It was, I think, the contemplation of these gentlemen, even more perhaps than my saddening knowledge of their shifty, time-serving, shilly-shallying, or glaringly unscrupulous leaders and masters, that finally disgusted me with those branches of political work which were open to me. I have no wish to sit in judgment. Other and stronger men may find that they may keep the most evil sort of company without ever soiling their own hands. I know and very sincerely respect a few political journalists and workers of different parties, whose uprightness is beyond suspicion; whose fine enthusiasm remains untarnished, even to-day. I yield to none in my admiration for such men. But however much I admired, or even envied, it was not for me to emulate these gentlemen. I probably lacked the necessary strength of fibre.
Arncliffe was, as ever, very kindly when I showed him my feeling in the matter; and, so far as might be, he released me from all journalistic obligations of a political sort. But more, I was given a complimentary dinner. Speeches were made, and I was genuinely astonished by the length of the list of my avowed services to politics. It was affirmed that, under Providence, and Arncliffe, and one or two people with titles, I had been instrumental in starting movements, launching an organ of opinion, and bringing about all kinds of signs and portents. The occasion embarrassed me greatly.
It was true enough that, for a season, I had thrown myself heart and soul into the furtherance of certain political aims; and, in all honesty, I had worked very hard. And--heavens! how I was sick of the fluent humbugs, and the complacent parasites! If only they could have been dumb, and, in their writings, forbidden by law the use of all such words as 'patriotism,' I could have borne much longer with them.
London is our British centre, and your true parasite makes ever for the kernel. I have seen them treated with the gravest and most modest deference by working bees from outlying hives--the Oversea Dominions and the Services--as men who were supposed to be fighting the good fight, there in the hub, the heart, and centre of our House. And, listening to their complacent oozings, under the titillations of innocent flattery, I have turned aside for very shame, in my impatience, feeling that in truth the heart and centre were devoid of virtue, and that true patriotism was a thing only to be found (where it was never named) in unknown officers of either service, and obscure civilians engaged in working out their own and the Empire's destinies in its remote outposts, and upon the high seas.
And, impatient as that thought may have been, how infinitely better founded and less extravagant it was than the presumptuous arrogance of these gentlemen, who, by their way of it, were 'Bearing the heat and burden of the day, here in the busy heart of things--the historic metropolis of our race!'
VI
Upon three occasions only, in five times that number of years, did I meet Cynthia--Cynthia Barthrop; and those meetings, I need hardly say, were accidental.
The promise of Cynthia's youth was to all outward seeming amply fulfilled. As a matron she would have been notable in any company, by reason of her sedate beauty, and the dignity of her presence. But her manner suggested to me that her life had certainly not brought content to Cynthia; and I gathered from her brother Ernest that the radiant brightness of nature which had characterised her youth had not survived her assumption of wifely and maternal cares. Others might regard this change as part of a natural and inevitable process. In my eyes also it was inevitable and natural, but not as the result of the passage of time. For me it was the inevitable outcome of a marriage of convenience, which was not, for Cynthia, a natural mating. The key to the changed expression of her beautiful face, and, in particular, of her eloquent eyes, as I saw it, lay in the fact that she was unsatisfied; her life, so rich in bloom, had never reached fruition.
One letter I had written to Cynthia, within a few days of her marriage. And there had been no other communication between us. I trust that forgetfulness came more easily to her than to me.
My withdrawal from political work I connect with the death of Queen Victoria, the Coronation of King Edward, and the end of the South African War. From the same period--a time of the inception of radical, far-reaching change in England--I date also my final emergence from that phase of one's existence in which one is still thought of, by some people at all events, as a young man. The phase has a longer duration in our time, I think, than in previous generations, because we have done so much in the direction of abolishing middle age. Grey hairs were fairly plentiful with me well before the admitted end of this phase.