The Duke was more malleable. June found it easy to influence him. He became quite a champion of fairydom over the dinner-table; and, when the men were left to their cigars, toasted Titania daily, in the good old-fashioned manner, with an apt quotation from the classics.
Nor did his enthusiasm and efforts finish there. Twice before the session ended he drove down to the House of Lords to move a resolution which would lead England elfwards; but, alas! on both occasions the warmth of the Gilded Chamber and the influence of ministerial explanations sent him to sleep. He awoke each time to find the Woolsack untenanted; the House adjourned; the opportunity gone.
The fairies took the will for the deed; and, after all, in those still unregenerate days, it came to much the same thing.
It was Geoffrey from whom Elfland came to hope most. He was young, capable of enthusiasm, and was already, though only in a shadowy way, on the side of the fairies.
He had thoroughly awakened to facts, and begun to take life very seriously. He went at his problems with a will. He immersed himself in Political Economy and the study of social problems, and sat at the feet of the Professors. He went for miles tramping through mean streets, studying conditions and people. He marched along country roads and noticed the empty and wasted fields, weed-choked streams, and infinite other opportunities for national well-being lost.
Frequently Bim went with him. For his own rest and comfort the gnome furnished Geoffrey's Homburg hat with a fairy hammock and gossamer sleeping-suit. His lordship became a walking bedroom, entertaining for hours, just over his brainpan, a distant cousin of Puck.
Geoffrey became eager to do something, to create something, to make life richer for his having lived. He thought of many possible occupations, chiefly mechanical; he felt he ought in his circumstance to do something quite contrary to his rule, something grimy and disagreeable. It ended--after some loose-ends of effort--by his remaining satisfied to prepare for Parliament. So he continued to absorb fustily-immortal works on the sciences of wealth and government, and practised the writing of pithy pamphlets and the delivery of orations--addressing "Mr. Speaker" and mighty demonstrations in the solitude of his bedroom.
In November the seat he was destined to, became vacant. The writ for an election could not be issued till after Parliament had reassembled in February; so, meanwhile, he must wait, and woo the suffrages of his future constituents.
He went to Armingham Castle, canvassed and took tea with several and sundry, kissed babies, opened bazaars, delivered a series of addresses of a pleasant Buff colour. The fairies were not with him then; they left that particular campaign alone. The burgesses he was to represent liked him well enough. They regarded him as a nice, handsome, earnest youth, whose speeches might well have contained more personalities and fewer figures, but who was safe and his cheques generous. He would do, was the burden of general opinion.
The fairies knew well that he would--when he was wanted.