Miss Farnum turned toward the house; and just then the others joined them. “You play, Mr. Holyoke, I know,” said Marion Lenoir, “and Mr. Van Kull is such a dab at it.” Van Kull looked anything but a dab at it, but rather an oddly sophisticated lamb being led to the slaughter; but then Miss Lenoir was, as she expressed it, “a tennis girl.” And certainly she looked it, when Arthur met her on the lawn, her lithe young figure robed in a blue and white tennis dress, her black hair shining in a tight coil.
“Fie, what would Jimmy say?” said Mrs. Gower to Miss Duval as they passed her. “Jimmy may say what he pleases,” said that young woman, with a shrug of her shoulders.
They had played several sets, and Miss Lenoir so well that she and Arthur had won most of them, when there was a ripple of excitement among the two married women, who had been sitting on a shady bench watching the game. Mrs. Gower had disappeared; Mr. Wemyss had sauntered up from time to time, to say a word and disappear again. “I do believe it’s the men come back!” cried Mrs. Hay, as a carriage stopped at the door of the house.
The game came to an end; and Arthur walked back with his partner to the terrace. Charlie Townley was there, and a middle-aged man who was Mr. Sewall, as Miss Lenoir told him; and a stout man with a red face, who bore a little clumsily his introduction to Mrs. Hay, and then turned with a “Well, old fellow—what do you know?” to Kill Van Kull. It was our old friend S. Howland Starbuck. He had changed more than Van Kull, and seemed ten years older, with a bloated look in his face. Van Kull, as he stood there in his light scarlet tennis-jacket and white flannels, was still a model of manly strength, with features pale and clear-cut, and a look of race about him. Probably he had led a far worse life than simple Buck Starbuck, as they still called him; but Van Kull’s beauty deathless, like a fallen angel’s. “So good of you all to take pity on us lone women,” said Flossie Gower, as she approached with Mr. Wemyss. “Mr. Sewall, thanks for leaving the administration so long unwatched. How are you, Si? Tell us what to do, Mr. Townley. Shall we take a sail?”
“A sail would be delightful, I think,” said Sewall, affably. “Mrs. Hay, I hope you got safely home the other night? Lord Birmingham, I am very glad to meet you; I had the pleasure of knowing your father, the late Earl.”
“Come, young women!” cried Flossie, “run and get your things on. I’ve ordered the lunch to be ready at five.”
Arthur was much impressed at the prospect of going on a pleasure-jaunt with so great a man as Sidney Sewall. He was one of those who really seem to shape the fortunes of the country; his newspaper was a political power throughout the land, and he made and unmade candidates at will. People of wealth and fashion were getting familiar to our hero; but the companionship of men of power was a social summit he had never yet climbed. Flossie Gower liked to get such men about her, as a child plays with chessmen.
There was a break to take them to the river; but most of the company preferred to walk. Mrs. Gower led the way with Mr. Sewall, and Arthur was close behind with Marion Lenoir. He was struck with the elaborate air of pleasure-seeking that Mr. Sewall assumed; he made himself a perfect squire of dames, for the nonce, and his talk was of other people and their misdoings. As they turned from the lower footpath-gate of Mrs. Gower’s place into the main road, they met Derwent, striding homeward in his knickerbockers; and Flossie introduced him to Mr. Sewall. Then they all went on and soon came to the river, where the Gowers’ pretty little steam-yacht lay at a private wharf. Derwent was full of his day at the Mills; and began talking of it to the great editor. “They are nearly all French Canadians,” said he, “not Americans at all; and their wages are quite as low, except the few skilled workmen and foremen, as at Manchester.”
“They were even lower last year,” said Sewall, “at the time of the worst depression. The mill has really no reason for being, except the tariff; and, of course, in the bad years the laborers are ten times worse off than if there were no tariff at all. But it attracts Canadian cheap labor; and our ignorant workmen think they are being protected all the same.”
“Surely, you would not abolish the tariff and wipe out the mill entirely?” said Wemyss, who had taken a seat close by. Sewall shrugged his shoulders. He was the editor of a great protectionist newspaper. “There is no use riding against a herd of cattle,” said he. “If you want to lead them, you must ride their way.” Arthur opened his eyes at this, for Sewall’s paper declared itself the great representative of the laboring classes; but he soon found that “cattle” was a milder term than the popular editor usually applied to his constituency. “The secret of statesmanship,” he went on, “in representative government, is to do nothing yourself until driven to it by the rabble, and in the meantime make capital out of the other fellow’s mistakes.”