The Marbeck Inn: A Novel

by Harold Brighouse

They explored chiefly the London which Londoners do not know, the London of the guide-books, and felt tremendously metropolitan because they went to the Tower, the British Museum and the National Gallery. The shops seared Ada. Their windows fascinated but their doors repelled. Probably Sam would have held her back by main force had she attempted to go in, but, as it was, she had the same satisfaction in identifying them that social snobs find in recognizing, at a distance, famous people. These were the authentic shops which advertised in the papers and they had a game called “hunting the Harrod” or “looking for Barkers,” which led to a lot of fun with ‘buses after they had quartered Oxford Street and Regent Street. It was all very gay, and gayer, almost naughtily gay, to go one night to a place called the Coliseum—a music-hall; a thing to do audaciously, not to be spoken of at home; and yet the place was very full of really most respectable people. They marvelled at the emancipation of the Londoner.

On his honeymoon, Sam became possessed of an ambition. It was not an extraordinarily fine ambition, but he came to care about, it greatly and it repaid his care a thousandfold. The way to sanity is to desire very keenly something which it is just possible one may get, and Sam’s ambition kept him sane in the days when he knew that Ada had failed him.

Struggles had suggested to our debater of the Concentrics that he ought to see the House of Commons at debate, and had written to their local Member for a pass to the Gallery. The result was the most thrilling experience of Sam’s honeymoon! It was, for one thing, unique that Ada could not be with him: these were the first hours since he married her that they spent apart and perhaps that, all unconsciously, had gilded them for Sam. They had almost a tiff before she let him go: not quite, but she resented his desertion of her and considered it his fault that she was not allowed to sit with him to hear the legislators who made laws for her as for him. Not that Ada cared who made her laws, nor cared to watch the makers at their work, but she managed to put enough snap into her resentment at his going to lend the added quality of a stolen pleasure to his experience.

That gallery, with its foreshortened view of the dingy cock-pit, is not the first choice of the connoisseur in thrills, but on Sam its effect was amazing. He must have had some gift, quite undisclosed till now, of veneration, for it is almost beyond belief that the reality of the House of Commons can impress. But the idea can and perhaps (to be just) the reality is more impressive than that of any other Chamber on earth. Imagination helping him, it caught and held his mind.

A small stout man of undistinguished appearance was speaking in a conversational tone not easy to hear from the Gallery, but presently the orator warmed to his subject and poured out living words in a spate of real emotion. He was one of those rare men, and this one of those rare speeches, that really convert an opponent: and Sam’s ambition to speak as this politician spoke, and from those benches, came instantly to birth.

Not only did he want to be a Member of Parliament, but a Liberal Member, because this man of words was Liberal. Up to this time, Sam had not been a political animal although he had voted, and voted Tory because that was in general the line of Mr. Travers and the property-owning class he represented. Now with a swift enthusiasm he was Liberal, knowing nothing of either side, but caught by sudden hero-worship for a little, pudgy, snubnosed politician who spoke in sentences of prodigious length and never lost his way in them.

In a twinkling he acquired the bias of the politician: his hero’s opponent was palpably a fool; he had no gifts, no argument. Yes, Sam was doubly right to be a Liberal. They had so obviously all the brains, they were so undeniably the winning side. He did not understand the technique of a division and was surprised when he looked at the paper next day to find that the Liberals were outvoted. It gave him pause, but did not shake him. When the Liberals came back to power, as with their superiority in brain they were certain to do, he, Sam Branstone, would come with them. Let it be only a year or two and he would be ready. He too would loll upon those padded benches, and catch the Speaker’s eye, and be an orator.

He walked along the Embankment towards his hotel, and it came into his mind that he had spent four hours in the Gallery and had not thought of Ada. Nor could he, though he tried, think of her now.

Sky-signs still flashed across the river, and as he paused and leaned against the parapet a young policeman kept a wary eye on him. But Sam was meditating life, not death. The lights of London gleamed upon the Thames and made it magical for him. He conquered London in his reverie, and stepped, a member, from the House to his automobile. His home, he supposed, was somewhere in Park Lane.

He thought back now to the theatre where he had seen The Sign of the Cross. It was different from the London Theatres he had seen where audiences seemed afraid of emotion. Or was it that the plays had not been right? That was it: they had not the note: they weren’t—what was Stewart’s phrase?—erotic religious plays. He wanted to move audiences as that play had moved its audience. Power! The power of the spoken word. That was the thing, and since he could not write a play he must rely upon himself, his oratory, his single voice. He saw himself on platforms facing crowded halls, gripping his hearers, leading them where he would, taming the mob till it made an idol of its master. As to where he would lead, why, he would lead and that was what mattered. Branstone was Prime Minister that night.