‘Yes,’ said Harry, ‘that is the very height of selfishness. But you remember Wordsworth’s lines—I think they just express what we have been saying—
“Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”’
Another day they talked of politics. Lady Venniker was present then. It was intended that Harry should one day stand for the county. The Vennikers had represented it, with some few intervals, in the House of Commons for nearly a century. In the old days the seat was considered safe in itself. It was still rendered safe by the personal popularity of Lord Venniker. But Lady Venniker feared that politics had a tendency to blunt the delicate edge of the moral sense. She thought the danger was not that public men, in a democracy, would do the thing which they believed to be wrong, but that there was nothing which they would not believe to be right.
‘Vox populi vox Dei,’ said Gerald. ‘There is a divinity, I suppose, in numbers, and the will of the people ought to be done. That is the fundamental principle of democracy.’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Venniker, ‘but it does not follow that you are the person who ought to do it. I cannot think that any preponderance of votes or opinions can alter the law of conscience for the individual. Ought not a statesman to say frankly what he thinks right, and, if something else is to be done, to let others do it?’
Impracticable, ideal vision of an invalid!
‘But Harry,’ said Miss Venniker, ‘will say what he thinks, and what he thinks will be right. All good people are Conservatives now.’
Gerald Eversley smiled.
‘If it is so,’ said Lady Venniker, ‘it is a bad thing for the country. There can be no greater misfortune than that the aristocracy of a country should be all on one side, even if it is the right side. For the aristocracy are the natural leaders of the people, and it is important that the leaders, whatever side they belong to, should have the same instincts and traditions of conduct, the same principles of action, the same moral feelings. If not, they have no common ground.’
‘That is certainly true,’ said Gerald. ‘You cannot play any game—least of all the game of politics—without a certain conventional code of honour. If people who play a game are bound by nothing but the rules, it cannot be played. The conventions of society are worth more than its rules. Unscrupulous men will always evade rules, but a sense of honour is a law to itself.’