“However, gentlemen,” the young man gathered himself up to say, “I believe I understand the situation. You are my friends and this is your advice. We must save the seat. I’ll see Carter. If I can get anything out of him to make me think he’ll go straight on the scheme to save the Empire”—he smiled faintly—“when it comes to a vote, I’ll withdraw in his favour at the convention. Horace here will think up something for me—any old lie will do, I suppose? In any case, of course, I withdraw.”
He took his hat, and they all got up, startled a little at the quick and simple close of the difficult scene they had anticipated. Horace Williams offered his hand.
“Shake, Lorne,” he said, and the other two, coming nearer, followed his example.
“Why, yes,” said Lorne.
He left them with a brief excuse, and they stood together in a moment’s silence, three practical politicians who had delivered themselves from a dangerous network involving higher things.
“Dash these heart-to-heart talks,” said Bingham irritably, “it’s the only thing to do, but why the devil didn’t he want something out of it? I had that Registrarship in my inside pocket.”
“If anybody likes to kick me round the room,” remarked Horace Williams with depression, “I have no very strong objection.”
“And now,” Mr Farquharson said with a sigh, “we understand it’s got to be Carter. I suppose I’m too old a man to do jockey for a three-year-old, but I own I’ve enjoyed the ride.”
Lorne Murchison went out into the companionship of Main Street, the new check in his fortunes hanging before him. We may imagine that it hung heavily; we may suppose that it cut off the view. As Bingham would have said, he was “up against it” and that, when one is confidently treading the straight path to accomplishment, is a dazing experience. He was up against it, yet already he had recoiled far enough to consider it; already he was adapting his heart, his nerves, and his future to it. His heart took it greatly, told him he had not yet force enough for the business he had aspired to, but gave him a secret assurance. Another time he would find more strength and show more cunning; he would not disdain the tools of diplomacy and desirability, he would dream no more of short cuts in great political departures. His heart bowed to its sorry education and took counsel with him, bidding him be of good courage and push on. He was up against it, but he would get round it, and there on the other side lay the same wide prospect, with the Idea shining high. At one point he faltered, but that was a matter of expediency rather than of courage. He searched and selected, as he went along the street, among phrases that would convey his disaster to Dora Milburn.
Just at that point, the turning to his own office, he felt it hard luck that Alfred Hesketh should meet and want a word with him. Hesketh had become tolerable only when other things were equal. Lorne had not seen him since the night of his election, when his felicitations had seemed to stand for very little one way or another. His manner now was more important charged with other considerations. Lorne waited on the word, uncomfortably putting off the necessity of coming out with his misfortune.