"You're not going to cement it by a tariff or a highfalutin' proclamation," he answered. "When anyone wants closer union, when it's worth anyone's while, it'll be done. You want it. Good. Well, do a little missionizing round the Empire, then; don't go into the House to do it." He took out his cigar-case and threw it over to me. "Smoke one and don't look so dam' dejected, George. I've been in the House the devil of a long time, and every day I go there I'm more and more impressed with the extraordinary little that can be done there. I'm not being discouraging on purpose; I want to save you from a crushing disappointment. Shed a few of your illusions, get rid of the 'Thursday Essays' frame of mind—capital debating-society stuff and precious little more. If you'll remember that the government of men is the hardest thing in the world, that this country is a very old and illogical place, with a half-feudal, half-mercantile aristocracy still in effective occupation, and that the House of Commons is the clumsiest tool a revolutionary ever had to handle, you'll be some way on the road to political sanity. Don't merely think of ideal reforms and get hysterical when you can't bring 'em to birth with the aid of a one-clause Bill: face your difficulties squarely, see the utmost extent to which, with all your courage and perseverance, you can overcome them, and then never rest till you've secured up to that limit. The one way sends you into the Cabinet; the other makes you the hero of a party of three in the Smoking-Room. Needless to say, you think I'm deliberately damping down your enthusiasm?"
"I think you're a bit jaundiced by twenty years of Tory rule," I said.
"Dear boy, I was through the '80 Parliament, and the '86 and the '92. If you want things done, you'd better go to Fleet Street. The House of Commons is being more and more ignored each day. Gladstone started it by his monster meetings; he could speak to six thousand electors instead of six hundred members. And the Press learned the lesson. A group of papers that get into every hand in the country, permeate every brain—that's worth a year of perorations and lobbying. But you'd better come along and see for yourself. There'll be an election in a few months now, so you'd better not waste too much time paying visits. Nobody's any idea what our majority will be like."
Between my first and second campaigns I paid but one visit—a week with the Lorings at House of Steynes. The Daintons were there before me, and Valentine Arden, my cousin Violet, Prendergast of the Foreign Office, Sally Farwell and her mother, Rupert Harley and the inevitable Crabtree arrived the same day. There was good shooting and tolerable golf, and in the evenings and on wet days we used to move the furniture and rugs out of the library and dance to Roger Dainton's heavy-footed working of the pianola. Early in life Loring had appreciated that the success of a house-party depended on compelling his female guests to breakfast in their rooms and allowing everyone to do what he liked for the rest of the day. We talked, shot, danced, played bridge, ate, drank, slept—and devised ingenious and bloodthirsty ways of speeding Crabtree on his way to Banff.
"And if he'd take that Dainton child with him," my cousin exclaimed on the evening of our arrival, "I don't think anybody would miss them. George, what's happened to her? She used to be such a nice little thing."
"She has been insufficiently slapped," I suggested. "I am now a serious student of social conditions; I have spent ten weeks in the East of London and ten months in the West. It is my considered opinion that wife-beating will only be stamped out when women are beaten regularly and severely before they become wives."
Violet's pretty blue eyes glanced across to the far end of the hall where an ill-suppressed tittering rose from behind an oak settle.
"And Mr. Crabtree?" she asked.
"I have seen the dog-fanciers of Shadwell holding his like below the surface of a rain-butt for five minutes at a time. In Crabtree's case I should lengthen the period to avoid risks. Incidentally, what has Sonia been doing?"