But the pleasantness of our life at Beaulieu was sufficient to counterbalance the disappointments inflicted on us by Fortune at the gaming tables. Our fantastic villa was embowered in flowers and foliage. Buginvillæas made a purple flame on the walls. An avenue of palms led down from the house to the flashings of a minute harbor, on which fishing boats rocked their gayly painted prows, while woods of olive made a mystery of the impending hills behind. Friends and acquaintances from Cannes often came to lunch with us, Alfred Montgomery and the Duchess of Montrose among them. Beckett's spirits rose. Singularly sensitive as he always was to poetry, I could hear him (for the walls which divided our rooms were thin) reciting passages from "Paradise Lost" in his tub. Though he had done with systems, he, his wife, and I frequently went to Monte Carlo for dinner, our inducements being mainly the chance of meeting friends whose scrutiny we no longer feared, and the beauty of the homeward drive by the Lower Corniche road. The Prince's palace, pale on its rocky promontory, seemed like some work of enchantment as we swept by in the moonlight, and our horses carried us into strange, fantastic solitudes, with mountainous woods on one side and the waves just below us on the other. In stillnesses broken only by the noise of our own transit, the murmur of the waves was merely a stillness audible, as they whispered along crescents of sand with a sound like a sleeping kiss.
The Becketts, however, had to go back to England some weeks sooner than they expected, and I was left till the expiration of our lease, to occupy the villa alone. It was during the weeks for which I was thus left to myself that a letter reached me from St. Andrews, announcing that if I wished to retire I was honorably free to do so, as a suitable substitute had been found. The news was extremely welcome to me. I had many books with me at Beaulieu, for the most part dealing with economic and social science; and once more, when I was left to myself, the study of these absorbed me, and led me to begin the planning of a kind of political novel, of which I shall speak presently. But my solitude was not enlivened by political speculation only. Two or three times a week I went to Monte Carlo to enjoy the society of the R——s in their villa, which I have already described, and which, still remains in my memory as associated with flowers and harp strings. Out of my intimacy with the R——s an incident arose which may be regarded as a fitting conclusion to the drama of Monte Carlo, so far as I myself was concerned with it. The R——s had a friend, Mrs. P——, a not very prosperous widow, who was spending the winter and spring with them. She was far from beautiful, and her manners perhaps were deficient in polish, but her temper was singularly sweet. She was willing to oblige everybody. She accompanied Miss R—— and myself on many interesting expeditions, and was pleased by our seeking her companionship. Otherwise she was much alone, and was left to amuse herself; her only amusement—so I gathered from her chance conversation—being the winning or losing of a five-franc piece at the tables. One day, when I called at the villa, I saw by the butler's face that something unusual must have happened. I learned a few minutes later that Mrs. P—— was dead. The cause of her death turned out to have been this. Having begun her exploits at the gambling rooms with winning or losing a five-franc piece occasionally, she had, unsuspected by anybody, succumbed by slow degrees to the true gambler's passion. In order to gratify this, everything she could sell—and it was not much—she had sold. Not many hours ago she had placed her last louis on the table, and had seen it disappear under the traction of the croupier's rake. She had nothing left in her bedroom but the clothes which she had worn yesterday, a hairbrush, and a bottle of laudanum. The bottle that morning had been found in her hand, empty. The last incident of my visit to Monte Carlo was her burial. In the mists of a rainy morning a surpliced English clergyman saw her put out of sight and mind in a little obscure cemetery. There were only two mourners. I myself was one; Miss R——, with her fair hair and her black dress, was the other.
A few days later I left Beaulieu for England by way of the Italian lakes. I had managed to hire at Nice a great old-fashioned traveling carriage—a relic of pre-railway days. By way of a parting dissipation I picked up the R——s at their villa, and took them with me as far as San Remo. There I joined the train, the R——s going back in the carriage. Next morning I was at Cadennabia, and Monte Carlo and the system, and Beaulieu and its Buginvillæas, were behind me.
CHAPTER XI
"THE OLD ORDER CHANGES"
Intellectual Apathy of Conservatives—A Novel Which Attempts to Harmonize Socialist Principles with Conservative
In spite of the severance of my connection with the St. Andrews Boroughs, I found, when I returned to England from Monte Carlo, that my active connection with politics was not by any means at an end. Politics, as a mere fight over details, or as a battle between rival politicians, appealed to me no more than it had done during my experience of electioneering in Fifeshire; but presently by family events I was drawn once more into the fray. My cousin, Richard Mallock of Cockington, had been asked, and had consented, to stand as Conservative candidate for the Torquay division of Devonshire. His local popularity, which was great, depended mainly on the engaging and somewhat shy simplicity of his manner, on his honesty, which was recognized by all, and on his generosity and sound sense as a landlord. These latter qualities had lately been made conspicuous by his administration of those parts of his property which were now, one after another, being quickly covered with buildings. He was no student, however, of statistics or political theory; as a speaker his practice had been small, and he and his advisers asked me to give what assistance I could.
One night early in July I had, at a large ball in London, spent a most agreeable hour with a companion who was, like myself, no dancer, in watching and discussing with her the brilliantly lighted company. At last, catching sight of a clock, I found myself obliged to go. "I have," I said, "to be at Paddington at five o'clock in the morning. To-morrow I must speak in Devonshire to a meeting of agricultural laborers." She expressed approval and sympathy, and I presently found myself in the dimness of the still streets, happy in the thought that soon I should be among the smell of meadows and listening to the noise of rooks. The following evening at a village on Richard Mallock's property, his political campaign was to be inaugurated, and I was to be one of the orators.
When the time for the meeting came I found myself erect in a wagon, with a world of apple trees in front of me and a thatched barn behind, and heard myself discussing the program of "three acres and a cow," of which my listeners understood nothing, and I not more than a little. Compared with such an audience the Liberals of St. Andrews were sages. The most intelligent of the Conservative audiences in the constituency were those got together under the auspices of the Primrose League. But Conservatism even with them was no more than a vague sentiment, healthy so far as it went, but incapable of aiding them in controversy with any glib Radical opponent. I tried again and again during the following few weeks to call their attention to the sources from which our national wealth generally, and most of their own food, was derived, and particularly to the economic significance of a town such as Torquay, much of the wealth of which had its origin in foreign countries. In dealing, however, with these matters, I met with no response more encouraging than puzzled smiles; but whenever, for want of something better to say, I alluded to "this great Empire on which the sun never sets," I was greeted with volume of cheers sufficient, one might almost have thought, to have secured the election of a Conservative candidate on the spot. Besides myself, two other workers were active, who began their political life as Richard Mallock's supporters at Torquay, and who subsequently rose to eminence of a wider kind—George Lane Fox, as Chancellor of the Primrose League, and J. Sandars as secretary and adviser to Mr. Arthur Balfour. But they, so it seemed to me, found it no easier than I did to vitalize the non-Radical or temperamentally Conservative classes with any definite knowledge of the main conditions and forces on which their own livelihood depended, and which Radicals and revolutionaries would destroy. Of this state of mind I remember an amusing illustration.
Many Primrose League meetings, at the time of which I now speak and later, were held at Cockington Court, which was now a political center for the first time since the days of William and Mary. The proceedings on one occasion were to begin with a few preliminary speeches, delivered from some steps in a garden which adjoined the house. The chair was to be taken by the Duchess (Annie) of Sutherland, who for many years spent part of the summer at Torquay. Her opening speech consisted of five words: "I declare this meeting open." Subsequently George Lane Fox moved a vote of thanks to the duchess "for the very able way in which she had taken the chair." Never did appropriate brevity receive a more deserved tribute. These preliminaries having been accomplished, the business of the day began. The slopes surrounding the house were dotted with various platforms, from each of which addresses were delivered to all who cared to listen. The audience which clustered round one of them was soon of such exceptional size that I joined it in the hope of discovering to what this fact was due. The platform was occupied by two county members, both men of worth and weight, but not even the highest talents which their warmest friends could attribute to them would account, so it seemed to me, for the outbursts of uproarious applause which greeted from time to time the one who was now speaking. In the applauded passages I failed to detect anything more cogent or pungent than the general substance of those which were passed by in silence. I could find no explanation of this perplexing fact till I realized that behind the platform was a tall, greased pole, up which successive competitors were doing their best to climb, the victor's reward being a large leg of mutton at the top of it, and the applause being excited by the feats, not of the orator, but of the acrobats.