"My dear child, I am double Edgar's age, and I have learnt that bare facts, like everything else, require clothing; and that the more becoming the clothing, the more effective the facts."
Mrs. Martin had learnt a great deal during the last ten years. She had got on in the world, and the world had taught her much and found her an apt pupil. It is the world's business to cover its vessels with the very best electro-plate; this is all that it undertakes to do, and it never pretends to be a depot for hall-marked articles. If we give ourselves up to the world's hardening process, and duly worship rank and wealth and success and all other licensed gods, it will hide our weaknesses under its elegant electro covering, and we shall shine for a while like burnished silver. But the real metal is found elsewhere.
In the spring of the year the long-expected Dissolution was announced. Excitement ran high all through the country as the general election approached; and Michael Ford was full of delight to think that at last he should see his life's ambition realized, and his son a member of Parliament.
But when he mentioned the subject to that son, Edgar—for the first time in his life—was not amenable to his father's wishes.
"I am more sorry than I can ever say to disappoint you, but I cannot stand at this election," he said.
Mr. Ford was dumfounded. "My dear boy, what on earth do you mean? You have plenty of money, and no business cares to occupy your time and attention; and at Chayford the thing will be simply a walk-over."
"It isn't that I am afraid of not getting in—it is something quite different from that. If I thought it right to stand, no amount of opposition would deter me."
"Then what is it? If you think that your views are too advanced to please me, you need have no further hesitation on that score. I have long ago learnt that the ways of old folks are too slow for the younger generation, and that we must be content to let the stream flow on as quickly as it will, and not attempt to let or hinder it."
Edgar longed to spare his father the pain which he felt bound to inflict; but this was impossible. He had dallied long enough, and now the time had come to speak out.
"I have made up my mind, and nothing now can alter me," he began, and his face was very white, "for a long time my duty to you has been in conflict with the duty which I owe to a higher Power; but now a crisis has come, and I feel I must hesitate no longer."
Mr. Ford did not speak, so Edgar went on: "I do not feel it right for me to be living in luxury while so many of my fellow-men are perishing with hunger; I do not feel it right for me to be living in idleness while so many of my brethren cry out for help. The call has come for me to go out into the highways and hedges and compel all that are bidden to come in to the feast; and it is a call which may not be disobeyed."
"But, my dear Edgar, did it never occur to you that you might serve God and your generation more effectually as an influential statesman than as an hysterical socialist?"
Mr. Ford's voice was hard and dry, but Edgar's face was alight with an enthusiasm which no worldly wisdom could quench.
"My dear father, you know as well as I do that it is not in me to become a statesman, or even an ordinary politician. I could never merge myself in my party, or content myself with compromises; I should always be fighting little battles of my own, and tilting at windmills which nobody but myself could see. I do not belong to any party; I have too many fads and scruples to identify myself with any political school. Therefore I should not be justified in asking any constituency to return me as its member. It would be unfair to my constituents and unfair to myself."
Mr. Ford played with a paper-knife, but he did not say anything. What was the use?
"I do not deny," Edgar continued, "that a politician is called to do a great and necessary work; I merely say that I am not called upon to be a politician. Oh! father, do not tempt me. I know all the arguments that you would use, and I have tried in vain to stifle my own conscience with them over and over again. I have lived an upright and honourable life—but that is not enough; I have kept my heart pure and my hands clean—but that is not enough; through it all I can hear one Voice speaking: 'Sell all thou hast and give to the poor'. And dare I turn away because I have great possessions?"
Michael Ford sighed heavily, but still he did not speak. His face looked ten years older than it had looked ten minutes ago.
"It cuts me to the heart to hurt you like this after all that you have done for me," continued Edgar, and his voice trembled, "but I see my way plain before my face, and I dare not turn aside; 'for he that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me'."
"Then what do you intend to do?" asked Mr. Ford wearily, looking across his writing-table at the young man standing by the fireplace.
"I intend to join the Hampden House Settlement at Stepney, and to live with the poor and for the poor; and I hope to spend the rest of my life in trying to comfort broken hearts and to brighten darkened homes. I have closed my ears to the cry of suffering humanity long enough—too long, alas!—but at last they have been opened; and afterEphphathahas once been pronounced, a man cannot but listen to the cries of his fellows and to the commands of his God."
"What does Alice say to all this?"
The mention of Alice's name gave her lover fresh courage.
"She agrees with me in all my decisions," he said, "and she is ready to share in all my efforts; in fact, it is her enthusiasm which has inspired and sustained me, and has renewed my strength when I felt ready to fall."
"Are you aware that both you and Alice will each have a very large fortune of your own some day?" Mr. Ford asked drily.
"Is any fortune too large to give to God?" was Edgar's response.
Michael Ford saw that the case was hopeless; therefore he wasted no more time in discussing it. He knew that it is possible, by means of argument, to convince a man's judgment and even to overcome his prejudices; but arguing against a man's conscience is sorry work—ninety-nine times out of a hundred it meets with no success; and the hundredth entails a responsibility which is harder to bear than failure.
When Edgar left him, Mr. Ford sat for a while buried in thought. "It is the way of the world," he said to himself; "one man is born to wealth and power and success, and he flings them all away; another man has everything against him, and he climbs to the top of the tree. The son of the rich man serves, while the son of the poor man sits down to meat; and one man labours, in order that another man's son may enter into his labours. Certainly Fate has a sense of humour."
Then he took up his pen and wrote to Paul Seaton.
They fought all day with might and main;And when the sun was setThe victors longed to fight again—The vanquished, to forget.
Paul Seaton was one of the men who possess the useful knack of knowing when the tide of their affairs is at the flood; so when Mr. Ford asked him to come down and fight the Liberal battle at Chayford in Edgar's stead, Paul consented without an hour's delay.
At the beginning of the campaign Joanna came home, completely restored to health, bringing Isabel with her; and the inhabitants of the Cottage gave themselves up body and soul to the election, and talked and thought and dreamed of nothing else. Great was the excitement all over England, and Chayford was no exception to the rule. For three weeks Paul made several speeches per day, and was treated as if he were a combination of Juggernaut and a popular preacher, with a flavour of Royalty thrown in.
Everybody in the town, including even the babies and the cats, wore colours, if it were nothing better than a scrap of tea paper; and there was all that delicious love of fighting in the air which makes an election like a glorious war with no death or danger in it.
"Isn't it fun?" exclaimed Isabel one day. "I adore every minute of it. It makes you hate the other side with such an exquisite frenzy of hatred, which has neither malice nor uncharitableness in it and yet which is so charmingly violent while it lasts."
"I know," agreed Joanna, "it is that nice sort of hatred which would never let you really injure people, but which makes you want their chimneys to smoke and their hats to blow off."
Isabel laughed. "And your love for your own side is equally enjoyable. I assure you I feel the most fervent glow of affection for all the Liberals in Chayford—just as if they were relations and it was Christmas Day."
"Yet all the time you know that these feelings will completely die out within a week of the declaration of the poll!" added Joanna.
"Of course you do; that is why they are so delightful. Feelings that last, take a good deal out of you I have discovered; the really delicious sort are those that you think will last for ever and that you know won't," said Isabel.
"I am afraid, my dear girl, that you are becoming an epicure in emotions," remarked Paul, who had just come in.
"I know I am; an election, supervening on a love-affair, is enough to intoxicate any woman, especially when the beloved object and the candidate are one. You can't think what glorious thrills I have all down my back when the crowds applaud you. Liberalism and love combined so overwhelm my soul that I feel you are the only man in the whole world, and the English nation rolled into one; and I am as tearful as if people were singing 'God Save the Queen' and 'Auld Robin Gray' at the same time. Oh! it is a delicious feeling, and I am eternally grateful to you for giving it to me."
Paul beamed with delight, but, being a man, did not say pretty things before a third person; Isabel, being a woman, did.
"I adore elections," she continued, waltzing round the room, "they are simply heavenly!"
"A general election and my idea of heaven are by no means synonymous," replied her lover quietly.
"My idea of heaven is pretty much the same as Beatrice's," Isabel said; "I shall go 'where the bachelors sit, and there live as merry as the day is long'. I shall say, 'Please reserve the place next to Mr. Paul Seaton for me'; and if I find it already occupied, there will be unpleasantness, and I shall contest the seat."
"You are very brilliant to-day." And Paul looked at her proudly. She was worth looking at just then, as she had dressed herself entirely in blue, the Liberal colour in Chayford; and a woman always looks her best when her gown is of the same shade as her eyes.
"It is this lovely election! It has got into my head."
"Well, don't let it tire you; I would rather lose the seat than that you should knock yourself up in helping me to win it."
"I am glad you have warned her," said Joanna, "I am sure she works too hard, but she won't listen to me. She has too much spirit for her strength."
An anxious expression came over Paul's face. "You do look a bit tired, Isabel," he said.
"Rubbish!" she replied; then she looked at herself in the glass. "Should you call me a brilliant woman or a sweet woman?" she asked thoughtfully.
"Brilliant," replied Joanna.
"Both," replied Paul.
"That is absurd! I can't be both; nobody could."
"But you are."
Isabel carefully arranged her fringe: "That is just like your interesting but incomprehensible sex, my good sir. If you happen to care for a woman, you at once endow her with every possible virtue, totally irrespective of the fact that some of the virtues won't go together."
"Oh! that's what we do, is it?"
"Now we women behave differently. If we love a man, we don't plaster him over with all the good qualities; but we merely say that the virtues he doesn't possess are not virtues at all, and that no decent man would be seen with such things. But though themodus operandiin each case is different, the result is the same; that is to say, the beloved object in both instances has the monopoly of human excellencies."
"Well, I must be off," said Joanna rising; "I have some work to do."
After his sister had left the room, Paul made up his deficiency in the saying of pretty things.
"Where is Isabel?" asked Mrs. Seaton of her daughter, as the latter was going out.
"With Paul in the drawing-room."
Mrs. Seaton drew a sigh of perfect contentment. "That is all right."
"What they have to say to each other that they are always wanting to be alone together, I cannot imagine," continued Joanna. "I never said anything in my life to anybody that a third person was not welcome to hear."
Her mother smiled. "You have not said all that there is to be said yet, then."
"Evidently not. There are still some things in heaven and earth undreamed of in my philosophy, and what those two good people talk to each other about is one of them. If I were Isabel I could say all I wanted to say before us all, I am certain."
"But you couldn't if you were Paul, my dear."
Joanna rolled up her umbrella. "Well, mother, I don't pretend to understand it; I could never exchange confidences with anybody for all those hours on end, least of all with a man. I should be 'gravelled for lack of matter' in no time; but those dear, silly people go on for sixty minutes at a stretch, and then, if I happen to disturb them, look at me as reproachfully as if they had only had five seconds together, instead of 'a long hour by Shrewsbury clock'."
Among the most enthusiastic of Paul's political supporters was the faithful Martha. Whenever she was able, she attended his meetings, and regarded them almost as means of grace.
"I don't believe that the Pope of Rome or the President of the Conference could make finer speeches than Master Paul does," she said one day, as she was dusting the drawing-room, and Joanna was arranging the flowers.
Joanna laughed. "He is certainly a born orator, Martha; he plays upon his audience as if he were playing upon an organ."
"He does indeed, miss; and never seems at a loss for a word. I'm bound to say I didn't think Master Paul had it in him to speak like that. When you listen to him, you wonder how the folks that think differently have managed to keep themselves out of the lunatic asylums; and that is the sort of speaking, and the sort of preaching, that does real good, to my thinking."
"Still, I suppose, one ought to hear both sides of a question," argued the wise Joanna.
"Certainly not, miss; there is nothing so unsettling. Besides, where's the good? Only one side can be right, that is plain; and what is the use of wasting the time in listening to the side that is wrong?"
"But, Martha, how can you tell which side is right without hearing both?"
Martha dusted so fiercely that the ornaments fairly danced. "Bless your dear heart, if you are a woman, you know who is right and who is wrong before you've heard a single word; and if you are a man, you don't know who is right and who is wrong after you've heard all there is to be said. But Mr. Paul's speeches are very convincing, all the same; especially to folks as think the same as he does to begin with."
"Oratory is a great power," remarked Joanna, half to herself; "it must be lovely to see hundreds of people hanging upon every word you utter, and to know that you can sway them for the time being as it pleases you!"
"It must indeed, my dear—in fact, it seems almost too great a power to be put into the hands of a man, even though the man be dear Master Paul himself. But it is a wonder to me that men get on in the world as well as they do, considering that they know nothing and can't bear to be taught. They say Providence takes special care of children and naturals, so I suppose Providence looks after men in the same sort of way. If it wasn't so, goodness knows what would become of them—the unmarried ones in particular!"
"You used to be such a strong Conservative," Joanna suggested, as she filled a vase with daffodils.
"So I was, miss; at one time the Conservatives seemed to me to do the least mischief of the two parties, because they were better able to mind their own business and leave the country to look after itself. As I have often passed the remark, interference is the one thing that I can't stand. I have no objection to speaking a word in season or out of season, whenever I think it is needed; but I know my own business, and I won't stand being taught it by anybody. And, I take it, the country is the same as me, miss; and doesn't want Governments to come poking their noses into things that don't concern them."
"So now I suppose you are a Liberal, Martha?"
"Well, I don't know that I'd go as far as that," replied Martha cautiously, "my father was a Liberal, and the love of reform got into his blood till he couldn't eat a bit of bacon without telling us how much better it might have been cooked if he'd had the doing of it himself. I've noticed, miss, that when the master of a house is a reformer, there's often trouble in the kitchen; so I set my face against reforms of any kind, as it were." And the good woman shook her duster to and fro, as if the whole Liberal party were wrapped up in it.
"Still some changes are improvements," persisted Joanna.
"I never came across them, miss; it seems to me that a new way of governing the country is like a new way of frying potatoes—the potatoes are no better than they were before, and the grease always smells. Still, my dear, I am no longer a Conservative. Take my word for that."
"What made you change your politics?" Joanna asked.
"Why, the way the Conservatives have turned against our Paul. As long as they kept themselves to themselves, and acted according to their lights, I had no objections to them; though I confess they sometimes made mistakes, like their betters. But when they turned against Master Paul, it was a different thing, and then I washed my hands once for all of the whole boiling of them."
Joanna smiled, as she disposed of her last daffodil. Martha's politics were so essentially feminine. As long as a political party contents itself with revolutionizing States and annexing continents and disestablishing Churches, and other trifling pastimes such as these, no right-minded woman troubles her head about it; these things amuse it and do not hurt her. But when the political party takes advantage of this patience and forbearance on her part, and goes to the length of actually contesting the seat in Parliament of some particular man, the sleeping tigress wakes up and shows all the claws wherewith provident Nature has endowed her. Which conduct is, after all, only natural; and the offending faction has no one but itself to blame.
But it is the same with parties as with individuals; if one gives them an inch they take an ell.
At last the day of the Chayford election dawned; and—as is the way of election days—it was so long, that it seemed as if the sun had stood still to watch the battle, as it did in the time of Joshua. But it came to an end at last; and the little party at the Cottage sat up till midnight awaiting Paul and the result. At first everybody said it would be a walk-over; but anybody who knows anything about electioneering will be aware that, however certain a seat may be, and however enormous the majority last time, fears come with fighting, whilst agonizing doubts foreshadow the declaration of the poll.
Paul's little home-circle felt very anxious; and the more they doubted the result, the more they kept repeating that there was no room for doubt at all. The Liberal majority at Chayford at the last election had been nine hundred; and they continually assured each other (and themselves) that a majority of that size could no more melt away than an Alp could.
"You see," said Mr. Seaton, "though of course it might have diminished, a majority of that size could not possibly have transformed itself into a minority in three years." He was thinking to himself that if only four hundred and fifty voters had gone over to the other side, Paul would be beaten.
"Of course not," replied Joanna, "the result really is a foregone conclusion; it is only a question as to the size of the majority. She felt sure that the Conservative papers could not write as they did, if they had not grounds for their hope of which she knew nothing.
"It is really absurd to think that a mere boy like Lord Gailey should beat a brilliant politician like Paul; the idea is simply ludicrous!" exclaimed Isabel; but she wished to goodness that Paul had not had an aristocrat for his opponent, as there is an underlying respect for titles at the bottom of every British heart.
"It is no use our expecting Paul for a couple of hours yet," remarked Paul's mother; "it would be impossible for him to be here before then." She was feeling that something dreadful must have happened—either that the mob had killed Paul or else had not elected him—otherwise he would have been at home an hour ago.
And so they went on telling little comforting fibs to each other, and inwardly wondering how much longer this suspense could be endured.
Suddenly they heard the sound of wheels, and the stamping and shouting of a multitude.
"Here he is," said Mr. Seaton gently; and he went very white and took his wife's hand.
Joanna and Isabel were past speaking; so they tried to laugh—and failed.
The noise grew louder. The crowd had taken the horses out of Paul's carriage, and were drawing it along with deafening cheers. At last they pulled up at the Cottage gate, and Paul sprang out and thanked them, and rushed inside.
"It is all right!" he cried, "I am in with a majority of twelve hundred."
Then he went straight up to Isabel and kissed her before them all.
"I am very glad I have won," he said simply, "because it gives me something to give to you, who have given me so much."
So it came to pass that the old wastes and the former desolations were built up and repaired in the life of Paul Seaton: and the name of the builder and repairer was Love.
A few days after the election—while Paul was helping a brother candidate and Joanna was working in her district—Isabel made her confession to Paul's father and mother. She told them the whole story: how she had writtenShams and Shadowsin a fit of temper—how Paul had saved her from the consequences of her mad act—how she had selfishly let him bear the blame—how his love for her had at last conquered the weakness and worldliness of her nature, and taught her that it is not in the power of outside things to make a woman happy—and how she had promised to keep the secret all her life, after she had once told the truth to his own people.
"I could not rest till I had your forgiveness," she said in conclusion, "but if you will only say you forgive me, I have promised I will never mention the subject again."
"I forgive you utterly, my child," replied the minister; "the deed shall be blotted out as though it had never been; and I thank my son for having taught me how divine a thing sometimes is human love."
"And you?" whispered Isabel to Mrs. Seaton.
Paul's mother took Isabel in her arms. "Of course I forgive you, my dear one, because Paul has forgiven you, and because you have loved much; and I thank you for having given my son back to me again."
"I understand," said Isabel softly, "the Paul that you know, never could have written that horrid book, so you felt that there were two Pauls."
"That was just it," Mrs. Seaton replied, "and I could not make the two Pauls agree with one another in my mind. But now you have not only given the old Paul back to me; you have shown me that he is not merely as good as I believed he was, but infinitely nobler and better than I had dreamed. I did not think that my son could ever have writtenShams and Shadows; but, on the other, hand, I did not think that he could ever have performed so noble an act of self-sacrifice as this. So you have restored him to me fourfold."
"I can never forgive myself," sobbed Isabel.
Mrs. Seaton drew the weeping girl close to her. "My dear, you must, for Paul's sake. Remember he loves you so much, that he could not forgive anybody for not forgiving you."
"And we must not forget," added the minister, "that it is love for you which has made Paul into the man he is; so you have had much to do with the making of Paul, and therefore his mother and I love you for it."
"I did not do it. It was God who made Paul what he is, and I was just the instrument."
Mr. Seaton smiled. "Exactly, my dear; but there is nothing remarkable in that. The man who does the most, is nothing more than God's instrument for fulfilling His purposes; and the man who does the least, is no less than that. But we love best the instruments whereby the most good is wrought; and so also, I think, does God."
Paul and his mother were left together for a few minutes that evening.
"My dear," she said, "Isabel has told me everything."
Paul's face fell. "I am sorry she told you, mother; but she would do it."
"Don't be sorry, Paul; it is the greatest joy to me to find that I have nothing for which to blame my dear son; but that he has been all that I believed and hoped, and far more."
"Still, I had rather that you blamed me than that you blamed her; that is the one thing that I could not bear even from you, mother."
"I do not blame her as I blamed you; the two cases are so different. Don't you know that when a woman is angry she says far more than she means, but that a man—however angry—never says as much? So one can hardly pass the same judgment on the utterances of both."
Paul looked relieved. "You think then that she was—but no; I may find fault with what she writes, but never with what she is; and no one else shall find fault with her at all. You will remember that this confidence is sacred, mother; and that no one but my father and Joanna must ever share it with you."
"Certainly; you may trust us, Paul."
"And you will love Isabel always?"
"Always, dear; both for your sake and her own."
If you will only give me time,And likewise opportunity,To earth's high places I will climbAnd govern the community.
One summer's day it happened that Mr. Kesterton gave a tea-party on the terrace of the House of Commons in honour of the Robert Thistletowns, the Paul Seatons and Lady Farley. It was one of those broiling afternoons, when all the world longs for shade and a breeze; and these two luxuries are almost always to be found on the terrace at Westminster. The latter is sometimes found inside the walls as well; but this "indoor relief" cannot be depended upon. Everybody knows that when the two Houses of Parliament agree, there are few things that they cannot compass; so when they combine to cast a pleasant shade—and get the river Thames to help them with a cool breeze or two—they naturally succeed in producing the most refreshing atmosphere that is to be found in London in July.
Isabel loved going to the House now; for to her "inward eye" St. Stephen's had suddenly developed—from being a mere uninteresting historical antiquity and dry political fact—into an effective and suitable background for the figure of her husband. Therefore the place was worth seeing as often as she had time to see it; and she was absorbingly interested in everything that she saw. But to her this afternoon was a special occasion; for Paul had made his first great speech in a full-dress debate (and his reputation at the same time), and was receiving congratulations on all sides. Isabel and her aunt had heard the speech from behind the gilt lattice of the ladies' gallery; while it was being delivered, the former felt that here at last was the ideal statesman for whom England had waited through the ages; while the latter decided that Paul spoke like a man and looked like a gentleman, and that Isabel might have done worse.
When it was tea-time Mr. Kesterton came to fetch them down to the terrace; and their progress was punctuated by compliments on Paul's success from all the members that they met.
Isabel knew what admiration of herself was like; she had lived on it all her life, and had thought that there was nothing better. Now she found that there was.
"How many members are killed every year from tumbling down this pitch-dark staircase?" she inquired of her host as they proceeded to the terrace.
"That, my dear lady, is a State secret which I am not at liberty to divulge. We never talk about it. We just hide them under the stairs, like the princes in the Tower, and no one asks any questions."
"I suppose it would be unconstitutional for public men to see which way they were going?" suggested Isabel.
"Most unconstitutional," answered the Cabinet Minister; "and most detrimental to anything in the shape of a forward policy. Besides, if it were not for that dark staircase, what should we leaders do with the private members who have private opinions? We should have to dissemble our love so far as to kick them downstairs; and that also would be unconstitutional."
Isabel nodded. "I see; you recommend the Amy Robsart cure."
"Laisser faireis a most successful course of treatment," added Lady Farley; "I have spent my life in allowing people sufficient rope, and the victims of my indulgence hang in rows, like the tails of Little Bo-peep's flock."
Then Paul met them, and was patted on the back by Mr. Kesterton and praised by Lady Farley. Isabel felt she could not speak to him about his speech before all these people—it would be like saying one's prayers at a ball; so she just looked into his eyes and smiled; and Paul understood.
"Here are the Thistletowns," said Mr. Kesterton, going forward to receive his guests.
Lord Bobby still limped, though he was limping along the road to complete recovery; and as he had won his V.C.—and Violet—his cup of happiness was full. As for his wife, she was lovelier than ever; she had got what she wanted, and there is nothing so becoming to a woman as that.
"Very glad to see you, Lady Robert," exclaimed her host, "I hope your husband is getting all right again, though with such a nurse as he now has I cannot blame him if he lengthens out the long-drawn sweetness of his convalescence to its fullest extent."
Violet held out a daintily gloved hand. "Oh! he is much better, thank you: aren't you, Bobby?"
"Indeed I am," agreed the invalid; "I'm nearly fit again now, but I've had a narrow shave of it with that silly old leg of mine. Those Johnnies of doctors wanted to chop it off at one time, and then my wife and I would only have had three legs between us, like the Isle of Man. Shouldn't we, Vi?"
"Oh! don't dear," pleaded Violet, with a pretty little shudder. "I cannot bear to hear you talk like that."
It was a very merry tea-party; they all liked each other, and the weather was fine—two most important ingredients in a social success. Isabel especially was delightfully happy and important; she felt that Paul was standing on his own ground at last, and that it was very creditable ground to be standing upon; and she took therefore a proprietary interest in the House of Commons, and all that appertained to it.
"What would happen if I were to walk on the part of the terrace reserved for members?" she asked.
"The shade of Cromwell would exclaim, 'Remove that bauble!' and then you would be removed by the officials of the House, and burnt in effigy every 5th of November," Lord Robert hastened to assure her.
"Should I, Mr. Kesterton?"
"That is the usual punishment for such an offence."
"But I am an M.P.-ress myself, you see."
"Then in that case you might only be named by the Speaker," replied Mr. Kesterton, "that is the next worst thing."
"I hope that my husband shows no signs of becoming an independent member," said Isabel; "because I don't approve of independent members."
"Not at all," answered her host, "he is a credit alike to the woman who trained him and the party that owns him."
"I am thankful for that; I think that people who make their own opinions are almost as bad as people who make their own clothes."
The front-bench man nodded his approval of this sentiment, as he dispensed the strawberries and cream.
"What is done to members who have opinions of their own and are troublesome to their leaders?" Mrs. Paul Seaton further inquired.
Mr. Kesterton's eyes twinkled. "The correct thing is for them to be hanged, drawn and quartered; but, if they happen to have charming wives, the sentence is generally commuted to transportation for life to the House of Lords."
"I see. Well, I am glad to hear that my husband behaves himself prettily, and that you approve of him."
"He certainly behaves himself prettily, my dear lady; and I always approve of and nearly always agree with him. The only difference between us is that he is still young enough to aim at perfection, whilst I have learnt to be satisfied with success."
"You see, my wife is anxious to learn the customs of the House," said Paul.
"Then, my dear Isabel, let me give you one piece of valuable information," chimed in Lord Bobby, "do not for a moment imagine that because our old friend Guy Fawkes was reprimanded for trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament, there is anything to prevent you from blowing up the members separately. This custom is not only lawful, but frequently expedient; and in certain cases—such as your own for instance—not only expedient, but absolutely necessary."
"You know nothing at all about it," replied Isabel with dignity.
"Pardon me; my father is a member of the Upper House, and—until my marriage—I resided principally at home."
Every one laughed, and Paul said: "You must not go about telling the secrets of the Upper House in that way, Thistletown."
Bobby shook his head reprovingly. "Don't crush all the spirit out of that poor little thing. She has a right to know that she may bully you if she wants to do so, and that nobody can stop her. You shouldn't take advantage of your dear wife's well-known meekness and submission, Seaton; you really shouldn't. If you had married a woman who could speak up for herself, it would have been different. But I cannot bear to see cruelty to dumb animals."
"I wonder if a meek wife would have suited Paul," remarked Lady Farley, leisurely sipping her tea.
"I expect so," Bobby answered, "because he has chosen the other sort; just like gouty men always drink champagne and port (when their wives aren't looking)."
"I have often noticed," said Mr. Kesterton, "that men, as a rule, fall in love with the exact opposite of the type that they theoretically approve of."
"I have noticed more than that," added Lady Farley; "having selected, as you say, the exact opposite, they set about transforming the object selected into their ideal type. This seems to my ignorant mind a waste of time and trouble, when the market is overstocked with their ideal types already."
"I know what you mean," agreed Isabel, "the man who admires silent women, loses his heart to a chatterbox, and spends the rest of his mortal life in teaching her to hold her tongue."
Lady Farley nodded. "In the same way, a man who applauds female brains, is carried off his feet by a pretty fool, and then wears her and himself out by trying to educate her."
"It is stupid of men to behave like that," said Violet Thistletown.
"Not at all," argued her aunt, "it is stupid of the women not to adapt themselves."
"I don't know about that. How should you like to have to pretend to a man that you were not clever, Aunt Caroline?" inquired Isabel, who, having been married for only a few months, naturally imagined that she knew all there was to be known concerning the management of Man.
"I have already done so, my dear, for thirty years, with the utmost success. To this day my husband always insists upon fighting my battles for me."
"With what results?" asked Mr. Kesterton.
"The battles, of course, are lost; but what does that matter? The process stimulates his chivalrous instincts, and so increases his attachment to me. It is far more important that a woman's husband should think that he knows better than she does, than that the world should see that he doesn't."
The three men fully agreed with Lady Farley.
"The sole duty of woman is to be charming," she continued in her pretty drawl, "and if only the women of to-day would do their hair properly instead of letting their heads run upon their wrongs, and would study how to amuse men instead of how to solve life-problems, there would soon be no wrongs and no life problems left."
"Also women would not talk about Art with a capital A," agreed Paul, "Art with a capital A always bores me."
"My experience is that a woman's heart has nohein it when she spells it with a capital A," said Isabel wisely.
"I don't know how it is," mused Lady Farley, putting down her tea-cup, "but women, who spell abstract nouns with capital letters, generally seem independent of such artificial aids to beauty as soap and water and hair brushes."
Mr. Kesterton smiled; Lady Farley amused him extremely. "Then doesn't Milady claim equal rights with men?" he asked.
Milady raised her delicate eyebrows in well-bred surprise. "Of course not; why should I? The cleverest woman should be ready to knock under to the stupidest man if necessary—or at any rate to make him think that she does."
"I am shocked, Lady Farley, to hear you inculcating deceitfulness."
"I am not inculcating deceitfulness—I am preaching wisdom. When I was young I used to treat men as I treated women, and tell them the whole truth about everything. But it didn't answer; they couldn't stand it."
"So now you tell them stories, I presume?"
"No; I still give them the truth, but I offer it to them in a peptonized form, so that they can digest it without discomfort."
"But what are the pretty, stupid women to do when the men try to educate them?" asked Violet, who was generally conversationally left a long way behind the rest of the field.
Her aunt gently instructed her. "Their course is even simpler than that of the clever ones. They have merely to listen to their husband's opinions, and repeat them verbatim as their own. A man always thinks a woman clever whose thoughts are identical with his—but when her expression of them is also identical, he considers her absolutely brilliant."
Mr. Kesterton laughed heartily. "You have learnt a great many things, my dear lady."
"I have lived a long time and I have kept my eyes open. Nevertheless there are two things which I have never been able to find out; namely, why people fall in love, and why Punch is published on a Wednesday."
"Then Paul is even cleverer than you are, Aunt Caroline," interpolated Paul's admiring wife, "because there is nothing that he doesn't know."
"Oh! yes there is," said Paul modestly; "I never know what to talk to young girls about, or what seven times eight are."
"I am with you there, Seaton," remarked the host; "the only things in which I take no interest are young girls and bimetallism."
"What is bimetallism?" asked Lady Robert.
Her husband looked appealingly round the table. "Think what my married life will be if she begins asking questions like that already!" Then he turned to his wife. "Bimetallism, my dear Violet, is the opposite of monometallism; let that suffice you."
"But what is monometallism?" persisted Violet.
"Monometallism is the opposite of monomania," replied Isabel; but Paul endeavoured—though of course vainly—to explain the terms to his wife's pretty cousin.
"I cannot stand young girls myself," agreed Lady Farley, "they are afraid of me, and I have no mercy on them."
"Then you ought to have," said Lord Bobby.
"I do not see the compulsion."
"Ah! Lady Farley," he continued, "you must remember that the quality of mercy should not be measured out by teaspoonfuls in a medicine-glass, but should be sent round in a watering-cart by the County Council."
"I know that," replied Lady Farley laughing, "nevertheless young girls are simple, and I never can stand simplicity."
"Neither can I," agreed Mr. Kesterton, "simple dinners and simple women are alike abhorrent to me, because they both always agree with me and that is so tiresome."
"By the way, it will be interesting when Seaton begins to teach you to hold your tongue," remarked Bobby to Isabel, "if he can accomplish that, he will be able to unite the offices of Prime Minister, Commander-in-Chief and Archbishop of Canterbury in his own person, as he will have proved that the impossible is mere play to him."
"He will never try to teach me, you see, because he enjoys my conversation more than anything."
"Does he?" said Bobby softly. "Do you know I once went on a switchback railway with a man who said he enjoyed the motion more than anything? the next thing he said was that he wished he was dead."
The talk rippled on till tea was over, and then they all got up and walked about. As Paul and Isabel were leaning over the parapet and looking down into the water, Mr. Kesterton and Lady Farley passed within earshot, and the Cabinet Minister was saying: "I feel certain that he will be in the Government before long; there is no doubt he has a great future before him. It is a pity that he ever wrote that silly book,Shams and Shadows; but this clever niece of yours will keep him straight now. The men with clever wives are not the men who make mistakes, Lady Farley."
Paul looked down upon his wife and smiled; but the eyes that Isabel raised to his were full of tears.
Not long after the tea-party on the terrace, Edgar Ford dined at the Paul Seatons' pretty little house in Kensington. Mr. Madderley was there; also Mr. Seaton, who was spending a few days with his son, and was very much enjoying a sight of London under Isabel's auspices.
Edgar and Alice were to be married in the autumn; and the former had already taken a house close to the Stepney Settlement, and was making ready for his bride.
The conversation at dinner ran upon Edgar's work among the poor; and he made the others both laugh and cry at the mingled humour and pathos of his stories. Mr. Seaton especially was interested in the doings of the Settlement, and gave Edgar some valuable hints from out of the stores of his own wisdom and experience.
"The thing that strikes me most forcibly," said Edgar, when the servants had left the room, "is the kindness of the poor to one another. Underneath all the squalor and sordidness of poverty, there is something beautiful after all."
"You are right there," agreed Mr. Seaton. "I have, of course, worked much among the poor in my time, and this phase of their character has never failed to impress me."
"It is what I have always told you," cried Paul; "human nature is a grand thing spoiled, but it is a grand thing still."
"But human nature must not be taken in the aggregate," said Edgar, playing with his empty wine-glass; "masses always represent their lowest component parts. It is only when you deal with men and women individually, that you discover the underlying beauty of their characters. I hate to hear classes condemned wholesale, whether it be the frivolity of the rich or the brutality of the poor that is held up to scorn."
"So do I," added Mr. Seaton; "there are frivolous poor and brutal rich; and likewise there are saints to be found equally in both classes, and more of them than we any of us dream."
"It seems to me," remarked Isabel, "that love is the leaven that leavens the whole lump. It is only when people begin to care for each other that the fineness of human nature is seen. I was horribly selfish myself till I really cared for somebody, and then I gradually became quite nice."
Mr. Madderley smiled, as he peeled a peach for his hostess; he had watched Isabel's development with much interest, and he perceived that she displayed wonderful accuracy in diagnosing her own case.
"As long as you don't love anybody much, your character is like a garden in winter," she continued; "one virtue is under a glass shade, and another is covered over with straw, and all of them are dreadfully pinched and sickly. Then love comes by, and it is summer; and your garden rejoices and blossoms like the rose, without your bothering about it at all."
"Nevertheless," said Madderley, "I think that love, though admirable as a pastime, is a little too flimsy to be designated an underlying principle."
Isabel tossed her head. Madderley's cynicism always irritated her.
"I suppose you would say," she replied, "that there is no more ennobling influence than beauty."
"Exactly," rejoined the artist, serious for once in his life, "what you call art, is the worship of beauty by the human mind; what you call love, is the worship of beauty by the human heart; and what you call religion, is the worship of beauty by the human soul."
Isabel was silent.
"You are right in thinking that love for the beautiful is to be found in strange places," said Edgar; "last month a lot of children were sent down from Hampden House into the country for a week; and one of the poorest and most ragged of them said afterwards to one of our Sisters: 'Oh! Sister, it was all so beautiful that it made me cry for you'. That simply meant, as you say, that the sight of natural beauty stimulated that child's highest feelings, and made her long for the person for whom she cared the most."
Isabel fully entered into the feelings of the little ragged girl; she had felt exactly the same herself at the State Concert.
"If the child hadn't loved the Sister first, the beauty of the country would not have had power to touch her," she said, "love is theOpen Sesamethat lets in beauty, and gives us eyes to see."
"I should put it just the other way," said Madderley; "and say that beauty is the cause of love."
"It seems to me that there is something deeper even than that," argued Paul, "some innate fineness, proper to human nature itself, which makes all these things possible to it."
"It is often surprising," remarked his wife, "how people are nearly always nice when one gets to know them, and pierces through the outer husk of artificiality which they wear before the world. I detest heaps of people that I have only met at dinner; but I think I like everybody that I have ever had breakfast with."
The others laughed.
"Which simply means that the better one knows one's fellow-creatures the better one thinks of them," added Paul.
"I cannot offer an opinion," said Madderley, "I have never been down to breakfast."
Paul turned to his father. "You have not given us your idea yet as to what is really the name of the underlying power which leavens the whole lump of humanity, and which Isabel calls love, and Madderley calls beauty, and Edgar calls individualism, and I call human nature."
"I should call it by none of these names," replied Mr. Seaton, "these are but the branches of a root which goes deeper and is stronger than any of them, or than all of them put together."
"Then what should you say is the name of this underlying and yet exalting power?" asked Edgar.
The minister smiled. "I am an old-fashioned man and I use old-fashioned phrases," he said, "I should call it the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ."
THE END