"But, mother," he objected, "you tell me she has gone away."
"There is no one else?"
"No one at all."
Peter lived deliciously for a week with his mother in the shaded room. He never seemed to have felt so happy. His mind was content to be idle. When he was tired of collecting into groupsthe roses on the wall-paper, or watching for hours the blue square of the window across which once or twice in a day a bird would fly, he would ask his mother to read to him old tales of Ainsworth and Marryat. He affected an imperious self-indulgence.
It was decided at last that Peter was strong enough for the journey home. Cordial thanks and farewells were exchanged with the farmer and his wife. Peter even left a kind message for the farmer's granddaughter, who had fled for fear of infection. He no longer thought of her as one who could trouble him.
Peter soon picked up his strength at Hamingburgh. Three weeks passed and he thought of returning to London. Then came a letter from Marbury.
His uncle had applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, and Marbury was to stand at once in a contested by-election. He lightly but cordially asked Peter to come and stay with him through the fight and meet some of the distinguished people it would draw into the constituency.
Peter eagerly accepted. Next day he met Marbury at York, leaving the train to avoid a tedious slow journey of forty miles.
Lord Haversham's principal seat was at Highbury Towers, a lonely house on the edge of a moor. The nearest town was ten miles away.
It was a fortress of civilisation planted in a wilderness. In a bad winter, with snow lying deep, it was sometimes cut off for days from the world outside.
"There's something impudent about the place," said Marbury, as the car rushed over the moors. "It flies in the face of Nature. The Towers is the most comfortable home in England, and it is in a desert."
"A very beautiful desert," said Peter. He wasfeasting on the superb line of a moor-end, red with the heather.
"You must see it in the winter. I went through last election with my uncle. It was December, and we did well if we managed to keep half our appointments."
"Tell me about your uncle."
"He's dying, Peter." Marbury conveyed this as a simple fact. He did not intend an effect.
"You mean that he's very ill," suggested Peter.
"I mean that he's dying. The doctors give him six months or a year in Egypt. Here they allow him till the autumn."
"When is he going away?"
"He isn't going away," answered Marbury. "He thinks it worth while to die at home." Again Marbury spoke without insisting in the least on the heroic implication of his words.
"But six months of life and the sun," protested Peter.
"Six months is not long. We have lived at Highbury for a thousand years. Besides, my uncle wants things to go smoothly when he dies. He is posting me up in the estate—all the small traditional things."
Marbury talked of these things with a curious tranquillity. He simply recorded them. He fell very silent; and at the journey's end looked with interest at the large old house at which they had arrived.
Marbury took Peter upstairs to a room besidehis own, and left to dress quickly for dinner. He would come back for Peter and show him the way down. When Peter was ready, he stood for a few minutes at the window. He looked on to a terrace and a garden which ended abruptly and fell suddenly to the moor. At the end of the terrace, magnificently poised and fronting desolation, was the copy of a famous statue by a contemporary sculptor, audaciously asserting the triumph of art—the figure of a naked youth superbly defiant.
Soon Marbury joined Peter at the window and put a hand affectionately on his shoulder.
"That's what I mean," he said, following Peter's look towards the statue in silhouette against the moor, "when I say that this place seems to fly in Nature's face. He's insolent, don't you think? He's looking over thirty miles of moor—not a house between himself and the open sea. In the winter the snow piles up against him, and storms bang into him from the German Ocean. He is the last exquisite word of the twentieth century asserting our mastery over all that."
Marbury waved his arm towards the open moor, and laughed an apology:
"He usually works me up like that. Let's have some dinner."
They went down, and Peter was made acquainted with many people whose names he tried to remember. His mind was whirling with impressions, unable to settle upon anything definitetill, at dinner, he had had time to recover from a sensation of being too much honoured. This sensation had invaded him at being introduced by Marbury to an exquisite young woman.
"Peter," he said, "this is my sister. Look after him, Mary, and tell him who everybody is."
Then Marbury had disappeared, leaving Peter shyly rising to her light chatter.
"The house is packed, and there are beds at the home-farm," she said as they sat to the table. "Everybody is rushing to help Antony."
"Antony?" Peter echoed in a puzzled way.
"Don't you know his name?" she asked, looking towards Marbury.
"I'm afraid not," Peter confessed.
"But he called you Peter."
"Everybody calls me Peter."
"Why does everybody do that?"
"I don't know. Everybody does."
Peter was beginning to enjoy himself. Lady Mary smiled into his frank eyes, liking the direct way in which they looked at her.
They paused as Haversham came in to dinner. His empty chair always stood at the head of the table. Sometimes he was unable at the last moment to come down, but he never allowed anyone to wait or to inquire.
Peter looked at him with interest. He was yet at the prime, but grey and frail. His features were proud and delicate, his voice gravely penetrating. He was too far from Peter for hisconversation to be heard, but he talked with lit face and a frequent smile. Sometimes, however, he fell silent, and Peter thought he detected the strained inward look of one struggling with physical pain.
"You don't know Uncle Eustace?" said Lady Mary, following Peter's look.
"Not yet."
"He will do you good."
"Antony was telling me about him on the way down."
They talked through dinner of indifferent things. The accent of conscious culture which Peter now cordially hated was missing. Yet the talk was alive—happily vivid and agreeable. No one seemed anxious to make an effort or to press home a conviction. Nor was Peter aware of words anxiously picked. He was unable yet to name his impression. He only knew that he talked more frankly of small things than he had talked before.
He noticed in a series of pleasant discoveries how beautiful was the setting of their talk. Lord Haversham had at Highbury brought the art of fine living to perfection. He had filled the place with costly things, without anywhere suggesting unreasonable luxury. Highbury Towers grew upon the visitor. Even as a guest began to wonder why he never seemed to have dined so well and been less brutally aware of it, he perceived that the glass he fingered was lovely andrare, that it consonantly set off the china bowl which neighboured it, and the ancient candlesticks to left and right. Haversham had always held that true luxury was not insistent, and he was never so disappointed as when his guest broke into a compliment of a particular object. Had it perfectly agreed, fitting its environment, the mood of the conversation, the temperament of the party for which it was designed, it would, he urged, have passed unnoticed. It would have made its effect without directly speaking.
Peter was filled with an adventurous sense of novelty. He had not met people quite like these before. What was it which so clearly distinguished this company from any he had yet frequented? Clearly it was not their manners. Opposite Peter was a peer who took most of his soup indirectly by way of a long moustache, who wisely sat with his napkin well tucked in at the neck. His face reminded Peter of the farmer with whom he had lately laboured in the field; his talk was mostly of dogs, his vocabulary limited and racy. Yet he quite obviously went with the silver, whereas Peter could think of a dozen men he knew—men who had not only learned to feed with discretion, but had read all the most refined literature in three or four languages, and could talk like people in a stage drawing-room—who quite obviously would have jarred.
Peter comfortably surrendered to the charm of an atmosphere quietly genial and free. Themachinery alone of this new life pleased and fascinated. He felt that a beautifully ordered system had taken charge of him, that henceforth he had only to suffer himself to be moved comfortably through the day, that life was now a series of artfully arranged opportunities for free expression in suitable surroundings. This feeling had first invaded him as at York he had seen his baggage mysteriously vanishing, by no act of his own, into a strange car which started off even as he himself was being wrapped in warm rugs for the race to Highbury. It was confirmed later, when, reaching his room with Marbury, he had found the things which had so swiftly vanished at York faultlessly spread for his evening wear. Peter was rapidly putting forth roots in this new soil. Every moment some unexpected thing appeared, to be at once included in his total impression of a new life, to become part of the common round.
There was nothing snobbish in Peter's delight. He already desired to know these people better. But he was not in the least aware of anything which could be described as a social aspiration. He liked his new friends because they were new; and because they behaved differently from any he had as yet encountered. They were continually surprising him in small ways. More particularly he was startled by the intimacy and freedom of their talk. Their conversation was innocent of periphrasis and free from uncomfortable reserve.Peter had heard nothing like it since he had talked with the old farmer under the hedge of his seven acre field.
When the men were alone, Marbury called Peter to the head of the table and introduced him to his uncle. Peter looked with an ardent respect at one who already had touched his imagination.
"I've heard of you," said Lord Haversham as Peter felt for a chair. "You're the man who forcibly removed the Lord Chamberlain's trousers."
"It wasn't the Lord Chamberlain," said Peter nervously.
Lord Haversham turned to Marbury: "I'm sure you told me it was a protest against the censorship of stage plays."
"That, Uncle, was another small affair."
"Then whose were the trousers?" persisted Haversham.
"They belonged to a Junior Prior," said miserable Peter.
"What was the protest this time?"
"Equality of treatment under the law," suggested Marbury. "But you're making Peter uncomfortable. He doesn't like to remember that he was once a man of ideas."
Haversham looked meditatively at Peter: "It must be splendid to believe so thoroughly in an idea that you are ready to remove the trousers of a Junior Prior."
"I was drunk," said Peter bluntly.
"Does that also explain the Lord Chamberlain?" asked Haversham, beginning to be interested.
"No," said Peter. "Then I was only a fool."
"I don't believe a word of it." Lord Haversham turned to Marbury: "Why does he say these things?"
"Peter is a bad case, Uncle. He runs all his ideas to death, and sickens at sight of the corpse. I read Peter two years ago. He was born young."
"I'm afraid he'll very soon exhaust Highbury," said Lord Haversham, smiling.
"No," blurted Peter.
"We haven't any ideas," said Haversham quaintly. "We grow on the soil here, labourers and landlords. Tony," he went on, putting his hand affectionately on Marbury's arm, "is almost perfectly the Radical's notion of a stupid squire. You never think, do you, Tony? You're just choked full of prejudices you can't explain. I'm ashamed of you, Tony. You remind me so perfectly of the sort of fool I was myself thirty years ago."
Lord Haversham looked at his nephew. There was a beautiful tenderness in his address. Almost as he spoke, an expression of great pain came into his eyes.
"I must leave you now," he said. "We will talk again."
He quietly slipped from the room, and the conversation was broken up.
Peter, in the later solitude of his room, sat meditating at length upon his evening. He could not yet define what he liked in Marbury's friends, but he felt his personal need of it. He lacked the frank nature and ease, the lightness and dexterity of these people. He trod too heavily, delivering his sentiments with a weight which was out of keeping. He felt he must get out of the habit—a habit which did not express or become him—of taking too seriously the frequent appeal for his views on this or that. What, after all, were these views that had always mattered so much? He saw his late companions at dinner as merry figures seated about a pool, idly throwing in pebbles to keep the water agreeably astir. Conversation, it seemed, was not something to be captured and led. It was an agreeable adventure in which the universe was sociably explored. The final word, which Peter so frequently was tempted to deliver, should never be spoken, for, after the final word, what more could decently be said?
The next morning Peter was early in the breakfast room. Only Lady Mary was there. She was looking for weather at the window.
"Let me get you some breakfast," said Peter, after they had greeted.
"Not for the world," she answered, lifting lids at a side table. "I love breakfast. It's the only time when food seems to matter. I wouldn't think of letting anybody choose my breakfast."
"There, at any rate, we agree," said Peter.
"Do you like breakfast, too?"
"It's an Oxford habit."
"Then you haven't given up Oxford altogether?" said Lady Mary, speaking as one who had heard something.
"Do you know all about me, like everybody else?"
Peter groaned.
"Of course. You don't know how famous you are. Everybody knows you were sent down from Gamaliel for being a Socialist."
"I am not a Socialist," Peter hotly protested.
Lady Mary's eyes were full of mischief: "You must have been sent down for being something."
"I'm nothing at all," said Peter.
"Are you quite sure?"
"The silliest person alive is more than a label."
Peter cursed himself. He had again delivered an apothegm. Why must he always be so heavily serious? Lady Mary was openly smiling.
"I'm afraid we're all going to be very silly at Highbury during the next few days. We've simply got to label ourselves for Antony's sake."
"Tories," said Peter, trying to be nice, "are exceptions."
"You mean that Tories don't count?"
"I really don't mean that," said Peter, genuinely grieved.
"Then I'm afraid you don't mean anything at all."
Lady Mary was clearly amused. Peter miserably looked at her, looked at his plate, and then heard himself say:
"Why am I such a solemn ass?"
"Who says that?"
"I say it myself," said Peter.
Lady Mary looked swiftly at his ingenuous face, in which exaggerated abasement struggled with a hope that she would reassure him. Her amusement was curiously shot with affection.
"You oughtn't to have told me this so soon," she said, smiling at him in the friendliest way. "You see I don't yet know you well enough to contradict you. It would be rude."
"Let me get you another sausage," said Peter, feeling a little better.
As he brought her the food he saw her morefamiliarly. Last night in her amazing dress she had seemed fragile and elaborate—all woman and social creature. But this morning he saw just a friendly girl, plainly suited in brown tweed, accessible and soothing. Now he really saw what she was like. He discreetly admired her hair and expressive eyes, her slender features and delicate complexion. She spoke on a clear note, level and quiet, suggesting that her ideas and feelings were regular and securely in leash. The music of her voice was vibrant but very sure. It declared a perfect balance, the voice of a woman who would not suffer to appear in any of her personal tones or gestures anything which could not beautifully be expressed.
At this point Marbury came into the room. Peter was bringing Lady Mary her sausage with the grave intentness of someone specially elected.
"Hullo, Mary. Hullo, Peter. You seem to be eating well."
"Yes," said Lady Mary. "This is my third sausage."
"What does Peter say?"
"I've at last met someone who takes breakfast seriously."
"I take everything seriously," said Peter, returning into gloom.
"You needn't be so unhappy about it," said Marbury. "One good thing about an election is that it makes one realise the importance of beingearnest. Even the local paper becomes an immensely serious thing."
Marbury settled to his breakfast, shook out theHighbury Gazette, and was absorbed. Soon he was smiling.
"What is it, Tony?" asked Lady Mary, eating an apple.
"Listen to this," said Marbury. "It's one of Jordan's speeches."
"Who's Jordan?" Peter interrupted.
"My opponent," said Marbury. "He seems to be dangerous. He knows how to appeal to the people. He has just bought a house and some acres in the constituency, and he tells the Yorkshiremen that he's a farmer, with a stake in the county.
"'Gentlemen,' he says, according to this report, 'you may perhaps be inclined to ask what this Mr. Jordan, a town-bred man and a stranger, knows about the land and the people on the land. Well, gentlemen, I'm a farmer myself—in a small way. (Cheers.) I have a hundred or so acres of good Yorkshire soil. (Cheers.) I have twenty head of cattle, some sheep and poultry, and only this morning I was admiring three fine stacks of hay built by the honest labour of your fellow townsmen. (Loud Cheers.) Gentlemen, I have come to live among you. (A great outburst of cheering, many of the audience rising and waving their hats.)'"
"Is this what you call politics from within?" Peter scornfully interrupted.
"Now, Peter, don't despise the amusements of the people. They like to be governed in this way. I shall have to see the bailiff."
"I'm passing the home-farm," said Lady Mary. "I'll send him to you."
When she had gone, Marbury looked with amusement at Peter, chafing up and down the hearth-rug.
"Peter," he said, "compose yourself. The others will be coming down to breakfast."
"Why do you want the bailiff?" Peter curtly inquired.
"I'm thinking out a little light banter for Jordan. I want to know whether we can do better than twenty head of cattle and three fine stacks of hay."
"I suggest," said Peter, massively sarcastic, "that you make out a list of your hens and pigs and send it round the constituency."
Marbury considered this. "That, Peter, is an idea. I'll talk it over with the agent."
Peter flung up his hands in the gesture Marbury loved in him and always knew how to provoke.
"It's all damn nonsense," said Peter shortly.
"Jordan calls it democracy."
"Politics!" Peter exclaimed, with his nose in the air.
"I've told you before, Peter, not to despise politics. It's ignorant. We'll go into the garden."
They walked on the terrace and found Haversham in the portable hut where he usually spent the day. He had been ordered by the doctors to live out of doors. Here he wrote letters, interviewed his tenants, and ordered the affairs of his estate and fortune. He was seldom alone, unless he wished it, for his friends treasured every moment they were able to spend with him.
Peter and Marbury paused at the open side of the hut, turned, as always, towards the sun. Marbury, before they reached Lord Haversham, had time to tell Peter that his uncle did not like his health to be talked about.
"What is the programme?" Haversham asked as they came up.
"Eight meetings to-day, Uncle."
Haversham tapped the paper he was holding:
"You've seen Jordan's latest?"
"We were talking about it," said Marbury.
"What are you going to do?" asked Haversham.
"Peter suggests we should post the constituency with a schedule of your stock on the home-farm."
Peter glowered at Marbury, but a moment after felt amiably foolish under Haversham's kind inspection.
"You don't expect me to believe that, Tony," said Haversham. "But, seriously, don't let your agent do anything of the kind. He'll probably suggest it."
"I wonder."
"It wouldn't do. If you were a Radical like Jordan you could tell them you owned the whole constituency. In a Radical it would show good faith and a likeliness to look after local interests. But in a Tory it is bribery and coercion. Your leaflet would be published in the London Radical papers—Another Instance of Tory Intimidation."
"You see, Peter," said Marbury, "we shall have to be tactful."
"Why notice the speech at all?" asked Peter.
"Because we are electioneering," said Marbury. "We're not here for fun. My enemy has sent out a leaflet: 'Vote for Jordan, the farmer, and the farmer's friend'—the implication, of course, being that I am neither a farmer nor a farmer's friend. It's much more important in an agricultural constituency to destroy this delicate suggestion than to prove that there is an absolute need for a Navy Bill next session of over sixty millions."
"Yes," objected Peter, "but the whole thing is so ridiculous."
Haversham sighed: "That's what makes public life so hard. It is especially hard for our people. There's nothing we dread more than losing touch with our sense of humour. But these sacrifices are necessary. These sixty millions have to be raised, and only Antony will raise them."
"You see, Peter," Marbury interposed, "the sense of duty is not yet extinct. Please look lessincredulous. Then we'll go and talk to the farmers."
"Why do you take me?" Peter grunted. "Why not take someone who really understands?"
"I have set my mind on taking you," said Marbury finally. "But you must be less critical. You will hear me say some obvious things. Please understand that I am quite honestly accepting a public duty, and don't look as if you were infinitely wiser and better, because you are not."
Peter felt the sincerity of this appeal. He turned impulsively to Haversham.
"Antony"—Peter used the name with shy pleasure—"has a way of putting me in the wrong."
Haversham smiled: "I'm sure you are excellent for one another," he said. "It does Antony good to realise that he is elderly for his years."
A servant came from the house and announced that the bailiff was waiting for Marbury. Peter was left for a time with his host, who drew him to talk easily of the days at Gamaliel and in town. Peter tried to explain how in suburban London he had failed to realise his hopes.
"Perhaps," Haversham suggested, "you put the intellectual average too high?"
"It wasn't that," said Peter eagerly. "I hope I haven't seemed too clever or anything of that kind. But somehow I was never comfortable. The more intelligence I found, the less I liked it."
"You felt, in fact, rather like a modern statesman measuring the results of popular education. He realises that he has educated the crowd just enough to be taken in by a smart electioneer. Happily there is wisdom still in Sandhaven. Our people will vote for Antony because they like him. They know he feels rightly about things. Jordan's cleverness doesn't appeal to them. He doesn't know the difference between a swede and a turnip."
"Then the seat is safe?" concluded Peter.
Haversham smiled.
"Not altogether," he said. "I got in last election by five hundred. There are some miners in the west corner, and there is a harbour at Sandhaven. The Government Whip has obscurely implied that votes for Jordan will be votes for the harbour. The harbour badly wants doing up."
"But that is corruption."
"I'm afraid not," corrected Haversham. "It is politics."
Marbury joined them from the house, telling Peter to be ready for a rush over the moors. In half an hour they started alone, provided for the day. The meetings were appointed in small villages near Sandhaven, where they would spend the night.
The ordered luxury of Highbury gave to their plunge into the wilderness a keener pleasure. Peter was free to enjoy the spacious loveliness of the moors—to enjoy it at ease in the best possibleway. The contours of the country here were gradual and vast, but the speed at which they ran defeated monotony. The line of the greater banks shifted perpetually as they flew. Their colour came and went, changing at every mile the palette of the spread gorse and heather. Peter's joy was complete when from a high point of the moors he discovered the sea alive with the sun.
The meetings began at noon with an informal handshaking of farmers in a tiny market-town not far from Sandhaven. They continued through the day in schoolhouses, lamplit as darkness fell, and they ended at Sandhaven in an orthodox demonstration, with a chairman and a Union Jack and the local committee importantly throned on a large platform. Except at this final meeting Marbury talked quite simply to the electors. Already he knew the majority of them personally. He was aware of their circumstances, family history, the troubles of their farming, their prejudices and characters. He knew the local jokes—who had made rather a better bargain with his horse than the purchaser, who, under feminine pressure, had lately turned from chapel to church. Peter marvelled through the day at the prodigious industry implied in Marbury's knowledge, confessed to be yet imperfect, of the estate to which he was succeeding. Peter admired, too, the perfection of Marbury's manner. He never condescended. Nor was he familiar in the way of a candidate seeking to be popular. He talked with his ownpeople, in whom he was interested, for whom he had a right to care. Neither in himself nor in his tenants to be was there any of that uneasy pride of place which spoils a community whose members are busily asserting their rank. Marbury behaved, without self-consciousness, as part of a traditional system. He was met in the same way by men as yet untouched with the snobbery of labour.
Only at Sandhaven, where there was a strong opposition, did Marbury adopt the political or platform manner. Here he was called upon to explain to his audience why he considered that a personal landlord was better for agriculture than the local council. To Peter this seemed ludicrously unnecessary after what he had seen that day in the villages.
Towards the close of the meeting in Sandhaven, when questions were being asked, Peter, from the platform, saw Marbury's agent speak to a member of the audience. Marbury saw it too.
"He realises I've shirked Jordan, the farmer's friend," he whispered to Peter.
The man whom the agent had prompted now rose and addressed Marbury:
"Will Lord Marbury tell us what title Mr. Jordan has to call himself the farmer's friend?"
Marbury rose, and picked a cutting of Jordan's speech from the table.
He read aloud the passages Peter had heard at breakfast, and deftly played with them. Peter admired the ease with which Mr. Jordan'spretensions as a farmer were justly measured without any assumption in Marbury of superiority or ruralsnobbisme. His speech was pointed throughout with hearty laughter and cheers. It effectually countered the speech of his opponent, but it gave no handle anywhere for a charge that Marbury desired to use his position as an argument for his return.
"Peter," said Marbury, as they were leaving the platform, "you will hear that speech of mine forty times, in forty moods and tenses, during the next ten days. Please don't imagine that I enjoy it. But you saw the agent. He would not let me escape, even for twenty-four hours. He knows how important it is."
Over a late supper at the hotel, Peter shared with Marbury his impressions of the day.
"Frankly," he said, "I admired you most of the time."
"Beginning to think better of politics?"
"Politics don't seem to count much in this election."
"Platform politics don't. The people here are only just discovering them. I hear, by the way, that the Government Whips have arranged a debauch for next week. They're sending down Wenderby. My agent, who despises me, is frightened."
"Your agent ought to be jolly well pleased with you," said Peter indignantly.
"He is not," Marbury asserted. "He thinksI'm too refined. He wants me to tell the people I'm going to inherit seventy thousand acres. He tells me not to cut marble with a razor. He wants it coarse."
They slept at Sandhaven, working back to Highbury on the following day. It was comparatively an easy journey, and they were back at Highbury in time for dinner.
Peter drifted shyly towards Lady Mary, and again was next to her.
"This is lucky," she said as they sat down. "You can tell me about Antony's meetings."
"I'm afraid I don't know the difference between a bad meeting and a good one," said Peter. "But Antony was pleased."
"Have you been speaking?" she asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
"What could I say?" objected Peter.
"Antony tells me you are quite an orator."
"But this is different," Peter pleaded.
"Why is it different?"
"Well, you see, I can talk when I really believe in things and have a lot to say."
"Don't you believe in Antony?" asked Lady Mary. She was determined not to let him off.
"Yes," Peter admitted.
"Then why not talk about him?"
"But what about politics?" Peter objected.
"Haven't you any politics?"
"They all seem to be going," said Peterdismally. "Things aren't so simple as I thought."
"One thing is simple enough," said Lady Mary, looking serenely at Peter. "Antony is a better man for Sandhaven than Mr. Jordan."
"I'm sure he is," Peter gladly agreed.
"Very well then. You must speak for Antony."
"Why do you insist?" asked Peter, hoping for a compliment.
"Because," said Lady Mary, resolved to disappoint him, "it will be good for Antony. It doesn't matter what you say. Our farmers will look at your honest face. Then they will measure your strong back. Then they will believe you are as good a man as themselves, especially if you halt a little in your speech. Antony is too fluent; and he is not sufficiently robust."
During the next few weeks Peter drifted rapidly into being a Tory. He soon talked himself into a conviction that Marbury must win for national as well as personal reasons. Moreover, in his encounter with the miners of the western end of the constituency, he had an opportunity of measuring the evil effect upon clouded minds of the simple demagogy practised on the other side. Peter provoked more than one riot by the contempt with which he challenged the cheap phrases whereby Mr. Jordan's electioneers were campaigning against squires and men of property. Fresh from a contemplation of Haversham's quiet heroism and devoted industry, he was amazed at the success with which English landlords were presented as conspirators against humanity. He was even more amazed at the impudent assurance with which their opponents, relying almost entirely upon popular text-books, raised a whirlwind of prejudice in favour of replacing men like Haversham by a committee of tradesmen. Arrived from these hot meetings in the West, Peter would stand beside his window and look upon a stream of visitors waiting upon Haversham. Already Haversham was told by the doctors to be readyfor the end, and he was now deep in a last review of the estate.
Only half a dozen people knew that this was a grand inquest and farewell, but many of the men with whom Haversham spoke realised they would not see him again. Their affection appeared in a solicitude clumsily expressed, but Haversham encouraged no sentiment, and with easy simplicity checked in his visitors any dwelling upon their personal loss.
Peter especially remembered the last time he sat in the small hut. Instinctively he avoided the thing that filled his mind. Not a word was spoken to suggest that Haversham was an invalid. When Peter came to recall their conversation, he realised that he had talked exclusively of himself under Haversham's quiet prompting. He still saw the interested smile, lighting the face of his host—now brilliant with fever and eloquent with the gesture of his spirit. Long afterwards, Peter shamefully realised how this man, already in the shadow of death, had, in perfect sincerity, bent as from the clouds to encourage his young egoism and to listen.
A few days later, Peter attended a mass meeting of Marbury's opponents. It was Wenderby's meeting, held in the western corner of the constituency, in contempt of landowners. Peter knew nothing of Wenderby beyond his public reputation. He saw in Wenderby only the brass and swagger which, for political purposes, he chose to affect. Peter was deceived. Wenderby was a politicianof exquisite finesse, playing the political bruiser partly out of genuine love for his country, partly from a deeply calculated personal ambition. His speech in this by-election well illustrated the intricacy of modern politics under their superficial simplicity. Ostensibly it denounced all Tories and pleaded for economy in naval expenditure. Actually it was Wenderby's cover for a set campaign for extorting as much money out of his own party for the Service as he dared.
Wenderby's position in Marbury's constituency was every way a snare for the politically innocent. He was a friend of Haversham, and usually a guest at Highbury. But, as he wrote to Haversham, to stay at Highbury in the present crisis would perhaps be regarded as a breach of political decency. Peter, seeing in Wenderby the public enemy of a nobleman whose hospitality the speaker had himself enjoyed, could not contain his rage. Wenderby's rhetorical periods were launched with deadly effect at a simmering audience.
At the close of the meeting, Peter, red with anger, rose to ask whether certain remarks concerning the landlords of England were intended to have a personal and local application. Wenderby, seeing he had only to do with a youngster who had lost his temper, smoothly evaded him. Peter sprang to his feet:
"Sir—" he began.
Immediately there were shouts of "Order!"and "Turn him out!" Peter obstinately stood.
"I insist," he shouted, "that my question be answered. An infamous insinuation——"
At this point Peter was choked by half a dozen dirty hands grabbing from all quarters at his neck. He was thrust gasping and struggling from the hall—his coat in ribbons. His battered hat and collar were derisively thrown after him, as he bitterly explained to the police that he was not drunk and disorderly.
Peter showed himself that night to Marbury and stormily told his tale. Marbury, to his mortification, only laughed.
"What is amusing you?" asked Peter, very short and stony.
"Everything."
"For example?"
"I don't know where to begin. First, you were shouting at the wrong man. Wenderby is the favourite godson of Uncle Eustace. He's the only man we can trust."
"But he's on the other side."
"In a way he is."
"He will lose you the seat."
"Perhaps. This by-election is only an incident. Wenderby's speech to-night was one of a series. Unfortunately it happens to lie in our constituency. Wenderby has to manage his own people."
Peter flung up his hands. "I don't understand these politics."
Marbury looked affectionately at Peter. Peter had met Marbury going to his room. He was without a collar, and he looked forlorn. Marbury put a hand on his arm:
"Wenderby shall apologise," he said gravely. "He's a charming fellow, and he is very fond of young people."
Lady Mary, fresh from canvassing, shared a late supper with Marbury and Peter. She joined with her brother to wring from Peter a full account of his adventure. Peter began sorely, but at last detected in Lady Mary an unconfessed approval. Clearly she liked him for his protest. He even dared to think that she admired. Peter was gradually more happy, and soon was enjoying his escapade. He even displayed, in mock heroism, the large blue marks upon his neck.
Later, in his room, Peter found in the events of the day a consecration of his devotion to Eustace Haversham. Unessential incidents fell away, and he was glad of his protest—mistaken though it seemed, and ridiculous.
Next day was Sunday, and meetings were suspended. The house was very quiet, and Haversham was not in his usual place. Marbury told Peter he might not again come down.
After dinner, Peter slipped on to the terrace and faced the shadowy moor, lifting his head to a faint breeze from the sea. He stood beside the bronze figure he had so often admired. Before him was the wilderness, but civilisation was behindin the murmured voices from the drawing-room and those harsher cries Peter had lately heard from men made selfish and bitter.
Surely it was well that this triumphant figure should brave the desert, and that in its shadow a beautiful life should be passing. It flung out the challenge of art and wisdom. It was a consummation for which millions worked, and now it confidently stood, as though aware of what it had cost, resolved that it was well worth the price. Peter wondered whether it were justified.
His dreaming was broken. Lady Mary rustled beside him.
"You have found this place?" she said after a silence. They watched the superb silhouette of the statue fading as the light emptied rapidly from the sky.
"I am wondering whether he is worth while?" said Peter, waving his hand at the figure between them.
"What is your riddle?"
"He has cost a thousand lives."
"You are talking like a Socialist," said Lady Mary curtly.
Peter felt in her a coldness that passed. She was looking over the moors as though she followed the blind eyes of the naked boy. Her attitude suggested that she, too, was part of this challenge. Her dress, conveying to Peter an impression of complicated and finished art, fell away from her shoulders as, with head flung back, she filled hereyes with the beauty of earth and sky. She interpreted in radiant life the cold metal of the statue. Civilisation was justified in her, or it could not be justified.
"Have you never any doubt?" said Peter, wistfully impulsive.
Lady Mary turned slowly from the moor. Her calm eyes swept over him.
"Doubt?" she echoed.
"Do you never wonder whether all this"—Peter made one of the large gestures of his mother—"is worth the noise and the dirt over there? Have you no doubt at all?"
"How is it possible to doubt?" she calmly responded. She stood proudly facing him. But she read perplexity in his face and, as it seemed to Peter, she stooped to him.
"Don't you see," she almost pleaded, "that either we must believe in ourselves or make way; and we do believe. I believe in all this"—she faintly parodied Peter's large gesture—"and I believe in myself."
There was a pause, and it was Lady Mary who spoke again. Almost it seemed that she wanted to make her point.
"You, at any rate," she urged him, "have learned to believe a little." She looked towards the hut on the terrace, and Peter followed her thoughts.
The trees stirred a moment, and laughter came from the open room. But these two heard onlythe voice of Eustace Haversham, and saw his lighted features vivid in memory. The last colour of the sunset was full upon her as she faced her uncle's empty place. Its emptiness to-night was an omen of the eternal emptiness to come. Her mouth quivered, and tears shone suddenly under her lids as she turned again to Peter.
"I believe he is worth the whole world," she said, and her voice broke.
Her tears seemed to remove every barrier. Peter saw in her eyes an appeal for an equal faith. She felt the drops on her cheek, and turned away into the shadow.
"I, too, believe," Peter deeply whispered.
Then he noticed how her hand lay unprotected upon the pedestal of the statue, vaguely delicate upon the hard metal.
He impulsively bent and touched it with his lips. She did not start or cry out, but turned again slowly towards him. She read in his eyes faith merely and dedication.
"I am glad you did that," she said in a level voice.
Then they went, as by consent, towards the lighted windows of the drawing-room.
Next morning, ten days before polling day at Sandhaven, Peter was summoned away by telegram to Hamingburgh. His uncle had suddenly been stricken seriously ill. Peter bade his friends a quick farewell and caught the first train from York.
When Peter found his uncle stretched helplessly in bed with all the ceremony about him of an urgent case, he reproached himself for having thought of him so little during his years of health. He had taken his uncle for granted as the sanguine and gracious benefactor. It had not occurred to him to probe the motives of his uncle's affection, or to ask whether he was making him an adequate return.
Now it was too late. When Peter arrived in Hamingburgh his uncle was already unconscious, and he did not recover sufficiently to recognise his nephew. A sudden seizure ended with a rush of blood to the brain; and Peter was left heir to a personal estate of over £90,000. Peter had to be content with his mother's assurance that his uncle died with entire faith in his nephew's ability to spend a fortune.
The next weeks passed in ending all connection with Hamingburgh, which Peter now found intolerable, and in preparing for life in London commensurate with his new ideas. He took rooms for himself and his mother in Curzon Street, to be made ready for the autumn season.
"We will have everything very beautiful, and we will have only what is necessary," he told hismother as they talked things over in their flat at Golder's Green. "Of course we must sell all this stuff."
He waved his hands in an inclusive gesture toward the chairs and tables. Mrs. Paragon mildly looked about her.
"But, Peter, I thought you liked all this pretty furniture."
"It's modern," said Peter briefly. "There is no such thing as modern furniture. Ask Marbury."
He came and sat on the arm of his mother's chair.
"I must get Marbury to help. I want to see you talking to Lady Mary over a tea-table by the Brother's Adam."
"Peter, this is the third time to-day you have mentioned Lord Marbury's sister."
"Naturally, mother. This is polling day at Highbury. I've been wondering how things are going."
A few days later Marbury came to town and took his seat as member for Sandhaven. Peter secured him for the following evening, and they all three dined together at the flat in Golder's Green. Marbury was called upon for advice as to Curzon Street.
"Peter," he said, "this is a new phase. Don't encourage him, Mrs. Paragon. He wasn't intended for an exquisite. He's too robust."
"He does not need encouraging," said Mrs.Paragon. She had calmly accepted Peter's new enthusiasm, and now only wondered how long it would endure.
"Peter has already sold all our furniture," she added by way of information. "It will disappear at the end of the week."
"What are you going to do in the meantime?" asked Marbury, exchanging an intelligible smile with Mrs. Paragon.
Mrs. Paragon quietly answered him, unaware of the irony which lurked in her undisturbed acceptance of the inevitable.
"Peter says that no one stays in London during these next months. He says we must go to the North of Scotland."
"What are you going to do there?" asked Marbury.
"Peter is going to fish," said Mrs. Paragon.
When the time came Mrs. Paragon discovered that her part in the holiday in North Britain was to attend Peter during long happy days in lonely places where Peter mysteriously dangled in lakes and rivers. She dreamed away the time beside the basket of food and shared with Peter pleasant meals under the sky, quickened with his lively account of the morning's work.
News came once into their wilderness when Eustace Haversham died. In the letters Peter exchanged with Marbury and his sister he learned that the end had come at the close of a happy dayin the sun, with people arriving and departing upon the terrace at Highbury. Haversham had smilingly received the congratulations of his friends upon his better health; then, with a look in his eyes showing that he at any rate knew better, he had died as the light fell from the bronze figure fronting the moor.
In long hours upon loch and river Peter sometimes thought of Lady Mary and their last meeting. He thought of her less as a woman than a lovely symbol of the life he was now called to lead. She stood in his eye, radiant and proud, thrown into relief by a mutter of poverty and ill-will. She was for Peter the supreme achievement of the time. The cool touch of her hand on his lips raised in him no remembered rapture. It had been not a personal caress but an act of worship, for which he could imagine no other possible expression. She charmed him, and made him afraid. The delicate play of her mind was intimately enjoyed by Peter in retrospect when he was able to realise the indulgence with which she had met his blundering.
Peter remembered his father and his years of revolt without misgiving for the way he now seemed to be taking. These memories enforced him towards all for which Lady Mary now stood. He so clearly had been wrong.
Early in September Peter and his mother returned to London. Peter, fearing to be bantered,furnished the rooms in Curzon Street without advice. The season was just beginning when they took possession.
Peter soon read in the fashionable intelligence that Lord Haversham—Marbury had shed the younger title—had come to town for the autumn session. He also saw that Wenderby had been staying at Highbury as the guest of Lady Mary and her brother. This displeased Peter. He would not surrender his animosity against Wenderby, or admit that he was mistaken. He owed this to himself in justification of his outbreak during the election. Now that he read Wenderby's name beside the name of Lady Mary, Peter was surprised to find how much he distrusted the man. He threw down the paper in a small passion.
"Why, Peter," said Mrs. Paragon, "what's the matter?"
"Nothing, mother."
Mrs. Paragon tried another way of approach.
"What's the news this morning?" she lightly inquired.
"Lord Haversham has come to town."
"With Lady Mary?" Mrs. Paragon quickly asked.
"Yes," said Peter. "Also with Lord Wenderby." He kicked the newspaper and went to the window.
"I see," said Peter's mother.
Perhaps Mrs. Paragon was right, and Peter was really jealous. Wenderby clearly belonged to theparty which had arrived in town. He knew the language. He did not make heroically foolish scenes at a public meeting. Probably he had never incurred the laughter of Lady Mary. She did not make allowances for him, or look at him with protection in her eyes, or take an interest in him as someone from a strange world. Wenderby knew all that Peter had yet to learn.
Peter himself was worried to account for his ill humour, and even came to the point of asking himself the question which his mother had already answered. He decided that he was not personally jealous. Rather he was jealous of the privilege and experience which made Wenderby at home and at ease in the world which Peter desired to enjoy. Haversham had told him that Wenderby was a charming fellow. Peter wondered whether he would ever be a charming fellow; and, in a fit of misgiving, began to exhaust the possibilities of self-contempt. He had had a glimpse of the beautiful life; but suppose he were not worthy to enter. Suppose Haversham could not be the friend of a young colt who had nothing in the world to fit him for an agreeable part in the social comedy. Suppose he would never again come into touch with exquisite creatures like Lady Mary. Suppose he were doomed to follow the witty pageant of London life (which now was a Paradise in Peter's fancy) only through the columns of the fashionable intelligence. Suppose it were his destiny henceforth to hear of LadyMary only when she happened to be entertaining Wenderby.
Peter was chewing this bitter cud at his mother's tea-table in Curzon Street when his man-servant (Peter, to his mother's dismay, had insisted on a man-servant) announced the figures of his meditation by name. Peter rose in a whirl, and before he had possession of his mind Haversham and Wenderby were taking tea with Mrs. Paragon. Mrs. Paragon received her guests with monumental calm, answered their inquiries after her holiday in Scotland with a quiet precision which suggested an irony of which really she was quite incapable, and wondered meanwhile why Peter was less talkative than a meeting with his best friend seemed to require.
"Peter," said Haversham at last, "you seem depressed."
"Not at all." Peter was the more laconic because he was suffering a quiet, persistent scrutiny from Wenderby.
"This," said Wenderby, "is surely not the sanguine young man who brought me to judgment."
"You remember that?" asked Peter briefly.
"I have come to apologise," Wenderby explained.
"I told you he should apologise," said Haversham.
"Isn't that for me to do?" asked Peter.
"I don't think so," Wenderby smiled. "You lost your collar and were nearly strangled."
"I would do it again," said Peter cheerfully.
"I admit the provocation," agreed Wenderby. He was quite unruffled by the vibrant conviction of Peter's voice.
"You must make allowances, Peter," put in Haversham. "It was a misfortune for all of us. That speech might have lost me the seat. Wenderby always puts public interest before personal feeling."
"The speech was a great success," said Wenderby. "It did not lose the seat, but it won the Cabinet. I have wrung out fifty-seven millions. The Tories could hardly have done better."
"No politics," protested Haversham. "Peter doesn't understand."
"How is Lady Mary?" asked Peter suddenly.
Haversham's phrase about "personal feeling" had stuck in his mind.
Wenderby glanced keenly at Peter, so keenly that Peter at once felt his question had touched a nerve.
"You must come and see for yourself," said Haversham. "We're moving into Arlington Street and Mary is being worried with decorators. She has even interviewed a plumber. I suggest that you look in at the Ballet to-night and encourage her."
"How shall I encourage her?" Peter gloomily asked.
"You are young, Peter, and youth is infectious."
"I wish I could catch it," said Wenderby; and Peter detected envy.
Shortly after they had left Peter made ready for Covent Garden. His master-thought was to get into touch with the life which at Highbury had so urgently attracted him. An encounter with Lady Mary would be the touchstone of his claim to be socially accepted. Also Peter knew that Wenderby would be there. He had seen in Wenderby the faintest gesture of annoyance when Haversham had mentioned the Ballet. Peter was sensitive to the least indication in Wenderby of a special interest in Lady Mary. Already there was a mutual faint dislike. Peter resented the keen appraisement of Wenderby's searching eyes. He felt the rapid working of a trained and subtle mind busily estimating his value. Wenderby, for his part, detected in Peter a wilful energy which, as a politician, he abhorred.
Mrs. Paragon preferred not to accompany Peter. He dined alone with her, and she found him clouded and cold. Afterwards he picked his way by cab to the Opera House, sitting bolt upright with a vague presage of complications to ensue. He joined the happy few carried to pleasure through the shining streets. Summer lingered wherever a foothold was offered to the green. It was warm, with cool air soft as the hum of the London traffic. But Peter's senses were shut to his position of ease. He was restive still under the penetrating eyes of Wenderby. He felt as ifhe were going into an arena. More than one woman turned in the crush of cars at Covent Garden to look at Peter's vivid, ingenuous face as he sat erect, frowning a little, staring blindly ahead. He was not actually thinking. Curious faint emotions came and went. His consciousness was ruled by a shimmering figure, infinite in grace and promise; but it rested under the threat of a cloud, which now was seen to grow dark and then to vanish.
A little later Peter found Lady Mary with his glasses; Wenderby stood beside her in the box. She saw Peter almost as his glasses were levelled, and leaned eagerly forward to greet him. Wenderby looked like one interrupted, and Peter could see how thoughtful he suddenly became. Then the lights were lowered.