Another delightful week elapsed, with yacht cruises and adventures by flood and field, and then Priscilla, never giving herself up with such complete abandonment to the intoxication of the first month of marriage as to be incapable of observing the changes of time and temper and temperature—the variations in the pulse of that little spiritual animal known by the pet name of Love, began to perceive that Jack was thinking about home; and that meant that she had been wholly successful in her treatment of that happiness of his which demanded the wisest nursing, with a mental chart of its variations from day to day. Women who are wise adopt the modern system of therapeutics, and devote all their thought to the nursing of that happiness which has been entrusted to their care when it is still in its cradle, and do not trouble about the Pharmacopoeia. It had been her aim to lead him to think about his home—their home—as that was where she meant him to spend most of his time; and the wife who can keep her husband’s attention most closely directed to home is the wisest as well as the happiest. The accountants who were going over the books of the estate, kept in a culpably slovenly way by Mr. Dunning, were, he was informed, approaching the end of their labours; and the new agent, who had been found with really only a reasonable amount of difficulty, was by the side of the accountants and the stewards and the bailiffs, mastering the details of the old system, which had been far from systematic, and, as Jack and Priscilla could see by his letters, instituting a newregimeon a proper basis.
This was satisfactory; but Priscilla could see that the establishment of routine did not greatly interest her husband. He was imaginative, though no one but herself had suspected it, and she meant that he should have something to appeal to his imagination. Even before they had been married she had seen some splendid possibilities in connection with the trout stream that flowed through the glen, though at that time she had not so much as hinted at them; but now she felt that she could do so with good effect if the opportunity should arise; and when an imaginative young woman is on the look-out for an opportunity, the opportunity invariably presents itself. A letter from Mrs. Wingfield mentioned the services of a new footman who had succeeded in putting out a fire—the result of a lamp accident in the still-room and a housemaid’s carelessness. Owing to the exertions of the man and the training which he had received at his last place, the fire had done very little injury; but if it had not been dealt with in time the Manor House would certainly have been done for, said the letter.
“Confound those lamps! That’s the third fire within two years, and all through those antiquated abominations,” cried Jack.
“Sell them for scrap metal, and trust to electric light,” said Priscilla in a second.
“Who is to pay for a cable from Gallingham—nine miles?” he enquired.
“No one, my dear. There is no need to go so far or to spend so much money, when you have that lovely cascade going to waste in Primrose Dell.”
“What has the cascade to do with it, my girl? I wasn’t talking about a fire engine; though with these lamps——”
“With some elementary engineering and a simple dynamo you can make an electric installation for the house, and stables, and yard, and farm, and gardens, that will cost you little more than the wages of one man—say, twenty-five shillings a week.”
“Make it thirty.”
“Well, thirty. Mind you, you will be able to put stoves in all the bedrooms, and you will be able to run machinery for pumping water, for cleaning harness, for churning, for brushing your hair, if you wish for it.”
“I don’t wish for it for brushing my hair, but I do for everything else. Is this a dream of yours, my girl, or have you been reading a pictorial advertisement?”
“I went into the question two years ago, hoping that we might be able to introduce electric power on the farm; but unhappily we have no stream of water to work the dynamo and it would not pay to use coal; we might as well use the coal energy direct. I went so far into the matter as to visit a place where a private installation had been made, and my eyes were opened.”
He gazed at her admiringly in silence for some time. Then he cried:
“Great Gloriana! You are a bit of a wonder, Priscilla! You carry me off my feet; and the worst of it is that I feel I must do everything that you suggest. If I try to look the other way I see something that sends me back to you. I’m like the master mariner whose adventures worried us at school—in trying to avoid what’s its name, he fell on the other—you know.”
“Scylla and Charybdis?”
“That’s it—Scylla—in my case, Priscilla and Charybdis. Priscilla and Charybdis—that’s how I am. But by the living shrimp, you’re a wonder! Where can I get any books that will go into the business? I suppose the dynamo people are those to apply to in the first place. But I know nothing worth talking about of electricity.”
“What is there to know about such a simple adaptation of it as is necessary for our purpose? I assure you that the sparking of your motor is a thousand times more complicated, and you know all about that. Long ago people thought that to be an electrical engineer enough to light up a house required years of training, and people’s sons were to become electrical engineers instead of being doctors or lawyers; but now they are only something between plumbers and gasfitters. Isn’t that so?”
“By the living shrimp! we’ll have the whole place in a blaze before the winter,” She lay back and laughed at his enthusiasm and the unfortunate way in which it led him to prophesy.
“I hope it will not be quite so bad as that,” she said. For the next three or four days he could talk of little else than the electrification of the Manor. She explained to him the way in which the course of the stream could be diverted at a trifling cost and at the sacrifice of none of the picturesqueness of the place of primroses.
“I would not have a primrose interfered with,” she cried. “The Primrose Dell is a sacred place.”
“I will take steps to have it incorporated on our coat of arms,” he said. “And I will see that it has a special motto to itself. Yes ‘Priscilla and Charybdis.’ Oh! we mustn’t spoil the primroses. If it hadn’t been for them where should I be to-day? What should I be to-day?” And then some of the books arrived, and with his usual aptitude for picking up new ideas, he mastered all the essentials to the schemes which Priscilla had initiated.
But before he had quite made up his mind as to the most suitable part of the stream to touch, something occurred which interfered materially with the development of his plans; for one morning he got a telegram signed “Franklin Forrester,” enquiring if he could be seen at 2.30 that day. “Very important.”
“What the mischief!” he exclaimed. “How does he know that I’m here? What can Franky Forrester want with me that’s very important?”
“Who is Franky Forrester?” asked Priscilla.
“Oh! Franky Forrester was one of the chaps who just escaped being sent down at Oxford when I enjoyed that distinction,” he replied. “Franky was a little too sharp for the powers. He had a genius for organizing; and that’s how he got through. He could organize a row with any man, but it was invariably part of his organization that he should be outside the row when it was going on. He has made his way in the world by the exercise of his genius. I saw him in London a few months ago. He is still organizing things—politics, I believe he said, What can he want with me?”
“Money,” suggested Priscilla. “I have heard that funds are the soul of politics, if principles are the body.”
“He’ll get no money out of me,” said Jack. “But somehow I don’t think that it’s money he wants. I suppose I had better see him. He is a nice chap and well connected. He never loses sight of a man that’s well off or that’s likely to be well off.”
“That’s the art of organization in a nutshell,” said she. “I suppose it is,” he said. “Anyhow, the phrase is a good one. There are a lot of good phrases knocking about; it’s a pity that so many of them are in nutshells—some of them are hard to crack. Franky was great at phrases. You always needed to carry a pair of nutcrackers in your pocket when he was in the offing. I wonder how he heard that I was here.”
“I suppose you will see him, Jack. He says ‘very important.’”
“Yes; but he doesn’t say whether it’s important to me or to himself. Oh, yes, I suppose I must see him.” Although Priscilla did not think that he had reached that period of honeymoon delight when a man is ready to welcome the arrival of a friend, or even an enemy, she was still pleased that a new element was entering into their communion. She had a strange longing to be presented to some of his friends, and to hear him say:
“I want to introduce you to my wife, old chap. She’s dying to know you.”
And she was gratified shortly after lunch that day; for those were the very words he employed when making her known to Mr. Franklin Forrester.
She saw by the expression of the visitor’s face when he looked at her that he was both surprised and pleased.
“He is appraising my value as a possible asset to a political party,” she said to herself; and that was precisely what Mr. Forrester was doing.
He was a well-made and rather good-looking man, with a Vandyck beard, inclined to fairness. He had a moderate supply of hair on the front of his head and he made praiseworthy, and on the whole successful, attempts to conceal the fact that it was becoming rather thin on the top. His eyes would possibly have been accounted good had he ever given anyone a chance to see them long enough to form an opinion upon them. As it was, most people saw them only long enough to see that they were restless. Still, Jack’s wife had managed to interpret the general expression of his face pretty accurately.
“And now maybe you’ll tell me how you got my address here,” said Jack, when they had said a few words about Sandycliffe and how it was being developed. Mr. Forrester knew who was most interested in its development, and how the hotel shares had been worked off.
“I sent a wire to Elliot—you know Compton Elliot—at Framsby to find out if you were at home. I believe that it was from Mrs. Wingfield, your mother, that he got your present location. Useful man, Compton Elliot,” said Mr. Forrester.
“Yes, infernally useful,” assented Jack.
“My dear Wingfield, you may be sure that I would not have thrust myself upon you at this—this—this interesting time if I could have avoided it,” cried the visitor. “At the same time, I must honestly confess that I’m rather glad to find you so circumstanced——”
“Gloriana! What a word—‘circumstanced’!” murmured Jack.
“Well, I mean that I’m pleased to be able to make an appeal to you in the presence of some one who will, I am sure, advise you to listen to me, and not condemn me without thinking the whole matter over.”
“Isn’t he artful?” said Jack. “He has just killed a political opponent and he is about to appeal to my better nature not to give him away. He knows that women are invariably on the side of the criminal. Go on, F. F.”
“Mrs. Wingfield, I ask you if this isn’t ungenerous on the part of your husband. Here I have come down from the intoxicating pleasure of the London season solely to ask this man to become a member of Parliament, and this is how he receives my proposition.”
Mr. Franklin Forrester had very rarely to be so straightforward as he was in this speech. As a matter of fact, his resources in this particular direction were so limited that he found it absolutely necessary to economise them; and the general opinion that prevailed among his political opponents was that he was very successful in his exercise of this form of thrift. But his excuse to himself for having resorted to an unaccustomed figure of speech was that this was an exceptional case that demanded exceptional treatment.
He had been straightforward almost to a point of abruptness, and he perceived that the end had justified the means: Jack Wingfield was voiceless and gasping, and Mrs. Wingfield was silent and flushing.
He saw what manner of woman she was—yes, up to a certain point. He saw that she was far more appreciative of a compliment paid to her husband than her husband was; and he also saw that she was more anxious for her husband’s advancement than her husband was.
He had rendered them speechless; and he knew that that was the prehistoric method of woman-capture; and that up to the present a more effective method has not been devised by the wit of man. Stun them, and there you are.
He felt that he had captured Mrs. Wingfield. She had flushed with surprise and delight. He had heard all about her from his useful friend, Compton Elliot, of Framsby. She was a farmer’s daughter, and having played her cards well, she had married a man with a fine property and not too rigid a backbone. She was sure to be ambitious to achieve a further step—one that should carry her away from the associations of the farm into the centre of London society—for the greater part of the year.
That was what Mr. Franklin Forrester’s analysis of the situation amounted to. It was not quite accurate; but there was something in it.
He had not expected the farmer’s daughter of Compton Elliot’s confidential report to have so pleasing a personality. He had rather visions of a stoutish young woman with an opulent bust and dark eyes, combined with a knowledge of how to use them. But the difference between his ideal and the real lady did not cause him to change the plan of attack which he had arranged for her capture.
“Now the murder’s out,” he said, looking not at Jack, but at Jack’s wife. “We want a good man who will make a good fight for Nuttingford, and we believe that we can hold the seat.”
“Then why the mischief didn’t you go to a good man?” enquired Jack.
Mr. Forrester smiled. He did not tell him that he had already approached two very good men; and that, being shrewd as well as good—politically good, which represents a condition that is possibly not quite the same as ethically good—they had shaken their heads and told him to go on to the next street.
No. Mr. Franklin Forrester regarded those communications as strictly confidential; he did not think it necessary to allude to them.
“I have come to the right man, if I know anything of the Nuttingford division,” was what he did say; “and I think I know something of the Nuttingford division,” he added.
“I don’t doubt it; but you don’t know quite so much about the man you’ve come to, or you wouldn’t have come,” suggested Jack. Then he glanced at his wife, and Mr. Forrester noted that glance with great interest.
“It’s because I know you, my friend, better than you know yourself—I won’t say better than Mrs. Wingfield knows you—that I have come to you,” said the politician. “You are the sort of man that we want—that the country wants.”
“Oh, I say, why drag in the poor old country by the hair of the head? It’s almost indecent,” remonstrated Jack, and once again he glanced at his wife. She smiled back at him, but spoke not a word. She was a wise woman. A wise woman is one who has a great deal to say and remains silent.
“You are the man that’s wanted at this time,” resumed Forrester. “By the way, what are your politics?”
“What politics do you want?” asked Jack. “I fancy that if I were to stand I could accommodate you; but I shan’t.”
“You’re the man for us. Most of us inherit our politics with the family Bible and our grandfather’s clock, and we rarely change them, unless, like our young Zimri—the unsuccessful Zimri—we are at the tail end of a Parliament, and are certain that there will be a change of government in the next—a change of government has usually meant a change of politics with the family of our aspiring Zimri. His father was the successful Zimri, but he didn’t have peace; and the founder of the family elevated Zimriism to a fine art—he didn’t have peace either—on the contrary, he had a wife. All things are possible with such men; but I don’t care what your politics are; we’ll put you in for Nuttingford, if you’ll agree to stand.”
“This is rot, Forrester, and you know it. What good shall I be in your House of Commons? What good shall I be to your blessed Party anyway?”
Mr. Forrester could quite easily have answered this question, had it been prudent to do so. He could have told him that he was wanted by the Party because there was a difficulty with two men, each of whom believed that he had a right to the reversion of the seat, and would certainly contest it in view of the other coming forward. In such a case the seat would undoubtedly be seized by the solitary representative of the Other Party. But Mr. Forrester perceived that such an explanation would occupy a good deal of valuable time; and he wished to spare his friend and his friend’s charming wife an acquaintance with details which possibly a man, and certainly a woman, looking into the arena of politics from a private box, might regard as sordid. So he merely laid his hand on his friend’s knee, and said:
“Leave that to us, my dear Wingfield. You may be sure that we would not take you up unless we saw that you could do something for us that would pay us for our trouble. Now, don’t you decide against us in a hurry. Talk the matter over with Mrs. Wingfield. I wouldn’t give much for a man who didn’t take his wife into his confidence on such important things.”
“And how much would you give for a man who did, and then decided by her advice against you?” asked Jack.
“The constituency is a peculiar one,” said Forrester, ignoring the question. “They hate politics. If we were to send them a well-known politician he would have no chance with them. What they want is a man like yourself—a simple ordinary, everyday, good-wearing English gentleman—plain commonsense—that’s what they want; nothing very definite in the way of a programme; they don’t want a windbag or a gasometer; they’re not going in for air ships at Nuttingford. You know what Cotton is?”
“Cotton? Who the mischief is Cotton that I should know of him?”
“That’s the best proof of the accuracy of what I’ve been telling you. Cotton is the man who has sat for the constituency for the past fifteen years, and yet nobody has heard of him.”
“And why shouldn’t he continue in the obscurity of the House of Commons for another fifteen years? Nobody wants him outside, I suppose.”
“He has been ordered off by his doctor, and he is applying for the Chiltern Hundreds at once. He will mention your name in his valedictory address, and we’ll do the rest—that is, of course—you know what I mean?”
“Blest if I do, quite!”
“Oh, I mean that having provided them with the right man for them—the man they want—we’ll see that they are loyal to you.”
‘“Wingfield and the Old Cause’—that’ll be the war cry, I suppose. You’ll have to coach me on the old cause—only there’ll be no need, for I haven’t the remotest idea of standing. I’m going in for a big electric scheme, Forrester, and I’ll have no time for politics.”
“I refuse to take your answer now. I should be doing you a grave injustice. I didn’t except you to jump at my offer before it was well out of my lips. Heavens, man! a seat in the House of Commons——”
“Mother of Parliaments, and the rest.”
“You needn’t sneer. I tell you it’s a position that carries weight with it. I don’t wonder that it’s so coveted. Men spend thousands of pounds trying to reach it—thousands of pounds and years of their life.”
“I’m not one of them, Forrester. Don’t look angrily at me because other men make such fools of themselves.”
“I won’t, Wingfield, because I know that you won’t make a fool of yourself by refusing this offer. But I have said my last word of encouragement. After all, you know best what will suit you. It would be an impertinence on my part to suggest that you are not competent to decide for yourself. Don’t be in a hurry. Now, what about this electrical scheme?”
Not one word had Priscilla uttered while that artful Mr. Forrester was talking to her husband, and, incidentally, giving her many opportunities for expressing her views either in accordance with or in divergence from those he expounded so fluently. Her silence surprised their visitor. He thought his friend Jack Wingfield an extremely lucky chap to have married a wife who knew when to be silent and was very generous in her time limit on this point.
He was all the more amazed when he found that she was quite capable of expressing herself on such subjects as the future of electricity and the novels of Anatole France, with originality and distinction. A farmer’s daughter, was she? Well, all that he could say was that agriculture, which was laid on mankind as part of a Bible Curse scheme, and which has been the subject of a pretty fair amount of reprobation within recent years, deserved a good word if this young woman had come into the world under its auspices.
But he took a leaf out of her book—one of the blank pages—one that had no word upon it—and went away, without another reference to the subject of his mission to the developing seaside resort.
When he had gone, Jack suggested a stroll along the beach, and she picked up her hat in a moment Among her most artful perfections was her readiness to move at a moment’s notice. She was at all times prepared for everything. She never kept her husband waiting while she went to her room for a hat or coat.
Of course he began to talk immediately of the possibility of Sandycliffe’s becoming developed out of all recognition of its charm. It was jolly rum, he thought, how places like that come and go. One year a place was the solitary right one to go to, and the next it was among the places that should never be so much as visited by anyone who wished to be thought anything; and such people were becoming more numerous every day.
She agreed with him. She wondered if there were any people in the right set who decreed which watering-places on the coast should be visited, and which left alone, just as the best set in Framsby decreed in regard to persons.
This was very interesting, of course, but she knew that he had not asked her to walk with him solely to discuss the vicissitudes of coasts towns. Still, they had gone on for quite half a mile before they had exhausted the topic, and seated themselves on one of the new chairs on the end of the concrete path. Even then he did not speak about Mr. Forrester and his mission for some time. At last he said casually:
“What brought that chap down to me to-day, do you fancy?”
“He came to you because he knows that you are the sort of member that the Nuttingford people want,” she replied with the utmost promptitude.
“Bless my heart and soul! Why should they be such fools? You mustn’t believe all that old F. F. tells you, my girl.”
“All? I don’t think that he could induce me to believe a quarter of what he says,” she replied. “But I’m positive that he believes you would have a better chance of being elected than anyone who is likely to come forward. What I felt from the first moment that he broached the subject was that he and his Party are somehow in a tight place in regard to the Nuttingford division. It occurred to me that someone whom they expected to come forward had thrown them over, and for some reason or other he thought that he might fall back on you. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that he expects you to win, but he expects you to make a good show for the Party on the day of the election; and so you will, Jack, only you’ll be at the head of the poll.” He jumped up from the seat as if he had been stung by a wasp.
“What do you mean?” he cried after a long pause, which he utilized in collecting himself. “Do you mean to think for a moment that I would make such a fool of myself as to go among strange people for the sake of getting a licking at a cost of a thousand pounds or so?”
“My dearest boy, I want you to go in for this business if only for the sake of showing that clever, far-seeing man that you’re not quite such a fool as he fancies.”
“The best way I could do that would be by laughing at him as I did.”
“There’s a better way still: take him at his word—a little better than his word—and amaze him by getting returned. He doesn’t believe that you could get returned for the division, but he thinks, as I said, that you will make a good fight for it. Now you must pull yourself together and fight every ounce there’s in you. Jack, youmustdo it, out of compliment to me.”
“Look here, my girl, you are making a man of me—I know that. Didn’t I call you my guardian—my good angel—once upon a time? Well, so you are—so you showed yourself to be; but are you not going ahead with me a little too fast?”
She rose from the seat and put her arm within one of his arms.
“Let us stroll on a little farther,” she said.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “Just beyond that iron railing there is the cliff and some horrid rocks below. If we walk on through that railing we shall come a cropper among the rocks. See?”
“I see your very apt allegory. Jack, if you don’t want me to urge you to go in heart and soul for this business, you made a grave error in that last remark of yours. Jack, the man who could turn the topographical condition of a place into a forcible argument and a picturesque one into the bargain, is the man to convince a constituency that they badly want him to represent them in Parliament.”
“You’re hustling me, Priscilla. I repeat that you’re hustling me, and I’m beginning to be mortally afraid of you.”
“You needn’t be afraid of me. I’m not so stupid as to want to hustle you. I’m not such an idiot as to start life with you by trying on a system of nagging. In my eyes you’ll always be the man with thebâton, and I’ll always be ready to play any tune that you beat time to. If I urge you all that I can to do something, and you refuse to do it, don’t fancy for a moment that I’ll dissolve in tears or get a hump or say, ‘You wouldn’t take my advice,’ when you come to grief through having your own way. I promise you that I’ll do none of these things. You’re the man and I’m your helpmeet. Heaven forbid that I should ever try to make my opinions take the place of yours; but heaven forbid also, that, having opinions, I should keep them to myself.”
“Amen to that, say I.”
“All that I can do is to lay them at your feet, Jack, and—no, that’s too humble altogether: I won’t lay them at your feet, I’ll try to make them look their best in front of you, and if you like them you can adopt them as your own. That’s all that I can do. You’ll find that I know my place, dear.”
“I see that you do; you know it a deal better than you know mine, if you fancy that my place is on a leather bench in the House of Commons.”
“Maybe you’re right, Jack; but what an experience to one is an election campaign! I’ve been longing all my life to be so placed that I should be able to go through an election fight—not a hollow thing, mind you, but a splendid tingling close fight. That’s the thing that develops whatever character one may have—whatever strength one may have within one. The only way by which a man can be made a man of is by a fight.”
He looked at her and laughed.
“And you’re determined to make a man of me, are you?” he said; “by a fight—an election fight? Well, that’s all very fine; but supposing I should win, where would we be then?”
“In the House of Commons, ready to carry the fight into the enemy’s country; and that’s where you’ll be as sure as you take off your coat—and youwilltake off your coat, Jack.”
“And my waistcoat, if necessary. And what am I to fight for? I’ve no definite opinions about anything in politics.”
“You begin by defining your opinions, and you’ll very soon find out how definite they are. But don’t you bother about opinions; the fight’s the thing that matters. Any excuse for a fight is valid.”
“You have a drop of Irish blood in you somewhere, my girl. Upon my word you have almost persuaded me to say ‘Agreed’ to Forrester’s proposal. But mind you, if I get in I’ll blame you. Let there be no mistake about that.”
She took a hasty glance around. She saw the strategical conditions of their surroundings. She thought that when they should get a step or two beyond the little peninsula of sea wall, she could do it.... And she did. She had an arm about his neck in a moment, and he felt delightfully near strangulation. He could not cry out for help, because there were two middle-aged ladies with books and a clergyman withThe Guardianon the seat in the hollow of the cliff.
“You are a perfect darling!” she cried. “You are doing this thing just to please me, because you know I have set my heart on it—and Ihaveset my heart on it, Jack, dear. I admit that I am ambitious, Jack, but only for you, dear—only because I know what there is in you, and I want it brought out. I want people to accept you at your true worth. My ambition is bounded by you.”
He did not say anything in response to this confession. But he pressed her arm very close to him, and so they walked on in silence, until he said:
“My girl, my girl, shall I tell you what I feel just now? I feel that I should like to do something to justify your belief in me. Until you began to talk to me I used to be inclined to grin at those old chaps who used to bump about in armour—Lord! the noise they made must have been like a tinker’s horse running away with a cartload of tin kettles—looking out for doughty deeds to do so that they might appear big Indians in the eyes of their ladies fair. They spelt—such of them as could spell, and there weren’t a lot—‘lady’ with an e at the end. I say I used to laugh at them and think them howling bounders; but by the Lord Henrietta! since I came to know you I’ve had just the same feeling. I tell you that I should dearly like to do something big, so that you might be able to say, ‘He did it, and he’s my husband, and it was I taught him how.’”
“And you will do it—I have no fear for you, Jack. You will show people what you can do, and I shall feel—I may boast of it, too—that I have had an influence for good upon you, not for evil.”
“If anybody wants to hear further of what that influence has been to me, send them along, and I’ll tell them. My dear girl, you’ve now set me a job of work to do, and if you stand by me I’ll do it.”
“I’ll stand by you, Jack; I’ve no interest in life except to stand by you. If I wasn’t quite sure that you’ll be a success in the fight to get into Parliament, and a still bigger success when you get in, I shouldn’t say a word to urge you on to this job. But I know enough of you to be sure that there’s no one in the House of Commons who has a greater capacity than you for grasping the practical side of things, and seeing the rights and the wrongs in every question. Of course you may say that I don’t know all the members of the House of Commons and that I don’t know so much about you, if it comes to that.”
“Well, I admit that something like that did occur to me.”
“I daresay it did. But don’t you think that I’m going to retract anything that I said on that account. I’m not. I’ve read the newspapers like a student for the past four years, and I’ve read you like—like a lover for the past two months. These respective times are quite long enough to enable me to pronounce the definite judgment that I did in making my comparison. Oh, Jack, I can see quite well that people won’t have oratory at any price, in these days. What they want is men like you, who will say in common language—colloquial language—what they think. After all, the great thing is the thinking and the doing; the talking is quite a secondary consideration. Goodness! Here have I been making a long speech to prove to you that there’s no use for speech-makers nowadays.”
“You have spoken good sense and to the point, my girl, and that’s more than can be said of the majority of orators. Well, I’ve taken on a big contract, and you’ve promised to see me through with it. All that we’ve got to do now is to search for principles to take the place of politics. Have you any outline in your mind at present?”
“Not even the most shadowy.”
“That’s satisfactory. We don’t start on this campaign with any foolish prejudices in favour of one thing or another. We can be all things to all men in the Nuttingford division of Nethershire.”
“And to all women—don’t forget the women. I look to them to make a strong muster on our side.”
“Whatever our side may be.”
It was in this happy spirit that they approached Mr. Franklin Forrester the next day, Jack having had a chat with him through the telephone.
Mr. Forrester was delighted—at his own sagacity in playing his hand so as to win Mrs. Wingfield to his side. He took care to make his principals aware of his sagacity in this particular, and they also were delighted. They smiled, of course, at the suggestion that the seat might be taken by his friend Wingfield, but he would come forward and contest it in their interest, and that was something. People, especially those of the opposition, must not get it into their heads that The Party could not put a man into the field to oppose Lawford, who would, of course, win the seat, but not so easily as he expected—not so easily as to reflect seriously upon the resources of The Party who were running Wingfield.
That was the way the leaders of the organization to which Forrester belonged looked at the candidature of Wingfield. And the way Forrester himself looked at it was that the fact of his being able to bring Wingfield up to the scratch—that was his metaphor in referring to his success—would raise him to the extent of another rung in the political ladder which he had set himself to climb some years before, and up which he had already made a creditable ascent.
One thing he saw clearly, and that was that his candidate’s having married the daughter of a farmer—not a gentleman farmer nor an amateur farmer, but a farmer, and a farmer, too, who was well known to make his business pay—was a distinct point in his favour. It would assuredly be accounted to him for righteousness by a constituency like Nuttingford, which was so largely agricultural.
He mentioned this to Jack, who, he found, was fully alive to the importance of making every legitimate use of this claim upon the electorate. So far as he could make out, it was the solitary claim which he had to their attention, and this made him value it all the more highly. He delighted Mr. Forrester by the ease with which he showed himself ready to adapt himself to circumstances and circumstances to his candidature. Most high class men, Mr. Forrester’s experience had shown him, had been at first inclined to take a very high tone on approaching a constituency, striking the attitude of a patriot or a philanthropist and assuring him that if they could not be returned solely on their own merits without such adventitious aids as family interests or business interests or the interest which attaches to an interesting wife, they would much prefer not to be returned at all. Such high-toned men very soon got such nonsense knocked out of them. One of them, who was the father of two little girls with lovely eyes, had the mortification of seeing his antagonist romp in ahead of him solely because he had appeared every morning on the balcony of the hotel carrying on his shoulder a flaxen-curled little boy in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, though he had only borrowed the child for the election.
“What did the crowds outside the hotel care whether the boy was his or not?” cried Mr. Forrester. “They gave him their votes; and there was the other man thrown out, though he might have played off his two lovely little girls against the borrowed brat with every chance of success. Oh, children are simply thrown away upon superior men like that!”
But Wingfield showed himself superior to such ridiculous affectations of superiority and high-tonedness. He knew enough about practical politics to be aware of the affinity of the cult to the pastry industry of the roadside. To attain success in the making of mud pies one must not be over-careful of one’s hands. There is no making mud pies without mud, and there is no dabbling in politics if you mean to devote your best energies to the culture of lilies—not the speckled variety nor even the golden, but the pure saint of flowerland, the snow-white sort.
Of this fact Jack Wingfield was well aware, so he did not resent—certainly not openly—Mr. Forrester’s advice: “You must run your wife’s connection with farming for all that it’s worth.”
“And it’s worth a good deal,” assented the candidate. “Yes, we’ll rub it in, never fear.”
And Priscilla also showed herself to be quite alive to the value of this connection.
“I’ll give a practical lesson daily on ‘How to make farming pay,’” she cried. “I’ll take care that he has not a monopoly of the farm in his speeches.”
“Oh! those speeches are what I dread,” groaned Jack. “Psha! you’ve no idea how simple this part of it is,” said Mr. Forrester. “All you’ve got to do is to get well grounded on about half a dozen topics and speak all you know of all of them at every meeting. Don’t on any account commit anything to memory, for so long as you don’t make use of the same words no one will recognize any sameness or repetition in what you say. I’ll take care that you have a proper number of repartees made out for you upon every occasion. These will be typewritten on slips of paper, and placed in order on the table in front of you, so that when the conscientious objectors, for whom we will arrange, ask you their questions from the body of the hall or the gallery, you will have nothing to do but glance at the repartee before you and repeat it with whatever inflection you may think necessary. Only you mustn’t forget to turn down each repartee when you have delivered it, or you’ll find yourself at sea.”
“I can easily believe that,” said the candidate.
“And then we shall have to arrange for an effective interruption now and again. But your appeal for the man to be allowed to remain and your joke on the matter will also be typewritten in front of you. Some men prefer to commit the joke to memory, but it’s never safe to do this. Oh, you’ll have no trouble when once you get into the stride of the thing.”
“I’ll do my best to accommodate my faltering steps to its majestic swing,” said Jack. “This is a nice business I’m learning, Priscilla,” he added, turning to his wife.
“It’s the most interesting game ever invented—so much is clear to me,” said she. “It’s the game of musical chairs on a heroic scale. You face the music, and the moment it stops you make a struggle for a seat, and if you don’t mind a little rough-and-tumble business you’ll get your seat, Jack—I see that clearly.”
This coaching took place during the first day or two after Jack’s announcement of his decision. And then he went off with Priscilla to the town of Nuttingford to make the acquaintance of the local organization of The Party, and to be grounded on all local questions, so that the soundness of his views on these points might never be open to suspicion. Then at the right moment the member for the division, Sir Christopher Cotton, applied for the appointment of Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, and this being an office of emolument, his seat automatically became vacant, but he did not offer himself for re-election.
His valedictory address appeared in all the papers, and it contained a very handsome recognition of the abilities of the gentleman who had, he said, come forward at considerable personal sacrifice to solicit the suffrages of his friends in his place. He could not doubt, he added, that the electorate would view with a friendly eye the candidature of Mr. John Wingfield, who, though not personally connected with the division, had many interests in common with the electors and was sound on all matters of Imperial bearing.
Beneath this graceful tribute to the worth of a gentleman of whom he knew absolutely nothing, appeared the address of that gentleman himself. It was of the simple, straightforward, manly type—and its burden was the shameful way in which the agricultural industry—the most important industry in the country—had been neglected not by one Government only, but by all. He frankly admitted that the one aim of his life was the placing of agriculture on a sound basis, and whether he was returned to Parliament or not, his opinion would remain unaltered, that prosperity to the country meant prosperity to the agricultural interests of the country. At that point in the address the candidate’s frankness became even more apparent.
“I am prepared to hear it alleged,” his address went on, “that my views on this matter are not wholly disinterested, that in fact my own interests are largely bound up with the agricultural industry. Gentlemen, I own that it would be futile for me to make an attempt to deny this accusation. My own interests are identical with those of agriculture. It is for you to say if this fact disqualifies me from being regarded as a fitting representative of such a constituency as yours.”
Now, considering that Jack Wingfield and Priscilla his wife had composed this address without the least aid from Franklin Forrester, the encomiums which it received from that critic were accepted by them with pride—of a certain sort. But when it is known that Jack, after reading over the address in the newspaper out loud, appealed to Priscilla to say if it contained a single false statement, and that she replied that it really did not contain a paragraph that was absolutely untrue, it may be gathered that their pride in its composition was tempered by some misgivings. When two people find it necessary to assure each other from time to time of the purity of their motives, one may perhaps go so far as to assume that neither of them is absolutely convinced on this point. It is understood that during an election certain ethical indulgence is allowed to the candidates and their immediate supporters, just as, at certain times of fasting, the representatives of the most rigid form of Church government grant exemption to some persons from obedience to the strict letter of the law, and just as ingenious Jews have in all ages contrived to effect a compromise with their conscience in the acceptance of the Mosaic injunctions in regard to the observance of the Sabbath (though the Jew has always paid in something on account, so to speak). But whether or not such an explanation of the ethics of the easy-going may be considered satisfactory by the Judge Flynns—the “high-toneder” people of the world, Jack Wingfield and Priscilla his wife soon found themselves too busy to subject themselves to any tests of the searching character of those that Farmer Wadhurst’s daughter had instituted in his dairy. The use of a spiritual lactometer would be extremely inconvenient during a contested election, and the contest at Nuttingford promised to be an unusually brisk one.
They both plunged into it. They had got the start of the other candidate—a solicitor by profession, who had made a former appeal to the same constituency—and they meant to keep ahead of him.
From the first it was seen that the sagacity of Mr. Forrester had not misled him when he had suggested that Mrs. Wingfield’s presence would tell largely in favour of the candidate of The Party. Priscilla stood by her husband at all times; but she refused to say to anyone:
“I want you to give your vote to my husband.”
“It’s entirely a matter between yourselves and him,” she would say with a smile and a wave of her hand. “If you think him the man for you, as I know him to be the man for me, you can’t do better than send him into Parliament as your representative; but if you don’t, well, there’s no harm done—I’ll have the more of him to myself.”
Moreover, she never made a suggestion to him as to what the character of any of his speeches should be. It was only when he talked over some question with her and asked her advice that she put forward an opinion.
She saw as clearly as did Mr. Forrester that Jack’s form of oratory was the sort that must tell at an election meeting. It was not classical; it was far better: it was colloquial. He told stories by the score, and everyone of them bearing upon his own experience in many countries—just the sort of stories that people like—about lions and tigers and killing things—about niggers (with a sly word or two about the scantiness of their attire)—about a cricket match in the South Seas which had lasted three weeks with a hundred and twenty on each side, and a free fight at the close—about a football match in Africa, where the football was a cocoanut in its original husk, and how they kicked it to pieces with, their bare feet, and how the referee was treated almost as badly as he is upon occasions in the Midlands. “But the great pull that those chaps have over us is of course that a black eye is never noticed.” This commentary was received with laughter and cheers; and under the cover of this demonstration Priscilla scribbled a few words on a piece of paper, and pushed it before him. When the yells had passed away, he resumed:
“I suppose you think that that about the black eyes has nothing to do with us at this election. Well, you’re wrong. I was about to say when you interrupted me—there really was nothing to laugh at. Do you think a black eye is something to laugh at? (Great laughter.) Well, you’re wrong again! (More laughter.) I should know, for I’ve had many a one myself. (Renewed laughter.) In fact, at one time of my life I had so many black eyes that my friends used to call me not blackeyed Susan, but black-eyed Jack. (Great laughter.) My mother said, ‘This can’t be my own beautiful boy, for my son had lovely dreamy blue eyes, and this boy’s are—’ (The remainder of the sentence was inaudible owing to the laughter and cheers.) But to come to the point. I was about to say that my opponent’s disclaimer with regard to the labourers’ cottages resembled that nigger’s black eyes. He declares that the opinions which I said were his were not his opinions at all. Ladies and gentlemen, if you had asked that nigger if he had a pair of black eyes he would have denied it. My opponent holds those opinions without knowing it, and we accept his disclaimer, feeling sure that he made it in good faith—as good faith as the nigger’s who denied his lovely black eyes, and so we part good friends.” (Loud cheers.)
That was his style of oratory, and it did very well. But of course, he was not always so successful as he was upon this occasion in dragging in a connection between one of his stories and an election topic. Priscilla was not always at hand to give him a hint of the possibility of turning a story to good account. But his audience cared no more for the appropriateness of a story to an election issue than children care for the moral of a fable. They wanted to be entertained and he entertained them, and they found him a jolly good fellow, and affirmed their belief in varying keys the moment he got upon his legs and the moment he sat down.
Mr. Forrester began to feel that there was more than a likelihood that the Wingfields would win. He took care to arrange with the local organization to have a sufficient number of sound dull speakers to precede Jack’s efforts and to follow them up. The difficulty of providing such speakers is never insuperable in an agricultural constituency, or for that matter, in any other constituency.
But thecoup de theatreof Jack’s campaign was due to the happy accident of a conscientious objector—not one of those who had been provided by the management—being present in the gallery one night, when Mr. Wingfield had been affirming (for the fiftieth time) that he was heart and soul an agriculturist.
“Look here, mister,” this person sang out. “Look here, we’ve heard a deal about you and the lady (cheers and cries of ‘Turn him out!’) No, nobody will turn me out.”
“You’re right there, my lad,” cried Jack. “We don’t want anybody turned out. We want somebody turned in—into Parliament, and I’ve the authority of that person for saying that he doesn’t want to be turned in by turning other people out. Go on, my friend. It’s a free country.”
“So I was hoping, sir. Well, what I want to know is this. Did ever you or your lady do a real day’s work yourselves? That’s what I want to know.”
There was some laughter and some confusion at the back of the hall, for it seemed that there were conscientious ejectors present as well as the conscientious objector. While order was being restored, Priscilla said something in Jack’s ear, and at once he held up his hand for silence.
“Our friend has thrown us down a challenge, and we’re only too glad to take it up,” he cried. “Has either of us ever done a real day’s work? he asks. Well, here’s my wife’s answer. Here we are in this hall to-night. Now, to-morrow morning at 10 o’clock my wife will show all who honour her with a visit in this place whether anyone in this neighbourhood can tell her something she doesn’t know in dairy work. She’ll do a day’s butter making with her own hands, and you’ll be able to judge for yourselves whether or not I have been over or under the mark in my claim that we understand what we’re talking about. If my speeches here haven’t contained much butter it’s not because we don’t know what the real thing is or that one of us at least can’t make it with it the best in the land. There’s no duchess in this country or any other that can beat Mrs. Wingfield at butter making (laughter), but it’s not for me to talk to you of it; you come here, any of you that know what butter is, and you can judge for yourselves to-morrow and maybe the day after. One friend up there talked of a single day’s real work. Well, we accept his challenge and double the task—two days—three—four—if he insists. Now, mind you, this is no joke. You’ll find that it’s no joke if any of you hope to beat the butter that will be made here to-morrow and as much longer as you please.”
He sat down “amid a scene of indescribable enthusiasm,” as the local newspapers had it, only they said that “he resumed his seat.” The man who had asked that question from the gallery was the driver of a traction engine, and he had long been suspected of harbouring unworthy socialistic theories. He thought it prudent to leave the hall before the close of the meeting.
“How will you get out of it?” asked Mr. Forrester of Priscilla. “That husband of yours has either made himself or marred himself by his attempt to get the better of that man in the gallery. How does he mean you to get out of the business?”
“He doesn’t,” replied Priscilla. “It was I who told him to take up the challenge. Oh, Mr. Forrester, we’re all sick to death of this vulgar talk, talk, talk day after day and night after night. Thank goodness that I have now a chance of turning from that unwholesome stuff to a good clean worthy job of butter making. I’ll win this election for my husband in the legitimate way of work as opposed to words.”
And she did win it for him.
By eleven o’clock the next morning she had turned the hall into a dairy, and in the daintiest dairymaid’s costume that had ever been seen, with her white arms bare to the elbow, she churned her milk and turned out pat after pat of the finest butter that had ever been seen in that neighbourhood. By the evening she had produced sufficient to stock a shop for a day, and she had leisure to make all the farmers’ daughters acquainted with the scientific tests by whose aid alone could the best results be obtained.
The only trouble that there was in carrying out her scheme was in regard to the regulation of the crowds of people who flocked from every quarter to see Mrs. Wingfield respond to the challenge that her husband had accepted on her behalf. The local police were quite unequal to the duty of marshalling the crowd. Volunteer stewards had to assist them to prevent the hall being rushed. But in spite of all their exertions the doors had to be closed several times during the afternoon. At the dinner hour of the working population the whole street was packed with interested young women and still more interested young men, and the sound of their cheering was as continuous as the firing of a battery of machine guns.
“What chance have I against that kind of thing, Forrester?” enquired Jack’s opponent of the manager of Mr. Wingfield’s party. “I suppose this is another of your clever tricks” he added, “I should be proud to be able to father it, but I am not,” said Mr. Forrester.
“You mean to say that you did not arrange for that challenge?”
“I do indeed. It was sprung on us—the whole thing was sprung on us. I give you my word for it. The fellow sang out some rot from the gallery, and while they were calling to put him out, Mrs. Wingfield saw her chance. She put Wingfield up to it, and he only did what she told him. I didn’t know where I was standing when I heard him accept the challenge; but in a minute or two I saw what could be made of it.”
“Butter! I don’t know what we are coming to in England when the grave issues of an election contest are decided in this way—I really don’t.”
“I’m not sure that that young woman hasn’t inaugurated, a new state of things. Speech-making is played out as an election force.”
“And butter-making is to take its place! Why not have a milking match between the candidates to decide which of them should be returned? Mrs. Wingfield is a clever young woman, and her husband’s a lucky man. We all thought him a bit of a juggins.”
“So he was; but she has made a man of him.”
“She has made a member of Parliament of him,” said Jack’s opponent; and whatever enthusiasm he may have felt at the thought, he managed to prevent it from being noticed in his voice.
He spoke the truth. Mrs. Wingfield’s husband was returned as the Parliamentary representative of the Nuttingford division of Nethershire by a majority of eleven hundred and sixty-one votes.
When the enthusiastic electors and non-electors—the latter are invariably the more enthusiastic—blocked the street in front of the hotel and shouted for Mrs. Wingfield, that lady appeared on the balcony, but after a long interval.
Everyone saw that she was smiling, but only those people who were close to her saw that her smile was that of a woman who has wept and is still weeping.