CHAPTER XI
IT was not long before Cecil’s abilities were recognised. Something was expected of him, for he came of a line of able Parliamentarians; and as he was already famous as a sportsman, he commanded an interest by no means inspired by the average young man of an illustrious house.
When the time came for him to make his first speech, shortly before the end of the Session, Lee sat in the gallery with an icy exterior surrounding a furious nerve storm. The day was dark and depressing. Those long rows of faces had never looked more apathetic; it was enough to make a novice feel, as he rose and confronted the bored old veterans, that he was on trial for his life. If Cecil failed Lee felt that she could hate him, not because the world would curl its lip, but because Cecil, mortified, stammering, a failure, would be an ideal in collapse. She might oust these unworthy sentiments later, and sympathise with him in his distress, but she could never quite rehabilitate him. He might be defeated in the most significant climaxes of his career, his party might turn upon and rend him, and she would pour all the wealth of her nature at his feet, but if he made a fool of himself, she’d never forgive him.
But Cecil had no intention of making a fool of himself. Moreover, his training at Oxford, whenthe Union had rung with his salad eloquence, made itself manifest among the other foundations of his mind and character. He was neither nervous nor too diffident. In fact he opened so easily that Lee thrilled with pride and excoriated herself. When he got his first “Hear!” her knees jerked; she realised how excited she was, and glanced about the gallery hastily; but in that dim cage she had little to fear. He demanded the attention of the House for something over an hour, and he would have scorned to amuse it; but his speech was terse and packed with his own thought; it had not a platitude in it, nor a time-honoured sentiment. He might or might not become a brilliant speaker when he had acquired sufficient practice and confidence to let himself go, but that he was a Maundrell to be reckoned with had been conceded long before he sat down.
Lee was with him in the lobby when he received the congratulations of men many years older than himself, and the next morning she brought all the newspapers, and pasted the highly laudatory articles on the rising sun into a scrap-book. She cunningly persuaded him to be photographed, and as his reputation waxed she supplied the weekly papers with his distinguished profile. He was moved to wrath, but his wife’s fervid admiration was very sweet to him, and when she pleaded it as her excuse for taking a step without consulting him, he forgave her instantly.
They could not get away in time for a trip abroad that year, much to Lee’s disappointment; for theContinent was one vast romantic ruin to her, varied with shops and the picturesque costumes of peasants. The late summer and autumn and early winter were precisely like the summer and autumn and early winter of the year before. They entertained the same people, visited the same houses; and this time Lee had the novel feeling of amazement for a people who were just as much pleased and just as absorbed as if a benign Providence had gifted them with the instinct for variety.
“No wonder they are great,” she thought, with a sigh.
In January the Londonmaisonnettewas open again, and as gay as flowers and upholstery and lamp shades could make it. Cecil for some time past had meditated a Bill for the relief of certain manufacturers, and had worked at it on odd days during the recess. He introduced it, and it failed, for it was practically a demand for the exclusion of much that was “made in Germany,” and was regarded as a covert and audacious attack on Free Trade. His Speech in its behalf was the most brilliant he had yet made, and he was bitterly denounced by the Liberal and Radical press next morning. Nor did their attentions cease with their comments on his Bill and Speech. From that time on he was regarded by the Opposition as a man to be sneered into the cooler regions of private life. His constituency was warned by that section of its press whose principles he did not represent, and he was accused of having pledged his abilities, “such as they were,” to a life-long fight against progress, andof a criminal indifference to Home Rule and to the unfortunate Armenian.
Of these jeremiads—which Cecil refused to read, having made up his mind and being at peace with his conscience—Lee was as proud as of the many compliments which the young member received, and she pasted them dutifully in the scrap-book. Of Society she saw something less than ever, although her mother-in-law adjured her not to “make a fool of herself.” She admitted that she should like to go to some of the great parties, and to an occasional supper at the Savoy, under Lady Barnstaple’s wing; for her evenings were lonely, and politics would have been even more interesting if seasoned with variety. She asked Cecil, with an apologetic blush, if he would mind.
He plunged his hands into his pockets.
“Are you very keen on it?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m not mad about it, but I haven’t seen much of London Society, and it interests me; and I have so much time on my hands.”
“I’m afraid you must get rather bored. I’m sorry I have to be so much away from you. But—I hate to see women running about without their husbands. Besides it’s always the beginning of the end—when a woman goes her way and a man his. It’s selfish of me, but I like to think of you as always here. As you know, I break away sometimes, and come home unexpectedly——”
“You haven’t this year.”
“We’ve been so confoundedly busy. But I often think of you, and I like to picture you in this roomwith a book, or asleep when other women are baking their complexions.”
Lee smiled. “That was very astute. You would rather I did not go out, then?”
“I feel a selfish brute. Let me know what you particularly want to go to, and I’ll try to pair and take you myself.”
But Lee knew that he hated the very thought of it, and he was more and more absorbed in his work. Of his ambition there was now no question; he had even gone so far as to half admit it to her. He did not return to the subject, upon which their conversation had, indeed, been so brief that he might be pardoned for forgetting it. Lee attempted to find oblivion in the mass of data elucidative of colonial history, past and present, to which Cecil, with his usual thoroughness, was devoting his leisure. It had been his purpose, from the moment he had decided upon his career, to achieve a full and sympathetic understanding of the colonies. He had given no little attention to politics in India and South Africa, as well as to their peoples, during his sporting tour, and he intended to revisit these and other parts of the Empire as soon as he felt reasonably sure of his footing at home, and had mastered the enormous bulk of colonial conditions in the abstract. He had no belief in home-made theories for governing the alien millions of the English race.
Lee looked forward to these journeyings with some interest, although she would have preferred to explore the crumbling and rather more picturesquecivilisations of Europe. Travel would be more comfortable, and the Continent was a superb theatre, under superb management—to take it seriously was out of the question; but although it did not appeal to the soul, it was a delight to the imagination. But neither the one change in her programme nor the other seemed imminent; Cecil found too much to do in England. The present routine bid fair to last for three or four years to come.
And to have argued that social success would have conduced to her husband’s advancement would have been a waste of words, for Cecil was a man of ideals and regarded meretricious connectives with scorn. He was very much elated at this period, for there was every indication that the Liberal tenure was a brief one, and that his party was regaining all it had lost, and more. He intended to speak throughout the North, pending the next elections, and he had good reason to anticipate that his services to his party would be rewarded with that first stepping-stone to power, an Under-Secretaryship. Lee was to go about with him, of course; he would as soon have thought of leaving one of his members at home, and she looked forward to the variation of the usual autumn programme with some enthusiasm. She was tremendously proud of her gifted and high-minded young husband, and when disposed to repine, forced into her mind her ten years of unremitting determination and desire to marry Cecil Maundrell, and her girlish hopes and dreams, some of which had certainly been realised.
It was just after the Easter recess that he beganto feel the need of a secretary, for he was doing certain work outside the House. Lee disliked the idea of a stranger in hermaisonnette, to say nothing of the fact that she would see less of her husband by many hours, and offered herself for the post. He was surprised and delighted, for he was reserved almost to secrecy with every one else, and had contemplated admitting a stranger into the privacy of his study with much distaste.
“Are you sure it won’t tire you?” he asked fondly. He was always very careful of her.
“Of course not! And I haven’t a thing to do, now that all my clothes are made. I’m sick of the sight of Bond Street. You know I love to feel that I am of use to you.”
“You are always that, whether you are doing anything for me or not. I’m quite selfish enough to accept your offer, if you really mean it. I simply hated the thought of an outsider. But if I find it tires or bores you, we can put a stop to the arrangement any day.”
It bored her, but he never knew it. As she had an exuberant vitality, it did not tire her, although she sometimes felt very nervous. She marvelled at the greatness of the masculine mind which could master such details and find them interesting, and wondered if she were a real politician after all. Somewhat to her amusement, she found herself looking forward with pleasure to the sporting season; it would be an interval of comparative liberty and rest. She enjoyed the sensation of being useful to her husband, and the increased companionship; butit was trying to spend so much of the morning indoors, and to sit up by herself copying, when she preferred being in bed, or reading such novels as were clever enough to satisfy a mind now quite tuned to serious things. The theatre was neglected during the last two months of the Session, for Cecil grew busier and busier, and worked late on his off nights. Occasionally he examined his wife’s lovely face anxiously to see if she were losing her colour, or acquiring any little fine lines, and when he could discover no outward symbol of injured health he begged her to tell him if she were really equal to the strain. When she assured him that she was profoundly interested, and had never felt better, he assured her in return that she was, indeed, a wife of whom any man might be proud. Sometimes she wished, with a sigh, that his wants were more spiritual. She might revive her enthusiasm if he had need of sympathy and solace, but the world was treating him very well, and he was satisfied and happy. She wondered if he had ever been anything else; he certainly seemed one of the favoured of earth.