The Patrician

It was already late in the afternoon when there came debouching into the high street a long string of sandwichmen, each bearing before and behind him a poster containing these words beautifully situated in large dark blue letters against a pale blue ground:

“NEW COMPLICATIONSDANGER NOT PASTVOTE FOR MILTOUN AND THE GOVERNMENT,AND SAVE THE EMPIRE.”

Courtier stopped to look at them with peculiar indignation. Not only did this poster tramp in again on his cherished convictions about Peace, but he saw in it something more than met the unphilosophic eye. It symbolized for him all that was catch-penny in the national life-an epitaph on the grave of generosity, unutterably sad. Yet from a Party point of view what could be more justifiable? Was it not desperately important that every blue nerve should be strained that day to turn yellow nerves, if not blue, at all events green, before night fell? Was it not perfectly true that the Empire could only be saved by voting blue? Could they help a blue paper printing the words, ‘New complications,’ which he had read that morning? No more than the yellows could help a yellow journal printing the words ‘Lord Miltoun’s Evening Adventure.’ Their only business was to win, ever fighting fair. The yellows had not fought fair, they never did, and one of their most unfair tactics was the way they had of always accusing the blues of unfair fighting, an accusation truly ludicrous! As for truth! That which helped the world to be blue, was obviously true; that which didn’t, as obviously not. There was no middle policy! The man who saw things neither was a softy, and no proper citizen. And as for giving the yellows credit for sincerity – the yellows never gave them credit! But though Courtier knew all that, this poster seemed to him particularly damnable, and he could not for the life of him resist striking one of the sandwich-boards with his cane. The resounding thwack startled a butcher’s pony standing by the pavement. It reared, and bolted forward, with Courtier, who had naturally seized the rein, hanging on. A dog dashed past. Courtier tripped and fell. The pony, passing over, struck him on the head with a hoof. For a moment he lost consciousness; then coming to himself, refused assistance, and went to his hotel. He felt very giddy, and, after bandaging a nasty cut, lay down on his bed.

Miltoun, returning from that necessary exhibition of himself, the crowning fact, at every polling centre, found time to go and see him.

“That last poster of yours!” Courtier began, at once.

“I’m having it withdrawn.”

“It’s done the trick – congratulations – you’ll get in!”

“I knew nothing of it.”

“My dear fellow, I didn’t suppose you did.”

“When there is a desert, Courtier, between a man and the sacred city, he doesn’t renounce his journey because he has to wash in dirty water on the way: The mob – how I loathe it!”

There was such pent-up fury in those words as to astonish even one whose life had been passed in conflict with majorities.

“I hate its mean stupidities, I hate the sound of its voice, and the look on its face – it’s so ugly, it’s so little. Courtier, I suffer purgatory from the thought that I shall scrape in by the votes of the mob. There is sin in using this creature and I am expiating it.”

To this strange outburst, Courtier at first made no reply.

“You’ve been working too hard,” he said at last, “you’re off your balance. After all, the mob’s made up of men like you and me.”

“No, Courtier, the mob is not made up of men like you and me. If it were it would not be the mob.”

“It looks,” Courtier answered gravely, “as if you had no business in this galley. I’ve always steered clear of it myself.”

“You follow your feelings. I have not that happiness.”

So saying, Miltoun turned to the door.

Courtier’s voice pursued him earnestly.

“Drop your politics – if you feel like this about them; don’t waste your life following whatever it is you follow; don’t waste hers!”

But Miltoun did not answer.

It was a wondrous still night, when, a few minutes before twelve, with his forehead bandaged under his hat, the champion of lost causes left the hotel and made his way towards the Grammar School for the declaration of the poll. A sound as of some monster breathing guided him, till, from a steep empty street he came in sight of a surging crowd, spread over the town square, like a dark carpet patterned by splashes of lamplight. High up above that crowd, on the little peaked tower of the Grammar School, a brightly lighted clock face presided; and over the passionate hopes in those thousands of hearts knit together by suspense the sky had lifted; and showed no cloud between them and the purple fields of air. To Courtier descending towards the square, the swaying white faces, turned all one way, seemed like the heads of giant wild flowers in a dark field, shivered by wind. The night had charmed away the blue and yellow facts, and breathed down into that throng the spirit of emotion. And he realized all at once the beauty and meaning of this scene – expression of the quivering forces, whose perpetual flux, controlled by the Spirit of Balance, was the soul of the world. Thousands of hearts with the thought of self lost in one over-mastering excitement!

An old man with a long grey beard, standing close to his elbow, murmured:

“‘Tis anxious work – I wouldn’t ha’ missed this for anything in the world.”

“Fine, eh?” answered Courtier.

“Aye,” said the old man, “‘tis fine. I’ve not seen the like o’ this since the great year – forty-eight. There they are – the aristocrats!”

Following the direction of that skinny hand Courtier saw on a balcony Lord and Lady Valleys, side by side, looking steadily down at the crowd. There too, leaning against a window and talking to someone behind, was Barbara. The old man went on muttering, and Courtier could see that his eyes had grown very bright, his whole face transfigured by intense hostility; he felt drawn to this old creature, thus moved to the very soul. Then he saw Barbara looking down at him, with her hand raised to her temple to show that she saw his bandaged head. He had the presence of mind not to lift his hat.

The old man spoke again.

“You wouldn’t remember forty-eight, I suppose. There was a feeling in the people then – we would ha’ died for things in those days. I’m eighty-four,” and he held his shaking hand up to his breast, “but the spirit’s alive here yet! God send the Radical gets in!” There was wafted from him a scent as of potatoes.

Far behind, at the very edge of the vast dark throng, some voices began singing: “Way down upon the Swanee ribber.” The tune floated forth, ceased, spurted up once more, and died.

Then, in the very centre of the square a stentorian baritone roared forth: “Should auld acquaintance be forgot!”

The song swelled, till every kind of voice, from treble to the old Chartist’s quavering bass, was chanting it; here and there the crowd heaved with the movement of linked arms. Courtier found the soft fingers of a young woman in his right hand, the old Chartist’s dry trembling paw in his left. He himself sang loudly. The grave and fearful music sprang straight up into they air, rolled out right and left, and was lost among the hills. But it had no sooner died away than the same huge baritone yelled “God save our gracious King!” The stature of the crowd seemed at once to leap up two feet, and from under that platform of raised hats rose a stupendous shouting.

“This,” thought Courtier, “is religion!”

They were singing even on the balconies; by the lamplight he could see Lord Valleys mouth not opened quite enough, as though his voice were just a little ashamed of coming out, and Barbara with her head flung back against the pillar, pouring out her heart. No mouth in all the crowd was silent. It was as though the soul of the English people were escaping from its dungeon of reserve, on the pinions of that chant.

But suddenly, like a shot bird closing wings, the song fell silent and dived headlong back to earth. Out from under the clock-face had moved a thin dark figure. More figures came behind. Courtier could see Miltoun. A voice far away cried: “Up; Chilcox!” A huge: “Husill” followed; then such a silence, that the sound of an engine shunting a mile away could be heard plainly.

The dark figure moved forward, and a tiny square of paper gleamed out white against the black of his frock-coat.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Result of the Poll:

“Miltoun Four thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight. Chilcox Four thousand eight hundred and two.”

The silence seemed to fall to earth, and break into a thousand pieces. Through the pandemonium of cheers and groaning, Courtier with all his strength forced himself towards the balcony. He could see Lord Valleys leaning forward with a broad smile; Lady Valleys passing her hand across her eyes; Barbara with her hand in Harbinger’s, looking straight into his face. He stopped. The old Chartist was still beside him, tears rolling down his cheeks into his beard.

Courtier saw Miltoun come forward, and stand, unsmiling, deathly pale.

PART II

CHAPTER I

At three o’clock in the afternoon of the nineteenth of July little Ann Shropton commenced the ascent of the main staircase of Valleys House, London. She climbed slowly, in the very middle, an extremely small white figure on those wide and shining stairs, counting them aloud. Their number was never alike two days running, which made them attractive to one for whom novelty was the salt of life.

Coming to that spot where they branched, she paused to consider which of the two flights she had used last, and unable to remember, sat down. She was the bearer of a message. It had been new when she started, but was already comparatively old, and likely to become older, in view of a design now conceived by her of travelling the whole length of the picture gallery. And while she sat maturing this plan, sunlight flooding through a large window drove a white refulgence down into the heart of the wide polished space of wood and marble, whence she had come. The nature of little Ann habitually rejected fairies and all fantastic things, finding them quite too much in the air, and devoid of sufficient reality and ‘go’; and this refulgence, almost unearthly in its travelling glory, passed over her small head and played strangely with the pillars in the hall, without exciting in her any fancies or any sentiment. The intention of discovering what was at the end of the picture gallery absorbed the whole of her essentially practical and active mind. Deciding on the left-hand flight of stairs, she entered that immensely long, narrow, and – with blinds drawn – rather dark saloon. She walked carefully, because the floor was very slippery here, and with a kind of seriousness due partly to the darkness and partly to the pictures. They were indeed, in this light, rather formidable, those old Caradocs black, armoured creatures, some of them, who seemed to eye with a sort of burning, grim, defensive greed the small white figure of their descendant passing along between them. But little Ann, who knew they were only pictures, maintained her course steadily, and every now and then, as she passed one who seemed to her rather uglier than the others, wrinkled her sudden little nose. At the end, as she had thought; appeared a door. She opened it, and passed on to a landing. There was a stone staircase in the corner, and there were two doors. It would be nice to go up the staircase, but it would also be nice to open the doors. Going towards the first door, with a little thrill, she turned the handle. It was one of those rooms, necessary in houses, for which she had no great liking; and closing this door rather loudly she opened the other one, finding herself in a chamber not resembling the rooms downstairs, which were all high and nicely gilded, but more like where she had lessons, low, and filled with books and leather chairs. From the end of the room which she could not see, she heard a sound as of someone kissing something, and instinct had almost made her turn to go away when the word: “Hallo!” suddenly opened her lips. And almost directly she saw that Granny and Grandpapa were standing by the fireplace. Not knowing quite whether they were glad to see her, she went forward and began at once:

“Is this where you sit, Grandpapa?”

“It is.”

“It’s nice, isn’t it, Granny? Where does the stone staircase go to?”

“To the roof of the tower, Ann.”

“Oh! I have to give a message, so I must go now.”

“Sorry to lose you.”

“Yes; good-bye!”

Hearing the door shut behind her, Lord and Lady Valleys looked at each other with a dubious smile.

The little interview which she had interrupted, had arisen in this way.

Accustomed to retire to this quiet and homely room, which was not his official study where he was always liable to the attacks of secretaries, Lord Valleys had come up here after lunch to smoke and chew the cud of a worry.

The matter was one in connection with his Pendridny estate, in Cornwall. It had long agitated both his agent and himself, and had now come to him for final decision. The question affected two villages to the north of the property, whose inhabitants were solely dependent on the working of a large quarry, which had for some time been losing money.

A kindly man, he was extremely averse to any measure which would plunge his tenants into distress, and especially in cases where there had been no question of opposition between himself and them. But, reduced to its essentials, the matter stood thus: Apart from that particular quarry the Pendridny estate was not only a going, but even a profitable concern, supporting itself and supplying some of the sinews of war towards Valleys House and the racing establishment at Newmarket and other general expenses; with this quarry still running, allowing for the upkeep of Pendridny, and the provision of pensions to superannuated servants, it was rather the other way.

Sitting there, that afternoon, smoking his favourite pipe, he had at last come to the conclusion that there was nothing for it but to close down. He had not made this resolution lightly; though, to do him justice, the knowledge that the decision would be bound to cause an outcry in the local, and perhaps the National Press, had secretly rather spurred him on to the resolve than deterred him from it. He felt as if he were being dictated to in advance, and he did not like dictation. To have to deprive these poor people of their immediate living was, he knew, a good deal more irksome to him than to those who would certainly make a fuss about it, his conscience was clear, and he could discount that future outcry as mere Party spite. He had very honestly tried to examine the thing all round; and had reasoned thus: If I keep this quarry open, I am really admitting the principle of pauperization, since I naturally look to each of my estates to support its own house, grounds, shooting, and to contribute towards the support of this house, and my family, and racing stable, and all the people employed about them both.

To allow any business to be run on my estates which does not contribute to the general upkeep, is to protect and really pauperize a portion of my tenants at the expense of the rest; it must therefore be false economics and a secret sort of socialism. Further, if logically followed out, it might end in my ruin, and to allow that, though I might not personally object, would be to imply that I do not believe that I am by virtue of my traditions and training, the best machinery through which the State can work to secure the welfare of the people…

When he had reached that point in his consideration of the question, his mind, or rather perhaps, his essential self, had not unnaturally risen up and said: Which is absurd!

Impersonality was in fashion, and as a rule he believed in thinking impersonally. There was a point, however, where the possibility of doing so ceased, without treachery to oneself, one’s order, and the country. And to the argument which he was quite shrewd enough to put to himself, sooner than have it put by anyone else, that it was disproportionate for a single man by a stroke of the pen to be able to dispose of the livelihood of hundreds whose senses and feelings were similar to his own – he had answered: “If I didn’t, some plutocrat or company would – or, worse still, the State!” Cooperative enterprise being, in his opinion, foreign to the spirit of the country, there was, so far as he could see, no other alternative. Facts were facts and not to be got over!

Notwithstanding all this, the necessity for the decision made him sorry, for if he had no great sense of proportion, he was at least humane.

He was still smoking his pipe and staring at a sheet of paper covered with small figures when his wife entered. Though she had come to ask his advice on a very different subject, she saw at once that he was vexed, and said:

“What’s the matter, Geoff?”

Lord Valleys rose, went to the hearth, deliberately tapped out his pipe, then held out to her the sheet of paper.

“That quarry! Nothing for it – must go!”

Lady Valleys’ face changed.

“Oh, no! It will mean such dreadful distress.”

Lord Valleys stared at his nails. “It’s putting a drag on the whole estate,” he said.

“I know, but how could we face the people – I should never be able to go down there. And most of them have such enormous families.”

Since Lord Valleys continued to bend on his nails that slow, thought-forming stare, she went on earnestly:

“Rather than that I’d make sacrifices. I’d sooner Pendridny were let than throw all those people out of work. I suppose it would let.”

“Let? Best woodcock shooting in the world.”

Lady Valleys, pursuing her thoughts, went on:

“In time we might get the people drafted into other things. Have you consulted Miltoun?”

“No,” said Lord Valleys shortly, “and don’t mean to – he’s too unpractical.”

“He always seems to know what he wants very well.”

“I tell you,” repeated Lord Valleys, “Miltoun’s no good in a matter of this sort – he and his ideas throw back to the Middle Ages.”

Lady Valleys went closer, and took him by the lapels of his collar.

“Geoff-really, to please me; some other way!”

Lord Valleys frowned, staring at her for some time; and at last answered:

“To please you – I’ll leave it over another year.”

“You think that’s better than letting?”

“I don’t like the thought of some outsider there. Time enough to come to that if we must. Take it as my Christmas present.”

Lady Valleys, rather flushed, bent forward and kissed his ear.

It was at this moment that little Ann had entered.

When she was gone, and they had exchanged that dubious look, Lady Valleys said:

“I came about Babs. I don’t know what to make of her since we came up. She’s not putting her heart into things.”

Lord Valleys answered almost sulkily:

“It’s the heat probably – or Claud Harbinger.” In spite of his easy-going parentalism, he disliked the thought of losing the child whom he so affectionately admired.

“Ah!” said Lady Valleys slowly, “I’m not so sure.”

“How do you mean?”

“There’s something queer about her. I’m by no means certain she hasn’t got some sort of feeling for that Mr. Courtier.”

“What!” said Lord Valleys, growing most unphilosophically red.

“Exactly!”

“Confound it, Gertrude, Miltoun’s business was quite enough for one year.”

“For twenty,” murmured Lady Valleys. “I’m watching her. He’s going to Persia, they say.”

“And leaving his bones there, I hope,” muttered Lord Valleys. “Really, it’s too much. I should think you’re all wrong, though.”

Lady Valleys raised her eyebrows. Men were very queer about such things! Very queer and worse than helpless!

“Well,” she said, “I must go to my meeting. I’ll take her, and see if I can get at something,” and she went away.

It was the inaugural meeting of the Society for the Promotion of the Birth Rate, over which she had promised to preside. The scheme was one in which she had been prominent from the start, appealing as it did to her large and full-blooded nature. Many movements, to which she found it impossible to refuse her name, had in themselves but small attraction; and it was a real comfort to feel something approaching enthusiasm for one branch of her public work. Not that there was any academic consistency about her in the matter, for in private life amongst her friends she was not narrowly dogmatic on the duty of wives to multiply exceedingly. She thought imperially on the subject, without bigotry. Large, healthy families, in all cases save individual ones! The prime idea at the back of her mind was – National Expansion! Her motto, and she intended if possible to make it the motto of the League, was: ‘De l’audace, et encore de l’audace!’ It was a question of the full realization of the nation. She had a true, and in a sense touching belief in ‘the flag,’ apart from what it might cover. It was her idealism. “You may talk,” she would say, “as much as you like about directing national life in accordance with social justice! What does the nation care about social justice? The thing is much bigger than that. It’s a matter of sentiment. We must expand!”

On the way to the meeting, occupied with her speech, she made no attempt to draw Barbara into conversation. That must wait. The child, though languid, and pale, was looking so beautiful that it was a pleasure to have her support in such a movement.

In a little dark room behind the hall the Committee were already assembled, and they went at once on to the platform.

CHAPTER II

Unmoved by the stares of the audience, Barbara sat absorbed in moody thoughts.

Into the three weeks since Miltoun’s election there had been crowded such a multitude of functions that she had found, as it were, no time, no energy to know where she stood with herself. Since that morning in the stable, when he had watched her with the horse Hal, Harbinger had seemed to live only to be close to her. And the consciousness of his passion gave her a tingling sense of pleasure. She had been riding and dancing with him, and sometimes this had been almost blissful. But there were times too, when she felt – though always with a certain contempt of herself, as when she sat on that sunwarmed stone below the tor – a queer dissatisfaction, a longing for something outside a world where she had to invent her own starvations and simplicities, to make-believe in earnestness.

She had seen Courtier three times. Once he had come to dine, in response to an invitation from Lady Valleys worded in that charming, almost wistful style, which she had taught herself to use to those below her in social rank, especially if they were intelligent; once to the Valleys House garden party; and next day, having told him what time she would be riding, she had found him in the Row, not mounted, but standing by the rail just where she must pass, with that look on his face of mingled deference and ironic self-containment, of which he was a master. It appeared that he was leaving England; and to her questions why, and where, he had only shrugged his shoulders. Up on this dusty platform, in the hot bare hall, facing all those people, listening to speeches whose sense she was too languid and preoccupied to take in, the whole medley of thoughts, and faces round her, and the sound of the speakers’ voices, formed a kind of nightmare, out of which she noted with extreme exactitude the colour of her mother’s neck beneath a large black hat, and the expression on the face of a Committee man to the right, who was biting his fingers under cover of a blue paper. She realized that someone was speaking amongst the audience, casting forth, as it were, small bunches of words. She could see him – a little man in a black coat, with a white face which kept jerking up and down.

“I feel that this is terrible,” she heard him say; “I feel that this is blasphemy. That we should try to tamper with the greatest force, the greatest and the most sacred and secret-force, that – that moves in the world, is to me horrible. I cannot bear to listen; it seems to make everything so small!” She saw him sit down, and her mother rising to answer.

“We must all sympathize with the sincerity and to a certain extent with the intention of our friend in the body of the hall. But we must ask ourselves:

“Have we the right to allow ourselves the luxury, of private feelings in a matter which concerns the national expansion. We must not give way to sentiment. Our friend in the body of the hall spoke – he will forgive me for saying so – like a poet, rather than a serious reformer. I am afraid that if we let ourselves drop into poetry, the birth rate of this country will very soon drop into poetry too. And that I think it is impossible for us to contemplate with folded hands. The resolution I was about to propose when our friend in the body of the hall – ”