Chapter IV: Part 4

“Just the usual,” I agreed, “unless you care to go to the expense of a Morganatic alliance for the chauffeur.”

We all agreed that there was no other way out of it.

_CHAPTER XIII_: HOW NAUGHTY

The deliberate pursuit of naughtiness may seem absurd to those who have a natural superfluity of it, but, all the same, it is much in vogue. And, as in other matters besides naughtiness, the amateurs who most wish to excel are those who are the least likely to do anything of the sort. Every one knows theoretically that possession is nine points of desire, that in love there is always _l’un qui baise et l’autre qui tend la joue_, but how many have realized that the Evil one is also human, and pursues those who shun him, while he turns a deaf ear to those who really long to be naughty. It is the nice, mousy dears whom he runs after with some brilliant new devilment in his pocket. When the young desperado or the middle-aged lady with nothing in particular to do runs up to him and exclaims, “Oh, Mr. Satan, do let us have some of your lovely, wicked suggestions!” he turns green, and says, “Go away to a supper club. I will send my junior assistant to you there.” And off he flies to refresh himself at the nearest rectory.

Equally incomprehensible are certain other folk who, themselves incapable of any vice, set forth armed to the teeth against a spiritual enemy who knows them not; just as innocent old ladies in silk mantles cling together at railway stations for fear of being abducted to San Francisco. Many sensitive young clergymen have been known to speak in an uncommonly plucky way about a hot bath as if it were a sporting enterprise; showing no delicacy whatever on the subject, but attacking it as man to man, without any of that nonsensical reserve which, as they say, drives so many good people out of the Church. It is difficult to explain why boasting of having had a hot bath should imply a defensive attitude towards Satan; but, in fact, these heroes seem to cry aloud, “Parsons are not such old ladies as you think. I could ruffle it with the best of you dog foxes if I chose, and, as it is, a feller gets jolly hot sprintin’ round the parish if he’s not in good condition, I can tell you.” When they behave in this wild fashion they are consciously playing with danger. Not exactly ringing Satan’s front-door bell and then running away as one type of woman does, but rather showing how, properly armed, one may walk through his domains and take no harm. But suppose that after coming down from the heights of the life apart, and proclaiming himself an ordinary person, he should discover that he may walk in “the flesh” all day and be as safe as if he were in the Albert Hall. If it is “influence” that he wants, shall we suggest that man’s respect is more easily roused by something different from himself than by a half-baked imitation; that non-churchgoers are not really surprised into admiration by learning that a clergyman washes more than his hands; and that a sailor who is already intimate with the reckless elements will not believe more readily in God because His exponent has been seen to gather up his petticoats and play football or to take a hand at whist? In fact, if details of the toilet are to come into it at all, a verminous hermit must seem almost more spiritually detached than a young gentleman who makes such a fuss about “boiling himself” after a game of tennis.

This dare-devil attitude has perhaps been adopted by some men who have taken to the profession of the Church partly because their natural inclination is towards a life so harmless that they might feel it to be not quite manly unless it were supposed to be compulsory. So they hide their mildness by eating a bun as if it were horseflesh, assuring the bad boys that their own tastes are extremely dashing, but that they have chosen to throw away the forbidden fruit and keep only the skin; to reject the germinating kernel and nibble the husks, which are really most enjoyable. The truth being that the fruit as the boys eat it would give our friends “with no nonsense about them” the most horrible indigestion. There are of course others who passionately loved the fruit and threw it away deliberately; but you never find them nibbling the husks, any more than Brutus would have had his son whom he sacrificed stuffed for a drawing-room ornament. It is quite one thing for a lion to find a baby in its path, and to refuse, from conscientious motives, to eat it, and another for a chicken to plume itself on having had such a jolly run after the cat without killing it.

We have referred, in passing, to the lady who rings Satan’s front-door bell and then runs away. In considering what Miss Corelli has taught us to call the “Sorrows of Satan,” even so small an annoyance as this very hackneyed trick must have its place. The ladies who practise it are those who make an appointment with a man whom they know to be in love with them, and then--turn up with a chaperon. They are the ladies who like their relatives to be respectable and their friends to be disreputable, so that they may have all the fun and none of the responsibility; who devour all the indecent books they can get hold of during the week, and then go to church on Sunday; who would run miles to be introduced to a murderer at dinner, but would feel really hurt if their parlour-maid so much as cracked the commandment which comes next to the one about murder.

People of such various types, those who wheedle the Devil for no particular purpose, those who assume the defensive when the poor fellow wasn’t looking at them, and those who call him down from his study to answer the bell and then make a bolt for sanctuary, are examples of a class whom the Evil one leaves to his subordinates.

A promising young assistant of his works, disguised as a waiter, at one of the supper clubs to which we have supposed the naughty ladies to be so contemptuously relegated. I caught his eye one night when he was cynically winding up the strands of coloured paper that are sometimes thrown about at the end of the proceedings. “Another evening wasted!” he exclaimed with uncontrollable displeasure, “They might be a lot of blooming anarchists for all the harm they’ve done to-night. And here am I, who have waited on the House of Commons from its earliest years, and put ’em up to all their best tricks, literally throwing myself away.” He stopped to brush aside a yellowish tear. “Mr. Satan himself,” he continued, “won’t come down here at all; he says they’re not worth it. Look at that there innocent mother of a family a-dancing the Tango! We’ll never do any good with her, yet she likes to come here and waste my time a-calling for cigarettes. Look at her and her party now, Miss--turn your head so--now then you see? One of our clients is there, with the bald head, behind the pillar. We’d have had him anyhow, without the club, so it doesn’t even pay us that way. Hair, did you say, Miss? No, the gentlemen with a good deal of hair aren’t as a rule much good to us, and they encourage the women.”

“Encourage them in what?” I asked.

“Toasting their toes at the mouth of hell, they thinks, Miss, though it’s nothing of the kind really; it’s just pestering Mr. Satan something awful.”

“Then where does your real work lie?” I asked. “Where is hell?”

It was some moments before I could get an answer, as the noise suddenly became terrific. A negro at the piano had begun to play, accompanied by guitars, tambourines, and a howling chorus of tired-looking equatorials of some sort. Three or four scandalous old women, with transformations on their heads, and trophies from the bargain sales on their backs, were joylessly smoking and applauding in a frightful state of nerves. They looked fish-out-of-wool-shops, and my heart ached to pop them gently back behind the counter and draw down the blinds while they had a little nap. My friend was very busy opening bottles of champagne. Presently he stood beside me once more, napkin on arm.

“What was that you asked me just now, Miss?” he said.

“I asked you where hell was,” I replied.

“Well, I couldn’t say exactly, Miss. Mr. Satan, like, he takes the interesting cases--very quiet folk mostly; you’d hardly believe what a powerful lot of harm they do in a lifetime. A different lot altogether from these ’ere naughty cards, Miss. They ain’t no manner of good to us.”

He disappeared then, but I met him again later. He was still a waiter, brought in on the occasion of a small dinner-party in the suburbs of London. I thought he looked much happier, but I wondered what he found worth his attention in the present company. My host I knew to be an angel, scarcely disguised, as incorruptible as fire. The guests seemed nothing in particular. They left at the hour decreed by good taste; we left an hour later. I had a moment’s conversation in the hall with my friend, while my husband was saying his last “Well now, look here,” over a drink.

“Who is it to-night?” I said. “Do tell me before they come out.”

“A gentleman as Mr. Satan has set his heart on, Miss,” he replied, with a careful eye on the open door of the smoking-room. “Third on your left as you sat at dinner. [I remembered his face after we got home, a blue-eyed, nervous little father with a drooping moustache.] He’s a gentleman in business, Miss, and would like to do right, I feel sure of that. That’s why I’ve been sent. Fortunately for us his trade’s a speculative one, in which it’s easy to make suggestions. A little intelligence is all that’s needed, and that, as a rule, they haven’t got. Mr. Satan’s a good deal interested in this case because of the gentleman’s principles. He’s been brought up with a great fear of anything like dishonesty. I’m afraid it’s upsetting his health a good deal. Good night, Miss; here they come. Your carriage up now, sir.”

_CHAPTER XIV_: ELECTIONEERING

I turned the corner of the street in a tremendous hurry and ran into Reginald and Polly. They both looked as if they had had news of a death, although they did not actually show signs of grief. It was a peculiar look they had, half importance, half vexation. I stopped for a moment in surprise, and Polly said to her husband, “I think we shall want Martha, Reginald.”

“Now, be careful,” I said, a little shortly. “I have had almost enough of you two. If you want to have your photographs taken again you must go by yourselves. Polly! [It was a dreadful idea, but quite likely.] You weren’t going to ask me to help you to have the baby taken?”

“Baby!” Polly said contemptuously. “It will be a long time before I think of having baby taken anywhere. I certainly won’t take it round canvassing with a blue ribbon round its neck like those other dreadful people did.”

“I have got to have an election, Martha,” Reginald explained. “It is my turn to come out, and they are going to oppose me. It is nothing personal; they are fighting all they can this year all over the town.”

“I forgot that you were on the City Council,” I said.

“You wouldn’t forget if you were me,” observed Polly. “Here, come into this café and have tea, and we’ll make things as clear as possible to you.”

It was a large café, with a band, where you get the kind of tea that doesn’t include bread-and-butter. You can get tea-cake that is like hot skin and oil, and you can put aniline raspberry jam on it, and follow it down with dandelion-coloured cake that has a suspicious flavour. But if you ask for bread-and-butter, the rather spent young person with the apron says, “Cut bread-and-butter, did you mean?” and makes it sound like a faddy temperance food. If you are brave enough to admit that you do mean cut bread-and-butter, she brings something thin and mottled like German sausage. But it was only for convenience that we turned in there; it is not like criticizing Polly’s tea.

“We have only got a week or two to do it in,” said Reginald, “and there is a lot to do. The organization is not up to much.”

“But look here,” I said; “I don’t know anything at all about politics, and I can’t argue, because I always agree with what anybody says; it always seems so sensible until one thinks it over quietly at home.”

“Well, common sense will teach you the main line of what you have got to drum into them,” said Reginald. “You see, there are always no end of things that they want ‘put down.’ Very well, then. I am the man to put them down, whatever they are, because I have a good deal of time to give to the job, see? Then there’s the Church. There’s Canon Black--you know the man I mean--they all know him, and he’s very much liked. If he speaks for me, we’ll get a lot of votes; do you know him, by the way?”

“No,” I said, “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Yes, you have,” Reginald corrected me, “because I have just told you about him; so you can say that you know he approves of me--he does, really--I’m not joking. Well then, you know, I haven’t got any fads--temperance or such things--but if any one wants you to say that I’ll support their fads, you must just use tact, and, if necessary, say I’ll call. You write on the card--here, I’ll show you.”

He pulled a card out of his pocket and showed it to me. It was a drab little article, with the mysteriously depressing influence which always accompanies a space for a name and address. Anything which emphasizes the fact that we are one of millions of similar works of the Almighty has the same dingy effect. To be one of numberless leaves on a tree is delightful enough, but to have a caterpillar come round with a note-book and enter, “Name of tree, number of branch, time of fall in preceding year,” etc., gives an air of squalor to the whole tree. There was, unhappily for my peculiar talent, no space in which to record the appearance of the voter, but the canvasser was instructed to classify her victims as “Conservative,” “Liberal,” or “doubtful,” and was encouraged, besides, to add such code signals of distress as “Mr. ---- call,” “won’t say,” “dead,” “at sea,” “carriage on day of election,” or anything else likely to be helpful in the committee rooms.

For the benefit of those who have never canvassed, I here explain the spiritual meaning of these different signals. “Mr. ---- call” means that it is impossible for the candidate to blandish each of his four thousand or so of voters, so he reserves himself for the very good and the very bad, and those who are described in the jargon of the committee rooms as “the doubtful ones.” But beware of the trap which underlies the fair word “doubtful”! There are no doubtful ones. People who express doubts on any subject are rarely concerned with the merits of the case on either side. All they are waiting for is something that will turn up to give a picturesque glow to whichever side their instinct favours; and they are seldom disappointed. Except in certain spots, where some common interest--like nationality or sectarianism, or the nature of their employment--makes a group of people definite and outspoken in their political feelings, it is remarkable what a lot of ratepayers one may fawn upon without being thrown off the door-step or welcomed with open arms. This alleged indecision is a pastime and a trap which the canvasser provides and falls into with unfailing regularity. The attitude of the voter is generally that of the tease among school-children. “Ticky, ticky, tack, which hand will you have?” he asks, and the coveted apple or vote shifts about with hardly a show of deception. Now and then they are secret, like a dog with a bone. “We have the benefit of the ballot,” they say, with the most aggressive purity-in-politics face, all pursed up. But if no one came prying to find out where their sympathies were hidden, they would be the first to throw out hints of “hot and cold” to promote the game. The voters who throw the “benefit of the ballot” in our teeth are regular old chase-me-Charlies.

But it took me three cold, wet, weary, underfed weeks in October to discover all this. Reginald took his election very seriously; so did his rival. Millport was shaken by the warfare of other excellent gentlemen in different parts of the town, and they were all serious. So far as one can see, it is only bad men who go into politics or administration with a light heart. Playful minds are so easily led astray. Reginald made all his canvassers take it seriously too. He put the fear of John Bull into them. Our faces grew long or wide with the timid earnestness of the perfect lady, convinced of the honesty of her commander. So did the faces of the Liberal candidate’s assistants, only they were of a rather different build from ours--very nice, but bonier than ours as a rule; and when we met them on the opposite side of the street, sometimes actually on the same door-step, they looked to me the sort of women who can carve a duck for eight people.

“Will you take these cards, please, Mrs. Molyneux?” said a fat, cheery man at the committee rooms when I presented myself there for the first time. The room seemed full of men, strangely shaped like fancy breads; some of them writing at a bare table; all of them as active as dry leaves at that time of year.

“You will,” continued the agent, shuffling the cards with the help of a moistened thumb, “do these houses not marked with a tick. The rest have been done, but these were either not at home when our canvasser called, or there was some other reason why they have to be done again.”

Reginald came in then, looking as if the fate of continents were secreted under his hat, and Polly arrived at the same moment. “Ah, Martha,” Reginald said, with the smile of a clever actor playing a crisis in the Foreign Office, “that’s good of you. You’d better take Polly and go round together. How are we getting on, Hoppes?” He leaned over the table in an absorbed attitude, so I left with my cards and Polly.

Christabel Street was a quiet little neighbourhood of yellow brick fronts, red stone steps, and brown doors, at the back of the main line of frowsy shops which ran across Reginald’s ward. I found number 102, next door to an inquisitive young person with a pail of dirty water and a cold in the head. We knocked at the door. The name on the card was Eliza Wickham. It will probably save explanation if I add a picture of Eliza Wickham and Polly (I kept in the background to learn experience), and record the conversation exactly as it took place.

ELIZA: “Is’t for the votin’? Well, ’oo is he?”

POLLY: “Oh such a good man! I expect you know all about him.” (I asked her afterwards why she did not explain that he was her husband, and she said she had done so in a great many cases, but found that it sometimes prejudiced them. They drew personal comparisons between her and the Liberal candidate’s wife, who ran clubs and concerts in that district.) “You know Canon Black? Well, Mr. Ashfield knows him _very_ well, and he has had so much experience on the School Board--Oh no, that is the Liberal candidate that you mean--No, he has had no experience at all. He couldn’t reduce the rates by a penny because, you see, he doesn’t know how to do it. Now, I am sure you will get your husband to vote for him; a good-looking woman like you can always get round her husband, and we can call for him at any hour. Good-bye, and you’ll say I called, won’t you?”

“What shall we mark her?” she asked, as we turned away.

“She didn’t give us much clue, did she?” I answered. “She hardly said anything. But she had a very firm eye. Suppose we say ‘doubtful.’”

We came upon Mrs. Henry at the bottom of Christabel Street, and Polly took her away, sending me alone to Llewellyn Street, and promising to join me at the other end.

“But surely John Hughes won’t be in at this time,” I protested, hoping for respite.

“He may be a sailor or a policeman,” said Polly; “you find them at all sorts of queer times. But mind: if he is in bed you must rout him out all the same; he has been visited a great many times.”

John Hughes, to my surprise and alarm, was on his door-step, smoking a pipe. I gathered together in my head all the directions that Reginald had given me, and we conversed as follows:

JOHN HUGHES: “Don’t know anything about him. What’s his views on this ’ere Irish business?”

ME (Aside: “Dash it! Reginald never told me that!”) “Oh, you had better ask him yourself. That is just the sort of question he delights in. Do you know Canon Black?”

JOHN HUGHES: “Never heard of ’im.”

ME: “Oh, well, I will send Mr. Ashfield to you. You are Conservative, aren’t you?”

JOHN HUGHES: “I’m not particular. I vote for the best man.”

ME (eagerly): “Oh, he’s _far_ the best. You see, he has done so much work before. But he will call on you, and then you will be able to hear everything he says.”

JOHN HUGHES: “You needn’t trouble. They all talk alike. I’ll make inquiries, and if I find he’s the best man I’ll vote for him.... No, I don’t want no fetchin’; I can walk. And I’ll vote one way or the other. We ’ave the benefit of the ballot, you see.”

“There is only one way to mark John Hughes,” I said to myself, as I retraced my steps, “and that is ‘WON’T SAY!’” I wrote it very distinctly and felt that I had done my duty.

I looked at my card and found a dozen names in Confucius Street, of which the only one unticked was that of Robert Taylor. But on Mr. Taylor’s door-step another of our canvassers was already waiting for admittance. I thought, at first, that she belonged to the opposite camp, but a second glance at her face and figure reassured me. “Church school teacher,” I said to myself, and waited patiently to go to her assistance if Mr. Taylor became restive, and, in any case, to enter the result of the interview on my card. Mr. Taylor was not at home, and my brave young lady did her best to gain the sympathy of his wife, who was a little chilly and preoccupied, I thought. The conversation, though delightfully friendly, was almost one-sided.

“You know Canon Black, don’t you? (“Ah,” I thought, “she has got our trump card too, has she?”) Mr. Ashfield knows him _very_ well. He thinks so much of him.... Yes, I quite agree with you, there’s a great deal too much of it, and Mr. Ashfield is just the sort of man you want to put it down. He gives so much time to the work, too. (“I must remember always to put that in,” I said to myself.) You have no idea the trouble he takes with it.... No, I don’t think the other gentleman does; you see, he has hardly the time for it. That is why we are trying to get Mr. Ashfield in; just because of that. He is such a sound man and can give the time to it. Thank you very much.... Oh, we shall certainly get him in if they all help us as much as you!”

“What do you think?” I said to her, card in hand, “doubtful?”

“No,” she replied brightly, her inextinguishable optimism shining through her glasses. “I think it will be better to say, ‘Not at home, but probably Conservative.’”

One of the greatest blows to my pride was Clarissa Scholefield. I wound up with her before lunch, and it had to be a good lunch! No amount of buns could have repaired my body after the humiliating loss of stamina--what I call “sawdust”--caused by that astonishingly powerful Clarissa with the butterfly in her cap. It had come on to rain, too, and, altogether, I cut a sorry figure in her well-ordered apartment with the mats and the shells.

“No, I don’t hold with the votin’,” she pronounced, grasping my offering of a shiny card, decorated with Reginald’s portrait, the names of his supporters, and seven reasons for preferring him before all other candidates. “No, I don’t hold with the votin’, and, what’s more, if I did vote I must see first what he’s goin’ to do when he is in. I always was and have been Conservative, but I haven’t voted for forty years and I don’t care to undertake it. Besides, I’m not at all sure he’s the right man. There’s a great deal of mischief goes on in public-houses, and the question is ‘who’s goin’ to stop it?’ I was sayin’ to a gentleman as was in here the other day that I hoped they was going to send men on to the Council as _would_ put a stop to it.... Yes, it’s very wet: I dare say you find it tirin’.”

I wrote, “Mr. Ashfield call,” with a very sharp pencil, against Clarissa’s name, and thought with pleasure, as I ordered a fried sole and chop to follow, of Reginald pommelling her silly old head with masterly repartee. After lunch I thought, with a more refined and indulgent glee, of dear Reginald’s silken head writhing under the podgy grasp of Clarissa’s hand--metaphorically, of course.

After lunch I went with Reginald’s sister Kate, who had just come back from college, to call on the Rev. Owen Griffiths ap Davis. I left her with him (which I would not have done had I known that a reverend gentleman could be so vicious) and went myself to recommend Reginald next door. Miss Kate told me afterwards exactly what happened, and having caught sight of Mr. ap Davis in the hall as he came out to see what all the talking was about, I could picture the scene exactly. Miss Kate curled up and looking very severe, the Reverend Davis opposite her, spitting out his remarks with absurd venom.

“Well, I don’t mind telling you frankly that you are canvassing for quite the wrong man altogether, and you will allow me to say that I hope very sincerely he won’t get in. I don’t know what he thinks about this Disestablishment Bill, but until that is passed I shall record my vote for whoever I think likely to put it in force. You say he’s your brother? Well, I think, if you will excuse my putting it plainly, that the fewer men of the stamp of your brother that there are in this town the better.... Oh, no trouble I assure you. Nasty damp day. Good morning.”

I had not met with much more success next door; in fact, I never got farther than the step. When Miss Amelia Carraway, dressmaker (I found this out by looking at her brass-plate), saw me from the window of her front room, where she was engaged behind the lace curtains with her mouth full of pins, she shot out at the door and at once gathered from my apologetic smile and the tell-tale cards in my hand what I had come about. I have drawn her in her room because she looks best there, although, in fact, I did not get so far until another day when I returned on legitimate business. She is like that “animal of merit, and perfect honesty, the ferret,” who, we are told, “bites holes in leaves, ties knots in string, or practically anything,” in the matter of clothes. But to return to that afternoon.

“It’s my sister that’s got the vote,” she said in a rapid, dry patter. “No, thank you, she doesn’t vote. She’s not the time. No, she doesn’t care for it, thank you. No, you can’t see her; she’s busy.... No, it’s no use, thank you. She’s not interested. No, she won’t come.... Oh, it’s all right. It’s no trouble. There’s been two ladies before.... Allow me. [Picking up my scattered cards.] Thank you. Good afternoon.”

“That’s a first-rate canvasser, I believe,” said Miss Kate as we passed down Elysium Street, where a cheery little lady in warm clothes was standing in front of an open door. On the step, beside a steaming pail of water, the lady of the house was reluctantly wiping her hands on her apron in order to meet the persistent cordiality of her canvasser. As we passed I heard the cheerful little lady say, hopefully:

“Well, good-bye, and you’ll say I called, won’t you?”

THE LADY OF THE HOUSE: “Oh, yes, I’ll tell ’im. He don’t take much interest in the votin’; he’s at sea now. Of course if it were me it ’ud be the Liberals I’d be for. My father ’e always voted Liberal.”

CHEERFUL CANVASSER: “Thank you. However, you’ll tell him?”

“Then does she write ‘at sea,’ on her card?” I asked.

“More likely, ‘carriage on day of election,’” replied Miss Kate bitterly. “At one election Polly was sent to fetch ninety people who were all at sea--except those who were dead!”

We were passing an oil-shop at the moment, and Miss Kate suddenly began to laugh. “If you can look through that door without attracting attention,” she said, “just take a good squint at Mr. Albert Vickers, and I’ll tell you what happened there this morning.”

Mr. Albert Vickers, who had a pale face and the eye of a cod--a cod, moreover, of whom its parents always boastfully foretold that it would “do something yet”--was leaning against his counter in his shirt-sleeves and a hat, negligently worn. His trousers were not well braced and he wore thin, brown boots.

“What happened?” I asked as we went along.

“Mrs. Henry went in quite airily,” said Miss Kate, “and began--‘Oh, I was just canvassing for the Conservative member,’ etc. Albert said, ‘Well, I don’t think I shall give me vote at all this year. I’m inclined to think we’d do better to be without ’em altogether and let the town manage itself a bit.’ ‘Oh, but we can’t do that, you know!’ said Mrs. Henry, ‘I dare say there are faults on both sides; but the Conservatives as a body----’ Albert went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘There’s none of ’em straight to the working man. Now, ’ow d’you make this out? I’m told there’s sixty-two councillors as sits down to champagne and shilling cigars four days out of the week----’ ‘But Mr. Ashfield never _touches_ champagne,’ burst out Mrs. Henry, ‘and he’s very particular about _all_ those things.’ ‘I don’t say he isn’t,’ grumbled Albert. ‘I don’t know ’im. But from what I can ’ear I think it very likely that I shan’t vote at all.’”

“And what do you suppose she put him down as?” I asked.

“Oh, Liberal, of course,” said Miss Kate, with innocent surprise.

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, with a sudden glance at my card, “this is where my next house is, and it is this cellar apparently. I must fish out some eyeglasses to go down these steps or I shall break my neck.”

“It is Eliza Thomas’s own vote,” said Miss Kate, examining my card. “I will wait up here for you.”

Eliza Thomas had, very likely, been celebrating her first centenary that afternoon in a glass of port. She was far and away deafer than the deafest person I have ever met. My throat becomes dry as I think about her.

“’Oo is it?” she asked, with her hand behind her ear. “There’s been a lady round and give me this card [fetching from the mantelpiece the portrait of our hated rival], and I said I’d give me vote, so it’ll be all right, my dear.”

ME (very loudly and distinctly): “No, no. You are a CONSERVATIVE, you know. You mustn’t vote for THAT one--THIS is the one.”

ELIZA (with a reassuring dribble): “Oh yes, I said I’d vote. It’ll be all right, my dear.”

ME (bawling): “YES--but you mustn’t vote for THIS one. You’re a CONSERVATIVE!”

ELIZA: “They told me it was to be for this one, but I don’t know. Is’t for the Parliament?”

ME: “Oh no, the City Council. Do you know Canon Black?”

ELIZA: “Know ’oo?”

ME: “Canon Black. The low Churchman. Never mind; you have promised me the vote, and I’ll call for you.”

“Pouff!” I said, as I came up the steps. “That’s hot work! Take my card, would you, please, dear, and write down ‘carriage as early as possible.’ It is just a question of which gets there first, Esau or Jacob.”

“I have got one or two in this street,” said Miss Kate. “I forgot about them, or I would have gone while you were cracking your tonsils down there. If you will go on slowly I will catch you up, and you can be resting your voice.”

I walked down the street and turned back. I walked up the street and turned back. “In another minute,” I thought, “I shall be arrested for loitering with intent. I wish Miss Kate would hurry up.” I was just passing a little house with dingy green curtains half-way up the windows when, to my surprise, the door burst open and Miss Kate shot out like an arrow aimed with temper.

“Run!” she breathed. “Run--don’t let him get us.”

We ran like sandpipers for a mile, and then Miss Kate stopped and looked behind her. “It’s all right,” she said, “I don’t think he has followed us. He was an anti-vivisectionist--just fancy! I would have sent one of the men from the committee rooms if I had known.”

“But you say he is an ‘anti,’” I remonstrated, a little peevish and out of breath. “If he is an ‘anti’ he wouldn’t have cut you up. What’s the fuss?”

“They _talk_,” said Miss Kate, with a long breath. There was a pause; I still didn’t understand.

“They _talk_!” she repeated. “He’s anti-vaccination too!”

“Well, he sounds most peaceable,” I said. “I can’t understand your behaving like that at all.”

“All right,” she retorted, “go back and talk to him.”

“It’s no good doing that,” I replied, “he has probably stopped by now.”

“Not he!” said Miss Kate with a shudder. “He’s only just begun.”

“What are his politics?” I asked.

“No one knows,” she replied, “not even his wife. She made me a sign from the door.”

“Well, what have you written?” I persisted, for I had seen her scribble something as we ran. With a weak gesture she handed me her card, and against the name of William Evans I read, “_When you get home at bedtime mark, HELL!_”

“Come, come,” I remonstrated, “that will never do. You can’t send in that sort of remark to the committee rooms. It’s quite one thing for Mr. Bernard Shaw and another for a young girl.”

“All right. Put him down as a cubist if you like,” she said defiantly. “I don’t care.”

“No,” I said, “I’ll tell you what--” and I wrote down, “Mrs. Ashfield call.” “Polly is inclined to be self-opinionated and this trial may soften her.”

I went alone to Solomon Levy, while Miss Kate finished her appointed round and went home for a cup of tea.

“I shall vote,” Mr. Levy assured me, leaning over his newspaper with the remote look of a sage; “but I’m not going to tell you who it’s for.--No, I shan’t say. I’ve never said who I’ve voted for. I can tell you it will be for the man who brings the rates down, but I’m not going to say who that is.... What’s that you say? No, I’m not a Churchman, and I don’t know the gentleman. I’ve my own views, and if we all do our duty that’s enough, isn’t it? What? Yes, I think so. It’s enough for me anyway, and, what’s more, I’d sooner vote for a man who had no religious opinions; he’s more likely to be fair to all. No, I shan’t say. Good day!”

* * * * *

“She’s away, next door,” said helpful Mrs. Murphy, with her large smile and the voice of a dove. I felt a sudden friendship towards her, as the thought struck me that any emotions she might ever feel would be as untouched by human shame as are changes in the weather.

She was very dirty, but it was the dirt of a potato-field and a pigsty, which I find less revolting than “tapestry curtains, art table-covers, fancy and silk blouses, soiled evening dresses,” and other horrors which, if we may believe the dry cleaners’ advertisements, form so large a part of every refined home.

“She’s away, next door,” I heard the dove-like gurgle, when I had knocked in vain for some minutes at No. 47. “I think it’ll be the Liberals she’s for, but you’ll do well to call again. We’ve not the vote, else we’d be pleased to oblige you, for we’re both Conservative. There’s been six ladies before, but you can leave another picture and welcome.... Oh, it’s all right--Get back, now, Flora, and leave the lady alone. Have y’ tried Mr. Hanny, now, on the other side? It’s likely he might vote if y’ asked him.”

“One more,” I said to myself, “and then Polly shall give me tea, or be answerable for my loss.” Stanmore Road was on my way home, and I proposed to have a word with Mr. James Groat. That would leave me only three to do after tea. I knocked at the door. It was opened, after some delay and shouting, by a minx--M-I-N-X--minx. Editors, I notice, always alter this name to “maiden,” or “débutante,” or something that does not mean quite the same thing. A minx, therefore, standing with reluctant feet where the door and door-step meet. I asked if Mr. Groat were at home, and she replied that she would “just see”; I could wait if I liked. She came back in a few minutes, leaving the parlour door open.

“Father says, ken’t you send a message; he’s busy,” she clipped. (You will, perhaps, observe “Father” in the picture.) I said “No,” out of sheer contrariness, and added that I only wanted to ask him one question.

She returned again to the parlour, where a short conversation of whispers and snorts took place.

“He says he doesn’t mind the voting, and you can leave it,” was the next message. “He’ll see about it.... No, you needn’t put him down anything at all; he ken’t attend to you now.”

I found Polly sitting with her feet up on the sofa, trying to pour out tea. “It’s all right,” she said, in answer to my criticism of her manners. “I have just been arguing with a gentleman of the name of Potts, who kept his feet up the whole time I was talking to him. I never got a word in. He just lay and smoked, and talked me down, so I thought I would come home and revenge myself on his memory.”

“I wish you would hurry up and give me some tea,” I said.

“Mr. Potts was just about to enjoy his when I called,” Polly continued, aggravatingly suspending the teapot. “‘’E’s just come ’ome to ’is tea, Miss,’ his silly wife, with a black eye, informed me--as if that were any excuse for lying on the sofa when a lady called.”

“Quite so,” I replied. “Please get up and pass me the cake.”

“All right,” said Polly. “Well, as I was saying, I said to Mr. Potts, ‘Oh, Mr. Potts, I was just canvassing for my,’ etc. etc. Mr. Potts shifted his pipe and spat, and then bellowed at me, ‘Well, I’m a ----’--now what was it he said he was? How stupid! I can’t remember.”

“An ill-mannered ape, perhaps,” I suggested.

“No, no. I mean that he held principles of some sort,” Polly continued, taxing her brain. “Anyhow, it doesn’t matter. ‘And I’m going,’ he assured me, ‘to vote for them as’ll be true to [whatever-principle-it-was-he-held] principles on the Council.’ ‘Oh, but,’ I chipped in, ‘my husband is _very_ strong on that point.’ (I wish I could remember what it was, and ask Reginald.) ‘I know,’ he replied; ‘they all say that, but they don’t DEW it. They want more men like’ (I forget whether it was Keir Hardie or Cunninghame Graham he said) ‘to make ’em DEW it. There’s not a member of that there Watch Committee as is fit to be on it.’ (What is the Watch Committee--do you know?) ‘It’s time something was done, and we’re going to elect men as will DEW it, and not be afraid to speak out on the Council. I’ve not thought about it yet,’ he added (just fancy the cheek!), ‘but I’ll see when the time comes.’”

“What did you put on your card?” I asked. “It is such a help to me to know the sort of way to classify these people.”

“Oh, I didn’t attempt to classify him,” said Polly. “I just wrote, ‘Some one else call,’ and then I came home and put my own feet up and smoked.”

“I shan’t do much more to-day,” I said, when we had finished tea.

“Don’t do any more at all, unless you like,” Polly remarked generously. “I am not going to. I can’t risk two Mr. Pottses in one day.”

“I have got three more on my card,” I said, “and I would like to finish them if I can, but not if it’s going to rain again; it’s too depressing.”

On my way to Paradise Terrace I met the same little school-teacher lady whom I had first seen attacking the preoccupied mother of the baby who was so contentedly grasping the carving-knife. This time the little canvasser was standing looking forlorn and discouraged before an excessively clean housewife, who, late though it was, knelt by her door-step, ornamenting it with a pattern in yellow donkey-stone. A person like that would never have delayed to wash her step until the afternoon, so I expect she was removing the traces of some bold spirit who had ventured to take tea with her.

“No, he’s not at home,” she was saying, without pausing in her work. “Couldn’t say, I’m sure, when he will be.... I couldn’t say.” (In answer to a timid question): “I never asked him. He always votes himself, and never mentions it to me. You can leave the card. I think he’s had one....” (Another timid question): “I couldn’t say. Sometimes he’s not back until two in the morning from his work.... Yes, I’ll tell him. Good afternoon.”

The little lady turned dejectedly away, her brightness all crushed, and I went on to Paradise Terrace. But before I got there the rain came on again, and I was fumbling under my umbrella for the everlasting cards, when Mrs. Salisbury came to the door on her way out, dangling a large key from her finger.

“Conservative!” she said, when I explained my errand. “I used to be, but I voted for the Liberals last time, because the Conservatives, to my mind, ain’t actin’ straight. They do more ’arm than good, and, like enough, I shan’t give me vote at all this year. I ’aven’t made up me mind. I shall hear what’s said a bit first, and what they’re going to do. It’s as much as I can do to pay me rent as it is.... Oh yes, I’ve got ’is picture; yer needn’t leave any more. I’ll just think it over.”

“Yes,” I said to myself as I turned away, “so will I think it over--in the seclusion of my own apartments.”

For three weeks this was my daily life, and at last we went to the poll--all of us, shepherds and sheep--in borrowed carriages, motors, traps, and side-cars. It would take another chapter to describe the fever and the flurry, the mistakes, the counter-orders, the number of canvassers sent at once to the same house to fetch hale and hearty supporters of the opposite party, while faithful invalids who had hobbled to our assistance for eighty years were never fetched at all. However, when the last bedridden cripple had been hoisted into a motor at the eleventh hour, and the door of the polling-booth had been held open by courtesy for an extra moment, only to find that his name was not on the Register, we went back to supper feeling that we _didn’t care_! They might elect the Rev. Griffiths ap Davis if they liked, or carry Mr. Potts or the Anti-Vaccinator shoulder-high, and proclaim him king if they were so disposed. All that we wanted was food and a fender. But by ten o’clock we were all in Reginald’s club, shouting ourselves hoarse, and by a quarter past he and Polly were in such a turmoil of speeches, and handshaking, and general absurdity, that I slipped out at a side door and took a taxi home. Half an hour afterwards I laid my weary head uncombed upon the pillow.

_CHAPTER XV_: LETTERS OF GEORGINA BROWN

“LONGMOOR,” MILLPORT.

My dear Louise,--The address on this paper does not mean that I have run away with a rich merchant. There is one in the house, but I am not his affianced bride. What has happened is far more absurd, and bewildering, and unaccountable. He wants me to paint his portrait, and, “if it is satisfactory,” as he says, I have his leave to go on to mamma and the children. Unfortunately, they are not a very reproductive family, or else I might have become a naturalized member of it; while I was painting one child, they could be getting another ready, and so on, until my old hands were hardly able to handle the brush.

What moved these people to choose me for the task is an interesting problem. I rather suspect that it was my weak points. To begin with, it was Bessie Lovelace’s idea; you know she was at school with me, and the merchant’s wife is her second cousin. She told them that I have remarkable talent, and am to be had cheap (God forgive her!). But still, that was only the placing by a master hand of a germinal spot within the protoplasm of their intelligence. A lot more was needed before that spot became the full-blown absurdity which it is now. It had to be fed and kept warm by some natural inclination on their part.

Here it was, I believe, that my weak points came in. You know as well as I do what is bad in my work. A certain sickliness creeps into it, do what I will. I can’t trace this quality in my tastes, except that I have a passion for over-ripe melons, and I feel a stirring in my gizzard when I am in a dark church, and the little choir boys look more saintly than my reason tells me that they are. But the main thing is that I am here and likely to stay some weeks at any rate.

The house is like nothing you can ever have seen unless you have been in one of the large provincial towns. It is not a town house nor a country house nor a cottage. It is more as if its father were a seaside hotel, and its mother were a villa, and it took after an aunt who had been a country house. There are two tennis lawns and a croquet lawn fenced round by netting. There are round flower beds and wide borders full of flowers of the sort that gardeners always delight in. I don’t mean the job gardeners that you and I labour under--they wouldn’t allow us to have any beds at all, because flowers “make work.” I mean the experienced and rather huffy gardeners, who are employed by the rich, and who are indifferent to work because they don’t do any. I think that Waring and Gillow must, originally, have supplied the garden as well as the furniture, because the flowers are all in “suites,” and they go so well with the curtains. They look unusually expensive, and as if they wouldn’t have very much smell. The roses, which all belong to the very best families, and are named after baronets’ wives, live apart in a sheltered elegance of their own. The vegetables and the hens amuse themselves as they like behind the garage. The clean and prosperous-looking garage, dividing the vegetables from the flowers, has a funny resemblance to the position of their owner and his place of business in the social scale. In former days there would have been a discreet plantation of shrubs between the stables and the flower garden, between traffic and the retreat of elegance. Now the shrubs are behind the garage, but still in front of the lowest society (the vegetables and the hens). Next year I confidently expect so see a hen lolling with a parasol under every rose bush, and rhubarb flourishing in the window boxes. It will be quite sad for the poor democrats when they have removed the last social barrier. They will have, as it were, to teach the amœba to check the hens and the vegetables.

The garage shelters an any-number-of-horse-power Rolls-Royce, which must not be used too often, and an open car with a canvas hood. This one jolts so much that when we are all in it we grind against one another the whole way, like stones washed about on the beach. The chauffeur hates it, and has blown it up twice, but they always stick it together again to save the Rolls-Royce. I forgot to say that in the West End, so to speak, of the garden there is a hot-house where they keep the huffiest gardener of all. He must not be spoken to except in questions, but if you ask the right kind--not knowing too much, and yet not being at all silly--he gives you three spiky things, one red, one blue, and one yellow, which don’t look nice in a vase, and which you can’t wear.

Every one here is hospitable in a way that exasperates, because it embarrasses me, and I cannot understand why it should. I have often felt this anger with people who are ill at ease in their bodies. Whenever I find them doing some kindly, simple thing, it is as if I had stumbled into their bedrooms when they were having a bath. In the same way I cannot be as friendly as I feel, because they would dislike it as much as if I wore an unconventionally low-cut dress. The man himself is so nervously suspicious of friendliness that he sometimes makes me think of a darling old scarecrow in a field from which all the crops have been gathered long ago. Or can you imagine a Lifeguards-man feeling so shy and indelicate without his full-dress uniform that he insists on wearing a tea-tray strapped to his chest when he is off duty? That is the sort of defensive attitude that Millport people adopt towards their friends.

The children are a little disappointing. They have cracky voices and want too much. They have been brought up by a nurse who is accustomed to every luxury except freedom of opinion, and has, therefore, no repose of manner, and they themselves are in a perpetual state of discontent, looking for El Dorado in their neighbours’ larders. Children have a certain community with animals, which makes it unnatural for them to desire anything that they cannot--by fair means or foul--get for themselves, and although these twins and their brother are still young enough to have some remnants of individual taste, they are rapidly settling down into their parents’ habit of systematic borrowing--borrowed hopes and fears, borrowed likes and dislikes--everything, in fact, except a borrowed husband. I do not want a borrowed husband, but for the life of me I cannot understand why it should be necessary to draw the line there when everything else, from the phrase on our lips to our idea of Divine Revelation, is borrowed from the borrowings of our neighbours.