Chapter III: Bertrand Oakleigh (3)

"I'm going to learn American," he assured us. "Say, this is my fi'ist visit to the U-nited States. Gee! I reckon this is a bully place. Pleased _to_ meet you, Miss Dainton. I say, Raney, what's the proper answer to that?"

"No mere European has ever discovered. Get it in first and then clear out while they're still feeling for their guns."

"You're a fat lot of use," Summertown retorted. "Here I'm going out to improve my mind. What's a 'cinch'? And this rotten American War of Independence I'm always up against--when'll it be over? I want to be a pukka Yank."

"You'll be more esteemed as you are," O'Rane answered. "Better let me do the talking."

"Oh, you'll only be taken for an Irish immigrant," returned Summertown.

There he was wide of the mark. There is a story that O'Rane, in shovel hat and clerical collar, bearded the night porter of his own college at two in the morning and gained permission to call on one of the chaplains in Meadow Buildings. I have seen him successfully assume an alien nationality in Montmartre, Seville and Leghorn; while the first draft of American Rhodes scholars, scattered though they be to the ends of the earth, may recall the inaugural address delivered in hearing of the scandalized Cæsars by an alleged attaché of the United States Embassy.

They may remember a slight, passionate figure with black hair and arresting eyes who urged them in the name of their great Republic to resist all interference with their liberty on the part of the University authorities and to lynch any black men they found lurking around Balliol or St. John's. Robert Hawke, of Texas and Hertford, six feet five and proportionately broad, may not yet have forgotten the night when the imposture was discovered; he alone may be able to explain why, after pursuing Raney down Holywell with a loaded revolver and running him to earth in Hell Passage, he tamely consented to breakfast next morning with the man he had sworn to slay. The Rhodes scholars were a fair mark for O'Rane whenever he had an outbreak. Creevey, of Melbourne and Trinity, still preserves the peremptory note that bade him call next morning on the Junior Proctor, Mr. D. O'Rane, though the House Mission has probably long ere this expended the five-shilling fine for non-attendance at the first University Sermon of the term. To add one digression to another, I have never understood how O'Rane survived four years at Oxford without being sent down.

The Covent Garden skirmish was my affair, and after summary defeat I retired into private life. O'Rane's moral lecture was no more successful than my diplomacy: the Americanization of women went on unchecked--if indeed the American girl be as Raney saw her, a social prostitute who would sell herself to the highest bidder and give as little as possible in return; I privately believe the breed to be indigenous to the wealthier strata of English society. He failed and retired to the other side of the Atlantic. Between the two skirmishes came the intervention of Loring House.

I was taking pot-luck there one night when Lady Amy asked me in an undertone how Raney's engagement was progressing. I told her all I knew, and she broke a significant silence by observing:

"Oh, I just wanted to know."

It was _not_ all she wanted to know, and I ventured to tell her so.

"Well, Sonia really is behaving rather extraordinarily," she went on. "I wonder her mother...."

"Lady Dainton accompanies her everywhere," I pointed out.

"Yes, either she doesn't see or she doesn't care."

"Probably she thinks there's no harm in it."

Lady Amy shook her head.

"This is my fourth season, George."

"And their first. I submit that they don't know how many people sit round the walls of a ballroom inventing scandal."

"Well, someone ought to tell her. You're a friend of the family."

"Not if I know it, Amy!" I said. "This is not a man's job."

"I'd do it myself, if I knew how to start."

"You've only to tell her there's safety in numbers," I suggested.

It is to be presumed my advice was followed quite literally, for the next time I dined at Rutland Gate the party had doubled in size, and no one got enough to drink. Sonia very dutifully granted dances to all the male guests and, so far as I could see, impartially encouraged all to make love to her. Certainly she discussed the possibility of platonic friendship with me at 10.45, when I had hardly finished my dinner; and four hours later, when Valentine Arden was changing his second buttonhole, I observed the expression of weariness that settled onto his passionless, immobile features when rash newcomers sought to shake his precocious celibacy.

"When does a girl get over the awkward age?" he demanded.

"At death," I hazarded, and he left me in disgust, because he clearly wanted to tell me the answer himself.

Thus to some extent Amy Loring succeeded where Raney and I had failed, but her ultimate defeat was more humiliating than ours. After the last War Fund meeting of the season I went up stairs to find a cup of tea and say good-bye to Sonia before starting out on my autumn campaign among the electors of Wiltshire. Crabtree was with her, and in a jaded, end-of-season spirit they were discussing future arrangements and enumerating the houses they "had to" visit.

"When are you going to House of Steynes, George?" Sonia asked.

I gave her the date, and we found we were invited for the same week.

"You're not selected, are you, Tony?" she asked Crabtree.

"Well, I don't quite know how I'm fixed," he answered, without committing himself. "I'm due with the Fordyces for the Twelfth, and from there...."

He worked out a chain of houses running from the south-west to the north-east of Scotland. House of Steynes, of course, lay across his path; the only question was whether he could fit in....

"By Jove, yes!" he exclaimed, with an air of one making an unexpected discovery. "A blank week! I've a very good mind to ask old Loring if he can give me a bed! It's a rotten business staying at an hotel, and if you're all going to be there...."

He finished his tea and drove to Curzon Street. Loring was at home, the case for charity was presented, and Crabtree carried the day. In an age of artificial politeness no other result was possible; House of Steynes could accommodate half a regiment, and there had never been a breach or the opportunity of a breach.

"The dirty, greasy dog!" Loring fumed when we met at dinner. And for want of a better description, "The dirty, greasy dog!"

VI

I have never calculated the proportion of independent men outside the Navy, Army, Church and Stage who have neither stood as parliamentary candidates nor worked on behalf of a friend or neighbour. It must be almost negligible, and no useful purpose will be served by a description of my first canvass. It was conventional in every feature--from the underpaid rustics who believed their landlords could somehow see into the walls of a ballot-box to the Big and Little Loaf pamphlets and the Chinese Labour posters which the Liberal Publication Department rained down on me in return for ridiculously few shillings and pence. My speeches were as conventional as the personalities exchanged with the Honourable Trevor Lawless, the sitting member, who invited me to dine, expressed the hope that the election would be conducted as among gentlemen and then uttered statements for which I had to make him apologize on the front page of "The Times."

The canvass lasted nearly a month, and I returned to Princes Gardens and my uncle with a sense that I had more than a sporting chance of carrying the seat. With all a young candidate's assured enthusiasm I gave Bertrand full résumés of all my speeches and underlined the telling points, till a more than usually unconcealed yawn reminded me that he too had addressed mass meetings and conducted door-to-door visitations.

"But where are the Ideals, George?" he demanded after my exposition of "The Case against Tariff Reform." "Where is your Imperial Federation, your Secular Solution, your new Poor Law, your Land Scheme, your Housing Reform? Have you outgrown that phase?"

"I can't say they went down very well," I answered. "The Food Taxes----"

My uncle threw back his head and laughed.

"Democracy! What crimes are committed in thy name!"

"The people aren't educated up to it," I returned unguardedly.

"So you stirred them with largely imaginary accounts of labour conditions on the Rand, you played on their fears of dearer food; and, if they return you, you'll blithely scrap the existing Constitution, interfere with the liberty of the subject in every conceivable way. George, George, you have much to learn of representative government."

The tone of my uncle's criticism nettled me--possibly because I felt it was justified.

"If you wait to get a lead from below," I said, "you'll wait all your life without attempting anything!"

Bertrand shook his head uncomprehendingly.

"This fury for Reform!" he exclaimed. "When you've outgrown the phase, George, you may perhaps recall my words of wisdom. I'm a democrat because I believe the folly of many is better than the corruption of few. Sometimes I ask my constituents to support me in advocating a change, sometimes they press a change on me; and, if I approve or can't argue them out of it, I push it on their behalf. The rest of the time I'm content to see that democracy doesn't lose its privileges. I defend the existing order from Tory attacks. Peace--Economy--and personal liberty to do what you dam' please so long as you don't hinder another man from doing what he dam' pleases. I don't affect the modern craving for legislation; I've still to learn that it's wanted, and if it's wanted you must prove that it suits the genius of the race. And I hold that the English find salvation quickest and best if you leave 'em to 'emselves. Of course, that's unfashionable nowadays. I shall be a bit of a candid friend to our Government when we get back. But you and I are poles apart. With the recognition of the Unions and the extension of the Franchise the active work of radicalism is done."

His easy, Pangloss tone exasperated me.

"And sweated Labour ...?" I began.

"Start your minimum wage, and it may pay a man to scrap low-grade labour and put in machines."

"Are you satisfied with our present haphazard Empire?"

"You're not going to cement it by a tariff or a highfalutin' proclamation," he answered. "When anyone _wants_ closer union, when it's worth anyone's while, it'll be done. _You_ want it. Good. Well, do a little missionizing round the Empire, then; don't go into the House to do it." He took out his cigar-case and threw it over to me. "Smoke one and don't look so dam' dejected, George. I've been in the House the devil of a long time, and every day I go there I'm more and more impressed with the extraordinary _little_ that can be done there. I'm not being discouraging on purpose; I want to save you from a crushing disappointment. Shed a few of your illusions, get rid of the 'Thursday Essays' frame of mind--capital debating-society stuff and precious little more. If you'll remember that the government of men is the hardest thing in the world, that this country is a very old and illogical place, with a half-feudal, half-mercantile aristocracy still in effective occupation, and that the House of Commons is the clumsiest tool a revolutionary ever had to handle, you'll be some way on the road to political sanity. Don't merely think of ideal reforms and get hysterical when you can't bring 'em to birth with the aid of a one-clause Bill: face your difficulties squarely, see the utmost extent to which, with all your courage and perseverance, you can overcome them, and then never rest till you've secured up to that limit. The one way sends you into the Cabinet; the other makes you the hero of a party of three in the Smoking-Room. Needless to say, you think I'm deliberately damping down your enthusiasm?"

"I think you're a bit jaundiced by twenty years of Tory rule," I said.

"Dear boy, I was through the '80 Parliament, and the '86 and the '92. If you want things done, you'd better go to Fleet Street. The House of Commons is being more and more ignored each day. Gladstone started it by his monster meetings; he could speak to six thousand electors instead of six hundred members. And the Press learned the lesson. A group of papers that get into every hand in the country, permeate every brain--that's worth a year of perorations and lobbying. But you'd better come along and see for yourself. There'll be an election in a few months now, so you'd better not waste too much time paying visits. Nobody's any idea what our majority will be like."

Between my first and second campaigns I paid but one visit--a week with the Lorings at House of Steynes. The Daintons were there before me, and Valentine Arden, my cousin Violet, Prendergast of the Foreign Office, Sally Farwell and her mother, Rupert Harley and the inevitable Crabtree arrived the same day. There was good shooting and tolerable golf, and in the evenings and on wet days we used to move the furniture and rugs out of the library and dance to Roger Dainton's heavy-footed working of the pianola. Early in life Loring had appreciated that the success of a house-party depended on compelling his female guests to breakfast in their rooms and allowing everyone to do what he liked for the rest of the day. We talked, shot, danced, played bridge, ate, drank, slept--and devised ingenious and bloodthirsty ways of speeding Crabtree on his way to Banff.

"And if he'd take that Dainton child with him," my cousin exclaimed on the evening of our arrival, "I don't think anybody would miss them. George, what's happened to her? She used to be such a nice little thing."

"She has been insufficiently slapped," I suggested. "I am now a serious student of social conditions; I have spent ten weeks in the East of London and ten months in the West. It is my considered opinion that wife-beating will only be stamped out when women are beaten regularly and severely before they become wives."

Violet's pretty blue eyes glanced across to the far end of the hall where an ill-suppressed tittering rose from behind an oak settle.

"And Mr. Crabtree?" she asked.

"I have seen the dog-fanciers of Shadwell holding his like below the surface of a rain-butt for five minutes at a time. In Crabtree's case I should lengthen the period to avoid risks. Incidentally, what has Sonia been doing?"

She brushed the low-clustering curls from her forehead with an angry little hand.

"Have you ever seen a shop-girl with two men on the pier at Brighton?" she demanded.

"My education was skimped," I had to admit.

"Well, you can make up for it now," she said, as Loring appeared and claimed her for the first dance.

I began making up for it next morning when the Lorings and Violet were at Mass. Refusing to breakfast alone in her room, Sonia raided a silent but amicable bachelor party in the dining-room, engaged it in conversation and inquired its plans for the day. None of us was anxious to shoot on the morrow of our journey, and after considerable deliberation she decided to play golf with Prendergast. They started off at ten, and by one-thirty Prendergast had had his devotion sorely tried.

"I told her to take a jersey," he confided to me in the smoking-room. "She wouldn't. She went out in a north-east wind with a blouse you could see through, and when we got to the links I had to come back and find her a coat. We got on famously till we reached the third tee, then she said she was too hot and I must carry the damned thing because the caddie's hands were dirty. I gave her a stroke a hole and was dormy at the turn; then she must needs say she was tired and insist on coming home. At the club-house she discovered she was hungry and sent me in to forage. I brought her out sandwiches, cake, chocolate, and milk." He checked the list with emphatic fingers. "She looked at them and said they weren't nice and she could hang on till lunch-time. Making a fool of a fellow," he concluded indignantly.

I murmured suitable words of sympathy and imagined that he had now learned his lesson. At luncheon, however, Sonia sat next to him and, with her innocent brown eyes looking into his, asked him to describe his work at the Foreign Office. When we left the table he was enslaved a second time. As the wind had dropped and rain was beginning to fall, she sent him to find a book she had lost; when he returned with it she was too sleepy to read and demanded bridge to keep her awake; no sooner had the table been set and three unwilling players dragged from their slumbers in the smoking-room than she decided the weather had cleared up sufficiently for her to take a walk.

"Anyone coming?" she asked at large.

Loring, Prendergast, Crabtree and I offered our services as escort--in that order and with a certain interval between the third and fourth.

"Well, run along and get ready," she ordered, "or the rain'll begin again. I shall go as I am."

When we returned with overcoats and thick boots she looked uncertainly at her thin shoes and inquired:

"Is it really wet outside? Perhaps I'd better change."

And change she did--every stitch of clothing she possessed, I imagine, for a full half-hour had passed before she descended in shooting-boots, Burberry and short skirt; and by that time tea was ready and the rain had set in for the night. Variations on the same theme were played daily under the eyes of Lady Loring, who was too placid to mind anything that did not affect her beloved Amy or Jim; under the eyes, too, of Lady Dainton, who, I believe, had hardly issued a command or rebuke to Sonia from the day of her birth. Crabtree and Prendergast openly kissed the rod, Loring good-humouredly regarded such treatment as being all in the day's work of a host; with the women I suppose Violet's criticism was expressive of the general feeling. I frankly derived a certain lazy amusement from watching Sonia playing the oldest game in the world; she seldom bothered me, and, while others ran errands, I was free to spend idle hours in the smoking-room with Valentine Arden, whose sex-philosophy taught him that, if a woman wanted him, she must first come and find him. Each day we elaborated a new and more masterly scheme for recalling Crabtree to town: each day we foundered on the same reef and forced the conversation at dinner in our attempt to discover his address in Lincoln's Inn and the name of his clerk.

It is perhaps humiliating to confess that his dislodgement, when it came, was not at our hands. I recall one afternoon when Prendergast fell from favour; Sonia forswore a walk with him and invited Crabtree to give his opinion of a new brassy she had just received from Edinburgh. They set out immediately after luncheon (in those days Sonia did not smoke and could not understand how it could be necessary to anyone else); at tea-time she returned alone--rather white and subdued--and went straight to her room. Her mother, Lady Loring and Amy visited her in turn and reported that she was over-tired and had lain down with a headache. As we started tea, a telegram arrived for Crabtree, followed by Crabtree himself. Tearing open the envelope, he informed us with fine surprise that his clerk had summoned him back to chambers to advise on an important case; might he have a car, would Lady Loring excuse him ...? Valentine Arden, with an author's small-minded jealousy in matters of copyright, dropped and broke a plate in sheer vexation, though to his credit be it said that the anger was short-lived, and, when Loring himself strolled round to the garage to see that his orders had not been misunderstood, Valentine was filling a petrol tank as enthusiastically as I had offered to help in the packing and dispatch of our fellow-guest.

With her taste for good 'entrances,' Sonia appeared as the car turned out of sight down the drive. The headache was gone, and throughout dinner she was almost hilarious, though by the time we had finished our cigars she had retired to bed. Two hours later I met Amy coming out of her room: she beckoned me to a window-seat by the "Mary Queen of Scots" room, and we sat down.

"Thank goodness _that's_ over!" she exclaimed, passing her hand over her eyes.

"Is Sonia upset?" I asked.

Amy shook her head and sighed.

"I can't make out," she answered. "They've--sort of parted friends. I think she's rather glad he proposed--and thoroughly frightened when it came to the point. George, does David fancy he's going to marry her?"

"I believe _he_ thinks so."

"I'm not sure that I envy him. But, if he is, he'd better hurry up. Sonia doesn't let much grass grow under her feet. I really rather hope mother won't let her be asked here again."

"But as long as your Prendergasts and Crabtrees spread their faces out to be walked on----" I began.

"Well, don't let her do it here," Amy interrupted. "I don't want to see dear old Jim scalped."

"He's much too lazy," I said.

Amy raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"My dear, you're not very observant."

"I've been watching rather closely," I protested. "He's decently civil----"

"To her, yes. But d'you remember a certain Horse Show week when we were staying with the Hunter-Oakleighs in Dublin, and Jim and Violet----"

"But that's the ancientest of ancient history! Jim was hardly short-coated at the time."

"They kept it up a good while," she answered, with a toss of the head.

"Amy, you're a shameless match-maker. First of all Raney and Sonia, then Jim and Violet----"

"As long as it isn't the other way round, I don't mind. Sonia isn't even a Catholic."

"Neither Jim nor Sonia will marry for years yet," I said. "People _don't_ nowadays. You have a much better time unmarried; there's an element of uncertainty and interest about you...."

"There's far too much uncertainty," said Amy, with a sigh. "Sometimes I have perfect nightmares about Jim. You see, he _is_ worth a woman's while, and I have a horror that he'll make some hideous mistake and then be too proud to wriggle out of it. However, don't let's meet trouble half-way."

I left House of Steynes two days later and crossed to Ireland. On the writing-table of my library at Lake House I found a picture-postcard representing the Singer Building, with the question, "Any news? Raney." I sent a postcard with an indifferent photograph of the landing-stage at Kingstown, inscribed with the words, "No news. George Oakleigh." Then I said good-bye to the life I had been leading since my return to England. Bertrand wired in October that an election was imminent, and I spent the autumn in an Election fur coat and an Election car, tearing from end to end of my constituency and delivering speeches for which--as Gibbon might have said--the part-author of "Thursday Essays" might afterwards have blushed with shame. I have fought but two elections, and the memory of the cheap pledges and cheaper pleasantries, the misleading handbills and vile posters--distributed impartially by either side--give me no feeling of moral elation.

And in 1906 the contamination seemed the more unwelcome for being superfluous. There was room for high thinking and lofty ideals at a time when the country went mad in its lust to restore Liberalism to power. Heaven knows what programme I could not have put forward so long as it radically reversed the measures and spirit of the Conservative administration!

Or so it seemed in the early weeks of the 1906 Session, when hundreds of new members pressed forward to take the Oath and sign the Roll of Parliament, each one as strong in the confidence of his electors, each one as resolved to bring in a new heaven and a new earth--and each one as innocent of parliamentary forms of procedure as myself.