Marcella Part 62

And he raised his shoulders, mocking, yet by no means disliking his own idiosyncrasies. It had been strange, indeed, that complete change of mental emphasis, that alteration of spiritual axis that had befallen him within the first weeks of his parliamentary life, nay, even before the Hurd agitation was over. That agitation had brought him vigorously and profitably into public notice at a convenient moment. But what had originally sprung from the impulse to retain a hold over a woman, became in the end the instrument of a new and quite other situation. Wharton had no sooner entered the House of Commons than he felt himself strangely at home there. He had the instinct for debate, the instinct for management, together with a sensitive and contriving ambition. He found himself possessed for the moment of powers of nervous endurance that astonished him--a patience of boredom besides, a capacity for drudgery, and for making the best of dull men. The omens were all favourable, sometimes startlingly so. He was no longer hampered by the ill-will of a county or a family connection. Here in this new world, every man counted strictly for what, in the parliamentary sense, he was worth. Wharton saw that, owing to his public appearances during the two preceding years, he was noticed, listened to, talked about in the House, from the first; and that his position in the newly-formed though still loosely-bound Labour party was one of indefinite promise. The anxieties and pitfalls of the position only made it the more absorbing.

The quick, elastic nature adjusted itself at once. To some kinds of success, nothing is so important as the ability to forget--to sweep the mind free of everything irrelevant and superfluous. Marcella Boyce, and all connected with her, pa.s.sed clean out of Wharton's consciousness.

Except that once or twice he said to himself with a pa.s.sing smile that it was a good thing he had not got himself into a worse sc.r.a.pe at Mellor. Good heavens! in what plight would a man stand--a man with his career to make--who had given Marcella Boyce claims upon him! As well entangle oneself with the Tragic Muse at once as with that stormy, unmanageable soul!

So much for a year ago. To-night, however, the past had been thrust back upon him, both by Lady Selina's talk and by the meeting with Raeburn. To smart indeed once more under that old ascendency of Raeburn's, was to be provoked into thinking of Raeburn's old love.

Where was Miss Boyce? Surely her year of hospital training must be up by now?

He turned into St. James Street, stopped at a door not far from the Palace end, let himself in, and groped his way to the second floor. A sleepy man-servant turned out of his room, and finding that his master was not inclined to go to bed, brought lights and mineral water. Wharton was practically a teetotaller. He had taken a whim that way as a boy, and a few experiments in drunkenness which he had made at college had only confirmed what had been originally perhaps a piece of notoriety-hunting. He had, as a rule, flawless health; and the unaccustomed headaches and nausea which followed these occasional excesses had disgusted and deterred him. He shook himself easily free of a habit which had never gained a hold upon him, and had ever since found his abstinence a source both of vanity and of distinction. Nothing annoyed him more than to hear it put down to any ethical motive. "If I liked the beastly stuff, I should swim in it to-morrow," he would say with an angry eye when certain acquaintance--not those he made at Labour Congresses--goaded him on the point. "As it is, why should I make it, or chloral, or morphia, or any other poison, my master! What's the inducement--eh, you fellows?"

_En revanche_ he smoked inordinately.

"Is that all, sir," said his servant, pausing behind his chair, after candles, matches, cigarettes, and Apollinaris had been supplied in abundance.

"Yes; go to bed, Williams, but don't lock up. Good-night."

The man departed, and Wharton, going to the window which opened on a balcony looking over St. James Street, threw it wide, and smoked a cigarette leaning against the wall. It was on the whole a fine night and warm, though the nip of the east wind was not yet out of the air. In the street below there was still a good deal of movement, for it was only just past midnight and the clubs were not yet empty. To his right the turreted gate-house of the Palace with its clock rose dark against a sky covered with light, windy cloud. Beyond it his eye sought instinctively for the Clock Tower, which stood to-night dull and beaconless--like some one in a stupid silence. That light of the sitting House had become to him one of the standing pleasures of life. He had never yet been honestly glad of its extinction.

"I'm a precious raw hand," he confessed to himself with a shake of the head as he stood there smoking. "And it can't last--nothing does."

Presently he laid down his cigarette a moment on the edge of the balcony, and, coming back into the room, opened a drawer, searched a little, and finally took out a letter. He stooped over the lamp to read it. It was the letter which Marcella Boyce had written him some two or three days after the breach of her engagement. That fact was barely mentioned at the beginning of it, without explanation or comment of any kind. Then the letter continued:

"I have never yet thanked you as I ought for all that you have done and attempted through these many weeks. But for them it must have been plain to us both that we could never rightly meet again. I am very dest.i.tute just now--and I cling to self-respect as though it were the only thing left me. But that scene in the past, which put us both wrong with honour and conscience, has surely been wiped out--_thought--suffered_ away. I feel that I dare now say to you, as I would to any other co-worker and co-thinker--if in the future you ever want my work, if you can set me, with others, to any task that wants doing and that I could do--ask me, and I am not likely to refuse.

"But for the present I am going quite away into another world. I have been more ill than I have ever been in my life this last few days, and they are all, even my father, ready to agree with me that I must go. As soon as I am a little stronger I am to have a year's training at a London hospital, and then I shall probably live for a while in town and nurse. This scheme occurred to me as I came back with the wife from seeing Hurd the day before the execution. I knew then that all was over for me at Mellor.

"As for the wretched break-down of everything--of all my schemes and friendships here--I had better not speak of it. I feel that I have given these village-folk, whom I had promised to help, one more reason to despair of life. It is not pleasant to carry such a thought away with one. But if the tool breaks and blunts, how can the task be done? It can be of no use till it has been re-set.

"I should like to know how your plans prosper. But I shall see your paper and follow what goes on in Parliament. For the present I want neither to write nor get letters. They tell me that as a probationer I shall spend my time at first in washing gla.s.ses, and polishing bath-taps, on which my mind rests!

"If you come across my friends of whom I have spoken to you--Louis, Anthony, and Edith Craven--and could make any use of Louis for the _Labour Clarion_, I should be grateful. I hear they have had bad times of late, and Louis has engaged himself, and wants to be married. You remember I told you how we worked at the South Kensington cla.s.ses together, and how they made me a Venturist?

"Yours very truly,

"MARCELLA BOYCE."

Wharton laid down the letter, making a wry mouth over some of its phrases.

"'_Put us both wrong with honour and conscience.' 'One more reason for despair of life'--'All was over for me at Mellor_'--dear! dear!--how women like the big words--the emphatic pose. All those little odds and ends of charities--that absurd straw-plaiting scheme! Well, perhaps one could hardly expect her to show a sense of humour just then. But why does nature so often leave it out in these splendid creatures?"

"Hullo!" he added, as he bent over the table to look for a pen; "why didn't that idiot give me these?"

For there, under an evening paper which he had not touched, lay a pile of unopened letters. His servant had forgotten to point them out to him.

On the top was a letter on which Wharton pounced at once. It was addressed in a bold inky hand, and he took it to be from Nehemiah Wilkins, M.P., his former colleague at the Birmingham Labour Congress, of late a member of the _Labour Clarion_ staff, and as such a daily increasing plague and anxiety to the _Clarion's_ proprietor.

However, the letter was not from Wilkins. It was from the secretary of a Midland trades-union, with whom Wharton had already been in communication. The union was recent, and represented the as yet feeble organisation of a metal industry in process of transition from the home-workshop to the full factory, or Great Industry stage. The conditions of work were extremely bad, and grievances many; wages were low, and local distress very great. The secretary, a young man of ability and enthusiasm, wrote to Wharton to say that certain alterations in the local "payment lists" lately made by the employers amounted to a reduction of wages; that the workers, beginning to feel the heartening effects of their union, were determined not to submit; that bitter and even desperate agitation was spreading fast, and that a far-reaching strike was imminent. Could they count on the support of the _Clarion_?

The _Clarion_ had already published certain letters on the industry from a Special Commissioner--letters which had drawn public attention, and had been eagerly read in the district itself. Would the _Clarion_ now "go in" for them? Would Mr. Wharton personally support them, in or out of Parliament, and get his friends to do the same? To which questions, couched in terms extremely flattering to the power of the _Clarion_ and its owner, the secretary appended a long and technical statement of the situation.

Wharton looked up from the letter with a kindling eye. He foresaw an extremely effective case, both for the newspaper and the House of Commons. One of the chief capitalists involved was a man called Denny, who had been long in the House, for whom the owner of the _Clarion_ entertained a strong personal dislike. Denny had thwarted him vexatiously--had perhaps even made him ridiculous--on one or two occasions; and Wharton saw no reason whatever for forgiving one's enemies until, like Narvaez, one had "shot them all." There would be much satisfaction in making Denny understand who were his masters. And with these motives there mingled a perfectly genuine sympathy with the "poor devils" in question, and a desire to see them righted.

"Somebody must be sent down at once," he said to himself. "I suppose,"

he added, with discontent, "it must be Wilkins."

For the man who had written the articles for the _Labour Clarion_, as Special Commissioner, had some three weeks before left England to take command of a colonial newspaper.

Still pondering, he took up the other letters, turned them over--childishly pleased for the thousandth time by the M.P. on each envelope and the number and variety of his correspondence--and eagerly chose out three--one from his bankers, one from his Lincolnshire agent, and one from the _Clarion_ office, undoubtedly this time in Wilkins's hand.

He read them, grew a little pale, swore under his breath, and, angrily flinging the letters away from him, he took up his cigarette again and thought.

The letter from his bankers asked his attention in stiff terms to a largely overdrawn account, and entirely declined to advance a sum of money for which he had applied to them without the guarantee of two substantial names in addition to his own. The letter from his agent warned him that the extraordinary drought of the past six weeks, together with the general agricultural depression, would certainly mean a large remission of rents at the June quarter day, and also informed him that the holders of his co-operative farm would not be able to pay their half-yearly interest on the capital advanced to them by the landlord.

As to the third letter, it was in truth much more serious than the two others. Wilkins, the pa.s.sionate and suspicious workman, of great natural ability, who had been in many ways a thorn in Wharton's side since the beginning of his public career, was now member for a mining const.i.tuency. His means of support were extremely scanty, and at the opening of the new Parliament Wharton had offered him well-paid work on the _Clarion_ newspaper. It had seemed to the proprietor of the _Clarion_ a way of attaching a dangerous man to himself, perhaps also of controlling him. Wilkins had grudgingly accepted, understanding perfectly well what was meant.

Since then the relation between the two men had been one of perpetual friction. Wilkins's irritable pride would yield nothing, either in the House or in the _Clarion_ office, to Wharton's university education and cla.s.s advantages, while Wharton watched with alarm the growing influence of this insubordinate and hostile member of his own staff on those labour circles from which the _Clarion_ drew its chief support.

In the letter he had just read Wilkins announced to the proprietor of the _Clarion_ that in consequence of the "scandalous mismanagement" of that paper's handling of a certain trade arbitration which had just closed, he, Wilkins, could no longer continue to write for it, and begged to terminate his engagement at once, there being no formal agreement between himself and Wharton as to length of notice on either side. A lively attack on the present management and future prospects of the _Clarion_ followed, together with the threat that the writer would do what in him lay henceforward to promote the cause of a certain rival organ lately started, among such working men as he might be able to influence.

"_Brute_! jealous, impracticable brute!" exclaimed Wharton aloud, as he stood chafing and smoking by the window. All the difficulties which this open breach was likely to sow in his path stood out before him in clear relief.

"_Personal_ leadership, there is the whole problem," he said to himself in moody despair. "Can I--like Parnell--make a party and keep it together? Can I through the _Clarion_--and through influence _outside_ the House--coerce the men _in_ the House? If so, we can do something, and Lady Cradock will no longer throw me her smiles. If not the game is up, both for me and for them. They have no cohesion, no common information, no real power. Without leaders they are a mere set of half-educated firebrands whom the trained mind of the country humours because it must, and so far as they have brute force behind them.

Without _leadership_, _I_ am a mere unit of the weakest group in the House.

Yet, by Jove! it looks as though I had not the gifts."

And he looked back with pa.s.sionate chagrin on the whole course of his connection with Wilkins, his unavailing concessions and small humiliations, his belief in his own tact and success, all the time that the man dealt with was really slipping out of his hands.

"d.a.m.n the fellow!" he said at last, flinging his cigarette away. "Well, that's done with. All the same, he would have liked that Midland job! He has been hankering after a strike there for some time, and might have ranted as he pleased. I shall have the satisfaction of informing him he has lost his opportunity. Now then--who to send? By Jove! what about Miss Boyce's friend?"

He stood a moment twisting the quill-pen he had taken up, then he hastily found a sheet of paper and wrote:

"Dear Miss Boyce,--It is more than a year since I have heard of you, and I have been wondering with much interest lately whether you have really taken up a nursing life. You remember speaking to me of your friends the Cravens? I come across them sometimes at the Venturist meetings, and have always admired their ability. Last year I could do nothing practical to meet your wishes. This year, however, there is an opening on the _Clarion_, and I should like to discuss it with you. Are you in town or to be found? I could come any afternoon next week, _early_--I go down to the House at four--or on Sat.u.r.days. But I should like it to be Tuesday or Wednesday, that I might try and persuade you to come to our Eight Hours debate on Friday night. It would interest you, and I think I could get you a seat. We Labour members are like the Irishmen--we can always get our friends in.

"I must send this round by Mellor, so it may not reach you till Tuesday.

Perhaps you will kindly telegraph. The _Clarion_ matter is pressing.

"Yours sincerely,

"H.S. WHARTON."

When he had finished he lingered a moment over the letter, the play of conflicting motives and memories bringing a vague smile to the lips.

Reverie, however, was soon dispersed. He recollected his other correspondents, and springing up he began to pace his room, gloomily thinking over his money difficulties, which were many. He and his mother had always been in want of money ever since he could remember. Lady Mildred would spend huge sums on her various crotchets and campaigns, and then subside for six months into wretched lodgings in a back street of Southsea or Worthing, while the Suffolk house was let, and her son mostly went abroad. This perpetual worry of needy circ.u.mstances had always, indeed, sat lightly on Wharton. He was unmarried, and so far scarcity had generally pa.s.sed into temporary comfort before he had time to find it intolerable. But now the whole situation was becoming more serious. In the first place, his subscriptions and obligations as a member of Parliament, and as one of the few propertied persons in a moneyless movement, were considerable. Whatever Socialism might make of money in the future, he was well aware that money in the present was no less useful to a Socialist politician than to any one else. In the next place, the starting and pushing of the _Clarion_ newspaper--originally purchased by the help of a small legacy from an uncle--had enormously increased the scale of his money transactions and the risks of life.

How was it that, with all his efforts, the _Clarion_ was not making, but losing money? During the three years he had possessed it he had raised it from the position of a small and foul-mouthed print, indifferently nourished on a series of small scandals, to that of a Labour organ of some importance. He had written a weekly signed article for it, which had served from the beginning to bring both him and the paper into notice; he had taken pains with the organisation and improvement of the staff; above all, he had spent a great deal more money upon it, in the way of premises and appliances, than he had been, as it turned out, in any way justified in spending.

Hence, indeed, these tears. Rather more than a year before, while the _Clarion_ was still enjoying a first spurt of success and notoriety, he had, with a certain recklessness which belonged to his character, invested in new and costly machinery, and had transferred the paper to larger offices. All this had been done on borrowed money.

Then, for some reason or other, the _Clarion_ had ceased to answer to the spur--had, indeed, during the past eight months been flagging heavily. The outside world was beginning to regard the _Clarion_ as an important paper. Wharton knew all the time that its advertis.e.m.e.nts were falling off, and its circulation declining. Why? Who can say? If it is true that books have their fates, it is still more true of newspapers.

Was it that a collectivist paper--the rival organ mentioned by Wilkins--recently started by a group of young and outrageously clever Venturists and more closely in touch than the _Clarion_ with two or three of the great unions, had filched the _Clarion's_ ground? Or was it simply that, as Wharton put it to himself in moments of rage and despondency, the majority of working men "are either sots or block-heads, and will read and support _nothing_ but the low racing or police-court news, which is all their intelligences deserve?" Few people had at the bottom of their souls a more scornful distrust of the "ma.s.ses" than the man whose one ambition at the present moment was to be the accepted leader of English labour.