CHAPTER VIII.
Wharton was sitting in a secluded corner of the library of the House ofCommons. He had a number of loose sheets of paper on a chair beside him,and others in his hand and on his knee. It was Friday afternoon;questions were going on in the House; and he was running rapidly for thelast time through the notes of his speech, pencilling here and there,and every now and then taking up a volume of Hansard that lay near thathe might verify a quotation.
An old county member, with a rugged face and eye-glasses, who had beenin Parliament for a generation, came to the same corner to look up aspeech. He glanced curiously at Wharton, with whom he had a familiarHouse-of-Commons acquaintance.
"Nervous, eh?" he said, as he put on his eye-glasses to inspect firstWharton, then the dates on the backs of the Reports.
Wharton put his papers finally together, and gave a long stretch.
"Not particularly."
"Well, it's a beastly audience!" said the other, carrying off his book.
Wharton, lost apparently in contemplation of the ceiling, fell into adreamy attitude. But his eye saw nothing of the ceiling, and was not atall dreamy. He was not thinking of his speech, nor of the other man'sremark. He was thinking of Marcella Boyce.
When he left her the other day he had been conscious, only more vividlyand intensely, more possessively as it were, than she, of the samegeneral impression that had been left upon her. A new opening forpleasure--their meeting presented itself to him, too, in the same way.What had he been about all this time? _Forget_?--such a creature? Why,it was the merest wantonness! As if such women--with such a brow, suchvitality, such a gait--passed in every street!
What possessed him now was an imperious eagerness to push the matter, torecover the old intimacy--and as to what might come out of it, let thegods decide! He could have had but a very raw appreciation of her atMellor. It seemed to him that she had never forced him to think of herthen in absence, as he had thought of her since the last meeting.
As for the nursing business, and the settlement in Brown's Buildings, itwas, of course, mere play-acting. No doubt when she emerged she would beall the more of a personage for having done it. But she must emergesoon. To rule and shine was as much her _metier_ as it was the _metier_of a bricklayer's labourer to carry hods. By George! what would not LadySelina give for beauty of such degree and kind as that! They must bebrought together. He already foresaw that the man who should launchMarcella Boyce in London would play a stroke for himself as well as forher. And she must be launched in London. Let other people nurse, andpitch their tents in little workmen's flats, and _live_ democracyinstead of preaching it. Her fate was fixed for her by her physique. _Ilne faut pas sortir de son caractere_.
The sight of Bennett approaching distracted him.
Bennett's good face showed obvious vexation.
"He sticks to it," he said, as Wharton jumped up to meet him. "Talks ofhis conscience--and a lot of windy stuff. He seems to have arranged itwith the Whips. I dare say he won't do much harm."
"Except to himself," said Wharton, with dry bitterness. "Goodness! let'sleave him alone!"
He and Bennett lingered a few minutes discussing points of tactics.Wilkins had, of course, once more declared himself the _enfant terrible_of a party which, though still undefined, was drawing nearer day by dayto organised existence and separate leadership. The effect of to-night'sdebate might be of far-reaching importance. Wharton's Resolution,pledging the House to a Legal Eight Hours' Day for all trades, came atthe end of a long and varied agitation, was at the moment in clearpractical relation to labour movements all over the country, and had infact gained greatly in significance and interest since it was firstheard of in public, owing to events of current history. Workableproposals--a moderate tone--and the appearance, at any rate, of harmonyand a united front among the representatives of labour--if so much atleast could be attained to-night, both Wharton and Bennett believed thatnot only the cause itself, but the importance of the Labour party in theHouse would be found to have gained enormously.
"I hope I shall get my turn before dinner," said Bennett, as he wasgoing; "I want badly to get off for an hour or so. The division won't betill half-past ten at earliest."
Wharton stood for a moment in a brown study, with his hands in hispockets, after Bennett left him. It was by no means wholly clear to himwhat line Bennett would take--with regard to one or two points. After along acquaintance with the little man, Wharton was not always, norindeed generally, at his ease with him. Bennett had curious reserves. Asto his hour off, Wharton felt tolerably certain that he meant to go andhear a famous Revivalist preacher hold forth at a public hall not farfrom the House. The streets were full of placards.
Well!--to every man his own excitements! What time? He looked first athis watch, then at the marked question paper Bennett had left behindhim. The next minute he was hurrying along passages and stairs, with hisspringing, boyish step, to the Ladies' Gallery.
The magnificent doorkeeper saluted him with particular deference.Wharton was in general a favourite with officials.
"The two ladies are come, sir. You'll find them in the front--oh! notvery full yet, sir--will be directly."
Wharton drew aside the curtain of the Gallery, and looked in.Yes!--there was the dark head bent forward, pressed indeed against thegrating which closes the front of the den into which the House ofCommons puts its ladies--as though its owner were already absorbed inwhat was passing before her.
She looked up with an eager start, as she heard his voice in her ear.
"Oh! now, come and tell us everything--and who everybody is. Why don'twe see the Speaker?--and which is the Government side?--oh, yes, I see.And who's this speaking now?"
"Why, I thought you knew everything," said Wharton as, with a greetingto Miss Craven, he slipped in beside them and took a still vacant chairfor an instant. "How shall I instruct a Speaker's great-niece?"
"Why, of course I feel as if the place belonged to me!" said Marcella,impatiently; "but that somehow doesn't seem to help me to people'snames. Where's Mr. Gladstone? Oh, I see. Look, look, Edith!--he's justcome in!--oh, don't be so superior, though you _have_ been herebefore--you couldn't tell me heaps of people!"
Her voice had a note of joyous excitement like a child's.
"That's because I'm short-sighted," said Edith Craven, calmly; "but it'sno reason why you should show me Mr. Gladstone."
"Oh, my dear, my dear!--do be quiet! Now, Mr. Wharton, where are theIrishmen? Oh! I wish we could have an Irish row! And where do yousit?--I see--and there's Mr. Bennett--and that black-faced man, Mr.Wilkins, I met at the Hallins--you don't like him, do you?" she said,drawing back and looking at him sharply.
"Who? Wilkins? Perhaps you'd better ask me that question later on!" saidWharton, with a twist of the lip; "he's going to do his best to make afool of himself and us to-night--we shall see! It's kind of you to wishus an Irish row!--considering that if I miss my chance to-night I shallnever get another!"
"Then for heaven's sake don't let's wish it!" she said decidedly. "Oh,that's the Irish Secretary answering now, is it?"--a pause--"Dear me,how civil everybody is. I don't think this is a good place for aDemocrat, Mr. Wharton--I find myself terribly in love with theGovernment. But who's that?"
She craned her neck. Wharton was silent. The next instant she drewhurriedly back.
"I didn't see," she murmured; "it's so confusing."
A tall man had risen from the end of the Government bench, and wasgiving an answer connected with the Home Secretary's department. For thefirst time since their parting in the Mellor drawing-room Marcella sawAldous Raeburn.
She fell very silent, and leant back in her chair. Yet Wharton's quickglance perceived that she both looked and listened intently, so long asthe somewhat high-pitched voice was speaking.
"He does those things very well," he said carelessly, judging it best totake the bull by the horns. "Never a word too much--they don't get anychange out of him. Do you see that old fellow in the white bear
d underthe gallery? He is one of the chartered bores. When he gets up to-nightthe House will dine. I shall come up and look for you, and hand you overto a friend if I may--a Staffordshire member, who has his wifehere--Mrs. Lane. I have engaged a table, and I can start with you.Unfortunately I mustn't be long out of the House, as it's my motion;but they will look after you."
The girls glanced a little shyly at each other. Nothing had been saidabout dining; but Wharton took it for granted; and they yielded. It wasMarcella's "day off," and she was a free woman.
"Good-bye, then," he said, getting up. "I shall be on in about twentyminutes. Wish me well through!"
Marcella looked round and smiled. But her vivacity had been quenched forthe moment; and Wharton departed not quite so well heartened for thefray as he could have wished to be. It was hard luck that the Raeburnghost should walk this particular evening.
Marcella bent forward again when he had gone, and remained for longsilent, looking down into the rapidly filling House. Aldous Raeburn waslying back on the Treasury bench, his face upturned. She knew very wellthat it was impossible he should see her; yet every now and then sheshrank a little away as though he must. The face looked to her older andsingularly blanched; but she supposed that must be the effect of thelight; for she noticed the same pallor in many others.
"_All that my life can do to pour good measure_--_down_--_runningover_--_into yours, I vowed you then!_"
The words stole into her memory, throbbing there like points of pain.Was it indeed this man under her eyes--so listless, so unconscious--whohad said them to her with a passion of devotion it shamed her to thinkof.
And now--never so much as an ordinary word of friendship between themagain? "On the broad seas of life enisled"--separate, estranged, forever? It was like the touch of death--the experience brought with itsuch a chill--such a sense of irreparable fact, of limitations never tobe broken through.
Then she braced herself. The "things that are behind" must be left. Tohave married him after all would have been the greatest wrong. Nor, inone sense, was what she had done irreparable. She chose to believe FrankLeven, rather than Edward Hallin. Of course he must and should marry! Itwas absurd to suppose that he should not. No one had a stronger sense offamily than he. And as for the girl--the little dancing, flirtinggirl!--why the thing happened every day. _His_ wife should not be toostrenuous, taken up with problems and questions of her own. She shouldcheer, amuse, distract him. Marcella endeavoured to think of it all withthe dry common-sense her mother would have applied to it. One thing atleast was clear to her--the curious recognition that never before hadshe considered Aldous Raeburn, _in and for himself_, as an independenthuman being.
"He was just a piece of furniture in my play last year," she said toherself with a pang of frank remorse. "He was well quit of me!"
But she was beginning to recover her spirits, and when at last Raeburn,after a few words with a minister who had just arrived, disappearedsuddenly behind the Speaker's chair, the spectacle below her seized herwith the same fascination as before.
The House was filling rapidly. Questions were nearly over, and thespeech of the evening, on which considerable public expectation bothinside and outside Parliament had been for some time concentrated, wasfast approaching. Peers were straggling into the gallery; the reporterswere changing just below her: and some "crack hands" among them, who hadbeen lounging till now, were beginning to pay attention and put theirpaper in order. The Irish benches, the Opposition, the Government--allwere full, and there was a large group of members round the door.
"There he is!" cried Marcella, involuntarily, with a pulse ofexcitement, as Wharton's light young figure made its way through thecrowd. He sat down on a corner seat below the gangway and put on hishat.
In five minutes more he was on his feet, speaking to an attentive andcrowded House in a voice--clear, a little hard, but capable of the mostaccomplished and subtle variety--which for the first moment sent ashudder of memory through Marcella.
Then she found herself listening with as much trepidation and anxiety asthough some personal interest and reputation depended for her, too, onthe success of the speech. Her mind was first invaded by a strong, an_irritable_ sense of the difficulty of the audience. How was it possiblefor any one, unless he had been trained to it for years, to make anyeffect upon such a crowd!--so irresponsive, individualist, unfused--solacking, as it seemed to the raw spectator, in the qualities andexcitements that properly belong to multitude! Half the men down below,under their hats, seemed to her asleep; the rest indifferent. And werethose languid, indistinguishable murmurs what the newspapers call"_cheers_"?
But the voice below flowed on; point after point came briskly out; theatmosphere warmed; and presently this first impression passed into onewholly different--nay, at the opposite pole. Gradually the girl's ardentsense--informed, perhaps, more richly than most women's with thememories of history and literature, for in her impatient way she hadbeen at all times a quick, omnivorous reader--awoke to the peculiarconditions, the special thrill, attaching to the place and itsperformers. The philosopher derides it; the man of letters out of theHouse talks of it with a smile as a "Ship of Fools"; both, when occasionoffers, passionately desire a seat in it; each would give his right handto succeed in it.
Why? Because here after all is power--here is the central machine. Hereare the men who, both by their qualities and their defects, are to havefor their span of life the leading--or the wrecking?--of this greatfate-bearing force, this "weary Titan" we call our country. Here thingsare not only debated, but done--lamely or badly, perhaps, but still_done_--which will affect our children's children; which link us to thePast; which carry us on safely or dangerously to a Future only the godsknow. And in this passage, this chequered, doubtful passage fromthinking to doing, an infinite savour and passion of life is somehowdisengaged. It penetrates through the boredom, through all the failure,public and personal; it enwraps the spectacle and the actors; it carriesand supports patriot and adventurer alike.
Ideas, perceptions of this kind--the first chill over--stole upon andconquered Marcella. Presently it was as though she had passed intoWharton's place, was seeing with his eyes, feeling with his nerves. Itwould be a success this speech--it was a success! The House was gained,was attentive. A case long familiar to it in portions and fragments,which had been spoilt by violence and discredited by ignorance, wasbeing presented to it with all the resources of a great talent--withbrilliancy, moderation, practical detail--moderation above all! From theslight historical sketch, with which the speech opened, of the English"working day," the causes and the results of the Factory Acts--throughthe general description of the present situation, of the workman'spresent hours, opportunities and demands, the growth of the desire forState control, the machinery by which it was to be enforced, and theeffects it might be expected to have on the workman himself, on thegreat army of the "unemployed," on wages, on production, and on theeconomic future of England--the speaker carried his thread of luminousspeech, without ever losing his audience for an instant. At every pointhe addressed himself to the smoothing of difficulties, to thepropitiation of fears; and when, after the long and masterly handling ofdetail, he came to his peroration, to the bantering of capitalistterrors, to the vindication of the workman's claim to fix the conditionsof his labour, and to the vision lightly and simply touched of theregenerate working home of the future, inhabited by free men, dedicatedto something beyond the first brutal necessities of the bodily life,possessed indeed of its proper share of the human inheritance ofleisure, knowledge, and delight--the crowded benches before and behindhim grudged him none of it. The House of Commons is not tolerant of"flights," except from its chartered masters. But this young man hadearned his flight; and they heard him patiently. For the rest, theGovernment had been most attractively wooed; and the Liberal party inthe midst of much plain speaking had been treated on the whole with adeference and a forbearance that had long been conspicuously lacking inthe utterances of the Labour men.
/> "'The mildest mannered man' _et cetera!_" said a smiling member of thelate Government to a companion on the front Opposition bench, as Whartonsat down amid the general stir and movement which betoken the break-upof a crowded House, and the end of a successful speech which people areeager to discuss in the lobbies. "A fine performance, eh? Great advanceon anything last year."
"Bears about as much relation to facts as I do to the angels!" growledthe man addressed.
"What! as bad as that?" said the other, laughing. "Look! they have putup old Denny. I think I shall stay and hear him." And he laid down hishat again which he had taken up.
Meanwhile Marcella in the Ladies' Gallery had thrown herself back in herchair with a long breath.
"How can one listen to anything else!" she said; and for a long time shesat staring at the House without hearing a word of what the verycompetent, caustic, and well-informed manufacturer on the Governmentside was saying. Every dramatic and aesthetic instinct shepossessed--and she was full of them--had been stirred and satisfied bythe speech and the speaker.
But more than that. He had spoken for the toiler and the poor; hisperoration above all had contained tones and accents which were in factthe products of something perfectly sincere in the speaker's motleypersonality; and this girl, who in her wild way had given herself to thepoor, had followed him with all her passionate heart. Yet, at the sametime, with an amount of intellectual dissent every now and then as tomeasures and methods, a scepticism of detail which astonished herself! Ayear before she had been as a babe beside him, whether in matters ofpure mind or of worldly experience. Now she was for the first timeconscious of a curious growth--independence.
But the intellectual revolt, such as it was, was lost again, as soon asit arose, in the general impression which the speech had left uponher--in this warm quickening of the pulses, this romantic interest inthe figure, the scene, the young emerging personality.
Edith Craven looked at her with wondering amusement. She and herbrothers were typical Venturists--a little cynical, therefore, towardsall the world, friend or foe. A Venturist is a Socialist minus cant, anda cause which cannot exist at all without a passion of sentiment lays itdown--through him--as a first law, that sentiment in public is theabominable thing. Edith Craven thought that after all Marcella waslittle less raw and simple now than she had been in the old days.
"There!" said Marcella, with relief, "that's done. Now, who's this? Thatman _Wilkins_!"
Her tone showed her disgust. Wilkins had sprung up the instant Wharton'sConservative opponent had given the first decisive sign of sittingdown. Another man on the same side was also up, but Wilkins, black andfrowning, held his own stubbornly, and his rival subsided.
With the first sentences of the new speech the House knew that it was tohave an emotion, and men came trooping in again. And certainly the shortstormy utterance was dramatic enough. Dissent on the part of animportant north-country Union from some of the most vital machinery ofthe bill which had been sketched by Wharton--personal jealousy anddistrust of the mover of the resolution--denial of his representativeplace, and sneers at his kid-gloved attempts to help a class with whichhe had nothing to do--the most violent protest against the servilitywith which he had truckled to the now effete party of free contract andpolitical enfranchisement--and the most passionate assertion thatbetween any Labour party, worthy of the name, and either of the greatparties of the past there lay and must lie a gulf of hatred,unfathomable and unquenchable, till Labour had got its rights, andlandlord, employer, and dividend-hunter were trampled beneath itsheel--all these ugly or lurid things emerged with surprising clearnessfrom the torrent of north-country speech. For twenty minutes NehemiahWilkins rioted in one of the best "times" of his life. That he was anorator thousands of working men had borne him witness again and again;and in his own opinion he had never spoken better.
The House at first enjoyed its sensation. Then, as the hard wordsrattled on, it passed easily into the stage of amusement. LadyCradock's burly husband bent forward from the front Opposition bench,caught Wharton's eye, and smiled, as though to say: "What!--you haven'teven been able to keep up appearances so far!" And Wilkins's finalattack upon the Liberals--who, after ruining their own chances and thechances of the country, were now come cap in hand to the working manwhining for his support as their only hope of recovery--was delivered toa mocking chorus of laughter and cheers, in the midst of which, with anangry shake of his great shoulders, he flung himself down on his seat.
Meanwhile Wharton, who had spent the first part of Wilkins's speech in astate of restless fidget, his hat over his eyes, was alternately sittingerect with radiant looks, or talking rapidly to Bennett, who had come tosit beside him. The Home Secretary got up after Wilkins had sat down,and spent a genial forty minutes in delivering the Government _nonpossumus_, couched, of course, in the tone of deference to King Labourwhich the modern statesman learns at his mother's knee, but enlivenedwith a good deal of ironical and effective perplexity as to which handto shake and whose voice to follow, and winding up with a tribute ofcompliment to Wharton, mixed with some neat mock condolence with theOpposition under the ferocities of some others of its nominal friends.
Altogether, the finished performance of the old stager, the _habitue_.While it was going on, Marcella noticed that Aldous Raeburn had comeback again to his seat next to the Speaker, who was his official chief.Every now and then the Minister turned to him, and Raeburn handed him avolume of Hansard or the copy of some Parliamentary Return whence thegreat man was to quote. Marcella watched every movement; then from theGovernment bench her eye sped across the House to Wharton sitting oncemore buried in his hat, his arms folded in front of him. A little shiverof excitement ran through her. The two men upon whom her life had so farturned were once more in presence of, pitted against, each other--andshe, once more, looking on!
When the Home Secretary sat down, the House was growing restive withthoughts of dinner, and a general movement had begun--when it was seenthat Bennett was up. Again men who had gone out came back, and those whowere still there resigned themselves. Bennett was a force in the House,a man always listened to and universally respected, and the curiosityfelt as to the relations between him and this new star and would-beleader had been for some time considerable.
When Bennett sat down, the importance of the member for West Brookshire,both in the House and in the country, had risen a hundred per cent. Aman who over a great part of the north was in labour concerns theunquestioned master of many legions, and whose political position hadhitherto been one of conspicuous moderation, even to his own hurt, hadgiven Wharton the warmest possible backing; had endorsed his proposals,to their most contentious and doubtful details, and in a few generousthough still perhaps ambiguous words had let the House see what hepersonally thought of the services rendered to labour as a whole duringthe past five years, and to the weak and scattered group of Labourmembers in particular, since his entrance into Parliament, by the youngand brilliant man beside him.
Bennett was no orator. He was a plain man, ennobled by the training ofreligious dissent, at the same time indifferently served often by animperfect education. But the very simplicity and homeliness of itsexpression gave additional weight to this first avowal of a strongconviction that the time had come when the Labour party _must_ haveseparateness and a leader if it were to rise out of insignificance; tothis frank renunciation of whatever personal claims his own past mighthave given him; and to the promise of unqualified support to the policyof the younger man, in both its energetic and conciliatory aspects. Hethrew out a little not unkindly indignation, if one may be allowed thephrase, in the direction of Wilkins--who in the middle of the speechabruptly walked out--and before he sat down, the close attention, thelooks, the cheers, the evident excitement of the men sitting abouthim,--amongst whom were two-thirds of the whole Labour representation inParliament--made it clear to the House that the speech marked an epochnot only in the career of Harry Wharton, but in the parliamentaryhistory of the great in
dustrial movement.
The white-bearded bore under the gallery, whom Wharton had pointed outto Marcella, got up as Bennett subsided. The house streamed out like oneman. Bennett, exhausted by the heat and the effort, mopped his brow withhis red handkerchief, and, in the tension of fatigue, started as he felta touch upon his arm. Wharton was bending over to him--perfectly white,with a lip he in vain tried to steady.
"I can't thank you," he said; "I should make a fool of myself."
Bennett nodded pleasantly, and presently both were pressing into theout-going crowd, avoiding each other with the ineradicable instinct ofthe Englishman.
Wharton did not recover his self-control completely till, after anordeal of talk and handshaking in the lobby, he was on his way to theLadies' Gallery. Then in a flash he found himself filled with thespirits, the exhilaration, of a schoolboy. This wonderful experiencebehind him!--and upstairs, waiting for him, those eyes, that face! Howcould he get her to himself somehow for a moment--and dispose of thatCraven girl?
"Well!" he said to her joyously, as she turned round in the darkness ofthe Gallery.
But she was seized with sudden shyness, and he felt, rather than saw,the glow of pleasure and excitement which possessed her.
"Don't let's talk here," she said. "Can't we go out? I am melted!"
"Yes, of course! Come on to the terrace. It's a divine evening, and weshall find our party there. Well, Miss Craven, were you interested?"
Edith smiled demurely.
"I thought it a good debate," she said.
"Confound these Venturist prigs!" was Wharton's inward remark as he ledthe way.