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Lost Leader, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book 1 - Chapter 3. Wanted--A Politician |
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_ BOOK I CHAPTER III. WANTED--A POLITICIAN Sir Leslie carefully closed the iron gate behind him, and looked around. "But where," he asked, "are the roses?" Clara laughed outright. "You may be a great politician, Sir Leslie," she declared, "but you are no gardener. Roses don't bloom out of doors in May--not in these parts at any rate." "I understand," he assented, humbly. "This is where the roses will be." She nodded. "That wall, you see," she explained, "keeps off the north winds, and the chestnut grove the east. There is sun here all the day long. You should come to Blakely in two months' time, Sir Leslie. Everything is so different then." He sighed. "You forget, my dear child," he murmured, "that you are speaking to a slave." "A slave!" she repeated. "How absurd! You are a Cabinet Minister, are you not, Sir Leslie?" He shrugged his shoulders. "I was once," he answered, "until an ungrateful country grew weary of the monotony of perfect government and installed our opponents in our places. Just now we are in opposition." "In opposition," she repeated, a little vaguely. "Meaning," he explained, "that we get all the fun, no responsibility, and, alas, no pay." "How fascinating," she exclaimed. "Do sit down here, and tell me all about it. But I forgot. You are not used to sitting down out of doors. Perhaps you will catch cold." Sir Leslie smiled. "I am inclined to run the risk," he said gravely, "if you will share it. Seriously, though, these rustic seats are rather a delusion, aren't they, from the point of view of comfort?" "There shall be cushions," she declared, "for the next time you come." He sighed. "Ah, the next time! I dare not look forward to it. So you are interested in politics, Miss Mannering?" "Well, I believe I am," she answered, a little doubtfully. "To tell you the truth, Sir Leslie, I am shockingly ignorant. You must live in London to be a politician, mustn't you?" "It is necessary," he assented, "to spend some part of your time there, if you want to come into touch with the real thing." "Then I am very interested in politics," she declared. "Please go on." He shook his head. "I would rather you talked to me about the roses. You should ask your uncle to tell you all about politics. He knows far more than I do." "More than you! But you have been a Cabinet Minister!" she exclaimed. "So was your uncle once," he answered. "So he could be again whenever he chose." She looked at him incredulously. "You don't really mean that, Sir Leslie?" "Indeed I do!" he asserted. "There was never a man within my recollection or knowledge who in so short a time made for himself a position so brilliant as your uncle. There is no man to-day whose written word carries so much weight with the people." She sighed a little doubtfully. "Then if that is so," she said, "I cannot imagine why we live down here, hundreds of miles away from everywhere. Why did he give it up? Why is he not in Parliament now?" "It is to ask him that question, Miss Mannering," Borrowdean said, "that I am here. No wonder it seems surprising to you. It is surprising to all of us." She looked at him eagerly. "You mean, then, that you--that his party want him to go back?" she asked. "Assuredly!" "You have told him this?" "Of course! It was my mission!" "Sir Leslie, you must tell me what he said." Borrowdean sighed. "My dear young lady," he said, "it is rather a painful subject with me just now. Yet since you insist, I will tell you. Something has come over your uncle which I do not understand. His party--no, it is his country that needs him. He prefers to stay here, and watch his roses blossom." "It is wicked of him!" she declared, energetically. "It is inexplicable," he agreed. "Yet I have used every argument which can well be urged." "Oh, you must think of others," she begged. "If you knew how weary one gets of this place--a man, too, like my uncle! How can he be content? The monotony here is enough to drive even a dull person like myself mad. To choose such a life, actually to choose it, is insanity!" Borrowdean raised his head. He had heard the click of the garden gate. "They are coming," he said. "I wish you would talk to your uncle like this." "I only wish," she answered, passionately, "that I could make him feel as I do." They entered the garden, Mannering, bareheaded, following his guest. Borrowdean watched them closely as they approached. The woman's expression was purely negative. There was nothing to be learned from the languid smile with which she recognized their presence. Upon Mannering, however, the cloud seemed already to have fallen. His eyebrows were set in a frown. He had the appearance of a man in some manner perplexed. He carried two telegrams, which he handed over to Borrowdean. "A boy on a bicycle," he remarked, "is waiting for answers. Two telegrams at once is a thing wholly unheard of here, Borrowdean. You really ought not to have disturbed our postal service to such an extent." Borrowdean smiled as he tore them open. "I think," he said, "that I can guess their contents. Yes, I thought so. Can you send me to the station, Mannering?" "I can--if it is necessary," Mannering answered. "Must you really go?" Borrowdean nodded. "I must be in the House to-night," he said, a little wearily. "Rochester is going for them again." "You didn't take a pair?" Mannering asked. "It isn't altogether that," Borrowdean answered, "though Heaven knows we can't spare a single vote just now. Rochester wants me to speak. We are a used-up lot, and no mistake. We want new blood, Mannering!" "I trust that the next election," Mannering said, "may supply you with it. Will you walk round to the stables with me? I must order a cart for you." "I shall be glad to," Borrowdean answered. They walked side by side through the chestnut grove. Borrowdean laid his hand upon his friend's arm. "Mannering," he said, slowly, "am I to take it that you have spoken your last word? I am to write my mission down a failure?" "A failure without doubt, so far as regards its immediate object," Mannering assented. "For the rest, it has been very pleasant to see you again, and I only wish that you could spare us a few more days." Borrowdean shook his head. "We are better apart just now, Mannering," he said, "for I tell you frankly that I do not understand your present attitude towards life--your entire absence of all sense of moral responsibility. Are you indeed willing to be written down in history as a philanderer in great things, to loiter in your flower gardens, whilst other men fight the battle of life for you and your fellows? Persist in your refusal to help us, if you will, Mannering, but before I go you shall at least hear the truth." Mannering smiled. "Be precise, my dear friend. I shall hear your view of the truth!" "I do not accept the correction," Borrowdean answered, quickly. "There are times when a man can make no mistake, and this is one of them. You shall hear the truth from me this afternoon, and when your days here have been spun out to their limit--your days of sybaritic idleness--you shall hear it again, only it will be too late. You are fighting against Nature, Mannering. You were born to rule, to be master over men. You have that nameless gift of genius--power--the gift of swaying the minds and hearts of your fellow men. Once you accepted your destiny. Your feet were firmly planted upon the great ladder. You could have climbed--where you would." A curious quietness seemed to have crept over Mannering. When he answered, his voice seemed to rise scarcely above a whisper. "My friend," he said, "it was not worth while!" Borrowdean was almost angry. "Not worth while," he repeated, contemptuously. "Is it worth while, then, to play golf, to linger in your flower gardens, to become a dilettante student, to dream away your days in the idleness of a purely enervating culture? What is it that I heard you yourself say once--that life apart from one's fellows must always lack robustness. You have the instincts of the creator, Mannering. You cannot stifle them. Some day the cry of the world to its own children will find its echo in your heart, and it may be too late. For sooner or later, my friend, the place of all men on earth is filled." For a moment that somewhat cynical restraint which seemed to divest of enthusiasm Borrowdean's most earnest words, and which militated somewhat against his reputation as a public speaker, seemed to have fallen from him. Mannering, recognizing it, answered him gravely enough, though with no less decision. "If you are right, Borrowdean," he said, "the suffering will be mine. Come, your time is short now. Perhaps you had better make your adieux to my niece and Mrs. Handsell." They all came out into the drive to see him start. A curious change had come over the bright spring day. A grey sea-fog had drifted inland, the sunlight was obscured, the larks were silent. Borrowdean shivered a little as he turned up his coat-collar. "So Nature has her little caprices, even--in paradise!" he remarked. "It will blow over in an hour," Mannering said. "A breath of wind, and the whole thing is gone." Borrowdean's farewells were of the briefest. He made no further allusion to the object of his visit. He departed as one who had been paying an afternoon call more or less agreeable. Clara waved her hand until he was out of sight, then she turned somewhat abruptly round and entered the house. Mannering and Mrs. Handsell remained for a few moments in the avenue, looking along the road. The sound of the horse's feet could still be heard, but the trap itself was long since invisible. "The passing of your friend," she remarked, quietly, "is almost allegorical. He has gone into the land of ghosts--or are we the ghosts, I wonder, who loiter here?" Mannering answered her without a touch of levity. He, too, was unusually serious. "We have the better part," he said. "Yet Borrowdean is one of those men who know very well how to play upon the heartstrings. A human being is like a musical instrument to him. He knows how to find out the harmonies or strike the discords." She turned away. "I am superstitious," she murmured, with a little shiver. "I suppose that it is this ghostly mist, and the silence which has come with it. Yet I wish that your friend had stayed away from Blakely!" * * * * * Upstairs from her window Clara also was gazing along the road where Borrowdean had disappeared. And Borrowdean himself was puzzling over a third telegram which Mannering had carelessly passed on to him with his own, and which, although it was clearly addressed to Mannering, he had, after a few minutes' hesitation, opened. It had been handed in at the Strand Post-office. "I must see you this week.--Blanche." A few hours later, on his arrival in London, Borrowdean repeated this message to Mannering from the same post-office, and quietly tearing up the original went down to the House. "I cannot tell," he reported to his chief, "whether we have succeeded or not. In a fortnight or less we shall know." _ |
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