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Lost Leader, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book 3 - Chapter 7. Mr. Mannering, M.P. |
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_ BOOK III CHAPTER VII. MR. MANNERING, M.P. Mannering threw up his window with a sigh of immense relief. The air was cold and fresh. The land, as yet unwarmed by the slowly rising sun, was hung with a faint autumn mist. Traces of an early frost lay in the brown hedgerows inland; the sea was like a sheet of polished glass. Gone the smoke-stained rows of shapeless houses, the atmosphere polluted by a thousand chimneys belching smuts and black vapour, the clanging of electric cars, the rattle of all manner of vehicles over the cobbled streets. Gone the hoarse excitement of the shouting mobs, the poisonous atmosphere of close rooms, all the turmoil and racket and anxiety of those fighting days. He was back again in Bonestre. Below in the courtyard the white cockatoo was screaming. The waiters in their linen coats were preparing the tables for the few remaining guests. And the other things were of yesterday! Mannering had arrived in the middle of the night unexpectedly, and his appearance was a surprise to every one. He had knocked at his wife's door on his way downstairs, but Blanche had taken to early rising, and was already down. He found them all breakfasting together in a sheltered corner of the courtyard. Berenice, after the usual greetings and explanations, smiled at him thoughtfully. "I am not sure," she said, "whether I ought to congratulate you or not. Sir Leslie here thinks that you mean mischief!" "Only on the principle," Borrowdean said, "that whoever is not with us is against us." "We are all agreed upon one thing," Berenice said. "It was your last speech, the one the night before the election, which carried you in. A national party indeed! A legislator, not a politician! You talked to those canny Yorkshiremen with your head in the clouds, and yet they listened." Mannering smiled as he poured out his coffee. "I talked common sense to them," he remarked, "and Yorkshiremen like that. We have been slaves to the old-fashioned idea of party Government long enough. It's an absurd thing when you come to think of it. Fancy a great business being carried on by a board of partners of divergent views, and unable to make a purchase or a sale or effect any change whatever without talking the whole thing threadbare, and then voting upon it. The business would go down, of course!" "Party Government," Borrowdean declared, "is the natural evolution of any republican form of administration. A nation that chooses its own representatives must select them from its varying standpoint." "Their views may differ slightly upon some matters," Mannering said, "but their first duty should be to come into accord with one another. It is a matter for compromises, of course. The real differences between intelligent men of either party are very slight. The trouble is that under the present system everything is done to increase them instead of bridging them over." "If you had to form a Government, then," Berenice asked, "you would not choose the members from one party?" "Certainly not," Mannering answered. "Supposing I were the owner of Redford's car there, and wanted a driver. I should simply try to get the best man I could, and I should certainly not worry as to whether he were, say, a churchman or a dissenter. The best man for the post is what the country has a right to expect, whatever he may call himself, and the country doesn't get it. The people pay the piper, and I consider that they get shocking bad value for their money. The Boer War, for instance, would have cost us less than half as much if we had had the right men to direct the commercial side of it. That money would have been useful in the country just now." "An absolute monarchy," Hester said, smiling, "would be really the most logical form of Government, then? But would it answer?" "Why not?" Borrowdean asked. "If the monarch were incapable he would of course be shot!" "A dictator--" Berenice began, but Mannering held out his hands, laughing. "Think of my last few days, and spare me!" he begged. "I have thirty-six hours' holiday. How do you people spend your time here?" Berenice took him away with her as a matter of course. Blanche watched them depart with a curious tightening of the lips. She was standing alone in the gateway of the hotel, and she watched them until they were out of sight. Borrowdean, sauntering out to buy some papers, paused for a moment as he passed. "Your husband, Mrs. Mannering," he said, drily, "is a very fortunate man." She made no reply, and Borrowdean passed on. Hester came out with a message from Lady Redford--would Mrs. Mannering care to motor over to Berneval for luncheon? Blanche shook her head. She scarcely heard the invitation. She was still watching the two figures disappearing in the distance. Hester understood, but she spoke lightly. "I believe," she said, "that the Duchess still has hopes of Mr. Mannering." "She is a persistent woman," Blanche answered. "They say that she generally succeeds. Let us go in." * * * * * Berenice was listening to Mannering's account of his last few days' electioneering. "The whole affair came upon me like a thunderclap," he told her. "Richard Fardell found it out somehow, and he took me to see Parkins. But it was too late. Polden had hold of the story and meant to use it. I never imagined but that Parkins had been talking and this journalist had got hold of him by accident. Now I understand that it was Borrowdean who was pulling the strings." She nodded. "He traced Parkins out some time ago, and knew exactly where he was to be found." "I think," Mannering said, "that it is time Borrowdean and I came to some understanding. I haven't said anything about it yet. I don't exactly know what to say now. You are a very generous woman." She sighed. "No," she said, "I don't think that. Sir Leslie is a schemer of the class I detest. I listened to him once, and I have regretted it ever since. Yet you must remember this! If it had not been for him you would have been at Blakely to-day." His thoughts carried him backwards with a rush. Once more the thrall of that quiet life of passionless sweetness held him. He looked back upon it curiously, as a man who has passed into another country. Days of physical exaltation, alone with the sun and the wind and all the murmuring voices of Nature, God's life he had called it then. And now! The stress of battle was hard upon him. He was fighting in the front ranks, a somewhat cheerless battle, fighting for great causes with inefficient weapons. But he could not go back. Life had become a more strenuous, a more vital, a less beautiful thing! He felt himself ageing. All the inevitable sadness of the man in touch with the world's great problems was in his heart. But he could not go back. "Yes," he said, quietly, "I owe that much to Borrowdean." "There is a question," she said, "which I have wanted to ask you. Do you regret, or are you glad to have been forced out once more upon the world's stage?" He smiled. "How can I answer you?" he asked. "At Blakely I was as happy as I knew how to be, and until you came I was content! But to-day, well, there are different things. How can I answer your question, indeed? Tell me what happiness means! Tell me whether it is an ignoble or a praiseworthy state!" Berenice was silent. Into her face there had come a sudden gravity. Mannering, glancing towards her, was at once conscious of the change. He saw the weariness so often and zealously repressed, the ageing of her face, the sudden triumph of the despair which in the quiet moments chilled her heart. It seemed to him that for that moment they had come into some closer communion. He bent over towards her. "Ah!" he murmured, "you, too, are beginning to understand. Happiness is only for the ignorant. For you and for me knowledge has eaten its way too far into our lives. We climb all the while, but the flowers in the meadows are the fairest." She shook her head. "The little white flower which grows in the mountains is what we must always seek," she answered. "The meadows are for the others." "We are accursed with this knowledge, and the desire for it," he declared, fiercely. "The suffering is for us, and the joy for the beasts of the field. Why not throw down the cards? We are the devil's puppets in this game of life." "There is no place for us down there," she answered, sadly. "There is joy enough for them, because the finger has never touched their eyes. But for us--no, we have to go on! I was a foolish woman, Lawrence. I lost my sense of proportion. Traditions, you see, were hard to break away from. I did not understand. Let this be the end of all mention of such things between us. We have missed the turning, and we must go on. That is the hardest thing in life. One can never retrace one's steps." "We go on--apart?" "We must," she said. "Don't think me prejudiced, Lawrence. I must stand by my party. Theoretically, I think that you are the only logical politician I have ever known. Actually, I think that you are steering your course towards the sandbanks. You will fail, but you will fail magnificently. Well, that is something." "It is a good deal," he answered, "but if I live long enough, and my strength remains, I shall succeed. I shall place the Government of this country upon an altogether different basis. I shall empty the work-houses and fill the factories. Nothing short of that will content me. Nothing short of that would content any man upon whose shoulders the burden has fallen." "You have centuries of prejudice to fight," she warned him. "You may not succeed! Yet you have all my good wishes. I shall always watch you." They turned homeward in silence. All that had passed between them seemed to be already far back in the past. Their retrogression seemed almost symbolical. They spoke of indifferent things. "Tell me," he asked, "how you came to know what was going on in Leeds." "It was your wife," she said, "who discovered it!" "My wife?" "She saw a telegram on Sir Leslie's table at breakfast, a telegram from the man Polden. She read it and demanded an explanation. Sir Leslie tried all he could to wriggle out of it, but in vain. She appealed to me. Even I had a great deal of difficulty in dealing with him, but eventually he gave way." "Then the telegram," Mannering asked, "wasn't that from you?" She shook her head. "It was from your wife," she said. "I cannot take much credit for myself. It is she whom you must thank for your election. I came out at rather a dramatic moment. Sir Leslie had just offered her money, five hundred pounds, I think, to give him back his telegram and say nothing. She appealed to me at once, and Sir Leslie looked positively foolish." "I am much obliged to you for telling me," Mannering muttered. He remembered now that he had scarcely spoken a dozen words to his wife since his return. "Mrs. Mannering appears to have your interests very much at heart," Berenice said, quietly. "She proved herself quite a match for Sir Leslie. I think that he would have left here at once, only we are expecting Clara back." Mannering smiled scornfully. "I do not think that even Clara," he said, "is quite fool enough not to recognize in Borrowdean the arrant opportunist. For my part I am glad that all pretence at friendship between us is now at an end. He is one of those men whom I should count more dangerous as a friend than as an enemy." Berenice did not reply. They were already in the courtyard of the hotel. Blanche was in a wicker chair in a sunny corner, talking to a couple of young Englishmen. Berenice turned towards the steps. They parted without any further words. _ |
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