Chapter 27

The next morning Peter was early in the breakfast room. Only Lady Mary was there. She was looking for weather at the window.

"Let me get you some breakfast," said Peter, after they had greeted.

"Not for the world," she answered, lifting lids at a side table. "I love breakfast. It's the only time when food seems to matter. I wouldn't think of letting anybody choose my breakfast."

"There, at any rate, we agree," said Peter.

"Do you like breakfast, too?"

"It's an Oxford habit."

"Then you haven't given up Oxford altogether?" said Lady Mary, speaking as one who had heard something.

"Do you know all about me, like everybody else?"

Peter groaned.

"Of course. You don't know how famous you are. Everybody knows you were sent down from Gamaliel for being a Socialist."

"I am not a Socialist," Peter hotly protested.

Lady Mary's eyes were full of mischief: "You must have been sent down for being something."

"I'm nothing at all," said Peter.

"Are you quite sure?"

[Pg 195]

"The silliest person alive is more than a label."

Peter cursed himself. He had again delivered an apothegm. Why must he always be so heavily serious? Lady Mary was openly smiling.

"I'm afraid we're all going to be very silly at Highbury during the next few days. We've simply got to label ourselves for Antony's sake."

"Tories," said Peter, trying to be nice, "are exceptions."

"You mean that Tories don't count?"

"I really don't mean that," said Peter, genuinely grieved.

"Then I'm afraid you don't mean anything at all."

Lady Mary was clearly amused. Peter miserably looked at her, looked at his plate, and then heard himself say:

"Why am I such a solemn ass?"

"Who says that?"

"I say it myself," said Peter.

Lady Mary looked swiftly at his ingenuous face, in which exaggerated abasement struggled with a hope that she would reassure him. Her amusement was curiously shot with affection.

"You oughtn't to have told me this so soon," she said, smiling at him in the friendliest way. "You see I don't yet know you well enough to contradict you. It would be rude."

"Let me get you another sausage," said Peter, feeling a little better.

As he brought her the food he saw her more[Pg 196] familiarly. Last night in her amazing dress she had seemed fragile and elaborate—all woman and social creature. But this morning he saw just a friendly girl, plainly suited in brown tweed, accessible and soothing. Now he really saw what she was like. He discreetly admired her hair and expressive eyes, her slender features and delicate complexion. She spoke on a clear note, level and quiet, suggesting that her ideas and feelings were regular and securely in leash. The music of her voice was vibrant but very sure. It declared a perfect balance, the voice of a woman who would not suffer to appear in any of her personal tones or gestures anything which could not beautifully be expressed.

At this point Marbury came into the room. Peter was bringing Lady Mary her sausage with the grave intentness of someone specially elected.

"Hullo, Mary. Hullo, Peter. You seem to be eating well."

"Yes," said Lady Mary. "This is my third sausage."

"What does Peter say?"

"I've at last met someone who takes breakfast seriously."

"I take everything seriously," said Peter, returning into gloom.

"You needn't be so unhappy about it," said Marbury. "One good thing about an election is that it makes one realise the importance of being[Pg 197] earnest. Even the local paper becomes an immensely serious thing."

Marbury settled to his breakfast, shook out the Highbury Gazette, and was absorbed. Soon he was smiling.

"What is it, Tony?" asked Lady Mary, eating an apple.

"Listen to this," said Marbury. "It's one of Jordan's speeches."

"Who's Jordan?" Peter interrupted.

"My opponent," said Marbury. "He seems to be dangerous. He knows how to appeal to the people. He has just bought a house and some acres in the constituency, and he tells the Yorkshiremen that he's a farmer, with a stake in the county.

"'Gentlemen,' he says, according to this report, 'you may perhaps be inclined to ask what this Mr. Jordan, a town-bred man and a stranger, knows about the land and the people on the land. Well, gentlemen, I'm a farmer myself—in a small way. (Cheers.) I have a hundred or so acres of good Yorkshire soil. (Cheers.) I have twenty head of cattle, some sheep and poultry, and only this morning I was admiring three fine stacks of hay built by the honest labour of your fellow townsmen. (Loud Cheers.) Gentlemen, I have come to live among you. (A great outburst of cheering, many of the audience rising and waving their hats.)'"

[Pg 198]

"Is this what you call politics from within?" Peter scornfully interrupted.

"Now, Peter, don't despise the amusements of the people. They like to be governed in this way. I shall have to see the bailiff."

"I'm passing the home-farm," said Lady Mary. "I'll send him to you."

When she had gone, Marbury looked with amusement at Peter, chafing up and down the hearth-rug.

"Peter," he said, "compose yourself. The others will be coming down to breakfast."

"Why do you want the bailiff?" Peter curtly inquired.

"I'm thinking out a little light banter for Jordan. I want to know whether we can do better than twenty head of cattle and three fine stacks of hay."

"I suggest," said Peter, massively sarcastic, "that you make out a list of your hens and pigs and send it round the constituency."

Marbury considered this. "That, Peter, is an idea. I'll talk it over with the agent."

Peter flung up his hands in the gesture Marbury loved in him and always knew how to provoke.

"It's all damn nonsense," said Peter shortly.

"Jordan calls it democracy."

"Politics!" Peter exclaimed, with his nose in the air.

"I've told you before, Peter, not to despise politics. It's ignorant. We'll go into the garden."

[Pg 199]

They walked on the terrace and found Haversham in the portable hut where he usually spent the day. He had been ordered by the doctors to live out of doors. Here he wrote letters, interviewed his tenants, and ordered the affairs of his estate and fortune. He was seldom alone, unless he wished it, for his friends treasured every moment they were able to spend with him.

Peter and Marbury paused at the open side of the hut, turned, as always, towards the sun. Marbury, before they reached Lord Haversham, had time to tell Peter that his uncle did not like his health to be talked about.

"What is the programme?" Haversham asked as they came up.

"Eight meetings to-day, Uncle."

Haversham tapped the paper he was holding:

"You've seen Jordan's latest?"

"We were talking about it," said Marbury.

"What are you going to do?" asked Haversham.

"Peter suggests we should post the constituency with a schedule of your stock on the home-farm."

Peter glowered at Marbury, but a moment after felt amiably foolish under Haversham's kind inspection.

"You don't expect me to believe that, Tony," said Haversham. "But, seriously, don't let your agent do anything of the kind. He'll probably suggest it."

"I wonder."

[Pg 200]

"It wouldn't do. If you were a Radical like Jordan you could tell them you owned the whole constituency. In a Radical it would show good faith and a likeliness to look after local interests. But in a Tory it is bribery and coercion. Your leaflet would be published in the London Radical papers—Another Instance of Tory Intimidation."

"You see, Peter," said Marbury, "we shall have to be tactful."

"Why notice the speech at all?" asked Peter.

"Because we are electioneering," said Marbury. "We're not here for fun. My enemy has sent out a leaflet: 'Vote for Jordan, the farmer, and the farmer's friend'—the implication, of course, being that I am neither a farmer nor a farmer's friend. It's much more important in an agricultural constituency to destroy this delicate suggestion than to prove that there is an absolute need for a Navy Bill next session of over sixty millions."

"Yes," objected Peter, "but the whole thing is so ridiculous."

Haversham sighed: "That's what makes public life so hard. It is especially hard for our people. There's nothing we dread more than losing touch with our sense of humour. But these sacrifices are necessary. These sixty millions have to be raised, and only Antony will raise them."

"You see, Peter," Marbury interposed, "the sense of duty is not yet extinct. Please look less[Pg 201] incredulous. Then we'll go and talk to the farmers."

"Why do you take me?" Peter grunted. "Why not take someone who really understands?"

"I have set my mind on taking you," said Marbury finally. "But you must be less critical. You will hear me say some obvious things. Please understand that I am quite honestly accepting a public duty, and don't look as if you were infinitely wiser and better, because you are not."

Peter felt the sincerity of this appeal. He turned impulsively to Haversham.

"Antony"—Peter used the name with shy pleasure—"has a way of putting me in the wrong."

Haversham smiled: "I'm sure you are excellent for one another," he said. "It does Antony good to realise that he is elderly for his years."

A servant came from the house and announced that the bailiff was waiting for Marbury. Peter was left for a time with his host, who drew him to talk easily of the days at Gamaliel and in town. Peter tried to explain how in suburban London he had failed to realise his hopes.

"Perhaps," Haversham suggested, "you put the intellectual average too high?"

"It wasn't that," said Peter eagerly. "I hope I haven't seemed too clever or anything of that kind. But somehow I was never comfortable. The more intelligence I found, the less I liked it."

[Pg 202]

"You felt, in fact, rather like a modern statesman measuring the results of popular education. He realises that he has educated the crowd just enough to be taken in by a smart electioneer. Happily there is wisdom still in Sandhaven. Our people will vote for Antony because they like him. They know he feels rightly about things. Jordan's cleverness doesn't appeal to them. He doesn't know the difference between a swede and a turnip."

"Then the seat is safe?" concluded Peter.

Haversham smiled.

"Not altogether," he said. "I got in last election by five hundred. There are some miners in the west corner, and there is a harbour at Sandhaven. The Government Whip has obscurely implied that votes for Jordan will be votes for the harbour. The harbour badly wants doing up."

"But that is corruption."

"I'm afraid not," corrected Haversham. "It is politics."

Marbury joined them from the house, telling Peter to be ready for a rush over the moors. In half an hour they started alone, provided for the day. The meetings were appointed in small villages near Sandhaven, where they would spend the night.

The ordered luxury of Highbury gave to their plunge into the wilderness a keener pleasure. Peter was free to enjoy the spacious loveliness of the moors—to enjoy it at ease in the best possible[Pg 203] way. The contours of the country here were gradual and vast, but the speed at which they ran defeated monotony. The line of the greater banks shifted perpetually as they flew. Their colour came and went, changing at every mile the palette of the spread gorse and heather. Peter's joy was complete when from a high point of the moors he discovered the sea alive with the sun.

The meetings began at noon with an informal handshaking of farmers in a tiny market-town not far from Sandhaven. They continued through the day in schoolhouses, lamplit as darkness fell, and they ended at Sandhaven in an orthodox demonstration, with a chairman and a union Jack and the local committee importantly throned on a large platform. Except at this final meeting Marbury talked quite simply to the electors. Already he knew the majority of them personally. He was aware of their circumstances, family history, the troubles of their farming, their prejudices and characters. He knew the local jokes—who had made rather a better bargain with his horse than the purchaser, who, under feminine pressure, had lately turned from chapel to church. Peter marvelled through the day at the prodigious industry implied in Marbury's knowledge, confessed to be yet imperfect, of the estate to which he was succeeding. Peter admired, too, the perfection of Marbury's manner. He never condescended. Nor was he familiar in the way of a candidate seeking to be popular. He talked with his own[Pg 204] people, in whom he was interested, for whom he had a right to care. Neither in himself nor in his tenants to be was there any of that uneasy pride of place which spoils a community whose members are busily asserting their rank. Marbury behaved, without self-consciousness, as part of a traditional system. He was met in the same way by men as yet untouched with the snobbery of labour.

Only at Sandhaven, where there was a strong opposition, did Marbury adopt the political or platform manner. Here he was called upon to explain to his audience why he considered that a personal landlord was better for agriculture than the local council. To Peter this seemed ludicrously unnecessary after what he had seen that day in the villages.

Towards the close of the meeting in Sandhaven, when questions were being asked, Peter, from the platform, saw Marbury's agent speak to a member of the audience. Marbury saw it too.

"He realises I've shirked Jordan, the farmer's friend," he whispered to Peter.

The man whom the agent had prompted now rose and addressed Marbury:

"Will Lord Marbury tell us what title Mr. Jordan has to call himself the farmer's friend?"

Marbury rose, and picked a cutting of Jordan's speech from the table.

He read aloud the passages Peter had heard at breakfast, and deftly played with them. Peter admired the ease with which Mr. Jordan's [Pg 205]pretensions as a farmer were justly measured without any assumption in Marbury of superiority or rural snobbisme. His speech was pointed throughout with hearty laughter and cheers. It effectually countered the speech of his opponent, but it gave no handle anywhere for a charge that Marbury desired to use his position as an argument for his return.

"Peter," said Marbury, as they were leaving the platform, "you will hear that speech of mine forty times, in forty moods and tenses, during the next ten days. Please don't imagine that I enjoy it. But you saw the agent. He would not let me escape, even for twenty-four hours. He knows how important it is."

Over a late supper at the hotel, Peter shared with Marbury his impressions of the day.

"Frankly," he said, "I admired you most of the time."

"Beginning to think better of politics?"

"Politics don't seem to count much in this election."

"Platform politics don't. The people here are only just discovering them. I hear, by the way, that the Government Whips have arranged a debauch for next week. They're sending down Wenderby. My agent, who despises me, is frightened."

"Your agent ought to be jolly well pleased with you," said Peter indignantly.

"He is not," Marbury asserted. "He thinks[Pg 206] I'm too refined. He wants me to tell the people I'm going to inherit seventy thousand acres. He tells me not to cut marble with a razor. He wants it coarse."

They slept at Sandhaven, working back to Highbury on the following day. It was comparatively an easy journey, and they were back at Highbury in time for dinner.

Peter drifted shyly towards Lady Mary, and again was next to her.

"This is lucky," she said as they sat down. "You can tell me about Antony's meetings."

"I'm afraid I don't know the difference between a bad meeting and a good one," said Peter. "But Antony was pleased."

"Have you been speaking?" she asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

"What could I say?" objected Peter.

"Antony tells me you are quite an orator."

"But this is different," Peter pleaded.

"Why is it different?"

"Well, you see, I can talk when I really believe in things and have a lot to say."

"Don't you believe in Antony?" asked Lady Mary. She was determined not to let him off.

"Yes," Peter admitted.

"Then why not talk about him?"

"But what about politics?" Peter objected.

"Haven't you any politics?"

"They all seem to be going," said Peter [Pg 207]dismally. "Things aren't so simple as I thought."

"One thing is simple enough," said Lady Mary, looking serenely at Peter. "Antony is a better man for Sandhaven than Mr. Jordan."

"I'm sure he is," Peter gladly agreed.

"Very well then. You must speak for Antony."

"Why do you insist?" asked Peter, hoping for a compliment.

"Because," said Lady Mary, resolved to disappoint him, "it will be good for Antony. It doesn't matter what you say. Our farmers will look at your honest face. Then they will measure your strong back. Then they will believe you are as good a man as themselves, especially if you halt a little in your speech. Antony is too fluent; and he is not sufficiently robust."