Part 40 (2/2)
The young men, realizing the ident.i.ty of the wrathful apparition, stared open-mouthed, turned red, and said nothing. Paul strode out, looking very fierce, and drove off in his car amid the cheers of the crowd, to which he paid no notice.
”It makes me sick!” he cried pa.s.sionately to Wilson, who was with him.
”I hope to G.o.d he wins in spite, of it!”
”What about the party?” asked Wilson.
Paul d.a.m.ned the party. He was in the overwrought mood in which a man d.a.m.ns everything. Quagmire and bramble and the derision of Olympus-that was the end of his vanity of an existence. Suppose he was elected--what then? He would be a failure-the high G.o.ds in their mirth would see to that--a puppet in Frank Ayres' hands until the next general election, when he would have ignominiously to retire. Awakener of England indeed!
He could not even awaken Hickney Heath. As he dashed through the streets in his triumphal car, he hated Hickney Heath, hated the wild ”hoorays” of waggon-loads of his supporters on their way to the polls, hated the smug smiles of his committee-men at polling stations. He forgot that he did not hate England. A little black disk an inch or two in diameter if cunningly focussed can obscure the sun in heaven from human eye. There was England still behind the little black disk, though Paul for the moment saw it not.
Wilson pulled his scrubby moustache and made no retort to Paul's anathema. To him Paul was one of the fine flower of the Upper Cla.s.ses to which lower middle-cla.s.s England still, with considerable justification, believes to be imbued with incomprehensible and unalterable principles of conduct. The grand old name of gentleman still has its magic in this country--and is, by the way, not without its influence in one or two mighty republics wherein the equality of man is very loudly proclaimed. Wilson, therefore, gladly suffered Paul's lunatic Quixotry. For himself he approved hugely of the cartoon.
If he could have had his way, Hickney Heath would have flamed with poster reproductions of it. But he had a dim appreciation of, and a sneaking admiration for, the aristocrat's point of view, and, being a practical man, evaded a discussion on the ethics of the situation.
The situation was rendered more extraordinary because the Liberal candidate made no appearance in the const.i.tuency. Paul inquired anxiously. No one had seen him. After lunch he drove alone to his father's house. The parlour-maid showed him into the hideously furnished and daub-hung dining-room. The Viennese horrors of plaster stags, gnomes and rabbits stared fatuously on the hearth. No fire was in the grate. Very soon Jane entered, tidy, almost matronly in buxom primness, her hair as faultless as if it had come out of a convoluted mould, her grave eyes full of light. She gave him her capable hand.
”It's like you to come, Paul.”
”It's only decent. My father hasn't shown up. What's the matter with him?”
”It's a bit of a nervous breakdown,” she said, looking at him steadily.
”Nothing serious. But the doctor--I sent for him--says he had better rest--and his committee people thought it wiser for him not to show himself.”
”Can I see him?”
”Certainly not.” A look of alarm came into her face. ”You're both too excited. What would you say to him?”
”I'd tell him what I feel about the whole matter.”
”Yes. You would fling your arms about, and he would talk about G.o.d, and a precious lot of good it would do to anybody. No, thank you. I'm in charge of Mr. Finn's health.”
It was the old Jane, so familiar. ”I wish,” said he, with a smile--”I wish I had had your common sense to guide me all these years.”
”If you had, you would now be a clerk in the City earning thirty s.h.i.+llings a week.”
”And perhaps a happier man.”
”Bosh, my dear Paul!” she said, shaking her head slowly. ”Rot! Rubbis.h.!.+
I know you too well. You adding up figures at thirty s.h.i.+llings a week, with a common sense wife for I suppose you mean that--mending your socks and rocking the cradle in a second-floor back in Hickney Heath!
No, my dear”--she paused for a second or two and her lips twitched oddly--”common sense would have been the death of you.”
He laughed in spite of himself. It was so true.
Common sense might have screwed him to a thirty s.h.i.+llings-a-week desk: the fantastic had brought him to that very house, a candidate for Parliament, in a thousand-guinea motor car. On the other hand--and his laughter faded from his eyes--the fantastic in his life was dead.
Henceforward common sense would hold him in her cold and unstimulating clasp. He said something of the sort to Jane. Once more she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed ”Rot, rubbish and bos.h.!.+” and they quarrelled as they had done in their childhood.
”You talk as if I didn't know you inside out, my dear Paul,” she said in her clear, unsmiling way. ”Listen. All men are donkeys, aren't they?”
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