CHAPTER XX
HICKNEY HEATH blazed with excitement. It is not every day that a
thrill runs through a dull London borough, not even every election
day. For a London borough, unlike a country town, has very little
corporate life of its own. You cannot get up as much enthusiasm for
Kilburn, say, as a social or historical entity, as you can for
Winchester or Canterbury. You may perform civic duties, if you are
public-spirited enough, with business-like zeal, and if you are
borough councillor you may be proud of the nice new public baths
which you have been instrumental in presenting to the community. But
the ordinary man in the street no more cares for Kilburn than he
does for Highgate. He would move from one to the other without a
pang. For neither's glory would he shed a drop of his blood. Only at
election times does it occur to him that he is one of a special
brotherhood, isolated from the rest of London; and even then he
regards the constituency as a convention defining. geographical
limits for the momentary range of his political passions. So that
the day when an electric thrill ran through the whole of Hickney
Heath was a rare one in its uninspiring annals.
The dramatic had happened, touching the most sluggish imaginations.
The Liberal candidate for Parliament, a respected Borough
Councillor, a notorious Evangelical preacher, had publicly confessed
himself an ex-convict. Every newspaper in London--and for the
matter of that, every newspaper in Great Britain--rang with the
story, and every man, woman and child in Hickney Heath read
feverishly every newspaper, morning and evening, they could lay
their hands on. Also, every man, woman and child in Hickney Heath
asked his neighbour for further details. All who could leave desk
and shop or factory poured into the streets to learn the latest,
tidings. Around the various polling stations the crowd was thickest.
Those electors who had been present at Silas Finn's meeting, the
night before, told the story at first-hand to eager groups. Rumours
of every sort spread through the mob. The man who had put the famous
question was an agent of the Tories. It was a smart party move.
Silas Finn had all the time been leading a double life. Depravities
without number were laid to his charge. Even now the police were
inquiring into his connection with certain burglaries that had taken
place in the neighbourhood. And where was he that day? Who had seen
him? He was at home drunk. He had committed suicide. Even if he
hadn't, and was elected, he would not be allowed to take his seat in
Parliament.
On the other hand, those in whose Radical bosoms burned fierce
hatred for the Tories, spoke loud in condemnation of their cowardly
tactics. There was considerable free-fighting in the ordinarily
dismal and decorous streets of Hickney Heath. Noisy acclamations
hailed the automobiles, carriages and waggonettes bringing voters of
both parties to the polls. Paul, driving in his gaily-decked car
about the constituency, shared all these demonstrations and heard
these rumours. The latter he denied and caused to be denied, as far
as lay in his power. In the broad High Street, thronged with folk,
and dissonant with tram cars and motor 'buses, he came upon a
quarrelsome crowd looking up at a window above a poulterer's shop,
from which hung something white, like a strip of wall paper.
Approaching, he perceived that it bore a crude drawing of a convict
and "Good old Dartmoor" for legend. White with anger, he stopped the
car, leaped out on to the curb, and pushing his way through the
crowd, entered the shop. He seized one of the white-coated
assistants by the arm. "Show me the way to that first-floor room,"
he cried fiercely.
The assistant, half-dragged, half-leading, and wholly astonished,
took him through the shop and pointed to the staircase. Paul sprang
up and dashed through the door into the room, which appeared to be
some business office. Three or four young men, who turned grinning
from the window, be thrust aside, and plucking the offending strip
from the drawing-pins which secured it to the sill, he tore it
across and across.
"You cads! You brutes!" he shouted, trampling on the fragments.
"Can't you fight like Englishmen?"
The young men, realizing the identity 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 passionately to Wilson, who was with
him. "I hope to God he wins in spite, of it!"
"What about the party?" asked Wilson.
Paul damned the party. He was in the overwrought mood in which a man
damns 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 gods in
their mirth would see to that--a puppet in Frank Ayres' hands
until the next general election, when be 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
Classes to which lower middle-class 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 constituency. 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 God,
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
shillings a week."
"And perhaps a happier man."
"Bosh, my dear Paul!" she said, shaking her head slowly. "Rot!
Rubbish! I know you too well. You adding up figures at thirty
shillings 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 shillings-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 ejaculated "Rot, rubbish and bosh!" 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?"
"For the sake of argument, I agree."
"Well--there are two kinds of donkeys. One kind is meek and mild
and will go wherever it is driven. The other, in order to get along,
must always have a bunch of carrots dangling before its eyes. That's
you."
"But confound it all!" he cried, "I've lost my carrots--can't you
see? I'll never have any carrots again. That's the whole damned
tragedy."
For the first time she smiled--the smile of the woman wiser in
certain subtle things than the man. "my dear," she said, "carrots
are cheap." She paused for an instant and added, "Thank God!"
Paul squeezed her arms affectionately and they moved apart. He
sighed. "They're the most precious things in the world," said he.
"The most precious things in the world are those which you can get
for nothing," said Jane.
"You're a dear," said he, "and a comfort."
Presently he left her and returned to his weary round of the
constituency, feeling of stouter heart, with a greater faith in the
decent ordering of mundane things. .A world containing such women as
Jane and Ursula Winwood possessed elements of sanity. Outside one of
the polling stations he found Barney Bill holding forth excitedly to
a knot of working-men. He ceased as the car drove up, and cast back
a broad proud smile at the candidate's warm greeting.
"I got up the old 'bus so nice and proper, with all your colours and
posters, and it would have been a spectacular Diorama for these 'ere
poor people; but you know for why I didn't bring it out to-day,
don't you, sonny?"
"I know, dear old friend," said Paul.
"I 'adn't the 'cart to."
"What were you speechifying about when I turned up?"
Barney Bill jerked a backward thumb. "I was telling this pack of
cowardly Radicals that though I've been a Tory born and bred for
sixty odd years, and though I've voted for you, Silas Finn, for all
he was in prison while most of them were sucking wickedness and
Radicalism out of Nature's founts, is just as good a man as what you
are. They was saying, yer see, they was Radicals, but on account of
Silas being blown upon, they was going to vote for you. So I tells
'em, I says, 'Mr. Savelli would scorn your dirty votes. If yer feel
low and Radical, vote Radical. Mr. Savelli wants to play fair. I
know both of 'em,' I says, 'both of 'em intimately.' And they begins
to laugh, as if I was talking through my hat. Anyway, they see now I
know you, sonny."
Paul laughed and clapped the loyal old man on the shoulder. Then he
turned to the silent but interested group. "Gentlemen," said he, "I
don't want to inquire on which side you are; but you can take it
from me that whatever my old friend Mr. Simmons says about Mr. Finn
and myself is the absolute truth. If you're on Mr. Finn's side in
politics, in God's name vote for him. He's a noble, high-souled man
and I'm proud of his private friendship."
He drew Barney Bill apart. "You're the only Tory in the place who
can try to persuade people not to vote for me. I wish you would keep
on doing it."
"I've been a-doing of it ever since the polls opened this morning,"
said Barney Bill. Then he cocked his head on one side and his little
eyes twinkled: "It's an upside-down way of fighting an election to
persuade people not to vote for you, isn't it?"
"Everything is topsy-turvy with me, these days," Paul replied: "so
we've just got to stand on our heads and make the best of it."
And he drove off in the gathering dusk.
Night found him in the great chamber of the Town Hall, with his
agent and members of his committee. Present too were the Liberal
Agent and the members of the Liberal Committee. At one end of the
room sat the Mayor of the Borough in robe and chain of office,
presiding over the proceedings. The Returning Officer and his staff
sat behind long tables, on which were deposited the sealed ballot
boxes brought in from the various polling stations; and these were
emptied and the votes were counted, the voting papers for each
candidate being done up in bundles of fifty. Knots of committee-men
of both parties stood chatting in low voices. In an ordinary
election both candidates would have chatted together, in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred about golf, and would have made an engagement
to meet again in milder conflict that day week. But here Paul was
the only candidate to appear, and he sat in a cane-bottomed chair
apart from the lounging politicians, feeling curiously an interloper
in this vast, solemn and scantily-filled hall. He was very tired,
too tired in body, mind and soul to join in the small-talk of Wilson
and his bodyguard. Besides, they all wore the air of anticipated
victory, and for that he held them in detestation. He had detested
them the whole day long. The faces that yesterday had been long and
anxious to-day had been wreathed in smirks. Wherever he had gone he
had found promise of victory in his father's disgrace. Passionately
the young man, fronting vital issues, longed for his own defeat.
But for the ironical interposition of the high gods, it might have
been so different. Any other candidate against him, he himself
buoyed up with his own old glorious faith, his Princess, dazzling
meteor illuminating the murky streets--dear God! what would not
have been the joy of battle during the past week, what would not
have been the intense thrill, the living of a thousand lives in
these few hours of suspense now so dull with dreariness and pain! He
sat apart, his legs crossed, a hand over his eyes. Wilson and his
men, puzzled by his apparent apathy, left him alone. It is not much
use addressing a mute and wooden idol, no matter how physically
prepossessing.
The counting went on slowly, relentlessly, and the bundles of fifty
on each side grew in bulk, and Paul's side bulked larger than Silas
Finn's.
At last Wilson could stand it no longer. He left the group with
which he was talking, and came to Paul. "We're far ahead already,"
he cried excitedly. "I told you last night would do the trick."
"Last night," said Paul, rising and stuffing his hands in his jacket
pockets, "my opponent's supporters passed a vote of confidence in
him in a scene of tumultuous enthusiasm."
"Quite so," replied Wilson. "A crowd is generous and easily swayed.
A theatrical audience of scalliwags and thieves will howl applause
at the triumph of virtue and the downfall of the villain; and each
separate member will go out into the street and begin to practise
villainy and say 'to hell with virtue.' If last night's meeting
could have polled on the spot, they would have been as one man.
To-day they're scattered and each individual revises his excited
opinion. Your hard-bitten Radical would sooner have a self-made man
than an aristocrat to represent him in Parliament; but, damn it all,
he'd sooner have an aristocrat than an ex-convict."
"But who the devil told you I'm an aristocrat?" cried Paul.
Wilson laughed. "Who wants to be told such an obvious thing? Anyhow,
you've only got to look and you'll see how the votes are piling
tip."
Paul looked and saw that Wilson spoke truly. Then he reflected that
Wilson and the others who had worked so strenuously for him had no
part in his own personal depression. They deserved a manifestation
of interest, also expressions of gratitude. So Paul pulled himself
together and went amongst them and was responsive to their
prophecies of victory.
Then just as the last votes were being counted, an official
attendant came in with a letter for Paul. It had been brought by
messenger. The writing on the envelope was Jane's. He tore it open
and read.
Mr. Finn is dying. He has had a stroke. The doctor says he can't
live through the night. Come as soon as you can. JANE.
Outside the Town Hall the wide street was packed with people. Men
surged tip to the hollow square of police guarding the approach to
the flight of steps and the great entrance door. Men swarmed about
the electric standards above the heads of their fellows. Men rose in
a long tier with their backs to the shop-fronts on the opposite side
of the road. In spite of the raw night the windows were open and the
arc lights revealed a ghostly array of faces looking down on the
mass below, whose faces in their turn were lit up by the more yellow
glare streaming from the doors and uncurtained windows of the Town
Hall. In the lobby behind the glass doors could be seen a few
figures going and coming, committee-men, journalists, officials. A
fine rain began to fall, but the crowd did not heed it. The
mackintosh capes of the policemen glistened. It was an orderly
crowd, held together by tense excitement: all eyes fixed on the
silent illuminated building whence the news would come. Across one
window on the second floor was a large white patch, blank and
sphinx-like. At right angles to one end of the block ran the High
Street and the tall, blazing trams passed up and down and all eyes
in the trams strained for a transient glimpse of the patch, hoping
that it would flare out into message.
Presently a man was seen to dash from the interior of the hall into
the lobby, casting words at the waiting figures, who clamoured
eagerly and disappeared within, just as the man broke through the
folding doors and appeared at the top of the steps beneath the
portico. The great crowd surged and groaned, and the word was
quickly passed from rank to rank.
"Savelli. Thirteen hundred and seventy majority." And then there
burst out wild cheers and the crowd broke into a myriad little waves
like a choppy sea. Men danced and shouted and clapped each other on
the back, and the tall facade of the street opposite the hall was
a-flutter. Suddenly the white patch leaped into an illumination
proclaiming the figures.
Savelli--6,135.
Finn--4,765.
Again the wild cheering rose, and then the great double windows in
the centre of the first floor of the Town Hall were flung open and
Paul, surrounded by the mayor and officials, appeared.
Paul gripped the iron hand-rail and looked down upon the tumultuous
scene, his ears deafened by the roar, his eyes dazed by the
conflicting lights and the million swift reflections from moving
faces and arms and hats and handkerchiefs. The man is not born who
can receive unmoved a frenzied public ovation. A lump rose in his
throat. After all, this delirium of joy was sincere. He stood for
the moment the idol of the populace. For him this vast concourse of
human beings had waited in rain and mud and now became a deafening,
seething welter of human passion. He gripped the rail tighter and
closed his eyes. He heard as in a dream the voice of the mayor
behind him: "Say a few words. They won't hear you--but that
doesn't matter."
Then Paul drew himself up, facing the whirling scene. He sought in
his pockets and suddenly shot up his hand, holding a letter, and
awaited a lull in the uproar. He was master of himself now. He had
indeed words to say, deliberately prepared, and he knew that if he
could get a hearing he would say them as deliberately. At last came
comparative calm.
"Gentlemen," said he, with a motion of the letter, "my opponent is
dying."
He paused. The words, so unexpected, so strangely different from the
usual exordium, seemed to pass from line to line through the crowd.
"I am speaking in the presence of death," said Paul, and paused
again.
And a hush spread like a long wave across the street, and the
thronged windows, last of all, grew still and silent.
"I will ask you to hear me out, for I have something very grave to
say." And his voice rang loud and clear. "Last night my opponent was
forced to admit that nearly thirty years ago he suffered a term of
penal servitude. The shock, after years of reparation, of spotless
life, spent in the service of God and his fellow-creatures, has
killed him. I desire publicly to proclaim that I, as his opponent,
had no share in the dastardly blow that has struck him down. And I
desire to proclaim the reason. He is my own father; I, Paul Savelli,
am my opponent, Silas Finn's son."
A great gasp and murmur rose from the wonder-stricken throng, but
only momentarily, for the spell of drama was on them. Paul
continued.
"I will make public later on the reasons for our respective changes
of name. For the present it is enough to state the fact of our
relationship and of our mutual affection and respect. That I thank
you for electing me goes without saying; and I will do everything in
my power to advance the great cause you have enabled me to
represent. I regret I cannot address you in another place to-night,
as I had intended. I must ask you of your kindness to let me go
quietly where my duty and my heart call me to my father's
death-bed."
He bowed and waved a dignified gesture of farewell, and turning into
the hall met the assemblage of long, astounded faces. From outside
came the dull rumbling of the dispersing crowd. The mayor, the first
to break the silence, murmured a platitude.
Paul thanked him gravely. Then he went to Wilson. "Forgive me," said
he, "for all that has been amiss with me to-day. It has been a
strain of a very peculiar kind."
"I can well imagine it," said Wilson.
"You see I'm not an aristocrat, after all," said Paul.
Wilson looked the young man in the face and saw the steel beneath
the dark eyes, and the Proud setting of the lips. With a sudden
impulse he wrung his hand. "I don't care a damn!" said he. "You
are."
Paul said, unsmiling: "I can face the music. That's all." He drew a
note from his pocket. "Will you do me a final service? Go round to
the Conservative Club at once, and tell the meeting what has
happened, and give this to Colonel Winwood."
"With pleasure," said Wilson.
Then Paul shook hands with all his fellow-workers and thanked them
in his courtly way, and, pleading for solitude, went through the
door of the great chamber and, guided by an attendant, reached the
exit in a side street where his car awaited him. A large concourse
of people stood drawn up in line on each side of the street,
marshalled by policemen. A familiar crooked figure limped from the
shadow of the door, holding a hard felt hat, his white poll gleaming
in the shaft of light. "God bless you, sonny," he said in a hoarse
whisper.
Paul took the old man by the arm and drew him across the pavement to
the car. "Get in," said he.
Barney Bill hung back. "No, sonny; no."
"It's not the first time we've driven together. Get in. I want you."
So Barney Bill allowed himself to be thrust into the luxurious car,
and Paul followed. And perhaps for the first time in the history of
great elections the successful candidate drove away from the place
where the poll was declared in dead silence, attended only by the
humblest of his constituents. But every man in the throng bared his
head.
