第78章 THE FOURTH(5)

"After all," I told myself, "if one wants to get to Westminster one must follow the road that leads there," but I found the road nevertheless rather unexpectedly distasteful."When one gets there," I said, "then it is one begins."But I would lie awake at nights with that sore throat and headache and fatigue which come from speaking in ill-ventilated rooms, and wondering how far it was possible to educate a whole people to great political ideals.Why should political work always rot down to personalities and personal appeals in this way? Life is, I suppose, to begin with and end with a matter of personalities, from personalities all our broader interests arise and to personalities they return.All our social and political effort, all of it, is like trying to make a crowd of people fall into formation.The broader lines appear, but then come a rush and excitement and irrelevancy, and forthwith the incipient order has vanished and the marshals must begin the work over again!

My memory of all that time is essentially confusion.There was a frightful lot of tiresome locomotion in it; for the Kinghamstead Division is extensive, abounding in ill-graded and badly metalled cross-roads and vicious little hills, and singularly unpleasing to the eye in a muddy winter.It is sufficiently near to London to have undergone the same process of ill-regulated expansion that made Bromstead the place it is.Several of its overgrown villages have developed strings of factories and sidings along the railway lines, and there is an abundance of petty villas.There seemed to be no place at which one could take hold of more than this or that element of the population.Now we met in a meeting-house, now in a Masonic Hall or Drill Hall; I also did a certain amount of open-air speaking in the dinner hour outside gas-works and groups of factories.Some special sort of people was, as it were, secreted in response to each special appeal.One said things carefully adjusted to the distinctive limitations of each gathering.Jokes of an incredible silliness and shallowness drifted about us.Our advisers made us declare that if we were elected we would live in the district, and one hasty agent had bills printed, "If Mr.Remington is elected he will live here." The enemy obtained a number of these bills and stuck them on outhouses, pigstyes, dog-kennels; you cannot imagine how irksome the repetition of that jest became.The vast drifting indifference in between my meetings impressed me more and more.Irealised the vagueness of my own plans as I had never done before Ibrought them to the test of this experience.I was perplexed by the riddle of just how far I was, in any sense of the word, taking hold at all, how far I wasn't myself flowing into an accepted groove.

Margaret was troubled by no such doubts.She was clear I had to go into Parliament on the side of Liberalism and the light, as against the late Government and darkness.Essential to the memory of my first contest, is the memory of her clear bright face, very resolute and grave, helping me consciously, steadfastly, with all her strength.Her quiet confidence, while I was so dissatisfied, worked curiously towards the alienation of my sympathies.I felt she had no business to be so sure of me.I had moments of vivid resentment at being thus marched towards Parliament.

I seemed now always to be discovering alien forces of character in her.Her way of taking life diverged from me more and more.She sounded amazing, independent notes.She bought some particularly costly furs for the campaign that roused enthusiasm whenever she appeared.She also made me a birthday present in November of a heavily fur-trimmed coat and this she would make me remove as I went on to the platform, and hold over her arm until I was ready to resume it.It was fearfully heavy for her and she liked it to be heavy for her.That act of servitude was in essence a towering self-assertion.I would glance sideways while some chairman floundered through his introduction and see the clear blue eye with which she regarded the audience, which existed so far as she was concerned merely to return me to Parliament.It was a friendly eye, provided they were not silly or troublesome.But it kindled a little at the hint of a hostile question.After we had come so far and taken so much trouble!

She constituted herself the dragoman of our political travels.In hotels she was serenely resolute for the quietest and the best, she rejected all their proposals for meals and substituted a severely nourishing dietary of her own, and even in private houses she astonished me by her tranquil insistence upon special comforts and sustenance.I can see her face now as it would confront a hostess, a little intent, but sweetly resolute and assured.

Since our marriage she had read a number of political memoirs, and she had been particularly impressed by the career of Mrs.Gladstone.

I don't think it occurred to her to compare and contrast my quality with that of Mrs.Gladstone's husband.I suspect her of a deliberate intention of achieving parallel results by parallel methods.I was to be Gladstonised.Gladstone it appeared used to lubricate his speeches with a mixture--if my memory serves me right--of egg beaten up in sherry, and Margaret was very anxious I should take a leaf from that celebrated book.She wanted, I know, to hold the glass in her hand while I was speaking.

But here I was firm."No," I said, very decisively, "simply I won't stand that.It's a matter of conscience.I shouldn't feel--democratic.I'll take my chance of the common water in the carafe on the chairman's table.""I DO wish you wouldn't," she said, distressed.