Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (503 page)

Mr. Blood said: “My God!” But the Chancellor, who was no particular hand at understanding personalities, was getting into his stride.

“If you could just do it,” he said, “you might become an influence. There are such things as influences — hidden forces. You see, young Debenham. He’s quite unformed. But one might do something if the ideas were put into his head — the words into his mouth.”

“You mean,” Mr. Blood asked, “that you might find him a useful minister — that sort of chap — or even figurehead, if you could work some of the leading ideas into him.”

The minister said:

“Yes, yes, that’s what I mean! I hope I can count on your co-operation?”

“I don’t think you can, you know,” Mr. Blood said. “It’s not exactly my job.”

The Chancellor gave a slight, new shudder of pain.

“My knee’s really very painful,” he said. And then he added: “I’ve got to speak in ten minutes. We’re getting through the Home Office vote. I must really see a doctor. Who’s a good man? Croswood? Spiers? But you just think of what I have been saying. You’ll see it’s overwhelming truth — that what we want is enthusiasm — if you reflect.” And he hobbled rather awkwardly from the room.

Mr. Blood walked obligingly beside him down the slippery marble steps into the hall. He was afraid that the Chancellor might fall down, but that distinguished statesman managed without accident to hobble into the hall, and at the same moment Mr. Blood perceived Mr. Debenham entering from the street. The Chancellor hooked his hand into the arm of one of the porters. He nodded, still amiably, to Mr. Blood, and remarked:

“You’ll remember to give your brother my message?” and was conducted by the porter into his waiting cab.

Mr. Debenham approached Mr. Blood.

“Well, he’s a gallant spirit!” Mr. Blood ejaculated, with his eyes upon the Chancellor’s back. “Do you mind coming upstairs with me and talking to a man called Garstein.”

“Garstein!” Mr. Debenham exclaimed. “Good God!”

“Well,” Mr. Blood answered amiably, “you didn’t expect the other side to be long after you, with the Byefleet election coming on and all?”

Again Mr. Debenham said “Good God!” He appeared to grow exceedingly excited. “We can’t talk about that here,” he said. “Not in the hall with all these people about. Just come in here a minute. I daresay you don’t know how important secrecy is at this moment.”

Mr. Blood followed him, though he remarked as he did so:

“I don’t like this lobbying, you know. The Chancellor’s pulled me in here; now it’s you! And there’s that fellow upstairs. I’m not used to your House of Commons manners. I like sitting in a chair and talking, not standing in a draught and whispering.”

They were by that time actually standing in the doorway of the reading room, and Mr. Debenham was preparing to whisper.

“You’ve got to keep that secret,” he said, “you’ve got to!”

“I’ve got to do nothing of the sort,” Mr. Blood said; “and I am not going to.”

“You got it out of the Chancellor in confidence,” Mr. Debenham said. “I only told it him this afternoon myself. I suppose I oughtn’t to have. But, hang it! if a whip can’t tell the Chancellor of the Exchequer things—”

“He’s a most dangerous enthusiast,” Mr. Blood said. “You can’t afford to tell him anything. But, as a matter of fact, he didn’t tell me. I wouldn’t let him; I knew it before. Redmaynes are down to thirty-two and a quarter. Don’t you see that that’s enough to make any man of ordinary intelligence know that Cronk would have to bolt?”

Mr. Debenham glanced round the reading room. The room was completely empty in a dim light reflected from the backs of books. He let himself go, exclaiming in quite a loud voice:

“Oh, I say! But, hang it all! what a confounded mess! There’s the Byefleet cat out of the bag; there’s the Opposition on to you. What’s to be done? What on earth’s to be done?”

Mr. Blood said soothingly:

“My good man, the Chancellor was just telling me that he’d marked you out for promotion on condition that you sat at my feet and took my advice.”

“Oh, that’s likely!” Mr. Debenham groaned; “but then, what are you doing? You’re on our side, aren’t you? What’s it all about?”

“What it’s all about,” Mr. Blood said, “works out at this. The Chancellor really seems to regard you as a possible Prime Minister in years to come — a sort of dummy figure that he’d pull the strings of.”

“But what’s all this got to do with Byefleet?” Mr. Debenham mumbled.

“Just this,” Mr. Blood answered: “I’ve got a Jew — a perfectly honest Jew of about your age and weight and intelligence. And I want to run him for that particular office of profit and emolument under the Crown. The Chancellor bulks too largely in your party to give my Jew a show there. They couldn’t run together.

The Chancellor’s old-fashioned with his enthusiasms. As old-fashioned as you. Perfectly honest and perfectly decent, but quite hopeless. A doomed type. You’ve got to go, you fellows. That’s why my Jew will be putting up as Opposition candidate for Byefleet to-morrow.”

“Oh, but I say!” Mr. Debenham ejaculated once more. “I don’t understand what you mean. I thought you belonged to our party. I don’t understand what it all means.”

“Let’s sit down,” Mr. Blood answered. And, walking towards an enormous card bearing the word “Silence” that was hung round a marble column, he sat down beneath it in an arm-chair, that permitted him to have a view of the stairs through the open door. Mr. Debenham sat down in the armchair beside him.

“The real trouble is,” Mr. Blood said, “that you’re too honest. I don’t much care which side my chap goes up on. Both parties of you are such a painful lot of cadgers that no decent man could possibly subscribe to either of your programmes. So it doesn’t matter one bean which of you my chap favours. The only trouble is that your side have sent you to me, and you’re a decent person. The other side have sent this Garstein, and he’s a swine!”

“But I don’t understand,” Mr. Debenham said. “You don’t want to do business with a swine.”

“I just do,” Mr. Blood said, “because he’ll give me the sort of bargain that I want. You wouldn’t let my man, in return for a decent sum of money, put up as your candidate, and then vote against you whenever he didn’t like your measures?”

“I certainly shouldn’t,” Mr. Debenham said. “It has been done by our party, and some of us favour its being done now. But it’s a beastly sort of trick. Either a man is a straight-forward, thick-and-thin supporter of democratic ideas, or he isn’t. If he isn’t we don’t want him.”

“Then you don’t want Mr. Fleight,” Mr. Blood said. “I respect you for it morally, but you simply can’t do with him.”

“You couldn’t,” Mr. Debenham almost pleaded, “let him be a straight party man for just one Parliament — until he became acquainted with the real state of public affairs? We’d let him in on those conditions. If he chose to go against us after that, we shouldn’t grumble. We are not so hard and fast, not so unreasonable.”

“It can’t be done,” Mr. Blood answered; “you forget that my man is perfectly honest, and we’ve got quite strong views between us. On certain questions he couldn’t vote with you without being a cad. And my man isn’t going to be a cad once in his existence — that’s what it comes to.”

Mr. Debenham got up. His face was quite hard and rather disagreeable.

“Then it
isn’t
any good!” he exclaimed. “I’m not going to do anything to endanger party discipline. We’ve got to be absolutely compact. Like a regiment of soldiers.

“By Jove!” Mr. Blood said, “how you have caught the Chancellor’s contagion! You’re speaking like him, and you’re doing your very best to look like him.”

“That’s because he’s perfectly right,” Mr. Debenham said. “I’ve had my doubts about him; but when I hear cynicism like yours it makes me feel that he is, by comparison, a man to lay down one’s life for.”

Mr. Blood suddenly laughed quite brilliantly.

“Well, you
have
caught it!” he said.

“I can’t stand cynicism,” Mr. Debenham answered. “Intolerance is all right by comparison.”

Mr. Blood exclaimed:

“Wait a minute!” and suddenly got quite quickly out of his chair. He moved across the dim room at a rapid pace towards the brilliantly-lit staircase which the fat, black form of Mr. Garstein could be seen to be descending. He looked like a pig shuffling down erect, and his face of a New York Tammany boss was distorted with rage. The Opposition had indeed imported him from Philadelphia to work up their organisation under the nominal supervision of a sleepy lieutenant-colonel, the most intimate friend of the Leader of the Opposition. His fat cheeks quivered with fury when Mr. Blood approached him on the broad, white marble of the steps.

“Here I say!” he exclaimed, “what the hell do you mean? What do you think you are, to keep me waiting like this?”

Mr. Blood said:

“You’re a tradesman. You’ve got something to sell. I was getting my candidate for you. The Byefleet division will be in the market to-morrow and I command the candidate worth twenty millions. Remember that, and remember your place, too.”

Mr. Garstein paused with his hand on the polished marble balustrade:

“What’s that?” he asked. “Byefleet? To-morrow? I say! But you couldn’t expect me not to get into a temper at your keeping me waiting so long.”

“You couldn’t expect me,” Mr. Blood said, “to turn the world upside down for your benefit without keeping you waiting ten minutes. You’d better come in here.”

Mr. Garstein followed Mr. Blood into the reading room. He was wheezing slightly, but he contrived to bring out the words:

“That’s all right! That’s all right!”

Three-quarters of an hour later Mr. Garstein, with an expression on his face resembling that of a wholesale hog-merchant who has just satisfactorily concluded a substantial deal in pork, was buttoning a cheque into the left-hand pocket of his top-coat. He went away down the brightly-lit marble staircase. Mr. Fleight was looking gloomily at the blotting-paper on a table at which he sat. The cheque book which he had just used still lay open before him.

“So now,” Mr. Blood said, “you’re the official Opposition candidate for Byefleet in Kent. You’ll have to come down with me to Corbury to-morrow morning, or better still, to-night. I suppose you can get your things ready?”

“I suppose I can,” Mr. Fleight said gloomily. “I’ve got sets of things already packed for when I want to travel.”

“We’d better go in your car,” Mr. Blood said; “it’s probably quicker than mine. You Jews always manage to have the fastest cars in the country. And we’d better get to bed as early as we can so as to start work fresh to-morrow. You’ll have a tremendous lot to do.”

Mr. Fleight said:

“I suppose I shall.” And his expression was so depressed that he seemed to be on the point of tears.

“It was rather interesting what that fellow said,” Mr. Blood went on, “about an uncertain member’s being of more value to the Opposition than to the Government.”

“I daresay it was,” Mr. Fleight said. “I’m afraid I wasn’t listening.”

“I don’t know why you should listen if you don’t want to,” Mr. Blood replied. “But what it amounted to was this: A Government has to have a solid vote that it can rely on, just because one snap division may turn them out. So they can’t afford to have wobblers. But when it comes to the Opposition they don’t care how often you vote for the Government as long as you can be trusted to vote for them every now and then in a snap division. You don’t appear to be listening to me, either.”

Mr. Fleight continued to say nothing at all. And then Mr. Blood addressed him, not at all unkindly:

“My good chap, she won’t cut her throat; you needn’t have the least fear of it.”