All Roads Lead to Calvary Part 16

The Greysons lived in a small house squeezed into an angle of the Outer Circle, overlooking Regent's Park. It was charmingly furnished, chiefly with old Chippendale. The drawing-room made quite a picture. It was home-like and restful with its faded colouring, and absence of all show and overcrowding. They sat there after dinner and discussed Joan's news.

Miss Greyson was repairing a piece of old embroidery she had brought back with her from Italy; and Greyson sat smoking, with his hands behind his head, and his long legs stretched out towards the fire.

"Carleton will want him to make his food policy include Tariff Reform,"

he said. "If he prove pliable, and is willing to throw over his free trade principles, all well and good."

"What's Carleton got to do with it?" demanded Joan with a note of indignation.

He turned his head towards her with an amused raising of the eyebrows.

"Carleton owns two London dailies," he answered, "and is in treaty for a third: together with a dozen others scattered about the provinces. Most politicians find themselves, sooner or later, convinced by his arguments.

Phillips may prove the exception."

"It would be rather interesting, a fight between them," said Joan.

"Myself I should back Phillips."

"He might win through," mused Greyson. "He's the man to do it, if anybody could. But the odds will be against him."

"I don't see it," said Joan, with decision.

"I'm afraid you haven't yet grasped the power of the Press," he answered with a smile. "Phillips speaks occasionally to five thousand people.

Carleton addresses every day a circle of five million readers."

"Yes, but when Phillips does speak, he speaks to the whole country,"

retorted Joan.

"Through the medium of Carleton and his like; and just so far as they allow his influence to permeate beyond the platform," answered Greyson.

"But they report his speeches. They are bound to," explained Joan.

"It doesn't read quite the same," he answered. "Phillips goes home under the impression that he has made a great success and has roused the country. He and millions of other readers learn from the next morning's headlines that it was 'A Tame Speech' that he made. What sounded to him 'Loud Cheers' have sunk to mild 'Hear, Hears.' That five minutes'

hurricane of applause, during which wildly excited men and women leapt upon the benches and roared themselves hoa.r.s.e, and which he felt had settled the whole question, he searches for in vain. A few silly interjections, probably pre-arranged by Carleton's young lions, become 'renewed interruptions.' The report is strictly truthful; but the impression produced is that Robert Phillips has failed to carry even his own people with him. And then follow leaders in fourteen widely-circulated Dailies, stretching from the Clyde to the Severn, foretelling how Mr. Robert Phillips could regain his waning popularity by the simple process of adopting Tariff Reform: or whatever the pet panacea of Carleton and Co. may, at the moment, happen to be."

"Don't make us out all alike," pleaded his sister with a laugh. "There are still a few old-fas.h.i.+oned papers that do give their opponents fair play."

"They are not increasing in numbers," he answered, "and the Carleton group is. There is no reason why in another ten years he should not control the entire popular press of the country. He's got the genius and he's got the means."

"The cleverest thing he has done," he continued, turning to Joan, "is your _Sunday Post_. Up till then, the working cla.s.ses had escaped him.

With the _Sunday Post_, he has solved the problem. They open their mouths; and he gives them their politics wrapped up in pictures and gossipy pars."

Miss Greyson rose and put away her embroidery. "But what's his object?"

she said. "He must have more money than he can spend; and he works like a horse. I could understand it, if he had any beliefs."

"Oh, we can all persuade ourselves that we are the Heaven-ordained dictator of the human race," he answered. "Love of power is at the bottom of it. Why do our Rockefellers and our Carnegies condemn themselves to the existence of galley slaves, ruining their digestions so that they never can enjoy a square meal. It isn't the money; it's the trouble of their lives how to get rid of that. It is the notoriety, the power that they are out for. In Carleton's case, it is to feel himself the power behind the throne; to know that he can make and unmake statesmen; has the keys of peace and war in his pocket; is able to exclaim: Public opinion? It is I."

"It can be a respectable ambition," suggested Joan.

"It has been responsible for most of man's miseries," he answered. "Every world's conqueror meant to make it happy after he had finished knocking it about. We are all born with it, thanks to the devil." He s.h.i.+fted his position and regarded her with critical eyes. "You've got it badly," he said. "I can see it in the tilt of your chin and the quivering of your nostrils. You beware of it."

Miss Greyson left them. She had to finish an article. They debated "Clorinda's" views; and agreed that, as a practical housekeeper, she would welcome attention being given to the question of the nation's food.

The _Evening Gazette_ would support Phillips in principle, while reserving to itself the right of criticism when it came to details.

"What's he like in himself?" he asked her. "You've been seeing something of him, haven't you?"

"Oh, a little," she answered. "He's absolutely sincere; and he means business. He won't stop at the bottom of the ladder now he's once got his foot upon it."

"But he's quite common, isn't he?" he asked again. "I've only met him in public."

"No, that's precisely what he isn't," answered Joan. "You feel that he belongs to no cla.s.s, but his own. The cla.s.s of the Abraham Lincolns, and the Dantons."

"England's a different proposition," he mused. "Society counts for so much with us. I doubt if we should accept even an Abraham Lincoln: unless in some supreme crisis. His wife rather handicaps him, too, doesn't she?"

"She wasn't born to be the chatelaine of Downing Street," Joan admitted.

"But it's not an official position."

"I'm not so sure that it isn't," he laughed. "It's the dinner-table that rules in England. We settle everything round a dinner-table."

She was sitting in front of the fire in a high-backed chair. She never cared to loll, and the shaded light from the electric sconces upon the mantelpiece illumined her.

"If the world were properly stage-managed, that's what you ought to be,"

he said, "the wife of a Prime Minister. I can see you giving such an excellent performance."

"I must talk to Mary," he added, "see if we can't get you off on some promising young Under Secretary."

"Don't give me ideas above my station," laughed Joan. "I'm a journalist."

"That's the pity of it," he said. "You're wasting the most important thing about you, your personality. You would do more good in a drawing- room, influencing the rulers, than you will ever do hiding behind a pen.

It was the drawing-room that made the French Revolution."

The firelight played about her hair. "I suppose every woman dreams of reviving the old French Salon," she answered. "They must have been gloriously interesting." He was leaning forward with clasped hands. "Why shouldn't she?" he said. "The reason that our drawing-rooms have ceased to lead is that our beautiful women are generally frivolous and our clever women unfeminine. What we are waiting for is an English Madame Roland."

Joan laughed. "Perhaps I shall some day," she answered.

He insisted on seeing her as far as the bus. It was a soft, mild night; and they walked round the Circle to Gloucester Gate. He thought there would be more room in the buses at that point.

"I wish you would come oftener," he said. "Mary has taken such a liking to you. If you care to meet people, we can always whip up somebody of interest."

She promised that she would. She always felt curiously at home with the Greysons.

They were pa.s.sing the long sweep of Chester Terrace. "I like this neighbourhood with its early Victorian atmosphere," she said. "It always makes me feel quiet and good. I don't know why."

"I like the houses, too," he said. "There's a character about them. You don't often find such fine drawing-rooms in London."

"Don't forget your promise," he reminded her, when they parted. "I shall tell Mary she may write to you."

She met Carleton by chance a day or two later, as she was entering the office. "I want to see you," he said; and took her up with him into his room.

"We must stir the people up about this food business," he said, plunging at once into his subject. "Phillips is quite right. It overshadows everything. We must make the country self-supporting. It can be done and must. If a war were to be sprung upon us we could be starved out in a month. Our navy, in face of these new submarines, is no longer able to secure us. France is working day and night upon them. It may be a bogey, or it may not. If it isn't, she would have us at her mercy; and it's too big a risk to run. You live in the same house with him, don't you? Do you often see him?"

"Not often," she answered.