Corruption; a novel

Chapter I

The hot August morning was cool and pleasant in Paul Carew’s chambers, high up in a great red block in Piccadilly, overlooking the trees of the Green Park.

' Through the open window, at his late breakfast, under the roar of the traffic, he heard the wind moving in the dry leaves.

He knew his speech in the House had been a success, without the approving note of patronage in the papers.

Last night in the lobbies men had gone so far as to declare that it had saved the Labour Bill. A dozen correspondents had sent the statement to the big provincial papers. Whether true or not it was convenient to believe.

The newspapers were gratulatory. His brilliant, handsome personality and his youth pleased the press, the public, and society.

A little sooner than the rest of the world, he had

perceived that the Bill, with its slight and superficial

fiavour of socialism, was generally acceptable to the

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vague gentlemen who boasted of belonging to the “ great party of progress,” whilst it was practically innocuous to the capitalists, at whose influence it theoretically aimed. A complicated measure, safe-guarded by intricate clauses such as the British legislator loves, it had been swallowed by the Labour men in the House, chiefly on the strength of Carew’s persuasive oratory.

“ Take it,” he practically said, “ for what it is worth.” Yet before he had sat down he made its worth seem great.

So they voted for it, although they knew every Trades Union would call the measure “a plausible sham ” when they understood it.

The Opposition speaker sneered. “ So long,” he said, “ as Greville paid his ‘ pledges ’ to the country, he was indifferent as to the value of the counters.”

When Carew had finished breakfast, he lit a cigarette and read the papers. “ Mr. Carew,” said the Times^

“ has advanced to the front rank of debaters and become

*

a power in the House with which no minister can longer afford to trifle.”

The “ no longer ” pleased him. Was it not a broad hint ?

The Standard had no doubt that the Government’s “ rash measure would bring its own punishment on all responsible for its acceptance,” but admitted that “ Mr. Carew’s speech was a notable one,” and added magnanimously, in reference to his “ inexperience,” that “ the man who has made a distinct place for himself in poli-

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tics at thirty, must have a great future before him.” It then explained why his place could never he a great one, but gave the wrong reason.

Carew never thought of the future without deep misgiving.

“ I’m like a fanatic with a hair shirt,” he reflected, “ only I wear mine next my conscience.”

But he was not candid even with himself. The eternal fear of “ being found out ” haunted him. It is a vulgar primitive dread, so he always draped it with the prettiest cloak his brilliant fancy could devise ; whilst in his public speeches, he recognised the truth of the ^schylean doctrine that “ the evil doer must suffer,” he never applied it to himself.

The one successful political free-lance of his day, Carew, by a sort of natural selection, became the pole to which the discontented supporters of the ministry gravitated. Over the Labour men he exercised the fascination of a snake for an honest duck. At once a critic and a supporter of the Government, he shot his arrows into both camps. The range his rhetoric thus acquired saved him from platitudes, and he never spoke to empty benches. Few men had risen so rapidly. The deferential attitude of the Government whips, the anxiety of the Prime Minister to secure his support were intelligible to the meanest intellect that studied the cheap wisdom of the political leader-writer. Poor, extravagant, and in debt, comparative wealth was almost within his grasp, since office, perhaps with a seat in the Cabinet, could not be long delayed.

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Many men, and more women, admired Paul Carew, but no man quite so much as Stephen Muir, the - millionaire brewer, whom the Prime Minister had disappointed of a peerage. Nothing in politics drives a man to revolt so surely as unrealised expectations. Muir had seen a whole awkward squad, not one of whom had served the party half so well, rewarded with seats in the Upper House. That he was only half a mutineer was due to Carew. The evening paper which Muir ran, at a loss of some thousands a year, in the cryptic interests of beer, and the open interests of “Carewism and Progress,” was constantly whining or barking at* the heels of the Government. But Muir had no real political nose, so he borrowed Carew’s infallible scent. Thanks to this alliance, the “ Beer King,” as the temperance orators called him, could kick the Ministry with vigour and skill whenever Carew gave the hint. So the Cornet^ for all practical purposes, became Carew’s organ.

Muir had several substantial reasons besides purely personal ones for adoring Carew, and since he had lent him a thousand pounds, which he knew pretty well the young politician could not pay back, in secret his regard assumed that patronising attitude which is a pleasing compliment to self-esteem.

“ Whatever Carew might be, would not Muir be able to say, ‘ I helped to make him.’ ”

“ If we are ever to have our peerage, my dear,” he said to his wife, “ we shall get it through Paul Carew.”

And as all the women who knew Paul regarded him

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as a political Lancelot without the blemish, Mrs. Muir agreed with her husband, and Miss Muir thought him a hero.

At twelve o’clock Stephen Muir called and interrupted Carew’s pleasant reverie.

“ Congratulations ! my dear Paul,” — ever since he had lent that thousand pounds, Muir had called him by his surname — “ you scored tremendously. I see you’ve read the papers. The Times pats you on the back. It will soon be only ‘ ask and have ! ’ If you’re not Home Secretary in Greville’s next Cabinet, may I be hanged for a revolutionist ! ” Carew smiled.

“ I don’t fly so high. I’ll take what I can get, and be thankful. But this Parliament won’t run two sessions more. Creville’s Prohibition Bill will wreck it, and we shall go out in the cold. Well (if we do), it will only be deferred. ’Twould serve Greville right to be turned out. He’s able, I admit, but has no sense of proportion. He has sold himself to the teetotallers. He fancies an invitation to dinner and ten minutes polite patronage cancel any favour. I shall never forget his last list of birthday honours ! Dissenters, fanatics, or temperance advocates to a man. Not a one amongst ’em for whom the country cares a button.”

“ But does the country ever care a button about politics? We magnify them because we never get far enough away. People are infinitely more interested in cricket matches than Labour bills, and quite right too.’’

“ I’ll tell you what’s the matter,” said Muir, who always rolled back into his grievance like a round stone

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into a hollow ; “ it’s Greville the country are tired of!”

“ I don’t think so. Three-fourths of his programme is popular enough. The papers are misleading. Greville is picturesque, and really has a strong basis of patriotism. He’s ineTectual at times, I grant you, but people never see that. Besides, he has so many chickens to feed, and there isn’t barley enough to go round. They trot after him, clucking all over the place, and don’t add to his dignity.”

It never occurred to Muir that his friend could include him in the brood.

“ What are you going to do, Carew ? ” he asked after a pause. “ Barrett tells me you’ve ‘ paired ’ with him for the few remaining days of the session. Come with us up to Scotland. There is any amount of grouse, my keepers tell me.”

Carew knew what he wanted to do, but whether he did it or not depended on the amount of temptation and the extent of his recklessness.

“ I should like to come up to you a little later in the season,” he said, “ but I can’t fix the date just yet.”

Carew never would fix a date. Destiny, he told himself, did that for him.

“We shall expect to see you,” said Muir, a little disappointed at not catching this difficult guest at once.

The mystery of Carew’s movements provoked curiosity, conjecture, and a suspicion of scandal.

Before Muir left, the post came, bringing a tray full

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of letters. The liandwriting on one made Carew’s heart heat, and he opened it first. It said : “ Well done ! I am proud of you. Come and see me this evening. Throw discretion to the winds, and make me happy for once. There are many things that I wish to say. — Beatrice.”

This was the signal for which he had waited.

Chapter II

English society as it grows older becomes more charitable. Perhaps the extension of good nature may be a sign of decadence as well as of its philosophy. Hitherto the world had let off Paul Carew easily, partly because a certain latitude is conceded to those who claim it, but chiefly because Beatrice Mannering’s airy way of announcing, “ Mr. Carew and I are remotely cousins,” disarmed suspicion. Their relationship, however, was on another footing. Her father had been rector in the west-country parish where Carew’s father had been squire. Agrarian disasters had blotted out the estate whilst Paul was at Oxford, and the rectory had passed into other hands before Beatrice’s marriage. A few scattered farms in the neighbourhood of Beau vis, from which he drew his scanty income, were all that remained of a once-valuable property.

Carew still thought the old rectory garden, with its climbing roses in summer, its gleaming evergreens in

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the mild, moist winters, the pleasantest spot on the earth. Yet Beatrice was the heroine of a poem whose end must be shame and defeat.

When Carew, at the beginning of his political career, first weighed the chances in cold blood, he determined the one passion of his life should not colour his future. But temptation grew with his growing fame, and begot recklessness.

It seemed to him that morning that he had been waiting for Beatrice’s summons for years. She had never thrown the little ballast of make-believe overboard so completely before.

“ Go ! ” thought he, “ of course I’ll go.”

So he went to dine with her partly because the tide swept him there, but chiefly because Mannering was in Norway.

As Beatrice sat in a low chair, with the lamp-light shining on her fair neck and arms, he thought he had never seen any woman so beautiful before.

Her clear smile showed the completeness of the understanding between them.

“ Miss Muir was here to-day,” she said. “ Her father told her you are sure of a place in the new Ministry. I long to see you in office.”

“ Muir is over sanguine. He looks to me to act as a sort of ministerial Nemesis for him some day, and is rather in a hurry for his revenge. The public isn’t used to Carew yet.”

“ But they will be soon.”

“ You exaggerate the importance of a little noto-

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riety,” he answered. “ But it is kind of you to be interested in me.”

“ Kind ! Every one is interested in you. There is scarcely a woman in London who would not envy me because you dined with me to-night.”

“ So they would, if I were the owner of a Derby winner or an envoy from Kegroland. That sort of thing counts for nothing, and only lasts a week or two. The public are always interested in jugglers, no matter what their tools are.”

Their emotions were flowing side by side whether they were silent or whether they spoke. They talked of old and half-forgotten things, when Beatrice was a schoolgirl and he an undergraduate. There was no conventional barrier between them now. The winds and waves of passion had swept it away long ago.

“ In a marriage like mine,” she said, “ and probably in all marriages, happiness is relative. We all miss our ideal but get something else in its place.”

“ As good ? ” he asked.

“ Who knows? when none of us have it.”

“ But you are not unhappy, Beatrice ? ”

“I am happy now,” she said, tremulously. “To-morrow I shall be sad enough.”

“Why? Tell me.”

“ Do you know what most women suffer from — I mean the women who have time to think and feel ? ”

“ From unsatisfied aspirations, like the rest of us ? ”

“ Ko ! from unsatisfied love.”

“ What is the remedy ? ”

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• “ There is none — only half remedies. When our first experiment fails — I mean when we miss our ideal — a second can never be entirely successful. We try to clip and trim our emotions and passions into regulation shape, and only half live in consequence.”

“ But most of us must be content with dim things,” he urged. “ My life is full of excitement and movement, but do you suppose it satisfies me ? ”

“ I know,” she said, “ your calm is only a sham. But whose fault was it, Paul ? ”

“ My own ! all my own.”

Then a wandering memory arrested his fancy. Once they had read Matthew Arnold’s poems together under the cedar tree on the rectory lawn, lovers unconfessed.

“ To-night, Beatrice,” he said, “ in this flowerhaunted room of yours, I am the ‘ Strayed Reveller,’ you are Circe.”

“ But I, Ulysses,

Sitting on warm steps Looking over the valley,

All day long, have seen.

Without pain, without labour.

Sometimes a wild-hair’d maenad —

Sometimes a faun with torches —

And sometimes, for a moment.

Passing through the dark stems,

Flowing-robed, the beloved,

The desired, the divine.

Beloved lacchus.”

Her face seemed luminous with excitement.

“I love the atmosphere you draw round things,”

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she exclaimed, “but politics will soon claim you for their own, and you will stray no more into Circe’s palace.”

“ I will come whenever Circe calls ! ”

“ Come now — darling.”

She extended her white arms towards him. •

“ Who am I,” he whispered, “ that I should try to live without love — and you ? ”

“ Paul,” she said, “ what I am you have made me.”

“ You are the cleverest and most beautiful woman I have ever known,” he answered recklessly.

“ And the wickedest ! ”

“Wickedness with you is only a relative form of virtue. You were so young and inexperienced, and love was knocking at the gate. We grew up with only a privet hedge between our two gardens — no other barrier. What wrong there was is all mine.”

“ The great wrong was when you let me marry Gerald ! If you had been ‘ the bashful gallant,’ I ‘ the lady with the colder breast than snow,’ now our consciences would be clear, and I could take my place in the army of British matronhood quite unafraid.”

“ And ended in caring for Mannering, and made our lives dim existences, like those of all the dull good people about us.”

“Far better for both of us, Paul! We built our nest on a volcano. The underground rumblings terrify me. I wonder what it feels like to be good 1 ’Tis so

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long ago that I forget, 3^et I was the year before my marriage.”

A cloud of anxiety passed across her pathetic face. For still at times, in spite of the slow corruption of her better self, the flickering of remorse assailed her.

In her memory one fatal day stood out vivid and clear with its conflicting emotions — the still August day, a year before her marriage.

Chapter III

On the last day of the session, Stephen Muir gave a parliamentary dinner in Carew’s honour, to which he invited all recalcitrant supporters of the Government whom the Prime Minister had succeeded in offending in his recurrent moments of petulant sincerity.

The dinner was remarkable for incongruity. They dined at Muir’s magnificent house in Kensington, an abode exuding wealth through a hundred luxurious pores.

The Labour group, who had not expanded beyond the meat-tea stage of society, and which knew not the dress-coat, was represented ; three Socialist members, who regarded dinner dress as an objectionable superfluity, also came. Other unclassed politicians, who had occasionally followed Carew into the Opposition lobby when there was no danger of upsetting the Government, and a chance of cheaply advertising their

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independence, sat round the table. When Carew looked round it, he recalled a recent cartoon which had represented him as Falstaff leading a ragged political army to defeat.

“ Stephen the Magnificent,” as he was called in the House, gazed with satisfaction on his guests. The Carewites, he told himself, swelling with secret pride, were destined to become the nucleus of a great National party which Carew must lead, but of which he would be the secret lever. Unfortunately, Muir’s scheme of life was coniplete consistency of attitude, so he passed a considerable portion of it in a dialectic conflict with himself. For a millionaire, he was pulling an oar in an odd galley. He used to tell his wife, upon whom he practised his oratory, and who mistook him for a statesman hicompris^ that “the Socialists were trying to drag the country into a dangerous sea of cosmopolitanism where patriotism and property must alike be submerged.” As for the Labour party, he would ask her at breakfast, were they but machines for recording the wishes of the Trade Unions in Parliament? “ If,” he would add proudly, “ I keep these convictions to myself, it is because I am a public man who has the reputation of being a millionaire.”

No one in the world took Muir seriously but his wife, but, as we are rarely candid to the exceedingly rich, he never discovered it.

Carew considered the dinner a dangerous but not uninteresting experiment.

“You would like to tie chaos to your chair if you u

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could, Muir,” he said before dinner. “ I hope the menagerie won’t fight.”

“ They won’t if you take the chair,” replied Muir nervously.

“ Your Labour men and Socialists hate one another with the ferocity of near relations,” said Carew, “ and w'e must keep them apart.”

“ Labour,” which had come in the omnibus and in thick boots, secretly resented the splendid flunkeys, but feared them a little too. The Socialists who drove up in a “ four-wheeler ” frowned on principle at the overwhelming signs of wealth which appealed hopelessly to their predatory legislative instincts. They dreamt of “ death duties ” to the confiscatory point.

While the guests were assembling Carew spoke to each with the charming urbanity he could assume whenever it pleased him, and succeeded in giving every man the good conceit of himself necessary for comfort.

He assured Buckler, the leader of the Labour men, who commenced life as a hammerman in a northcountry foundry, that he considered his acceptance of Muir’s invitation a personal compliment of extreme delicacy.

Buckler was pleased. “ Tliere isn’t,” he answered magnanimously, “ a man in the House w^ho wouldn’t have done as much for you. But those chaps in fancy dress do put my back up.”

“ But you’ll soon make them obsolete, Mr. Buckler,” said Carew, smiling genially, “ so suffer them gladly for this evening.”

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Fansliawe, the Socialist poet, who wore a velvet coat and a red tie, pretended to suRer acutely from his gilded environment.

“ Do conceal your horror for an hour,” urged Oarew. “ Since ^\e can’t divide Muir amongst us yet awhile, let us keep him as a fatted calf for future use. If you are decently polite you will find him enough of a Socialist to help pay your next election expenses, if only for the pleasure of spiting Greville.”

The dinner was superb, with its forest of flowers and perfect service. Chdteau Lafitte, worth two guineas a bottle, tickled the dull palate of Labour, and priceless champagne heated the ardent fancy of Socialism. Hard faces nnwrinkled ; voluble tongues loosened.

But the political friends v>^hose support had helped to make Carew formidable to the Prime Minister as w^ell as useful, were seen to greater advantage on the public platform than at the dinner table of a lavish millionaire. They mixed uncomfortably, and thought it evidence of independence never to conceal their opinions. A shadowy constituency sat behind each man’s chair in judgment on his democratic spirit. The harmonious units had been placed together as much as possible, but wdiere the Labour group overlapped the Socialists there was friction.

Muir, who, nervously festive, perceived the sparks flying from the impact, glanced towards Carew, hoping he would quell it.

“ Before you talk of the association of labour and 2

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capital, sir,” Fanshawe was shouting to Buckler, “ I advise you to read what Karl Marx has to say on the subject.”

D — n Karl Marx ! ” bawled the Labour man in reply ; “ he’s a misguider of youth.”

Whilst the argument was growing in heat, Carew scribbled a pencil note to Fanshawe : “ Remember the quarrels of the Centaurs and Lapithao over their wine, and forget Marx.”

The servant gave it on a salver to the long-haired poet, who smiled and nodded, and handed it to Buckler, who, imagining it was a reference to some incident in recent Irish history, smoothed his wiry locks, and signified acquiescence too.

Then Muir, who had not been at Eton and Oxford quite in vain, waved his champagne glass and said :

“ ‘ Nunc est bibendum

and rose to propose the only toast of the evening.

“ We are here to-night, gentlemen, to honour a young political leader, who is, unless all my instincts fail me, the man of the future. It is he who has taught independent members like ourselves, with views which in some cases may be divergent, but with interest more frequently harmonising, how best to make their weight felt. AVe are all on the side of progress, and, although we may differ in detail as to what constitutes it, we are yet enabled frequently to agree on the broad lines which Paul Carew has discovered. The

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newspapers in derision have called ns ‘ Carewites.’ What was intended as a term of reproach has become a title of honour. The critics who once scoRed at us now fear us. We can, they say, only agree to be mischievous, and declare that as conditional supporters of the present Ministry we have no policy of our own. A party without a formula may be an anomaly, but certainly we have made it a powerful one. But, gentlemen, if we have no formulas, we can at least understand the spirit of the time. We all believe in Democracy, or acquiesce in it because we perceive it is hopeless to fight against it. I will not conceal from you that I am amongst the latter. Democracy is now a law in the political world. Like the winds and the tides of the physical world — which we occasionally use as useful economic motive forces — it must ultimately be obeyed. But in guiding the popular forces lies the secret of success. This our young leader has discovered. The enemies declare that we are the rcductio ad absurdum of representative government ! I claim that we are the most striking evidence of its sanity! We represent the allied forces of the different sections of the advanced camp of political thinkers. That we have on the whole been able to give the Premier our support during the session has been due to the skill of Paul Carew. The impress of his own — I may say of our own — hand, gentlemen, is on more than one important measure. So long as we agree, we can make our weight felt. For our agreement in the past we must thank Paul Carew. That alone has given us our influence.

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We are now gathered together — under my roof I am proud to say — to thank him for his splendid services, his dauntless courage, and his unstinted energies* Gentlemen ! I propose the health of Paul Carew, our leader and our friend.”

Muir had enjoyed his speech more than auy of his hearers. The scratch collection of politicians who enabled Carew to worry the Prime Minister had listened with a cynical contempt that the temporary amiability lurking in champagne barely enabled them to conceal, but they toasted Carew with much cordiality. They knew that he hoped to ride into olTice on their shoulders, but scarcely grudged him the saddle.

The scene struck him as grotesque. The red ties, the rough heads, the clumsy fingers in agitation to honour him suddenly shifted into the white light that illumines pure folly.

Carew had often replied to similar compliments before, and the ancient cliches were ready to his hand. They had no logical claim, he said, to be called a new party. They had worked together during certain critical periods in unison and to their general advantage. So far they had not been called upon to offer any programme, but merely to prevent others from acting unwisely. Society and politics were in a transition stage, but every man might stand a sentinel at the gate of human progress.

“ Our modern horizons,” ho said, “ are very wide, and the light obscure. In the twilight the shadows move to and fro ; we give these shapes names, but their

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outlines shift as they approach and recede. Humanity is like a watcher standing on a tower looking into the night, awaiting a new dawn. The world is weary of old parties, of obsolescent prejudices, of ancient cries, of bloodless platitudes. My chief fear, gentlemen, is that pessimism should invade political existence as it has invaded social life. So many generations of men have helped to make laws whose benefits appear infinitesimal when compared with their initial promise that despair is not without its excuses. But hope alone can keep the world sweet. However we may differ, however often our convictions may drive us into different lobbies, we can at least all belong to one great human party — the party which never despairs of human progress. To-night, at least, gentlemen, we can claim to belong to the party of hope.”

Carew had learnt to pitch this thin cry in different keys, but it always had the ring of sincerity. He believed the human race possessed the innate power of savifig itself, but he was convinced legislators exaggerated their own importance as factors in social progress. This solaced a deficient sense of public duty. A vague belief in the success of human society is not a robust creed, but shadowy aspirations appease the least hurried forms of modern democracy, thanks to the dogma of evolution which is the basis on which Labour candidates with a school board education reconstruct their society of to-morrow with the bricks of to-day.

A horizon is always restful to the eye and brain, and although Carew’s speech was as indefinite as a moth

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seen in the twilight, it answered the purpose for which it was intended, and the diners separated with more cordiality than they had met.

“ Thank goodness that’s over,” said Muir, as the last Labour guest departed, thoughtfully sucking a wooden pipe, imperfectly convinced, in the dimmest corner of his mind, that he had not been subjected to some delusive form of moral massage, removing for the moment the wrinkles of doubt and suspicion, his political heritage.

That evening Mrs. Muir was “ at home,” but she had abstained from sending a card to any of the diners. When the footman had closed the doors on the last dinner guest, the two politicians went up to the great drawing-room.

Carew found Constance Muir, who was a masterpiece of English prettiness, a graceful change for the sullen politicians with their weight of care and lack of the amenities.

“ I hope you enjoyed your dinner,” said Mrs. Muir. “ You got rid of your guests sooner than we expected. Stephen tells me Independent members of Parliament, when they include the most jorogressive elements, can hardly dine without disagreeing.”

“Earnest people are always a little difficult,” said Carew, smiling ; “ they are also extremely unfashionable, but they are not nearly so ferocious as some of the papers pretend. I suggested that we should hold our revels at the ‘ Ilolborn,’ but Mr. Muir wouldn’t listen to me.”

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“ He is quite right,” she replied. ‘‘ Now he has identified himself with the rebels, he must make the best of it. The new political distinctions are a little bewildering, but no doubt essential.”

“ I fear they are,” he answered, glancing towards Constance Muir so as to include her in the conversation ; “ the new democracy has so many heads, and the type in the House is constantly changing ; but what do you think. Miss Muir ? ”

The girl looked at him earnestly, but answered lightly.

“ I have discovered,” she said, “ that to be a follower of yours gives one a sort of notoriety. The newspapers are always talking of Mr. Carew and the ‘ new Jacobins.’ To be a Carewite is to escape being overlooked. But why don’t you wear a cloth cap and carry a fat umbrella, Mr. Carew?”