Magnus Merriman (20 page)

But before his lordship appeared there came a surprise that all the more sensational newspapers referred to, not inaptly, as a bombshell. This was caused by the intervention of Lady Mercy Cotton, who suddenly put forward a candidate of her own choosing, and by exerting a mite of her enormous influence secured his nomination by a fairly representative meeting of electors.

Lady Mercy [some account of her activities may be found in a novel called
Poet's Pub
] was a power in the land, though it would be difficult to make an exact assessment of her strength. It was more than her enemies pretended, but less than she herself believed. She commanded an audience of
several million people, but as there are limits even to the gullibility of a great democracy she was not always able to persuade her audience to do what she wanted. She could, however, make herself extremely objectionable to her political opponents, and her destructive criticism might have been more effective had it been more stable. But its habit of veering from one point of the compass to another—now blowing hotly against the Conservatives, now rudely buffeting the remainder Liberals, and anon whistling icy derision at the Socialists—tended to diminish its potency though greatly increasing its value as entertainment.

Her fortune had been founded on Cotton's Breweries. Her growing wealth had nourished a growing ambition, and by sacrificing the amiability that previously had characterized even her professional activities she had become a truly conquering figure. After the death of Sewald Cotton, her mild and dignified husband, she had assumed full control of the business, and presently added to her possession a couple of provincial newspapers. The intoxicating power of the press—even of such a comparatively small draught as this—had tempted her into greater extravagance, and in a little while she had also acquired a London daily paper, the
Morning Call
, and its subsidiary organ, the
Evening Bolus
.

But her commercial genius stood her in good stead: so far from losing money in this venture, she made it, and her fortune mounted to bewildering heights. For some years it had been the practice of certain newspapers to win new readers by offering gifts, or free life insurance, or free household insurance, to regular subscribers. Lady Mercy immediately discerned the full possibilities of this custom, and after negotiations with a building society, a well-known firm that specialized in the supply of furniture on the instalment system, and an insurance company, she elaborated a scheme by which readers of the
Morning Call
might acquire, with no further expense than their subscriptions, an artistic freehold dwelling and elegant appointments for every apartment from the drawing-room to the scullery. The purchase of a single copy of the
Call
entitled you to the free gift of a chamber pot; a year's subscription, paid in advance, brought you a handsome suite of drawing-room
furniture; and if you could persuade five hundred of your friends each to pay a five years's subscription you at once became the owner of a half-timbered semi-detached villa built in the Elizabethan style so far as that was consistent with single-brick walls.

A week after the announcement of this scheme the circulation of the
Call
had risen to three and a half million, and Lady Mercy had quadrupled her advertising rates. She was able, then, to appeal to an enormous public, and it was a source of real sorrow to her that these people, many of them living as they were in her half-timbered villas and more of them using her chamber pots, could not yet be relied upon to believe all the news with which she supplied them, or to obey her numerous behests to write at once to the Prime Minister and demand his adoption of a firmer attitude towards America.

But she was not dismayed by this popular ineptitude: she determined to save the country in spite of its predilection for
laissez-faire
and the road to ruin. Because of the Socialists' two years in office, and because they seemed likely to be replaced by a set of lukewarm, milk-and-watery Constitutionalists, she was at this time well-inclined towards the Conservatives—but only to those Conservatives of the true two-bottle, penal-flogging, forty-shillings-on-wheat, hands-off-the-Navy complexion. Mr Gatwick Buchanan, that new and suspect convert to Conservatism, was not at all to her liking. She therefore instituted inquiries in Kinluce and discovered that there was an excellent candidate in the person of a gentleman there called Hammerson. He was a prosperous farmer who had political ambitions, was the kind of Tory she favoured, and being of a generous and open-hearted nature he was extremely popular throughout the county. She decided that with her support he could easily win the election and she promptly established connection with Major Muir-Macbeth, the secretary of the Kinluce Conservative Association, who was known to be dissatisfied with the candidature of Mr Gatwick Buchanan.

Major Muir-Macbeth was instructed, by telephone, to go and see Mr Hammerson and to tell him that if he would agree to stand he would be assured of Lady Mercy's personal
assistance, of the support of her newspapers, of her political organization, and of the most generous financial backing. The Major seemed somewhat surprised by this commission, but having accepted it he very soon reported, again by telephone, that the offer had been accepted with great pleasure, and that he would immediately arrange a nomination meeting for the Cotton-Conservative candidate.

Lady Mercy thereupon sent Nelly Bly [a previous adventure of Nelly Bly is also told in
Poet's Pub
], the most brilliant of her special correspondents, to Kinluce in order to report the meeting and also to prepare the way for the advent of further Cotton auxiliaries.

On the following day the
Morning Call
described, with great enthusiasm and prominent type, the adoption of a fourth candidate in Kinluce, and already prophesied his success at the polls. But his name, by some curious mistake apparently, was said to be Emerson, not Hammerson. Lady Mercy angrily demanded an explanation. She was informed that there had been no mistake, but that Mr Emerson—a prosperous gentleman-farmer, a Conservative, and a man with political ambitions—was in truth the candidate.

‘Then where is Hammerson?' she demanded.

Mr Hammerson, it appeared, was sitting quietly at home, and the dilucidation of this unfortunate error was only made when Lady Mercy interviewed the assistant news-editor of the
Morning Call
, who had conducted the telephone negotiations with Major Muir-Macbeth.

‘It was you who spoke to Major Muir-Macbeth?' she asked.

‘Yes, your ladyship,' said the assistant news-editor.

‘And you told him to get in touch with Mr Hammerson?'

‘Yes, your ladyship.'

‘And what happened then?'

‘He rang up again and told me that Mr Emerson would be very pleased to stand.'

‘
Who
would be pleased to stand?'

‘Mr Emerson, your ladyship.'

‘Hammerson, I told you, not Emerson.'

‘Yes, your ladyship, Mr Emerson. That's what I said.'

‘Give this fool a week's wages and tell him to get out of
here,' shouted Lady Mercy, and strode up and down the room in a stupendous rage.

The unfortunate assistant news-editor was therefore sacked for no more grievous a fault than the possession of a Cockney accent, and for the same slight phonetic reason Lady Mercy found herself committed to a large public gamble with the wrong cards in her hand.—Also the electors of Kinluce were saddled with a candidate whom neither they nor anyone else wanted; but that, after all, was a matter of small importance.—Lady Mercy, being a great woman, quickly decided that any man who stood with her support was better than any other without that help, and resolved to prosecute Mr Emerson's candidature with all her energy. She announced her own early arrival in the constituency, and sent ahead of her a small army of supporting speakers, canvassers, handbill-distributors, reporters, photographers, agents and organizers. Kinluce was filled with the sound and fury of her campaign, and even the phlegmatic countenances of the dour east-wind-hardy electors began to show occasional traces of excitement.

The announcement of the Cotton candidate affected Magnus with some dismay, for the election now appeared to be taking on the likeness of a raree-show, and he grew painfully aware of the indignity of competitive shouting. But Captain Smellie was unperturbed.

‘I've been expecting something like this,' he said. ‘I was talking to a man who's in Muir-Macbeth's confidence a few days ago, and I got an inkling of what might happen. But I said nothing about it because I didn't want to cause you unnecessary worry. And you mustn't worry now, Merriman. It was clear from the beginning—at least it was clear to me—that this was going to be no ordinary election. From the very first day I knew that we had to be prepared for anything. And I was prepared! That's why I left my plans in a somewhat fluid state, so that I could adapt them to meet an emergency. On the whole I'm very glad of this Cotton intervention. It will split the Conservative vote, and your chances will be much improved. We're doing very well indeed. I was talking to an errand-boy yesterday, and he assured me that if he had a vote—unfortunately he hasn't—
he would certainly give it to you. But every straw shows how the wind blows.'

Magnus said idly, ‘What regiment were you in during the war, Smellie?'

Captain Smellie coughed and turned to look out of the window. ‘I was unattached during most of my service,' he said. ‘I was on the General List.'

‘What were you doing there?'

‘I had special duties. At the War Office, you know.'

‘Intelligence?'

‘Yes,' said Captain Smellie.

‘I thought as much,' said Magnus bitterly. But Captain Smellie was pleased by the compliment.

Magnus said, ‘Well, I'm going for a walk. I want to think out a couple of speeches for tonight.'

The Captain purred sympathetically. ‘I have a score of things to do,' he said. ‘There's a very busy morning ahead of me. Bird and Boden must be kept up to scratch, you know, and owing to this Cotton complication my plans will need a certain amount of revision. It's lucky that I'm an old hand at the game and was prepared for it.'

Magnus walked moodily out of the town, across a golf-course, and down to the sea-shore. Firm yellow sands stretched southwards. In cold sunlight the sea shone azure-bright, and white gulls wheeled above its crumbling edge. The gorse on the links was breaking into golden bloom, a lark rose singing on its invisible ladder, and far-off hills smudged the oyster sky with blue. Suddenly Magnus felt his heart fill with passionate love for the very soil of Scotland, for the sea that broke on its coasts, and the mountain airs that filled its sky with music. Why should he waste his time talking of statistics, in the counting of dead chimneys, in the unearthing of political scandals, in the dull reiteration of economic facts? Was it not better to open blind eyes to the beauty of Scotland, to waken sleeping minds to pride, and trust to pride for strength to leap all obstacles?

He thought of all the counties of Scotland he had never seen: of the Highlands, of the islands of the north and the west: and the beauty of his own country cried like trumpets in his blood and woke in him such desire and love that a
weakness came on him, and tears broke saltily in his eyes … He saw the granite and the grace of the Western Highlands, the stark hills and the multitude of small bright flowers that enamelled all the summer fields. Here in a dark pool grew water-lilies with hearts of gold and cool white petals: that water-lilies should grow in flat English ponds was nothing, but here, where birch trees made a curtain for the tarn and the stony grandeur of the mountains made under heaven a wall for the birches, here water-lilies were a sign of grace indeed, as though, not silver-footed Thetis, but some white-foot girl of Ossian's or Freyja from the northern snows, had walked in loveliness and painted flowers where she trod. Now to the white shore came with green banners an army of young trees, and stooped upon the sand, and gazed beyond it to still water more deeply green than they. Where in the world was greenness so multi-hued and various as here?—the green of young larches, the pallid green of winter fields, the tender gaiety of young corn, the peacock tones of the sea past Eriskay, the black-heart green of pine-forests, the soft green of old and faded tartan, the darkly-gleaming holly-green, bracken-green and heather-green, reeds in the lake and peewit's wings, and the emerald heart of Atlantic waves that reared like horses in the sun and broke like thunder on the shore? And this was the abiding magic of the land, that wherever you looked closely you saw loveliness in delicate and tiny shapes, and whenever you raised your eyes to far-off things you beheld beauty tall and severe, the stony ribs of the mountains, the cloud-capped sublimity of their peaks. Kneel on that white sand and behold the infinite variety of its colour: stoop to orchis and heartsease, heather and hare-bell, and discover the minute perfection of their design: then stand and see Braeriach in the storm, or the towering heights of Rum, savage and blue, crowning a golden sea.

In such guise did Scotland appear to Magnus as he walked by the sea-shore, and over its mountains and its glens, its lochs and islands, flew like wild sea-gulls the shrill voices of their Gaelic names. In his exalted mood it seemed to him infinitely more desirable to speak in grave and lofty terms of these aspects of his country than to argue irately about unemployment, shipyards on the Clyde, and injustices that
were killing the textile industry. Surely politics were false, were mere huckstering and trading in a clipped coinage, unless based on patriotism? And surely patriotism might be given a voice even in a Parliamentary election.

Magnus resolved to speak that night on larger issues, in a nobler key, and driving to Pitsharnie, where a meeting had been arranged to take the place of that which had been mis-arranged, he preserved a somewhat gloomy silence despite the provocative chatter of Captain Smellie and a talkative young man from Glasgow who had recently arrived to display, in the name of Nationalism, a truly remarkable power of oratory.

At Pitsharnie, however, Magnus found an atmosphere and an audience ill-suited to an exposition of lofty patriotism. A little fat man, who had opened the meeting, was speaking to an audience of some twenty or thirty oafish rustics. He was quoting the poet Burns—whom with greasy unction he referred to as
Rabbie
—and he was distorting the utterance of that sweet singer, that boisterous satirist, into something as mealy-mouthed, as nauseatingly sentimental, as his own saps-and-treacle habit of thought. Magnus listened to him with sour distaste—there had been no applause when the candidate entered—and looked at the audience.