“I’ll be happy to,” Pitt accepted immediately, rising also.
“Be my guest in the members’ dining room,” Jack suggested, opening the door for Pitt. He hesitated a moment, as if worrying over Pitt’s clean collar but crooked tie and slightly bulging pockets. He sighed and gave up.
Pitt followed him and took his place at one of the tables. He was fascinated. He hardly tasted his food he was so busy trying to watch the other diners without appearing to do so. He saw face after face he had seen in the newspapers, many whose names he knew, others familiar but he could not place them. He kept hoping he might see Gladstone himself.
Jack sat smiling, considerably entertained.
They were halfway through a dessert of hot treacle pudding and custard when a large man with thinning fair hair stopped by. Jack introduced him as Finch, the Honorable Member for one of the Birmingham constituencies, and Pitt as his brother-in-law, without stating any occupation.
“How do you do,” Finch said civilly, then looked at Jack. “Hey, Radley, have you heard that this fellow Hardie is actually going to stand? And in West Ham South, not even in Scotland!”
“Hardie?” Jack frowned.
“Keir Hardie!” Finch said impatiently, ignoring Pitt. “Fellow’s been down the mines since he was ten years old. God knows if he even can read or write, and he’s standing for Parliament! Labor Party, he says . . . whatever that is.” He spread his hands in a sharp gesture. “It’s no good, Radley! That’s our territory . . . trades unions, and all that. He won’t get in, of course—not a cat’s chance. But we can’t afford to lose any support this time.” He lowered his voice. “It’s going to be a tight thing! Too damned tight. We can’t give in on the working week, we’d be crippled. It would ruin us in months. But I wish to the devil the Old Man would forget Home Rule for a while. He’ll bring us down!”
“A majority’s a majority,” Jack replied. “Twenty or thirty is still workable.”
Finch grunted. “No it isn’t! Not for long. We need fifty at least. Nice to have met you . . . Pitt? Pitt, did you say? Good Tory name. Not a Tory, are you?”
Pitt smiled. “Shouldn’t I be?”
Finch looked at him, his light blue eyes suddenly very direct. “No, sir, you shouldn’t. You should look towards the future and steady, wise reform. No self-interested conservatism that will alter nothing, remain fixed in the past as if it were stone. And no harebrained socialism that would alter everything, good and bad alike, as if it were all written in water and the past meant nothing. This is the greatest nation on earth, sir, but we still need much wisdom at the helm if we are to keep it so in these changing times.”
“In that at least I can agree with you,” Pitt replied, keeping his voice light.
Finch hesitated a moment, then bade him good-bye and left, walking briskly, his shoulders hunched as if he were fighting his way through a crowd, although in fact he passed only a waiter with a tray.
Pitt was following Jack out of the dining room when they all but bumped into the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, on his way in. He was dressed in a pinstriped suit, his long, rather sad face full-bearded, but almost bald to the crown of his head. Pitt was so fascinated that it was a moment before he looked fully at the man a step behind him, but obviously in his company. His features were strong, intelligent, his nose a trifle crooked, his skin pale. For an instant their eyes met and Pitt was frozen by the power of hatred he saw looking back at him, as if they were the only two in the room. All the noise of talk, laughter, clink of glass and crockery vanished. Time was suspended. There was nothing but the will to hurt, to destroy.
Then the present rolled back like a wave, human, busy, argumentative, self-absorbed. Salisbury and his companion went in; Pitt and Jack Radley went out. They were twenty yards down the corridor before Jack spoke.
“Who was that with Salisbury?” he asked. “You know him?”
“Sir Charles Voisey,” Pitt replied, startled to hear how his voice rasped. “Prospective Parliamentary candidate for Lambeth South.”
Jack stopped. “That’s Serracold’s constituency!”
“Yes,” Pitt replied steadily. “Yes . . . I know that.”
Jack let out his breath very slowly; understanding filled his face, and the beginning of fear.
CHAPTER
TWO
Pitt found the house uniquely lonely without Charlotte and the children. He missed the warmth, the sound of laughter, excite-ment, even the occasional quarreling. There was no clatter of Gracie’s heels on the floor, or her wry comments, only the two cats, Archie and Angus, curled up asleep in the patches of sun that came through the kitchen windows.
But when he remembered the hatred in Voisey’s eyes, relief washed over him with an intensity that caught his breath that they were out of London, far away where neither Voisey nor any of the Inner Circle would find them. A small cottage in a country hamlet on the edge of Dartmoor was as safe as anywhere possible. That knowledge left him free to do all he could to stop Voisey from winning the seat and beginning the climb to a power which would corrupt the conscience of the land.
Although as he sat at the kitchen table over breakfast of toast he had definitely scorched, homemade marmalade and a large pot of tea, he was daunted by a task so nebulous, so uncertain. There was no mystery to solve, no explanation to unravel, and too little specific to seek. His only weapon was knowledge. The seat Voisey was contesting had been Liberal for years. Whose vote did he hope to sway? He was standing for the Tories, the only alternative to the Liberals with any chance of forming a government, even though the majority opinion was that this time Mr. Gladstone would win, even if his administration did not last long.
He took another piece of toast from the rack where he had set it, and spread it with butter. He spooned out a very good helping of marmalade. He liked the pungent taste of it, sharp enough to feel as if it filled his head.
Did Voisey intend somehow to win the middle ground and so enlarge his share of the vote? Or to disenchant the poorer men and drive them towards socialism, and so split the left-wing support? Had he some weapon, as yet undisclosed, with which to damage Aubrey Serracold and so cripple his campaign? He could not openly do all three. But then with the Inner Circle behind him, he did not need to be open. No one outside the very top of its power, perhaps no one but Voisey himself, knew the names or positions of all its members, or even how many there were.
He finished the toast, drank the last of the tea, and left the dishes where they were. Mrs. Brody would wash up when she came, and no doubt feed Archie and Angus again. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and time he began to acquire more knowledge of Voisey’s platform, the issues he was making the core of his appeal, who his open supporters were, and where he was going to speak. Pitt already knew from Jack the bare outline of these things regarding Serracold, but it was not enough.
It was late June and the city was hot, dusty and crammed with traffic of every sort—trade, business and pleasure. Street peddlers cried their wares on almost every pavement corner, open carriages held ladies who were out to see the sights, keeping the sun from their faces with an array of parasols in pretty colors like enormous overblown flowers. There were heavy wagons carrying bales of goods, vegetable and milk carts, omnibuses and the usual hordes of hansom cabs. Even the footpaths were crowded, and Pitt had to weave his way in and out. The noise was an assault on the ears and the mind, chatter, street cries of vendors of a hundred different articles for sale, the rattle of wheels on cobbles, the jingle of harness, shouts of frustrated drivers, the sharp clip of horses’ hooves.