IF only Ada had had the courage of what ought to have been her convictions, things would have been very different. But she hadn’t the pluck or the zest in life to be anything at all except an almost perfect negative, and a man will fight for a wife for many reasons, but not for the reason that she is a full-stop.

Ada, as Peter knew when he consented to the marriage, could be led: with even surer hope of good result she could be driven, and if Sam had cared to drive, to play Petruchio with Ada, he could have turned her negative into a comparative, if not into a positive.

Unhappily, his driving powers were otherwise engaged, and his objectives were on the battlefield, his office, rather than in the dormitory which he might have turned into a home. And since Ada had all that she was conscious of wanting, she had a dull contentment. Two servants and credit at the shops were good enough for Ada, and good enough, too, for Sam, because they advertised success. If Ada had been actively vicious, if she had drunk, if men or a man had obsessed her, if indeed she had been anything that was bad perceptibly, Sam would have abandoned his indifference and taken a strong and effective line with her. It might, at first, have been only because a positively vicious Ada would have been bad for the Branstone + Classics, but it would have ended by being good for Ada and for Sam: it would have been the beginning of Ada and Sam, of their dual life which had not yet come to birth. But, as it was, he saw nothing to fight. There was a superficial rightness; therefore all was right, he could forget Ada and turn to the things which were vital to him, business for its own sake, and business considered as a stepping-stone to politics.

He was content for some time to leave his political ambitions alone, because it seemed to him that money, quite a lot of money, was needed for politics. In truth, he was rather awed by his ambition: the House of Commons seemed a tremendous distance from his office in Manchester, and he thought a great deal of money would be needed for the fare. Fundamentally, he was modest and rarely overrated his abilities, but he believed that he had luck, and thought money a good first aid to more luck. Well as he was doing in business, he could not afford to divert his energies from moneymaking to politics, wherein he did not mean to begin at the bottom.

He was not ready yet to make political opportunities for himself, but if political opportunities came to him, that was another matter. And they did come. When he interviewed Sir William Gatenby, he threw a pebble into a pool whose wave was to wash him to high places.

It washed him into the knowledge of Mr. Charles Wattercouch, who was agent for the Division. Wattercouch read Gatenby’s letter about Sam with some surprise, as one of his recruiting grounds for voluntary workers was the Concentrics, and he thought he recalled hearing Sam speak for the other faction, but he catalogued the name for future reference on his list of earnest young men.

Wattercouch, like Sam, was in no hurry. He preferred men to come to him, not to go in search of them, but Sam did not come, and a letter from Gatenby was not to be neglected. Though Gatenby had probably dismissed the subject from his mind, he paid half of Wattercouch’s salary, and he might inquire about Sam some day. So the agent called on Sam at the office.

He was a square-built, square-faced man of forty, with a pink, eupeptic complexion, and light hair which bristled hardily. Your organizer of victory, like your editor, is apt to be cynical about the politics he is paid to profess, but Wattercouch kept his perfect faith in Liberalism, in spite of the fact that he served the Liberal Party, a feat in the accommodation of blameless principle with unscrupulous opportunism, which he accomplished with entire sincerity. One can be sincere and Jesuitical, in fact one can hardly be Jesuitical without being sincere, and to Mr. Wattercouch the most egregiously illiberal acts of the Liberal Party were justified because they were the acts of that party, and must, however improbable it seemed, be means to the end which was Liberalism.

This is not to suggest that Mr. Wattercouch was complex, for he was indeed quite simple, as witness the man’s relish in his grotesque name. He knew the value of being ridiculed when one can turn ridicule into respect, and much of his popularity resulted from the genial way in which he took jokes about his name. He made an asset of what might, to a less good-natured man, have been a handicap. “Indeed,” says Ben Jonson, “there is a woundy luck in names, sir,” and Wattercouch turned doubtful luck to good account.

Sam had the gift of the gab, which means that he knew both how and when to speak, and how and when to be silent. He was silent while Mr. Wattercouch spoke of the valuable work to be done by an earnest labourer in connection with the annual revision of the register. The point of the work was to see that all possible known Liberals were on the register, and all possible objection taken to any known Conservatives, and, complicated as the work was by the removal habit amongst electors, it was no light undertaking. Certainly no agent could have carried it through without the aid of industrious volunteers.

But Sam did not see himself in the character of an industrious volunteer, and he was silent for two reasons. The first was that his silence was causing Mr. Wattercouch visible embarrassment, and Sam liked the other man to be embarrassed; the second was that he was considering how to make Mr. Wattercouch see that his suggestion was an absurdity, if not an insult.

He smiled with quite polite superiority. “But I think, Mr. Wattercouch, that you are making a mistake,” he said, as one who apologizes for having to be blunt.

“Well,” admitted Wattercouch, “I had my doubts, because I fancied I’d heard you support Stephen Verity at the Concentrics.”

“That,” said Sam, “is not the mistake to which I allude. I am aware that I have supported Verity at the Concentrics. And I am aware that the way to learn how to cut a man’s hair is to practise on a sheep’s head. Verity was my sheep’s head.”

“I’m afraid I hardly follow,” said Wattercouch, who was indeed rather scandalized by such an allusion to Mr. Verity, who, if a Conservative, was an alderman and a noted figure in local politics.

“I will make it easier for you by admitting that even I had to learn,” said Sam.

“Ah! I see. You have now seen the error of your ways. You realize the grandeur of Liberalism, the——”

“I always did,” Sam asserted. “When I supported Verity, I was teaching myself to speak. I was practising on Toryism that I might become perfect in Liberalism. Those days when I made a convenience of Toryism were the days of my apprenticeship to the art of speaking. Would you have had me speak badly for such a cause as Liberalism? No. But if I spoke badly for Toryism, I damaged nothing. Toryism is nothing unless, as I said, it is a sheep’s head for Liberals to practise on when they are novices, and the mistake you made is to suppose that I am still a novice, when, as a matter of fact——” He paused elaborately and hoped that Mr. Wattercouch would fill in the blank intelligently. “But it is premature to speak of that,” he said. “As to the registration, I can send you one of my clerks.” He made a gesture dismissing as an affair of pygmies that chief event of an agent’s year.

“I see... I see,” said Wattercouch, trying hard to believe that he had so far been looking at Sam through the wrong end of a telescope. “And you yourself, Mr. Branstone?”

It tempted Sam, that tone of quite startled respect which Wattercouch adopted now. The misfortune of Sam’s imaginative flights was that he never knew when to stop. All that he cared about, at the moment, was to give Wattercouch the impression that Sam Branstone was too important to be asked to drudge at registration work. He was in no hurry about politics, but when he began it would not be as a volunteer clerk.

“I?” he replied. “Two things. One a fact and the other a prophecy. The fact is that I am an orator, and the prophecy is that Sir William Gatenby will not live long and that I shall take his place as member for the Division. Have you a cold?” he added, as Wattercouch choked with irresistible stupefaction.

He had not a cold, neither had he powers of speech just then, and the silence grew emphatic without in the least disconcerting Sam. Once launched on the sea of bluff, Sam was a hardy navigator, and he had the moral support of knowing that his whole purpose just now was to avoid being a clerk. To avoid being a clerk it is justifiable to do more than to romance: it is justifiable to commit most of the crimes in the Newgate Calendar. Sam was hardly asked to do that, but Wattercouch’s cough was a challenge, and a bluff half bluffed is worse than no bluff at all. It became a matter of pride to convince this unbeliever.

“I intend,” said Sam with aplomb, “to do a good deal of platform for the Party. If an election comes soon, so much the better. I shall take the opportunity to make myself more popular with the electors than Sir William Gatenby is. That is easy. He quotes Latin in election speeches, and I’m a man of the people. After that, I expect to contest a by-election for a seat which the Party regards as a forlorn hope. If it is possible to win that seat for our Great Cause, I shall win it. If not, I shall trust to two things, the senile decay of Sir William Gatenby and the discretion of the Whip’s office.”

Wattercouch was adapting himself painfully to the new perspective. He granted that Sam had plausibility, and an assurance which nearly lent conviction to his astonishing statement.

“You are in touch with the Whips!” he gasped.

Sam remembered and varied an old formula. “Do you suppose,” he asked indignantly, “that I should be speaking to you like this if I were not?”

Wattercouch did not suppose it. For one thing he was acquainted with the devious ways of Whips, and nothing that those secretive autocrats did could surprise him: for another, he wished to believe what Sam wished him to believe. He saw in Sam the way out of a dilemma.

His dilemma was a common one. A death had caused a vacancy in the Town Council, and the local Liberal caucus was almost pathetically embarrassed as to its choice of a candidate. There were at least three veteran workers for the Cause who expected, with justice, to be approached and none of the three could be selected without offence being given to interests which it was impolitic to offend.

It was all very well for the caucus: they left it to Wattercouch, the general handy man, to make suggestions, and as he listened to Sam he thought he had found a candidate who, simply because he was politically unknown, could offend nobody. If the obvious men were wrong, he must rely on the rightness of the unexpected, and, after all, Sam might be speaking the truth. One never knew where one was with Whips, and here was his chance to propitiate Sam and at the same time to solve the problem which troubled the caucus. Sam was a dark horse and he wished he knew more about him; it was startling to come in search of a voluntary clerk and to find a candidate; but, finally, he saw it as a legitimate case for taking a risk.

“I don’t know, sir,” he said, with a very pretty respect in his voice, “whether municipal politics will appeal to a man of your calibre, but there is a vacancy in St. Mary’s Ward, and I hardly think there will be any difficulty about your adoption as candidate if you cared to stand.”

Sam pretended to reflect. The truth was that the prospect of an immediate seat in the Council made his heart beat fiercely. He had meant for a while longer to put business before politics, but this sort of politics was business. The Council took up one’s time, but conferred a prestige on Branstone and the Branstone Publications which would more than compensate for the waste of time.

And it was deliciously unexpected. He had not studied to impress Wattercouch, but had talked exaltedly simply to excuse himself from the unseen, thankless drudgery of organization: yet it seemed he had impressed. Virtually, he was offered a seat, He was, this soon, to sit where Travers had sat, to be a City Father before he was thirty-five. He had romanced glibly about a bird in the bush, and found himself grasping a bird in hand, and no contemptible fowl either.

“We must despise nothing,” he said, “which makes for Liberalism.” Wattercouch nodded with enthusiasm. “Of course,” Sam went on, “strictly between ourselves, the Council is small beer. But it is for the Cause, and if I were asked to stand, you may take it that I should not allow the larger view I have of my ultimate activities to interfere with my acceptance. I take pleasure in duty and I see it as my duty, even if it involves the postponement of my Parliamentary ambitions, to throw myself wholeheartedly into this conflict.” He was wonderfully pious.

Wattercouch was less emotional. He had heard too many speeches from prospective candidates to be carried away by Sam’s. “Quite probably there will be no contest,” he said dryly. “It’s a safe Liberal seat.”

“I should have preferred a fight,” Sam lied wistfully. “But I put duty first.”

As a fact, there was no contest, and if each of the three veteran workers thought himself aggrieved, he had the consolation of knowing that the other two shared his grievance. Wattercouch was discreetly mysterious about Sam in the inner councils of the local Party, used Gatenby’s name freely and managed to convey that Branstone was something much bigger than he appeared to be. He had, at least, got them out of their quandary.

Nor did Sam discredit his sponsor either at the private meeting he addressed or at the public one which followed. He had said he was an orator, Wattercouch had repeated it indefatigably, and Sam’s audience believed it implicitly. He was not quite an orator, but was coming along nicely under the tuition of an old actor who had failed on the stage and now called himself a professor of elocution.

He became Mr. Councillor Branstone, and happy little references to the event began to appear in the papers. The Sunday Judge, for instance, had “no doubt that Mr. Branstone will live to look back upon his unopposed return to the Council as a minor episode of his political career, and we speak by the book. Branstone will go far, but, meantime, it is something even for him to know that he is the most popular man in St. Mary’s Ward. We had almost written in the whole city, but that would be to anticipate. How is it done? How is such popularity achieved? How, in other words, did merit become recognized? Mr. Branstone himself only smiled when we asked him, but his smile is half of his secret and his rousing, earnest oratory the other half. They are indeed an open smile and an open secret. But there are other secrets less open. All we shall say now is, ‘Watch Branstone. He will not disappoint you.’”

There was a low evening paper, run in the Conservative interest, which fastened on the phrase “other secrets less open” and published the scurrilous statement that one of the less open secrets was the fact that Mr. Councillor Branstone’s mother was a charwoman, but the paragraph appeared only in the early edition and unaccountably disappeared from later issues. It did no harm, as first editions are not published for politicians, but for sportsmen, and, in any case, there was a brief, but dignified, eulogy of Mr. Branstone in the Manchester Warden next day. That paper happened, fortunately, to be Liberal in politics, and indeed to be, on just occasion, a valiant log-roller. It rolled a log for Sam; the popularity of Branstone was established, hall-marked by the Press; and it was about this time that Stewart’s second potboiler was accepted for inclusion in Branstone’s Novels. The terms were even more favourable to the author than before.