第36章

"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 hoarse, 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-fashioned 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 classes 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 shifted 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 class, but his own. The class 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.