THE fight won, John and Helen went back to London, strong in a sense of victory. It was, of course, the business of the Ring to minimize what had occurred so far as it was able to do so. But facts are stubborn things; an enhanced majority in favor of one who had been bold enough to throw down the gage of battle to the U. P. could neither be ignored nor explained away.
At Westminster itself this could not be gainsaid. There was no escape from the blunt truth that the incredible had happened. The result of the Blackhampton election brought dismay to more than one nominee of the Ring on the Government benches. It was the writing on the wall with a vengeance.
Still for the accomplished trimmer all was not lost. He could still cling to his famous motto, “Nothing succeeds like success.” Part and parcel of the race of trimmers, flesh of its flesh, bone of its bone, it even takes precedence of its other famous motto “Honesty is the best policy.” “So glad, old man, you brought it off.” Slap on the back. “Quite sure you would.” Grasp of the hand. “Downed the dirty dogs, eh?” Punch in the ribs.
The blushing victor had much of this kind of thing to endure in the first few days of his return to town. He was in no sense a cynic, for his eyes looked steadily towards the future, but even he was aware that the most rejoicing voices were those which would have been still louder had the cat jumped the other way.
Watching the cat jump, that art, too, was ever important. Truly wonderful was the effect now wrought upon the Mother of Parliaments. The Slippery One had brought off the biggest thing since the Famous Lie in the middle of that prehistoric period of the Great War which had founded the fortune of more than one grave and reverend parliamentarian and had reduced the country to the verge of ruin. This new stroke of daring had been so cunningly timed that its success was said to be a masterpiece of strategy, a triumph of tactical insight by those who would have been the first to brand its failure, from whatever cause, as a lapse into premature senility on the part of a mind outwardly strong and vigorous.
Mr. Wilberforce Williams shared to the full in the congratulations showered upon his brilliant lieutenant. Some of the more volatile friends of the moment tried to draw the prime minister as to the date of the General Election which now was going to be a matter of such vital concern to the world at large. But Mr. Wilberforce Williams lay low and said Nuffin. He knew Nuffin. It almost seemed in point of fact that Nuffinness had been permanently emblazoned upon his politely specious countenance.
In many dovecotes there was, all the same, a mighty flutter. On the side of the angels, amid honorable and right honorable gentlemen all over the House, there was much anticipatory preening of feathers. The plain English of the matter was the country would not stand for a buccaneering war with China. Also there was now a second vital consideration to face. Endor with foolhardy courage had made the curbing of the U. P. the first plank in his platform, yet the result had justified him. The whole country was now alive to the extreme peril of the Newspaper Ring and it was in a mood for action.
Said the pundits, it would need a new constitution to do it. But the super-pundits didn’t think so. Or even granting that such was the case, there would be no difficulty. Since the U. P. had taken the affairs of the nation in hand, a new constitution could be delivered every morning with the punctuality of the Planet, the Mercury or the U. P. Milk in U. P. germ-proof bottles.
John Endor was Home Secretary now. A man not yet forty, with only a few years’ experience of parliamentary life, his rise had been singularly rapid. Without being called upon to serve an apprenticeship in a minor office, at one leap he had reached the Cabinet. True, it was almost the worst Cabinet that had ever misgoverned the country, but at its head was a man of great abilities. And this man, faced with a terrible menace to the world’s peace, was bent upon the only remedy. Come what might, Saul Hartz, “the secret power behind the throne of antichrist,” in the picturesque phrase of John Endor—the prime minister himself preferred the saponaceous to the picturesque—must at all costs be broken.
To this end Mr. Williams, with discreet assistance from the Crown lawyers, set himself to devise a Bill. His task was not light, for directly or indirectly almost every salaried official, not to say every wage-earning person in the Island, was now affiliated to the Ring. The measure was on lines long familiar in America, but in “free” Britain it was something new.
The Wilberforce Williams Anti-Trust Law was designed for the castration of the U. P. For that reason it was doubtful if it would ever find its way to the statute book. But as its sponsor mildly said, “There is no harm in trying.” From the first, the prime minister was extremely modest about this measure. For one thing, personal modesty was the prime minister’s long suit. On the Front Bench, on the platform, at the dinner table, on the golf course, at an evening party, he had always been so modest as to seem apologetic, not to say deprecatory. “Really, my dear sir—to think that I—of all people—should be asked to form a government—why, my dear sir—you know as well as I do—that the idea is positively—ah—ludicrous.”
Wilberforce Williams had raised self-effacement to a fine art, yet somehow he had got there just the same. While the Really Great Talents slept, the Slippery One had climbed upwards in the night. And once in office, although the fact was by no means clear to the world at large, he was there “for keeps.” He had got in, nobody quite knew how. With equal truth that formula applied to the question of his getting out.
If Mr. Williams said little as to the prospects of his Bill, as to its character he was reticence itself. The most accomplished Cat-Jumpers, herded in solid phalanx, tier upon tier, on both sides of the House could get hardly a word out of him. Slippery Sam was not exactly beloved, but since the Blackhampton Election his stock as a political entity had risen. To have spiked the U. P. batteries so neatly at such a fateful moment clearly meant that W. W. had known how to read the skies. Every professional legislator now began to feel in his bones that one of the much dread periodical reactions was at hand.
Could it be that the power of the U. P. was on the wane? It had promised the Millennium and was doing its best to deliver the goods, but it was so like human nature to be in rather a hurry in these little matters. The price of all commodities, “hot air” excepted, was at an immoral height; unemployment, starvation, suppressed communism were rife on every hand; taxation was cruel, the depreciation of securities went on and on; an all-pervading sense of disaster struck ever nearer the surface. The Millennium was surely coming, all the morning and evening journals said so, but in the meantime life for the ordinary rate-payer was growing impossible. Yet, said the noble army of Cat-Jumpers, with Blackhampton East now before their eyes, the hour of deliverance is near. Hence, the Anti-Trust Law! Hence, Down with the U. P.! Hence, the pyramids!
In the present condition of Denmark it was unwise to take anything for granted, but one fact was clear. The country was in bonds, but a recent event had shown that it was possible for its chains to be shed.
If deliverance was to come, however, it was now felt that the task would devolve upon one man. John Endor, in the opinion of the insiders, was that man. His recent victory was a torch. It focused every eye in the world of politics upon him. No one else could have won that battle, at any rate in just that way; and it became at once a talisman for all the spirits by nature free, whom the degrading conditions of modern political life were galling beyond endurance.
All things were possible now for John Endor. The dragon which was crushing the life out of the nation was not invulnerable. And one of the very few daily newspapers outside the Ring which had any authority, crystallized the feeling now uppermost in every perceptive mind when it came out one evening with its famous cartoon “The New Perseus.”