The fall of England synchronised with the rise of Nicholas Jardine—first Labour Prime Minister of this ancient realm. When he married it was considered by his wife's relations that she had married beneath her! It fell out thus. In the neighbourhood of Walsall an accomplished young governess had found employment in the family of a wealthy solicitor, who was largely interested in the ironworks of the district. Her employer was conservative in his profession and radical in his politics. He took the chair from time to time at public meetings, and liked his family to be present on those occasions as a sort of domestic entourage, to bear witness to the eloquence of his orations. On one of these occasions a swarthy young engineer made a speech which quite eclipsed that of the chairman. He carried the meeting with him, raising enthusiasm and admiration to a remarkable height, and storming, among other things, the heart of the clever young governess. The young orator was not unconscious of the interest he excited. Bright eyes told their tale, and the whole-hearted applause that greeted his rhetorical flourishes could not escape attention at close quarters. Fair and refined in face, with fine, wavy[Pg 2] light hair, the girl afforded a striking contrast to this forceful, dark-skinned man of the people; but they were drawn to each other by those magnetic sympathies which carry wireless messages from heart to heart. It would be too much to say that he fell in love with her at first sight. Had they never met again, mutual first impressions might have worn off; but they did meet again, and yet again. Coming to her employer's house on some political business, young Jardine encountered the girl in the hall, and she frankly gave him her hand—blushingly and with a word or two of thanks for the speech which had seemed to her so eloquent. After that, in the grimy streets of Walsall and in various public places, the acquaintance ripened, until one winter day, outside the town, she startled him with an unusually earnest "good-bye." The children she had taught were going away to school; she, too, was going away—whither she knew not.
"Don't go," he said, slowly; "don't go. Stay and marry me."
She was almost alone in the world, and shuddering at the grey prospect of her life. Besides, she loved him, or at least believed she did. Within a month they were married at the registrar's office. Nicholas Jardine did not hold with any church or chapel observances. After the banal ceremony of the civil law, he took his bride to London for a week. Then they returned to Walsall. His means were of the scantiest; they lived in a little five-roomed house, with endless tenements of the same mean type and miserable material stretching right and left. The conditions of life, after the first glamour faded, were dreary and soul-subduing. All the women in Warwick Road knew or wanted to know their neighbour's business; all resented 'uppish' airs on the part of any particular resident. They were of the ordinary type, those neighbours, kindly, slatternly, given to gossip. Mrs. Jardine was not, and did not look like,[Pg 3] one of them. She was sincerely desirous of doing her duty in that drab state of life in which she found herself, but she wholly failed to please her neighbours, whose quarrels she heard through the miserable plaster walls, or witnessed from over the road. Worse than that, she found with dismay, as time went on, that she did not wholly please her husband. She was conscious of a gloomy sense of disappointment on his part; and she, though bravely resisting the growing feeling, knew in her heart that disillusionment had fallen upon herself. The recurrent coarseness of the man's ideas and expressions jarred upon her nerves. His way of eating, sleeping, and carrying himself, in their cramped domestic circle, constantly offended her fastidious tastes.
When their child was born life went better; and all the time Jardine himself, though rather grudgingly, had been improving under the refining but unobstrusive influence of his cultured wife. One thing, at least, they had in common: a love of reading. Most of the money that could be spared in those days went in book buying. It was a time of education for the husband, and a time of disenchantment for the wife. She drooped amid their grey surroundings. The summers were sad, for the Black Country is no paradise even in the time of flowers. Everywhere the sombre industries of the place asserted themselves, and in the gloomy winters short dark days seemed to be always giving place to long dreary nights, hideously illumined by the lurid furnaces that glowed on every side.
Jardine himself was as strong as the steel with which he had so much to do in the local works in which he found employment. But his wife found herself less and less able to stand up against the adverse influences of their environment. It came upon him with a shock that she had grown strangely fragile. Great God in heaven!—men call upon the name of God[Pg 4] even when they profess to be agnostics—could she be going to die?
Her great fear was for the future of the child; and her chief hope that the passionate devotion of Jardine to the little girl would be a redeeming influence in his own life and character. Both of them, from the first, took what care they could that their daughter should not grow up quite like the other children of the Walsall back streets. Their precautions helped to make them unpopular, and "that little Obie Jardine," as the Warwick Road ladies called Zenobia, was consequently compelled to hear many caustic remarks concerning the airs and graces that "some people" were supposed to give themselves.
Good fortune and advancement came to Nicholas Jardine too late for his wife to share in them. The once bright eyes were closed for ever before the Trade union of which he was secretary put him forward as a Parliamentary candidate. The swing of the Labour pendulum carried him in, and Jardine, M.P., and his little daughter moved to London. They found lodgings in Guildford Place, opposite the Foundling Hospital. The child was happier now, and the memory of the mother faded year by year. Life grew more cheerful and interesting for both of them as time went on. Members of Parliament and wire-pullers of the Labour party came to the lodgings and filled the sitting-room with smoke and noisy conversation. Zenobia listened and inwardly digested what she heard. Sundays were the dullest days. She often felt that she would like to go to service in the Foundling Chapel, but that was tacitly forbidden. Religion was ignored by Mr. Jardine, and among the books he had brought up from Walsall, and those he had since bought, neither Bible nor Prayer Book found a place.
Jardine had other things to think of. He was going forward rapidly, and busy—in the world of[Pg 5] politics—fighting Mr. Renshaw in the House of Commons. When the old Labour leader in the House of Commons had a paralytic seizure, the member for Walsall was chosen, though not without opposition, to fill the vacant place.
There were millions of voters behind him now; Nicholas Jardine had become a power. At last the popular wave carried him into the foremost position in the State. The resolute Republican mechanic of miry Walsall actually became the foremost man in what for centuries had been the greatest Empire in the world.
Before that great step in promotion was obtained, Jardine had removed from London to the riverside house, in which he still resided, when a certain young Linton Herrick came from Canada and stayed with his uncle—Jardine's next door neighbour.
According to the new Constitution, the Government held office for five years. The end of that term was now approaching, and every adult man and woman in the land would shortly have the opportunity of voting for his retention in office or for replacing him with a successor, man or woman. He talked much with his daughter of the struggle that was coming, as it had been his custom to do for years. She was his only companion, the only object of his affections, the one domestic interest in his life.