The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(146)

Michael buttoned the top of his waistcoat loosened by Sir Alexander’s grip, observed in the glass that his ear was very red, his cuff bloodstained, and his opponent still bleeding from the nose, and went out.

‘Some scrap!’ he thought, entering the fresher air of Westminster. ‘Jolly lucky we were tucked away in there! I don’t think I’ll mention it!’ His ear was singing and he felt rather sick, physically and mentally. The salvational splendour of Foggartism already reduced to a brawl in a lavatory! It made one doubt one’s vocation. Not even the Member for Wasbaston, however, had come off with dignity, so that the affair was not likely to get into the papers.

Crossing the road towards home, he sighted Francis Wilmot walking west.

‘Hallo!’

Francis Wilmot looked up, and seemed to hesitate. His face was thinner, his eyes deeper set; he had lost his smile.

‘How is Mrs Mont?’

‘Very well, thanks. And you?’

‘Fine,’ said Francis Wilmot. ‘Will you tell her I’ve had a letter from her cousin Jon. They’re in great shape. He was mighty glad to hear I’d seen her, and sent his love.’

‘Thanks,’ said Michael, drily. ‘Come and have tea with us.’

The young man shook his head.

‘Have you cut your hand?’

Michael laughed. ‘No, somebody’s nose.’

Francis Wilmot smiled wanly. ‘I’m wanting to do that all the time. Whose was it?’

‘A man called MacGown’s.’

Francis Wilmot seized Michael’s hand. ‘It’s the very nose!’ Then, apparently disconcerted by his frankness, he turned on his heel and made off, leaving Michael putting one and one together.

Next morning’s papers contained no allusion to the bloodletting of the day before, except a paragraph to the effect that the Member for Wasbaston was confined to his house by a bad cold. The Tory journals preserved a discreet silence about Foggartism; but in two organs – one Liberal and one Labour – were little leaders, which Michael read with some attention.

The Liberal screed ran thus: ‘The debate on the King’s speech produced one effort which at least merits passing notice. The policy alluded to by the Member for mid-Bucks under the label of Foggartism, because it emanates from that veteran Sir James Foggart, has a certain speciousness in these unsettled times, when everyone is looking for quack specifics. Nothing which departs so fundamentally from all that Liberalism stands for will command for a moment the support of any truly Liberal vote. The risk lies in its appeal to backwoodism in the Tory ranks. Loose thought and talk of a pessimistic nature always attracts a certain type of mind. The state of England is not really parlous. It in no way justifies any unsound or hysterical departure from our traditional policy. But there is no disguising the fact that certain so-called thinkers have been playing for some time past with the idea of reviving a ‘splendid isolation’, based (whether they admit it or not) on the destruction of Free Trade. The young Member for mid-Bucks in his speech handled for a moment that corner-stone of Liberalism, and then let it drop; perhaps he thought it too weighty for him. But reduced to its elements, Foggartism is a plea for the abandonment of Free Trade, and a blow in the face of the League of Nations.’

Michael sighed and turned to the Labour article, which was signed, and struck a more human note:

‘And so we are to have our children carted off to the Antipodes as soon as they can read and write, in order that the capitalist class may be relieved of the menace lurking in Unemployment. I know nothing of Sir James Foggart, but if he was correctly quoted in Parliament yesterday by a member for an agricultural constituency, I smelled Prussianism about that old gentleman. I wonder what the working man is saying over his breakfast-table? I fear the words: “To Hell!” are not altogether absent from his discourse. No, Sir James Foggart, English Labour intends to call its own hand; and with all the old country’s drawbacks, still prefers it for itself and its children. We are not taking any, Sir James Foggart.’

‘There it is naked,’ thought Michael. ‘The policy ought never to have been entrusted to me. Blythe ought to have found a Labour townsman.’

Foggartism, whittled to a ghost by jealousy and class-hatred, by shibboleth, section and Party – he had a vision of it slinking through the purlieus of the House and the corridors of the Press, never admitted to the Presence, nor accepted as flesh and blood!

‘Never mind,’ he muttered; ‘I’ll stick it. If one’s a fool, one may as well be a blazing fool. Eh, Dan?’

The Dandie, raising his head from his paws, gave him a lustrous glance.