Marsham looked up.

“Well, it isn’t for want of pressure.  Ferrier’s life hasn’t been worth living this last month.”

The tone was ambiguous.  It fitted either with defence or indictment.

The London member—­Roland Lankester, who was a friend of Marion Vincent, and of Frobisher, represented an East End constituency, and lived there—­looked at the speaker with a laugh.  “That’s perfectly true.  What have we all been doing but ‘gingering’ Ferrier for the last six months?  And here’s the result!  No earthly good in wearing one’s self to fiddle-strings over this election!  I shall go and keep pigs in Canada!”

The group strolled along the Terrace, leaving behind them an animated crowd, all busy with the same subject.  In the middle of it they passed Ferrier himself—­flushed—­with the puffy eyes of a man who never gets more than a quarter allowance of sleep; his aspect, nevertheless, smiling and defiant, and a crowd of friends round him.  The wind blew chill up the river, crisping the incoming tide; and the few ladies who were being entertained at tea drew their furs about them, shivering.

“He’ll have to go to the Lords!—­that’s flat—­if we win this election.  If we come back, the new members will never stand him; and if we don’t—­well, I suppose, in that case, he does as well as anybody else.”

The remarks were McEwart’s.  Lankester turned a sarcastic eye upon him.

“Don’t you be unjust, my boy.  Ferrier’s one of the smartest Parliamentary hands England has ever turned out”

At this Barton roused.

“What’s the good of that?” he asked, with quiet ferocity, in his strong Lancashire accent.  “What does Ferrier’s smartness matter to us?  The Labor men are sick of it!  All he’s asked to do is to run straight!—­as the party wants him to run.”

“All right. Ad leones! Ferrier to the Lords.  I’m agreeable.  Only I don’t know what Marsham will say to it.”

Lankester pushed back a very shabby pot-hat to a still more rakish angle, buttoning up an equally shabby coat the while against the east wind.  He was a tall fair-haired fellow, half a Dane in race and aspect:  broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, with a Franciscan passion for poverty and the poor.  But a certain humorous tolerance for all sorts and conditions of men, together with certain spiritual gifts, made him friends in all camps.  Bishops consulted him, the Socialists claimed him; perhaps it was the East End children who possessed him most wholly.  Nevertheless, there was a fierce strain in him; he could be a fanatic, even a hard fanatic, on occasion.

Marsham did not show much readiness to take up the reference to himself.  As he walked beside the others, his slender elegance, his handsome head, and fashionable clothes marked him out from the rugged force of Barton, the middle-class alertness of McEwart, the rubbed apostolicity of Lankester.  But the face was fretful and worried.