tories. Some special sort
of people was, as it were, secreted in response to each special appeal.
One said things carefully adjusted to the distinctive limitations of
each gathering. Jokes of an incredible silliness and shallowness drifted
about us. Our advisers made us declare that if we were elected we would
live in the district, and one hasty agent had bills printed, "If Mr.
Remington is elected he will live here." The enemy obtained a number
of these bills and stuck them on outhouses, pigstyes, dog-kennels; you
cannot imagine how irksome the repetition of that jest became. The vast
drifting indifference in between my meetings impressed me more and more.
I realised the vagueness of my own plans as I had never done before
I brought them to the test of this experience. I was perplexed by the
riddle of just how far I was, in any sense of the word, taking hold at
all, how far I wasn't myself flowing into an accepted groove.

Margaret was troubled by no such doubts. She was clear I had to go into
Parliament on the side of Liberalism and the light, as against the late
Government and darkness. Essential to the memory of my first contest, is
the memory of her clear bright face, very resolute and grave, helping me
consciously, steadfastly, with all her strength. Her quiet confidence,
while I was so dissatisfied, worked curiously towards the alienation
of my sympathies. I felt she had no business to be so sure of me. I had
moments of vivid resentment at being thus marched towards Parliament.

I seemed now always to be discovering alien forces of character in
her. Her way of taking life diverged from me more and more. She sounded
amazing, independent notes. She bought some particularly costly furs for
the campaign that roused enthusiasm whenever she appeared. She also made
me a birthday present in November of a heavily fur-trimmed coat and this
she would make me remove as I went on to the platform, and hold over her
arm until I was ready to resume it. It was fearfully heavy for her and
she liked it to be heavy for her. That act of servitude was in essence
a towering self-assertion. I would glance sideways while some chairman
floundered through his introduction and see the clear blue eye with
which she regarded the audience, which existed so far as she was
concerned merely to return me to Parliament. It was a friendly eye,
provided they were not silly or troublesome. But it kindled a little at
the hint of a hostile question. Aft