Читать книгу The Dawn of Reckoning - James Hilton - Страница 27

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At one of his mother's dinner-parties Philip met a certain Sir Charles Maddison, M.P., and this gentle man listened to him with a patience and sympathy unusual in Mrs. Monsell's guests, most of whom were bent on exploding their own carefully prepared bombs of brilliance.

Sir Charles, however, had a special reason for taking notice of Philip. He was chairman of the Northern Political Association, and as such was responsible for providing party candidates for some of the less promising industrial constituencies between the Irwell and the Tyne. When he heard that Philip hankered after a political career, and above all, when he learned that Philip was prepared to put up a thousand pounds at the service of any local association that chose him as their candidate, he immediately asked him if he would care to become Member of Parliament for Loamport.

True there were difficulties, chief among which was a hostile majority of some eleven thousand votes. "But you have youth," said Sir Charles, optimistically, "and Loamport folks like young 'uns. There's no knowing what you might do if you had a try."

Philip, torn betwixt the fires of his ambition and his doubts as to his own capabilities, promised that he would give the matter his earnest consideration.