Chapter XIV.

Francis Hogarth’s Canvass And Election

There can be little doubt that Jane Melville was a good deal influenced in her decision as to the position she ought to hold with Francis by the letter she had received from Tom Lowrie on the morning of the day in which her cousin had betrayed to her more unmistakably than ever the state of his own heart.  It was something more for him to give up, and, as I have said before, she rather overestimated both the importance of the public duty and the amount of success in it which Francis was likely to attain to.  It might seem to impartial observers rather Utopian to hope and expect some regeneration of the political world of Great Britain from the return of an intelligent country gentleman of independent and original principles, for a few obscure Scottish burghs, to be one of an assembly of six hundred and fifty-eight legislators, but it is from such Utopianism, felt, not in one instance, but in many, that the atmosphere of politics, both in Great Britain and in Australia, can be cleared and purified.  When people, whether as electors or candidates (or, as in the case of Jane Melville, even those who are neither), take an exaggerated view of the trouble, expense, and annoyance attending the discharge of public duty, and form a low estimate of the good that each honest energetic individual can do to his country by using every means in his power to secure good government, to promote public spirit, and to raise the standard of political morality, the country is on the decline.  It may grow rich, it may increase in national prosperity, but, as a nation, it wants the soul of national life and national freedom.  I prefer Jane Melville’s rather unreasonable hopes to the pusillanimous fears—­the LASSEZ Faire policy of those who think they know the world far better, and who believe the game of public life is not worth the cost of the candle that lights it up.

If she had been the only woman in the world, or the only woman likely to suit Francis, and to make him happy, she would have felt very differently; but surely he could have no difficulty in finding, among the hundreds of thousands of marriageable women in Great Britain, some one as likely (she even thought, more likely), to satisfy his heart than herself.  It was only because circumstances had made him know her so well, and because he had been so intimately connected with no one else, that he believed he loved her.  He was a man whom any woman might easily learn to love; and if she steadily held out to him that she was only his dear sister—­his faithful friend, and that she could never be anything else, he would ere long form a tenderer tie.  But she hoped and wished that his lot might be cast with a good woman, who would not grudge her the secondary place that she felt she could not give up.  She tried to convince herself that it could be only friendship really on his part; but he had been so unused to affectionate friendships, especially with one of the other sex, that he was very likely to mistake his feelings.