'Property and its Origin.''Property and its Evils.''Property and its Dangers.''Property and Liberty.''Property and Progress.''Property and its Decay.'
The Master pointed to the Bill. 'Read it,' he said. 'There you have my mission clearly announced. No mistake about it. A bold pronouncement, which cannot be mistaken. I make war against Property—I am the enemy irreconcilable—the enemy to the death—of Property. I am almost alone against the world, for my followers are a feeble folk and without power. All the interests, all the prejudices, all the powers, all the intellect, of the whole world are against me. I stand alone. But I fear nothing, because the future is given overto me and to mine—yea—though I do not live to see the day of Victory.'
He opened the door, and Elsie entered. She found herself in a room about sixty feet long by twenty broad, and lofty—a fine and goodly room. It was furnished with a long and narrow table running down the middle, and a few benches. Nothing else. The table was laid with a white cloth, and provided with plates of ham and beef, cold sausages, hard-boiled eggs, cakes, toast, muffins, bread and butter, marmalade, jam, shrimps, water-cresses, and teacups. In fact, there was spread out a Tea of generous proportions.
The room was half filled with thirty or forty people, mostly young, though there were some elderly men. Among them Elsie remarked, without surprise, the decayed Barrister of Gray's Inn. Perhaps he was attracted as much by the loaves as by the sermon. Three-quarters of them were young men. Elsie noticed that they were young men of a curious type—their faces keen, their eyes hard, their manner aggressive. They belonged to a Church Militant. They longed to be fighting. On the appearance of their preacher they flocked about him, shaking hands and inquiring after his health. At least, therefore, he had the affection of his followers.
'My friends,' said the Prophet, 'I bring you a new Disciple. She comes to us from the very stronghold of Property. Her friends'—yet he had shown no sign of recognition—'are either those who pillage the producer, or those who rob the possessor on pretence of defending him. She is at present only a recruit. She comes to listen and to learn. She will go home to remember and to meditate. She is a recruit now who will be hereafter a Leader.'
The people received her with curiosity. They were not of the higher classes, to put it mildly, and they had never had a young lady among them before. Two or three girls who were present—girls from the dressmaker's workrooms—looked at her frock with envy, and at her bonnet and her gloves with a yearning, helpless, heart-sinking admiration. To the young men she seemed a goddess, unapproachable. They stood at a distance: men of the rank above them would have worshipped. These young men only gaped. Such a girl had nothing to do with their lives.
Apparently they had been waiting for the Master, for at the moment a stout woman and a girl appeared bearing trayswith teapots and jugs of hot water, which they placed upon the board. Mr. Edmund Gray took the chair. Elsie began to feel like Alice in Wonderland. She came to see a 'Place': she expected to hear a sermon or a lecture; and behold a Tea!
'Sit beside me,' said the Master. 'We begin our evening on Sunday with a simple feast, which I provide. It is a sign of brotherhood. Every Sunday we begin with this renewal of fraternity. Those who break bread together are brothers and sisters. In the good time to come every meal shall be in common, and every evening meal shall be a Feast. Eat and drink with us, my daughter. So you will understand that you belong to a Brotherhood.'
'Try some shrimps, Miss,' said her neighbour on the right, an elderly man, who was a builder's foreman.
History does not concern itself with what Elsie took. She found the meal very much to the purpose after a long afternoon of talk, argument, and emotion. She was young and she was hungry. The tea was good: the things to eat were good: the cake and toast were admirable. Elsie ate and drank and wondered what was coming next.
After a little, she began to look round her and to watch the company. There were now, she counted, forty-five of them—forty-five disciples of Mr. Edmund Gray. What had he to teach them? The destruction of Property. Out of the four millions of London, forty-five were found who wanted to destroy Property—only forty-five. But perhaps all who advocated that step were not present. Her ancient prejudices whispered that this was a reassuring fact, considering that the Preacher had preached his doctrine for nine long years. Only forty-five. Next to her the foreman began to talk to her of Fourier and Owen, and a dozen half-forgotten leaders in the old experiments. He had been a Chartist in the Forties: he was a Socialist in these, the Nineties: but he confessed that before any real reform was attempted, Property must first be destroyed.
'It's the selfishness,' he whispered earnestly, 'that's got to be torn out by the roots. Take that away, and there's a chance for the world. It never can be taken away till a man finds that he can't work no longer for himself, and that he must work for all, whether he likes it or lumps it. Don't give him the choice nor the chance, I say. Take away Property, andthere's neither choice nor chance left. You hear Mr. Gray upon that. Oh, he's powerful! What do they say? Naked we came into the world. Naked we enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. There's a wonderful lot of fine things hangin' to that. You must wait till you hear Mr. Gray upon that theme.—Kingdom of Heaven! To hear the parsons talk, it's away above the clouds. Not so. It's here—close beside us—on this earth. All we've got to do is to put out our hands and reach it.'
'You may put out your hands as much as you like,' said one of the younger men; 'but you won't reach it, all the same. Property stands between.'
'At our place,' said a girl sitting opposite—a girl of intelligent face, pale and thin,—'we work from eight till eight, and sometimes longer, for twelve shillings a week. I know what things cost and what they sell for. I could produce enough to keep me—ah! a good deal better than I live now—if I could sell what I made myself—for four hours' work a day. So I work eight hours a day, not counting the dinner hour, just to keep the boss and to make Property for him. My Property it is—well—I know—in here, we say,ourProperty: outside we say,myProperty. Where's your Kingdom of Heaven, then, if you reach out your hand ever so far, so long as I've got to work to make somebody else rich? Let's destroy Property, and then we shall see.'
A desire—a foolish concealed desire, born of prejudice, seized Elsie to argue. For she perceived in the girl's reasoning certain confusions and intricacies. But she had the courage to suppress the inclination: she refrained. She was a disciple. She must listen.
'I am a slave, like all the rest of us,' another young man remarked cheerfully. 'My Master owns me. He can sell me if he likes, only he calls it by another name; he can't take a whip and lash me, though he'd like to, because, if he did, I'd break every bone in his body for him, but he can cut down the work and the money. I do editing and reporting for a local paper. Thirty shillings a week. The proprietor makes ten pounds a week out of it. And I'm not allowed to tell the truth for fear of advertisers.' He added a few words not commonly heard in a place that looks like a chapel on a Sunday evening.
Elsie observed that their faces showed two variations ofexpression—only two. The majority of the company had the eyes of the dreamer, the theorist, the enthusiast. They are soft eyes, and in repose are heavy, and they look through stone walls into space, far away—space where their dreams are realised and men and women live according to their theories. In moments of enthusiasm and passion they become flaming fires. These eyes belonged to most of those present. The rest—the minority—were those who are angry and restless and eager for the practical application of the doctrine. These want revolution: they are impatient: they feel for themselves the injustices and impressions which enthusiasts feel for others: these are always resentful: the others are always hopeful: these want to convert the world at once with bludgeon and with gun: the others are certain that before long the world will be converted by reason. The one despairs of anything but force: the other will have no force: the one hates his enemy: he would kill him if he could: he has no words too bad for him: the enthusiast, on the other hand, regards his enemy with pity, and would at any moment welcome him, forgive him, and—well—invite him to a Fraternal Tea if he would only desert his ranks and come over. And these are the two divisions in every party, and such is the nature of man that there must always be these two divisions.
The Fraternal Tea finished, the company cleared the tables, everybody lending a hand, perhaps as another sign or pledge of fraternity. It was then nearly seven o'clock, the hour appointed for the address. The door was thrown wide open for the admission of the world; but there was no sign that the world took the least interest in the subject of Property. No one came at all. Elsie learned afterwards that the world outside the Hall had long since grown tired of the subject on which Mr. Gray had been preaching for nine years. Those who came to the Tea were the inner circle of believers or disciples, a small but faithful company, to whose members there was rarely any addition.
At seven Mr. Edmund Gray rose to commence his address, standing at the head of the table, so that it was like an after-dinner speech. Outside, the sun was hot and bright and the air clear. Within the Hall, there were the mingled odours and steams of long-protracted and hearty Fraternal Tea: the air was heavy and the room dark. When the Master began to speak, a young man—one of the ardent and wrathful kind—drewout a note-book and took everything down: all listened with respect, some with rapt interest. Some nodded—some groaned—some said 'Hear' softly—to encourage the preacher and to show their adhesion to principle.
Elsie sat at the right hand of the speaker. His discourses moved her much less in this public place than in his chambers. The persuasive voice was there, but it did not persuade her—moreover, she could not meet his eyes. Their magnetism failed to touch her. So much the better, because she could listen with cold judgment and watch the people.
'My friends,' he began, 'my brothers and my sisters—we are all long since agreed that the root of all evil, the first form of disease, the first fatal step that was leading to so many other mischiefs, was the beginning of Property. We have proved that so often—we are all so entirely agreed upon this vital principle, that we seldom, and only on rare occasions, find it necessary to do more than assume its truth. That occasion, however, is the present, when we have among us one who comes as a stranger, yet a disciple: one who has a mind open to the influence of reason: one who is anxious to clear herself of the prejudices and absurdities in which she has been from infancy brought up. Let us, therefore, briefly, for her instruction and for the strengthening of our own faith, point out some of the arguments which support this position. It is to us an axiom. To the world it still requires proof. And the world refuses to accept the proof, because it is given over to the Chase of the Abominable Thing.'
He proceeded to parade the reasons which made his School regard Property as the root of all evil. The line which lie pursued was not new: many men have pointed out before Mr. Edmund Gray the selfishness of mankind as illustrated by the universal game of Grab: others, with equal force, have shown that the protection of Things causes an immense expenditure and a great shrinkage in Things: others have shown that it is the continual efforts of men to get without working the Things for which others have worked, that fill our jails and keep up an army of police.
'We start with a false principle,' the Master went on, 'which has ruined the world and still keeps it down. If there are to be rich men, they must become rich at the expense of the rest: they must be few and the poor must be many. Therefore, the protection of Property is the robbery of the poor bylaw. We all know that: in this place we have agreed, so far a thousand times: the rich can only become rich by robbing the poor: they rob their land: they rob their work: they rob their whole lives—and they are permitted and encouraged by the Law. Shall we, then, change the Law? No: it would be a work too vast. Shall we change the minds of men? Not by reason: it is impossible by any argument so long as by law and custom they can still rob the producer of his work. The only way is to destroy all Property. When men can no longer by any kind of thought get richer than their neighbours, then they will cease to think for themselves, and think for the whole community. You will say—some one may object—that some are not the same in strength of mind or of body: there will be many, then, who will refuse to work at all, and become burdens on the community. We have thought of that objection. At first, there would be many such; but not for long. Because we should kill them. Yes, my friends,' he added with a smile of the sweetest benevolence. 'For the good of the community it will be necessary, without any sentimental considerations, to kill all those who refuse to work, all those who shirk their work, all those who persistently do scamped and bad work. They must die. So the commonwealth shall contain none but those who are vigorous, loyal, and true. For the rest—Death—if it means the death of a million who were once rich—Death is the only escape from the difficulty which is so often objected.
'It has been asked again how we differ from the Socialists. In this. We would begin with no theories, no constitution, no code. Only let every man give all his strength, all his heart, all his mind, to the good of the commonwealth, without the least power of enriching himself, saving money—of course there would be no money—without the chance of getting better food and better clothes than the rest—and we may safely leave the world to take care of itself. Why—my brothers—why—my sisters—should we poor purblind creatures, unable to comprehend more than a glimpse of that glorious future which awaits the world when Property shall be destroyed—why—I say—should we dare to lay down schemes and invent systems for that glorified humanity? Let us leave them to themselves. They will be as far above us, my brothers, as we are already above the holders and the defenders of Property.'
Elsie looked at the little gathering—five-and-forty—with a little smile. They were then already far above the holders and the defenders of Property, and again she thought, 'What if these words were heard in Lincoln's Inn?'
'How, then, can Property be destroyed?'
At this practical question every one sat upright, coughed, and looked interested. Their Preacher had often enough declaimed upon the evils of Property. He seldom spoke of a practical way. Perhaps the time had come.
'There are, my friends, several ways. They are already beginning to be understood and to be worked. The Irish and the politicians who wanted the Irish vote have shown the world how to destroy property in land. Believe me, that example will be followed. It was an evil day for the holders of Property when the Government interfered between the landlord and his tenant. That example will bear fruit elsewhere. We shall see everywhere the owners of the land turned out and their places taken by those who work the land. The next step is from land to houses. Why not with houses as with land? Since a beginning has been made, it must be carried on. But there is other property besides lands and houses. There are companies with shares, railways, and so forth. We have only begun to see what united labour can effect—since union of labour is, in fact, not yet begun. When it is fairly started it will pay small respect to shareholders and to dividends. When wages are paid, there will be perhaps no dividend left at all. In a single year—nay, a single week—the whole capital invested in all the companies will lose its value: it will be so much waste-paper. My friends, we need not stir hand or foot to bring about this end: it will be done for us by the working-man, and by those who follow the example of Ireland. They will do it for their own selfish ends first—but—Property once destroyed, we shall never again allow it to be created.
'Oh!'—he warmed with his subject, his voice grew more musical, his face glowed—'I see a splendid—a noble sight. I see the great houses in the country fallen to ruin and decay: their contents are stored in museums: the great palaces of the towns are pulled down: the towns themselves are decayed and shrunk: there is no Property: there is no one working for himself: the man of science works his laboratory for the community—but he has the honour of his discoveries:the medical man pursues his work with no thought of getting rich: there is plenty to go the round of everything—oh! plenty of the best. We can have what we like, do what we like, dress as we like, teach what we please—provided we work for the State. If we refuse—Death! If we give bad work—Death! It is the only Law. We shall have no lawyers—no power—no magistrates. Oh! great and glorious time—you shall see it, you who are young—yes, you shall see it—while I—I—I—who have dreamed of the time so long—I shall lie low in the grave. What matter—so the time come and so the world rises free at last to follow out the destiny of a new and glorified humanity!'
He sat down and laid his head upon his hand, as one in prayer. They remained in silence till he raised his head. Then the young man who had called attention to his slavery spoke.
'There is perhaps another way,' he said, 'which might do the job for us. Suppose the chemists were to find out how to produce food—food of any kind—artificially—just as good and as nourishing as if it was butcher-meat or bread. Suppose it could be produced dirt cheap—most chemists' things cost nothing. Then no one would need to work: because he'd have his food found for him. If no one would need to work, no one could get rich any more. And if no one wanted to buy anything, nobody could sell. Then riches wouldn't count, and there you are. Let's get a chemist to take the thing up.'
The conversation that followed struck out new ideas. Presently it flagged, and one by one the people stole away.
The Master and the Disciple returned in the tram as far as Gray's Inn.
The Master fell into profound silence a quarter of an hour before the end of the journey. When they got down, Elsie observed first, that he buttoned his coat; next, that he put on gloves; thirdly, that he pulled his hat forwards: and lastly, that he ignored her presence. He drew himself erect, and walked away with firm and precise step in the direction of Bedford Row, which is on the other side of Gray's Inn. He was once more Mr. Edward Dering.
'I wonder,' said Elsie, 'how much, to-morrow, he will recollect?'
It was past ten o'clock that Sunday evening when Elsie arrived home. Athelstan and George were waiting up for her. 'Again the mysterious appointment?' asked the former. 'Are we to know anything yet?'—Elsie shook her head.—'Not to-night? Very good. You look tired, Elsie.'
'I am tired, thank you. And—and I think I would rather not talk to-night. I will go to my own room.—Have patience, both of you, for a day or two longer. Believe me, everything is going well. The only reason why I cannot tell you what I have been doing is that it is so strange—so wonderful—that I have not been able even to shape it into words in my own mind.—What is to-day? The 1st of August.'
'Only eleven days yet—eleven long days,' said George, 'but also eleven short days.'
'I do not forget. Well—you may both of you sit down—go about your business—you need do nothing more. As for me, I think you will have to get on without me every evening this week. But be quite easy. The thing is done.' And with that, nodding and laughing, she ran out of the room.
'It is done,' repeated George. 'The thing is done. Which thing?'
'It is done,' repeated Athelstan. 'What is done? How was it done? Who did it? When was it done?'
'Since Elsie says it is done, I am bound to accept her assurance. Presumably, she has caught old Checkley at South Square, in the very act. Never mind; I am quite sure that Elsie knows what she says.'
In her own retreat Elsie sat down to consider.
If you think of it, she had a good deal to consider. She had, in fact, a tremendous weapon, an eighty-ton Woolwich, in her possession; a thing which had to be handled so that when it was fired it should not produce a general massacre. All those who had maligned and spoken and thought evil of her brother and her lover should, she thought, be laid prostrateby the mere puff and whiff of the discharge. Checkley should fall backwards, and raise a bump at the back of his head as big as an egg. Sir Samuel and Hilda should be tumbled down in the most ignominious fashion, just as if they had no money at all. And her mother should be forced to cry out that she had been wrong and hasty.
She held in her own hands nothing less than the complete demolition of all this erection of suspicion and malignity. Nothing less. She could restore to her brother that which he had never lost, save in the eyes of his own people, who should have been the most jealous to preserve it. No greater service could be rendered to him. And she could clear from her lover's name whatever shreds and mists had been gathered round it by the industrious breath of Checkley—that humble Cloud Compeller. You see, we all have this much of Zeus in us, even in the compelling of Clouds: every man by the exercise of a little malignity, a little insinuation and a few falsehoods, can raise quite a considerable mist about the head or the name or the figure or the reputation of anyone. Women—some women, that is—are constantly engaged in this occupation; and after they have been at their work, it is sometimes hard for the brightest sunshine to melt those mists away.
To be able to clear away clouds is a great thing. Besides this, Elsie had found out what the rest had failed to find out—and by the simplest method. She had learned from the only person who knew at what hour she should be most likely to find the mysterious Edmund Gray, and she had then waited on the stairs until he came. No method more direct—yet nobody thought of it except herself. She had done it. As the result, there was no longer any mystery. The man who forged the first cheque: the man who wrote those letters and conducted their transfer: was, as they all thought at first, Edmund Gray. No other. And Edmund Gray was Edward Dering, one and the same person—and Edward Dering was a Madman, and this discovery it was which so profoundly impressed her. There were no confederates: there was no one wanted to intercept the post: no one had tampered with the safe: the Chief himself had received the letters and conducted the correspondence alternately as Edmund Gray himself, or Edmund Gray acting unconsciously for Edward Dering.
Perfectly impossible— Perfectly simple— Perfectly intelligible. As for the impossibility, a fact may remain when its impossibility is established. Elsie was not a psychologist or a student of the brain. She knew nothing about mental maladies. She only said after what she had seen and heard: 'The man is mad.'
Then she thought how she should best act. To establish the identity of Mr. Dering and Edmund Gray must be done. It was the one thing necessary. Very well. That could easily be done, and in a simple way. She had only to march into his office at the head of a small band of witnesses and say: 'You wanted us to find out Edmund Gray! I have found him. And thou art the man!'
He would deny it. He certainly knew nothing about it. Then she would call upon her witnesses. First, Athelstan's commissionaire, who declared that he should remember, even after eight years or eighty years, the gentleman who sent him to cash that cheque. 'Who is this man, commissionaire?'
'That is Mr. Edmund Gray.'
Next the landlord of his chambers. 'Who is this man?'
'That is Mr. Edmund Gray, my tenant for nine years.'
Then she would call the eminent Barrister, Mr. Langhorne. 'Do you know this man?'
'He is my neighbour, Mr. Edmund Gray.'
And Freddy Carstone the Coach.
'He is my neighbour, Mr. Edmund Gray.'
And the laundress, and she would say: 'I have done for the gentleman for nine years. He's a very good gentleman, and generous—and his name is Mr. Edmund Gray.'
And the people from the Hall—and they would make answer, with one consent: 'That is Mr. Edmund Gray, our preacher and our teacher.'
And she herself would give her testimony: 'I have sat with you in your Chambers. I have heard you lecture in your Hall, surrounded by these good people, and you are Edmund Gray.'
The thing was quite easy to do. She could bring forward all this evidence at once, and it would be unanswerable and convincing even to Sir Samuel.
Except for one thing which made it difficult.
The discovery would be a most dreadful—a most terrible—revelation to one who believed himself to be the most respectablesolicitor in the whole of London; the most trustworthy; the clearest in mind; the keenest in vision; the coldest in judgment. He would learn without the least previous suspicion or preparation, or any softening of the blow, that for many years he had been—— What? Is there any other word—any kinder word—any word less terrifying or less humiliating by which the news could be conveyed to him that he had been Mad—Mad—Mad? Heavens! what a word it is! How terrible to look at with its three little letters which mean so much! All the words that mean much are monosyllables: God—Love—Joy—Hate—Fear—Glad—Sad—Mad—Bad—Hell—Home—Wife—Child—House—Song—Feast—Wine—Kiss—everything—they are the oldest words, you see; they have been used from time immemorial by prehistoric man as well as by ourselves.
Mr. Dering had to be told that he was Mad. Somehow or other, he must be told that. It seemed at first the only way out of the difficulty. How could this girl communicate the dreadful news to her guardian, who had always been to her considerate, and even affectionate? She shrank from the task. Then she thought she would hand it over to her brother Athelstan. But he was far more concerned about clearing up the hateful business than about softening the blow for Mr. Dering. Or of communicating it to George. What should she do? Mr. Dering was mad. Not mad all the time, but mad now and then, sometimes every day, sometimes with intervals. This kind of madness, I believe, takes many forms—a fact which should make the strongest men tremble. Sometimes it lasts a long time before it is found out. Sometimes even it is never found out at all. Solicitors and doctors tell queer stories about it. For instance, that story—quite a common story—of an old gentleman of irreproachable reputation, a speaker and leader in religious circles, a man enormously respected by all classes, concerning whom not his bitterest enemy had a word of scandal—yet, after his death, things deplorable, things incredible, things to be suppressed at any cost, were brought to the knowledge of his lawyers. At certain times he went mad, you see. Then he forgot who he was: he forgot his reputation, his place in the world, and the awful penalties of being found out: he went down: he lived among people of the baser sort, and became an inferior man with another name, and died without everknowing his own dreadful record. Another of whom I have heard was mad for fifteen years, yet the Chief of a great House, who all the time conducted the business with great ability. He was found out at last because he began to buy things. Once he sent home six grand pianos: another time he bought all the cricket bats that were in stock in a certain shop; and another time he bought all the hats that fitted him at all the hatters' shops within a circle whose centre was Piccadilly Circus and the radius a mile long. After this they gave him a cheerful companion, who took walks abroad with him, and he retired from active business.
Some philosophers maintain that we are all gone mad on certain points. In that case, if one does not know it or suspect it, and if our friends neither know nor suspect it, what does it matter? There are also, we all know, points on which some of us are mad, and everybody knows it. There is the man who believes that he is a great poet, and publishes volume after volume, all at his own expense, to prove it: there is the man—but he ought to be taken away and put on a treadmill—who writes letters to the papers on every conceivable subject with the day before yesterday's wisdom: there is the man who thinks he can paint—we all know plenty of men mad like unto these, and we are for the most part willing to tolerate them. Considerations, however, on the universality of the complaint fail to bring consolation to any except those who have it not. In the same way, nobody who dies of any disease is comforted with the thought of the rarity or the frequency of that disease; its interesting character has no charm for him. Nor is the man on his way to be hanged consoled by the reminder that thousands have trodden that flowery way before him. To Mr. Dering, proud of his own intellect, self-sufficient and strong, the discovery of these things would certainly bring humiliation intolerable, perhaps—even—shame unto Death itself. How—oh! how could things be managed so as to spare him this pain?
Elsie's difficulties grew greater the more she pondered over them. It was past midnight when she closed the volume of thought and her eyes at the same moment.
In the morning, Athelstan kissed her gravely.
'Do you remember what you said last night, Elsie? You said that we could rest at peace because the thing was done.'
'Well, Athelstan, the words could only have one meaning, could they? I mean, if you want me to be more explicit, that the thing is actually done. My dear brother, I know all about it now. I know who signed that first cheque—who sent the commissionaire to the Bank—who received the notes—who placed them in the safe—who wrote about the transfers—who received the letters and carried on the whole business. I can place my hand upon him to-day if necessary.'
'Without doubt? With proofs, ample proofs?'
'Without the least doubt—with a cloud of witnesses. My dear brother, do not doubt me. I have done it. Yet—for a reason—to spare one most deeply concerned—for the pity of it—if you knew—give me a few days—a week, perhaps, to find a way if I can. If I cannot, then the cruel truth must be told bluntly, whatever happens.'
'Remember all the mischief the old villain has done.'
'The old villain? Oh! you mean Checkley?'
'Of course; whom should I mean?'
'Nobody—nothing. Brother, if you bid me speak to-day, I will speak. No one has a better right to command. But if this—this person—were to die to-day, my proofs are so ample that there could be no doubt possible. Yes—even my mother—it is dreadful to say it—but she is so hard and so obstinate—even my mother would acknowledge that there is no doubt possible.'
Athelstan stooped and kissed her. 'Order it exactly as you please, my child. If I have waited eight long years, I can wait another week. Another week. Then I shall at last be able to speak of my people at home. I shall go back to California with belongings like other men. I shall be able to make friends; I can even, if it comes in my way, make love, Elsie. Do you think you understand quite what this means to me?'
He left her presently to go about his work.
In the corner of the room stood her easel with the portrait, the fancy portrait, of Mr. Dering the Benevolent—Mr. Dering the Optimist—Mr. Dering as he might be with the same features and the least little change in their habitual setting.
Elsie stood before this picture, looking at it curiously.
'Yes,' she murmured, 'you are a dear, tender-hearted,kindly, benevolent, simple old Thing. You believe in human nature: you think that everybody is longing for the Kingdom of Heaven. You think that everybody would be comfortable in it: that everybody longs for honesty. Before I altered you and improved your face, you were Justice without mercy: you were Law without leniency: you were Experience which knows that all men are wicked by choice when they get the chance: you had no soft place anywhere: you held that Society exists only for the preservation of Property. Oh! you are so much more lovable now, if you would only think so—if you only knew. You believe in men and women: that is a wonderful advance—and you have done well to change your old name to your new name. I think I should like you always to be Edmund Gray. But how am I to tell you? How, in the name of wonder, am I to tell you that you are Edmund Gray? First of all, I must see you— I must break the thing gently— I must force you somehow to recollect, as soon as possible. I must make you somehow understand what has happened.'
She had promised to meet Mr. Edmund Gray at his Chambers that evening at five. He showed his confidence in her by giving her a latch-key, so that she might let herself in if he happened not to be in the Chambers when she called, at five. She would try, then, to bring him back to himself. She pictured his amazement—his shame—at finding himself in strange rooms under another name, preaching wild doctrines. It would be too much for him. Better go to Mr. Dering, the real Mr. Dering, and try to move him in his own office, to recollect what had happened. Because, you see, Elsie, unacquainted with these obscure forms of brain disease, imagined that she might by artful question and suggestion clear that clouded memory, and show the lawyer his double figuring as a Socialist.
She waited till the afternoon. She arrived at New Square about three, two hours before her engagement at Gray's Inn.
Mr. Dering received her with his usual kindness. He was austerely benignant.
'I tried to see you last night,' she said, untruthfully, because the words conveyed the impression that she had called upon him.
'No—no. I was— I suppose I was out. I went out——' His face clouded, and he stopped.
'Yes—you were saying, Mr. Dering, that you went out.'
'Last night was Sunday, wasn't it? Yes; I went out.—Where did I go?' He drummed the table with his fingers irritably. 'Where did I go? Where?—What does it matter?'
'Nothing at all. Only it is strange that you should not remember.'
'I told you once before, Elsie,' he said, 'I suffer—I labour—under curious fits of forgetfulness. Now, at this moment, I—it really is absurd—I cannot remember where I was last night. I am an old man. It is the privilege of age to forget yesterday, and to remember fifty years ago.'
'I was talking last night to an old gentleman who said much the same. He has Chambers where he goes to write: he has a Lecture Hall—where he preaches to the people——'
Mr. Dering looked at her in mild surprise. What did she mean? Elsie coloured.
'Of course,' she said, 'this has nothing to do with you.'
'How I spent the evening I know very well,' Mr. Dering went on. 'Yet I forget. That is the trouble with me. My housekeeper will not give me dinner on Sunday evening, and on that day I go to my Club. I get there about five or six: I read the magazines till seven. Sometimes I drop off to sleep—we old fellows will drop off, you know—about seven I have dinner. After dinner I take my coffee, and read or talk if there is any one I know. About nine I walk home. That has been my custom for many years. Therefore, that is how I spent the evening of yesterday.—But, you see, I cannot remember it. Breakfast I remember, and the Church service afterwards. Luncheon I remember: getting home at ten I remember. But the interval between I cannot remember.'
'Do you forget other things? Do you remember Saturday afternoon, for instance?'
'Yes—perfectly. I left the office about five. I walked straight home.—No—no—that isn't right. It was nearly eight when I got home. I remember. The dinner was spoiled.—No—I did not go straight home.'
'Perhaps you stayed here till past seven?'
'No—no. I remember looking at the clock as I put onmy hat. It was half-past five when I went out— Five. What did I do between half-past five o'clock and eight? I forget. You see, my trouble, Elsie—I forget. Perhaps I went to the Club: perhaps I strolled about: perhaps I came back here. There are three hours to account for—and I have forgotten them all.'
Should she tell him? She could not. The way must somehow be prepared. No—she could not tell him just so—in cold blood. How would he look if she were to begin: 'I have found out the mystery. You are Edmund Gray. During the hours that you cannot recall, you are playing the part of a Socialist teacher and leader: you are actively propagating the doctrines that you hold to be dangerous and misleading'? What would he say? What would he feel when he realised the truth?
On the table lay a copy of theTimes—a fortnight-old copy—open at the place where there was a certain letter from a certain Edmund Gray. Elsie pointed to it. Mr. Dering sighed. 'Again,' he said, 'they persecute me. Now it is a letter addressed to Edmund Gray, lying on my table: now it is the bill of a pernicious lecture by Edmund Gray: to-day it is this paper with the letter that appeared a week or two ago. Who brought it here? Checkley says he didn't. Who put it on my table?'
Elsie made no reply. It was useless to test her former theory of the boy under the table.
'As for the man who wrote this letter,' Mr. Dering went on, 'he bears the name of our forger and writes from the same address. Yet he is not the man. Of that I am convinced. This man is a fool because he believes in the honesty of mankind: he is a generous fool, because he believes that people would rather be good than bad. Nonsense! They would rather be stealing from each other's plates, like the monkeys, than dividing openly. He has what they call a good heart—that is, he is a soft creature—and he is full of pity for the poor. Now, in my young days, I was taught—whatafter-experience has only brought more home to me—that the poor are poor in consequence of their vices. We used to say to them: "Go away—practise thrift. Be sober—work hard. By exercising these virtues we rose out of your ranks. By continuing to exercise them we remain on these levels. Go away. There is no remedy for disease contracted by vice. Go away and suffer." That's what we said formerly. What they say now is: "Victims of greed! You are filled with every virtue possible to humanity. You are down-trodden by the Capitalist. You are oppressed. Make and produce for others to enjoy. We will change all this. We will put the fruits—the harvest—of your labour in your own hands, and you shall show the world your justice, your noble disinterestedness, your generosity, your love of the common weal." That's the new gospel, Elsie, and I prefer the old.'
Strange that a man should at one time hold and preach with so much fervour and earnestness the very creed which at another time he denounced as fiercely!
'This man, and such as he,' continued Mr. Dering, lifted out of his anxieties by that subject, 'would destroy Property in order to make the workman rich. Wonderful doctrine! He would advance the world by destroying the only true incentive and stimulant for work, invention, civilisation, association, and every good and useful thing. He would destroy Property. And then? Can he not see what would follow? Why, these people do not know the very alphabet of the thing. By Property they mean the possession by individuals of land or money. But that is only a part of Property. Take that away, and the individual remains. And he has got—what you cannot take away—the rest of his Property, by which he will speedily repair the temporary loss. Consider, child, if you can, what does a man possess? He has, I say, Property—all his own—which cannot be taken from him or shared with another—Property in his brain, his trade, his wit, his craft, his art, his skill, his invention, his enterprise, his quickness to grip an opportunity. Again, he has his wife and children—sometimes a very valuable Property: he has, besides, his memories, his knowledge, his experience, his thoughts, his hopes, his projects, and intentions: he has his past and he has his future: he has, or thinks he has, his inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven. Take away all these things bit by bit, what is left? Nothing.Not even the shadow of a man. Not even a naked figure. This, Elsie, is Property. These things separate the individual from the mass, and each man from his neighbour. A shallow fanatic, like this Edmund Gray, thinks that wealth is the whole of Property. Why, I say, it is only a part of Property: it is the external and visible side of certain forms of Property. Take all the wealth away to-day—even if you make ten thousand laws, the same qualities—the same forms of Property—the same lack of those qualities will produce like results to-morrow.—Do you now understand, child, what is meant by Property? It is everything which makes humanity. Wealth is only the symbol or proof of society so organised that all these qualities—the whole Property of a man, can be exercised freely and without injustice.'
'I see,' said Elsie, gazing with wonder undisguised. Was this last night's Prophet? Could the same brain hold two such diverse views'?
'You are surprised, child. That is because you have never taken or understood this larger view of Property. It is new to you. Confess, however, that it lends sacredness to things which we are becoming accustomed to have derided. Believe me, it is not without reason that some of us venerate the laws which have been slowly, very slowly, framed: and the forms which have been slowly, very slowly, framed: as experience has taught us wisdom for the protection of man—working man, not loafing, lazy man. It is wise and right of us to maintain all those institutions which encourage the best among us to work and invent and distribute. By these forms alone is industry protected and enterprise encouraged. Then such as this Edmund Gray'—he laid his hand again upon the letter—'will tell you that Property—Property—causes certain crimes—ergo, Property must be destroyed. Everything desirable causes its own peculiar class of crime. Consider the universal passion of Love. It daily causes crimes innumerable. Yet no one has yet proposed the abolition of Love—eh?'
'I believe not,' Elsie replied, smiling. 'I hope no one will—yet.'
'No. But the desire for Property, which is equally universal—which is the most potent factor in the cause of Law and Order—they desire and propose to destroy. I have shown you that it is impossible. Let the companies pay no dividends,let all go to the working men: let the lands pay no rent: the houses no rent: let the merchants' capital yield no profit: to-morrow the clever man will be to the front again, using for his own purposes the dull and the stupid and the lazy. That is my opinion.—Forgive this sermon, Elsie. You started me on the subject. It is one on which I have felt very strongly for a long time. In fact, the more I think upon it the more I am convinced that the most important thing in any social system is the protection of the individual—personal liberty: freedom of contract: right to enjoy in safety what his ability, his enterprise, and his dexterity may gain for him.'
Elsie made no reply for a moment. The conversation had taken an unexpected turn. The vehemence of the upholder of Property overwhelmed her as much as the earnestness of its destroyer. Besides, what chance has a girl of one-and-twenty on a subject of which she knows nothing with a man who has thought upon it for fifty years? Besides, she was thinking all the time of the other man. And now there was no doubt—none whatever—that Mr. Dering knew nothing of Mr. Edmund Gray—nothing at all. He knew nothing and suspected nothing of the truth. And which should she believe? The man who was filled with pity for the poor and saw nothing but their sufferings, or the man who was full of sympathy with the rich, and saw in the poor nothing but their vices? Are all men who work oppressed? Or are there no oppressed at all, but only some lazy and stupid and some clever?
'Tell me more another time,' she said, with a sigh. 'Come back to the case—the robbery. Is anything discovered yet?'
'I have heard nothing. George refuses to go on with the case out of some scruple because——'
'Oh! I know the cause. Very cruel things have been said about him. Do you not intend to stand by your own partner, Mr. Dering?'
'To stand by him? Why, what can I do?'
'You know what has been said of him—what is said of him—why I have had to leave home——'
'I know what is said, certainly. It matters nothing what is said. The only important thing is to find out—and that they cannot do.'
'They want to connect Edmund Gray with the forgeries, and they are trying the wrong way. Checkley is not the connecting link—nor is George.'
'You talk in riddles, child.'
'Perhaps. Do you think, yourself, that George has had anything whatever to do with the business?'
'If you put it so, I do not. If you ask me what I have a right to think—it is that everything is possible.'
'That is what you said about Athelstan. Yet now his innocence is established.'
'That is to say, his guilt is not proved. Find me the man who forged that cheque, and I will acknowledge that he is innocent. Until then, he is as guilty as the other man—Checkley—who was also named in connection with the matter. Mind, I say, I do not believe that my Partner could do this thing. I will tell him so. I have told him so. If it had to be done over again, I would ask him to become my partner. But all things are possible. My brother is hot upon it. Well—let him search as he pleases. In such a case the solution is always the simplest and the most unexpected. I told him only this morning—he had lunch with me—that he was on a wrong scent—but he is obstinate. Let him go on.'
'Yes—let him divide a family—keep up bitterness between mother and son—make a lifelong separation between those who ought to love each other most—— Oh! it is shameful! It is shameful! And you make no effort—none at all—to stop it.'
'What can I do? What can I say, more than I have said? If they would only not accuse each other—but find out something!'
'Mr. Dering—forgive me—what I am going to say'—she began with jerks. 'The honour of my brother—of my lover—are at stake.'
'Say, child, what you please.'
'I think that perhaps'—she did not dare to look at him—'if you could remember sometimes those dropped and forgotten evenings—those hours when you do not know what you have said and done—if you could only remember a little—we might find out more.'
He watched her face blushing, and her eyes confused, and her voice stammering, and he saw that there was something behind—something that she hinted, but would not or could not express. He sat upright, suspicious and disquieted.
'Tell me what you mean, child.'
'I cannot—if you do not remember anything. You comelate in the morning—sometimes two hours late. You think it is only ten o'clock when it is twelve. You do not know where you have been for the last two hours. Try to remember that. You were late on Saturday morning. Perhaps this morning. Where were you?'
His face was quite white. He understood that something was going—soon—to happen.
'I know not, Elsie—indeed—I cannot remember. Where was I?'
'You leave here at five. You have ordered dinner, and your housekeeper tells me that you come home at ten or eleven. Where are you all that time?'
'I am at the Club.'
'Can you remember? Think—were you at the Club last night? George went there to find you, but you were not there—and you were not at home. Where were you?'
He tried to speak—but he could not. He shook his head—he gasped twice.
'You cannot remember? Oh! try—Mr. Dering—try—for the sake of everybody—to put an end to this miserable condition—try.'
'I cannot remember,' he said again feebly.
'Is it possible—just possible—that while you are away—during these intervals—you yourself may be actually—in the company—of this Socialist—this Edmund Gray?'
'Elsie—what do you mean?'
'I mean—can you not remember?'
'You mean more, child! Do you know what you mean? If what you suggest is true, then I must be mad—mad. Do you mean it? Do you mean it? Do you understand what you say?'
'Try—try to remember,' she replied. 'That is all I mean. My dear guardian, is there any one to whom I am more grateful than yourself? You have given me a fortune and my lover an income. Try—try to remember.'
She left him without more words.
He sat looking straight before him—the horror of the most awful thing that can befall a man upon him. Presently, he touched his bell, and his old clerk appeared.
'Checkley,' he said, 'tell me the truth.'
'I always do,' he replied surlily.
'I have been suffering from fits of forgetfulness. Haveyou observed any impairing of the faculties? When a man's mental powers are decaying, he forgets things: he loses the power of work: his old skill leaves him: he cannot distinguish between good work and bad. He shows his mental decay, I believe, in physical ways—he shuffles as he walks; he stoops and shambles—and in his speech—he wanders and he repeats—and in his food and manner of eating. Have you observed any of these symptoms upon me, Checkley?'
'Not one. You are as upright as a lance: you eat like five-and-twenty: your talk is as good and your work is as good as when you were forty.—Don't think such things. To be sure you do forget a bit. But not your work. You only forget sometimes what you did out of the office—as if that matters. Do you remember the case you tackled yesterday afternoon?'
'Certainly.'
'Do you tell me that any man—forty years younger than you—could have tackled that case more neatly? Garn! Go 'long!'
Checkley went back to his office.
'What did she mean by it, then?' Mr. Dering murmured. 'Who put her on to such a suspicion? What did she mean by it? Of course it's nonsense.' So reassuring himself, he yet remained disquieted. For he could not remember.
At half-past five or so, Mr. Edmund Gray arrived at his Chambers. The outer door was closed, but he found his disciple waiting for him. She had been there an hour or more, she said. She was reading one of the books he had recommended to her. With the words of Mr. Dering in her ears, she read as if two voices were speaking to her—talking to each other across her.
She laid down the book and rose to greet him. 'Master,' she said, 'I have come from Mr. Dering. He is your solicitor, you told me.'
'Assuredly. He manages my affairs.'
'It is curious—I asked him if he knew you—and he said that he knew nothing about you.'
'That is curious, certainly. My solicitor for—for many years. He must have mistaken the name. Or—he grows old—perhaps he forgets people.'
'Do you often see him?'
'I saw him this morning. I took him my letter to theTimes. He is narrow—very narrow, in his views. We argued the thing for a bit. But, really, one might as well argue with a stick as with Dering when Property is concerned. So he forgets, does he? Poor old chap! He forgets—well—we all grow old together!' He sighed. 'It is his time to-day and mine to-morrow.—My Scholar, let us talk.'
The Scholar left her Master at seven. On her way out she ran against Checkley, who was prowling round the court. 'You!' he cried. 'You! Ah! I've caught you, have I? On Saturday afternoon I thought I see you going into No. 22. Now I've caught you coming out, have I?'
'Checkley,' she said, 'if you are insolent, I shall have to speak to Mr. Dering;' and walked away.
'There's another of 'em,' Checkley murmured, looking after her—'a hardened one, if ever there was. All for her lover and her brother! A pretty nest of 'em. And calls herself a lady!'
'Child,' said the Master, 'it is time that you should take another lesson.'
'I am ready. Let us begin.' She crossed her hands in her lap and looked up obedient.
'Not a lesson this time from books. A practical lesson from men and women, boys and girls, children and infants in arms. Let us go forth and hear the teaching of the wrecks and the slaves. I will show you creatures who are men and women mutilated in body and mind—mutilated by the social order. Come, I will show you, not by words, but by sight, why Property must be destroyed.'
It was seven o'clock, when Mr. Dering ought to have been thinking of his dinner, that Mr. Edmund Gray proposed this expedition. Now, since that other discourse on the sacredness of Property, a strange thing had fallen upon Elsie. Whenever her Master spoke and taught, she seemed to hear, following him, the other voice speaking and teaching exactly the opposite. Sometimes—this is absurd, but many true things are absurd—she seemed to hear both voices speaking together:yet she heard them distinctly and apart. Looking at Mr. Dering, she knew what he was saying: looking at Mr. Edmund Gray, she heard what he was saying. So that no sooner had these words been spoken, than, like a response in church, there arose the voice of Mr. Dering. And it said: 'Come. You shall see the wretched lives and the sufferings of those who are punished because their fathers or themselves have refused to work and save. Not to be able to get Property is the real curse of labour. It is no evil to work provided one chooses the work and creates for one's self Property. The curse is to have to work for starvation wages at what can never create property, if the worker should live for a thousand years.'
Of the two voices she preferred the one which promised the abolition of poverty and crime. She was young: she was generous: any hope of a return of the Saturnian reign made her heart glow. Of the two old men—the mad man and the sane man—she loved the mad man. Who would not love such a man? Why, he knew how to make the whole world happy! Ever since the time of Adam we have been looking and calling out and praying for such a man. Every year the world runs after such a man. He promises, but he does not perform. The world tries his patent medicine, and is no better. Then, the year after, the world runs after another man.
Elsie rose and followed the Master. It was always with a certain anxiety that she sat or talked with him. Always she dreaded lest, by some unlucky accident, he should awaken and be restored to himself suddenly and without warning—say in his Lecture Hall. How would he look? What should she say? 'See—in this place for many years past you have in course of madness preached the very doctrines which in hours of sanity you have most reprobated. These people around you are your disciples. You have taught them by reason and by illustration with vehemence and earnestness to regard the destruction of property as the one thing needful for the salvation of the world. What will you say now? Will you begin to teach the contrary? They will chase you out of the Hall for a madman. Will you go on with your present teaching? You will despise yourself for a madman.' Truly a difficult position. Habit, however, was too strong. There was little chance that Edmund Gray among his own people, and at work upon his own hobby, would become Edward Dering.
They went out together. He led her—whither? It matterednot. North and South and East and West you may find everywhere the streets and houses of the very poor hidden away behind the streets of the working people and the well-to-do.
The Master stopped at the entrance of one of those streets—it seemed to Elsie as if she was standing between two men both alike, with different eyes. At the corner was a public-house with swinging doors. It was filled with men talking, but not loudly. Now and then a woman went in or came out, but they were mostly men. It was a street long and narrow, squalid to the last degree, with small two-storied houses on either side. The bricks were grimy; the mortar was constantly falling out between them: the woodwork of doors and windows was insufferably grimy: many of the panes were broken in the windows. It was full of children: they swarmed: they ran about in the road, they danced on the pavement, they ran and jumped and laughed as if their lot was the happiest in the world and their future the brightest. Moreover, most of them, though their parents were steeped in poverty, looked well fed and even rosy. 'All these children,' said Mr. Edmund Gray, 'will grow up without a trade: they will enter life with nothing but their hands and their legs and their time. That is the whole of their inheritance. They go to school, and they like school: but as for the things they learn, they will forget them, or they will have no use for them. Hewers of wood and drawers of water shall they be: they are condemned already. That is the system: we take thousands of children every year, and we condemn them to servitude—whatever genius may be lying among them. It is like throwing treasures into the sea, or burying the fruits of the earth. Waste! Waste! Yet, if the system is to be bolstered up, what help?'
Said the other Voice: 'The world must have servants. These are our servants. If they are good at their work, they will rise and become upper servants. If they are good upper servants, they may rise higher. Their children can rise higher still, and their grandchildren may join us. Service is best for them. Good service, hard service, will keep them in health and out of temptation. To lament because they are servants is foolish and sentimental.'
Standing in the doorways, sitting on the door-steps, talking together, were women—about four times as many women asthere were houses. This was because there were as many families as rooms, and there were four rooms for every house. As they stood at the end of the street and looked down, Elsie observed that nearly every woman had a baby in her arms, and that there were a great many types or kinds of women. That which does not surprise one in a drawing-room, where every woman is expected to have her individual points, is noticed in a crowd, where, one thinks, the people should be like sheep—all alike.
'A splendid place, this street, for such a student as you should be, my Scholar.' The Master looked up and down—he sniffed the air, which was stuffy, with peculiar satisfaction: he smiled upon the grubby houses. 'You should come often; you should make the acquaintance of the people: you will find them so human, so desperately human, that you will presently understand that these women are your sisters. Change dresses with one of them: let your hair fall wild: take off your bonnet——'
'Shall I then be quite like them?' asked Elsie. 'Like them, Master? Oh! not quite like them.'
'Not quite like them,' he said. 'No; you could never talk like them.'
He walked about among the people, who evidently knew him, because they made way for him, nodded to him, and pretended, such was their politeness, to pay no attention to the young lady who accompanied him.
'Every one of them is a study,' he continued. 'I could preach to you on every one as a text. Here is my young friend Alice Parden, for instance'—he stopped before a pale girl of seventeen or so, tall and slender, but of drooping figure, who carried a baby in her arms. 'Look at her. Consider. Alice is foolish, like all the Alices of this street. Alice must needs marry her chap a year ago, when she was sixteen and he was eighteen. Alice should be still at her club in the evening and her work in the daytime. But she must marry, and she is a child mother.—Is he out of work still?' Alice nodded, and hugged her baby closer. Mr. Edmund Gray shook his head in admonition, but gave her a coin, and went on. 'Now look at this good woman'—he stopped before a door where an Amazon was leaning—a woman five feet eight in height, with brawny arms and broad shoulders and a fiery furnace for a face—a most terrible andfearful woman.—'How are you this evening, Mrs. Moss? And how is your husband?'
Long is the arm of coincidence. Mrs. Moss was just beginning to repose after a row royal; she was slowly simmering and slowly calming. There had been a row royal, a dispute, an argument, a quarrel, and a fight with her husband. All four were only just concluded. All four had been conducted on the pavement, for the sake of coolness and air and space. The residents stood around: the controversy was sharp and animated: the lady bore signs of its vehemence in a bruise, rapidly blackening, over one eye, and abrasions on her knuckles. The husband had been conducted by his friends from the spot to the public-house at the corner, where he was at present pulling himself together, and forgetting the weight of his consort's fists, and solacing his spirit with strong drink.
'How is my husband?' the lady repeated. 'Oh! I'll tell you. I'll tell you, Mr. Gray, how my husband is. Oh! how is he? Go, look for him in the public-house. You shall see how he is and what he looks like.' She descended two steps, still retaining the advantage of the lowest. Then, describing a semicircle with her right arm, she began an impassioned harangue. The residents fled, right and left, not knowing whether in her wrath she might not mistake the whole of them, collectively, for her husband. The men in the public-house hearing her voice, trembled, and looked apprehensively at the door. But Mr. Gray stood before her without fear. He knew her better than to run away. The lady respected his courage, and rejoiced in a sympathetic listener. Presently she ran down: she paused: she gasped: she caught at her heart: she choked: she wept. She sat down on the doorstep, this great strong woman, with the brawny arms and the fiery face, and she wept. The residents crept timidly back again and gathered round her, murmuring sympathy: the men in the public-house trembled again. Mr. Gray grasped her by the hand and murmured a few words of consolation; for indeed there were great wrongs, such as few wives even in this street expect, and undeniable provocations. Then he led his Scholar away.
At the next house he entered, taking Elsie with him to a room at the back where a woman sat making garments. She was a middle-aged woman, and though very poorly dressed, not in rags: the room was neat except for the garments lyingabout. She looked up cheerfully—her eyes were bright, her face was fine—and smiled. 'You here, Mr. Gray?' she said. 'Well, I was only thinking yesterday how long it is since you came to see me last. I mustn't stop working, but you can talk.'
'This is a very special friend of mine,' said the Master. 'I have known her for ten years, ever since I began to visit the street. She is always cheerful: though she has to live on sweating work and sweating pay. She never complains. She lives like the sparrows, and eats about as much as a sparrow: she is always respectable. She goes to church on Sundays: she is always neat in her dress. Yet she must be always hungry.'
'Ah!' said the woman, 'you'd wonder. Miss, if you knew how little a woman can live upon.'
'Oh! but,' said Elsie, 'to have always to live on that little!'
'She is the daughter of a man once thought well to do.'—'He was most respectable,' said the woman.—'He died, and left nothing but debts. The family were soon scattered, and—you see—this street contains some of those who have fallen low down as well as those who are born low down. It is Misfortune Lane as well as Poverty Lane. To the third and fourth generation, misfortune, when it begins—the reason of its beginning is the wickedness of one man—still persecutes and follows the family.'
'Thank you, Miss,' said the woman. 'And if you will come again sometimes—— Oh! you needn't be afraid. No one would hurt a friend of Mr. Gray.' So they went out.
On the next doorstep and the next and the next, there sat women old and young, but all of these had the same look and almost the same features—they were heavy-faced, dull-eyed, thick-lipped, unwashed, and unbrushed. 'These,' said the Master, 'are the women who know of nothing better than the life they lead here. They have no hope of rising: they would be unhappy out of this street. They bear children: they bring them up, and they die. It is womanhood at its lowest. They want warmth, food, and drink, and that is nearly all. They are the children and grandchildren of women like themselves, and they are the mothers of women like themselves. Savage lands have no such savagery as this, for the worst savages have some knowledge, and these women have none.They are mutilated by our system. We have deprived them of their souls. They are the products of our system. In a better order these people could not exist: they would not be allowed parents or birth. The boy would still be learning his trade, and the girl would be working at hers. That little woman who meets her troubles with so brave a heart has been sweated all her life—ever since her misfortunes began: she takes it as part of the thing they call life: she believes that it will be made up to her somehow in another world. I hope it will.'
'All these people,' said the other Voice, 'are what they are because of the follies and the vices of themselves and their fathers. The boy-husband has no trade. Whose fault is that? The rickety boy and the rickety girl bring into the world a rickety baby. Whose fault is that? Let them grow worse instead of better until they learn by sharper suffering that vice and folly bring their punishment.'
'You see the children,' continued the Master, 'and the mothers. You do not see any old men, because this sort mostly die before they reach the age of sixty. Those who are past work and yet continue to live go into the House. The girls you do not see, because those who are not forced to work all the evening as well as all the day are out walking with their sweethearts. Nor the men, because they are mostly in the public-house. They are all hand-to-mouth working men: they live by the job when they can get any. When they are out of work, they live upon each other. We hide this kind of thing away in back streets like this, and we think it isn't dangerous. But it is. Formerly, the wreckage huddled together bred plagues and pestilences, which carried off rich and poor with equal hand, and so revenged itself. In other ways, the wreckage revenges itself still.'
'This kind of people,' said the other Voice, 'may be dangerous. We have a Police on purpose to meet the danger. They would be quite as dangerous if you were to give them free dinners and house them without rent. The class represents the untameable element. They are always a danger. To cry over them is silly and useless.'
They walked down the street. Everybody knew Mr. Edmund Gray. He had a word for all. It was evident that he had been a visitor in the street for a long time: he had the air of a proprietor: he entered the houses and openeddoors and sat down and talked, his disciple standing beside him and looking on. He asked questions and gave advice—not of a subversive Socialistic kind, but sound advice, recognising the order that is, not the order that should be.
All the rooms in this street were tenanted, mostly a family to each. In many of them work was going on still, though it was already eight o'clock. Sometimes it would be a woman sitting alone in her room like a prisoner in a cell, stitching for dear life: sometimes three or four women or girls sitting all together, stitching for dear life: sometimes a whole family, little children and all, making matches, making canvas bags, making paper bags, making card-boxes, all making—making—making for dear life. And the fingers did not stop and the eyes were not lifted, though the visitors opened the door and came in and asked questions, to which one replied in the name of all the rest.