by Ouida
The ladies present are too horrified to speak; Jane Rivaux, alone, recovering her first shock of surprise at such a blasphemy, asks, with vivacity: “But all the people you would throw out of employment? The people who dig for jewels, don’t they dig? The people who polish them, and cut them, and set them, and deal in them; the people who make the iron safes, and the patent locks, you would throw them all out of work? Surely that wouldn’t be doing any good? What would become of the miners and lapidaries and jewellers and all the rest?”
Bertram smiles with pitying disdain.
“Oh, my dear Lady Jane, your kind of reasoning is as old as the hills, and carries its own refutation with it. All those workmen and tradesmen would be liberated from labours which now degrade them, and would thus be set free for higher work — work worthy of being illumined by the light of reason.”
“What work? Would they be all schoolmasters and governesses? Or all authors and artists?”
“What work? Such work as the Community might organise and distribute, such work as might be needful for the general good. When every one will work, every one will have leisure. The poet will mow the meadow in the morning and compose his eclogues in the afternoon. The painter will fell trees at dawn and at noon paint his landscapes in the forest. The sculptor will hew coal in the bowels of the earth for a few hours and come to the upper air to carve the marble and mould the clay. The author will guide the plough or plant the potato-patch at sunrise and will have the rest of the day free to write his novel or study his essay—”
“Humph!” says South wold, ruffling his short grey hair in perplexity. “The precise use of wasting Sir Frederic Leighton’s time on a seam of coal, and Mr. Swinburne’s on a mowing machine, I don’t exactly perceive. However—”
“Pierre Loti is your ideal, then,” says Cicely Seymour. “He ‘has gone down to the deep in ships’ before he writes of sea life.”
“He is an officer,” objects Bertram, with regret and condemnation in his tone. “With his true and profound altruism he should have gone before the mast.”
“I suppose our sex will have to sweep and cook and sew before we are allowed to frolic?” asks Lady Jane.
“You’ll have to produce a certificate that you have made and baked three dozen pigeon pies before you’ll be allowed one waltz, Lady Jane,” says Marlow, who has with difficulty kept his mouth shut.
“We shall sweep our own chimneys, clean ourselves, and play the violin,” replies that lively person. “We shall have to cook our salmon before we’re allowed to fish for it; we shall have to roast our pheasants before we’re allowed to shoot them, and —— —”
Bertram interrupts her with scant courtesy:— “I under stood that those who did me the honour to come here to-day brought open minds and philosophical views to this meeting, or I should not have invited you to discuss and consider the best means for the educated classes to anticipate the coming changes of the world.”
“Why should we anticipate them,” murmurs the old duke, “when they’ll be so deucedly uncomfortable to all of us?”
“Yes, indeed,” says Southwold, “it’ll be bad enough to grin and bear ’em.”
Bertram plays wearily with his shut note-book.
“If you cannot see the theoretic beauty of united and universal work, it is hopeless to expect that you should desire its practical adjustment to everyday life.”
“Well, but,” says the politician, who is nothing if not practical, “it is just the utter unworkableness of your system which damns it in the eyes of rational men. Pardon my saying so.”
Lady Southwold murmurs: “Give them some tea, Wilfrid; they are all growing cross.”
“As you please. But it is to me absolutely frightful to see how unconscious of your own doom, and how indifferent to the great movements of the day you all are—”
“If they are really great movements, they’ll move without us; you can’t stop an iceberg or an earthquake with your little finger. But there’s a good deal of grit in the old order of things still,” says the duke. “Yes, I’ll have a cup of tea, Wilfrid; I see you’ve got it there.”
Bertram murmurs wearily: “Critchett — tea!”
“Yes, sir,” says a person who is the perfection of all the virtues of valetdom.
Marlow, wholly undisturbed by the insults which have been heaped on him, calls out:
“And temperance drinks, Critchett! Lemons divorced from rum, sterilised milk, barley-water, tartaric acid—”
“Mr. Bertram,” says Cicely Seymour, “how do you reconcile your conscience to the debasing offices which you employ Critchett to fill for you?”
“Or to the fact of keeping a Critchett at all?” adds his aunt Southwold.
“Surely it’s Critchett who keeps him, — , out of a strait-waistcoat?” murmurs Marlow.
Critchett hands tea and coffee and chocolate, in a silver service, with cakes, fruits, and biscuits.
“And all these pretty things, Mr. Bertram?” asks Lady Jane. “Surely they are the flesh-pots of Egypt, and ought not to be here?”
“They ought not,” replies Bertram, “nor Critchett either.”
“Oh, he is such a delightful servant; so noiseless, so prévenant, and so devoted to you; you would never find his equal if you sent him away.”
“No; but for one man to serve another is contrary to all principles of self-respect on either side.”
“My dear Wilfrid,” cries Lady Southwold, “how I wish you were small enough to be whipped! What a deal of good it would do you!” Bertram smiles faintly.
“Flagellation was, I believe, most admirable discipline; but we have grown too effete for it. Our bodies are as tender as our hearts are hard.”
“I have always thought,” said Cicely Seymour, in a very soft voice, “that if everybody could be born with ten thousand a year, nobody would ever do anything wrong.”
Bertram looks at her approvingly.
“You are on the right road, Miss Seymour. But as we cannot generalise property, we must generalise poverty. The result will be equally good.”
“Good Lord!” roars his uncle very loudly. “I never heard such a subversive and immoral doctrine in all my days!”
Bertram glances pityingly at him.
“And yet it is based on precisely the same theory as the one which you accepted when you passed the Compulsory Clause of the Parish Councils Bill.”
“The Upper House passed that infamous Bill. I was in the minority against it,” replies Southwold, very angrily.
“But when everybody’s got sixpence a day,” suggests a young man with an ingenuous countenance, “and nobody sixpence halfpenny, surely somebody’ll have a try for the illegal halfpenny, won’t they? It is human nature.”
“Certainly not,” replies Bertram, very positively. “Nobody will even wish for an extra halfpenny, because when inequality shall be at an end envy and discontent will be unknown.
Besides, if all the property of the world was confiscated or realised and equally distributed, the individual portion would come more nearly to half a crown a head per diem. On half a crown a head per diem any one can live—”
Lord Southwold sighs.
“Oysters are three shillings a dozen,” he murmurs.
“Of course, if you expect to continue the indulgence of an epicure’s diseased appetites—” says Bertram, with impatience.
“It’s the oysters that are diseased, not our appetites,” says Southwold, with a second sigh.
“If,” says Bertram, ignoring his uncle’s nonsense—” if I have made anything clear in my recent remarks it must surely be that Property is, in the old copy-book phrase, the root of all evil; the mandrake growing out of the bodies of the dead, the poisonous gas exhaling from the carrion of prejudice, of injustice, and of caste.”
“But, my dear Wilfrid,” cries Lady Southwold, with equal impatience, “yours is rank Communism.”
“You can call it what you please. It is the only condition of things which would accompany pur
e civilisation. When, however, I speak of half a crown a day,” he pursues, “I use a figure of speech! Of course, in a purely free world there would be no coined or printed money, there would be only barter.”
“Barter!” echoes Marlow. “I should carry two of my Berkshire pigs, one under each arm, and exchange them with you for a thousand copies of your Age to Come.”
“I think barter would be inconvenient, Mr. Bertram,” says Cicely Seymour, doubtfully. “And what should I barter? I can’t make anything. I should have to cut off my hair and wait a year till it grew again.” Every one laughs, and Bertram even relaxes his gravity.
“I fear, Miss Seymour, that Solon’s self would give you all you wished for a single smile!” At that moment a small boy comes into the room, out of breath, grinning, with several oblong pieces of printed paper in his hand; he pushes his way unconcerned between the ladies and gentlemen, and thrusts the papers at Bertram.
“Here, mister, you must tone these here down; manager says as Fanshawe says as the British Public wouldn’t never stand them pars, he’s marked at no time; and manager says as I was to tell you Public is extra nervous now cos o’ that bomb at Tooting.”
Bertram takes the sheets in ill humour, and tears them across.
“Mr. Fanshawe is well aware that I never correct and I never suppress. I forbid the production of the article in a mutilated state.” He hands the pieces to the boy. “Bid Mr. Fanshawe return me my original copy.” The boy looks frightened. “Who’ll pay for this here settin’-up, sir, please, if proof ain’t to be used?”
“Did you say Fanshawe?” says Lord Southwold. “Do you mean the great Fanshawe of the Torch? Can anything be possibly too strong for him?”
“Oh, my dear Wilfred! do let us hear what you can have said? It must be something terrific!” says the old duke, who rather likes subversive opinions, considering philosophically that he will be in his grave before they can possibly be put into practice.
“What’m I to tell the manager about payin’ for the settin’-up of this here, if type’s to be broke up, sir?” asks the boy, with dogged persistence.
“Go out of the room, you impudent little rascal!” says Bertram, in extreme irritation. “Critchett! turn that boy out!”
Marlow gets up and offers the boy a plate of pound cake.
“You are not civil to your sooty Mercury, Bertram. He offers you at this moment the most opportune illustration of your theories. He comes on an errand of the intellect, and if a somewhat soiled messenger, he should nevertheless be treated with the respect due to a guardian of literary purity and public morality. Sweet imp! refresh your inner man!”
The boy stuffs his mouth with cake and grins.
“Are these chambers mine or yours, Lord Marlow?” asks Bertram.
“Both mine and yours, or neither yours or mine. There is no such thing as exclusive possession. You have just told us so.”
“Critchett!” says Bertram, and points with stony gaze to the printer’s devil, “turn that boy out of the room.”
Critchett, reluctantly touching anything so sooty, takes him by the collar and drives him before him out of the room.
Marlow picks up the torn proofs. “Who’ll pay for the setting-up? asks this dear child. Unused proofs are, I suppose, first cousins to spilt milk and spoilt powder. Mayn’t we read this article? The title is immensely suggestive—’ Fist-right and Brain-divinity.’ Are you feloniously sympathetic with the Tooting bomb?”
Bertram takes the torn proofs from him in irritation and throws them into the open drawer of a cabinet.
“The essay is addressed to persons of intelligence and with principle,” he says, significantly.
“But it seems that Fanshawe has neither, if he fail to appreciate it?”
“Fanshawe has both; but there are occasional moments in which he recollects that he has some subscribers in Philistia.”
“Fanshawe knows where his bread is buttered,” chuckles the duke; “knows where his bread is buttered.”
“If Fanshawe don’t publish it he won’t pay for it, will he?” asks Marlow, with some want of tact.
“I do not take payment for opinions,” replies Bertram, au bout des lévres, and much annoyed at the turn the conversation has taken.
“Most people run opinions in order to get paid for ’em,” says the duke, with a chuckle.
“Why are you not in Parliament, Mr. Bertram?” asks Cicely Seymour.
“In Parliament!” repeats Bertram, with the faintness of horror; incredulous that he can hear aright.
“Well, yes; have I said anything so very dreadful?”
“Oh, my dear Cicely!” says Lady Southwold. “Ever since Wilfrid came of age we have all been at him about that; he might have had a walk over for Sax-Stoneham, or for Micklethorpe, at any election, but he would never even let himself be nominated.”
Bertram shrugs his shoulders in ineffable disgust.
“Two Tory boroughs!”
“You could have held any opinions you had chosen. Toryism is a crépon changeant nowadays; it looks exactly like Radicalism very often, and only differs from it in being still more outrageous.”
“But perhaps Mr. Bertram’s objection is to all representative government?” says Cicely Seymour.
Bertram glances gratefully at her. “Precisely so, Miss Seymour.”
“But what could you substitute?”
“Oh, my dear Cicely, read his paper the Age to Come, and pray spare us such a discussion before dinner,” says Lady Southwold, with impatience.
“But what would you substitute?” says Cicely Seymour, with persistent interest in the topic.
“Yes; what would you substitute?” asks the practical politician.
Bertram is out of temper; these acquaintances and relatives worried him into giving this exposition of his altruistic and socialistic views, and then they brought a fool with them like Marlow, and have turned the whole thing into a farce. To Bertram his views were the most serious things in creation. He does not choose to have them set up like croquet pegs for imbeciles to bowl at in an idle hour.
“I would abolish all government,” he replies, very decidedly.
“Oh!” Both the politician and Cicely Seymour look a little astonished.
“But how then would you control people?”
“Sane people do not require to be controlled.”
“But I have heard a man of science say that only one person out of every hundred is really sane?”
“We are bad judges of each other s sanity. But since you take an interest in serious subjects,” says Bertram, resting his eyes on her in approval, “I will, if you will allow me, send you some back numbers of the Age to Come.”
“Do you mean, Wilfrid, that an obtuse world is so ungrateful as to leave you any back numbers at all?” asks Southwold.
“They will show you,” continues Bertram, ignoring the interruption, “what my views and the views of those who think with me are, concerning the best method of preparing the world to meet those social changes which are inevitable for the future, those rights of the individual which are totally ignored and outraged by all present governments, whether absolute, constitutional, or, in nomenclature, republican.”
“But why should we prepare to meet them when they’ll be so deucedly uncomfortable to us if they arrive, and why should we trouble about helping them onward if they’re so inevitable and cocksure in their descent on us?” says his uncle. “I asked you that question just now, and you didn’t answer me. Does one avoid an avalanche in the Alps by firing a gun to make it fall sooner than it would do if left alone?” Critchett is meantime engaged on the expulsion of the printer’s devil by a back-stair exit, and, profiting by his absence, a little girl, who has come in at the front entrance, pushes aside the portiere of the door and stands abashed in the middle of the room. She is eight years old, has a head of red hair, and the shrewd, watching face of the London child; she carries a penny bunch of violets. Bertram sees her entrance with extreme displeasu
re, not unmixed with embarrassment.
“What do you want here, Bessy?” he inquires, with scant amiability.
Bessy advances and holds out the violets.
“Annie sends these ’ere vi’lets with her love, and she’s got to go to Ealin’ for a big horder o’ mustard an’ cress, and please when’ll you be round at our place?”
Bertram is extremely annoyed.
“Run away, my good child. You see I am engaged.”
“When’ll you be round at our place?” repeats the little girl. “The pal as lodges over cousin Joe hev given us tickets for Hoxton Theayter, and Annie says as how she’d go if you wasn’t comin’ in this evenin’.”
“Run away, child,” repeats Bertram, imperiously. “Critchett!”
Critchett, who has returned, with a demure smile, guides the steps of the reluctant Bessy from the chamber.
“Why do you let these children in, Critchett?” asks Bertram, as the valet returns.
“I beg pardon, sir,” the servant says, humbly, as he lays the violets down on a cloisonné plate. “But you have told me, sir, that you are always at home for the Brown family.”
“You might surely have more judgment, after all your years of service!” replies his master. “There are exceptions to every rule.”
Marlow looks up to the ceiling in scandalised protest.
“Service! Service!” he repeats. “Hear him, ye gods! This is the rights of the individual; the independence of the unit; the perfect equality of one human being before another!”
Cicely Seymour looks over her shoulder at him and remarks slightingly: “You are a great tease, Lord Marlow. You make me think I am in the schoolroom at Alfreton with my brothers home from Eton for Christmas. Do you really think that chaff is wit?”
“I am not chaffing, Miss Seymour. I am in deadly earnest. This modest bunch must hold a deal of meaning. Who are the Brown family? Where is ‘our place’? What is the meeting which must be postponed because a bloated aristocrat, rolling in ill-gotten wealth, requires that corrupting luxury known as mustard and cress?”
Everybody laughs, except Cicely Seymour.