"And yet they say the People's Palace is a failure!"
"Ah, I told you! It was not in the hands of University men. I said to Bristowe, 'Don't you think a few Oxford men mixing among them would soon change the tone?' He didn't seem to see it. But there is nothing else. Diffuse culture among the masses: let them see what it has done for us: give them examples to study as well as principles. There is no other way to work – at least it is the best. Christ and the apostles did the same sort of thing. It was more rudimentary in their day. Civilisation has multiplied the wants of humanity, and scientific methods have increased our power. We have got everything in our hands. What are politics or theories? a settlement of ours in every district, leaving our own sphere to leaven theirs – that is what the people want."
"When they don't like the Bruither better, and his public-house," said Scarfield. "I had thome of those fellowth up once to thee my Tondo. They stared, and then they made their remarks. 'I don't call her pretty,' they thaid – 'not a bit; and nobody could write like that. I'm sure I couldn't write with my hand out like that; and them shavers in wings making eyes at her: and she might a put a rag on the babby to thave it from catching cold.'"
Scarfield was something of a mimic, and the party was in his rooms, and there was a laugh, but a laugh very speedily suppressed.
"That's not my experience," said Bailey. "I find them full of respect. If you fellows would only put your shoulders to the wheel, and all of you do something, by Heaven we'd move the world."
"Don't sneer at politics," said a young man, who had just come in. "You should first feel the swing of them, and hundreds of fellows roaring at your back. I'm in with all the strikes, don't you know. I tell them they oughtn't to stand it – not a day. A man's wages should be what he can live on comfortably with his wife and children, not any cursed balance of trade. What does it matter whether the masters get their profit or not? Confound the masters! – selfish beggars, setting up their unions too, forsooth, as if they had an equal right. The right's with the masses that have the work to do. When I see them sitting down contented and taking whatever is offered them, off I go and hold a meeting or two. And as for response! – if you once heard them shouting with you, by Jove you'd never try any of your dilettante ways again."
"Thoftly, my good fellow, thoftly," said Scarfield, from his chair. "We don't like such coarth thpeaking here – "
"Brutal," said Bailey, "brutal, encouraging all their worst instincts. That is not, from my point of view, the mission of the Oxford man. I wouldn't interfere with these rude problems: if you let them alone they will settle themselves. Why must they marry and fill the world with hungry children and get into difficulties about wages? I don't want to marry. I make myself a happy life of art and refined enjoyment. Why shouldn't they? I have no sympathy with your shouting, your talk of wages, and so forth. If they did without wives and children they would get on well enough. I can't afford wives and children. Scarfield's Botticelli to look at, or one of your own if you can afford it, is enough for me."
"There's something in strikes when you can do it," said a youth in one of the groups by the wall. "Schoolmasters, now – I'm going to be a schoolmaster – if we could strike, it would be a fine thing; but there's a hundred beggars waiting to step into your shoes."
"Then you must stop them," said John, in reply, who was nearest to him. "Pull down their houses, burn their books, blow up their schoolrooms – blind them or deafen them, if you can, still better; then they would be out of your way."
"Oh, I say," said the youth, "that would be a cowardly business; that would not be fair fighting; that would be a cad's way."
"There are no cads," said John. "Everything's fair on your side, nothing on the other – that's the new doctrine. Ask Sutton: he knows."
"Everything's fair against a rat who goes against his own side," cried the revolutionary; "everything's fair against the masters. Whenever there's force against you, you've got a licence to meet it any way you can. That is strategy, it's not a cowardly way."
"I am all for the rights of man, too," cried another youth, standing up against the wall. "And Chortles is brute force, and he's going to send me down – what am I to do?"
A sudden pause came upon the assembly. It was a fate to which all of them were subject, and the boldest held his breath. Besides, what could be done? there was nothing to be suggested amid all the expedients which theoretical revolution has in store.
"I dare thay, Ripton, you deserved it," said Scarfield, in a subdued tone.
"One is powerless," said Sutton aloud, with a sigh; "it's against natural justice, but there's no help for it. You can't stand up alone."
"We could not stand up against Chortles if he were to send us all down," another voice, still more subdued and solemn, said.
"You could bully him after in all the newspapers."
"Throw stones at his windows – but they'd have you up for that: blow up the next fellow that is given your rooms."
These suggestions were made with a perilous inclination towards frivolity which had to be stopped in the bud.
"We have no combination," said Bailey. "We're an inferior lot altogether to the working men. Besides, the whole case is different. We pay the Dons, don't you see, they don't pay us, and – Well, it's not a thing to argue about. If Chortles were to send us all down – "
"Well, this is a fine thing," said the youth, who was desperate; "you're going to move the world and upset the whole country, and you daren't jaw old Chortles, not one of you. And I've got to go down to-morrow, and what shall I say to my people?" the poor young fellow cried.
They all looked at him aghast, compassionate, no doubt, but quite unwilling to share the stigma thus put upon him, or identify themselves with his disgrace. It was John who took him by the arm and led him out, and was the confidant of his trouble, which indeed was no out of the way, or original, or unusual trouble, but only a tale of idleness, of recklessness, of the usual rush and round of careless life. "I went and apologised too," the young fellow said. "I give you my word, Rushton, it wasn't all billiards and that, as Chortles thinks – I used to go to play the violin, you know, for Bailey – and carry their messages for them, and go to their meetings. I've done a little myself in the East End," he added, with forlorn pride. "But not one of them will speak up for me, or tell Chortles if I was a fool that it wasn't all in the one way. Scarry can do what he likes with Chortles, but he never would mix himself up with a fellow that's sent down."
"I am very sorry for you," said John, "and I don't want to preach: but after this, if I were you, I would stick to my own business and get that done first of all."
"Oh, don't you think, then, as they say," cried the young unfortunate, "that it's a fine thing to work for other people? That's what they all say – to do good to the lower class that haven't our advantages."
"And in what way did you think you could do good to the lower class?" said John, grimly: but he did not pursue his subject. He kept the young man in view, and soothed him, which was perhaps better, and saw him off next day in somewhat better spirits, and with a certain sense that he was a martyr to his principles stealing into his soul – which he was able to communicate to his mother, at least, consoling, nay, making that poor lady proud, even of the sending down.
John had quite enough to do, however, with his own difficulties, which he had brought on himself as he well knew. He too had gone speechifying in his time, and tried to do good to the lower classes, carried on by the whirl of the movement of the others, whose sense of the high superiority of the Oxford man, and his certain effect upon the world, he had not perhaps ever seriously, certainly never enthusiastically, shared. To do good to the lower classes, to make a transformation by his mere presence, to influence the whole fabric of life and the rolling of its wheels – John asked himself with a blush which there was no one to perceive, what there was in him to do all this? and the very direction which his feet took, almost against his will, gave him the information he sought. Where was he going? he was turning mechanically towards the road in which he knew another person – a person very easily influenced indeed, and one who had taken too much the impressions of his mind, unconsciously at first, perhaps unwillingly to himself – was likely to be found. It was not an appointment: that would have alarmed her as well as him; though he was not now so sure of that as he had been. Was it possible that perhaps little Mary, innocent little girl as she seemed and was, was playing for what were to her high stakes, and risking a good deal in the spirit of the gamester? He did not allow this, and yet it came in. But that did not in the least extenuate his guilt or explain how his footsteps sought that way and no other in those early twilights, now wan with the November chill. What game was he playing? Was it to lose – everything – his head, his feet, his self-command in some whirl of foolish feeling which was not passion or anything real at all? or was it to win – in any shameful way? Certainly not that, certainly not that. He said it over to himself raising his head, setting down his foot with a stamp upon the ground. But while he made this vow to himself, once more against the pale background of the willows and the dusk of the damp fields that little figure rose, with its air of fictitious surprise. "Oh, Mr Rushton! are you really walking this way again?" she said.