Demos Part 12

'Ah, about this awkward affair of yours,' observed Mr. Westlake with reference to Richard's loss of his employment, of which, as editor of the Union's weekly paper, he had of course at once been apprised.

'No, not about that. Since then a very unexpected thing has happened to me.'

The story was once more related, vastly to Mr. Westlake's satisfaction.

Cheerful news concerning his friends always put him in the best of spirits.

He shook his head, laughing.

'Come, come, Mutimer, this'll never do! I'm not sure that we shall not have to consider your expulsion from the Union.'

Richard went on to mention the matters of legal routine in which he hoped Mr. Westlake would serve him. These having been settled--

'I wish to speak of something more important,' he said. 'You take it for granted, I hope, that I'm not going to make the ordinary use of this fortune. As yet I've only been able to hit on a few general ideas; I'm clear as to the objects I shall keep before me, but how best to serve them wants more reflection. I thought if I talked it over with you in the first place--'

The door opened, and a lady half entered the room.

'Oh, I thought you were alone,' she remarked to Mr. Westlake. 'Forgive me!'

'Come in! Here's our friend Mutimer. You know Mrs. Westlake?'

A few words had pa.s.sed between this lady and Richard in the lecture-room a few weeks before. She was not frequently present at such meetings, but had chanced, on the occasion referred to, to hear Mutimer deliver an harangue.

'You have no objection to talk of your plans? Join our council, will you?' he added to his wife. 'Our friend brings interesting news.'

Mrs. Westlake walked across the room to the curved window-seat. Her age could scarcely be more than three- or four-and-twenty; she was very dark, and her face grave almost to melancholy. Black hair, cut short at its thickest behind her neck, gave exquisite relief to features of the purest Greek type. In listening to anything that held her attention her eyes grew large, and their dark orbs seemed to dream pa.s.sionately. The white swan's down at her throat--she was perfectly attired--made the skin above resemble rich-hued marble, and indeed to gaze at her long was to be impressed as by the sad loveliness of a supreme work of art. As Mutimer talked she leaned forward, her elbow on her knee, the back of her hand supporting her chin.

Her husband recounted what Richard had told him, and the latter proceeded to sketch the projects he had in view.

'My idea is,' he said, 'to make the mines at Wanley the basis of great industrial undertakings, just as any capitalist might, but to conduct these undertakings in a way consistent with our views. I would begin by building furnaces, and in time add engineering works on a large scale.

I would build houses for the men, and in fact make that valley an industrial settlement conducted on Socialist principles. Practically I can devote the whole of my income; my personal expenses will not be worth taking into account. The men must be paid on a just scheme, and the margin of profit that remains, all that we can spare from the extension of the works, shall be devoted to the Socialist propaganda. In fact, I should like to make the executive committee of the Union a sort of board of directors--and in a very different sense from the usual--for the Wanley estate. My personal expenditure deducted, I should like such a committee to have the practical control of funds. All this wealth was made by plunder of the labouring cla.s.s, and I shall hold it as trustee for them. Do these ideas seem to you of a practical colour?'

Mr. Westlake nodded slowly twice. His wife kept her listening att.i.tude unchanged; her eyes 'dreamed against a distant goal.'

'As I see the scheme,' pursued Richard, who spoke all along somewhat in the lecture-room tone, the result of a certain embarra.s.sment, 'it will differ considerably from the Socialist experiments we know of. We shall be working not only to support ourselves, but every bit as much set on profit as any capitalist in Belwick. The difference is, that the profit will benefit no individual, but the Cause. There'll be no attempt to carry out the idea of every man receiving the just outcome of his labour; not because I shouldn't be willing to share in that way, but simply because we have a greater end in view than to enrich ourselves.

Our men must all be members of the Union, and their prime interest must be the advancement of the principles of the Union. We shall be able to establish new papers, to hire halls, and to spread ourselves over the country. It'll be fighting the capitalist manufacturers with their own weapons. I can see plenty of difficulties, of course. All England 'll be against us. Never mind, we'll defy them all, and we'll win. It'll be the work of my life, and we'll see if an honest purpose can't go as far as a thievish one.'

The climax would have brought cras.h.i.+ng cheers at Commonwealth Hall; in Mr. Westlake's study it was received with well-bred expressions of approval.

'Well, Mutimer,' exclaimed the idealist, 'all this is intensely interesting, and right glorious for us. One sees at last a possibility of action. I ask nothing better than to be allowed to work with you. It happens very luckily that you are a practical engineer. I suppose the mechanical details of the undertaking are entirely within your province.'

'Not quite, at present,' Mutimer admitted, 'but I shall have valuable help. Yesterday I had a meeting with a man named Rodman, a mining engineer, who has been working on the estate. He seems just the man I shall want; a Socialist already, and delighted to join in the plans I just hinted to him.'

'Capital! Do you propose, then, that we shall call a special meeting of the Committee? Or would you prefer to suggest a committee of your own?'

'No, I think our own committee will do very well, at all events for the present. The first thing, of course, is to get the financial details of our scheme put into shape. I go to Belwick again this afternoon; my solicitor must get his business through as soon as possible.'

'You will reside for the most part at Wanley?'

'At the Manor, yes. It is occupied just now, but I suppose will soon be free.'

'Do you know that part of the country, Stella?' Mr. Westlake asked of his wife.

She roused herself, drawing in her breath, and uttered a short negative.

'As soon as I get into the house,' Richard resumed to Mr. Westlake, 'I hope you'll come and examine the place. It's unfortunate that the railway misses it by about three miles, but Rodman tells me we can easily run a private line to Agworth station. However, the first thing is to get our committee at work on the scheme.' Richard repeated this phrase with gusto. 'Perhaps you could bring it up at the Sat.u.r.day meeting?'

'You'll be in town on Sat.u.r.day?'

'Yes; I have a lecture in Islington on Sunday.'

'Sat.u.r.day will do, then. Is this confidential?'

'Not at all. We may as well get as much encouragement out of it as we can. Don't you think so?'

'Certainly.'

Richard did not give expression to his thought that a paragraph on the subject in the Union's weekly organ, the 'Fiery Cross,' might be the best way of promoting such encouragement; but he delayed his departure for a few minutes with talk round about the question of the prudence which must necessarily be observed in publis.h.i.+ng a project so undigested. Mr. Westlake, who was responsible for the paper, was not likely to transgress the limits of good taste, and when Richard, on Sat.u.r.day morning, searched eagerly the columns of the 'Cross,' he was not altogether satisfied with the extreme discretion which marked a brief paragraph among those headed: 'From Day to Day.' However, many of the readers were probably by that time able to supply the missing proper-name.

It was not the fault of Daniel Dabbs if members of the Hoxton and Islington branch of the Union read the paragraph without understanding to whom it referred. Daniel was among the first to hear of what had befallen the Mutimer family, and from the circle of his fellow-workmen the news spread quickly. Talk was rife on the subject of Mutimer's dismissal from Longwood Brothers', and the sensational rumour which followed so quickly found an atmosphere well prepared for its transmission. Hence the unusual concourse at the meeting-place in Islington next Sunday evening, where, as it became known to others besides Socialists, Mutimer was engaged to lecture. Richard experienced some vexation that his lecture was not to be at Commonwealth Hall, where the gathering would doubtless have been much larger.

The Union was not wealthy. The central hall was rented at Mr. Westlake's expense; two or three branches were managing with difficulty to support regular places of a.s.sembly, such as could not being obliged as yet to content themselves with open-air lecturing. In Islington the leaguers met in a room behind a coffee-shop, ordinarily used for festive purposes; benches were laid across the floor, and an estrade at the upper end exalted chairman and lecturer. The walls were adorned with more or less striking advertis.e.m.e.nts of non-alcoholic beverages, and with a few prints from the ill.u.s.trated papers. The atmosphere was tobaccoey, and the coffee-shop itself, through which the visitors had to make their way, suggested to the nostrils that bloaters are the working man's chosen delicacy at Sunday tea. A table just within the door of the lecture-room exposed for sale sundry Socialist publications, the latest issue of the 'Fiery Cross' in particular.

Richard was wont to be among the earliest arrivals: to-night he was full ten minutes behind the hour for which the lecture was advertised.

A group of friends were standing about the table near the door; they received him with a bustle which turned all eyes thitherwards. He walked up the middle of the room to the platform. As soon as he was well in the eye of the meeting, a single pair of hands--Daniel Dabbs owned them--gave the signal for uproar; feet made play on the boarding, and one or two of the more enthusiastic revolutionists fairly gave tongue.

Richard seated himself with grave countenance, and surveyed the a.s.sembly; from fifty to sixty people were present, among them three or four women, and the number continued to grow. The chairman and one or two leading spirits had followed Mutimer to the place of distinction, where they talked with him.

Punctuality was not much regarded at these meetings; the lecture was announced for eight, but rarely began before half-past The present being an occasion of exceptional interest, twenty minutes past the hour saw the chairman rise for his prefatory remarks. He was a lank man of jovial countenance and jerky enunciation. There was no need, he observed, to introduce a friend and comrade so well known to them as the lecturer of the evening. 'We're always glad to hear him, and to-night, if I may be allowed to 'int as much, we're _particularly_ glad to hear him.

Our friend and comrade is going to talk to us about the Land. It's a question we can't talk or think too much about, and Comrade Mutimer has thought about it as much and more than any of us, I think I may say.

I don't know,' the chairman added, with a sly look across the room, 'whether our friend's got any new views on this subject of late. I shouldn't wonder if he had.' Here sounded a roar of laughter, led off by Daniel Dabbs. 'Hows'ever, be that as it may, we can answer for it as any views he may hold is the right views, and the honest views, and the views of a man as means to do a good deal more than talk about his convictions!'

Again did the stentor-note of Daniel ring forth, and it was amid thunderous cheering that Richard left his chair and moved to the front of the platform. His Sunday suit of black was still that with which his friends were familiar, but his manner, though the audience probably did not perceive the detail, was unmistakably hanged. He had been wont to begin his address with short, stinging periods, with sneers and such bitterness of irony as came within his compa.s.s. To-night he struck quite another key, mellow, confident, hinting at personal satisfaction; a smile was on his lips, and not a smile of scorn. He rested one hand against his side, holding in the other a sc.r.a.p of paper with jotted items of reasoning. His head was thrown a little back; he viewed the benches from beneath his eyelids. True, the pose maintained itself but for a moment. I mention it because it was something new in Richard.

He spoke of the land; he attacked the old monopoly, and visioned a time when a claim to individual owners.h.i.+ps of the earth's surface would be as ludicrous as were now the a.s.sertion of t.i.tle to a fee-simple somewhere in the moon. He mustered statistics; he adduced historic and contemporary example of the just and the unjust in land-holding; he gripped the throat of a certain English duke, and held him up for flagellation; he drifted into oceans of economic theory; he sat down by the waters of Babylon; he climbed Pisgah. Had he but spoken of backslidings in the wilderness! But for that fatal omission, the lecture was, of its kind, good. By degrees Richard forgot his pose and the carefully struck note of mellowness; he began to believe what he was saying, and to say it with the right vigour of popular oratory. Forget his struggles with the h-fiend; forget his syntactical lapses; you saw that after all the man had within him a clear flame of conscience; that he had felt before speaking that speech was one of the uses for which Nature had expressly framed him. His invective seldom degenerated into vulgar abuse; one discerned in him at least the elements of what we call good taste; of simple manliness he disclosed not a little; he had some command of pathos. In conclusion, he finished without reference to his personal concerns.

The chairman invited questions, preliminary to debate.

He rose half-way down the room,--the man who invariably rises on these occasions. He was oldish, with bent shoulders, and wore spectacles--probably a clerk of forty years' standing. In his hand was a small note-book, which he consulted. He began with measured utterance, emphatic, loud.

'I wish to propose to the lecturer seven questions. I will read them in order; I have taken some pains to word them clearly.'

Richard has his sc.r.a.p of paper on his knee. He jots a word or two after each deliberate interrogation, smiling.

Other questioners succeeded. Richard replies to them. He fails to satisfy the man of seven queries, who, after repeating this and the other of the seven, professes himself still unsatisfied, shakes his head indulgently, walks from the room.

The debate is opened. Behold a second inevitable man; he is not well-washed, his s.h.i.+rt-front shows a beer-stain; he is angry before he begins.

'I don't know whether a man as doesn't 'old with these kind o' theories 'll be allowed a fair 'earin--'

Indignant interruption. Cries of 'Of course he will!'--'Who ever refused to hear you?'--and the like.