Part 6 (1/2)
”The unending formula,” said Brother Ambrose with weary bitterness. ”...
Bread, and you give them stones ... Man,” he cried with sudden energy, ”almost within your grasp lies the foundation of New Jerusalem, tranquil, smiling, sinless. What stands in your way? Nothing, nothing!
truly nothing but the heavy shadow of the old and cruel past. Throw it off; is it not worth doing? No more spiritual death, no more sorrow of the things of this world, nor crying, 'Neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are pa.s.sed away.'”
”I have nothing more to say,” responded the Home Secretary coldly, bending over his desk to write.
”Then I have much more to do,” retorted Ambrose impetuously, ”and that shall be with the sword of my mouth.” He strode from the room with an air that no amount of legislative equality could ever confer upon any of those he left behind, and a moment later his ragged escort was in motion homeward--slumward.
”k.u.mreds,” said Mr Tubes, looking up, ”the harmony of the occasion has been somewhat impaired by an untoward incident, but on the whole I think that you may rest well satisfied with the result of your representations. Having another appointment I must now leave you, but I have given instructions for some beer and sandwidges to be brought in, and I trust that in my enforced absence you will all make yourselves quite at home.” He shook hands with each man present and withdrew.
”Beer and sandwidges!” muttered Comrade Tintwistle, with no affectation of delight, to a chosen spirit. ”And this is the man we pay fifty quid a week to!”
”Ah!” a.s.sented the friend, following Mr Tubes's hospitable directions by strolling round the room and fingering the ornaments. ”Well, when it comes to a general share-out I don't know but what I should mind having this here little round barometer for my parlour.”
”Neat little thing,” a.s.sented Tintwistle with friendly interest. ”What does it say?”
”Seems to be dropping from 'Change' to 'Stormy,'” read the friend.
CHAPTER VI
MISS LISLE TELLS A LONG POINTLESS STORY
Sir John Hampden lived within a stone-throw of the Marble Arch; George Salt had established himself in Westminster; and about midway between the two, in the neighbourhood of Pall Mall, a convenient but quite unostentatious suite of offices had been taken and registered as the headquarters of the Unity League.
The Unity League was a modern organisation that had come into existence suddenly, and with no great parade, within a week of that day when George Salt had forced Hampden to hear what he wished to say, a day now nearly two years ago. The name was simple and commonplace, and therefore it aroused neither curiosity nor suspicion; it was explained by the fact that it had only one object: ”By const.i.tutional means to obtain an adequate representation of the middle and upper cla.s.ses in Parliament,”
a phrase rendered by the lighter-hearted members colloquially as ”To kick out the Socialists.” The Government, quite content to govern const.i.tutionally (in the wider sense) and to be attacked const.i.tutionally (in the narrower sense), treated the existence of the Unity League as a playful ebullition on the part of the milch sections of society, and raised the minimum income-tax to four and threepence as a sedative.
At first the existence of the League met with very little response and no enthusiasm among those for whom it was intended. It had become an article of faith with the oppressed cla.s.ses that no propagandism could ever restore an equitable balance of taxation. Every change must inevitably tend to be worse than the state before. To ask the working cla.s.ses (the phrase lingered; by the demarcation of taxation it meant just what it conventionally means to-day, and, similarly, it excluded clerical workers of all grades)--to ask this privileged cla.s.s which dominated practically every const.i.tuency to throw out their own people and put in a party whose avowed policy would be to repeal the Employers'
Liability Act (Extended), the Strikes Act, the Unemployed Act, the Amended Companies Act, the Ecclesiastical Property Act, the infamous Necessity Act, and a score of other preposterous Acts of Injustice before they even gave their attention to anything else, had long been recognised to be grotesque. A League, therefore, which spoke of working towards freedom on const.i.tutional lines fell flat. The newspapers noticed it in their various individual fas.h.i.+ons, and all but the Government organs extended to it a welcome of cold despair. The general reader gathered the impression that he might look for its early demise.
The first revulsion of opinion came when it was understood that Sir John Hampden had returned to public life as the President of the League. What his name meant to his contemporaries, how much the League gained from his a.s.sociation, may be scarcely realised in an age existing under different and more conflicting conditions. Briefly, his personality lifted the effort into the plane--not of a national movement, for with the nation so sharply riven by two irreconcilable interests that was impossible, but certainly beyond all cavil as to motives and methods.
When it was further known that he was not lending his name half-heartedly as to a forlorn hope, or returning reluctantly as from a tardy sense of duty, men began to wonder what might lie behind.
The first public meeting of the newly formed League deepened the impression. Men and women of the middle and upper cla.s.ses were invited to become members. The annual subscription being a guinea, none but adults were expected. Those of the working cla.s.s were not invited. If the subscription seemed large, the audience was asked to remember what lay at stake, and to compare with it the case of the artisan cheerfully contributing his sixpence a week to the strike fund of his cla.s.s. ”As a result there is a Strikes Act now in force,” the President reminded them, ”and the artisan no longer pays the cost----”
”No, we do,” interjected a listener.
”I ask you to pay it for three years longer; no more, perhaps less,”
replied Hampden with a rea.s.suring smile, and his audience stared.
If the subscription seemed large for an organisation of the kind the audience was a.s.sured that it was by no means all, or even the most, that would be expected of them. They must be prepared to make some sacrifice when called upon; the nature he could not indicate at that early stage.
No balance sheet would be published; no detailed reports would be issued. There would be no dances, no garden-parties, no club houses, no pretty badges. The President warned them that members.h.i.+p offered no facilities for gaining a precarious footing in desirable society, through the medium of tea on the Vicarage lawn, or croquet in the Home Park. ”We are not playing at tin politics nowadays,” he caustically remarked.
That closed the exordium. In a different vein Hampden turned to review the past, and with the chartered freedom of the man who had prophesied it all, he traced in broad lines and with masterly force the course of Conservative inept.i.tude, Radical pusillanimity, Labour selfishness, and Socialistic tyranny. What would be the crowning phase of grab government? History foreshadowed it; common-sense certified it. Before the dark curtain of that last stupendous act the wealth and wisdom, the dignity and responsibility of the nation, stood in paralysed expectancy.
There was a telling pause; a dramatic poignant silence hung over the ma.s.sed crowd that listened to the one man who could still inspire a kindling spark of hope. Then, just at the opportune moment, a friendly challenge gave the effective lead: