Part 19 (1/2)
”All's well that ends well,” he said at length, spluttering out his words. ”Good heavens! what a marvellous day it has been! We go to the Duke of Paddington's property, so that Miss Marriott can get ideas for the part of the heroine in the play which is to draw all England to the iniquity of great landlords like the duke, who do nothing, and allow their agents to draw rents for rat-holes. Then we find the duke himself trussed up like a chicken in a gloomy cellar of one of his own filthy properties! What extraordinary tricks Fate does play sometimes! Who would have thought that such a thing could possibly happen? And, what is better still--what is more quaintly humorous than ever--here is the young gentleman with his hundred and fifty thousand a year and his great name and t.i.tle, here! sleeping in my best bedroom--in the very headquarters of the party which is labouring to destroy monopolies such as his. I wonder what he will say when he wakes up and finds out where he is, poor fellow!”
”If he is a gentleman, as I suppose he is,” said Mrs. Rose, ”he will say 'Thank you'--not once, but several times, because, you know, Fabian dear, not only did you save his life, in the first instance by chance, but you brought him here instead of sending him to a hospital when you had no idea who he was.”
”And that,” Mary broke in, ”is what I call practical socialism. Don't you allow, Mr. Rose, that the duke is a brother?”
”Oh, yes,” the Socialist replied, ”but no more and no less a brother because of his dukedom.”
There was a tap at the door. The nurse had sent down a message that the gentleman upstairs was awake, had learned where he was, and would like to see Mr. Rose.
This was what had occurred. For three days the duke had lain in bed, gradually growing stronger. Lord Hayle had visited him constantly, and when he was well enough to be moved he was to go straight to the Camborne's house in Grosvenor Street.
The sun poured into the bedroom--a cold, wintry sun, but still grateful enough after the fog and gloom of the last week. A fire crackled upon the hearth, and the duke lay propped up with pillows, smoking a cigarette. On a chair at the side of the bed sat Fabian Rose, and on a chair on the other side was Mr. Conrad, the clergyman. An animated conversation was in progress.
For the first time in his life the duke had met types to which he was utterly unaccustomed. He had known of Fabian Rose, of course; there was no one in England who did not know the great Socialist's name, and few people of the upper cla.s.ses who had not, at some time or other, witnessed one of his immensely clever plays. But now the duke was finding that all his ideas were being rudely upset. They were in a process of transition. The man with the white face and the mustard-coloured beard, with the lambent humour, had captivated him. He felt drawn to Rose, though his predominant sensation when talking to his host was one of wild amazement, and as for the clergyman, the duke liked him also, though he was a type that he had never met before.
It was an odd situation indeed. Here was the great capitalist captured and cornered by two of the most militant Socialists of the day--and here--he was rather enjoying it!
”Well,” he said, ”I seem fated nowadays to be carried off into the camp of the enemy; but I like this captivity better than the first. All the same, I cannot in the least agree with you, Mr. Conrad, in what you say, that the law of England, as it stands at present, is simply in the interests of the cla.s.ses with property. Poor people have just as much justice, I have always understood, as any others.”
”It is not so,” replied Mr. Conrad, shaking his head. ”I wish it were.
As I see it, as Rose sees it, as we Socialists see it, the law works wholly to protect property and the propertied, and to do whatever injustices the propertied people who control the State require of it.
”When a hungry man helps himself to the food he cannot pay for, a man in blue introduces him to a man on a bench, and the result of the interview is that the hungry one is put away and locked up for a lengthened time.
When the people meet to discuss their miseries and to demand relief men in scarlet as well as in blue beat and cut them to death. The law of England, as it stands at present, is entirely built up upon what John Kenworthy has so aptly described as 'that Devil's Bible, the Codex Romanorum.' Rome built up a property system which a.s.serted and maintained the rights of the selfish and cunning over those whom they cheated and robbed, and we have done precisely the same with similar results. It is just the same in England to-day as it is in Russia, though the English people are not able to a.s.sert themselves as their brethren in Russia are doing. Count Tolstoi has said that in both countries--in almost all countries, in fact, authority is in the hands of men who, like all the rest, are ever ready to sacrifice the commonweal if their own personal interests are at stake. These men encounter no resistance from the oppressed, and are wholly subject to the corrupting influence of authority itself. And yet we call ourselves a Christian nation!”
”And so we are, Mr. Conrad,” the duke replied. ”England is ruled and guided entirely by the Christian faith. If it were not so society would fall to pieces in a day.”
”It is not so, believe me, duke,” the clergyman answered; ”and if society could but fall to pieces in a day, then indeed there would be a glorious opportunity to reconstruct it on really Christian lines! Jesus left no doubt as to the nature of His mission. He pictured Dives, the rich man, plunged into torment for nothing else than for being rich when another was poor--not, you will observe, only for being rich. He pictures Lazarus, who had not anything, poor and afflicted, as comforted and consoled. For that those evangelical nonconformists the Pharisees, derided the Great Teacher of mankind. Again, by the force of His personality, for it was not the scourge that He held in His hands alone, Jesus drove the usurers out of their business quarters in the Temple and named them thieves. 'Woe,' He said, 'to those who lay up treasures upon earth. Blessed,' He said, 'are the poor!' It is,” he concluded, ”to reconstruct real Christianity that the Socialists are labouring to-day.”
The duke did not answer. He lay back upon his pillows, thinking deeply.
”These are very new thoughts to me,” he said, ”and you must forgive me if I cannot immediately a.s.similate them.”
”Quite so,” Fabian Rose broke in, ”but perhaps some day your Grace will get more light upon these subjects. It is impossible for you and us to think alike in any particular. Our whole lives and environment have been entirely different. Some men upon a mountain survey a landscape; others see nothing but a map. I agree with Mr. Conrad to a certain extent, but he would be the very last person to call me an orthodox Christian all the same. As one looks round it really does often seem that when Christ died the religion of Christ died too. Instead of that we have only the 'Christian religion' nowadays. But we must not tire you, you must get up all your strength to-day, for your removal to Lord Camborne's house to-morrow--for your removal out of our lives,” he concluded, with an unusual sadness in his voice, ”for our ways lie very far apart.”
”If you will allow me, Mr. Rose,” the duke answered, ”our ways will not lie very far apart. Thinking differently as we do, looking upon these problems through different pairs of spectacles, nevertheless it would be a grief to me if I thought that we were not to meet sometimes and to remain friends. What you have done for me is more than I can say, and I should be indeed ungrateful if the fact that we were in opposite camps prevented a hand-grasp now and then.”
”Well, well,” Rose answered, ”I am sure it is very kind of you to say so, and we shall see what the future brings forth. At the same time it is only fair to tell you what I have not told you before--that I am organising an active campaign against you in the first instance, as a type of the cla.s.s we desire to destroy, and for which we wish to subst.i.tute another.”
”Dear me!” said the duke, smiling. ”That sounds very dreadful, Mr. Rose.
Do tell me what is going to happen. Are you going to blow up some more of my house in Piccadilly?”
”Oh, no,” Rose replied, laughing. ”Those are not our methods, and although they have not found out, I understand, who threw the bomb and destroyed the Florentine Vase, I am sure it was no member of the Socialistic party, to which I belong. We accomplish our ends by more peaceful methods, though infinitely stronger. No, duke, I will tell you frankly what is on the cards.”
Mr. Rose paused for a moment, and then in a few sentences told his guest exactly, and in detail, all his plan for educating society to socialistic ideals by means of the theatre.
”And here,” he concluded with a smile, as Mrs. Rose knocked at the door and entered with Mary Marriott, who was carrying a bunch of chrysanthemums in her hand, ”and here is the girl who is to be the arch offender against your rights! Here is the heroine of the play! The artist whose influence shall be more powerful and far-reaching than a thousand lectures!”