“INDEED you are quite wrong, Sidney. There was a girl at the Slade school who supported her mother and two sisters by her drawing. Besides, what can you do? People were made so.”
“Yes; I was made a landlord and capitalist by the folly of the people; but they can unmake me if they will. Meanwhile I have absolutely no means of escape from my position except by giving away my slaves to fellows who will use them no better than I, and becoming a slave myself; which, if you please, you shall not catch me doing in a hurry. No, my beloved, I must keep my foot on their necks for your sake as well as for my own. But you do not care about all this prosy stuff. I am consumed with remorse for having bored my darling. You want to know why I am living here like a hermit in a vulgar two-roomed hovel instead of tasting the delights of London society with my beautiful and devoted young wife.”
“But you don’t intend to stay here, Sidney?”
“Yes, I do; and I will tell you why. I am helping to liberate those Manchester laborers who were my father’s slaves. To bring that about, their fellow slaves all over the world must unite in a vast international association of men pledged to share the world’s work justly; to share the produce of the work justly; to yield not a farthing — charity apart — to any full-grown and ablebodied idler or malingerer, and to treat as vermin in the commonwealth persons attempting to get more than their share of wealth or give less than their share of work. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish, because working-men, like the people called their betters, do not always understand their own interests, and will often actually help their oppressors to exterminate their saviours to the tune of ‘Rule Britannia,’ or some such lying doggerel. We must educate them out of that, and, meanwhile, push forward the international association of laborers diligently. I am at present occupied in propagating its principles. Capitalism, organized for repressive purposes under pretext of governing the nation, would very soon stop the association if it understood our aim, but it thinks that we are engaged in gunpowder plots and conspiracies to assassinate crowned heads; and so, whilst the police are blundering in search of evidence of these, our real work goes on unmolested. Whether I am really advancing the cause is more than I can say. I use heaps of postage stamps, pay the expenses of many indifferent lecturers, defray the cost of printing reams of pamphlets and hand-bills which hail the laborer flatteringly as the salt of the earth, write and edit a little socialist journal, and do what lies in my power generally. I had rather spend my ill-gotten wealth in this way than upon an expensive house and a retinue of servants. And I prefer my corduroys and my two-roomed chalet here to our pretty little house, and your pretty little ways, and my pretty little neglect of the work that my heart is set upon. Some day, perhaps, I will take a holiday; and then we shall have a new honeymoon.”
For a moment Henrietta seemed about to cry. Suddenly she exclaimed with enthusiasm: “I will stay with you, Sidney. I will share your work, whatever it may be. I will dress as a dairymaid, and have a little pail to carry milk in. The world is nothing to me except when you are with me; and I should love to live here and sketch from nature.”
He blenched, and partially rose, unable to conceal his dismay. She, resolved not to be cast off, seized him and clung to him. This was the movement that excited the derision of Wickens’s boy in the adjacent gravel pit. Trefusis was glad of the interruption; and, when he gave the boy twopence and bade him begone, half hoped that he would insist on remaining. But though an obdurate boy on most occasions, he proved complaisant on this, and withdrew to the high road, where he made over one of his pennies to a phantom gambler, and tossed with him until recalled from his dual state by the appearance of Fairholme’s party.
In the meantime, Henrietta urgently returned to her proposition.
“We should be so happy,” she said. “I would housekeep for you, and you could work as much as you pleased. Our life would be a long idyll.”
“My love,” he said, shaking his head as she looked beseechingly at him, “I have too much Manchester cotton in my constitution for long idylls. And the truth is, that the first condition of work with me is your absence. When you are with me, I can do nothing but make love to you. You bewitch me. When I escape from you for a moment, it is only to groan remorsefully over the hours you have tempted me to waste and the energy you have futilized.”
“If you won’t live with me you had no right to marry me.”
“True. But that is neither your fault nor mine. We have found that we love each other too much — that our intercourse hinders our usefulness — and so we must part. Not for ever, my dear; only until you have cares and business of your own to fill up your life and prevent you from wasting mine.”
“I believe you are mad,” she said petulantly. “The world is mad nowadays, and is galloping to the deuce as fast as greed can goad it. I merely stand out of the rush, not liking its destination. Here comes a barge, the commander of which is devoted to me because he believes that I am organizing a revolution for the abolition of lock dues and tolls. We will go aboard and float down to Lyvern, whence you can return to London. You had better telegraph from the junction to the college; there must be a hue and cry out after us by this time. You shall have my address, and we can write to one another or see one another whenever we please. Or you can divorce me for deserting you.”
“You would like me to, I know,” said Henrietta, sobbing.
“I should die of despair, my darling,” he said complacently. “Ship aho-o-o-y! Stop crying, Hetty, for God’s sake. You lacerate my very soul.”
“Ah-o-o-o-o-o-o-oy, master!” roared the bargee.
“Good arternoon, sir,” said a man who, with a short whip in his hand, trudged beside the white horse that towed the barge. “Come up!” he added malevolently to the horse.
“I want to get on board, and go up to Lyvern with you,” said Trefusis. “He seems a well fed brute, that.”
“Better fed nor me,” said the man. “You can’t get the work out of a hunderfed ‘orse that you can out of a hunderfed man or woman. I’ve bin in parts of England where women pulled the barges. They come cheaper nor ‘orses, because it didn’t cost nothing to get new ones when the old ones we wore out.”
“Then why not employ them?” said Trefusis, with ironical gravity. “The principle of buying laborforce in the cheapest market and selling its product in the dearest has done much to make Englishmen — what they are.”
“The railway comp’nies keeps ‘orspittles for the like of ‘IM,” said the man, with a cunning laugh, indicating the horse by smacking him on the belly with the butt of the whip. “If ever you try bein’ a laborer in earnest, governor, try it on four legs. You’ll find it far preferable to trying on two.”
“This man is one of my converts,” said Trefusis apart to Henrietta. “He told me the other day that since I set him thinking he never sees a gentleman without feeling inclined to heave a brick at him. I find that socialism is often misunderstood by its least intelligent supporters and opponents to mean simply unrestrained indulgence of our natural propensity to heave bricks at respectable persons. Now I am going to carry you along this plank. If you keep quiet,