THE CHILDREN OF GRIEVANCE
The Dictator and Hamilton stood in Ericson's study, waiting to receive a
deputation. The Dictator had agreed to receive this deputation from an
organisation of working men. The deputation desired to complain of the
long hours of work and the small rate of pay from which English artisans
in many branches of labour had to suffer. Why they had sought to see him
he could not very well tell--and certainly if it had been left to
Hamilton, whose mind was set on sparing the Dictator all avoidable
trouble, and who, moreover, had in his heart of hearts no great belief
in remedy by working-men's deputation, the poor men would probably not
have been accorded the favour of an interview. But the Dictator insisted
on receiving them, and they came; trooped into the room awkwardly; at
first seemed slow of speech, and soon talked a great deal. He listened
to all they had to say, and put questions and received answers, and
certainly impressed the deputation with the conviction that if his
Excellency the ex-Dictator of Gloria could not do anything very much for
them, his heart at least was in their cause. He had an idea in his mind
of something he could do to help the over-oppressed English working
man--and that was the reason why he had consented to receive the
deputation.
The spokesman of the deputation was a gaunt and haggard-looking man. The
dirt seemed ingrained in him--in his hands, his eyebrows, his temples,
under his hair, up to his very eyes. He told a pitiful story of long
work and short pay--of hungry children and an over-tasked wife. He told,
in fact, the story familiar to all of us--the 'chestnut' of the
newspapers--the story which the busy man of ordinary society is not
expected to trouble himself by reading any more--supposing he ever had
read it at all.
The Dictator, however, was not an ordinary society man, and he had been
a long time away from England, and had not had his attention turned to
these social problems of Great Britain. He was therefore deeply
interested in the whole business, and he asked a number of questions,
and got shrewd, keen answers sometimes, and very rambling answers on
other occasions. The deputation was like all other deputations with a
grievance. There was the fanatic burning to a white heat, with the
inward conviction of wrong done, not accidentally, but deliberately, to
him and to his class. There was the prosaic, didactic, reasoning man,
who wanted to talk the whole matter out himself, and to put everybody's
arguments to the test, and to prove that all were wrong and weak and
fallible and unpractical save himself alone. There was the fervid man,
who always wanted to dash into the middle of every other man's speech.
There was the practical man, who came with papers of figures and desired
to make it all a question of statistics. There was the 'crank,' who
disagreed with everything that everybody else said or suggested or could
possibly have said or suggested on that or any other subject. The first
trouble of the Dictator was to get at any commonly admitted appreciation
of facts. More than once--many times indeed--he had to interpose and
explain that he personally knew nothing of the subjects they were
discussing; that he only sought for information; and that he begged them
if they could to agree among themselves as to the actual realities which
they wished to bring under his notice. Even when he had thus adjured
them it was not easy for him to get them to be all in a story. Poor
fellows! each one of them had his own peculiar views and his own
peculiar troubles too closely pressing on his brain. The Dictator was
never impatient--but he kept asking himself the question: 'Suppose I had
the power to legislate, and were now called upon by these men and in
their own interests to legislate, what on their own showing should I be
able to do?'
More than once, too, he put to them that question. 'Admitting your
grievances--admitting the justice, the reason, the practical good sense
of your demands, what can _I_ do? Why do you appeal to me? I am no
legislator. I am a proscribed and banished man from a country which
until lately most of you had never heard of. What would you have of me?'
The spokesman of the deputation could only answer that they had heard of
him as of one who had risen to supreme position in a great far-off
country, and who had always concerned himself deeply with the interest
of the working classes.
'Will that,' he asked, 'get me one moment's audience from an English
official department?'
No, they did not suppose it would; they shook their heads. They could
not help him to learn how he was to help them.
The day was cold and dreary. No matter though the season was still
supposed to be far remote from winter, yet the look of the skies was
cruelly depressing, and the atmosphere was loaded with a misty chill.
Ericson's heart was profoundly touched. He saw in his mind's eye a
country glowing with soft sunshine--a country where even winter came
caressingly on the people living there; a country with vast and almost
boundless spaces for cultivation; a country watered with noble rivers
and streams; a country to be renowned in history as the breeder of
horses and cattle and the grower of grain; a country well qualified to
rear and feed and bring up in sunny comfort more than the whole mass of
the hopeless toilers on the chill English fields and in the sooty
English cities. His mind was with the country with which he had
identified his career--which only wanted good strong hands to convert
her into a country of practical prosperity--which only needed brains to
open for her a history that should be remembered in all far-stretching
time. He now excused himself for what had at one moment seemed his
weakness in consenting to receive a deputation for which he could do
nothing. He found that he had something to say to them after all.
The Dictator had a sweet, strong, melodious voice. When he had heard
them all most patiently out, he used his voice and said what he had to
say. He told them that he had directly no right to receive them at all,
for, as far as regards this country, there was absolutely nothing he
could do for them. He was not an official, not a member of Parliament,
not a person claiming the slightest influence in English public life.
Nor even in the country of his adoption did he reckon for much just now.
He was, as they all knew, an exile; if he were to return to that country
now, his life would, in all probability, be forfeit. Yet, in God's good
pleasure, he might, after all, get back some time, and, if that should
be, then he would think of his poor countrymen, in England. Gloria was a
great country, and could find homes for hundreds and hundreds of
thousands of Englishmen. There--he had no scheme, had never thought of
the matter until quite lately--until they had asked him to receive their
deputation. He had nothing more to say and nothing more to ask. He was
ashamed to have brought them to listen to a reply of so little worth in
any sense; but that was all that he could tell them, and if ever again
he was in a position to do anything, then he could only say that he
hoped to be reminded of his promise.
The deputation went away not only contented but enthusiastic. They quite
understood that their immediate cause was not advanced and could not be
advanced by anything the Dictator could possibly have to say. But they
had been impressed by his sincerity and by his sympathy. They had been
deputed to wait on many a public official, many a head of a department,
many a Secretary of State, many an Under-Secretary. They were familiar
with the stereotyped official answers, the answers that assured them
that the case should have consideration, and that if anything could be
done--well, then, perhaps, something would be done. Possibly no other
answer could have been given. The answer of the unofficial and
irresponsible Dictator promised absolutely nothing; but it had the
musical ring of sincerity and of sympathy about it, and the men grasped
strongly his strong hand, and went away glad that they had seen him.
The Dictator did not usually receive deputations. But he had a great
many requests from deputations that they might be allowed to wait on him
and express their views to him. He was amazed sometimes to find what an
important man he was in the estimation of various great organisations.
Ho was assured by the committee of the Universal Arbitration Society
that, if he would only appear on their platform and deliver a speech,
the cause of universal arbitration would be secured, and public war
would go out of fashion in the world as completely as the private duel
has gone out of fashion in England. Of course, he was politely pressed
to receive a deputation on behalf of several societies interested on one
side or the other of the great question of Woman's Suffrage. The
teetotallers and Local Optionists of various forms solicited the favour
of a talk with him. The trade associations and the licensed victuallers
eagerly desired to get at his views. The letters he received on the
subject of the hours of labour interested him a great deal, and he tried
to grapple with their difficulties, but soon found he could make little
of them. By the strenuous advice of Hamilton he was induced to keep out
of these complex English questions altogether. Ericson yielded, knowing
that Hamilton was advising him for the best; but he had a good deal of
the Don Quixote in his nature; and having now a sort of enforced
idleness put upon him, he felt a secret yearning for some enterprise to
set the world right in other directions than that of Gloria.
There was a certain indolence in Ericson's nature. It was the indolence
which is perfectly consistent with a course of tremendous and sustained
energy. It was the nature which says to itself at one moment, 'Up and do
the work,' and goes for the work with unconquerable earnestness until
the work is done, and then says, 'Very good; now the work is done, let
us rest and smoke and talk over other things.' Nature is one thing;
character is another. We start with a certain kind of nature; we beat it
and mould it, or it is beaten and moulded for us, into character. Even
Hamilton was never quite certain whether Nature had meant Ericson for a
dreamer, and Ericson and Fortune co-operating had hammered him into a
worker, or whether Nature had moulded him for a worker, and his own
tastes for contemplation and for reading and for rest had softened him
down into a dreamer.
'The condition of this country horrifies me, Hamilton,' he said, when
left alone with his devoted follower. 'I don't see any way out of it. I
find no one who even professes to see any way out of it. I don't see any
people getting on well but the trading class.'
'_But_ the trading class?' Hamilton asked, with a quiet smile.
'You mean that if the trading class are getting on well the country in
the end will get on well?'
'It would look like that,' Hamilton answered; 'wouldn't it? This is a
country of trade. If our trade is sound, our heart is sound.'
'But what is becoming of the land, what is becoming of the peasant? What
is becoming of the East End population? I don't see how trade helps any
of these. Read the accounts from Liverpool, from Manchester, from
Sheffield, from anywhere: nothing but competition and strikes and
general misery. And, look here, I can't bear the idea of everything in
life being swallowed up in the great cities, and the peasantry of
England totally disappearing, and being succeeded by a gaunt, ragged
class of half-starved labourers in big towns. Take my word for it,
Hamilton, a cursed day has come when we see _that_ day.'
'What can be done?' Hamilton asked, in a kind of compassionate
tone--compassion rather for the trouble of his chief than for the
supposed national tribulation. Hamilton was as generous-hearted a young
fellow as could be, but his affections were more evidenced in the
concrete than in the abstract. He had grown up accustomed to all these
distracting social questions, and he did not suppose that anything very
much was likely to come of them--at any rate, he supposed that if
anything were to come of them it would come of itself, and that we could
not do much to help or hinder it. So he was not disposed to distress
himself much about these social complications, although, if he felt sure
that his purse or his labour could avail in any way to make things
better, his help most assuredly would not be wanting. But he did not
like the Dictator to be worried about such things. The Dictator's work,
he thought, was to be kept for other fields.
'Nothing can be done, I suppose,' the Dictator said gloomily. 'But, my
dear Hamilton, that is the trouble of the whole business. That does not
help us to put it out of our minds--it only racks our minds all the
more. To think that it should be so! To think that in this great
country, so rich in money, so splendid in intellect, we should have to
face that horrible problem of misery and poverty and vice, and, having
stared at it long enough, simply close our eyes, or turn away and
deliver it as our final utterance that there is nothing to be done!'
'Anyhow,' Hamilton said, 'there is nothing to be done by you and me.
It's of no use our wearing out our energies about it.'
'No,' the Dictator assented, not without drawing a deep breath; 'but if
I had time and energy I should like to try. We have no such problems to
solve in Gloria, Hamilton.'
'No, by Jupiter!' Hamilton exclaimed, 'and therefore the very sooner we
get back there the better.'
The Dictator sent a compassionate and even tender glance at his young
companion. He had the best reason to know how sincere and
self-sacrificing was Hamilton's devotion to the cause of Gloria; but he
could not doubt that just at present there was mingled in the young
man's heart, along with the wish to be serving actively the cause of
Gloria, the wish also to be free of London, to be away from the scene of
a bitter disappointment. The Dictator's heart was deeply touched. He had
admired with the most cordial admiration the courage, the noble
self-repression, which Hamilton had displayed since the hour of his
great disappointment. Never a word of repining, never the exhibition in
public of a clouded brow, never any apparent longing to creep into
lonely brakes like the wounded deer--only the man-like resolve to put up
with the inevitable, and go on with one's work in life just as if
nothing had happened. All the time the Dictator knew what a passionately
loving nature Hamilton had, and he knew how he must have suffered. 'I am
old enough almost to be the lad's father,' he thought to himself, 'and I
could not have borne it like that.' All this passed through his mind in
a time so short that Hamilton was not able to notice any delay in the
reply to his observation.
'You are right, boy,' the Dictator cheerily said. 'I don't believe that
you and I were meant for any mission but the redemption of Gloria.'
'I am glad, to hear you say so,' Hamilton interposed quickly.
'Had you ever any doubt of my feelings on that subject?' Ericson asked
with a smile.
'Oh, no, of course not; but I don't always like to hear you talking
about the troubles of these old worn-out countries, as if you had
anything to do with them or were born to set them right. It seems as if
you were being decoyed away from your real business.'
'No fear of that, boy,' the Dictator said. 'What I was thinking of was
that we might very well arrange to do something for the country of our
birth and the country of our adoption at once, Hamilton--by some great
scheme of English colonisation in Gloria. If we get back again I should
like to see clusters of English villages springing up all over the
surface of that lovely country.'
'Our people are so wanting in adaptability,' Hamilton began.
'My dear fellow, how can you say that? Who made the United States? What
about Australia? What about South Africa?'
'These were weedy poor chaps, these fellows who were here just now,'
Hamilton suggested.
'Good brain-power among some of them, all the same,' the Dictator
asserted. 'Do you know, Hamilton, say what you will, the idea catches
fire in my mind?'
'I am very glad, Excellency; I am very glad of any idea that makes you
warm to the hope of returning to Gloria.'
'Dear old boy, what _is_ the matter with you? You seem to think that I
need some spurring to drive me back to Gloria. Do you really think
anything of the kind?'
'Oh, no, Excellency, I don't--if it comes to that. But I don't like your
getting mixed up in any manner of English local affairs.'
'I see, you are afraid I might be induced to become a candidate for the
House of Commons--or, perhaps, for the London County Council, or the
School Board. I tell you what, Hamilton: I do seriously wish I had an
opportunity of going into training on the School Board. It would give me
some information and some ideas which might be very useful if we ever
get again to be at the head of affairs in Gloria.'
Hamilton was a young man who took life seriously. If it were possible to
imagine that he could criticise unfavourably anything said or done by
his chief, it would be perhaps when the chief condescended to trifle
about himself and his position. So Hamilton did not like the mild jest
about the School Board. Indeed, his mind was not at the moment much in a
condition for jests of any kind, mild or otherwise.
'I don't fancy we should learn anything in the London School Board that
would be of any particular service to us out in Gloria,' he said
protestingly.
'Right you are,' the Dictator answered, with a half-pathetic smile. 'I
need you, boy, to recall me to myself, as the people say in the novels.
No, I do not for a moment feel myself vain enough to suppose that the
ordinary member of the London School Board could at a stroke put his
finger within a thousand miles of Gloria on the map of the
world--Mercator's Projection, or any other. And yet, do you know, I have
odd dreams in my head of a day when Gloria may become the home and the
shelter of a sturdy English population, whom their own country could
endow with no land but the narrow slip of earth that makes a pauper's
grave.'