THE DUMPLING'S SECRET.
The man, as I have said before, was mad--stark, staring mad, and
with a madman one must go warily. Had I too profusely protested my
sympathy, too readily declared myself an adherent, his cunning would,
I am persuaded, have led him to doubt my sincerity, in which case his
promise to strangle the life, or to tear the heart out of me, would, I
believe, have been fulfilled.
Under the circumstances I thought it best not to appear too eager.
"You can't frighten me with your threats," I said, quietly. "I did lose
my nerve some time ago. But I've got it back again now, and while I'm
willing to hear all you have to say about a cause with which I'm not
only ready but anxious to throw in my lot, I'm not going to be bounced
or threatened into doing so. The co-operation of a man who, in making
so momentous a choice, is capable of being threatened or talked into
standing in with you, who jumps, in fact, to your whistling, isn't
worth having. There are more momentous matters than my life hanging to
this, and before I say definitely I'm with you--as is my wish--there
are one or two more questions I must ask."
With no one will an appeal to sanity find more favour than with the
insane. "Do let us be reasonable" is the best of all arguments to use
to those whose reason is affected. Evidently the man before me was
favourably impressed by what I had said.
"You are quite right," he replied cordially. "We want the co-operation
of no one who is not persuaded in his own mind of the righteousness of
our cause. From what I've seen of you, Mr. Rissler, you are just the
sort of man with whom I should like to be associated in my work. Your
getting out of that opium den with a whole skin when, believing you
to be Grant, I'd given the strictest orders that you shouldn't leave
the place alive, proves you to be a man ready of resource and quick
of brain, just such a man whose co-operation would ensure the final
success of the cause. It will be a red-letter day for us if we could
induce you to throw in your lot with us. Ask your questions, then, and
I'll give you a straight reply."
"Well," I said, "tell me in a word what is the end at which you are
aiming."
"I'm aiming," he said, "to create first in England, and afterwards
all over the world, such an upheaval of the social order of things as
took place in France at the time of the Great Revolution. But with
this difference. The French Revolution was aimed at the aristocrat.
You'll think me inconsistent, I fear, when I say that it is not
with the aristocrat that I have my chief quarrel. I hold no brief
for the aristocracy. Many of them--most of them, perhaps--are lazy,
extravagant, self-indulgent, luxury-loving, selfish, and vicious,
as I know to my cost. I don't blame them very much for that, any
more than I blame the very poor for their want of cleanliness,
their thriftlessness, their hand-to-mouth methods of living, and
for seeking solace from the cold, the squalor, and the misery of
their surroundings, in the warmth and light and companionship of
the public-house. Both classes are to some extent the outcome of
circumstances. The aristocracy have most of them their sense of
_noblesse oblige_, and have the honour of a great name to keep up.
On the whole, they do it tolerably well. They distribute largess
generously, they entertain lavishly, they pay those who work for them
fairly, and they treat those who work for them well. The aristocracy,
it is true, has got, first, to give way, and, ultimately, to go, just
as the monarchy has got to give way and to go before the advance of
democracy.
"Do you know what King Edward--wise man! foreseeing man!--is reported
to have said? I tell it to you as it was told to me. It may be true, or
it may not. Personally, I believe it is, and it adds to the admiration
to which, in spite of myself, I am compelled, for his wisdom and for
his foresight. He is reported to have said, 'My grandson is likely to
be the last King of England. The whole face of things is changing, not
in this country only, but in Germany, Austria, Russia, in Europe, and
all over the world. The monarchy will last my time. It may last my
son's. Possibly it will last his son's time. I shall not be there to
see. But those who are alive, when my grandson dies, may possibly see
an end of the monarchy in England!'
"That is what King Edward is reported to have said, and whether he
said it or did not say it, it is true. We are on the verge of a death
struggle between the masses and the classes. Much will depend upon the
side with which the great middle classes throw in their lot. If the
middle classes decide for what we call the classes, the struggle will
necessarily be prolonged. If the middle classes decide, as I believe
they will, for the masses, the end will come soon, and with awful
swiftness. One of the two--the masses or the classes--must go. Can you
doubt for one moment which it will be? Even now the death-knell of the
monarchy and the aristocracy is sounding. Already the day of democracy
has dawned. King Labour is coming into his own.
"But the democracy of to-day doesn't see the real danger in front of
it. It is so busy, abusing and striving to sweep away the monarchy and
the aristocracy, that it doesn't see that it is playing into the hands
of an infinitely greater danger--the plutocracy.
"As things stand now, King and Court and House of Lords are some sort
of check upon the encroachments of the plutocracy. Sweep King and
Court and House of Lords away, and the country will be at the mercy of
the mere man of money. And what will the poor get out of _him_? Better
a thousand times for the poor to be in the hands--be under the heels,
if you like--of the monarchy and the aristocracy, than be given over,
tied hand and foot, to the tender mercies of the mere money-grabber,
with no name to uphold, no sense of chivalry to inspire, no conscience
to control, no object in life, save to get and keep and grind out
money from man, woman, and child. It is _not_ the monarchy or the
aristocracy who is the enemy of the people. It is your capitalist,
your mill and factory owner, your middleman, your wholesale and retail
merchants, your employers of labour. It is against him and all of his
tribe that I would stir up a revolution in England which should make as
clean a sweep of the lot of them as the French Revolution made of the
aristocrat.
"Do I carry you with me thus far, Mr. Rissler? If not, it were idle to
say more."
"You carry me completely," I replied, "But--forgive me asking--how is
what you propose accomplishing to be done? Thus far you have dealt
only in generalisations, but generalisations by themselves never yet
brought about a revolution."
"You are absolutely right," he replied quickly. "In the ordinary way
I should say it could not be done for another twenty, thirty, perhaps
another hundred years. There is only one way; but there _is_ a way.
There is only one man who can do it; but there is such a man, as you
yourself will admit when you hear his name."
He stopped, and for at least half a minute looked at me searchingly, as
if uncertain how far he was justified in taking me into his confidence,
but muttering to himself meanwhile, in language which, by the word or
two I caught, I knew to be French. So close was his face to mine that I
saw what at first I thought was my own face mirrored in his eyes. But,
as I looked, the picture-face in his eyes became more definite, and I
knew that the face I saw there was not mine. It was a face there was
no mistaking; a face which every schoolboy, every child, would have
recognised at sight.
And now it seemed to be growing larger until what had been a tiny
picture, in the pupils of the Dumpling's eyes, was the life-size head
of a man, looking at me with eyes of its own--eyes so stern, so cold,
so cruel, so commanding, that the bidding of the set lips beneath them
few men would dare to disobey. At the bidding of those lips, at one
glance from those eyes--men, regiments, an army, even, had gone forth
unhesitatingly to die.
That all this could be seen in the picture, which is formed in the
pupils of one man's eyes, sounds incredible, and I can only explain it
by saying that what I saw lay not in the pupils themselves, but lay
behind those pupils, through which I looked as one looks through a
window.
Then suddenly the face which I had seen faded away. Silhouetted against
the sky, I saw the solitary figure of a man standing upon the rocky
point of an island, and looking out--the soul of him more lonely than
that lone island, so far away from other land, and surrounded by a
wasteful wilderness of waters--the heart of him torn with unrest,
wilder, sadder, more hopeless, than the surging, sobbing unrest of
those surrounding seas.
Then, too, this picture faded, and I was looking upon the face of the
Dumpling, and listening to the words which fell sharply, incisively,
from his lips.
Clearly he had decided to trust me with his great secret, and something
of the excitement which I saw upon his face communicated itself to me
as I listened.
"Why has the Great Revolution, why has the cause of Labour failed
thus far?" he asked, turning upon me almost savagely. "I will tell
you," he went on, without waiting for an answer. "Because great
revolutions are only brought about by great men; and for ten, twenty,
thirty years, perhaps more, the womb of England has been barren of
great men. The histories of religions, we are told, are written in
the life-stories of great men. The histories of politics are no more
than the life-stories of great men. To-day there are parties, but
no politics. What are your Labour party, your Liberal party, if you
like--your Campbell-Bannermans, Asquiths, Bryces, Birrells, Morleys,
Burnses, Keir Hardies? Amiable men, able men, capable men, well-meaning
men, conscientious men, but spoken of in a comparative sense, as
compared with your real makers of history, of statecraft, what are
they? Mediocrities, every one of them. Parnell had it in his power
to have been a great man had he lived, and had he not made a mess
of his life, but for the rest"--he stopped short for a moment--"for
the rest," he went on, "judged by any standard of greatness, for the
rest"--he snapped his fingers contemptuously--"that! The whole of
them combined couldn't do in a year what one great man--a Napoleon,
for instance--could do in an hour. The great revolution has failed
of coming thus far, the cause of Labour has failed thus far, for one
reason, and one reason only--there is no Napoleon to lead the people to
victory. Once find Labour her Napoleon, and Labour will rule the land.
"Listen!
"I who stand before you am he--not Labour's Napoleon only, not merely
the Napoleon of Labour, but Napoleon the Corsican, Napoleon the First
Consul, Napoleon the Emperor himself! In me you see not only Napoleon
re-incarnate, but Napoleon's very self--the conqueror of Europe, the
Cæsar of France, now come again to earth, even as the Christ came two
thousand years ago, to save and to redeem the people. I am here to
lead the leaderless armies of Labour to victory--I am here to set King
Labour on his rightful throne. The world has waited over-long for the
coming of Napoleon. But at last he is come. I who stand before you am
he!"