Only one thing threatened Mr. Waddington's intense enjoyment of his
meeting: his son Horace would be there. Young Horace had insisted on
coming over from Cheltenham College for the night, expressly to attend
the meeting. And though Mr. Waddington had pointed out that the meeting
could very well take place without him, Fanny appeared to be backing
young Horace up in his impudent opinion that it couldn't. This he found
excessively annoying; for, though for worlds he wouldn't have owned it,
Mr. Waddington was afraid of his son. He was never the same man when he
was about. The presence of young Horace--tall for sixteen and developing
rapidly--was fatal to the illusion of his youth. And Horace had a way of
commenting disadvantageously on everything his father said or did; he
had a perfect genius for humorous depreciation. At any rate, he and his
mother behaved as if they thought it was humorous, and many of his
remarks seemed to strike other people--Sir John and Lady Corbett, for
example, and Ralph Bevan--in the same light. Over and over again young
Horace would keep the whole table listening to him with unreasoning and
unreasonable delight, while his father's efforts to converse received
only a polite and perfunctory attention. And the prospect of having
young Horace's humour let loose on his meeting and on his speech at the
meeting was distinctly disagreeable. Fanny oughtn't to have allowed it
to happen. He oughtn't to have allowed it himself. But short of writing
to his Head Master to forbid it, they couldn't stop young Horace coming.
He had only to get on his motor-bicycle and come.
Barbara came on him in the drawing-room before dinner, sitting in an
easy chair and giggling over the prospectus.
He jumped up and stood by the hearth, smiling at her.
"I say, did my guv'nor really write this himself?"
"More or less. Did you really come over for the meeting?"
"Rather."
His smile was wilful and engaging.
"You _are_ enthusiastic about the League."
"Enthusiastic? We-ell, I can't say I know much about it. Of course, I
know the sort of putrid tosh he'll sling at them, but what I want is to
_see_ him doing it."
He had got it too, that passion of interest and amusement, hers and
Ralph's. Only it wasn't decent of him to show it; she mustn't let him
see she had it. She answered soberly:
"Yes, he's awfully keen."
"_Is_ he? I've never seen him really excited, worked up, except once or
twice during the war."
As he stood there, looking down, smiling pensively, he seemed to brood
over it, to anticipate the joy of the spectacle.
He had an impudent, happy face, turned and coloured like his mother's;
he had Fanny's blue eyes and brown hair. All that the Waddingtons and
Postlethwaites had done to him was to raise the bridge of his nose, and
to thicken his lips slightly without altering their wide, vivacious
twirl. He considered Barbara.
"You're going to help him to write his book, aren't you?"
"I hope so," said Barbara.
"You've got a nerve. He pretty well did for Ralph Bevan. He's worse than
shell-shock when he once gets going."
"I expect I can stand him. He can't be worse than the War Office."
"Oh, isn't he? You wait."
At that moment his father came in, late, and betraying the first
symptoms of excitement. Barbara saw that the boy's eyes took them in. As
they sat down to dinner Mr. Waddington pretended to ignore Horace. But
Horace wouldn't be ignored. He drew attention instantly to himself.
"Don't you think it's jolly decent of me, pater, to come over for your
meeting?"
"I shouldn't have thought," said Mr. Waddington, "that politics were
much in your line. Not worth spoiling a half-holiday for."
"I don't suppose I shall care two fags about your old League. What I've
come for is to see you, pater, getting up on your hind legs and giving
it them. I wouldn't miss that for a million half-holidays."
"If that's all you've come for you might have saved yourself the
trouble."
"Trouble? My dear father, I'd have taken _any_ trouble."
You could see he was laughing at him. And he was talking at Barbara,
attracting her attention the whole time; with every phrase he shot a
look at her across the table. Evidently he was afraid she might think he
didn't know how funny his father was, and he had to show her. It wasn't
decent of him. Barbara didn't approve of young Horace; yet she couldn't
resist him; his eyes and mouth were full, like Ralph's, of such
intelligent yet irresponsible joy. He wanted her to share it. He was an
egoist like his father; but he had something of his mother's charm,
something of Ralph Bevan's.
"Nothing," he was saying, "nothing would have kept me away."
"You're very good, sir." Horace could appreciate that biting sarcasm.
"Not at all. I say, I wish you'd let me come on the platform."
"What for? You don't propose yourself as a speaker, do you?"
"Rather not. I simply want to be somewhere where I can see your face and
old Grainger's at the same time, and Hitchin's, when you're going for
their Socialism."
"You shall certainly not come on the platform. And wherever you sit I
must request you to behave yourself--if you can. You may not realize it,
but this is going to be a serious meeting."
"I know _that_. It's just the--the seriousness that gets me." He
giggled.
Mr. Waddington shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, if you've no sense of
responsibility--if you choose to go on like an ill-bred schoolboy--but
don't be surprised if you're reprimanded from the chair."
"What? Old Corbett? I should like to see him.... Don't you worry, pater,
I'll behave a jolly sight better than anybody else will. You see if I
don't."
"How did you suppose he'd behave, Horatio?" said Fanny. "When he's come
all that way and given up a picnic to hear you."
"Pater'll be a picnic, if you like," said Horace.
Mr. Waddington waved him away with a gesture as if he flicked a teasing
fly, and went out to collect his papers.
Fanny turned to her son. "Horry dear, you mustn't rag your father like
that. You mustn't laugh at him. He doesn't like it."
"I can't help it," Horry said. "He's so furiously funny. He _makes_ me
giggle."
"Well, whatever you do, don't giggle at the meeting, or you'll give him
away."
"I won't, mater. Honour bright, I won't. I'll hold myself in like--like
anything. Only you mustn't mind if I burst."
2
Mr. Waddington had spoken for half an hour, expounding, with some
necessary repetitions, the principles and objects of the League.
He was supported on the platform by his Chairman, Sir John Corbett, and
by the other members of his projected Committee: by Lady Corbett, by
Fanny, by the Rector, by Mr. Thurston of the Elms, Wyck-on-the-Hill; by
Mr. Bostock of Parson's Bank; Mr. Jackson, of Messrs. Jackson, Cleaver
and Co., solicitors; Major Markham of Wyck Wold, Mr. Temple of
Norton-in-Mark, and Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicott; and by his secretary,
Miss Barbara Madden. The body of the hall was packed. Beneath him, in
the front row, he had the wives and daughters of his committeemen; in
its centre, right under his nose, he was painfully aware of the presence
of young Horace and Ralph Bevan. Colonel Grainger sat behind them,
conspicuous and, Mr. Waddington fancied, a little truculent, with his
great square face and square-clipped red moustache, and on each side of
Colonel Grainger and behind him were the neighbouring gentry and the
townspeople of Wyck, the two grocers, the two butchers, the drapers and
hotel keeper, and behind them again the servants of the Manor and a
crowd of shop assistants; and further and further back, farm labourers
and artisans; among these he recognized Ballinger with several of
Colonel Grainger's and Hitchin's men. A pretty compact group they made,
and Mr. Waddington was gratified by their appearance there.
And well in the centre of the hall, above the women's hats, he could see
Mr. Hitchin's bush of hair, his shrewd, round, clean-shaven and rosy
face, his grey check shoulders and red tie. Mr. Hitchin had the air of
being supported by the entire body of his workmen. Mr. Waddington was
gratified by Mr. Hitchin's appearance, too, and he thought he would
insert some expression of that feeling in his peroration.
He was also profoundly aware of Mrs. Levitt sitting all by herself in an
empty space about the middle of the third row.
From time to time Ralph Bevan and young Horace fixed on Fanny Waddington
and Barbara delighted eyes in faces of a supernatural gravity. Young
Horace was looking odd and unlike himself, with his jaws clamped
together in his prodigious effort not to giggle. Whenever Barbara's eyes
met his and Ralph's, a faint smile quivered on her face and flickered
and went out.
Once Horace whispered to Ralph Bevan: "Isn't he going it?" And Ralph
whispered back: "He's immense."
He was. He felt immense. He felt that he was carrying his audience with
him. The sound of his own voice excited him and whipped him on. It was a
sort of intoxication. He was soaring now, up and up, into his
peroration.
"It is a gratification to me to see so many working men and women here
to-night. They are specially welcome. We want to have them with us. Do
not distrust the working man. The working man is sound at heart. Sound
at head too, when he is let alone and not carried away by the
treacherous arguments of ignorant agitators. We--myself and the
founders of this League--have not that bad opinion of the working man
which his leaders--his misleaders, I may call them--appear to have. We
believe in him, we know that, if he were only let alone, there is no
section of the community that would stand more solid for order and good
government than he."
"Hear! Hear!" from Colonel Grainger. Ralph whispered, "Camouflage!" to
Horace, who nodded.
"There is nothing in the aims of this League contrary to the interests
of Labour. On the contrary"--he heard, as if somebody else had
perpetrated it, the horrible repetition--"I mean to say--" His brain
fought for another phrase madly and in vain. "On the contrary, it exists
in order to safeguard the true interests, the best interests, of every
working man and woman in the country."
"Hear! Hear!" from Sir John Corbett. Mr. Waddington smiled.
"President Wilson"--he became agitated and drank water--"President
Wilson talked about making the world safe for democracy. Well, if we,
you and I, all of us, don't take care, the world won't be safe for
anything else. It certainly won't be safe for the middle classes, for
the great business and professional classes, for the class to which I,
for one, belong: the class of English gentlemen. It won't be safe for
_us_.
"Not that I propose to make a class question of it. To make a class
question of it would be more than wrong. It would be foolish. It would
be a challenge to revolution, the first step towards letting loose,
unchaining against us, those forces of disorder and destruction which we
are seeking to keep down. I am not here to insist on class differences,
to foment class hatred. Those differences exist, they always will exist;
but they are immaterial to our big purpose. This is a question of
principle, the great principle of British liberty. Are we going to
submit to the tyranny of one class over all other classes, of one
interest over all other interests in the country? Are we going to knock
under, I say, to a minority, whether it is a Labour minority or any
other?
"Are--we--going--to tolerate Bolshevism and a Soviet Government here? If
there are any persons present who think that that is our attitude and
our intention, I tell them now plainly--it is _not_. In their own
language, in our good old county proverb: 'As sure as God's in
Gloucester,' it is not and never will be. The sooner they understand
that the better. I do not say that there are any persons present who
would be guilty of so gross an error. I do not believe there are. I do
not believe that there is any intelligent person in this room who will
not agree with me when I say that, though it is just and right that
Labour should have a voice in the government, it is not just and it is
not right that it should be the only voice.
"It has been the only voice heard in Russia for two years, and what is
the consequence? Bloodshed. Anarchy and bloodshed. I don't _say_ that we
should have anarchy and bloodshed here; England, thank God, is not
Russia. But I do not say that we shall _not_ have them. And I _do_ say
that it rests with us, with you and me, ladies and gentlemen, to decide
whether we shall or shall not have them. It depends on the action we
take to-night with regard to this National League of Liberty, on the
action taken on--on other nights at similar meetings, all over this
England of ours; it depends, in two words, on our _united action_,
whether we shall have anarchy or stable government, whether this England
of ours shall or shall not continue to be a free country.
"Remember two things: the League is National, and it is a League of
Liberty. It would not be one if it were not the other.
"You will say, perhaps many of you _are_ saying: 'This League is all
very well, but what can _I_ do?' Perhaps you will even say: 'What can
Wyck do? After all, Wyck is a small place. It isn't the capital of the
county.'"
"Well, I can tell you what Wyck can do. It can be--it _is_ the first
town in Gloucestershire, the first provincial town in England to start a
National League of Liberty. They've got a League in London, the parent
League; they may have another branch League anywhere any day, but I hope
that--thanks to the very noble efforts of those ladies and gentlemen who
have kindly consented to serve on my Committee--I hope that before long
we shall have started Leagues in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Cirencester,
Nailsworth and Stroud; in every town, village and hamlet in the county.
I hope, thanks to your decision to-night, ladies and gentlemen, to be
able to say that Wyck--little Wyck--has got in first. All round us, for
fifteen--twenty miles round, there are hamlets, villages and towns that
haven't got a League, that know nothing about the League.
Wyck-on-the-Hill will be the centre of the League for this part of the
Cotswolds.
"It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the principle at
stake. Impossible, therefore, to exaggerate the importance of this
League, therefore impossible to exaggerate the importance of this
meeting, of every man and woman who has come here to-night. And when
you rise from your seats and step up to this platform to enroll your
names as members of the National League of Liberty, I want you to feel,
every one of you, that you will be doing an important thing, a thing
necessary to the nation, a thing in its way every bit as necessary and
important as the thing the soldier does when he rises up out of his
trench and goes over the top."
It was then, and then only, that young Horace giggled. But he covered
his collapse with a shout of "Hear! Hear!" that caused Fanny and Barbara
to blow their noses simultaneously. As for Ralph, he hid his face in his
hands.
"Like him," said Mr. Waddington, "you will be helping to save England.
And what can any of us do more?"
He sat down suddenly in a perfect uproar of applause, and drank water.
In spite of the applause he was haunted by a sense of incompleteness.
There was something he had left out of his speech, something he had
particularly wanted to say. It seemed to him more vital, more important,
than anything he _had_ said.
A solitary pair of hands, Mrs. Levitt's hands, conspicuously lifted,
were still clapping when Mr. Hitchin's face rose like a red moon behind
and a little to the left of her; followed by the grey check shoulders
and red tie. He threw back his head, stuck a thumb in each armhole of
his waistcoat, and spoke. "Ladies and gentlemen. The speaker has quoted
President Wilson about the world being made safe for democracy. He seems
to be concerned about the future, to be, if I may say so, in a bit of a
funk about the future. But has he paid any attention to the past? Has he
considered the position of the working man in the past? Has he even
considered the condition of many working men at the present time, for
instance, of the farm labourer now in this country? If he had, if he
knew the facts, if he cared about the facts, he might admit that,
whether he's going to like it or not, it's the working man's turn. Just
about his turn.
"I needn't ask Mr. Waddington if he knows the parable of Dives and
Lazarus. But I should like to say to him what Abraham said to the rich
man: 'Remember that thou in thy life-time receivedst thy good things,
and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted and thou art
tormented.'
"I don't want Mr. Waddington to be tormented. To be tormented too much.
Not more than is reasonable. A little torment--say, his finger scorched
for the fraction of a second in that hot, unpleasant place--would be
good for him if it made him think. I say I don't want to torment him,
but I'll just ask him one question: Does he think that a world where
it's possible for a working man, just because he _is_ a working man and
not an English gentleman, a world where it's still possible for him, and
his wife and his children, to be turned out of house and home to suit
the whim of an English gentleman; does he think that a world where
things like that can happen is a safe place for anybody?
"I can tell him it isn't safe. It isn't safe for you and me. And if it
isn't safe for you and me, it isn't safe for the people who make these
things happen; and it isn't any safer for the people who stand by and
let them happen.
"And if the Socialist--if the Bolshevist is the man who's going to see
to it that they don't happen, if a Soviet Government is the only
Government that'll see to that, then the Socialist, or the Bolshevist,
is the man for my money, and a Soviet Government is the Government for
my vote. I don't say, mind you, that it _is_ the only Government--I say,
if it were.
"Mr. Waddington doesn't like Bolshevism. None of us like it. He doesn't
like Socialism. I think he's got some wrong ideas about that. But he's
dead right when he tells you, if you're afraid of Bolshevism and a
Soviet Government, that the remedy lies in your own hands. If there ever
is a day of reckoning, what Mr. Waddington would call a revolution in
this country, you, we, ay, everyone of us sitting here, will be done
with according as we do."
He sat down, and Mr. Waddington rose again on his platform, solemn and a
little pale. He looked round the hall, to show that there was no person
there whom he was afraid to face. It might have been the look of some
bold and successful statesman turning on a turbulent House, confident in
his power to hold it.
"Unless I have misheard him, what Mr. Hitchin has just said, ladies and
gentlemen, sounded very like a threat. If that is so, we may
congratulate Mr. Hitchin on providing an unanswerable proof of the need
for a National League of Liberty."
There were cries of "Hear! Hear!" from Sir John Corbett and from Mr.
Hawtrey of Medlicott.
Then a horrible thing happened. Slight and rustling at first, then
gathering volume, there came a hissing from the back rows packed with
Colonel Grainger's and Mr. Hitchin's men. Then a booing. Then a booing
and hissing together.
Sir John scrabbled on to his little legs and cried: "Ordah, there!
Ordah!" Mr. Waddington maintained an indomitably supercilious air while
Sir John brought his fist down on the table (probably the most energetic
thing he had ever done in his life), with a loud shout of "Ordah!"
Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin were seen to turn round in their
places and make a sign to their men, and the demonstration ceased.
Mr. Waddington then rose as if nothing at all had happened and said,
"Any ladies and gentlemen wishing to join the League will please come up
to the platform and give their names to Miss Madden. Any persons wishing
to subscribe at once, may pay their subscriptions to Miss Madden.
"I will now call your attention to the last item on the programme, and
ask you all to join with me very heartily in singing 'God Save the
King.'"
Everybody, except Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin, rose, and everybody,
except the extremists of the opposition, sang. One voice--it was Mrs.
Levitt's voice--was lifted arrogantly high and clear above the rest.
"Send--him--vic-torious,
Hap-py--and--glorious.
Long--to-oo rei-eign overious
Gaw-aw-awd--Save--ther King."
Mr. Waddington waited beside Barbara Madden at the table; he waited in a
superb confidence. After all, the demonstration engineered by Colonel
Grainger had had no effect. The front and middle rows had risen to their
feet and a very considerable procession was beginning to file towards
the platform.
Mr. Waddington was so intent on this procession, Barbara was so busy
taking down names and entering subscriptions and making out receipts,
Sir John and Lady Corbett and the rest of the proposed Committee were
talking to each other so loud and fast, Ralph and Horace were so
absorbed in looking at Barbara that none of them saw what was happening
in the body of the hall. Only Fanny caught the signals that passed
between Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin, and between Mr. Hitchin and
his men.