Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team
PHILISTIA
BY
GRANT ALLEN
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. CHILDREN OF LIGHT
II. THE COASTS OF THE GENTILES
III. MAGDALEN QUAD
IV. A LITTLE MUSIC
V. ASKELON VILLA, GATH
VI. DOWN THE RIVER
VII. GHOSTLY COUNSEL
VIII. IN THE CAMP OF THE PHILISTINES
IX. THE WOMEN OF THE LAND
X. THE DAUGHTERS OF CANAAN
XI. CULTURE AND CULTURE
XII. THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY
XIII. YE MOUNTAINS OF GILBOA
XIV. WHAT DO THESE HEBREWS HERE
XV. EVIL TIDINGS
XVI. FLAT REBELLION
XVII. COME YE OUT AND BE YE SEPARATE!
XVIII. A QUIET WEDDING
XIX. INTO THE FIRE
XX. LITERATURE, MUSIC, AND THE DRAMA
XXI. OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE
XXII. THE PHILISTINES TRIUMPH
XXIII. THE STREETS OF ASKELON
XXIV. THE CLOUDS BEGIN TO BREAK
XXV. HARD PRESSED
XXVI. IRRECLAIMABLE
XXVII. RONALD COMES OF AGE
XXVIII. TELL IT NOT IN GATH
XXIX. A MAN AND A MAID
XXX. THE ENVIRONMENT FINALLY TRIUMPHS
XXXI. DE PROFUNDIS
XXXII. PRECONTRACT OF MARRIAGE
XXXIII. A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE
XXXIV. HOPE
XXXV. THE TIDE TURNS
XXXVI. OUT OF THE HAND OF THE PHILISTINES
XXXVII. LAND AT LAST: BUT WHAT LAND?
CHAPTER I.
CHILDREN OF LIGHT.
It was Sunday evening, and on Sundays Max Schurz, the chief of the
London Socialists, always held his weekly receptions. That night
his cosmopolitan refugee friends were all at liberty; his French
disciples could pour in from the little lanes and courts in Soho,
where, since the Commune, they had plied their peaceful trades as
engravers, picture-framers, artists'-colourmen, models, pointers,
and so forth--for most of them were hangers-on in one way or another
of the artistic world; his German adherents could stroll round,
pipe in mouth, from their printing-houses, their ham-and-beef shops,
or their naturalists' chambers, where they stuffed birds or set up
exotic butterflies in little cabinets--for most of them were more
or less literary or scientific in their pursuits; and his few English
sympathisers, chiefly dissatisfied philosophical Radicals of the
upper classes, could drop in casually for a chat and a smoke, on
their way home from the churches to which they had been dutifully
escorting their un-emancipated wives and sisters. Max Schurz kept
open house for all on Sunday evenings, and there was not a drawing-room
in London better filled than his with the very advanced and not
undistinguished set who alone had the much-prized entrée of his
exclusive salon.
The salon itself did not form any component part of Max Schurz's
own private residence in any way. The great Socialist, the man whose
mandates shook the thrones of Russia and Austria, whose movements
spread terror in Paris and Berlin, whose dictates were even obeyed
in Kerry and in Chicago, occupied for his own use two small rooms
at the top of a shabby composite tenement in a doubtful district
of Marylebone. The little parlour where he carried on his trade of
a microscope-lens grinder would not have sufficed to hold one-tenth
of the eager half-washed crowd that pressed itself enthusiastically
upon him every Sunday. But a large room on the ground floor of the
tenement, opening towards the main street, was used during the
week by one of his French refugee friends as a dancing-saloon;
and in this room on every Sunday evening the uncrowned king of the
proletariate Socialists was permitted to hold his royal levees.
Thither all that was best and truest in the socially rebellions
classes domiciled in London used to make its way; and there men
calmly talked over the ultimate chances of social revolutions which
would have made the hair of respectable Philistine Marylebone stand
stiffly on end, had it only known the rank political heresies that
were quietly hatching in its unconscious midst.
While Max Schurz's hall was rapidly filling with the polyglot crowd
of democratic solidarists, Ernest Le Breton and his brother were
waiting in the chilly little drawing-room at Epsilon Terrace,
Bayswater, for the expected arrival of Harry Oswald. Ernest had
promised to introduce Oswald to Max Schurz's reception; and it
was now past eight o'clock, getting rather a late hour for those
simple-minded, early-rising Communists. 'I'm afraid, Herbert,'
said Ernest to his brother, 'he forgets that Max is a working-man
who has to be at his trade again punctually by seven o'clock
to-morrow. He thinks he's going out to a regular society At Home,
where ten o'clock's considered just the beginning of the evening. Max
won't at all like his turning up so late; it smells of non-productivity.'
'If Herr Schurz wants to convert the world,' Herbert answered
chillily, rolling himself a tiny cigarette, 'he must convince the
unproductive as well as the proletariate before he can set things
fairly on the roll for better arrangement. The proletariate's
all very well in its way, no doubt, but the unproductive happen to
hold the key of the situation. One convert like you or me is worth
a thousand ignorant East-end labourers, with nothing but their
hands and their votes to count upon.'
'But you are not a convert, Herbert.'
'I didn't say I was. I'm a critic. There's no necessity to throw
oneself open-armed into the embrace of either party. The wise man
can wait and watch the progress of the game, backing the winner
for the time being at all the critical moments, and hedging if
necessary when the chances turn momentarily against the favourite.
There's a ring at the bell: that's Oswald; let's go down to the
door to meet him.'
Ernest ran down the stairs rapidly, as was his wont; Herbert
followed in a more leisurely fashion, still rolling the cigarette
between his delicate finger and thumb. 'Goodness gracious, Oswald!'
Ernest exclaimed as his friend stepped in, 'why, you've actually
come in evening dress! A white tie and all! What on earth will
Max say? He'll be perfectly scandalised at such a shocking and
unprecedented outrage. This will never do; you must dissemble
somehow or other.'
Oswald laughed. 'I had no idea,' he said, 'Herr Schurz was such
a truculent sans-culotte as that comes to. As it was an evening
reception I thought, of course, one ought to turn up in evening
clothes.'
'Evening clothes! My dear fellow, how on earth do you suppose a
set of poor Leicester Square outlaws are going to get themselves
correctly set up in black broadcloth coats and trousers? They might
wash their white ties themselves, to be sure; they mostly do their
own washing, I believe, in their own basins.' ('And not much at
that either,' put in Herbert, parenthetically.) 'But as to evening
clothes, why, they'd as soon think of arraying themselves for dinner
in full court dress as of putting on an obscurantist swallow-tail.
It's the badge of a class, a distinct aristocratic outrage; we must
alter it at once, I assure you, Oswald.'
'At any rate,' said Oswald laughing, 'I've had the pleasure of finding
myself accused for the first time in the course of my existence of
being aristocratic. It's quite worth while going to Max Schurz's
once in one's life, if it were only for the sake of that single
new sensation.'
'Well, my dear fellow, we must rectify you, anyhow, before you go.
Let me see; luckily you've got your dust-coat on, and you needn't
take that off; it'll do splendidly to hide your coat and waistcoat.
I'll lend you a blue tie, which will at once transform your upper
man entirely. But you show the cloven hoof below; the trousers
will surely betray you. They're absolutely inadmissible under any
circumstances whatsoever, as the Court Circular says, and you must
positively wear a coloured pair of Herbert's instead of them. Run
upstairs quickly, there's a good fellow, and get rid of the mark
of the Beast as fast as you can.'
Oswald did as he was told without demur, and in about a minute more
presented himself again, with the mark of the Beast certainly most
effectually obliterated, at least so far as outer appearance went.
His blue tie, light dust-coat, and borrowed grey trousers, made up
an ensemble much more like an omnibus conductor out for a holiday
than a gentleman of the period in correct evening dress. 'Now
mind,' Ernest said seriously, as he opened the door, 'whatever you
do, Oswald, if you stew to death for it--and Schurz's rooms are
often very close and hot, I can assure you--don't for heaven's sake
go and unbutton your dust-coat. If you do they'll see at once you're
a wolf in sheep's clothing, and I shouldn't be at all surprised
if they were to turn and rend you. At least, I'm sure Max would be
very much annoyed with me for unsocially introducing a plutocratic
traitor into the bosom of the fold.'
They walked along briskly in the direction of Marylebone, and
stopped at last at a dull, yellow-washed house, which bore on
its door a very dingy brass plate, inscribed in red letters, 'M.
et Mdlle. Tirard. Salon de Danse.' Ernest opened the door without
ringing, and turned down the passage towards the salon. 'Remember,'
he said, turning to Harry Oswald by way of a last warning, with his
hand on the inner door-handle, 'coûte que coûte, my dear fellow,
don't on any account open your dust-coat. No anti-social opinions;
and please bear in mind that Max is, in his own way, a potentate.'
The big hall, badly lighted by a few contribution candles (for the
whole colony subscribed to the best of its ability for the support
of the weekly entertainment), was all alive with eager figures and
the mingled busy hum of earnest conversation. A few chairs ranged
round the wall were mostly occupied by Mdlle. Tirard and the other
ladies of the Socialist party; but the mass of the guests were
men, and they were almost all smoking, in utter indifference to the
scanty presence of the fair sex. Not that they were intentionally
rude or boorish; that they never were; except where an emperor or an
aristocrat is concerned, there is no being on earth more courteous,
kindly, and considerate for the feelings of others than your
exiled Socialist. He has suffered much himself in his own time, and
so miseris succurrere discit. Emperors he mentally classes with
cobras, tarantulas, and scorpions, as outside the pale of humanitarian
sympathies altogether; but, with this slight political exception,
he is the broadest and tenderest and most catholic in his feelings
of all living breathing creatures. However, the ladies of his party
have all been brought up from their childhood onward in a mingled
atmosphere of smoke and democracy; so that he no more thinks
of abstaining from tobacco in their presence than he thinks of
commiserating the poor fish for being so dreadfully wet, or the
unfortunate mole for his unpleasantly slimy diet of live earthworms.
'Herr Schurz,' said Ernest, singling out the great leader in the
gloom immediately, 'I've brought my brother Herbert here, whom
you know already, to see you, as well as another Oxford friend of
mind, Mr. Harry Oswald, Fellow and Lecturer of Oriel. He's almost
one of us at heart, I'm happy to say, and at any rate I'm sure
you'll be glad to make his acquaintance.'
The little spare wizened-up grey man, in the threadbare brown velveteen
jacket, who stood in the middle of the hall, caught Ernest's hand
warmly, and held it for a moment fettered in his iron grip. There
was an honesty in that grip and in those hazy blue-spectacled eyes
that nobody could for a second misunderstand. If an emperor had
been introduced to Max Schurz he might have felt a little abashed
one minute at the old Socialist's royal disdain, but he could not
have failed to say to himself as he looked at him from head to
foot, 'Here, at least, is a true man.' So Harry Oswald felt, as
the spare grey thinker took his hand in his, and grasped it firmly
with a kindly pressure, but less friendly than that with which he
had greeted his known admirer, Ernest Le Breton. As for Herbert, he
merely bowed to him politely from a little distance; and Herbert,
who had picked up at once with a Polish exile in a corner, returned
the bow frigidly without coming up to the host himself at all for
a moment's welcome.
'I'm always pleased to meet friends of the cause from Oxford,'
Herr Schurz said, in almost perfect English. 'We want recruits most
of all among the thinking classes. If we are ever to make headway
against the banded monopolies--against the place-holders, the
land-grabbers, the labour-taxers, the robbers of the poor--we must
first secure the perfect undivided confidence of the brain-workers,
the thinkers, and the writers. At present everything is against us;
we are but a little leaven, trying vainly in our helpless fashion
to leaven the whole lump. The capitalist journals carry off all
the writing talent in the world; they are timid, as capital must
always be; they tremble for their tens of thousands a year, and
their vast circulations among the propertied classes. We cannot
get at the heart of the people, save by the Archimedean lever of
the thinking world. For that reason, my dear Le Breton, I am always
glad to muster here your Oxford neophytes.'
'And yet, Herr Schurz,' said Ernest gently, 'you know we must not
after all despair. Look at the history of your own people! When
the cause of Jehovah seemed most hopeless, there were still seven
thousand left in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal. We are
gaining strength every day, while they are losing it.'
'Ah yes, my friend. I know that too,' the old man answered, with a
solemn shake of the head; 'but the wheels move slowly, they move
slowly--very surely, but oh, so slowly. You are young, friend
Ernest, and I am growing old. You look forward to the future with
hope; I look back to the past with regret: so many years gone, so
little, so very little done. It will come, it will come as surely
as the next glacial period, but I shall not live to see it. I stand
like Moses on Pisgah; I see the promised land before me; I look
down upon the equally allotted vineyards, and the glebe flowing
with milk and honey in the distance; but I shall not lead you into
it; I shall not even lead you against the Canaanites; another than
I must lead you in. But I am an old man, Mr. Oswald, an old man
now, and I am talking all about myself--an anti-social trick we have
inherited from our fathers. What is your friend's special line at
Oxford, did you say, Ernest?'
'Oswald is a mathematician, sir,' said Ernest, 'perhaps the greatest
mathematician among the younger men in the whole University.'
'Ah! that is well. We want exact science. We want clear and definite
thinking. Biologists and physicists and mathematicians, those are
our best recruits, you may depend upon it. We need logic, not mere
gas. Our French friends and our Irish friends--I have nothing in
the world to say against them; they are useful men, ardent men,
full of fire, full of enthusiasm, ready to do and dare anything--but
they lack ballast. You can't take the kingdom of heaven by storm.
The social revolution is not to be accomplished by violence, it is
not even to be carried by the most vivid eloquence; the victory
will be in the end to the clearest brain and the subtlest intellect.
The orthodox political economists are clever sophists; they mask
and confuse the truth very speciously; we must have keen eyes and
sharp noses to spy out and scent out their tortuous fallacies. I'm
glad you're a mathematician, Mr. Oswald. And so you have thought
on social problems?'
'I have read "Gold and the Proletariate,"' Oswald answered modestly,
'and I learned much from it, and thought more. I won't say you have
quite converted me, Herr Schurz, but you have given me plenty of
food for future reflection.'
'That is well, said the old man, passing one skinny brown hand
gently up and down over the other. 'That is well. There's no hurry.
Don't make up your mind too fast. Don't jump at conclusions. It's
intellectual dishonesty to do that. Wait till you have convinced
yourself. Spell out your problems slowly; they are not easy ones;
try to see how the present complex system works; try to probe
its inequalities and injustices; try to compare it with the ideal
commonwealth: and you'll find the light in the end, you'll find
the light.'
As he spoke, Herbert Le Breton lounged up quietly from his farther
corner towards the little group. 'Ah, your brother, Ernest!' said
Max Schurz, drawing himself up a little more stiffly; 'he has found
the light already, I believe, but he neglects it; still he is not
with us, and he that is not with us is against us. You hold aloof
always, Mr. Herbert, is it not so?'
'Well, not quite aloof, Herr Schurz, I'm certain, but not on
your side exactly either. I like to look on and hold the balance
evenly, not to throw my own weight too lightly into either stale.
The objective attitude of the mere spectator is after all the right
one for an impartial philosopher to take up.'
'Ah, Mr. Herbert, this philosophy of your Oxford contemplative
Radicals is only another name for a kind of social selfishness,
I fancy,' said the old man solemnly. 'It seems to me your head is
with us, but your heart, your heart is elsewhere.'
Herbert Le Breton played a moment quietly with the Roman aureus of
Domitian on his watch-chain; then he said slowly in his clear cold
voice, 'There may be something in that, no doubt, Herr Schurz, for
each of us has his own game to play, and while the world remains
unreformed, he must play it on his own gambit to a great extent,
without reference to the independent game of others. We all agree
that the board is too full of counters, and as each counter is not
responsible for its own presence and position on the board, having
been put there without previous consultation by the players, we
must each do the best we can for ourselves in our own fashion. My
sympathies, as you say, are on your side, but perhaps my interests
lie the other way, and after all, till you start your millennium,
we must all rattle along as well as we can in the box together,
jarring against one another in our old ugly round of competition,
and supply and demand, and survival of the fittest, and mutual
accommodation, and all the rest of it, to the end of the chapter.
Every man for himself and God for us all, you know. You have the
logic, to be sure, Herr Schurz, but the monopolists have the law
and the money.'
'Ah, yes,' said the old Socialist grimly; 'Demas, Demas; he and his
silver mine; you remember your Bunyan, don't you? Well, all faiths
and systems have their Demases. The cares of this world and the
deceitfulness of riches. He's bursar of his college, isn't he, Ernest?
I thought so. "He had the bag, and bare what was put therein." A
dangerous office, isn't it, Mr. Oswald? A very dangerous office.
You can't touch pitch or property without being defiled.'
'You at least, sir, said Ernest, reverentially, 'have kept yourself
unspotted from the world.'
The old man sighed, and turned for a moment to speak in French to
a tall, big-bearded new-comer who advanced to meet him. 'Impossible!'
he said quickly; 'I am truly distressed to hear it. It is very
imprudent, very unnecessary.'
'What is the news?' asked Ernest, also in French.
The new-comer answered him with a marked South Russian accent.
'There has been another attempt on the life of Alexander Nicolaiovitch.'
'You don't mean to say so!' cried Ernest in surprise.
'Yes, I do,' replied the Russian, 'and it has nearly succeeded
too.'
'An attempt on whom?' asked Oswald, who was new to the peculiar
vocabulary of the Socialists, and not particularly accustomed to
following spoken French.
'On Alexander Nicolaiovitch,' answered the red-bearded stranger.
'Not the Czar?' Oswald inquired of Ernest.
'Yes, the one whom you call Czar,' said the stranger, quickly, in
tolerable English. The confusion of tongues seemed to be treated as
a small matter at Max Schurz's receptions, for everybody appeared
to speak all languages at once, in the true spirit of solidarity,
as though Babel had never been.
Oswald did not attempt to conceal a slight gesture of horror. The
tall Russian looked down upon him commiseratingly. 'He is of the
Few?' he asked of Ernest, that being the slang of the initiated
for a member of the aristocratic and capitalist oligarchy.
'Not exactly,' Ernest answered with a smile; 'but he has not entirely
learned the way we here regard these penal measures. His sympathies
are one-sided as to Alexander, no doubt. He thinks merely of the
hunted, wretched life the man bears about with him, and he forgets
poor bleeding, groaning, down-trodden, long-suffering Russia. It
is the common way of Englishmen. They do not realise Siberia and
Poland and the Third Section, and all the rest of it; they think
only of Alexander as of the benevolent despot who freed the serf
and befriended the Bulgarian. They never remember that they have
all the freedom and privileges themselves which you poor Russians
ask for in vain; they do not bear in mind that he has only to sign
his name to a constitution, a very little constitution, and he
might walk abroad as light-hearted in St. Petersburg to-morrow as
you and I walk in Regent Street to-day. We are mostly lopsided,
we English, but you must bear with us in our obliquity; we have
had freedom ourselves so long that we hardly know how to make due
allowance for those unfortunate folks who are still in search of
it.'
'If you had an Alexander yourselves for half a day,' the Russian
said fiercely, turning to Oswald, 'you would soon see the difference.
You would forget your virtuous indignation against Nihilist assassins
in the white heat of your anger against unendurable tyranny. You
had a King Charles in England once--the mere shadow of a Russian
Czar--and you were not so very ceremonious with him, you order-loving
English, after all.'
'It is a foolish thing, Borodinsky,' said Max Schurz, looking up
from the long telegram the other had handed him, 'and I told Toroloff
as much a fortnight ago, when he spoke to me about the matter. You
can do no good by these constant attacks, and you only rouse the
minds of the oligarchy against you by your importunity. Bloodshed
will avail us nothing; the world cannot be regenerated by a baptism
like that. Every peasant won over, every student enrolled, every
mother engaged to feed her little ones on the gospel of Socialism
together with her own milk, is worth a thousand times more to
us and to the people than a dead Czar. If your friends had really
blown him up, what then? You would have had another Czar, and
another Third Section, and another reign of terror, and another
raid and massacre; and we should have lost twenty good men from our
poor little side for ever. We must not waste the salt of the earth
in that reckless fashion. Besides, I don't like this dynamite. It's
a bad argument, it smacks too much of the old royal and repressive
method. You know the motto Louis Quatorze used to cast on his
bronze cannon--"Ultima ratio regum." Well, we Socialists ought to
be able to find better logic for our opponents than that, oughtn't
we?'
'But in Russia,' cried the bearded man hotly, 'in poor stricken-down
groaning Russia, what other argument have they left us? Are we to
be hunted to death without real law or trial, tortured into sham
confessions, deluded with mock pardons, arraigned before hypocritical
tribunals, ensnared by all the chicanery, and lying, and treachery,
and ferreting of the false bureaucracy, with its spies, and its
bloodhounds, and its knout-bearing police-agents; and then are we
not to make war the only way we can--open war, mind you, with fair
declaration, and due formalities, and proper warning beforehand--against
the irresponsible autocrat and his wire-pulled office-puppets who
kill us off mercilessly? You are too hard upon us, Herr Schurz;
even you yourself have no sympathy at all for unhappy Russia.'
The old man looked up at him tenderly and regretfully. 'My poor
Borodinsky,' he said in a gentle tremulous voice, 'I have indeed
sympathy and pity in abundance for you. I do not blame you; you
will have enough and to spare to do that, even here in free England;
I would not say a harsh word against you or your terrible methods
for all the world. You have been hard-driven, and you stand at
bay like tigers. But I think you are going to work the wrong way,
not using your energies to the best possible advantage for the
proletariate. What we have really got to do is to gain over every
man, woman, and child of the working-classes individually, and to
array on our side all the learning and intellect and economical
science of the thinking classes individually; and then we can present
such a grand united front to the banded monopolists that for very
shame they will not dare to gainsay us. Indeed, if it comes to
that, we can leave them quietly alone, till for pure hunger they
will come and beg our assistance. When we have enticed away all
the workmen from their masters to our co-operative factories, the
masters may keep their rusty empty mills and looms and engines to
themselves as long as they like, but they must come to us in the
end, and ask us to give them the bread they used to refuse us. For
my part, I would kill no man and rob no man; but I would let no
man kill or rob another either.'
'And how about Alexander Nicolaiovitch, then?' persisted the
Russian, eagerly. 'Has he killed none in his loathsome prisons and
in his Siberian quicksilver mines? Has he robbed none of their own
hardly got earnings by his poisoned vodki and his autocratically
imposed taxes and imposts? Who gave him an absolute hereditary right
to put us to death, to throw us in prison, to take our money from
us against our will and without our leave, to treat us as if we
existed, body and soul, and wives and children, only as chattels
for the greater glory of his own orthodox imperial majesty? If we
may justly slay the highway robber who meets us, arms in hand, in
the outskirts of the city, and demands of us our money or our life,
may we not justly slay Alexander Nicolaiovitch, who comes to our
homes in the person of his tax-gatherers to take the bread out of
our children's mouths and to help himself to whatever he chooses by
the divine right of his Romanoff heirship? I tell you, Herr Max,
we may blamelessly lie in wait for him wherever we find him, and
whoso says us nay is siding with the wolf against the lambs, with
the robber and the slayer against the honest representative of
right and justice.'
'I never met a Nihilist before,' said Oswald to Ernest, in a
half-undertone,' and it never struck me to think what they might
have to say for themselves from their own side of the question.'
'That's one of the uses of coming here to Herr Schurz's,' Ernest
answered quickly. 'You may not agree with all you hear, but at
least you learn to see others as they see themselves; whereas if
you mix always in English society, and read only English papers,
you will see them only as we English see them.'
'But just fancy,' Oswald went on, as they both stood back a little
to make way for others who wished for interviews with the great
man, 'just fancy that this Borodinsky, or whatever his name may be,
has himself very likely helped in dynamite plots, or manufactured
nitro-glycerine cartridges to blow up the Czar; and yet we stand
here talking with him as coolly as if he were an ordinary respectable
innocent Englishman.'
'What of that?' Ernest answered, smiling. 'Didn't we meet Prince
Strelinoffsky at Oriel last term, and didn't we talk with him too,
as if he was an honest, hard-working, bread-earning Christian? and
yet we knew he was a member of the St. Petersburg office clique,
and at the bottom of half the trouble in Poland for the last ten
years or so. Grant even that Borodinsky is quite wrong in his way
of dealing with noxious autocrats, and yet which do you think is
the worst criminal of the two--he with his little honest glazier's
shop in a back slum of Paddington, or Strelinoffsky with his jewelled
fingers calmly signing accursed warrants to send childing Polish
women to die of cold and hunger and ill-treatment on the way to
Siberia?'
'Well, really, Le Breton, you know I'm a passably good Radical,
but you're positively just one stage too Radical even for me.'
'Come here oftener,' answered Ernest; 'and perhaps you'll begin to
think a little differently about some things.'
An hour later in the evening Max Schurz found Ernest alone in a
quiet corner. 'One moment, my dear Le Breton,' he said; 'you know
I always like to find out all about people's political antecedents;
it helps one to fathom the potentialities of their characters. From
what social stratum, now, do we get your clever friend, Mr. Oswald?'
'His father's a petty tradesman in a country town in Devonshire,
I believe,' Ernest answered; 'and he himself is a good general
democrat, without any very pronounced socialistic colouring.'
'A petty tradesman! Hum, I thought so. He has rather the mental
bearing and equipment of a man from the petite bourgeoisie. I have
been talking to him, and drawing him out. Clever, very, and with
good instincts, but not wholly and entirely sound. A fibre wrong
somewhere, socially speaking, a false note suspected in his ideas
of life; too much acquiescence in the thing that is, and too little
faith or enthusiasm for the thing that ought to be. But we shall
make something of him yet. He has read "Gold" and understands it.
That is already a beginning. Bring him again. I shall always be
glad to see him here.'
'I will,' said Ernest, 'and I believe the more you know him, Herr
Max, the better you will like him.'
'And what did you think of the sons of the prophets?' asked Herbert
Le Breton of Oswald as they left the salon at the close of the
reception.
'Frankly speaking,' answered Oswald, looking half aside at Ernest,
'I didn't quite care for all of them--the Nihilists and Communards
took my breath away at first; but as to Max Schurz himself I think
there can be only one opinion possible about him.'
'And that is----?'
'That he's a magnificent old man, with a genuine apostolic
inspiration. I don't care twopence whether he is right or wrong,
but he's a perfectly splendid old fellow, as honest and transparent
as the day's long. He believes in it all, and would give his life
for it freely, if he thought he could forward the cause a single
inch by doing it.'
'You're quite right,' said Herbert calmly. 'He's an Elijah thrown
blankly upon these prosaic latter days; and what's more, his
gospel's all true; but it doesn't matter a sou to you or me, for
it will never come about in our time, no nor for a century after.
"Post nos millennium." So what on earth's the good of our troubling
our poor overworked heads about it?'
'He's the only really great man I ever knew,' said Ernest
enthusiastically, 'and I consider that his friendship's the one
thing in my life that has been really and truly worth living for.
If a pessimist were to ask me what was the use of human existence,
I should give him a card of introduction to go to Max Schurz's.'
'Excuse my interrupting your rhapsody, Ernest,' Herbert put in
blandly, 'but will you have your own trousers tonight, Oswald, or
will you wear mine back to your lodgings now, and I'll send one of
the servants round with yours for them in the morning?'
'Thanks,' said Harry Oswald, slapping the sides of the unopened
dust-coat; 'I think I'll go home as I am at present, and I'll recover
the marks of the Beast again to-morrow. You see, I didn't betray
my evening waistcoat after all, now did I?'
And they parted at the corner, each of them going his own way in
his own mood and manner.