Gildea led the way upstairs and ushered Maddock into the sitting-room. It
was in reality two rooms joined together by a large folding-door, which
was now thrown open and draped with four looped-up curtains, two of some
dark-red material behind two of delicately-wrought muslin. The two rooms
were of the whole depth of the house, the large bay-windows, open and
with a glass-door in the middle of them open also, at one end looking
out over the city, at the other over the harbour. A grass-slope, and a
garden with flower-beds and rustling trees, spread all round and down to
the water’s edge; while, a little way out, the “Petrel” rode at peaceful
anchorage, her boat behind her. Maddock was for the moment so taken up
with the beauty of the place within and without—the room with all its
harmonies of form and colour, the garden and harbour scene—that he did
not notice that someone was standing, half hidden by the curtains, in
the next room on the hearth-rug. Then Gildea passed through and greeted
this person whom he brought forward and introduced to Maddock as Mr.
Hawkesbury.
Hawkesbury was a small but well-made man with a tendency to muscular
leanness. His face was striking and interesting, and betrayed a
strongly-defined individuality. At one moment he might have been called
handsome, and his manner frank, free, and open: at another his features
took such a contracted intensified look, and his movements were so
nervously acute, that the whole man seemed to have suffered distortion.
It seemed as if he were suddenly seized by some keen pain, spiritual and
physical, and was being racked by it. When Gildea entered, there was
for a moment a trace of this latter manner in Hawkesbury: his sensitive
pride found something antagonistic in, what seemed to him, the consummate
luxury which surrounded him and even in the consummate culture of its
owner: he was almost asking himself what right this man had to spend so
much money and care in decorating a few rooms for a few months, this
man whose life was so radically selfish? Hawkesbury’s was, he might
have said, the feeling of one who was a socialist and worker by intense
conviction, finding himself opposed to one who was an aristocrat and
hedonist by the mere chance of birth and fortune. But, when Gildea met
and greeted him with the frank sweet unconscious cordiality of an equal
whose acquaintance is pleasant, the dark look passed from Hawkesbury’s
face and he gave himself up to the simple pleasure of the situation.
His unexpected introduction to Maddock, who represented to him the more
or less sumptuous aristocrat of religion, for a moment, it is true,
threatened to bring back the evil spirit to him; but Maddock, with his
fine social tact, almost divining the state of affairs, was equally
frank, sweet, unconscious and cordial in his manner, and Hawkesbury was
at his ease.
The three men stood talking together, Maddock in the middle, in the
bay-window that looked out over the harbour.
“Why, Sir Horace,” said Maddock, “you will never be able to get away from
this enchanting place again! Are you sure you do not intend to make it
into a home? You did not honour your Melbourne rooms with such care—such
choice of furniture, and....” (He raised his arm and outspread hand,
smiling humorously).
“‘Man delights not me,’” answered Gildea, “‘No, nor woman neither, though
by your smiling you seem to say so.’” The smile broke out on Hawkesbury’s
face too. It was soothing and very pleasant to find these two talking in
his presence of such an intimate matter as that alluded to here: he was
not accustomed, in the company of, what in Australia and even England
goes by the name of, ladies and gentlemen to this complete absence of
social and individual constraint.
Then Edgar, Gildea’s valet, ushered in someone else, Mr. Fitzgerald, and
there was a movement and introductions between Maddock, Hawkesbury, and
the new-comer, the three being left alone for a moment while Gildea was
giving some directions to Edgar about domestic arrangements.
Maddock and Fitzgerald fell almost immediately into a conversation,
Hawkesbury playing the part of silent member. The Doctor was interested
in finding out what the impressions of a cultured Roman Catholic were
of Australia and more particularly of Victoria and New South Wales.
He asked a few questions, the answer to which, he thought, would show
him whether Fitzgerald had observed things with care and sympathy, and
was answered with a gentle readiness that pleased and satisfied him.
The two men felt themselves to a certain extent on common ground, and,
Fitzgerald touching incidentally on the education question, they began to
parallelise each other’s views with cordiality.
“We quite recognise,” said Fitzgerald, “all the difficulties of
the case—the danger of the unfair influence of catholic teaching
over protestant children, or vice versa, just as each happens to be
stronger in the particular place and school. But we would accept this
danger—accept it, even supposing we were the losers by it—rather than
have the present state of things continue. As our Archbishop said only
the other day at Leichardt: ‘Besides the faculties of intellect and of
reason, there are certain passions of the soul,’ and to develop the
former and wholly neglect the latter is to send a boy out into the world
with _only one eye_. You have prepared him for the temporary business of
life, and unfitted him for the glorious service of eternity: you have
given his ship fine sails, and forgotten to add a rudder! He may be an
acute man of business, but he will be a bad citizen; for, in taking away
from him his sense of religion, you will take away from him his sense of
morality, of honesty, of integrity! We can, at the present stage, see for
Australia no future save that of corruption—a corrupt political life, a
corrupt national life, the unlimited worship of Mammon!”
“I agree with you to a large extent,” said Maddock, “and we all know
that, practically speaking, the talk about ‘religious education at home’
is mere verbiage. If the education of a child is secular, his spiritual
lungs, so to speak, end in being able to inhale no other air and thrive
on it.”
“And,” Fitzgerald said, “the education _is_ secular! Every effort is
being made to drive the voluntary schools out of the field. Their state
aid here in New South Wales is withdrawn: in England it is reduced to
a pittance and hedged about with annoyance. And this, although the
educational reports, drawn up by a secular commission, show that, at
any rate the catholic schools educate on the average both better and
more cheaply than the state-schools do! We only ask for fair play, and
now it has come to this pass that we cannot get it! All over England
the protestant voluntary schools are failing and disappearing. But we,
we Catholics, who cannot, as Protestants do, console ourselves with the
reflection that the atmosphere of the state-schools, if secular, will be
tempered by that of our own beliefs—we _will_ not fail and disappear! We
are the poorest of all religious bodies in England; but I will venture
to say, that not a single case can be found of a catholic school which
has surrendered itself up, as these others did, into the hands of the
Secularists. Our educating priests and laymen have to suffer much
privation: I know, shall I say hundreds, of them who deny themselves all
but the bare necessities of life; but—_we stand our ground_!... You see,”
he added smiling gently, “we Catholics cannot labour under any delusion
here. We recognize that this is a stupendous crisis in the world’s
history. We will have no compromise and secular tempering of the wind to
the shorn Christian. We will stand to our guns, and, if we must perish,
perish there!”
Maddock was impressed, and so even was Hawkesbury. This man’s enthusiasm
was so quiet, so clear, and yet so radiant. Gildea returned and joined
them.
“We were speaking of the popular education,” said Fitzgerald, turning to
him, “and I would persuade Dr. Maddock that his cause and ours are here
identic.”
“I need no persuading,” said Maddock, “I have for some time been
persuading _myself_!”
“And yet,” Fitzgerald put in gently, “the alliance between us and you
seems farther off than between us and the Dissenters.”
“And that, I think,” Gildea said, “is because you have more in common.
You are afraid of one another. In the one case, you know that the
frontier of your alliance will be observed, in the other there is a
chance that it may not. At present the most dangerous opponents of
Catholicism in England are, what they call, the High Churchmen. The
Church of England is a compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism;
hence its adaptiveness, hence its strength! It more nearly, in my
opinion, approaches ideal Christianity than any other sect in existence.
It unites the Faith, the Poetry, of Catholicism, with the Freedom, the
Prose, of Protestantism.”
“We thank you,” said Maddock.
“Logically speaking, however,” added Gildea, “it is an absurdity.”
They all began to laugh.
“Ah,” said Maddock, “I was right when, even while thanking you, Sir
Horace, I thought to myself: _Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes_.”
“The Christianity of the Future,” Gildea proceeded gravely, “lies, I
believe, in two transformations—in Catholicism learning that its kingdom
is not of this world, that it no longer requires a Pope, a Rome, as a
Palladium whereby it may fight; in a word, in learning the lesson of
Protestantism, of Freedom: and in Protestantism doing the converse, and
absorbing into itself the catholic Faith, the catholic Poetry!”
“And what are the Secularists going to do in your Future?” asked
Hawkesbury, “are Messrs. Arnold and Huxley to be put up on a shelf in
your spiritual Museum, in two large spirit bottles, labelled respectively
‘Culture’ and ‘Science?’”
“Culture,” answered Gildea, “is, after all, but Secular Catholicism, just
as Science is but Secular Protestantism. They too will each learn their
lesson of the other.”
“Humph!” said Maddock, who again had a faint suspicion that Gildea was
mocking, “and so, after all, Sir Horace is an optimist.”
“We do not lay stress,” Fitzgerald said gently, “on the temporal power
of the Holy Father. As Sir Horace implied, this temporal power was once
the one shining light in a chaotic world, and it was well that it should
be set on a hill. But now the light is diffusing itself. It is our
wish that, as the Vatican Œcumenical Council declared: ‘Intelligence,
Knowledge, and Wisdom may grow and perfect themselves—as much with the
mass as with individuals, with one man as with the whole church!’ We are
no foes to Freedom. What we _are_ foes to, is Anarchy! At the Reformation
you gave the right of deciding on the deepest religious questions to
every ignorant man that chose to discuss them, and the seamless robe of
Christianity was rent into a hundred pieces! Look at all these miserable
little protestant sects and sub-sects, Plymouth Brethren, Primitive
Methodists, Ana-baptists, and I know not what noisy, ignorant fanatics.
At the Revolution, you did the same for social questions, and what is
the result? The Dynamiters of Russia, of Germany, of Ireland, initiated
by what you, Dr. Maddock, so well call ‘such gentleness as was revealed
in the diabolical deeds of the Commune,’—to say nothing of those of the
Reign of Terror.”
Maddock half-deprecated, half-approved by a gesture and an inarticulate
sound.
“Yes, but,” said Hawkesbury with the thrilled voice of suppressed
passion, “has not history justified the Reformation? and how can you say
that it will not justify the Revolution? These, as it seems to me, are
the two fiery portals which lead to Religious and Social Liberty. But you
are right to depreciate them: they knew nothing of the poetry of Culture
and Catholicism, or of the prose of Protestantism and Science. They were
volcanic eruptions of the People. Heine says well, when he talks of ‘the
divine brutality’ of Luther, and we do not shrink from the same phrase
for Hugo or Whitman. Sir Horace has painted us a Future which is indeed
heavenly. It is thronged with sweet-singing angels, and there is not a
shadow in its perfect light. But what has become of the _men_, and what,
O what, has become of the _devils_? They have no place in this Future.
You do not care for the People, I say, except as you care for your dog
which, if he is quiet and docile, shall have a kennel and the bones and
scraps from your table; or, if he is surly, shall be chained up; or, if
he goes mad, shall be shot! Ah believe me, gentlemen, the People _has_
a place in the Future, for the People, and none other, _is_ the Future!
‘_All for the modern_,’ cries Whitman, ‘_all for the average man of
to-day_.’ But you—you only care for the Upper and the Middle-class. Your
scheme of civilization does not reach to the People. The Upper-class is
exhausted: it needs invigorating. ‘_Cultivate the Middle-class_,’ is the
cry, ‘_Give us Higher Education for the Middle-class!_’ This is the whole
social teaching of the best representative man you have, Matthew Arnold.
Now we, we Socialists as you call us, _love_ the People, and (you will
pardon me) _hate_ the Middle-class;—the dispossessed, the sufferers,
_not_ the possessors, the usurpers! The People is the Prodigal Son. What
sympathy have we, then, with a man like Arnold who has devoted himself
to the edification of the Elder Brother? Arnold says once that he has
evolved that perfect style of his which we know so well—that style which
encloses a minimum of ideas in a maximum of catch-words—or, as he likes
to call it, ‘plain popular exposition’—for the especial benefit of the
British Philistine, the divine Middle-class, who otherwise could not be
got to read him! He would have done better, perhaps, if he had not turned
to the setting, but to the rising sun. The People are the masters of the
Future, and the People’s great men will be the great men of the Future.”
There was a pause. Then:
“There is much truth in what Mr. Hawkesbury says,” says Gildea, “Just at
present we think too much of the ultimate Culture of the Middle-class
and too little of that of the People. But the fact is, that the question
of the Middle-class is pressing: they are, as you say, Hawkesbury, the
possessors; they are the Present! And this, I think, is why men like
Arnold, who believe that, in the organization of the Present, lies
the only hope of the success of the Future, are so anxious about it.
It is a case, as he believes, of ‘Culture or Anarchy’—Culture now or
Anarchy then. And Carlyle, a disciple of whom Mr. Hawkesbury has, in
the admirable Preface to his second book of Poems, declared himself to
be; Carlyle too, who laid much stress on what he calls ‘the radical
element’ in himself, yet mocks at ‘Mill and Co.’ as he says, in whom he
declares the opposite element was ‘so miserably lacking.’ Carlyle had no
respect for ‘Rousseau fanaticisms,’ even in a man like Mazzini: he saw
that, if the Middle-class were purblind and slow, the Socialists were
only purblind and quick. Supposing that we grant that the Dynamiters
of Russia are justified in meeting an absolutely dense despotism with
violence, what excuse but impatience can we find for the Dynamiters of
Ireland? The first have no means of free agitation, the second have every
means. Ireland has been wronged: no one denies it; and never, in the
whole course of her history, has England shown such alacrity as she is
doing now to right the wrong; never, not even for herself. But the Irish
Socialists are impatient: their cry is for everything to-day, this very
hour! To grant it them would be the greatest unkindness possible. Well,
they too have taken to dynamite as a hypochondriac takes to opium. The
Russian Nihilists are noble people, none nobler, but they taught fools
and knaves an appalling lesson when they inaugurated the reign of terror
in Petersburg. At the present moment, as Heine clearly foresaw, the
Civilization, not of Europe, but of the whole world is in danger.”
“You speak well, Sir Horace,” said Maddock, “and express my opinions
better than I could myself, but—_Timeo_.”
He, Gildea, and Fitzgerald smiled. Hawkesbury was grave. There was a
pause. Then:
“I think,” he said, “that you do the People wrong. These extreme
Socialists, the Nihilists as they are called, are not from the People,
but from the Middle-class. They are, as a rule, men who have received the
best education of the time, and who yet find themselves unrecognized and
unrewarded. Most of them are journalists. It would astonish you, I think,
to see the amount of really first-rate talent that is being flogged to
death in the shafts of the modern Press. These men cannot work in shops
and banks: the narrow material life has been made impossible to them.
The only opening for the life they would—nay, that they _must_ live, or
perish, is that of Literature. Literature caters for the Middle-class,
the ruling class. These men, then, are the slaves of the great caterers,
the newspaper editors. One of the most thorough Socialists I ever knew,
Holden, in fact, was on the regular staff of the English _Spectator_,
the organ of the enlightened portion of the Middle-class; and there, as
he said to me, he went as near Socialism as he could for threepence!
(Threepence is the price of the paper.) This same man wrote, too,
political articles for a distinguished radical politician, and I have
seen the proof-sheets of these hacked and mauled by the patron to
suit the palates of the Radicals. It was this man who once seriously
contemplated dropping a bomb in the House of Lords, to show that herd of
hereditary liars, as he put it, that there was such a thing as justice
in the world! He loved the People: he hated the Middle-class, but the
People cared nothing for him. It is, then, I think, a mistake to lay the
paternity of Nihilism to the charge of any but the over-fed tyrannous
Middle-class.”
“What you say,” Maddock said slowly and courteously, “is very interesting
and instructive, Mr. Hawkesbury, and I perceive that the ground which
you, and I think I may say Mr. Fitzgerald,” (Fitzgerald smiled and
bowed), “and myself have in common is large enough to admit of our
working—at any rate not in opposition to one another. Is not our mutual
object the enlightenment of the unintelligent mass of the People and of
the Middle-class? I am, I am sure, grateful to you, sir, for the manner
in which you have brought this home to me. I always felt that underneath
all our differences—I mean, the differences of our beliefs, religious
or social—we had a common ground, the advancement of a really good and
true Civilization, and now, I think, I know this. He renders us a great
service who makes our feelings self-conscious, who turns them into the
articulate thought of words.”
There was a slight pause.
“And now,” said Gildea, in his half-amused way, “we will, if you please,
go down to lunch. Mr. Alcock particularly asked me not to wait for him,
and we have waited, it seems unconsciously, for over half-an-hour.”
They went down together into the dining-room, chatting lightly and
pleasantly.