A ROYAL COMMISSION
I
While the King and the Prime Minister had thus been giving each other
shocks of a somewhat unpleasant character, Prince Max had received a far
pleasanter one. Only a week after the holding of the King's court the
lady of his dreams had written asking for an interview.
The letter was not dated from the Archbishop's palace, but from the Home
of the Little Lay-Sisters; and it was thither that he repaired, in order
to forestall her humble yet amazing offer to wait upon him.
In the bare, conventual parlor, with high walls that echoed resoundingly
and boards that smelt of soap, they met once more face to face and
alone. She courtesied low, addressed him formally as "sir," and thanked
him with due deference for coming; otherwise there was no change in her
demeanor. The flat-frilled cap showed within its border a delicate
ripple of hair, and above the fair breastplate of linen the face shone
with tender warmth like a white rose resting upon snow; and as her lips
moved in speech he re-encountered with a fervor of delight that curious
quality of look which had ever haunted his dreams--a communicativeness
not limited to words. Though it remained still her whole face spoke to
him; lips and eyes made music together--a harmony of two senses in
alliance, as into morning mist comes the yet unrisen light and the
hidden singing of birds.
And yet all the while she was but saying quite ordinary things, making
brief the embarrassment of this their first meeting since their relative
positions had become explained.
"I have taken you at your word, sir," she began. "When we last met you
asked if you could not be useful. Now you can."
"Your remembrance makes me grateful," said the Prince.
"Perhaps I ought not to be so confident," she went on, "since the idea
is only my own. It came from something I heard my father saying; and as
he strongly disapproves of women taking part in politics it was no use
saying anything to him."
"Oh, politics?" That explanation rather surprised him.
"Sometimes--just now and then," explained Sister Jenifer, "politics do
touch social needs: and to their detriment."
"My acquaintance with politics," answered the Prince, "is
very--Chimerical," he added after a pause, pleased to have found the
term.
"Yes," she smiled, "I have heard you. You are full of happy ideas, many
of them somewhat contradictory; but you have not yet fallen into any
groove. To you freedom means rebellion; you represent no vested
interest."
"Is that my certificate of character?"
"I had not finished," she said. "I was keeping the best to the last. You
have a great position and an open mind."
"An important combination, you think?"
"An unusual one."
"And so you have an unusual proposition to make to me?"
"Yes, I suppose you will think so. There is a brand I want plucked from
the burning--a Royal Commission saved from becoming merely official and
useless."
"What is its subject?"
"All this!"--she made an inclusive gesture--"slums, the conditions of
sweated labor, the daily material which we have to work on."
"About which you have taught me that I know really nothing."
"You said you were anxious to learn. At least half of that Commission
will be anxious not to learn--or not to let others."
"Then you ought to be on it."
"No woman is on it."
"You wish them to be?"
She threw out her hands. "What would be the use? Their voices would have
no weight."
"Whose would?"
"Yours," she said; and, eyeing him full, stopped dead.
"You wish me to go upon that Commission?" cried Prince Max.
"Yes."
"In spite of all my ignorance?"
"The sittings do not begin till late autumn; between now and then you
could get more actual knowledge--brought home and made visible to you, I
mean--than most of those who will form its majority."
"Then you think I could be of use?"
She looked at him, silent for a moment. "I think you have a mind capable
of taking fire, when it learns the facts."
"Facts only deaden some people," said he.
"Yes; that is what crushes us here. We have such mountains of facts to
deal with."
"And you want fire to come down from those mountains and consume me?"
She nodded prophetically.
"I know you wouldn't run away."
"I am trying to feel the call," said Max a little skeptically. And in
truth he was of divided mind, not because he had any doubt of his
ability, but because the temptation to insincerity was so strong. This
would give him the very opportunity he sought--through a vale of misery
he beheld the way to his own Promised Land; but was it fair that he
should take advantage of it without a heart of pity and conviction? This
Prince of ours rather prided himself on his conscientious scruples.
"Will you tell me from the beginning," he said at last, "what put this
thought into your mind? I seem to be getting it only by fragments."
"Three days ago," she answered, "I heard my father talking with others
of the projected Commission. They were dissatisfied at the Church not
being sufficiently represented--so insufficiently, indeed, that they
took it as an intentional slight, part of the Government's policy for
depriving the Bishops of all standing. It was held that further
representation was imperative."
"What?" exclaimed Max; "am I to represent the Bishops, then?"
She shook her head, laughing. "Oh, no!" she answered. "They found some
one very much better for themselves. That is the really immediate
danger. They are afraid that the Commission as it stands will issue
findings of a one-sided and party character, and that any minority
report, unless it obtained the chairman's signature, would have no
weight. Their main hope, therefore, is to secure a chairman of high
standing on whose help they can rely, and it is thought that the
Government could not oppose the nomination of a member of the Royal
Family. It would appeal to popular sentiment; and subject to his
Majesty's assent, his Royal Highness the Duke of Nostrum has expressed
his willingness to serve."
Max had no great opinion of the collaterals of his grandfather--this one
least of all. "Oh, ye Heavens!" he exclaimed. "For what use these bones
of my ancestors? Why, with him to direct its deliberations, the
Commission will run on into the next century, and its report be only
applicable to the last!" Then, as he took stock of the situation, "And
are you expecting me to head the minority report instead of him?" he
inquired.
"It is not their report I am concerned about," she answered, "and for
party I care little; it is the majority I fear. On paper the Commission
looks as if it meant business; Church and property have been squeezed
into one small corner, but the trade-interest is very strong; it is
there in concealed ways which outsiders cannot recognize, for even over
our public and medical departments--and still more in the press--it has
now got control. I can give you instance after instance of men known as
philanthropists whose riches come from sweated labor, and whose
munificent charities form not one tithe of their inhuman profits drained
from the lives of the very poorest. Some of them, great advertisers, are
to sit on this Commission, and all the press, irrespective of party,
will praise their appointment; while to defend their interests others
will be attacked. The Government may be quite ready as a temporary
expedient to make scapegoats of the property-owners, but it is not so
ready to antagonize trade. I believe, sir, that on this Commission the
real source of evil will never be traced; we shall hear of the grinding
middleman and the rack-renter, but nothing dangerous to these magnates,
or to the trade-system itself--unless----" She paused, and left silence
to carry her message.
"Unless," supplemented Max, "some one thoroughly indiscreet occupies the
chair?"
"Somebody," she replied, "whose minority report of one would attract all
the attention it deserved."
"Oh, you think----?" His mind sparkled at the prospect: to be in a
minority of one had a peculiar fascination for him.
"Yes, I think it may come to that," she said, "if you will honestly open
your eyes."
"Then you cannot promise me the support of the Church?"
She shook her head as though that were the last thing possible.
"I am to be all alone?" His tone invited commiseration, while his brain
soared with the dreams of a hashish-eater.
"I think about three may be with you, not more," she said, letting him
down to earth again.
"Why are you so confident about me?"
Her gentle gray eyes met his with friendly understanding.
"When I found out who you were," she said, "I saw"--then she
hesitated--"I saw that you had the rare gift of doing naturally what one
would never expect."
"In what way?"
"To begin with, in coming here at all. And then you did things which, I
imagine, no prince ever did before, and did them quite easily--'for
fun,' I suppose you would say. Well, if you could do all that for fun,
what might you not do when you became serious? A man who doesn't mind
being laughed at--whatever his position--is very rare."
"Ah!" cried Max, "but now you are giving me more credit than I deserve.
You set me to do ridiculous things for you--ridiculous, I mean, in one
dressed as I was for fashion and not for use--I was aware of it; but
nobody was aware of me. When I come here into these poor streets, I am
so unexpected that nobody recognizes me. If they thought that they did,
they would not believe their eyes. In that alone there is a sense of
enlargement and liberty which those who have not to live in our position
can hardly realize. It was like holiday; I felt as though I had been let
loose."
"And so became more yourself?"
"I cannot say; but I was happy while I was here. Why did you send me
away?"
"For the same reason that I now ask you to come back. I wanted you to be
of use--independently."
"Yet here I am dependent upon you again."
"No; you have this in your own hands: it is your position."
"That secures the chairmanship? But am I at all likely to be accepted?"
"From what I hear, nobody suspects you of taking any great interest in
the life of the poor. They have therefore no reason to be afraid of
you."
"I see," said Max. "As a figure-head chairman I might even be valuable."
"Very, I have no doubt."
"Part of the game?"
"Royalty and Trade are supposed to be natural allies," remarked Sister
Jenifer.
Max was startled at her discernment. "Oh, but that is true!" he cried.
"How wonderful, then, that you should be able to trust me at all."
This set her smiling. "I had the advantage to begin with of not knowing
who you were."
"And that gave you a start."
"No, finding you out gave me the start."
"You certainly have not lost time."
"That I cannot say, till I have your answer." There was no temporizing
here.
Max thought for a while, then drew breath and spoke. "I want you quite
to understand," he said, "that if I take up this work it will be very
largely for a personal reason. I daresay I shall, as you say, 'take
fire' when I know more about it; but at present I am not so moved.
Commissions do not attract me; and what I undertake I shall do solely on
faith--faith in you. Are you content that it should be so?"
"For a beginning, yes."
"Very well; something else follows. I shall need you for my guide."
"I am always here at certain hours," she said. "But there are others who
know far more than I."
He let that point go unregarded.
"Then I may come to you for help?"
"Always, if really you need it."
"My needs shall be as real as I can make them," said Max. "How am I to
begin?"
She named one or two books. "If you follow up what you read there," she
said, "you will find most of it practically demonstrated in this
district alone. For instance, we have a strike on just now among our
tailors and shirt-makers; the men have made the women come out with
them; they did not want to--women can exist under conditions where men
cannot. Go and mix with them, be among them for hours, attend their
street-corner meetings; you will hardly hear two ideas of any practical
value, but you will get many. It isn't theory that is wanted,--it is
that the life which thousands are living should be known and realized.
When the eye has seen, the heart follows. All we really want is
brotherhood; but how are we to bring it about?"
"From that I am furthest away of all," said Prince Max.
"No, no," she cried; "that is the great mistake! If kings are not the
very symbol of our community then they have no value left. May I tell
you two of the most kingly things I ever heard done in the present day?
The one was by the old King of Montenegro, the smallest of the Balkan
States. He found that his chief gentry were becoming lazy, too proud to
put their hands to labor--making idleness a class distinction. He sat
down in the courtyard of his palace and began to make shoes, and went on
making them daily while he held his Court and administered justice; and
so the new folly died."
"And the other?" inquired the Prince.
"It may seem far-fetched in the present connection," said she, "yet as
an expression of the real kingly instinct it has all that I mean. Some
years ago the heir to the English throne--the one who died young--went
out to India. One day he was holding a durbar of Indian chiefs, and they
with their retinues stood drawn up in parade ready to offer homage as he
passed along their ranks. Opposite was a great crowd of natives watching
the spectacle, and at a certain point in that crowd stood, as a mere
onlooker, one whom Britain had defeated and driven into exile, the old
Ameer of Afghanistan. Just before he rode down the Prince heard of it,
and had the man pointed out to him; and when he came there he wheeled
his horse about and gave the full royal salute. And through all that
great multitude went a thrill because the kingly thing had been done,
and all had seen it."
Tears glistened in her eyes as she spoke. "He was rather a dull young
man," she went on, "so one has been told, but that was better than
brains, for that was the touch of human kindness done in the grand
manner which royalty makes possible, and ought to make natural--done
with a pride which has its place beside the humility of St. Francis."
"Well, well," said Max, "put me in touch then, and I will see what I can
do. But I haven't the grand manner, you know."
II
The King was considering the request of his revered uncle, the Duke of
Nostrum, to preside over the Commission on slums, when Max came, asking
also to be made useful.
"What, you too?" cried his Majesty; "isn't one of us enough?"
"Quite," said Max. "I want to be that one."
"What are your qualifications?"
"Willingness," said Max, "a brain capable of taking fire at facts, a
great position, and an open and rebellious mind. I am quoting from
authority; I was given my certificate yesterday."
To his Majesty this was merely the voice of Max at his flightiest.
"Well," he said, "your Uncle Nostrum happens to have come first."
"Do you always grant first applications?"
"He has had much more experience."
"Of slums?" inquired Max.
"Of commissions, and all that sort of thing. He has sat on them."
"So he has--the elephant! And they have died the death."
"He works," said the King, "and you don't! You only talk."
"I only talk!" cried the injured Max; his voice went up to Heaven
appealing against parental injustice. "Has he ever in his life been down
into the slums and spent whole days there, as I have? Has he carried
buckets for washing-sisters of charity, as I have; and borne upon his
back the beds of the dying, as I have?"
"You?" cried the King with incredulity.
"I do not publish these things upon the housetops," said Max, "but in
the secrecy of your chamber and in strict confidence I tell you that
they are true. And while I, for many anxious weeks, have been toiling to
qualify for this post, he, this Nostrum, this patent-drug from our royal
medicine-chest, this soporific sedative----"
"Max, Max!" reproved his father.
"He rushes in where an angel has feared to tread, and filches from me
my reward!"
"My dear boy, are you serious?" cried the King.
"I was never more serious in my life, father," replied his son. "But in
order to arrest your attention I have to be theatrical. Now if you will
really believe what I am going to say I will drop play-acting. I have,
as I tell you, been down into our slum districts, I have been among the
slum workers, means have been offered me for studying these problems at
first hand, and I am prepared,--from this week on when Parliament rises,
and the metropolis empties itself of pleasure, and you have gone sadly
to your annual cure at Bad-as-Bad,--I am prepared to devote the whole of
my time and energy to qualifying for this post; and with Heaven helping
me, I will make it the most astonishing and effective Royal Commission
that ever sat down believing itself on cushions to find that it was on a
hornets' nest."
"You are becoming theatrical again," said the King.
"No, no," said Max, "but my brain is taking fire; an angel warned me of
it in a dream, and behold it has come true. I have been seeing things."
"Your Uncle Nostrum won't be pleased," remarked the King.
"He never is," said Max. "Discontent is his prevailing virtue. Give
himself something to be discontented about, then he can go down to his
house justified."
"The Prime Minister has already recommended him," went on the King, "at
least, said he would not oppose; but I don't know what he'll say to
this."
"Nor do I," said Max, "and I don't care; neither do you."
The King opened his eyes as though he had been surprised in some
secret--how did Max know that? And then his mind traveled a few months
further on; yes, it was quite true, he did not now care in the least.
What he had made up his mind to do had released him from all ministerial
terrors; and as he contemplated the relief in his own case his thoughts
turned to that bright youth over whose head so unlooked-for a fate was
now impending; how dramatic it would be! And here was Max, all
unbeknownst, harnessing himself to the wheels of State, pledged, unable
to run away. It was just one more turn in the toils which a
simple-minded man of gentle and retiring character was able to wind
around the scheming lives of others. By at last daring to be himself he
had become a power.
"Very well. I will see that it is arranged," he said. "Yes, it is
perhaps time you had some experience in presiding over--over boards and
all that sort of thing. I shan't last for ever; I don't feel like it."
And he shook his head sadly, for he liked to be sorry for himself;
nothing helped him more to bear up under the troubles of life.
"My dear father," said Max, with some fondness of tone, "you know that
the prospect of going for your cure always depresses you; but as you
insist on doing it you must pay the penalty. And when you are taking
those waters which so upset your digestion, and deprive you of the flesh
which nature meant you to wear, then think of me--not talking any
longer, but really up and doing--preparing myself at last to follow in
your footsteps. Now in this land of Jingalo, in the very heart of its
social and commercial system, I am going to make history."
"Oh, you think so?" said the King to himself. "Young man, before you
have much more than begun, you may have to come out of it! You can't do
that sort of thing when you are in my shoes."
And then he bade Max a benevolent good-bye and went off to his cure; and
Max, assured of his seat upon the forthcoming Commission, went off to
his.
III
"How am I to dress for this business?" Max had inquired; it was one of
the first practical problems to be solved, and an important one.
"If you don't mind," said Sister Jenifer, "you had better dress like a
Socialist. Wear a very soft hat, a very low collar, and a very red or
green tie, done loose in the French fashion, and nobody will wonder at
your looking clean, or at your asking questions. Young Socialists come
here to study the social problem and to show themselves off, and in a
vague sort of way the people have begun to understand them; and though
they look upon them as cranks, they don't any longer think they are
inspectors or charity agents--the two things you must avoid."
"Dress," said Max, "has a very subtle effect upon the character. At a
fancy-dress ball, last season, I wore a Cardinal's robe--there is a
portrait of one in the British National Gallery rather like me--and it
took me a month to get rid of the effects. If I turn into a Socialist,
therefore, it will be upon your advice."
"As far as politics go it matters very little what you turn into," said
Sister Jenifer.
"What a statement!" exclaimed Max.
"It is perfectly true," she said. "At present what we are fighting is
ignorance and indifference; in comparison to that the mere theory of
government doesn't matter, for nothing is going to succeed while one
half of society neither knows nor cares how the other half lives. Your
politicians are welcome to any theories they can find tenable, if only
they will face facts."
"What are your own politics?"
"I haven't any; I haven't room for them. My only aim is just to get that
one half of the community to come and look with understanding at the
other half; and then service, I know, would follow. It won't until they
do."
"Well, you are making me look," said Max.
"Yet I have not been able to make my father."
"Has he never been here?"
"He has opened churches."
"Well, you believe in prayer."
"That depends on how you define it."
"I wanted to ask you that. You are only a lay-sister; but some of you
have taken vows--for a period, at all events."
"That is all the Church allows; but it makes little difference since
they can always renew."
"Those who have taken vows--do they give themselves entirely up to
prayer?"
"No, but they entirely depend upon it."
"Depend--how?"
"They could not do their work without it. You asked me for definition: I
can only give you example. Some of our sisters quite literally cannot
face what they have to do except after prayer; otherwise their flesh
would revolt."
"Is it such horrible work?"
"They will not tell you so; but I know that it must be. You see I am
rather an outsider. My father only allowed me to come here on certain
conditions; and with the inner side of our work here I have nothing to
do; I understand nothing about it."
Her face flushed slightly under his gaze, the faint, troubled flush of
maidenhood which apprehends an evil of which it may not know the
conditions; and he saw by swift intuition that this sincere spirit was
ashamed of its own ignorance. His mind darted a guess that he had before
him, in fact, an inexperience of life underlying intimate acquaintance
with grief and poverty which he would not have believed to be possible.
And oh, sexually, how it redoubled her beauty and charm! Yes, he could
not deny that so unnatural a combination attracted him, and yet it
enraged him also. A few moments ago he had heard from this woman's lips
a declaration that no help could come till half and half made up one
whole in knowledge and understanding; and yet there she stood--if his
guess was right--hesitant and bashful on the borders of that great
central problem about which parental authority had decreed she was to
know nothing; an example set before him of that idealistic waste of
womanhood which is for ever going on, and which for bad practical
reasons society is always encouraging. For depend upon it the practical
social result is what we men are really afraid of--not lest our women
should lose either modesty or charm, but lest with knowledge they should
apply themselves too ruthlessly to practical ends, and set upon their
charm a price which hitherto we have avoided having to pay. And as he so
moralized upon the relations of sex, a sentimental desire grew in him to
kneel down there and then at her feet and tell her how good a young man
from his point of view he had always been--and how bad a one from hers.
For the time being he resisted that temptation; other things that he was
not yet sure of must come first; for before we can allow the beloved to
think ill of us at all she must first think far better of us than we
deserve. Then for the letting-down process there is a safe margin left,
and confession becomes a luxury with no danger involved; since to see
himself retrospectively pardoned by a heart virginally pure has surely
restored to many a weary and disillusioned sensualist a better opinion
of himself than he could ever have hoped to refurbish by his own
efforts. That, oh ye men about town, is a good woman's mission in life;
that is what she is for--when the watch has run down she winds it up
again and sets it domestically ticking. And that she may continue to do
so, let us keep her from all knowledge independently acquired. When we
ourselves bring her the evidence, having first packed her fond jury of a
heart, then we can also dictate verdict and sentence, and the world will
run on in the grooves to which we have accustomed it.
All of which is a digression, and not in the least intended as being
applicable to Max, unless, indeed, some reader of virulent morals so
chooses to apply it; for far be it from this historian to prevent any
reader forming his or her own judgment on the facts set forth. And if to
any of these Max appears as one whose springs have run riotously down
and now need setting up again--if his seems to be a heart that has never
yet ticked domestically, because it had not been legally registered, I
can at least promise them this--that before they come to the end of this
history they will have an eminent ecclesiastical authority agreeing with
them, and expressing their sentiments with an eloquence which I cannot
hope to rival. And so having done with digression, let us return to the
social education of Max, now trying to become acquainted with the lowest
stratum of all.
IV
After a few weeks he began to distinguish in the squalor of the faces
that surrounded him the separate causes of their malady--to know drink
from disease, dissipation from destitution, the drug-habit from hunger.
Complexion and facial expression stood more than dress as an indication
of trade, habit, and environment; from physiognomy he began to learn
history, and from Monday's streets a commentary on the linked sweetness
long drawn out of Jewish followed by Christian sabbath. He became inured
to smells, to the breathing of foul atmosphere, to contact with foul
bodies, to a nakedness of speech such as he had not dreamed of, to a
class-hatred that struck from eye to eye like murder, to an apathy of
dead hopelessness that revolted him yet more. From Sister Jenifer he
learned the hardest lesson of all, that to understand social conditions
he must refrain from gifts of charity. And so, afraid of his own
frailty, he came to his district with empty pockets, and going hungry
himself spent hours among sale-dens, pawn-shops, the alleys where
half-starved middle-men received the piece-work of sweated labor, and
the black staircases where rent-collectors, hard-driven by competing
agencies, plied a desperate piece-work of their own.
In every place he visited cleanliness was discouraged, and the water
system seemed a mere after-thought. In most cases the taps were buttons
requiring continuous pressure, and then yielding only an exiguous
supply; a kettle took nearly a minute to fill, so that while one tenant
drew service others stood waiting. He spoke indignantly of it to Sister
Jenifer. What were the sanitary authorities doing? he asked.
"Oh, yes," she said, "those buttons are a new device; the old taps were
taken away--they became too dangerous; these poor people found a way of
turning them to effect."
"You mean they stole the fixings?"
"No; though they used to do that now and then. But this was at the last
strike which happened to come during a drought. One of their leaders
said to them: 'Take all the water you can; drain the city dry, make the
rich give up their baths,--then perhaps they will attend to you.' They
actually had the power; they organized the whole of the working
district, and one night they turned on all the taps, the street
fountains as well. And we, because at last they were taking their full
share, were threatened with a water famine! Yes, if they had those
tenement baths which the last Housing Commission recommended they could
run us dry as their leader proposed,--hold the whole city up to ransom
and dictate terms. As it was even those taps proved dangerous, so we
gave them buttons instead; and of course the death-rate has gone up."
"And now the next strike has come."
"Ah, yes, but this is not such a large one and so, as it isn't reckoned
'dangerous,' the Government doesn't interfere, and no one outside
troubles about the rights of it."
They were moving on the outskirts of a crowd in the center of which a
demonstration of strikers was going on. Gaunt, hungry, apathetic faces
formed the bulk of them; in their midst a man with a big voice talked
heroically of the rights of labor and prophesied victory. They stood to
listen for a while, then moved on. At the corner of a side-street which
they crossed stood a smaller group; a woman, her hat tied round with a
motor-veil, stood waving her arms from an orange-box.
"Who are those?" inquired Max.
"Women Chartists," said Sister Jenifer.
"What are they doing here?"
"They go wherever they can get a hearing."
Max stopped to listen a little satirically; he had never heard a woman
speaking in public before. Presently he turned to his guide and found
that her eye was on him. "Shall we go on?" he said.
"This does not interest you, then?"
"It is a subject about which I know nothing."
"But you came to learn."
"Well,--is that woman telling the truth?"
"No, not exactly."
"Does she know what she is talking about?"
"Not as well as she ought to."
"Then, isn't that sufficient?"
"You have listened to men here whose statements were just as wide of the
mark, and whose proposals were just as useless."
"Yes, so you warned me; but what I find instructive is not the speaker
but the crowd."
"You have a crowd here."
"A much smaller one."
"So you are for the majorities?"
Max acknowledged the stroke. "Very well," he said; "let us go back."
"No, I only wanted you to notice the crowd. Did they seem interested?"
"They listened."
"That is something, is it not, when she was talking of things that to
their minds hardly concerned them?"
"But you say she was not telling the truth."
"She was ignorant, and she exaggerated; but for all they know what she
is saying might be gospel."
"Is that how you would have it preached?"
"If gospels had to wait for the wise and prudent," said Jenifer, "they
would wait till eternity. That woman was speaking not for an institution
but for a movement."
"Do not such exaggerations condemn it?"
"By no means; if some did not exaggerate none of us would get a
hearing--especially if we happened to be in a minority; and reformers
always are."
"Though I embroider it for myself," said Prince Max, "from others I
prefer to get plain truth."
"Plain truth," she replied, "is only that manner of dealing with a
thing--with some wrong, say--which makes it plain to people that the
wrong exists. Short of that you haven't got truth into them."
"Now you are preaching pragmatism," said Max.
"Do you suppose," she went on, "that to that dull, sunk, slow-witted
crowd we have been looking at, a mere niggardly statement of facts
would make the truth plain, or stir them to any action or feeling
for others? That woman on some points over-stated her case quite
ridiculously--especially as to the benefits and rewards which the
women's Charter would bring--but the effect upon her hearers fell far
short of what the real facts justify. Oh, people have to be bribed even
to do no more than open their ears to the truth."
"By false promises of reward? Yes, you have the Church with you there.
It deals with our ordinary everyday morality, in very much the same way.
Tells a maximum of untruth so that a necessary minimum may spring out of
it. How many Christians to-day really believe in the doctrine of hell?"
"Surely," she said, "to see the light of its fires in so many faces is
proof enough."
"That is not the doctrine," said the Prince, "and you know it. Hell here
and now may be very real; but it is not what your Church preaches. Many
of those lit-up faces that you speak of are aglow with mere lustful
enjoyment. But the Church does not teach that men can make the mistake
when in hell of actually believing themselves in Heaven; that would be
too dangerous. Turn on that tap, and the jasper sea in which your angels
take their baths will run dry."
She looked at him half quizzically. "And what is your doctrine?" she
inquired. "When you are enjoying yourself--saying things like that, for
instance, hoping to hurt--do you ever think that you are in hell?"
"No," said Max, "I do not make enjoyment the test. Just now, for
instance, I rather feel that I may be at the gates of Heaven; but I am
not, therefore, superlatively happy. Can you promise me that the
heavenly road is one of pure happiness?"
"To any one who accepted absolutely the Divine Will it must be."
"The Divine Will," said Max, "gave me my body and my reasoning power.
You must not ask me to forfeit them. I agree with that old collegiate (a
doctor of divinity like myself) to whom one of more austere piety had
declared 'abject submission' the only possible attitude of the creature
toward his Creator. 'No, no!' protested the Doctor, with outraged
dignity, 'deference, but not--not abject submission!' Deference is all a
man can honestly promise so long as reason remains to him; abject
submission is fit only for lunatic asylums."
"And yet," she retorted, "abject submission to antecedents is all that
science can infer when once it starts to investigate the springs of
action."
"That is not to deny reason; that only conditions it. I wanted you to
accuse me of blasphemy; but as you do not give me my legitimate openings
I have to make them for myself. To me the abrogation of reason, on any
pretense, is the most rooted blasphemy of which the mind of man is
capable. Some modern Romanist penned once a hymn which had in it these
or like words for its refrain--
'And black is white,
And wrong is right,
If it be Thy sweet Will.'
That, to my mind, is a blasphemous utterance, for it juggles with the
fundamentals of all morality. The person who adopts that attitude as an
act of surrender to earthly love is a sensualist. It is a form of
sensualism rampant in women; and men encourage it by bestowing upon it
the names of womanly virtues. To adopt a similar attitude in spiritual
matters seems to me sensualism none the less. And what a hot-bed for
that sort of sensualism the Church has always been and still is!"
His ugly talk roused her spirit of resistance.
"How can it be sensual," she protested, "when it results in self-denial
and self-sacrifice?"
"Self-sacrifice," he replied, "may be merely sensualism in its intensest
form; it is peculiarly a woman's temptation; the scientific name for it
(since you throw science at my head) is 'negative egoism.' You yourself
are quite capable of it; for you cannot get rid of the results of your
training all in a day."
She did not flinch from his attack.
"What do you know of my training?" she asked.
"I know this: here are you the superior of any Bishop on the bench now
preparing to play injured martyr at the loss of his political
privileges; and what position of authority and influence has your Church
to offer you--you and the thousands like you whose practical humanity
alone has made its antiquated forms still possible? Yes, you are its
life-preservers, and they tuck you away into subordinate positions and
back slums where nobody hears of you. And you have been trained to think
that it is right!"
"The training was all my own," she said. "I tucked myself."
"Wastefully, under parental conditions--you yourself have owned it."
"There is always more work than one can do."
"There is much more work that you could do; but here, what is your
chance? Has it not struck you--if you had only the position given you,
what a power you might be, in that direction, I mean, of bringing the
two halves of society face to face, which you say is your main object?
If that position were offered you would you accept it as a thing sent to
you from God, or would you----?"
And then Max stopped abruptly, for he realized that in another moment he
would have been offering her the succession to the throne, and he felt
that the street was not exactly the right place for it. Not that he
minded making the offer anywhere; but she, self-sacrificingly, might
refuse; and a crowded street was not the place where he could tackle a
refusal of the throne to advantage. It was not like an ordinary
proposal; there were too many points to urge and objections to be met;
while a certain amount of preliminary incredulity was almost inevitable.
She might know that he loved her still; but it would take a considerable
amount of knowing that he also wished her to sit with him upon the
throne; nay, for that matter, to sit with him off it, if Court etiquette
and the fates so ordained. And if they did so ordain, where would that
great position be which he was proposing to offer?
And so as Max has ended his declaration abruptly let us also end the
chapter abruptly, and wonder what the next, or the next but one may have
to bring forth.