A VIOLENT man, pallid and perspiring, with crazy dark eyes and a
voice hoarse from the effort to make himself heard above the noise of
a hymn-singing group a few yards to the right and of a brazen-throated
atheist on the left, was delivering his soul of its message to
mankind--a confused, disconnected, oft-delivered message, so
inconsequent as to suggest that it had been worn into shreds and tatters
of catch-phrases by process of over-delivery, yet uttered with the
passion of one inspired with a new and amazing gospel.
“I am speaking to you, the working-men, the proletariat, the downtrodden
slaves of the plutocracy, the creators in darkness of the wealth that
the idlers enjoy in dazzling halls of brightness. I do not address the
bourgeoisie rotting in sloth and apathy. They are the parasites of the
rich. They sweat the workers in order to pander to the vices of the
rich. They despise the poor and grovel before the rich. They shrink from
touching the poor man's hand, but they offer their bodies slavishly to
the kick of the rich man's foot. It is not in their hands, but in yours,
brother toilers and brother sufferers, that lies the glorious work
of the great social revolution whose sun just rising is tipping the
mountain-tops with its radiant promise of an immortal day. It is
against them and not with them that you have to struggle. In that day
of Armageddon you will find all tailordom, all grocerdom, all
apothecarydom, all attorneydom arrayed in serried ranks around the
accursed standards of plutocracy, of aristocracy, of bureaucracy. Beware
of them. Have naught to do with them on peril of your salvation. The
great social revolution will come not from above, but from below, from
the depths. _De profundis clamavi!_ “From the depths have I cried, O
Lord!”
He paused, wiped his forehead, cleared his throat, and went on in
the same strain, indifferent to ribald interjections and the Sunday
apathy of his casual audience. The mere size of the crowd he was
addressing seemed to satisfy him. The number was above the average. A
few working-men in the inner ring drank in the wild utterances with
pathetic thirst. The majority listened, half amused, half attracted by
the personality of the speaker. A great many were captivated by the
sonority of the words, the unfaltering roll of the sentences, the vague
associations and impressions called up by the successive images. It is
astonishing what little account our sociological writers take of the
elementary nature of the minds of the masses; how easily they are
amused; how readily they are imposed upon; how little they are capable
of analytical thought; at the same time, how intellectually vain they
are, which is their undoing. The ineptitudes of the music hall which
make the judicious grieve--the satirical presentment, for instance, of
the modern fop, which does not contain one single salient characteristic
of the type, which is the blatant convention of fifty years back--are
greeted with roars of unintelligent laughter. Books are written, vulgar,
fallacious, with a specious semblance of philosophical profundity, and
sell by the hundred thousand. The masses read them without thought,
without even common intelligence. It is too great an intellectual effort
to grasp the ideas so disingenuously presented; but the readers can
understand just enough to perceive vaguely that they are in touch with
the deeper questions of philosophy, and through sheer vanity delude
themselves into the belief that they are vastly superior people in being
able to find pleasure in literature of such high quality. And the word
Mesopotamia is still blessed in their ears. Nothing but considerations
such as these can explain the popularity of some of the well-known
Sunday orators in Hyde Park. The conductors of the various properly
organised mission services belong naturally to a different category. It
is the socialist, the revivalist, the atheist, the man whose blood and
breath seem to have turned into inexhaustible verbiage, that present the
problem.
Some such reflections forced themselves into the not uncharitable mind
of Jimmie as he stood on the outer fringe of the pallid man's audience
and listened wonderingly to the inspired nonsense. He had left a
delighted Aline to be taken by Colonel Pawley to the Zoological Gardens,
and had strolled down from Bryanston Square to the north side of the
Park. To lounge pleasantly on a Sunday afternoon from group to group
had always been a favourite Sunday pastime, and the pallid man was a
familiar figure. Jimmie had often thought of painting him as the central
character of some historical picture--an expectorated Jonah crying to
Nineveh, or a Flagellant in the time of the plague, with foaming
mouth and bleeding body, calling upon the stricken city to repent. His
artist's vision could see the hairy, haggard, muscular anatomy beneath
the man's rusty black garments. He could make a capital picture out of
him.
The man paused only for a few seconds, and again took up his
parable--the battle of the poor and the rich. The flow of words
poured forth, platitude on platitude, in turbid flood, sound and fury
signifying elusively, sometimes the collectivist doctrine, at others the
mere _sans-culotte_ hatred of the aristocrat. Jimmie, speculating on
the impression made by the oratory on the minds of the audience, moved
slightly apart from the crowd. His glance wandering away took in Morland
on his way home, walking sedately on the path towards the Marble Arch.
He ran across the few yards of intervening space and accosted his friend
gaily.
“Come and have a lesson in public speaking, and at the same time hear
the other side of the political question.”
“What! go and stand among that rabble?” cried Morland, aghast.
“You'll have to stand among worse, so you had better get used to it.
Besides, the man is a delightful fellow, with a face like Habakkuk,
capable of everything. To hear him one would think he were erupting
red-hot lava, whereas really it is molten omelette. Come. Your purple
and fine linen will be a red rag to him.”
Laughing, he dragged the protesting Morland within earshot of the
speaker. Morland listened superciliously for a few moments.
“What possible amusement can you find in this drivel?” he asked.
“It is so devilish pathetic,” said Jimmie, “so human--the infinite
aspiration and the futile accomplishment. Listen.”
The hymn next door had ceased, the atheist was hunting up a reference,
and the words of the pallid man's peroration resounded startlingly in
the temporary silence:
“In that day when the sovereign people's will is law, when the
weakest and the strongest shall share alike in the plenteous bounty of
Providence, no longer shall the poor be mangled beneath the Juggernaut
car of wealth, no longer shall your daughters be bound to the rich man's
chariot-wheels and whirled shrieking into an infamy worse than death, no
longer shall the poor man's soul burn with hell fire at the rich man's
desecration of the once pure woman that he loves, no more rottenness,
foulness, stench, iniquity, but the earth shall rest in purity, securely
folded in the angel wings of peace!”
He waved his arms in a gesture of dismissal, turned his back on the
crowd, and sat down exhausted on the little wooden bench that had been
his platform. The crowd gradually moved away, some laughing idly, others
reflectively chewing the cud of their Barmecide meal. Morland pointed a
gold-mounted cane at the late speaker.
“Who and what is this particular brand of damned fool?”
Jimmie checked with a glance a working-man who had issued from the inner
ring and was passing by, and translated Morland's question into soberer
English.
“Him?” replied the working-man. “That's Daniel Stone, sir. Some people
say he's cracked, but he always has something good to say and I like
listening to him.”
“What does he do when he is n't talking?” asked Jimmie. “Snatches a nap
and a mouthful of food, I should say, sir,” said the man, with a
laugh. He caught Jimmie's responsive smile, touched his cap, like the
downtrodden slave that he was, and went on his way. Jimmie glanced round
for Morland and saw him striding off rapidly. He ran after him.
“What is the hurry?”
“That damned man--”
“Which? The one I was talking to? You surely did n't object--?”
“Of course not. The other--Daniel Stone--”
“Well, what of him?”
“He's a dangerous lunatic. I have heard of him. Why the devil did you
want me to make an exhibition of myself among this scum?”
Jimmie stared. Morland broke into a laugh and held out his hand.
“Never mind. The beast got on my nerves with his chariot wheels and his
desecration of maidens and the rest of it. I must be off. Good-bye.”
Jimmie watched him disappear through the gate and turned back towards
the groups. The pallid man was still sitting on his bench; a few
children hung round and scanned him idly. Presently he rose and tucked
his bench under his arm, and walked slowly away from the scene of his
oratory. His burning eyes fixed themselves on Jimmie as he passed by.
Jimmie accosted him.
“I have been greatly interested in your address.”
“I saw you with another of the enemies of mankind. You are a gentleman,
I suppose?”
“I hope so,” said Jimmie, smiling.
“Then I have nothing to do with you,” retorted the man, with an angry
gesture. “I hate you and all your class.”
“But what have we done to you?”
“You have turned my blood into gall and my soul into consuming fire.”
“Let us get out of the dust and sit down under a tree and talk it over.
We may get to understand each other.”
“I have no wish to understand you,” said the man, coldly. “Good-day to
you.”
“Good-day,” said Jimmie, with a smile. “I am sorry you will not let us
be better acquainted.”
He turned to the next group, who were listening to a disproof of God's
existence. But the atheist was a commonplace thunderer in a bowler
hat, whose utterances fell tame on Jimmie's ears after those of
the haggard-eyed prophet. He wandered away from the crowd, striking
diagonally across the Park, and when he found comparative shade and
solitude, cast himself on the grass beneath a tree. The personality of
Daniel Stone interested him. He began to speculate on his daily life,
his history. Why should he have vowed undying hatred against his social
superiors? He reminded Jimmie of a character in fiction, and after some
groping the association was recalled. It was the monk in Dumas, the son
of Miladi. He wove an idle romance about the man. Perhaps Stone was
the disinherited of noble blood, thirsting for a senseless vengeance.
Gradually the drowsiness of deep June fell upon him. He went fast
asleep, and when he awoke half an hour afterwards and began to walk
homewards, he thought no more of Daniel Stone.
But on following Sunday afternoons he frequently stood for a while
to listen to the man. It was always the same tale--sound and fury,
signifying nothing. On one occasion he caught Jimmie's eye, and
denounced him vehemently as an enemy of society. After that, Jimmie,
who was of a peaceful disposition, ceased attending his lectures. He
sympathised with Morland.