Читать книгу The Secret of the League: The Story of a Social War - Bramah Ernest - Страница 5

"Kumreds," announced Mr Tubes with winning familiarity, "I may say now and once and for all that you've thoroughly convinced me of the justice of your claims. But that isn't saying that the thing's as good as done, so don't go slinging it broadcast in the next pub you come to. There's our good kumred the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be taken into account, and while I'm about it let me tell you straight that these Cabinet jobs, whether at twenty, fifty, or a hundred quid a week, aren't the softest things going, as some of you chaps seem to imagine."

"Swap you, mate, then," called out a facetious L. & N. W. fireman. "Yus, and throw the missis and kids into the bargain. Call it a deal?"

In his modest little house the Right Hon. James Tubes, M.P., Secretary of State for the Home Department, was receiving a deputation. Success, said his friends, had not spoiled him; others admitted that success had not changed him. From the time of his first appearance in Parliament he had been dubbed "Honest Jim" (perhaps a somewhat empty compliment in view of the fact that every Labour constituency had barbed unconscious satire at its own expense by distinguishing its representative as "Honest" Tom, Dick, or Harry), and after his elevation to Cabinet rank he still remained honest. More to the point, because more apparent, he remained unpretentious. It is true that he ceased to wear, as a personal concession to the Prime Minister, by whose side he sat, the grimy coal miner's suit in which he had first appeared in the House to the captivating of all hearts; but, more fortunate than Caractacus, he escaped envy by continuing to occupy his humble villa in Kilburn. The expenses of a Cabinet Minister, even in a Socialist Government, must inevitably be heavier than those of a private member, but this admirable man illustrated the uselessness of riches by continuing to live frugally but comfortably upon a tenth of his official income. According to intimate rumour he prudently invested the superfluous nine-tenths against a rainy day in the gilt-edged securities of countries where Socialism was least rampant.

Mr Tubes never refused to see a deputation, and when their views had been laid before him it was rare indeed that he was not able to declare a warm personal interest in their objects. True, he could not always undertake to carry their recommendations into effect; as a Minister he could not always express official approval of them, but they were rarely sent away without the moral support of that wink which is proverbially as significant as a more compromising form of agreement. Whether the particular expression of the great voice of the people was in the direction of the State adoption of Zulu orphans, or the compulsory removal of park palings from around private estates, the deputation could always go away with the inward satisfaction that however his words might read to outsiders on the morrow, they knew that as a man and a comrade, he, Jim Tubes, was with them heart and soul. "It costs nothing," he was wont to remark broad-mindedly to his home circle – referring, of course, to his own sympathetic attitude; for some of the ingenuous proposals which he countenanced were found in practice to prove very costly indeed – "and who knows what may happen next?"

But on this occasion, as far as compliance lay within his power, there had been no need for mental reservation. The railway-men had been patient under capitalistic oppression in the past; they were convincing now in argument; and they were moderate in their demands for the future. It was no "Væ victis!" that these sturdy wearers of green corduroy trousers held out to their employers, but a cheery "Come now, mates. Fair does and we'll mess along somehow till the next strike."

Mr Drugget, M.P., introduced the deputation. It consisted of railway workers of all the lower grades with the exception of clerks. After many ineffectual attempts to get clerks to enter the existing Labour ring, it had been seriously proposed by the Labour wirepullers (who loved them in spite of their waywardness, and would have saved them, and their votes and their weekly contribution, from themselves) that they should form a Union of their own in conjunction with shop assistants and domestic servants. When the clerks (of whom the majority employed domestic servants directly or indirectly in their homes or in their lodgings) laughed slightly at the proposal; when the shop assistants smiled self-consciously, and when the domestic servants giggled openly, the promoters of this amusing triple alliance cruelly left them to their fate thenceforward, pettishly declaring that all three were a set of snobs – a designation which they impartially applied to every class of society except their own, and among themselves to every minute subdivision of Labour except the one which they adorned.

It devolved upon a rising young "greaser" in the service of the Great Northern to explain, as spokesman, the object of the visit. Under the existing unfair conditions the directors of the various companies were elected at large salaries by that unnecessary and parasitic group, the shareholders, while the workmen – the true creators of every penny of income – had no direct hand in the management of affairs. When they wished to approach the chief authorities it was necessary for them to send delegates from their Union, who were frequently kept waiting ten minutes in an ante-room; and although of late years their demands were practically always conceded without demur, the position was anomalous and humiliating. What seemed only reasonable to them, then, was that they should have the right to elect an equal number of directors from among themselves, who should sit on the Board with the other directors, have equal powers, and receive similar salaries.

"To be, in fact, your permanent deputation to the Board," suggested the Home Secretary.

"That's it – with powers," replied the G. N. man.

"There'll be some soft jobs going – then," murmured a shunter, who was getting on in years, reflectively.

"No need for the missis to take in young men lodgers if you get one, eh, Bill?" said his neighbour jocosely.

Whether it was the extreme unlikelihood of his ever being made a director, or some other deeper cause, the secret history of the period does not say, but Bill turned upon his innocent friend in a very aggressive mood.

"What d'yer mean – young men lodgers?" he demanded warmly. "What call have you to bring that up? Come now!"

"Why, mate," expostulated the offending one mildly, "no one said anything to give any offence. What's the 'arm? Your missis does take in lodgers, same as plenty more, don't she? Well, then!"

"I can take a 'int along the lines as well as any other," replied Bill darkly. "It's gone far enough between pals. See? I never said anything about your sister leaving that there laundry, did I? Never, I didn't."

"And what about it if you did?" demanded the neighbour, growing hot in his turn. "I should think you'd have enough – "

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," expostulated the glib young spokesman, as the voices rose above the conversational whisper, "let us have absolute unanimity, if you please – expressed in the usual way, by all saying nothing together."

"Wha's matter with Bill?" murmured the next delegate with polite curiosity.

"Seems to me the little man is troubled with his teef," replied the unfortunate cause of the ill-feeling, with smouldering passion. "Strike me if he isn't. Ah!" And seeing the impropriety of relieving his feelings in the usual way in a Cabinet Minister's private study, he relapsed into bitter silence.

Mr Tubes having expressed his absolute approval of this detail of the programme, the second point was explained. Why, it was demanded, should the provisions of the Employers' Liability Act apply only to the hours during which a man was at work? Furthermore, why should they apply only to accidents? Supposing, said Mr William Mulch, the spokesman in question, that a bloke went out in a social way among his friends, as any bloke might, caught the small-pox, and got laid up for life with after-effects, or died? Or suppose the bloke, after sweating through a day's work, went home dog-tired to his miserable hovel, and broke his leg falling over the carpet, or poisoned his hand opening a tin of sardines? They looked to the present Government to extend the working of the Act so as to cover the disablement or death of employés from every cause whatever, natural death included, and wherever they might be at the time. Under the present unfair and artificial conditions of labour, the work-people were nothing but the slaves and chattels of capitalists, and it was manifestly unfair that the latter should escape their responsibilities after exploiting a man's labour for their own greedy ends, simply because he happened to die of hydrophobia or senile decay, or because the injury that disabled him was received outside the fœtid, insanitary den where in exchange for a bare sordid pittance his flesh was ground from his bones for eight hours daily.

The Right Hon. gentleman expressed his entire concurrence with this provision also, and roused considerable enthusiasm by mentioning that some time ago he had independently arrived at the conclusion that such a clause was urgently required.

Before the next point was considered, Comrade Tintwistle asked permission to say a few words. He explained that he had no intention of introducing a discordant note. On the contrary, he heartily supported the proposal as far as it went, but – and here he wished to say that though he only voiced the demands of a minority, it was a large, a growing, and a noisy minority – it did not go far enough. The contention of those he represented was that the responsibility of employers ought to extend to the wives and families of their work-people. Many a poor comrade was sadly harassed by having to keep a crippled child who would never be a bread-winner, or an ailing wife who was incapable of looking after his home comfort properly. They were fighting over again the battle that they had won in the matter of free meals for school children. It had taken years to convince people that it was equally necessary that children who did not happen to be attending school should have meals provided for them, and even more necessary to see that their mothers should be well nourished; it had taken even longer to arrive at the logical conclusion that if free meals were requisite, free clothes were not a whit less necessary. No one nowadays doubted the soundness of that policy, yet here they were again timorously contemplating half-measures, while the insatiable birds of prey who sucked their blood laughed in their sleeve at the spectacle of the British working men hiding their heads ostrich-like in the shifting quicksand of a fool's paradise.

The signs of approval that greeted this proposal showed clearly enough that other members of the deputation had sympathetic leanings towards the larger policy of the minority. Mr Tubes himself more than hinted at the possibility of a personal conversion in the near future. "In the meantime," he remarked, "everything is on your side. Your position is logical, moderate, and just. All can admit that, although we may not all exactly agree as to whether the time is ripe for the measure. With every temptation to wipe off some of the arrears of injustice of the past, we must not go so far as to kill the goose that lays the golden egg."

"How do you make that out?" demanded an unsophisticated young signalman. "It's the work of the people that produces every penny that circulates."

"Oh, just so," replied Tubes readily. "That is the real point of the story. It was the grains of corn that made the eggs, and the goose did nothing but sit and lay them. We must always have our geese." He turned to the subject in hand again with a laugh, and approved a few more modest suggestions for abolishing "privileges."

"The last point," continued the spokesman, "is one that closely concerns the principles that we all profess. I refer to the obsolete and humiliating anachronism that with a Government pledged to the maintenance of social equality in office, at any hour of the day, at practically every railway station throughout the land you will still see trains subdivided as regards designation and accommodation into first, second, and third classes. It is a distinction which to us, as the representatives of the so-called third class, is nothing more or less than insulting. Why should me and my missis when we travel be compelled to sit where the accidents generally happen and have to put up with eighteen in a compartment, when smug clerks and saucy ladies' maids, who are no better than us, enjoy the comparative luxury of only fifteen in a compartment away from the collisions, and snide financiers and questionable duchesses, who are certainly a good deal worse, sit in padded rooms, well protected front and rear, and never know what it is to be packed more than six a-side? If that isn't class distinction I should like to know what is. It isn't – Gawd help us! – that we wish to mix with these people, or that we envy their position or covet their wealth. Such motives have never entered into the calculations of those who have been foremost in Socialistic propaganda. But as thoughtful and self-respecting units of an integral community we object to being segregated by the imposition of obsolete and arbitrary barriers, we do resent the artificial creation of social grades, and we regard with antagonism and distrust the unjust accumulation of labour-created wealth in the hands of the idle and incapable few.

"But if this is the standpoint of the great mass of the democracy, to us of the Amalgamated Unions of Railway Workers and Permanent Way Staffs the invidious distinction has a closer significance. As ordinary citizens our sense of equality is outraged by the demarcations I have referred to; but as our work often places us in a temporary subordination to the occupants of these so-called first and second classes, whom we despise intellectually and resent economically, we incur the additional stigma of having to render them an external deference which we recognise to be obsolete and servile. The Arden and Avon Valley case, which earned the martyrdom of dismissal for William Jukson and ultimately involved forty thousand of us in a now historic strike, simply because that heroic man categorically refused to the doddering Duke of Pentarlington any other title than the honourable appellation of 'Comrade,' is doubtless still fresh within your minds. We lost on that occasion through insufficiency of funds, but the ducal portmanteau over which William Jukson took his memorable stand, will yet serve as a rallying point to a more successful issue."

Mr Mulch paused for approbation, which was not stinted, but before he could resume, a passionate little man who had been rising to a more exalted state of fervour with every demand, suddenly hurled himself like a human wedge into the forefront of the proceedings.

"Kumrids!" he exclaimed, breathless from the first, "with your kind permission I would say a few words embodying a suggestion which, though not actually included in the agenda, is quite in 'armony with the subject before us."

"Won't it keep?" suggested a tired delegate hopefully.

"The suggestion is briefly this," continued the little man, far too enthusiastic to notice any interruption, "that as a tribute to William Jukson's sterling determination and as a perpetual reminder of the issues raised, we forthwith add to the banners of the Amalgamated Unions one bearing an allegorical design consisting of two emblematic figures struggling for the possession of a leather portmanteau with the words 'No Surrender!' beneath. The whole might be made obvious to a person of the meanest intelligence by the inscription 'A. and A. V. Ry. Test Case. W. J. upholds the Principles of Social Democracy and Vindicates the People's Rights,' running round."

"Why should he be running round?" asked a slow-witted member of the deputation.

"Who running round?" demanded the last speaker, amenable to outside influence now that he had said his say.

"William Jukson. Didn't you say he was to be on this banner vindicating the people's rights running round? He stood there on the platform, man to man, so I've always heard."

The redoubtable Jukson's champion cast a look of ineffable contempt upon his simple brother and made a gesture expressive of despair. "That's all," he said, and sat down.

Mr Mulch resumed his interrupted innings. "The suggestion will doubtless receive attention if submitted through the proper channels," he remarked a little coldly. It was one thing to take the indomitable Jukson under his own ægis; quite another to countenance his canonisation at a period when strenuous candidates were more numerous than remunerative niches. "But to revert to the subject in hand from which we have strayed somewhat. It only remains for me to say that all artificial distinctions between class and class are distasteful to the people at large, detestable to the powerful Unions on whose behalf we are here to-day, and antagonistic to the interests of the community. We confidently look, therefore, to the present Government to put an end to a state of things that is inconsistent with the maintenance of practical Socialism."

Towards this proposal, also, Mr Tubes turned a friendly ear, but he admitted that in practice his sympathies must be purely platonic, for the time at least. In truth, the revenue yielded by the taxation of first and second class tickets was so considerable that it could not be ignored. Many people adopted the third class rather than suffer the exaction, and the receipts of all the railway companies in the kingdom fell considerably – to the great delight of that large section of the Socialistic party that had not yet begun to think. But the majority of the wealthy still paid the price, and not a few among the weak, aged, and timorous, among children, old men, and ladies, were driven to the superior classes which they could ill afford by the increased difficulty of finding a seat elsewhere, and by the growing truculence of the workmen who were thrust upon them in the thirds. For more than a decade it had been observed that when a seat in tram or train was at stake the age of courtesy was past, but a new Burke, listening to the conversation of those around, might too frequently have cause to think that the age of decency had faded also. Another development, contributing to the maintenance of the higher classes, was the fact that one was as heavily mulcted if he turned to any of the other forms of more exclusive travelling. Private carriages of all kinds were the butt of each succeeding Budget, even bicycles (unless owned by workmen) were not exempt; and so heavily was the Chancellor's hand laid upon motor cars (except such as were the property of Members of Parliament) that even the Marquis of Kingsbery was satisfied, and withdrew his threat to haunt the Portsmouth Road with an elephant gun.

And yet, despite the persistence of a Stuart in imposing taxation and the instincts of a Vespasian in making it peculiarly offensive, the Treasury was always in desperate straits. The reason was not far to seek. In the old days Liberal governments had at times proved extravagant; Tory governments had perhaps oftener proved even more extravagant; but in each case it was the tempered profusion of those who through position and education were too careless to count their pence and too unconcerned to be dazzled by their pounds. The Labour and the Socialist administrations proved superlatively extravagant: and there is nothing more irredeemable than the spendthrift recklessness of your navvy who has unexpectedly "come into money." The beggar was truly on horseback, or, to travel with the times, he had set off in his motor car, and he was now bowling along the great high-road towards the cliff-bound sea of national perdition, a very absent-minded beggar indeed, with a merry hand upon the high speed gear.

"I am with you heart and soul," therefore declared Mr Tubes as a man, and as a member of the Cabinet added – "in principle. But the contemplated Act for providing State maintenance of strikers, in strikes approved of by the Board of Trade, makes it extremely undesirable to abolish any of the existing sources of revenue, at least until we see what the measure will involve."

"Save on the Navy, then," growled a malcontent in the rear rank.

"We have already reduced the Navy to the fullest extent that we consider it desirable to go at present; that is to say, to the common-sense limit – equality with any one of the other leading powers."

"The Army, then."

"We have already reduced the Army very considerably, but with a navy on the lines which I have indicated and an army traditionally weaker at the best than those of the great military powers, which are also naval powers, is it prudent?" The gesture that closed the sentence clearly expressed Mr Tubes's own misgivings on the subject. He had always been regarded as a moderate though a vacillating man among his party, and the "reduce everything and chance it" policy of a powerful section of the Cabinet disturbed his rest at times.

"Why halt ye between two opinions?" exclaimed a clear and singularly sweet voice from the doorway. "Temporise not with the powers of darkness when the day of opportunity is now at hand. Sweep away arms and armies, engines of war and navies, in one vast and irresistible wave of Universal Brotherhood. Beat the swords into ploughshares, cast your guns into instruments of music, let all strife cease. Extend the hand of friendship and equality not only man to man and class to class, but nation to nation and race to race. Make a great feast, and in love and fellowship compel them to come in: so shall you inaugurate the reign of Christ anew on earth."

Every one looked at the speaker and then glanced at his neighbour with amusement, contempt, enquiry, here and there something of approval, in his eye. "The Mad Parson," "Brother Ambrose," "The Ragged Priest," "St Ambrose of Shadwell," ran from lip to lip as a few recognised the tonsured barefoot figure standing in his shabby cassock by the door. Mr Tubes alone, seated out of the range of whispers and a victim to the defective sight that is the coal-pit heritage throughout the world, received no inkling of his identity, and, assuming that he was a late arrival of the deputation, sought to extend a gentle conciliation.

"The goal of complete disarmament is one that we never fail to strive for," he accordingly replied, "but our impulsive comrade must admit that the present is hardly the moment for us to make the experiment entirely on our own. Prudence – "

"Prudence!" exclaimed the ragged priest with flashing vehemence. "There is no more cowardly word in the history of that Black Art which you call Statecraft. All your wars, all your laws, all tyranny, injustice, inhumanity, all have their origin in a fancied prudence. It marks the downward path in whitened milestones more surely than good intentions pave that same decline. Dare! dare! dare! man. Dare to love your brother. Herod was prudent when he sought to destroy all the children of Bethlehem; it was prudence that led Pilate to deliver up our Master to the Jews. The deadly ignis fatuus of prudence marched and counter-marched destroying armies from the East and from the West through every age, formed vast coalitions and dissolved them treacherously, made dynasties and flung them from the throne. It led pagan Rome, it illumined the birth of a faith now choked in official bonds, it danced before stricken Europe, lit the martyrs' fires, lured the cold greed of commerce, and now hangs a sickly beacon over Westminster. But prudence never raised the fallen Magdalene nor forgave the dying thief. Christ was not prudent."

"Christ, who's 'e?" said a man who had a reputation for facetiousness to maintain. "Oh! I remember. He's been dead a long time."

Ambrose turned on him the face that led men and the eye that quelled. "My brother," he almost whispered across the room, "if you die with that in your heart it were better for you that He had never lived."

There was something in the voice, the look, the presence, that checked the ready methods by which a hostile intruder was wont to be expelled. All recognised a blind inspired devotion beside which their own party enthusiasm was at the best pale and thin. Even to men who were wholly indifferent to the forms of religion, Ambrose's self-denying life, his ascetic discipline, his fanatical whole-heartedness, his noble – almost royal – family, and the magnetic influence which he exercised over masses of the most wretched of the poor and degraded gave pause for thought, and often extorted a grudging regard. Not a few among those who had dispassionately watched the rise and fall of parties held the opinion that the man might yet play a wildly prominent part in the nation's destinies and involve a tragedy that could only yet be dimly guessed: for most men deemed him mad.

"Whatever you may wish to say this is neither the time nor the place," said Mr Drugget mildly. "We are not taking part in a public meeting which invites discussion, but are here in a semi-private capacity to confer with the Home Secretary."

"There is no time or place unseasonable to me, who come with Supreme authority," replied Ambrose. "Nor, if the man is worthy of his office, can the Home Secretary close his ears to the representative of the people."

"The people!" exclaimed a startled member of the Amalgamated Unions. "What d'yer mean by the 'representative of the people'? We are the representatives of the people. We are the people!"

"You?" replied Ambrose scornfully, sweeping the assembly with his eye and returning finally with a disconcerting gaze to the man who spoke, "you smug, easy, well-fed, well-clad, well-to-do in your little way, self-satisfied band of Pharisees, you the people of the earth! Are you the poor, are you the meek, the hungry, the persecuted? You are the comfortable, complacent bourgeoisie of labourdom. You can never inherit the Kingdom of Christ on earth. Outside your gates, despised of all, stand His chosen people."

There was a low, rolling murmur of approval, growing in volume before it died away, but it rose not within the chamber but from the road outside.

"Mr Tubes," whispered the introducer of the deputation uneasily, "give the word, sir. Shall we have this man put out?"

"No, no," muttered Tubes, with his eyes fixed on the window and turning slightly pale; "wait a minute. Who are those outside?"

The Member of Parliament looked out; others were looking too, and for a moment not only their own business was forgotten, but the indomitable priest's outspoken challenge passed unheeded in a curious contemplation of his following. At that period the sight was a new one in the streets of London, though afterwards it became familiar enough, not only in the Capital, but to the inhabitants of every large town and city throughout the land.

Ambrose had been called "The Ragged Priest," and it was a very ragged regiment that formed his bodyguard; he was "The Mad Parson," and an ethereal mania shone in the faces of many of his followers, though as many sufficiently betrayed the slum-bred cunning, the inborn brutishness of the unchanged criminal and the hooligan, thinly cloaked beneath a shifty mask of assumed humility. As became "St Ambrose," the banners which here and there stood out above the ranks – mere sackcloth standards lashed to the roughest poles – nearly all bore religious references in their crude emblems and sprawling inscriptions. The gibes at charity, the demands for work of an earlier decade had given place to another phase. "Christ is mocked," was one; "Having all things in common," ran another; while "As it was in the beginning," "Equality, in Christ," "Thy Kingdom come," might frequently be seen. But a more significant note was struck by an occasional threat veiled beneath a text, as "The sun shall be turned into darkness, the moon into blood," though their leader himself never hinted violence in his most impassioned flights. Among the upturned faces a leisurely observer might have detected a few that were still conspicuous in refinement despite their sordid settings – women chiefly, and for the most part fanatical converts who had been swept off their feet by Ambrose's eloquence in the more orthodox days when he had thrilled fashionable congregations from the pulpit of a Mayfair church. Other women there were in plenty; men, old and young; even a few children; dirty, diseased, criminal, brutalised, vicious, crippled, the unemployed, the unemployable. Beggars from the streets, begging on a better lay; thieves hopeful of a larger booty; malcontents of every phase; enemies of society reckoning on a day of reckoning; the unfortunate and the unfortunates swayed by vague yearnings after righteousness; schemers striving for their private ends; with a salting of the simple-hearted; all held together so far by the vehement personality of one fanatic, and glancing down the ranks one could prophesy what manner of monster out of the depths this might prove when it had reached rampant maturity. Poverty, abject poverty, was the dominant note; for all who marched beneath the ragged banner must go in rags.

Mr Drugget was the first to recover himself. "Look here," he said, turning to Ambrose aggressively, "I don't quite catch on to your game, but that's neither here nor there. If you want to know what I call it, I call it a bit of blasted impertinence to bring a mob like that to a man's private house, no matter who he may be. What's more, this is an unlawful gathering according to Act of Parliament."

"That which breaks no divine commandment cannot be unlawful," replied Ambrose, unmoved. "I recognise no other law. And you, who call yourselves Socialists and claim equality, what are your laws but the old privileges which you denounced in others extended to include yourselves, what your equality but the spoliation of those above you?"

"We are practical Socialists," exclaimed one or two members with dignity. "As reasonable men we recognise that there must be a limit somewhere."

"Practical is the last thing you can claim to be. You are impractical visionaries; for it would be as easy for a diver to pause in mid-air as for mankind to remain at a half-way house to Equality. All! All! Every man-made distinction must be swept away. Neither proprietor nor property, paid leader nor gain, task-work nor pride of place; nothing between God and man's heart. That is the only practical Socialism, and it is at hand."

"Not while we're in office," said the Home Secretary shortly.

"Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," cast back Ambrose. "Where is now the great Unionist party? In a single season the sturdy Liberal stronghold crumbled into dust. You deposed a Labour government that was deemed invulnerable in its time. Beware, the hand is already on the wall. Those forces which you so blindly ignore will yet combine and crush you."

It was not unlikely. In former times it would have required barricades and some personal bravery. But with universal suffrage the power of the pauper criminal was no less than that of the ducal millionaire, and the alcohol lunatic, presenting himself at the poll between the spasms of delirium tremens, was as potent a force as the philosopher. A party composed of paupers, aliens, chronic unemployed, criminals, lunatics, unfortunates, the hysterical and degenerate of every kind, together with so many of the working classes as might be attracted by the glamour of a final and universal spoliation, led by a sincere and impassioned firebrand, might yet have to be reckoned with.

"And you, comrade?" said a railway-man with pardonable curiosity. "When you've had your little fling, who's going to turn you out and come in?"

"We!" exclaimed Ambrose with a touch of genuine surprise; "how can you be so blind! We represent the ultimate destiny of mankind."

In another age and another place a form of government called the States General, and largely composed of amiable clerics, had been called up to redress existing grievances. Being found too slow, it gave place to the National Assembly, and, to go yet a little faster, became the Legislative Assembly. This in turn was left behind by the more expeditious Girondins, but as even they lagged according to the bustling times, the Jacobins came into favour. The ultimate development of quick-change Equality was reached in the Hébertists. From one to another had been but a step, and they were all "The People"; but while the States General had looked for the millennium by the abolition of a grievance here and there, and the lightening of a chafing collar in the mass, the followers of Hébert found so little left for them to abolish that they abolished God. The experiment convinced the sagest of the leaders that human equality is only to be found in death, and, true to their principles, they "equalised" a million of their fellow-countrymen through the instrumentality of the guillotine, and other forms of moral suasion. Grown more tender-hearted, "The People" no longer thirsted for another section of "The People's" blood – only for their money; and in place of Fouquier-Tinville and the Gentleman with the Wooden Frame, their instruments of justice were represented by a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and an individual delivering blue papers.

"We represent the ultimate destiny of mankind: absolute equality," announced Ambrose. "Any other condition is inconsistent with the professions to which your party has repeatedly pledged itself. Will you, my brother," he continued, addressing himself to the Home Secretary, "receive a deputation?"

The deputation was already waiting at the outer door, three men and three women. It included a countess, a converted house-breaker, and an anarchist who had become embittered with life since the premature explosion of one of his bombs had blown off both his arms and driven him to subsist on the charitable. The other three were uninteresting nonentities, but all were equal in their passion for equality.

"We are all pledged to the principle of social equality, and every step in that direction that comes within the range of practical politics must have our sympathy," replied Mr Tubes. "Further than that I am not prepared to commit myself at present. That being the case, there would be no object in receiving a deputation." To this had Mr Tubes come at last.

"The unending formula," said Brother Ambrose with weary bitterness. "… Bread, and you give them stones … Man," he cried with sudden energy, "almost within your grasp lies the foundation of New Jerusalem, tranquil, smiling, sinless. What stands in your way? Nothing, nothing! truly nothing but the heavy shadow of the old and cruel past. Throw it off; is it not worth doing? No more spiritual death, no more sorrow of the things of this world, nor crying, 'Neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.'"

"I have nothing more to say," responded the Home Secretary coldly, bending over his desk to write.

"Then I have much more to do," retorted Ambrose impetuously, "and that shall be with the sword of my mouth." He strode from the room with an air that no amount of legislative equality could ever confer upon any of those he left behind, and a moment later his ragged escort was in motion homeward – slumward.

"Kumreds," said Mr Tubes, looking up, "the harmony of the occasion has been somewhat impaired by an untoward incident, but on the whole I think that you may rest well satisfied with the result of your representations. Having another appointment I must now leave you, but I have given instructions for some beer and sandwidges to be brought in, and I trust that in my enforced absence you will all make yourselves quite at home." He shook hands with each man present and withdrew.

"Beer and sandwidges!" muttered Comrade Tintwistle, with no affectation of delight, to a chosen spirit. "And this is the man we pay fifty quid a week to!"

"Ah!" assented the friend, following Mr Tubes's hospitable directions by strolling round the room and fingering the ornaments. "Well, when it comes to a general share-out I don't know but what I should mind having this here little round barometer for my parlour."

"Neat little thing," assented Tintwistle with friendly interest. "What does it say?"

"Seems to be dropping from 'Change' to 'Stormy,'" read the friend.