Demos. George Gissing
of subduing his voice, and had a certain pleasure in the ease with which he achieved this feat. It would not have been so easy a day or two ago.
‘Ah, about this awkward affair of yours,’ observed Mr. Westlake with reference to Richard’s loss of his employment, of which, as editor of the Union’s weekly paper, he had of course at once been apprised.
‘No, not about that. Since then a very unexpected thing has happened to me.’
The story was once more related, vastly to Mr. Westlake’s satisfaction. Cheerful news concerning his friends always put him in the best of spirits.
He shook his head, laughing.
‘Come, come, Mutimer, this’ll never do! I’m not sure that we shall not have to consider your expulsion from the Union.’
Richard went on to mention the matters of legal routine in which he hoped Mr. Westlake would serve him. These having been settled—
‘I wish to speak of something more important,’ he said. ‘You take it for granted, I hope, that I’m not going to make the ordinary use of this fortune. As yet I’ve only been able to hit on a few general ideas; I’m clear as to the objects I shall keep before me, but how best to serve them wants more reflection. I thought if I talked it over with you in the first place—’
The door opened, and a lady half entered the room.
‘Oh, I thought you were alone,’ she remarked to Mr. Westlake. ‘Forgive me!’
‘Come in! Here’s our friend Mutimer. You know Mrs. Westlake?’
A few words had passed between this lady and Richard in the lecture-room a few weeks before. She was not frequently present at such meetings, but had chanced, on the occasion referred to, to hear Mutimer deliver an harangue.
‘You have no objection to talk of your plans? Join our council, will you?’ he added to his wife. ‘Our friend brings interesting news.’
Mrs. Westlake walked across the room to the curved window-seat. Her age could scarcely be more than three- or four-and-twenty; she was very dark, and her face grave almost to melancholy. Black hair, cut short at its thickest behind her neck, gave exquisite relief to features of the purest Greek type. In listening to anything that held her attention her eyes grew large, and their dark orbs seemed to dream passionately. The white swan’s down at her throat—she was perfectly attired—made the skin above resemble rich-hued marble, and indeed to gaze at her long was to be impressed as by the sad loveliness of a supreme work of art. As Mutimer talked she leaned forward, her elbow on her knee, the back of her hand supporting her chin.
Her husband recounted what Richard had told him, and the latter proceeded to sketch the projects he had in view.
‘My idea is,’ he said, ‘to make the mines at Wanley the basis of great industrial undertakings, just as any capitalist might, but to conduct these undertakings in a way consistent with our views. I would begin by building furnaces, and in time add engineering works on a large scale. I would build houses for the men, and in fact make that valley an industrial settlement conducted on Socialist principles. Practically I can devote the whole of my income; my personal expenses will not be worth taking into account. The men must be paid on a just scheme, and the margin of profit that remains, all that we can spare from the extension of the works, shall be devoted to the Socialist propaganda. In fact, I should like to make the executive committee of the Union a sort of board of directors—and in a very different sense from the usual—for the Wanley estate. My personal expenditure deducted, I should like such a committee to have the practical control of funds. All this wealth was made by plunder of the labouring class, and I shall hold it as trustee for them. Do these ideas seem to you of a practical colour?’
Mr. Westlake nodded slowly twice. His wife kept her listening attitude unchanged; her eyes ‘dreamed against a distant goal.’
‘As I see the scheme,’ pursued Richard, who spoke all along somewhat in the lecture-room tone, the result of a certain embarrassment, ‘it will differ considerably from the Socialist experiments we know of. We shall be working not only to support ourselves, but every bit as much set on profit as any capitalist in Belwick. The difference is, that the profit will benefit no individual, but the Cause. There’ll be no attempt to carry out the idea of every man receiving the just outcome of his labour; not because I shouldn’t be willing to share in that way, but simply because we have a greater end in view than to enrich ourselves. Our men must all be members of the Union, and their prime interest must be the advancement of the principles of the Union. We shall be able to establish new papers, to hire halls, and to spread ourselves over the country. It’ll be fighting the capitalist manufacturers with their own weapons. I can see plenty of difficulties, of course. All England ‘ll be against us. Never mind, we’ll defy them all, and we’ll win. It’ll be the work of my life, and we’ll see if an honest purpose can’t go as far as a thievish one.’
The climax would have brought crashing cheers at Commonwealth Hall; in Mr. Westlake’s study it was received with well-bred expressions of approval.
‘Well, Mutimer,’ exclaimed the idealist, ‘all this is intensely interesting, and right glorious for us. One sees at last a possibility of action. I ask nothing better than to be allowed to work with you. It happens very luckily that you are a practical engineer. I suppose the mechanical details of the undertaking are entirely within your province.’
‘Not quite, at present,’ Mutimer admitted, ‘but I shall have valuable help. Yesterday I had a meeting with a man named Rodman, a mining engineer, who has been working on the estate. He seems just the man I shall want; a Socialist already, and delighted to join in the plans I just hinted to him.’
‘Capital! Do you propose, then, that we shall call a special meeting of the Committee? Or would you prefer to suggest a committee of your own?’
‘No, I think our own committee will do very well, at all events for the present. The first thing, of course, is to get the financial details of our scheme put into shape. I go to Belwick again this afternoon; my solicitor must get his business through as soon as possible.’
‘You will reside for the most part at Wanley?’
‘At the Manor, yes. It is occupied just now, but I suppose will soon be free.’
‘Do you know that part of the country, Stella?’ Mr. Westlake asked of his wife.
She roused herself, drawing in her breath, and uttered a short negative.
‘As soon as I get into the house,’ Richard resumed to Mr. Westlake, ‘I hope you’ll come and examine the place. It’s unfortunate that the railway misses it by about three miles, but Rodman tells me we can easily run a private line to Agworth station. However, the first thing is to get our committee at work on the scheme.’ Richard repeated this phrase with gusto. ‘Perhaps you could bring it up at the Saturday meeting?’
‘You’ll be in town on Saturday?’
‘Yes; I have a lecture in Islington on Sunday.’
‘Saturday will do, then. Is this confidential?’
‘Not at all. We may as well get as much encouragement out of it as we can. Don’t you think so?’
‘Certainly.’
Richard did not give expression to his thought that a paragraph on the subject in the Union’s weekly organ, the ‘Fiery Cross,’ might be the best way of promoting such encouragement; but he delayed his departure for a few minutes with talk round about the question of the prudence which must necessarily be observed in publishing a project so undigested. Mr. Westlake, who was responsible for the paper, was not likely to transgress the limits of good taste, and when Richard, on Saturday morning, searched eagerly the columns of the ‘Cross,’ he was not altogether satisfied with the extreme discretion which marked a brief paragraph among those headed: ‘From Day to Day.’ However, many of the readers were probably by that time able to supply the missing proper-name.
It was not the fault of Daniel Dabbs if members of the Hoxton and Islington branch of the Union read the paragraph without understanding to whom it referred. Daniel was among the first