with us. "You know his reputation," said Margaret. "That Normandy
girl. Every one knows about it. I shiver when I look at him. He
seems-oh! like something not of OUR civilisation. He WILL come and
say little things to me."
"Offensive things?"
"No, politenesses and things. Of course his manners are-quite
right. That only makes it worse, I think. It shows he might have
helped-all that happened. I do all I can to make him see I don't
like him. But none of the others make the slightest objection to
him."
"Perhaps these people imagine something might be said for him."
"That's just it," said Margaret.
"Charity," I suggested.
"I don't like that sort of toleration."
I was oddly annoyed. "Like eating with publicans and sinners," I
said. "No!…
But scandals, and the contempt for rigid standards their condonation
displayed, weren't more than the sharp edge of the trouble. "It's
their whole position, their selfish predominance, their class
conspiracy against the mass of people," said Margaret. "When I sit
at dinner in that splendid room, with its glitter and white
reflections and candlelight, and its flowers and its wonderful
service and its candelabra of solid gold, I seem to feel the slums
and the mines and the over-crowded cottages stuffed away under the
table."
I reminded Margaret that she was not altogether innocent of unearned
increment.
"But aren't we doing our best to give it back?" she said.
I was moved to question her. "Do you reallythink," I asked, "that
the Tories and peers and rich people are to blame for social
injustice as we have it to-day? Do you reallysee politics as a
struggle of light on the Liberal side against darkness on the Tory?"
"They MUST know," said Margaret.
I found myself questioning that. I see now that to Margaret it must
have seemed the perversest carping against manifest things, but at
the time I was concentrated simply upon the elucidation of her view
and my own; I wanted to get at her conception in the sharpest,
hardest lines that were possible. It was perfectly clear that she
saw Toryism as the diabolical element in affairs. The thing showed
in its hopeless untruth all the clearer for the fine, clean emotion
with which she gave it out to me. My sleeping peer in the library
at Stamford Court and Evesham talking luminously behind the
Hartstein flowers embodied the devil, and my replete citizen sucking
at his cigar in the National Liberal Club, Willie Crampton
discussing the care and management of the stomach over a specially
hygienic lemonade, and Dr. Tumpany in his aggressive frock-coat
pegging out a sort of right in Socialism, were the centre and
wings of the angelic side. It was nonsense. But how was I to put
the truth to her?
"I don't see things at all as you do," I said. "I don't see things
in the same way."
"Think of the poor," said Margaret, going off at a tangent.
"Think of every one," I said. "We Liberals have done more mischief
through well-intentioned benevolence than all the selfishness in the
world could have done. We built up the liquor interest."
"WE!" cried Margaret. "How can you say that? It's against us."
"Naturally. But we made it a monopoly in our clumsy efforts to
prevent people drinking what they liked, because it interfered with
industrial regularity-"
"Oh!" cried Margaret, stung; and I could see she thought I was
talking mere wickedness.
"That's it," I said.
"But would you have people drink whatever they pleased?"
"Certainly. What right have I to dictate to other men and women?"
"But think of the children!"
"Ah! there you have the folly of modern Liberalism, its half-
cunning, half-silly way of getting at everything in a roundabout
fashion. If neglecting children is an offence, and it IS an
offence, then deal with it as such, but don't go badgering and
restricting people who sell something that may possibly in some
cases lead to a neglect of children. If drunkenness is an offence,
punish it, but don't punish a man for selling honest drink that
perhaps after all won't make any one drunk at all. Don't intensify
the viciousness of the public-house by assuming the place isn't fit
for women and children. That's either spite or folly. Make the
public-house FIT for women and children. Make it a real public-
house. If we Liberals go on as we are going, we shall presently
want to stop the sale of ink and paper because those things tempt
men to forgery. We do already threaten the privacy of the post
because of betting tout's letters. The drift of all that kind of
thing is narrow, unimaginative, mischievous, stupid…"
I stopped short and walked to the window and surveyed a pretty
fountain, facsimile of one in Verona, amidst trim-cut borderings of
yew. Beyond, and seen between the stems of ilex trees, was a great
blaze of yellow flowers…
"But prevention," I heard Margaret behind me, "is the essence of our