Thorne Guy
The Socialist

"Let us go on!" Mary said in a very quiet voice.

They went on.

And now the houses seemed to grow closer together, the fœtid atmosphere became more difficult for unaccustomed lungs to breathe, the roads became more difficult to walk upon, the faces which watched and gibbered round their progress were menacing, more awful, more hopeless.

They walked in a compact body, and then suddenly Inspector Brown turned round to his little battalion.

He addressed Fabian Rose.

"Sir," he said, "I think we have arrived at the starting point. Shall we begin now?"

Mary heard the words, and turned to Fabian Rose.

"Oh, Mr. Rose!" she said, "what terrible places, what dreadful places these are! I had no idea, though I have lived in London all my life, that such places existed. Why, I – oh, I don't know what I mean exactly – but why should such places be?"

"Because, my dear Miss Marriott," Rose answered – and she saw that his face was lit up with excitement and interest – "because of the curse of capitalism, because of the curse of modern life which we are endeavouring to remove."

Mary stamped her little foot upon the ground.

"I see," she said. "Why, I would hang the man who was responsible for all this! Who is he? Tell me!"

Rose looked gravely at her.

"My dear," he answered, "the man who is responsible for all this that immediately surrounds us is the man whom we hope to hold up to the whole of England as a type of menace and danger to the Commonwealth. It is the Duke of Paddington!"

CHAPTER X
NEWS ARRIVES AT OXFORD

On the afternoon when the Bishop of Carlton, Lord Hayle and Lady Constance Camborne had left the Duke of Paddington's rooms in St. Paul's College, Oxford, they went back to the Randolph Hotel, where the bishop and his daughter were staying.

Lord Hayle accompanied them, and the father, his son and daughter, went up to the private sitting-room which the bishop occupied.

The fog – the nasty, damp river mist, rather, which takes the place of fog in Oxford – was now thicker than ever, but a bright fire burnt upon the hearth of the comfortable sitting-room in the hotel, and one of the servants had drawn down the blinds and made the place cheery and home-like.

The Cambornes had only been three days in Oxford, but Lady Constance had already transformed the somewhat bare sitting-room into something of wont and use; the place was full of flowers, all the little personalia that a cultured and wealthy girl carries about with her, showed it. A piano had been brought in, photographs of friends stood about, and the huge writing-table, specially put there for the use of the bishop, stood near the fireplace covered with papers.

The three sat down and some tea was brought.

"Well, Connie dear," Lord Hayle said, "and what do you think of John? You have often heard me talk about him. He is the best friend I have got in the world, and he is one of the finest chaps I know. What do you think of him, Connie?"

"I thought he was charming, Gerald," Lady Constance answered, "far more charming than I had expected. Of course, I have known that you and he have been friends all the time you have been up, but I confess I did not expect to see anybody quite so pleasant and sympathetic."

"My dear girl," Lord Hayle answered, "you don't suppose I should be intimate friends with anybody who was not pleasant and sympathetic?"

"Oh, no, I don't mean that, Gerald," the girl replied; "but, after all, the duke is in quite a special position, isn't he?"

"How do you mean?" said Lord Hayle.

"Well, Gerald, he is not quite like all the other young men one meets of our own class. Of course he is, in a way, but what I mean is that one expected a boy who was so stupendously rich and important to be a little more conscious of it than the duke was. He seemed quite nice and natural."

The bishop, who was sipping his tea and stretching out his shapely, gaitered feet to the fire, gave a little chuckle of satisfaction.

"My dear Constance," he said, "the duke is all you say, of course, in the way of importance and so on, but at the same time, he is just the simple gentleman that one would expect to meet. I also thought him a charming fellow, and I congratulate Gerald upon his friendship."

The bishop sipped his tea and said nothing more. He was gazing dreamily into the fire, while his son and daughter talked together. All was going very well. There was no doubt that the two young people had been mutually pleased with each other. Rich as the Earl of Camborne and Bishop of Carlton was, celebrated as he was, sure as he was of the Archbishopric when dear old Doctor Arbuthnot – now very shaky – should be translated to heaven, Lord Camborne was, nevertheless, not insensible of the fact that a marriage between his daughter and the Duke of Paddington would crown a long and distinguished career with a befitting finis.

His own earldom was as old as the duke's title. There would be nothing incongruous in the match. Yet at the same time it would be a very fine thing indeed. All was well with the world, with the bishop, and the world was still a very pleasant place.

It was now about half-past five.

The bishop, Lady Constance, and Lord Hayle were to dine with Sir Andrew Anderson, a Scotch baronet, who had a seat some eight miles away from Oxford.

The bishop's motor-car was to be ready at half-past six, and they would reach Packington Grange by seven.

"What a blessing it is," the bishop said, breaking in upon the conversation of his son and daughter, "that the automobile has been invented. Here we are, sitting comfortably by the fire at half-past five. There is time to change without hurry or disturbance, and by dinner time we shall be at Packington. In my days, my dear Gerald, if one wanted to dine so far away from Oxford one had to get permission from the dean to stay all night. It would have been impossible for me, as an undergraduate, to go back before college gates were finally shut. You are far more fortunate."

"I don't know about that, father," Lord Hayle replied. "As a matter of fact, I should much prefer to stay the night at Packington, as you and Connie may possibly do so. In fact, I know the dean would give me permission at once, especially as I am with you. However, I quite agree with you about the joys of motoring, as I propose to drive the car back to Oxford myself whether you two return or not."

The bishop smiled. He was proud of his bright, handsome son, who had done him so much credit in his University career, and was already becoming a pronounced favourite of society.

"Well, Gerald," he said, "we look at things from a different point of view. Has the duke any motors, by the way?"

"He has lots of motors," Lord Hayle answered, "but only one up here, which he does not often use. In fact, I use it as much as he does. He is a riding man, you know. He sticks to the horses. Now then, father, I must run back to college and change. I will be back in time to start."

"We had all better change, I think," said the bishop, and smiling at his son he took his daughter by the arm, pinching it playfully, and they left the sitting-room for their respective bedrooms.

As his valet assisted him the bishop thought with a pleasant glow that his daughter had never looked more beautiful.

There was something changed about her. Of that he felt quite certain, and once more he thanked God for all the blessings of his life.

It is a blessed thing, indeed, to be an earl of old lineage, and the bishop of a famous cathedral city, a handsome and portly man, with a beautiful son and daughter, the friend of princes, and designate to the archiepiscopal chair.

Constance, as the maid brushed out that hair like ripe corn, that wonderful hair that so many men had eulogised, so many poets sung of, that hair which was often referred to by the society papers as if it was a national possession, sat thinking over the events of the afternoon.

How charming Gerald's friend was! He seemed so strong and self-contained, yet so simple and so natural. Despite his great position and the enormous figure he made and was to make in the public eye, he was yet the pleasantest of boys. He was unspoiled yet, she reflected, by the whirl and artificial va et vient of society. He had not yet taken up his sceptre, as it were, and had none of the manners of princedom.

The whole scene had etched itself upon her memory. The rich and the sober old college-rooms, the quiet, happy meal, the talk, the music, and then the dramatic telegram announcing the anarchistic outrage to Paddington House in Piccadilly.

How well the duke had taken it all. He had heard that the famous Florentine vase had been destroyed beyond hope of repair, that a picture which the nation would gladly have purchased for a fabulous sum had shown its painted glories to the eyes of the world for the last time.

Yet he had not seemed unduly worried. He had taken the whole thing calmly, and Lady Constance thought it imperative that well-bred people should take everything calmly.

And then, and then – well! he had certainly seemed very pleased to see her. He had been extremely attentive and nice. There had been something in his eyes. She smiled a little to herself, and a faint blush crept into her cheeks. She saw the colour as she looked into the glass and heard the soft swish of the ivory brush as it passed over her tresses.

"I am sure," she thought, "that he is good. He is so unlike the men one meets in society. They all seem to have something behind their words, some thought which is not quite simple and spontaneous, which informs all that they say. Nearly all of them are artificial, but the duke was quite natural and ordinary. I am so glad Gerald has such a nice friend, and he seemed quite pleased to come and stay with us when the term ends. What a good idea it was that we proposed it. It seems odd, indeed, that the poor boy, with his great house in London and all the country seats, should stay at the Carlton or the Ritz when he comes to town. Really, highly placed as he is, he is quite lonely. Well, we'll do all we can to make him happy." Once more she said to herself: "It must be very nice for Gerald to have such a friend!" though even as she thought it she half realised that this was not precisely the sole spring and fountain of her satisfaction with the events of the afternoon.

At half-past six Lady Constance and her father met in the hall. In her long sable robe, and with a fleecy cloud of spun silk from China covering her head, she stood by the side of the earl, splendid in his coat of astrakhan and corded hat. All round them, in the hall of the Randolph, were people who were dressed for dinner standing and talking in groups.

Many heads nodded, and there were many whispers as the two stood there. Every one knew that here was the famous young society beauty, Lady Constance Camborne, and that the majestic old man by her side was her father, the earl, and the Bishop of Carlton.

Then, as the swing doors burst open, and Lord Hayle, in a fur coat and a tweed cap, came bustling in, the onlookers whispered that this was the young viscount who would succeed to everything.

The hall porter, cap in hand, came up to the trio.

The car was waiting for his lordship.

The servants grouped around rushed to the doors. The muttering of the great red motor waiting outside became suddenly redoubled as the earl and his children left the hall. There was a little sigh, and then a buzz of talk, as the three distinguished people disappeared into the night opposite the Museum.

The dinner party at Sir Andrew Anderson's was a somewhat ceremonious function, and was also rather dull.

The Scotch baronet was a "dour laird," who had been a member of the last Government, and the visit was one of those necessary and stately occasions to which people in the bishop's position are subject.

Sir Andrew had no son, and his two daughters were learned girls, who had taken their degree at St. Andrew's University, and looked upon Lady Constance as a mere society butterfly, although they thawed a little when talking to Lord Hayle. It was all over about a quarter-past ten, much earlier than the bishop and Lady Constance had anticipated.

The bishop's suit-case had been put into the car, and Lady Constance also had her luggage. Nothing had been decided as to whether the Cambornes should stay the night or not, though the party had assumed that they would do so. As, however, at a little after ten the conversation languished, and everybody was obviously rather bored with everybody else, the bishop decided to return to Oxford with his son, and before the half-hour struck the great Mercedes car was once more rushing through the wintry Oxfordshire lanes towards the ancient City of Spires.

"Well," Lord Hayle said, "I have never in all my life, father, been to such a dull house, or been so bored. Didn't you feel like that, too, Connie?"

"Indeed, I did, Gerald," the girl answered. "It was perfectly terrible!"

Slowly the bishop replied —

"I know, my dears, that it was not an enlivening entertainment, but Sir Andrew, you must remember, is a very solid man, and is well liked by the country. He will be in the Cabinet when this wretched Radical and Socialistic ministry meets the fate it deserves, and, you know, Hayle, that in our position, it is necessary to endure a good deal sometimes. One must keep in with one's own class. We must be back to back, we must be solid. I have nothing to say against Sir Andrew, except that, of course, he is not a very intellectual man. At the same time, he is liked at court, and is, I believe," the bishop concluded with a chuckle, "one of the most successful breeders of short-horns in the three kingdoms."

The motor-car brought the party back into civilisation. It rolled up the High, past the age-worn fronts of the colleges, brilliantly illuminated now by the tall electric light standards. They flitted by St. Mary's, where Cranmer made his great renunciation, past the new front of Brazenose, up to the now dismantled Carfax.

As they turned The Corn was almost deserted, in a flash they were abreast of the Martyrs' Memorial, and the car was at rest before the doors of Oxford's great hotel.

The three entered the warm, comfortable hall.

"Good-night, father!" Lady Constance said "Good-night, Gerald, I shall go straight up-stairs!"

She kissed her father and brother, and turned to the right towards the lift.

"I think I will have a final smoke, father," Lord Hayle said, "before I go back to college. There's lots of time yet. Shall we go upstairs, or shall we go into the smoking-room?"

"Oh, well, let us go into the smoking-room," said the bishop. "It's a comfortable place."

They gave their coats to an attendant, and went through the door under the stairs into the smoking-room.

No one else was there, though a great fire burned upon the hearth, and drawing two padded armchairs up before it they sat down and lit their cigarettes.

"I think," said the bishop, "that I shall have a glass of Vichy. Will you have anything more, dear boy?"

"No, thanks, father," Lord Hayle answered, "but I will ring the bell for you."

He pressed the button, and the waiter came into the room, shortly afterwards returning with the bishop's aerated water.

Lord Hayle was well known at the Randolph. He sometimes gave dinners there, in preference to using the Mitre or the Clarendon. He and the duke sometimes dined there together.

As he was sitting with his father, quietly talking over the events of the day, one of the managers of the hotel came hurriedly into the smoking-room and up to the earl and the viscount.

"My lord," he said, and his face was very white and agitated. "I fear I have very sad news for you."

There was something in the man's voice that made both the bishop and his son turn round in alarm.

"What is it?" said Lord Hayle.

"My lord," the manager continued, "a telegram has just reached us that there has been a terrible railway accident to the six o'clock train from here to Paddington. We are informed that the Duke of Paddington, your friend, my lord, was in the train, and it is feared that his grace has been killed."

CHAPTER XI
THE DISCOVERY

It really was appalling!

All the others had seen this sort of thing many times, and it did not appeal to them with the same first flush of horror and dismay as it did to Mary Marriott.

She turned to Fabian Rose.

"Oh, Mr. Rose," she said, "it is dreadful, more dreadful than I could ever have thought!"

"There is much worse than this, my dear," he answered in a grave tone, from which all the accustomed mockery had gone. "A painful experience is before you, but you must endure it. At the end of that time – "

Mary looked into the great Socialist's face, and she knew what his unspoken words would have conveyed. She knew well that she was on a trial, a test; that this strange expedition had been devised, not only that her art as an actress might be stimulated to its highest power, but that the very strings of her pity and womanhood should be touched also. Her new friends knew well that when at last she was on the boards of the Park Lane Theatre, acting there for all the rich and fashionable world to see, her work could only accomplish its great mission with success if it came poignantly from her heart.

"Yes," she said in answer to his look, "I am beginning to see, I am beginning to hear the cry of the down-trodden and the oppressed, the wailing of the poor."

Rose nodded gravely.

"Now, Miss Marriott and gentlemen," said Inspector Brown, "we will turn down here, if you please. I should like to show you one or two tenements."

As he spoke he turned to the right, down a narrow alley. Tall, grimy old houses rose up on either side of them, and there was hardly room for two members of the party to walk abreast. The flags upon which they trod were soft with grease and filth. The air was fœtid and chill. It was, indeed, as though they were treading a passage-way to horror!

The whole party came out into a court, a sort of quadrangle some thirty yards by twenty. The space between the houses and the floor of the quadrangle was of beaten earth, though here and there some half-uprooted flagstone showed that it had once been paved. The whole of it was covered with garbage and refuse. Decayed cabbage leaves lay in little pools of greasy water. Old boots and indescribable rags of filthy clothes were piled on heaps of cinders.

As they came into the square Mary shrank back with a little cry; her foot had almost trodden upon a litter of one-day old kittens which had been drowned and flung there.

The houses all round this sinister spot had apparently at one time, though many years ago, been buildings of some substance and importance. Now they wore an indescribable aspect of blindness and misery. There was hardly a whole window in any of the houses. The broken panes were stopped with dirty rags or plastered with newspaper. The doors of the houses stood open, and upon the steps swarms of children – dirty, pale, pallid, and hopeless – squirmed like larvæ. A drunken old woman, her small and ape-like face caked and encrusted with dirt, was reeling from one side of the square to another, singing a hideous song in a cracked gin-ridden voice, which shivered up into the cold, dank air in a forlorn and bestial mockery of music.

"What is this?" Mary said, turning round to the police inspector by her side.

"This, miss," said the bearded man grimly, "is called Taverner's Rents. Every room in these houses is occupied by a family; some rooms are occupied by two families. The people that live here are the poorest of the poor. The boys that sell newspapers, the little shoeless boys and girls who hawk the cheaper kinds of flowers about the streets, the cab-runners, the people who come out at night and pick over the dust-bins for food, those are the people that live here, miss. And there's a fairly active criminal population as well."

Mary shuddered. The inspector noticed her involuntary shrinking.

"Miss," he said, "you have only seen a little of it yet. Wait until I take you inside some of these places, then you will see what life in London can be like."

The clergyman, Mr. Conrad, broke in.

"You have come, Miss Marriott," he said, "now to the home of the utterly degraded and the utterly lost. Nothing I or anybody else can say or do is possible to redeem this generation. Their brains have almost gone, through filth and starvation. They live more terribly than any animal lives. Their lives are too feeble and too awful, either for description or for betterment. It is, indeed, difficult for one who, as myself, believes most thoroughly in the fact that each one of us has an immortal soul, that each one of us in the next world will start again, according to what we have done in this, to realise that the poor creatures whom you have seen now are human. Come!"

It was almost with the slowness and solemnity of a funeral procession that the party passed up the broken steps of one of the houses and entered what had once, in happier bygone days, been the hall of a mansion of some substance and fair-seeming.

The broken stairs stretched up above. The banisters which guarded them had long since been broken and pulled away. The doors all round were almost falling from their hinges.

"Come in here, gentlemen," said the sanitary inspector of the London County Council, pushing a door open with his foot as he did so.

They all followed into a large front room.

A slight fire was burning in a broken grate, and by it, upon a stool, sat an immensely fat woman of middle-age. Her hair was extremely scanty and caught up at the back of her head in a knot hardly bigger than a Tangerine orange. Through the thin dust-coloured threads the dirty pink scalp showed in patches. The face was inordinately large, bloated, and of a waxen yellow. The eyes were little gimlet holes. The mouth, with its thick lips of pale purple, smiled a horrid toothless smile as they came in.

All round the walls of the room were things which had once been mattresses, but from which damp straw was bursting in every direction. These mattresses were black, sodden, and filthy, and upon them – covered, or hardly covered as the case might be, with scraps of old quilt or discarded clothing – lay young children of from one year to eighteen months old. These little mites were almost motionless. Their heads seemed to be extraordinarily large, their unknowing, unseeing eyes blazed in their faces.

The fat woman, suffering from dropsy, rose from her seat and curtsied as she saw the sanitary inspector and his colleagues.

"It is all right, gentlemen," she said in a wee, fawning voice. "There's food on the fire for the little dearies, and they're going to have their meal, bless 'em, as soon as it's boiled up."

She pointed to an iron pot full of something that looked like oatmeal which was simmering upon the few coals.

"That's all right, Mary," the County Council inspector said in a rough but genial voice. "We haven't come to make any trouble to-day. We know you do your best. It is not your fault."

"Thank you, sir," the woman answered, subsiding heavily once more upon her stool. "I have never done away with any children yet, and I am glad you know it. I've never been up before any beak yet, and I does my best. They comes to me when they've got the insurances on the kids, and I ses, 'No,' I ses, 'you take 'em where you know wot you wants will be done. You won't have far to go,' I ses, and so they takes 'em away. 'My bizness,' I ses, 'is open and aboveboard.' I looks arter the kids for a penny a day, and I gives 'm back to their mothers when they comes 'ome, feeding them meanwhile as well as I can."

Mary was standing horror-struck in the middle of the room. She turned to Inspector Brown.

"Oh," she said, "how awful! How terrible! How utterly awful!"

The inspector looked down at her with grave face.

"You may well say so, miss," he answered. "I am a married man myself, and it goes to my heart. But you must know that all this woman says is absolutely true. She is dying of dropsy, and she looks after these children for their mothers while they are at the match factories in Bethnal Green or making shirts in some Jew sweater's den. She is not what you may call a 'baby-farmer.' She is not one of those women who make a profession of killing children by starvation and cold in order that their parents may get the insurance money. As she goes, this woman is honest."

"But look, look!" Mary answered, pointing with quivering finger to the swarming things upon the mattresses.

"I know," the inspector answered, "but, miss, there are worse things than this that you could see in the neighbourhood."

Suddenly Mary's blood, which had been cooled and chilled by the awful spectacle, rose to boiling point in a single second. She felt sick, she said, wheeling round and turning to Fabian Rose – she felt sick that all these terrible things should be. "Why should such things be allowed?"

"My dear," Rose answered very gravely, "it is the fault of our modern system. It is the fault of capitalism. This is one of the reasons why we are Socialists."

"Then," Mary said, her eyes flashing, her breast heaving, "then, Mr. Rose, I am a Socialist, too – from this day, from this hour."

As she spoke she did not see that Aubrey Flood, the actor-manager, was regarding her with a keen, intense scrutiny. He watched her every movement. He listened to every inflection of her voice, and then – even in that den of horror – he turned aside and smiled quietly to himself.

"Yes," he thought, "Fabian was right. Here, indeed, is the one woman who shall make our play a thing which shall beat at the doors of London like a gong."

Inspector Brown spoke to Mary in his calm official voice.

"Now, what should you think, miss," he said, "this woman – Mrs. Church – pays weekly for this room?"

"Pays?" Mary answered. "Pays? Does she pay for such a room as this?"

The fat woman upon the stool answered in a heavy, thick, watery voice: "Pye, miss? I pye eight shillings a week for this ere room."

Mary started; she could not understand it.

"What?" she said with a little stamp of her foot upon the ground.

"It is perfectly true, miss," the County Council inspector interposed. "The rents of these places – these single rooms – are extremely high."

"Then why do they pay them?" Mary asked.

"Because, miss," the inspector answered, "if they didn't they would have nowhere to go at all, except to the workhouse. You see, people of this sort cannot move from where they are. They are as much tied to places of this sort as a prisoner in gaol is confined in his cell. It is either this or the streets."

"But for all that money," Mary said, "surely they could give them a decent place to live in?"

"We are doing all we can, miss, on the County Council, of course," the man replied, "and the workmen's dwellings which are springing up all over London are, indeed, a great improvement, but they are taken up at once by the hard-working artisan class, in more or less regular employment. It would be impossible to let any of the County Council tenements to a woman like this. Her income is so precarious, and there are others far more thrifty and deserving who must have first choice."

"Who is the landlord?" Mary asked. She was standing next to the dropsical woman by the fireside as she spoke.

"Oh, missie" – the woman answered her question – "the 'ead-landlord is Colonel Simpson at the big estyte orffice in Oxford Street, but, of course, we don't never see 'im. The collectors comes raund week by week and we pyes them. If we wants anythink then we arsts them, and they ses they'll mention it at 'eadquarters, but, of course, nuthink does get done. I don't suppose Colonel Simpson ever 'ears of nuthink."

"It is perfectly true, miss," said the inspector. "It is only when we absolutely prosecute the estate agency for some flagrant breach of sanitary regulations that anything can be done in houses like this, and even then the lawyers in their employ are so conversant with all the recent enactments, and so shrewd in the science of evading them, that practically we can do nothing at all."

When Mary turned to Fabian Rose he was standing side by side with the Reverend Peter Conrad.

Both men were looking at her gravely and a little curiously.

"Who is this Colonel Simpson?" she asked. "Could not he be exposed in the Press? Could not he be held up to execration? Could not you, Mr. Goodrick," she said, flashing upon the editor, who had hitherto remained in the background and said no word, "could not you tell the world of the wickedness of this Colonel Simpson?"

The little man with the straw-coloured moustache and the keen eyes smiled.

"Miss Marriott," he said, "you realise very little as yet. You do not know what the forces of capitalism and monopoly mean. Day by day we are driving our chisels into the basis of the structure, and some day it will begin to totter; some day, again, it will fall, but not yet, not yet. Mr. Simpson is a mere nobody. He is a machine. His object in life is to get as much money as he can out of the vast properties which he controls for another. He is an agent, nothing more."

"Then who does this really belong to? Who is really responsible?" Mary asked.

Fabian Rose looked at her very meaningly.

"Once more," he said, "I will pronounce that ill-omened name – the Duke of Paddington."

"Let us go away," Mr. Conrad said suddenly. He noticed that Mary's face was very pale, and that she was swaying a little.

They went out into the hall and stood there for a moment undecided as to what to do.

Mary seemed about to faint.

Suddenly from the back of the hall, steps were heard coming towards them, and in a moment more the face of a clean-shaven man appeared. He was mounting from the stairs that led down into what had once been the kitchens or cellars of the old house.

Just half of his body was visible, when he stopped suddenly, as if turned to stone.

As he did so the bearded Inspector Brown stepped quickly forward and caught him by the shoulder.

"Ah, it is you, is it?" he said. "Come up and let us have a look at you."