Or else, in looking once more for that exquisite scene between Haidee and Don Juan on the beach, we fall unawares upon these lines:

"Year after year they voted cent. per cent., Blood, sweat, and tear-wrung millions—why? for rent! They roared, they dined, they drank, they swore they meant To die for England—why then live?—for rent!

* * * * *

And will they not repay the treasures lent? No; down with everything, and up with rent! Their good, ill, health, wealth, joy, or discontent, Being, end, aim, religion—rent, rent, rent!"

The men who uttered such lines were driven from their class, their homes, and their country. They were despised and hated, like all who protest against oppression and remind the smug world of uncomfortable things. But they were great poets. One of them was our sweetest singer, the other was, when he wrote, the most conspicuous figure in Europe, and the most shattering force. Even England, which cares so little for her greatest inheritance of passionate intellect, cannot yet forget them. But others who sang the same terrible theme she has long forgotten, or she keeps them only on the shelves of curious and dusty investigators. Such men, I mean, as Ebenezer Elliot, Ebenezer Jones, Ernest Jones, Thomas Cooper, William James Linton, and Gerald Massey, who so lately died.

They were not high-born, nor were they shining poets like the twin stars of freedom whom I have quoted. Little scholarship was theirs, little perfection of song. Some had taught themselves their letters at the forge, some in the depths of the mine, some sang their most daring lines in prison cells where they were not allowed even to write down the words. Nearly all knew poverty and hunger at first hand; nearly all were persecuted for righteousness' sake. For maintaining the cause of the poor and the helpless they were mocked and reviled; scorn was their reward. The governing classes whose comfort they disturbed wished them dead; so did the self-righteous classes whose conscience they ruffled. That is the common fate of any man or woman who probes a loathsome evil, too long skimmed over. The peculiarity of these men was that, when they were driven to speak, they spoke in lines that flew on wings through the country. Indignation made their verse, and the burning memory of the wrongs they had seen gave it a power beyond its own expression. Which shall we recall of those ghostly poems, once so quick with flame? Still, at moments of deep distress or public wrong-doing, we may hear the echo of the Corn-law Rhymer's anthem:

"When wilt thou save the people? O God of mercy! when? Not kings and lords, but nations! Not thrones and crowns, but men!"

Or if we read his first little book of rhymes, that may be had for twopence now, we shall find the pictures of the life that was lived under Protection—the sort of life the landlords and their theorists invite us to enact again. From his "Black Hole of Calcutta" we take the lines:

"Bread-tax'd weaver, all can see What that tax hath done for thee, And thy children, vilely led, Singing hymns for shameful bread, Till the stones of every street Know their little naked feet."

Or let us take one verse from the lines, "O Lord, how long?"

"Child, what hast thou with sleep to do? Awake, and dry thine eyes! Thy tiny hands must labour too; Our bread is tax'd—arise! Arise, and toil long hours twice seven, For pennies two or three; Thy woes make angels weep in Heaven— But England still is free."

Or we might recall "The Coming Cry," by Ebenezer Jones, with its great refrain:

"Perhaps it's better than starvation,—once we'll pray, and then We'll all go building workhouses, million, million men!"

Or we might recall Ernest Jones and his "Song of the 'Lower Classes,'" where the first verse runs:

"We plow and sow, we're so very, very low, That we delve in the dirty clay; Till we bless the plain with the golden grain And the vale with the fragrant hay. Our place we know, we're so very, very low, 'Tis down at the landlord's feet; We're not too low the grain to grow, But too low the bread to eat."

Or shall we take one verse from the terrible "Easter Hymn," written by the same true-hearted prisoner for freedom:

"Like royal robes on the King of Jews, We're mocked with rights that we may not use; 'Tis the people so long have been crucified, But the thieves are still wanting on either side.

Chorus—Mary and Magdalen, Peter and John, Swell the sad burden, and bear it on."

The iteration of the idea throughout the poem is tremendous in effect, and the idea comes close to Swinburne's ode, "Before a Crucifix":

"O sacred head, O desecrate, O labour-wounded feet and hands, O blood poured forth in pledge to fate Of nameless lives in divers lands, O slain and spent and sacrificed People, the grey-grown speechless Christ."

Time would fail to tell of Linton's "Torch-Dance of Liberty," or of Massey's "Men of Forty-eight," and there are many more—the utterance of men who spoke from the heart, knowing in their own lives what suffering was. But let us rather turn for a moment to the prose of a man who, also reared in hardship's school, had learnt to succour misery. Speaking at the time when Protection was biting and clawing the ground in the last death-struggle, as all men but the landlords hoped, Carlyle asked this question of the people:

"From much loud controversy, and Corn-law debating, there rises, loud though inarticulate, once more in these years, this very question among others, Who made the Land of England? Who made it, this respectable English Land, wheat-growing, metalliferous, carboniferous, which will let readily, hand over hand, for seventy millions or upwards, as it here lies: who did make it? 'We,' answer the much-consuming Aristocracy; 'We!' as they ride in, moist with the sweat of Melton Mowbray: 'It is we that made it, or are the heirs, assigns and representatives of those who did!'—My brothers, You? Everlasting honour to you, then; and Corn-laws many as you will, till your own deep stomachs cry Enough, or some voice of Human pity for our famine bids you Hold!"

So our fathers have told us, and we have forgotten. It is all very long ago, and the Protectionist says that times have changed. Certainly times have changed, and it was deliverance from Protection that changed them most. But if landowners have changed, if they are now more alien from the people, and richer from other sources than land, we have no reason to suppose them less greedy or more pitiful; nor can a nation live on the off-chance of pity. Seventy years ago the net encompassed the land. We have seen how the people suffered under its entanglement. In the sight of all, landowners and speculators are now trying to spread that net again. Are we to suppose the English people have not the hereditary instinct of sparrows to keep them outside its meshes?



XIV

THE GRAND JURY

When Mr. Clarkson, of the Education Office, received a summons to attend the Grand Jury, or to answer the contrary at his peril, he was glad. "For now," he thought, "I shall share in the duties of democracy and be brought face to face with the realities of life."

"Mrs. Wilson," he said to the landlady, as she brought in his breakfast, "what does this summons mean by describing the Court as being in the suburbs of the City of London? Is there a Brixton Branch?"

"O Lordy me!" cried the landlady, "I do hope, sir, as you've not got yourself mixed up with no such things; but the Court's nigh against St. Paul's, as I know from going there just before my poor nephew passed into retirement, as done him no good."

"The summons," Mr. Clarkson went on, "the summons says I'm to inquire, present, do, and execute all and singular things with which I may be then and there enjoined. Why should only the law talk like that?"

"Begging your pardon, sir," replied the landlady, "I sometimes do think it comes of their dressing so old-fashioned. But I'd ask it of you not to read me no more of such like, if you'd be so obliging. For it do make me come over all of a tremble."

"I wonder if her terror arises from the hideousness of the legal style or from association of ideas?" thought Mr. Clarkson as he opened a Milton, of which he always read a few lines every morning to dignify the day.

On the appointed date, he set out eastward with an exhilarating sense of change, and thoroughly enjoyed the drive down Holborn among the crowd of City men. "It's rather strangely like going to the seaside," he remarked to the man next him on the motor-'bus. The man asked him if he had come from New Zealand to see the decorations, and arrived late. "Oh no," said Mr. Clarkson, "I seldom think the Colonies interesting, and I distrust decoration in every form."

It was unfortunate, but the moment he mounted the Court stairs, the decoration struck him. There were the expected scenes, historic and emblematic of Roman law, blindfold Justice, the Balance, the Sword, and other encouraging symbols. But in one semicircle he especially noticed a group of men, women, and children, dancing to the tabor's sound in naked freedom. "Please, could you tell me," he asked of a stationary policeman, "whether that scene symbolises the Age of Innocence, before Law was needed, or the Age of Anarchy, when Law will be needed no longer?"

"Couldn't rightly say," answered the policeman, looking up sideways; "but I do wish they'd cover them people over more decent. They're a houtrage on respectable witnesses."

"All art—" Mr. Clarkson was beginning, when the policeman said "Grand Jury?" and pushed him through a door into a large court. A vision of middle-age was there gathering, and a murmur of complaint filled the room—the hurried breakfast, the heat, the interrupted business, the reported large number of prisoners, likely to occupy two days, or even three.

Silence was called, and four or five elderly gentlemen in black-and-scarlet robes—"wise in their wigs, and flamboyant as flamingoes," as a daily paper said of the judges at the Coronation—some also decorated with gilded chains and deep fur collars, in spite of the heat, entered from a side door and took their seats upon a raised platform. Each carried in his hand a nosegay of flowers, screwed up tight in a paper frill with lace-work round the edges, like the bouquets that enthusiasts or the management throw to actresses.

"Are those flowers to cheer the prisoners?" Mr. Clarkson whispered, "or are they the rudimentary survivals of the incense that used to counteract the smell and infection of gaol-fever?"

"Covent Garden," was the reply, and the list of jurors was called. The first twenty-three were sent into another room to select their foreman, and, though Mr. Clarkson had not the slightest desire to be chosen, he observed that the other jurors did not even look in his direction. Finally, a foreman was elected, no one knew for what reasons, and all went back to the Court to be "charged." A gentleman in black-and-scarlet made an hour's speech, reviewing the principal cases with as much solemnity as if the Grand Jury's decisions would affect the Last Judgment, and Mr. Clarkson began to realise his responsibility so seriously that when the jurors were dismissed to their duties, he took his seat before a folio of paper, a pink blotting-pad, and two clean quill pens, with a resolve to maintain the cause of justice, whatever might befall.

"Page eight, number twenty-one," shouted the black-robed usher, who guided the jurors as a dog guides sheep, and wore the cheerful air of congenial labour successfully performed. Turning up the reference in the book of cases presented to each juror, Mr. Clarkson found: "Charles Jones, 35, clerk; forging and uttering, knowing the same to be forged, a receipt for money, to wit, a receipt for fees on a plaint note of the Fulham County Court, with intent to defraud."

"This threatens to be a very abstruse case," he remarked to a red-faced juror on his right.

"A half of bitter would elucidate it wonderful to my mind," was the answer.

But already a policeman had been sworn, and given his evidence with the decisiveness of a gramophone.

"Any questions?" said the foreman, looking round the table. No one spoke.

"Signify, gentlemen, signify!" cried the genial usher, and all but Mr. Clarkson held up a hand.

"Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve," counted the usher, totting up the hands till he reached a majority. "True Bill, True Bill! Next case. Page eleven, number fifty-two."

"Do you mean to tell me that is all?" asked Mr. Clarkson, turning to his neighbour.

"Say no more, and I'll make it a quart," replied the red-faced man, ticking off the last case and turning up the new one, in which a doctor was already giving his evidence against a woman charged with the wilful murder of her newly-born male child.

"Signify, gentlemen, signify!" cried the usher. "Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve. True Bill, True Bill! Next case. Page fourteen, number seventy-two."

"Stop a moment," stammered Mr. Clarkson, half rising; "if you please, stop one moment. I wish to ask if we are justified in rushing through questions of life and death in this manner. What do we know of this woman, for instance—her history, her distress, her state of mind?"

"Sit down!" cried some. "Oh, shut it!" cried others. All looked at him with the amused curiosity of people in a tramcar looking at a talkative child. The usher bustled across the room, and said in a loud and reassuring whisper: "All them things has got nothing to do with you, sir. Those is questions for the Judge and Petty Jury upstairs. The magistrates have sat on all these cases already and committed them for trial; so all you've got to do is to find a True Bill, and you can't go wrong."

"If we can't go wrong, there's no merit in going right," protested Mr. Clarkson.

"Next case. Page fourteen, number seventy-two," shouted the usher again, and as the witness was a Jew, his hat was sent for. "There's a lot of history behind that hat," said Mr. Clarkson, wishing to propitiate public opinion.

"Wish that was all there was behind it," said the juror on his left. The Jew finished his evidence and went away. The foreman glanced round, and the usher had already got as far as "Signify," when a venerable juror, prompted by Mr. Clarkson's example, interposed.

"I should like to ask that witness one further question," he said in a fine Scottish accent, and after considerable shouting, the Jew was recalled.

"I should like to ask you, my man," said the venerable juror, "how you spell your name?" The name was spelt, the juror carefully inscribed it on a blank space opposite the charge, sighed with relief, and looked round. "Signify, gentlemen, signify!" cried the usher. "Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve. True Bill, True Bill! Next case. Page six, number eleven."

Number eleven was a genuine murder case, and sensation pervaded the room when the murdered man's wife was brought in, weeping. She sobbed out the oath, and the foreman, wishing to be kind, said, encouragingly, "State briefly what you know of this case."

She sobbed out her story, and was led away. The foreman glanced round the tables.

"I think we ought to hear the doctor," said the red-faced man. The doctor was called and described a deep incised wound, severing certain anatomical details.

"I think we ought to hear the constable," said the red-faced man, and there was a murmur of agreement. A policeman came in, carrying a brown paper parcel. Having described the arrest, he unwrapped a long knife, which was handed round the tables for inspection. When it reached the red-faced juror, he regarded the blade closely up and down, with gloating satisfaction. "Are those stains blood?" he asked the policeman.

"Yes, sir; them there is the poor feller's blood."

The red-faced man looked again, and suddenly turning upon Mr. Clarkson, went through a pantomime of plunging the knife into his throat. At Mr. Clarkson's horrified recoil he laughed himself purple.

"Well said the Preacher you may know a man by his laughter," Mr. Clarkson murmured, while the red-faced man patted him amicably on the back.

"No offence, I hope; no offence!" he said. "Come and have some lunch. I always must, and I always do eat a substantial lunch. Nice, juicy cut from the joint, and a little dry sherry? What do you say?"

"Thank you very much indeed," said Mr. Clarkson, instantly benign. "You are most kind, but I always have coffee and a roll and butter."

"O my God!" exclaimed the red-faced man, and speaking across Mr. Clarkson to another substantial juror, he entered into discussion on the comparative merits of dry sherry and champagne-and-bitters.

Soon after two they both returned in the comfortable state of mind produced by the solution of doubt. But Mr. Clarkson's doubts had not been solved, and his state of mind was far from comfortable. All through the lunch hour he had been tortured by uncertainty. A plain duty confronted him, but how could he face it? He hated a scene. He abhorred publicity as he abhorred the glaring advertisements in the streets. He had never suffered so much since the hour before he had spoken at the Oxford Union on the question whether the sense for beauty can be imparted by instruction. He closed his eyes. He felt the sweat standing on his forehead. And still the cases went on. "Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve. True Bill. True Bill. Two, four, six, eight...."

"Now then, sleepy!" cried the red-faced man in his ear, giving him a genial dig with his elbow. Mr. Clarkson quivered at the touch, but he rose.

"Gentlemen," he began, "I wish to protest against the continuation of this farce."

The jury became suddenly alert, and his voice was drowned in chaos. "Order, order! Chair, chair!" they shouted. "Everybody's doing it!" sang one.

"I call that gentleman to order," said the foreman, rising with dignity. "He has previously interrupted and delayed our proceedings, without bringing fresh light to bear upon our investigations. After the luncheon interval, I was pleased to observe that for one cause or another—I repeat, for one cause or another—he was distinctly—shall I say somnolent, gentlemen? Yes, I will say somnolent. And I wish to inform him that the more somnolent he remains, the better we shall all be pleased."

"Hear, hear! Quite true!" shouted the jury.

"Does it appear to you, sir, fitting to sit here wasting time?" Mr. Clarkson continued, with diminishing timidity. "Does it seem to you a proper task for twenty-three apparently rational beings—"

"Twenty-two! Twenty-two!" cried the red-faced man, adding up the jurors with the end of a pen, and ostentatiously omitting Mr. Clarkson.

The jurors shook with laughter. They wiped tears from their eyes. They rolled their heads on the pink blotting-paper in their joy. When quiet was restored, the foreman proceeded:

"I have already ruled that gentleman out of order, and I warn him that if he perseveres in his contumacious disregard of common decency and the chair, I shall proceed to extremities as the law directs. We are here, gentlemen, to fulfil a public duty as honourable British citizens, and here we will remain until that duty is fulfilled, or we will know the reason why."

He glanced defiantly round, assuming an aspect worthy of the last stand at Maiwand. Looking at Mr. Clarkson as turkeys might look at a stray canary, the jurors expressed their applause.

But the genial usher took pity, and whispered across the table to him, "It'll all come right, sir; it'll all come right. You wait a bit. The Grand Jury always rejects one case before it's done; sometimes two."

And sure enough, next morning, while Mr. Clarkson was reading Burke's speeches which he had brought with him, one of the jurors objected to the evidence in the eighty-seventh case. "We cannot be too cautious, gentlemen," he said, "in arriving at a decision in these delicate matters. The apprehension of blackmail in relation to females hangs over every living man in this country."

"Delicate matters; blackmail; relation to females; great apprehension of blackmail in these delicate matters," murmured the jury, shaking their heads, and they threw out the Bill with the consciousness of an independent and righteous deed.

Soon after midday, the last of the cases was finished, and having signified a True Bill for nearly the hundredth time, the jurors were conducted into the Court where a prisoner was standing in the dock for his real trial. As though they had saved a tottering State, the Judge thanked them graciously for their services, and they were discharged.

"Just a drop of something to show there's no ill-feeling?" said the red-faced man as they passed into the street.

"Thank you very much," replied Mr. Clarkson warmly. "I assure you I have not the slightest ill-feeling of any kind. But I seldom drink."

"Bless my soul!" said the red-faced man. "Then, what do you do?"



XV

A NEW CONSCRIPTION

When the Territorial exclaims that, for his part, he would refuse to inhabit a planet on which there was no hope of war, the peaceful listener shudderingly charges the inventor of Territorials with promoting a bloodthirsty mind. After all the prayers for peace in our time—prayers in which even Territorials are expected to join on church parade—it appears an impious folly to appraise war as a necessity for human happiness. Or if indeed it be a blessing, however much in disguise, why not boldly pray to have the full benefit of it in our time, instead of passing it on, like unearned increment, for the advantage of posterity? Such a thing is unimaginable. A prayer for war would make people jump; it would empty a church quicker than the collection. Nevertheless, it is probable that the great majority of every congregation does in its heart share the Territorial's opinion, and, if there were no possibility of war ever again anywhere in the world, they would find life upon this planet a trifle flat.

The impulse to hostilities arises not merely from the delight in scenes of blood enjoyed at a distance, though that is the commonest form of military ardour, and in many a bloody battle the finest fruits of victory are reaped over newspapers and cigars at the bar or in the back garden. There is no such courage as glows in the citizen's bosom when he peruses the telegrams of slaughter, just as there is no such ferocity as he imbibes from the details of a dripping murder. "War! War! Bloody war! North, South, East, or West!" cries the soldier in one of Mr. Kipling's pretty tales; but in real life that cry arises rather from the music-halls than from the soldier, and many a high-souled patriot at home would think himself wronged if perpetual peace deprived him of his one opportunity of displaying valour to his friends, his readers, or his family. All these imaginative people, whose bravery may be none the less genuine for being vicarious, must be reckoned as the natural supporters of war, and, indeed, one can hardly conceive any form of distant conflict for which they would not stand prepared.

But still, the widespread dislike of peace is not entirely derived from their prowess; nor does it spring entirely from the nursemaid's love of the red coat and martial gait, though this is on a far nobler plane, and comes much nearer to the heart of things. The gleam of uniforms in a drab world, the upright bearing, the rattle of a kettledrum, the boom of a salute, the murmur of the "Dead March," the goodnight of the "Last Post" sounding over the home-faring traffic and the quiet cradles—one does not know by what substitutes eternal peace could exactly replace them. For they are symbols of a spiritual protest against the degradation of security. They perpetually re-assert the claim of a beauty and a passion that have no concern with material advantages. They sound defiance in the dull ears of comfort, and proclaim woe unto them that are at ease in the city of life. Dimly the nursemaid is aware of the protest; most people are dimly aware of it; and the few who seriously labour for an unending reign of peace must take it into account.

It is useless to allure mankind by promises of a pig's paradise. Much has been rightly written about the horrors of war. Everyone knows them to be sudden, hideous, and overwhelming; those who have seen them can speak also of the squalor, the filthiness, the murderous swindling, and the inconceivable absurdity of the whole monstrous performance. But the horrors of peace, if not so obvious, come nearer to our daily life, and we are naturally terrified at its softness, its monotony, and its enfeebling relaxation. Of all people in the world the wealthy classes of England and America are probably the furthest removed from danger, and no one admires them in the least; no one in the least envies their treadmill of successive pleasures. The most unwarlike of men are haunted by the fear that perpetual peace would induce a general degeneration of soul and body such as they now behold amid the rich man's sheltered comforts. They dread the growth of a population slack of nerve, soft of body, cruel through fear of pain, and incapable of endurance or high endeavour. They dread the entire disappearance of that clear decisiveness, that disregard of pleasure, that quiet devotion of self in the face of instant death, which are to be found, now and again, in the course of every war. Even peace, they say, may be bought too dear, and what shall it profit a people if it gain a swill-tub of comforts and lose its own soul?

The same argument is chosen by those who would persuade the whole population to submit to military training, whether it is needful for the country's defence or not. Under such training, they suppose, the virtues that peace imperils would be maintained; a sense of equality and comradeship would pervade all classes, and for two or three years of life the wealthy would enjoy the realities of labour and discomfort. It is a tempting vision, and if this were the only means of escape from such a danger as is represented, the wealthy would surely be the first to embrace it for their own salvation. But is there no other means? asked Professor William James, and his answer to the question was that distinguished psychologist's last service. What we are looking for, he rightly said, is a moral equivalent for war, and he suddenly found it in a conscription, not for fighting, but for work. After showing that the life of many is nothing else but toil and pain, while others "get no taste of this campaigning life at all," he continued:

"If now—and this is my idea—there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against nature, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other benefits to the commonwealth would follow. The military ideals of hardihood and discipline would be wrought into the growing fibre of the people; no one would remain blind, as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's real relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently solid and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dish-washing, clothes-washing, and window-washing, to road-building and tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas."

Here, indeed, is a vision more tempting than ever conscription was. To be sure, it is not new, for Ruskin had a glimpse of it, and that was why he induced the Oxford undergraduates to vary their comfortable Greek studies and games at ball with a little honest work upon the Hinksey road. But the vision is irresistible. There cannot be the smallest doubt it will be realised, and when the young dukes, landed proprietors, financiers, motorists, officers in the Guards, barristers, and curates are marched off in gangs to their apportioned labour in the stoke-holes, coal-mines, and December fishing fleets, how the workmen will laugh, how exult!

Nor let it be supposed that the conscription would subject even the most luxurious conscripts to any unendurable hardship. So hateful is idleness to man that the toil of the poor is continually being adopted by the rich as sport. To climb a mountain was once the irksome duty of the shepherd and wandering hawker; now it is the privilege of wealth to hang by the finger-nails over an abyss. Once it was the penalty of slaves to pull the galleys; now it is only the well-to-do who labour day by day at the purposeless oar, and rack their bodies with a toil that brings home neither fish nor merchandise. Once it fell to the thin bowman and despised butcher to provide the table with flesh and fowl; now, at enormous expense, the rich man plays the poulterer for himself, and statesmen seek the strenuous life in the slaughter of a scarcely edible rhinoceros. Let the conscripts of comfort take heart. They will run more risks in the galleries of the mines than on the mountain precipice, and one night's trawl upon the Dogger Bank would provide more weight of fish than if they whipped the Tay from spring to winter.

Under this great conscription, a New Model would, indeed, be initiated, as far superior to the conscript armies as Cromwell's Ironsides were to the mercenaries of their time. The whole nation from prince to beggar would by this means be transformed, labour would cease to be despised or riches to be worshipped, the reproach of effeminacy would be removed, the horrors of peace mitigated, and the moral equivalent of war discovered. For the first time a true comradeship between class and class would arise, for, as Goethe said, work makes the comrade, and democracy might have a chance of becoming a reality instead of a party phrase. After three years' service down the sewers or at the smelting works, our men of leisure would no longer raise their wail over national degeneracy or the need of maintaining the standard of hardihood by barrack-square drill. As things are now, it is themselves who chiefly need the drill. "Those who live at ease," said Professor James, "are an island on a stormy ocean." In the summing up of the nation they, in their security, would hardly count, were they not so vocal; but the molten iron, the flaming mine, the whirling machine, the engulfing sea, and hunger always at the door take care that, for all but a very few among the people, the discipline of danger and perpetual effort shall not be wanting. You do not find the pitman, the dustman, or the bargee puling for bayonet exercise to make them hard, and if our nervous gentlemen were all serving the State in those capacities, they might even approach their addition sums in "Dreadnoughts" without a tremor. Besides, as Professor James added for a final inducement, the women would value them more highly.



XVI

THE LAST OF THE RUNNYMEDES

The high debate was over, and Lord Runnymede issued from the House, proud in his melancholy, like a garrison withdrawing from a fortress with colours flying and all the honours of war. He had sent a messenger (he called him an "orderly") for his carriage. He might have telephoned, but he disliked the Board-School voice that said "Number, please!" and he still more disliked the idea of a coachman speaking down a tube (as he imagined it) into his ear. Not that he was opposed to inventions, or the advance of science as such. He recognised the necessity of progress, and had not openly reproached his own sister when she instituted a motor in place of her carriage. But for himself the two dark bays were waiting—heads erect, feet firmly planted on the solid earth. For he loved horses, and the Runnymede stables maintained the blood of King Charles's importations from Arabian chivalry. Besides, what manners, what sense, could be expected of a chauffeur, occupied with oily wheels and engines, instead of living things and corn?

Some of the small crowd standing about the gate recognised him as he came out, and one called his name and said "What ho!" For his appearance was fairly well known through political caricatures, which usually represented him in plate-armour, holding a spear, and wearing a coat-of-arms. He had once instructed his secretary to write privately to an editor pointing out that the caricaturist had committed a gross error in heraldry; but in his heart he rather enjoyed the pictures, and it was the duty of one of his maids to stick them into a scrap-book, inscribed with the proper dates, for the instruction and entertainment of his descendants. In fact, he had lately been found showing the book to a boy of three, who picked out his figure by its long nose, and said "Granpa!" with unerring decision.

But what was the good of son or grandchild now? He had nothing to hand down to them but the barren title, the old estate, and wealth safely invested in urban land and financial enterprises which his stockbroker recommended. Titles, estates, and wealth were but shadows without the vitalising breath of power. Cotton-spinners, boot-finishers, purveyors of food at popular prices could now possess such things, and they appeared to enjoy them. There were people, he believed, satisfied with comfort, amusements, rounds of visits, social ambitions, and domestic or luxurious joys. But for a Runnymede thus to decline would be worse than extinction.

For six centuries the Runnymedes had served their country. Edward I had summoned one of them to his "model Parliament," and the present lord could still spell out a word or two of the ancient writ that hung framed in the hall at Stennynge, with the royal seal attached. Two of his ancestors had died by public violence (one killed in battle, fighting for the Yorkists, who Lord Runnymede inclined to think represented the Legitimist side; the other executed under Elizabeth, apparently by mistake), and regretting there were not more, he had searched the records of the Civil Wars and the 'Forty-five in vain. But never had a Runnymede failed in Parliament, or the Council of the King, as he preferred to call it; and their name had frequently appeared among the holders of subordinate but dignified offices, such as the Mastership of the Buckhounds, to which special knowledge gave an honourable claim.

Trained from his first pony in political tradition, and encouraged by every gamekeeper to follow the footsteps of his ancestors, Lord Runnymede had inevitably taken "Noblesse oblige" as his private motto. But of what service was nobility if its obligations were abolished? He sometimes pictured with a shudder the fate of the surviving French nobility—retaining their titles by courtesy, and compelled to fritter away their lives upon chateaux, travelling, aeroplanes, or amatory intrigues, instead of directing their wisdom and influence to the right government of the State. The guillotine was better. He could not imagine his descendants without a House of Lords to sit in. Without the Lords, he was indeed the last of the Runnymedes, and upon the scaffold he might at least die worthy of his name.

Compromise he despised as the artifice of lawyers and upstart politicians. It had been a dagger in his heart to hear his leader speaking of some readjustment between the two Houses as inevitable. He denied the necessity, unless the readjustment augmented the power of the Lords. Planting himself on Edward I's statute, he had vehemently maintained the right of the Lords to control finance, though he was willing to allow the commercial gentlemen in the Commons the privilege of working out the figures of national income and expenditure. He now regarded the threatened creation of Peers as a gross insult to public decency. Properly speaking, he protested, Peers cannot be created. You might as well put terriers into kennels and call them foxhounds. Now and then a distinguished soldier or even a statesman could be ennobled without much harm; and he supposed there was something to be said for a learned man, and a writer or two, though he preferred them to be childless. He had once published a book himself, with the Runnymede arms on the cover. But the thought of making Lords by batches vulgarised the King's majesty, and reversed the order of nature. "Are we worse than Chinamen," he asked, "that we seek to confer nobility on fellows sprung from unknown forefathers?" The Archbishop of Canterbury had appealed to the House to approach the question with mutual consideration and respect, high public spirit and common sense. But on such a question consideration was dangerous, and common sense fatal. He wished the Bishops had stuck to their own Convocation from Plantagenet times, instead of intruding their inharmonious white sleeves where they were not wanted. He was sorry he had subscribed so handsomely to the restoration of Stennynge Church. He ought to have ear-marked his contribution for the Runnymede aisle.

Worse still, the Archbishop had mentioned "the average voter in tramcar or railway train," and the words had called up a haunting vision of disgust. He often said that he had no objection to the working classes as such. He rather liked them. He found them intelligent and unpretentious. He could converse with them without effort, and they always had the interest of sport in common. He felt no depression in passing through the working quarters of the city, and at Stennynge he was well acquainted with all the cottagers and farmers alike. In one family he had put out a puppy at walk; in another he had let off a man who had poached a pheasant when his wife was ill; in a third he had stood godfather to the baby when the father was killed falling from a stack. He felt a kind of warmth towards the poor whenever he saw them upon his own estate.

But of the average voter, such as the Archbishop described, he could not think without pain and apprehension. Coming to London from any part of the country, he always closed his eyes as the train entered the suburbs. Those long rows of monotonous little houses—so decent, so uneventful, so temporary—oppressed him like a physical disease. If he contemplated them, they induced violent dyspepsia, such as he had once incurred by visiting the Crystal Palace. The consciousness that they were there, even as he passed through tunnels, lowered his vitality until he reached his town house or club in the centre of things. Not even the considerable income he derived from land on the outskirts of a large manufacturing town consoled him for the horror of the town's extension. In those uniform houses—in their railings, their Venetian blinds, indiarubber plants, and stained-glass panels to the doors—he beheld the coming degradation of his country. He saw them, like great armies of white or red ants, creeping over the land, devouring all that was beautiful in it, or ancient, or redolent of grandeur. Bit by bit, street by street, the ignoble, the tidy, the pettiness of the parlour, was gaining upon splendour and renown, and the anticipation of the change cast a foreboding sadness over the beauty of his own ancestral home. It tainted even his unuttered pride in his son, who had been at Eton without expulsion, and served two years in the Foot Guards without discredit. And now, there was his grandson.

What future could be theirs? Should a Runnymede sit in a House shorn of its prerogatives, bound to impotence, reduced to a mere echo of popular caprice, with hardly the delaying power of a chaperon at a ball? Or should a son of his trot round from door to door, seeking the suffrages of those distressing suburbs at the polls—a son whose ancestry had known the favour of princes, and withstood foes and traitors upon the field? Lord Runnymede himself had never thought of election, even before the House of Lords received him. Yet if you wanted representatives, who was more truly representative of his own estates and the interests of every soul upon it—interests identical with his own? Who was more fit to control the country than a man who had breathed the atmosphere of State from childhood, and learnt history from the breast-plates, the swords, the cloaks, the wigs, and the side-whisker portraits of men whose very blood beat in his heart?

As the carriage went down Piccadilly, he was overwhelmed with the darkness of the prospect. He saw an ancient country staggering from side to side on its road to ruin, while the hands which had directed and steadied it for centuries lay bound or idle. He saw coverts and meadows and cornfields eaten away by desirable residences, angular garden cities, and Socialist communities. He saw his own Stennynge advertised for plots, and its relics catalogued for a museum, while factories spouted smoke from its lawns and shrubberies, and if a Runnymede survived, he lived in a rough-cast villa, like an eagle in a cage at the Zoo. The soul of all his ancestors rose within him. Never should it happen while he had a sword to draw. At least he could display the courage of the fine old stock. If he submitted to the degradation, he would feel himself a coward, unfit for the position he and his fathers had occupied. Let the enemy do their worst; they should find him steady at his post. Before him lay one solemn duty still to be performed for God and country. The spirit of noble sacrifice was not dead. The populace should see how an aristocrat still could die. Come what might, he would vote against the third reading of the Bill!

Dismounting from his carriage, he approached the entrance-porch of his house with so proud and resolute a bearing that three hatless working-girls passing by, in white frocks, with arms interlaced, all cried out "Percy!" as their ironic manner is.



XVII

CHILDREN OF THE STATE

I

Mrs. Reeve was an average widow with encumbrances. Ten years before she had married a steady-going man—a cabinet-maker during working hours, and something of a Dissenter and a Radical in the evenings and on Sundays. His wages had touched thirty shillings, and they had lived in three rooms, first floor, in a quiet neighbourhood, keeping themselves to themselves, as they boasted without undue pride. In their living-room was a flowery tablecloth; a glass shade stood on the mantelpiece; there were a few books in a cupboard. They had thoughts of buying a live indiarubber plant to stand by the window, when unexpectedly the man died.

He had followed the advice of economists. He had practised thrift. During his brief illness his society had supplied a doctor, and it provided a comfortable funeral. His widow was left with a small sum in hand to start her new life upon, and she increased it by at once pawning the superfluous furniture and the books. She lost no time hanging about the old home. Within a week she had dried her eyes, washed out her handkerchiefs, made a hatchment of her little girl's frock with quarterings of crape, piled the few necessities of existence on a barrow and settled in a single room in the poorest street of the district.

It was not much of a place, and it cost her half a crown a week, but in six months she had come to think of it as a home. She had brushed the ceiling and walls, and scrubbed the boards, the children helping. She had added the touch of art with advertisements and picture almanacs. A bed for the three children stood in one corner—a big green iron bed, once her own. On the floor was laid a mattress for herself and the baby. Round it she hung her shawl and petticoats as a screen over some lengths of cords. Right across the room ran a line for the family's bits of washing. A tiny looking-glass threw mysterious rays on to the ceiling at night. On the whole, it really was not so bad, she thought, as she looked round the room one evening. Only unfortunately her capital had been slipping away shilling by shilling, and the first notice to quit had been served that day. She was what she called "upset" about it.

"Now, Alfred," she said to her eldest boy, "it's time I got to my work, and it won't do for you to start gettin' 'ungry again after yer teas. So you put yerself and Lizzie to bed, and I'll make a race of it with Hen and the baby."

"There now," she said when the race was over, "that's what's called a dead 'eat, and that's a way of winnin' as saves the expense of givin' a prize."

With complete disregard for the theorising of science, she then stuck the poker up in front of the bars to keep the fire bright.

"Now, Alfred," she said, "you mind out for baby cryin', and if she should 'appen to want for anythink, just give a call to Mrs. Thomas through the next door."

"Right you are," said Alfred, feeling as important as a 'bus conductor.

Mrs. Reeve hurried towards the City to her work. Office cleaning was the first thing that had offered itself, and she could arrange the hours so as to look after the children between whiles. Late at night and again early in the morning she was in the offices, and she earned a fraction over twopence an hour.

"You're not seemin' exackly saloobrious to-night, my dear," said the old woman who had lately come to the same staircase, as they began to scour the stone with whitening. "I do 'ope 'e ain't been layin' 'is 'and on yer."

"My 'usband didn't 'appen to be one of them sort, thankin' yer kindly," said Mrs. Reeve.

"Oh, a widder, and beggin' yer pardon. And you'll 'ave children, of course?"

"Four," said Mrs. Reeve, and she thought of them asleep in the firelight.

The old woman—a mere bundle with a pair of eyes in it—looked at her for a moment, and pretending out of delicacy to be talking to herself, she muttered loud enough to be heard: "Oh, that's where it is, is it? There's four, same as I've buried. And a deal too many to bring up decent on ten shillin' a week. Why, I'd sooner let the Poor Law 'ave 'em, though me and the old man 'ad to go into the 'Ouse for it. And that's what I said to Mrs. Green when Mrs. Turner was left with six. And Mrs. Turner she went and done it. An uncommon sensible woman, was Mrs. Turner, not like some as don't care what comes to their children, so long as they're 'appy theirselves."

In the woman's words Mrs. Reeve heard the voice of mankind condemning her. She knew it was all true. The thought had haunted her for days, and that she might not hear more, she drowned the words by sousing about the dirty water under the hiss of the scouring brush.

But when she reached home just before midnight, her mind was made up. Her husband had always insisted that the children should be well fed and healthy. He had spoken with a countryman's contempt of the meagre Cockney bodies around them. One at least should go. She lit the candle, and stood listening to their sleep. Suddenly the further question came—which of the four? Should it be Alfred, the child of her girlhood, already so like his father, though he was only just nine? She couldn't get on without him, he was so helpful, could be trusted to light the lire, sweep the room and wash up. It could not possibly be Alfred. Should it be Lizzie, her little girl of five, so pretty and nice to dress in the old days when even her father would look up from his book with a grunt of satisfaction at her bits of finery on Sundays? But a girl must always need the mother's care. It couldn't possibly be Lizzie. Or should it be little Ben, lying there with eyes sunk deep in his head, and one arm outside the counterpane? Why, Ben was only three. A few months ago he had been the baby. It couldn't possibly be little Ben. And then there was the baby herself—well, of course, it couldn't be the baby.

So the debate went on, in a kind of all-night sitting. At half-past five she started for the offices again, sleepless and undecided.

That afternoon she went to the relieving officer at the workhouse. Two days later she was waiting among other "cases" in a passage there, under an illuminated text: "I have not seen the righteous forsaken." In her turn she was ushered into the presence of the Board from behind a black screen. A few questions were put with all the delicacy which time and custom allowed. There was a brief discussion.

"Quite a simple case," said the chairman. "My good woman, the Guardians will undertake to relieve you of two children to prevent the whole lot of you coming on the rates. Send the two eldest to the House at once, and they will be drafted into our school in due course. Good morning to you. Next case, please."

She could do nothing but obey. Alfred and Lizzie were duly delivered at the gate. Bewildered and terrified, hoping every hour to be taken home, they hung about the workhouse, and became acquainted with the flabby pallor and desperate sameness of the pauper face. After two days they were whirled away, they knew not where, in something between a brougham and an ambulance cart.

"You lay, Liz, they're goin' to make us Lord Mayors of London, same as Whittington, and we'll all ride in a coach together," said Alfred, excited by the drive, and amazed at the two men on the box. Then they both laughed with the cheerful irony of London children.

II

It was an afternoon in early October, the day after Alfred and Lizzie had been removed from the workhouse. They were now in the probation ward of one of the great district schools. Lizzie was sitting in the girls' room, whimpering quietly to herself, and every now and then saying, "I want my mother." To which the female officer replied, "Oh, you'll soon get over that."

Alfred was standing on the outside of a little group of boys gathered in idleness round a stove in a large whitewashed room on the opposite side of the building. Nearest the warmth stood Clem Bowler, conscious of the dignity which experience gives. For Clem had a reputation to maintain. He was a redoubtable "in and out." Four times already within a year his parents had entrusted themselves and him to the care of the State, and four times, overcome by individualistic considerations, they had recalled him to their own protection. His was not an unusual case. The superintendent boasted that his "turn-over" ran to more than five hundred children a year. But there was distinction about Clem, and people remembered him.

"You 'ear, now," he said, looking round with a veteran's contempt upon the squad of recruits in pauperism, "if none on yer don't break out with somethink before the week's over, I'll flay the lot. I'm not pertikler for what it is. Last time it was measles first, and then ringworm. Nigh on seven weeks I stopt 'ere with nothink to do only eat, and never got so much as a smell of the school. What's them teachers got to learn me, I'd like to know?"

He paused with rhetorical defiance, but as no one answered he proceeded to express the teachers and officers in terms of unmentionable quantities. Suddenly he turned upon a big, vacant-looking boy at his side.

"What's yer name, fat-'ead?" he asked.

The boy backed away a pace or two, and stood gently moving his head about, and staring with his large pale eyes, as a calf stares at a dog.

"Speak, you dyin' oyster!" said Clem, kicking his shins.

"Ernest," said the boy, with a sudden gasp, turning fiery red and twisting his fingers into knots.

"Ernest what?" said Clem. "But it don't matter, for your sort always belongs to the fine old family of Looney. You're a deal too good for the likes of us. Why, you ought to 'ave a private asylum all to yerself. Hi, Missus!" he shouted to the porter's wife who was passing through the room. "This young nobleman's name's Looney, isn't it?"

"Looks as if it 'ad ought to be," she answered, with a smile, for she avoided unnecessary difficulties. It was her duty to act as mother to the children in the probation ward, and she had already mothered about five thousand.

"Well, Looney," Clem went on as soon as she had gone, "I'll give you a fair run for your money. By next Sunday week you must 'ave a sore 'ead or sore eyes, or I'll see as you get both. But p'raps I may as well take two of the lot of yer in 'and at once."

He seized the daft creature and Alfred by the short hair at the back of their heads, and began running them up and down as a pair of ponies. The others laughed, partly for flattery, partly for change.

"That don't sound as if they was un'appy, do it, sir?" said the porter's wife, coming in again at that moment with one of the managers, who was paying a "surprise visit" to the school.

"No, indeed!" he answered heartily. "Well, boys, having a real good time, are you? That's right. Better being here than starving outside, isn't it?"

"Oh yuss, sir, a deal better!" said Clem. "Plenty to eat 'ere, sir, and nobody to be crule to yer, and nice little lessons for an hour in the afternoon!"

It was getting dark, and as the gas was lit and cast its yellow glare over the large room, Alfred thought how his mother must just then be lighting the candle to give Ben and the baby their tea.

III

So the children waited the due fortnight for the appearance of disease. But no one "broke out." Looney, it is true, developed a very sore head, but the doctor declared there was nothing contagious about it; at which neglect of scientific precaution Clem expressed justifiable disgust. For, indeed, he could have diagnosed the case completely himself, as a sore due to compulsory friction of the epidermis against an iron bedstead. But as science remained deaf to his protests, he hastened to get first pick of the regulation suits and shoes, and when fairly satisfied with the fit, he bit private marks on their various parts, helped to put on Looney's waistcoat wrong way before, split Alfred's shirt down the back to test its age, and with an emphatic remark upon the perversity of mortal things, marched stoically up to the school with the rest of the little band. Little Lizzie followed with the girls about a hundred yards behind. Alfred pretended not to see her. Somehow he was now becoming rather ashamed of having a sister.

The great bell was just ringing for dinner. Alfred and the other new boys were at once arranged according to height in the phalanx of fours mustered in the yard. At the word of command the whole solid mass put itself in motion, shortest in front, and advanced towards the hall with the little workhouse shuffle. Dividing this way and that, the boys filed along the white tables. At the same moment the girls entered from another door, and the infants from a third. By a liberal concession, "the sexes" had lately been allowed to look at each other from a safe distance at meals.

A gong sounded: there was instant silence. It sounded again: all stood up and clasped their hands. Many shut their eyes and assumed an expression of intensity, as though preparing to wrestle with the Spirit. Clem, having planted both heels firmly on Looney's foot, screwed up his face, and appeared to wrestle more than any. A note was struck on the harmonium. All sang the grace. The gong sounded: all sat down. It sounded again: all talked.

"Yes, we allow them to talk at meals now," said the superintendent to a visitor who was standing with him in the middle of the room. "We find it helps to counteract the effects of over-feeding on the digestion."

"What a beautiful sight it all is!" said the visitor. "Such precision and obedience! Everything seems satisfactory."

"Yes," said the superintendent, "we do our very best to make it a happy home. Don't we, Ma?"

"We do, indeed," said the matron. "You see, sir, it has to be a home as well as a school."

The superintendent had been employed in workhouse schools for many years, and had gradually worked himself up to the highest position. On his appointment he had hoped to introduce many important changes in the system. Now, at the end of nine years, he could point to a few improvements in the steam-laundry, and the substitution of a decent little cap for the old workhouse Glengarry. At one time he had conceived the idea of allowing the boys brushes and combs instead of having their hair cropped short to the skin. But in this and other points he had found it better to let things slide rather than throw the whole place out of gear for a trifle. Changes received little encouragement; and the public didn't really care what happened until some cruel scandal in the evening papers made their blood boil for half a minute as they went home to dinner in the suburbs.

The gong sounded. All stood up again with clasped hands, and again Looney suffered while Clem joined in the grace. As the boys marched out at one door, Alfred looked back and caught sight of Lizzie departing flushed and torpid with the infants after her struggle to make a "clean plate" of her legal pound of flesh and solid dough. In the afternoon he was sent to enjoy the leisure of school with his "standard," or to creep about in the howling chaos of play-time in the yard. After tea he was herded with four hundred others into a day-room quite big enough to allow them to stand without touching each other. Hot pipes ran round the sides under a little bench, and the whitewashed walls were relieved by diagrams of the component parts of a sweet pea and scenes from the life of Abraham. As usual an attempt was made at hide-and-seek under strange conditions. Some inglorious inventor had solved the problem of playing that royal game in an empty oblong room. His method was to plant out the "juniors" in clusters or copses on the floor, whilst the "seniors" lurked and ran and hunted in and out their undergrowth. To add zest to the chase, Clem now let Looney slip as a kind of bag-fox, and the half-witted creature went lumbering and blubbering about in real terror of his life, whilst his pursuers encouraged his speed with artifices in which the animated spinnies and coverts deferentially joined. Unnoticed and lonely in the crowd, Alfred was almost sorry he was not half-witted too.

At last he was marched off to his dormitory with fifty-five others, and lay for a long time listening with the fascination of innocence whilst Clem in a low voice described with much detail the scenes of "human nature" which he had recently witnessed down hopping with his people. Almost before he was well asleep, as it seemed, the strange new life began again with the bray of a bugle and the flaring of gas, and he had to hurry down to the model lavatory to wash under his special little jet of warm spray, so elaborately contrived in the hope of keeping ophthalmia in check.

So, with drills and scrubbings and breakfasts and schools, the great circles of childhood's days and nights went by, each distinguished from another only by the dinner and the Sunday services. And from first to last the pauper child was haunted by the peculiar pauper smell, containing elements of whitewash, damp boards, soap, steam, hot pipes, the last dinner and the next, corduroys, a little chlorate of lime, and the bodies of hundreds of children. It was not unwholesome.

IV

One thing shed a light over the days as it approached, and then left them dark till the hope of its return brought a dubious twilight. Once a month, on a Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Reeve had promised to come and see the two children. She might have come oftener, for considerable allowance was made for family affection. But it was difficult enough in four weeks to lay by the few pence which would take her down to the suburb. Punctually at two she was at the gate, and till four she might sit with the children in the lodge. Not much was said. They clung to each other in silence. Or she undid the boy's stiff waistcoat, and looked at his grey shirt, and tried to accustom herself to her Lizzie's short hair and heavy blue dress. Many others came too, and sat in the same room—eloquent drunkards appealing to heaven, exuberant relatives with apples and sweets, unsatisfied till the children howled in answer to their pathos, girls half-ashamed to be seen, and quiet working mothers. As four struck, good-bye was said, and with Lizzie's crying in her ears Mrs. Reeve walked blindly back through the lines of suburban villas to the station. Twice she came, and, counting the days and weeks, the children had made themselves ready for the third great Saturday. Carefully washed and brushed, they sat in their separate day-rooms, and waited. Two o'clock struck, but no message came. All the afternoon they waited, sick with disappointment and loneliness. At last, seeing the matron go by, Alfred said: "Please, mum, my mother ain't come to-day."

"Not come?" she answered. "Oh, that is a cruel mother! But they're all the same. Each time, sure as fate, there's somebody forgotten, so you're no worse off than anybody else. Look, here's a nice big sweet for you instead! Oh yes, I'll tell them about your little sister. What's your name, did you say?"

As he went out along the corridor, Alfred came upon Looney hiding behind an iron column, and crying to himself. "Why, what's the matter with you?" he asked.

"My mother ain't been to see me," whined Looney, with unrestrained sobs; "and Clem says 'e's wrote to tell 'er she'd best not come no more, 'cos I'm so bad."

His mother had been for years at the school herself, and after serving in a brief series of situations, had calculated the profit and loss, and gone on the streets.

"Mine didn't come neither," said Alfred. "Matron says they're all like that. But never you mind, 'ere's a nice sweet for you instead."

He took the sweet out of his own mouth. Looney received it cautiously, and his great watery eyes gazed at Alfred with the awe of a biologist who watches a new law of nature at work.

Next day after dinner Lizzie and Alfred met in the hall, as brothers and sisters were allowed to meet for an hour on Sundays. They sat side by side with their backs to the long tablecloths left on for tea.

"She never come," said Alfred after the growing shyness of meeting had begun to pass off.

"You don't know what I've got!" she answered, holding up her clenched fist.

"I s'pose she won't never come no more," said Alfred.

"Look!" she answered, opening her fingers and disclosing a damp penny, the bribe of one of the nurses.

"Matron says she's cruel, and 'as forgot about us, same as they all do," said Alfred.

Then Lizzie took up her old wail. The penny dropped and rolled in a fine curve along the boards.

"There, don't 'e cry, Liz," he said. And they sat huddled together overcome by the dull exhaustion of childish grief. The chapel bell began to ring. Alfred took a corner of her white pinafore, wetted it, and tried to wash off the marks of tears. And as they hurried away Lizzie stooped and picked up the penny.

A few minutes later they were at service in their brick and iron chapel, which suburban residents sometimes attended instead of going to church in the evening.

"My soul doth magnify the Lord," they sang, following the choir, of which the head-master was justly proud. And the chaplain preached on the text, "Thou hast clothed me in scarlet, yea, I have a goodly heritage," demonstrating that there was no peculiar advantage about scarlet, but that dark blue would serve quite as well for thankfulness, if only the children would live up to its ideal.

"This is a wonderful institution," said the chaplain's friend after service, as they sat at tea by the fire. "It is a kind of little Utopia in itself, a modern Phalanstery. How Plato would have admired it! I'm sure he'd have enjoyed this afternoon's service."

"Yes, I daresay he would," said the chaplain. "But you must excuse me for an hour or so. I make a point of running through the infirmary and ophthalmic ward on Sundays. Oh yes, we have a permanent ward for ophthalmia. Please make yourself comfortable till I come back."

His friend spent the time in jotting down heads for an essay on the advantages of communal nurture for the young. He was a lecturer on social subjects, and liked to be able to appeal to experience in his lectures.

V

Next morning came a letter written in a large and careful hand: "My dear Alfred,—I hope these few lines find you well, as they don't leave me at present. I fell down the office stairs last night and got a twist to my inside, so can't come to-day. Kiss Liz from me, and tell her to be good. From your loving mother, Mrs. Reeve."

Day followed day, and the mother did not come. The children lived on, almost without thought of change in the daily round, the common task.

It was early in Christmas week, and the female officers were doing their best to excite merriment over the decorations. Snow was falling, but the flakes, after hesitating for a moment, thawed into sludge on the surface of the asphalte yard. Seeing Alfred shivering about under the shed, the superintendent sent him to the office for a plan of the school drainage, which had lately been reconstructed on the most sanitary principles. The boy found the plan on the table, under a little brass dog which someone had given the superintendent as a paper-weight.

"A dog!" he said to himself, taking it up carefully. It was a setter with a front paw raised as though it sighted game. Alfred stroked its back and felt its muzzle. Then he pushed it along the polished table, and thought of all the things he could make it do, if only he had it for a bit. He put it down, patted its head again with his cold hand, and took up the plan. But somehow the dog suddenly looked at him with a friendly smile, and seemed to move its tail and silky ears. He caught it up, glanced round, slipped it up his waistcoat, and ran as hard as he could go.

"Thank you my boy," said the superintendent, taking the plan. "You've not been here long, have you?"

"Oh yes, sir, a tremenjus long time!" said Alfred, shaking all over, whilst the dog's paw kept scratching through his shirt.

"My memory isn't what it was," sighed the superintendent to himself, and he thought of the days when he had struggled to learn the name at least of every boy in his charge.

That afternoon Alfred went into school filled with mixed shame, apprehension, and importance, such as Eve might have felt if she could have gone back to a girls' school with the apple. Lessons began with a "combined recitation" from Shakespeare.

"Now," said the teacher, "go on at 'Mercy on me.'"

"'Methinks nobody should be sad but I,'" shouted seventy mouths, opening like one in a unison of sing-song.

"Now, you there!" cried the teacher. "You with your hand up your waistcoat! You're not attending. Go on at 'Only for wantonness.'"

"'By my Christendom,'" Alfred blurted out, almost bringing dog and all to light in his terror:

"'So I were out of prison and kept sheep, I should be merry as the day is long. And so I should be here, but that I doubt—'"

"That'll do," said the teacher, "Now attend."

The seventy joined in with "My uncle practises," and Alfred turned from red to white.

At tea the table jammed the hidden dog against his chest. When he sought relief by sitting back over the form, Clem corrected the irregular posture with a pin. At bedtime he undressed in terror lest the creature should jump out and patter on the boards as live things will. But at last the gas was turned off at the main, and he cautiously groped for his pet among his little heap of clothes under the bed. That night Clem's most outrageous story could not attract him. He roamed Elysian fields with his dog. Like all toys, it was something better than alive. And certainly no mortal setter ever played so many parts. It hunted rats up the nightgown sleeves, and caught burglars by the throat as they stole into bed. It tracked murderers over the sheet's pathless waste. It coursed deer up and down the hills and valleys of his knees. It drove sheep along the lanes of the striped blanket. It rescued drowning sailors from the vasty deep around the bed. It dug out frozen travellers from the snowdrifts of the pillow. And at last it slept soundly, kennelled between two warm hands, and continued its adventures in dreams.

At the first note of the bugle Alfred sprang up in bed, sure that the drill-sergeant would come to pull him out first. As he marched listlessly up and down the yard at drill, the wind blew pitilessly, and the dog gnawed at him till he was red and sore. At meals and in school he was sure that secret eyes were watching him. He searched everywhere for some hole where he might hide the thing. But the building was too irreproachable to shelter a mouse.

Next day was Christmas Eve. He had heard from the "permanents" that at Christmas each child received an apple, an orange, and twelve nuts in a paper bag. He hungered for them. Even the ordinary meals had become the chief points of interest in life, and the days were named from the dinners. He was forgetting the scanty and uncertain food of his home, now that dinner came as regularly as in a rich man's house or the Zoo. And Christmas promised something far beyond the ordinary. There was to be pork. At Christmas, at all events, he would lay himself out for perfect enjoyment, undisturbed by terrors. He would take the dog back, and be at peace again.

Just before tea-time he saw the superintendent pass over to the infants' side. He stole along the sounding corridors to the office, and noiselessly opened the door. There was somebody there. But it was only Looney, who, being able to count like a calculating machine because no other thoughts disturbed him, had been set to tie up in bundles of a hundred each certain pink and blue envelopes which lay in heaps on the floor. Each envelope contained a Christmas card with a text, and every child on Christmas morning found one laid ready on its plate at breakfast. A wholesale stationer supplied them, and a benevolent lady paid the bill.

"Leave me alone," cried Looney from habit, "I ain't doin' nuffin."

"All right," said Alfred airily; "I've only come to fetch somethink."

But just at that moment he heard the superintendent's footstep coming along the passage. There was no escape and no time for thought. With the instinct of terror he put the dog down noiselessly beside Looney on the carpet, drew quickly back, and stood rigid beside the door as it opened.

"Hullo!" said the superintendent, "what are you doing here?"

"Nothink, sir, only somethink," Alfred stammered.

"What's the meaning of that?" said the superintendent.

"I wanted to speak to that boy very pertikler, sir," said Alfred.

The superintendent looked at Looney. But Looney in turning round had caught sight of the dog at his side, and was gazing at it open-mouthed, as a countryman gazes at a pigeon produced from a conjuror's hat. Suddenly he pounced upon it as though he was afraid it would fly away, and kept it close hidden under his hands.

"Oh, that's what you wanted to speak about so particular, is it?" said the superintendent. "That paperweight's been lost these two or three days, and it was you who stole it, was it?"

"Please sir," said Alfred, beginning to cry, "'e never done it, and I didn't mean no 'arm."

"Oh, enough of that," said the superintendent. "I've got other things to do besides standing here arguing with you all night. I'll send for you both at bed-time, and then I'll teach you to come stealing about here, you young thieves. Now drop that, and clear out!" he added more angrily to Looney, who was still chuckling with astonishment over his prize.

So they were both well beaten that night, and Looney never knew why, but took it as an incident in his chain of dim sensations. Next day they alone did not receive either the Christmas card or the paper bag. But after dinner Clem had them up before him, and gave them each a nutshell and a piece of orange-peel, adding the paternal advice: "Look 'ere, my sons, if you two can't pinch better than that, you'd best turn up pinchin' altogether till you see yer father do it."

On Boxing Day Mrs. Reeve at last contrived to come again. She was informed that she could not see her son because he was kept indoors for stealing.

After this the machinery of the institution had its own way with him. It was as though he were passed through each of its scientific appliances in turn—the steam washing machine, the centrifugal steam wringer, the hot-air drying horse, the patent mangle, the gas ovens, the heating pipes, the spray baths, the model bakery, and the central engine. After drifting through the fourth standard he was sent every other day to a workshop to fit him for after life. Looney joined a squad of little gardeners which shuffled about the walks, two deep, with spades shouldered like rifles. Alfred was sent to the shoemaker's, as there was a vacancy there. He did such work as he was afraid not to do, and all went well as long as nothing happened.

Only two events marked the lapse of time. Mrs. Reeve did not recover from the "twist in her inside." In answer to her appeal, a brother-in-law in the north took charge of her two remaining children, and then she died. It was about three years after Alfred had entered the school. He was sorry; but the next day came, and the next, and there was no visible change. The bell rang: breakfast, dinner, and tea succeeded each other. It was difficult to imagine that he had suffered any loss.

The other event was more startling, and it helped to obliterate the last thought of his mother's death. After a brief interval of parental guidance, Clem had returned to the school for about the tenth time. As usual he devoted his vivacious intellect chiefly to Looney, in whose progress he expressed an almost grandmotherly interest. Looney sputtered and made sport as usual, till one night an unbaptized idea was somehow wafted into the limbo of his brain. He was counting over the faggots in the great store-room under his dormitory when the thought came. Soon afterwards he went upstairs, and quietly got into bed. It was a model dormitory. So many cubic feet of air were allowed for each child. The temperature was regulated according to thermometers hung on the wall. Windows and ventilators opened on each side of the room to give a thorough draught across the top. The beds had spring mattresses of steel, and three striped blankets each, and spotted red and white counterpanes such as give pauper dormitories such a cheerful look. Looney and Clem slept side by side. Before midnight the dormitory was full of suffocating smoke. The alarm was raised. For a time it was thought that all the boys had escaped down an iron staircase lately erected outside the building. But when the flames had been put out in the store-room below, the bodies of Looney and Clem were found clasped together on Clem's bed. Looney's arms were twisted very tightly around Clem's neck, and people said he had perished in trying to save his friend. Next Sunday the chaplain preached on the text, "And in death they were not divided." Their names were inscribed side by side on a little monument set up to commemorate the event, and underneath was carved a passage from the Psalms: "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."

EPILOGUE

At last Alfred's discharge paper came from the workhouse, and he trudged down the road to the station, carrying a wooden box with his outfit, valued at L7. He had been in charge of the State for six years, and had quite forgotten the outside world. His nurture and education had cost the ratepayers L180. He was now going to a home provided by benevolent persons as a kind of featherbed to catch the falling workhouse boy. Here the manager found him a situation with a shoemaker, since shoemaking was his trade, but after a week's trial his master called one evening at the home.

"Look 'ere, Mr. Waterton," he said to the manager. "I took on that there boy Reeve to do yer a kindness, but it ain't no manner of good. I suppose the boy 'ad parents of some sort, most likely bad, but 'e seems to me kind of machine-made, same as a Leicester boot. I can't make out whether you'd best call 'im a sucklin' duck or a dummercyle. And as for bootmakin'—I only wish 'e knowed nothing at all."

So now Alfred is pushing a truck for an oilman in the Isle of Dogs at a shilling a day. But the oilman thinks him "kind of dormant," and it is possible that he may be sent back to the school for a time. Next year he will be sixteen, and entitled to the privileges of a "pauper in his own right."

Meanwhile little Lizzie is slowly getting her outfit ready for her departure also. A society of thoughtful and energetic ladies will spend much time and money in placing her out in service at L6 a year. And, as the pious lady said to herself when she wrote out a good character for her servant, God help the poor mistress who gets her!

But in all countries there is a constant demand of one kind or another for pretty girls, even for the foster-children of the State.



XVIII

THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS

Mr. Clarkson, of the Education Office, was coming back from a Garden Suburb, where the conversation had turned upon Eugenics. Photographs of the most beautiful Greek statues had stood displayed along the overmantel; Walter Pater's praise of the Parthenon frieze had been read; and a discussion had arisen upon the comparative merits of masculine and feminine beauty, during which Mr. Clarkson maintained a modest silence. He did, however, support the contention of his hostess that the human form was the most beautiful of created things, and he shared her regret that it is so seldom seen in London to full advantage. He also agreed with the general conclusion that, in the continuance of the race, quality was the first thing to be considered, and that the chief aim of civilisation should be to restore Hellenic beauty by selecting parentage for the future generation.

Meditating over the course of the discussion, and regretting, as he always did, that he had not played a distinguished part in it, Mr. Clarkson became conscious of a certain dissatisfaction. "Should not one question," he asked himself, "the possibility of creating beauty by preconcerted design? Conscious and deliberate endeavours to manipulate the course of Nature often frustrate their own purpose, and the action of cultivated intelligence might conduce to a delicate peculiarity rather than a beauty widely diffused. Such a sense for form as pervaded Greece must spring, unconscious as a flower, from a passion for the beautiful implanted in the heart of the populace themselves."

His motor-'bus was passing through a region unknown to him—one of those regions where raw vegetables and meat, varied with crockery and old books, exuberate into booths and stalls along the pavement, and salesmen shout to the heedless passer-by prophetic warnings of opportunities eternally lost. Contemplating the scene with a sensitive loathing against which his better nature struggled in vain, Mr. Clarkson had his gaze suddenly arrested by a flaunting placard which announced:

TO-NIGHT AT 10.30!

UNEXAMPLED ATTRACTION!!

OUR BEAUTY SHOW!!!

UNEQUALLED IN THE WORLD!

PRIZES OF UNPRECEDENTED VALUE!!

ENCOURAGE HOME LOVELINESS!!!

"The very thing!" thought Mr. Clarkson, rapidly descending from his seat. "Sometimes one is almost compelled to believe in a Divinity that shapes our criticism of life."

"Shillin'," said the box-office man, when Mr. Clarkson asked for a stall. "Evenin' dress hoptional" And Mr. Clarkson entered the vast theatre.

It was crammed throughout. Every seat was taken, and excited crowds of straw-hatted youths, elderly men, and sweltering women stood thick at the back of the pit and down the sides of the stalls. "'Not here, O Apollo,'" quoted Mr. Clarkson sadly, as he squeezed on to the end of a seat beside a big man who had spread himself over two. "But still, even in the lower middle, beauty may have its place."

"Warm," said the big man conversationally.

"Unavoidably, with so fine an audience," replied Mr. Clarkson, with his grateful smile for any sign of friendliness.

"Like it warm?" asked the big man, turning upon Mr. Clarkson, as though he had said he preferred babies scolloped.

"Well, I rather enjoy the sense of common humanity," said Mr. Clarkson, apologising.

"Enjoy common humanity?" said the big man, mopping his head. "Can't say I do. 'Cos why, I was born perticler."

For a moment Mr. Clarkson was tempted to claim a certain fastidiousness himself. But he refrained, and only remarked, "What is a Beauty Show?"

The big man turned slowly to contemplate him again, and then, slowly turning back, regarded his empty pipe with sad attention.

"'Ear that, Albert?" he whispered at last, leaning over to a smart little fellow in front, who was dressed in a sportsmanlike manner, and displayed a large brass horseshoe and hunting crop stuck sideways in his tie.

"The ignorance of the upper classes is somethink shockin'," the sportsman replied, imitating Mr. Clarkson's Oxford accent. Then turning back half an eye upon Mr. Clarkson, like a horse that watches its rider, he added, "You wait and see, old cock, same as the Honourable Asquith."

"Isn't the retort a trifle middle-aged?" suggested Mr. Clarkson, with friendly cheerfulness.

"Who's that he's callin' middle-aged?" cried a girl, sharply facing round, and removing the sportsman's arm from her waist.

"I only meant," pleaded Mr. Clarkson, "that an obsolescent jest is, like middle-age, occasionally vapid, possessing neither the interest of antiquity nor the freshness of surprise."

"Very well, then," said the girl, flouncing back and seeking Albert's arm again; "you just keep your tongue to yourself, same as me mine, or I'll surprise you!"

At that moment the rising curtain revealed a cinematograph scene, representing a bull-dog which stole a mutton chop, was at once pursued by a policeman and the village population, rushed down streets and round corners, leapt through a lawyer's office, ran up the side of a house, followed by all his pursuers, and was finally discovered in a child's cot, where the child, with one arm round his neck, was endeavouring to make him say grace before meat. The audience was profoundly moved. Cries of "Bless his 'eart!" and "Good old Ogden!" rang through the house.

"Great!" said the big man.

"It illustrates," replied Mr. Clarkson, "the popular sympathy with the fugitive, combined with the public's love of vicarious piety."

"Fine dog," said the sportsmanly Albert.

"It was a clever touch," Mr. Clarkson agreed, "to introduce so hideous a creature immediately before a Beauty Show. The strange thing is that the dog's ugliness only enhanced the sympathetic affection of the audience. Yet beauty leads us by a single hair."

"You wait before you start talkin' about beauty or hair either!" said Albert.

The curtain then rose upon a long green-baize table placed at the back of the stage. Behind it were sitting eleven respectable and portly gentlemen in black coats. One in the centre, venerable for gold eye-glasses and grey side-whiskers, acted as chairman.

"Are those the beauties?" asked Mr. Clarkson ironically, recalling the Garden Suburb discussion as to the superiority of the masculine form.

"'Ear that, Albert?" said the big man again. "Judges," he added, in solemn pity.

"On what qualification are they selected as critics?" Mr. Clarkson asked.

"Give prizes," said the big man.

"That qualifies them for Members of Parliament rather than judges of beauty," said Mr. Clarkson, but he was shown that on the table before each judge stood a case of plated articles, a vase, a candlestick, or something, which he had contributed as a prize.

An authoritative person in a brown suit and a heavy watch-chain festooned across his waistcoat came forward and was greeted with applause, varied by shouts of "Bluebeard!" "Crippen!" and "Father Mormon!" In the brief gasps of silence he explained the rules of the competition, remarking that the entries were already unusually numerous, the standard of beauty exceptionally high and accordingly he called upon the audience by their applause or the reverse to give the judges every assistance in allotting as desirable a set of prizes as he had ever handled.

"The first prize," he went on, "is a silver-plated coffee-set, presented by our ardent and lifelong supporter, Mr. Joseph Croke, proprietor of the celebrated grocery store, who now occupies the chair. The second prize is presented by our eminent butcher, Mr. James Collins, who considers his own stock unsuitable for the occasion, and has therefore substituted a turquoise necklace, equivalent in value to a prime sirloin. For third prize Mr. Watkins, the conspicuous hairdresser of the High Street, offers a full-sized plait of hair of the same colour as worn by the lady."