Mufti Part 20

"My G.o.d!" said Vane, "as bad as that! I was hoping he'd eat peas with his knife."

She looked towards the door and suddenly stood up. "Here he is, coming down the stairs now. . . ." She held out her hand to him as he came up. "I was afraid you weren't going to come, Mr. Ramage."

"Am I late?" he answered, glancing at his watch. "A thousand apologies, Mrs. Smallwood. . . . A committee meeting. . . ."

He turned towards Vane and she introduced the two men, who followed her into the restaurant. And in his first quick glance Vane was conscious of a certain disappointment, and a distinct feeling of surprise.

Far from being clad in corduroy, Ramage had on a very respectable morning coat. In fact, it struck him that Nancy Smallwood's remark exactly described him. He looked _most_ respectable--not to say dull.

By no stretch of imagination could Vane imagine him as the leader of a great cause. He might have been a country lawyer, or a general pract.i.tioner, or any of those eminently worthy things with which utility rather than brilliance is generally a.s.sociated. He recalled what he had read in the papers--paragraphs describing meetings at which Mr. Ramage had taken a prominent part, and his general recollection of most of them seemed to be summed up in the one sentence . . . "the meeting then broke up in disorder, Mr. Ramage escaping with difficulty through a window at the back." Somehow he could not see this decorous gentleman opposite escaping through windows under a barrage of bad eggs. He failed to fill the part completely. As a cas.h.i.+er in a local bank gravely informing a customer that his account was overdrawn--yes; but as a fighter, as a man who counted for something in the teeming world around--why no. . . . Not as far as appearance went, at any rate. And at that moment the eyes of the two men met for an instant across the table. . . .

It seemed to Vane almost as if he had received a blow--so sudden was the check to his mental rambling. For the eyes of the man opposite, deep set and gleaming, were the eyes of greatness, and they triumphed so completely over their indifferent setting that Vane marvelled at his previous obtuseness. Martyrs have had such eyes, and the great pioneers of the world--men who have deemed everything well lost for a cause, be that cause right or wrong. And almost as if he were standing there in the flesh, there came to him a vision of Sir James raving furiously against this man.

He watched him with a slightly puzzled frown for a moment. This was the man who was deliberately leading the ma.s.ses towards discontent and revolt; this was the man of intellect who was deliberately using his gift to try to ruin the country. . . . So Sir James had said; so Vane had always understood. And his frown grew more puzzled.

Suddenly Ramage turned and spoke to him. A faint smile hovered for a second around his lips, as if he had noticed the frown and interpreted its cause aright.

"Things seem to be going very well over the water, Captain Vane."

"Very well," said Vane abruptly. "I think we've got those arch swine beaten at last--without the help of a negotiated peace."

For a moment the deep-set eyes gleamed, and then, once more, a faint smile hovered on his face. "Of which much maligned subst.i.tute for war you doubtless regard me as one of the High Priests?"

"Such is the general opinion, Mr. Ramage."

"And you think," returned the other after a moment, "that the idea was so completely wrong as to have justified the holders of the opposite view expending--what, another two . . . three million lives?" . . .

"I am afraid," answered Vane a little curtly, "that I'm in no position to balance any such account. The issues involved are a little above my form. All I do know is, that our dead would have turned in their graves had we not completed their work. . . .'

"I wonder?" said the other slowly. "It always seems to me that the dead are saddled with very blood-thirsty opinions. . . . One sometimes thinks, when one is in a particularly foolish mood, that the dead might have learned a little common sense. . . . Very optimistic, but still. . . ."

"If they have learned anything," answered Vane gravely, "our dead over the water--they have learned the sublime lesson of pulling together.

It seems a pity, Mr. Ramage, that a few of 'em can't come back again and preach the sermon here in England."

"Wouldn't it be too wonderful?" chirruped their hostess. "Think of going to St. Paul's and being preached to by a ghost. . . ." For the past minute she had been shooting little bird-like glances at a neighbouring table, and now she leaned forward impressively. "There are some people over there, Mr. Ramage, and I'm sure they recognise you." This was better, far better, than feeding a hen in the drawing-room.

He turned to her with a faintly amused smile. "How very annoying for you! I am so sorry. . . . Shall I go away, and then you can discuss my sins in a loud voice with Captain Vane?"

Nancy Smallwood shook an admonis.h.i.+ng finger at him, and sighed pathetically. "Do go on talking, you two. I do so love to hear about these things, and I'm so stupid myself. . . ."

"For Heaven's sake, Nancy," laughed Vane, "don't put me amongst the highbrows. I'm groping . . . crumbs from rich man's table sort of business."

"Groping?" Ramage glanced at him across the table.

"Yes," said Vane taking the bull by the horns. "Wondering why the devil we fought if the result is going to be anarchy in England. Over there everybody seems to be pals; here. . . . Great Scott!" He shrugged his shoulders. After a while he went on--"Over there we got rid of cla.s.s hatred; may I ask you, Mr. Ramage, without meaning in any way to be offensive, why you're doing your utmost to stir it up over here?"

The other put down his knife and fork and stared at Vane thoughtfully.

"Because," he remarked in a curiously deep voice, "that way lies the salvation of the world. . . ."

"The machine-gun at the street corner," answered Vane cynically, "is certainly the way to salvation for quite a number."

Ramage took no notice of the interruption. "If labour had controlled Europe in 1914, do you suppose we should have had a war? As it was, a few men were capable of ordering millions to their death. Can you seriously contend that such a state of affairs was not absolutely rotten?"

"But are you going to alter it by fanning cla.s.s hatred?" demanded Vane going back to his old point.

"Not if it can be avoided. But--the issue lies in the hands of the present ruling cla.s.s. . . ."

Vane raised his eyebrows. "I have generally understood that it was Labour who was bringing things to a head."

"It rather depends on the way you look at it, doesn't it? If I possess a thing which by right is yours, and you demand the return of it, which of us two is really responsible for the subsequent fight?"

"And what does the present ruling cla.s.s possess which Labour considers should be returned to it?" asked Vane curiously.

"The bond note of slavery," returned the other. "If the present rulers will tear up that bond--willingly and freely--there will be no fight. . . . If not. . . ." He shrugged his shoulders. "Labour may be forcing that issue, Captain Vane; but it will be the other man who is responsible if the fight comes. . . . Labour demands fair treatment--not as a concession, but as a right--and Labour has felt its power. It will get that treatment--peacefully, if possible; but if not"--and a light blazed in his eyes--"it will get it by force."

"And the referee as to what is just is Labour itself," said Vane slowly; "in spite of the fact that it's the other man who is running the financial risk and paying the piper. It sounds wonderfully fair, doesn't it? Surely some rights must go with property--whether it's land or a coal mine, or a bucket shop. . . . Surely the owner must have the princ.i.p.al say in calling the tune." For a few moments he stared at the man opposite him, and then he went on again, with increasing earnestness--with almost a note of appeal in his voice. "I want to get at your point of view, Mr. Ramage--I want to understand you. . . . And I don't. There are thousands of men like me who have been through this war--who have seen the glory underneath the dirt--who want to understand too. We hoped--we still hope--that a new England would grow out of it; but somehow. . . ." Vane laughed shortly, and took out his cigarette case.

"And we are going to get that new England for which you have fought,"

burst out the other triumphantly. Then with a slight smile he looked at Vane. "We must not forget our surroundings--I see a waiter regarding me suspiciously. Thanks--no; I don't smoke." He traced a pattern idly on the cloth for a moment, and then looked up quickly. "I would like you to try to understand," he said. "Because, as I said, the whole question of possible anarchy as opposed to a const.i.tutional change lies in your hands and the hands of your cla.s.s."

Vane gave a short, incredulous laugh, and shook his head.

"In your hands," repeated the other gravely. "You see, Captain Vane, we approach this matter from a fundamentally different point of view.

You look around you, and you see men striking here and striking there.

And you say 'Look at the swine; striking again!' But there's one thing that you fail to grasp, I think. Underneath all these strikes and violent upheavals, bursting into flame in all sorts of unexpected places--there is the volcano of a vital conflict between two fundamental ideas. Though the men hardly realise it themselves, it's there, that conflict, all the time. . . . And we, who see a little further than the mob, know that it's there, and that sooner or later that conflict will end in victory for one side or the other. Which side, my friend? Yours _or_ ours. . . . Or both. Yours _and_ ours. . . . England's." He paused for a moment as the waiter handed him the coffee. Then he went on--"To the master-cla.s.s generally there is a certain order of things, and they can imagine nothing else. They employ workers--they pay them, or they 'chuck' them, as they like.

They hold over them absolute power. They are kind in many cases; they help and look after their employees. But they are the masters--and the others are the men. That is the only form of society they can conceive of. Any mitigation of conditions is simply a change within the old order. That is one point of view. . . . Now for the other." He turned with a smile to his hostess. "I hope I'm not boring you. . . ."

"Why, I'm thrilled to death," she cried, hurriedly collecting her thoughts from an adjacent hat. "Do go on."

"The other point of view is this. We do not wish for mitigation of conditions in a system which we consider wrong. We want the entire system swept away. . . . We want the entire propertied cla.s.s removed.

We deny that there are any inherent rights which go with the possession of property; and even if there are, we claim that the rights of the ma.s.ses far outweigh the property rights of the small minority of owners. . . ."

"In other words," said Vane briefly, "you claim for the ma.s.ses the right to commit robbery on a large scale."

"For just so long as that view of robbery holds, Captain Vane, for just so long will there fail to be any real co-operation between you and us.

For just so long as you are convinced that your vested right is the true one, and that ours is false--for just so long will the final settlement by quiet methods be postponed. But if you make it too long the final settlement will not come by quiet means."

"Your proposal, then, is that we should commit suicide with a good grace?" remarked Vane. "Really, Mr. Ramage, it won't do. . . . I, personally, if I owned property, would go into the last ditch in defence of what was mine." Into his mind there flashed Joan's words. . . . "It's ours. I tell you, ours," and he smiled grimly.

"Why, in the name of fortune, I should give what I possess to a crowd of scally wags who haven't made good, is more than I can fathom. . . ."

"It is hardly likely to go as far as that," said the other with a smile. "But the time is coming when we shall have a Labour Government--a Government which at heart is Socialistic. And their first move will be to nationalise all the big industries. . . . How far will property meet them and help them? Will they fight--or will they co-operate? . . . It's up to property to decide. . . ."

"Because you will have forced the issue," said Vane; "an issue which, I maintain, you have no right to force. Robbery is robbery, just the same whether its sanctioned by an Act of Parliament, or whether it's performed by a man holding a gun at your head. . . . Why, in G.o.d's name, Mr. Ramage, can't we pull together for the side? . . ."

"With you as the leaders--the kind employers?"

"With those men as the leaders who have shown that they can lead," said Vane doggedly. "They will come to the top in the future as they have in the past. . . ."

"By all manner of means," cried Ramage. "Leaders--brains--will always rise to the top; will always be rewarded more highly than mere manual labour. . . . They will occupy more remunerative positions under the State. . . . But the fruits of labour will only be for those who do the work--be it with their hands or be it with their heads. The profiteer must go; the private owner must go with his dole here and his dole there, generally forced from him as the result of a strike. I would be the last to say that there are not thousands of good employers--but there are also thousands of bad ones, and now labour refuses to run the risk any more."