"What is that man doing there?" said Henrietta, stopping mistrustfully.

Agatha laughed, and said loudly, so that he might hear: "It is only
a harmless madman that Miss Wilson employs. He is fond of disguising
himself in some silly way and trying to frighten us. Don't be afraid.
Come on."

Henrietta hung back, but her arm was linked in Agatha's, and she was
drawn along in spite of herself. Smilash did not move. Agatha strolled
on coolly, and as she passed him, adroitly caught the apron between
her finger and thumb and twitched it from his face. Instantly Henrietta
uttered a piercing scream, and Smilash caught her in his arms.

"Quick," he said to Agatha, "she is fainting. Run for some water.
Run!" And he bent over Henrietta, who clung to him frantically. Agatha,
bewildered by the effect of her practical joke, hesitated a moment, and
then ran to the lawn.

"What is the matter?" said Fairholme.

"Nothing. I want some water--quick, please. Henrietta has fainted in the
shrubbery, that is all."

"Please do not stir," said Miss Wilson authoritatively, "you will crowd
the path and delay useful assistance. Miss Ward, kindly get some water
and bring it to us. Agatha, come with me and point out where Mrs.
Trefusis is. You may come too, Miss Carpenter; you are so strong. The
rest will please remain where they are."

Followed by the two girls, she hurried into the shrubbery, where Mr.
Jansenius was already looking anxiously for his daughter. He was the
only person they found there. Smilash and Henrietta were gone.

At first the seekers, merely puzzled, did nothing but question Agatha
incredulously as to the exact spot on which Henrietta had fallen. But
Mr. Jansenius soon made them understand that the position of a lady
in the hands of a half-witted laborer was one of danger. His agitation
infected them, and when Agatha endeavored to reassure him by declaring
that Smilash was a disguised gentleman, Miss Wilson, supposing this to
be a mere repetition of her former idle conjecture, told her sharply to
hold her tongue, as the time was not one for talking nonsense. The news
now spread through the whole company, and the excitement became intense.
Fairholme shouted for volunteers to make up a searching party. All the
men present responded, and they were about to rush to the college gates
in a body when it Occurred to the cooler among them that they had better
divide into several parties, in order that search might be made at once
in different quarters. Ten minutes of confusion followed. Mr. Jansenius
started several times in quest of Henrietta, and, when he had gone a few
steps, returned and begged that no more time should be wasted. Josephs,
whose faith was simple, retired to pray, and did good, as far as it
went, by withdrawing one voice from the din of plans, objections, and
suggestions which the rest were making; each person trying to be heard
above the others.

At last Miss Wilson quelled the prevailing anarchy. Servants were sent
to alarm the neighbors and call in the village police. Detachments were
sent in various directions under the command of Fairholme and other
energetic spirits. The girls formed parties among themselves, which were
reinforced by male deserters from the previous levies. Miss Wilson then
went indoors and conducted a search through the interior of the college.
Only two persons were left on the tennis ground--Agatha and Mrs.
Jansenius, who had been surprisingly calm throughout.

"You need not be anxious," said Agatha, who had been standing aloof
since her rebuff by Miss Wilson. "I am sure there is no danger. It is
most extraordinary that they have gone away; but the man is no more mad
than I am, and I know he is a gentleman He told me so."

"Let us hope for the best," said Mrs. Jansenius, smoothly. "I think
I will sit down--I feel so tired. Thanks." (Agatha had handed her a
chair.) "What did you say he told you--this man?"

Agatha related the circumstances of her acquaintance with Smilash,
adding, at Mrs. Jansenius's request, a minute description of his
personal appearance. Mrs. Jansenius remarked that it was very singular,
and that she was sure Henrietta was quite safe. She then partook of
claret-cup and sandwiches. Agatha, though glad to find someone disposed
to listen to her, was puzzled by her aunt's coolness, and was even
goaded into pointing out that though Smilash was not a laborer, it did
not follow that he was an honest man. But Mrs. Jansenius only said: "Oh,
she is safe--quite safe! At least, of course, I can only hope so. We
shall have news presently," and took another sandwich.

The searchers soon began to return, baffled. A few shepherds, the only
persons in the vicinity, had been asked whether they had seen a young
lady and a laborer. Some of them had seen a young woman with a basket of
clothes, if that mout be her. Some thought that Phil Martin the
carrier would see her if anybody would. None of them had any positive
information to give.

As the afternoon wore on, and party after party returned tired and
unsuccessful, depression replaced excitement; conversation, no longer
tumultuous, was carried on in whispers, and some of the local visitors
slipped away to their homes with a growing conviction that something
unpleasant had happened, and that it would be as well not to be mixed up
in it. Mr. Jansenius, though a few words from his wife had surprised and
somewhat calmed him, was still pitiably restless and uneasy.

At last the police arrived. At sight of their uniforms excitement
revived; there was a general conviction that something effectual would
be done now. But the constables were only mortal, and in a few moments a
whisper spread that they were fooled. They doubted everything told them,
and expressed their contempt for amateur searching by entering on
a fresh investigation, prying with the greatest care into the least
probable places. Two of them went off to the chalet to look for Smilash.
Then Fairholme, sunburnt, perspiring, and dusty, but still energetic,
brought back the exhausted remnant of his party, with a sullen boy, who
scowled defiantly at the police, evidently believing that he was about
to be delivered into their custody.

Fairholme had been everywhere, and, having seen nothing of the missing
pair, had come to the conclusion that they were nowhere. He had asked
everybody for information, and had let them know that he meant to have
it too, if it was to be had. But it was not to be had. The sole resort
of his labor was the evidence of the boy whom he didn't believe.

"'Im!" said the inspector, not quite pleased by Fairholme's zeal, and
yet overborne by it. "You're Wickens's boy, ain't you?"

"Yes, I am Wickens's boy," said the witness, partly fierce, partly
lachrymose, "and I say I seen him, and if anyone sez I didn't see him,
he's a lie."

"Come," said the inspector sharply, "give us none of your cheek, but
tell us what you saw, or you'll have to deal with me afterwards."

"I don't care who I deal with," said the boy, at bay. "I can't be took
for seein' him, because there's no lor agin it. I was in the gravel pit
in the canal meadow--"

"What business had you there?" said the inspector, interrupting.

"I got leave to be there," said the boy insolently, but reddening.

"Who gave you leave?" said the inspector, collaring him. "Ah," he added,
as the captive burst into tears, "I told you you'd have to deal with me.
Now hold your noise, and remember where you are and who you're speakin'
to; and perhaps I mayn't lock you up this time. Tell me what you saw
when you were trespassin' in the meadow."

"I sor a young 'omen and a man. And I see her kissin' him; and the
gentleman won't believe me."

"You mean you saw him kissing her, more likely."

"No, I don't. I know wot it is to have a girl kiss you when you don't
want. And I gev a screech to friken 'em. And he called me and gev me
tuppence, and sez, 'You go to the devil,' he sez, 'and don't tell no one
you seen me here, or else,' he sez, 'I might be tempted to drownd you,'
he sez, 'and wot a shock that would be to your parents!' 'Oh, yes, very
likely,' I sez, jes' like that. Then I went away, because he knows Mr.
Wickens, and I was afeerd of his telling on me."

The boy being now subdued, questions were put to him from all sides.
But his powers of observation and description went no further. As he was
anxious to propitiate his captors, he answered as often as possible in
the affirmative. Mr. Jansenius asked him whether the young woman he had
seen was a lady, and he said yes. Was the man a laborer? Yes--after a
moment's hesitation. How was she dressed? He hadn't taken notice. Had
she red flowers in her hat? Yes. Had she a green dress? Yes. Were the
flowers in her hat yellow? (Agatha's question.) Yes. Was her dress pink?
Yes. Sure it wasn't black? No answer.

"I told you he was a liar," said Fairholme contemptuously.

"Well, I expect he's seen something," said the inspector, "but what it
was, or who it was, is more than I can get out of him."

There was a pause, and they looked askance upon Wickens's boy. His
account of the kissing made it almost an insult to the Janseniuses to
identify with Henrietta the person he had seen. Jane suggested dragging
the canal, but was silenced by an indignant "sh-sh-sh," accompanied by
apprehensive and sympathetic glances at the bereaved parents. She was
displaced from the focus of attention by the appearance of the two
policemen who had been sent to the chalet. Smilash was between them,
apparently a prisoner. At a distance, he seemed to have suffered some
frightful injury to his head, but when he was brought into the midst of
the company it appeared that he had twisted a red handkerchief about
his face as if to soothe a toothache. He had a particularly hangdog
expression as he stood before the inspector with his head bowed and his
countenance averted from Mr. Jansenius, who, attempting to scrutinize
his features, could see nothing but a patch of red handkerchief.

One of the policemen described how they had found Smilash in the act of
entering his dwelling; how he had refused to give any information or
to go to the college, and had defied them to take him there against his
will; and how, on their at last proposing to send for the inspector
and Mr. Jansenius, he had called them asses, and consented to accompany
them. The policeman concluded by declaring that the man was either drunk
or designing, as he could not or would not speak sensibly.

"Look here, governor," began Smilash to the inspector, "I am a common
man--no commoner goin', as you may see for--"

"That's 'im," cried Wickens's boy, suddenly struck with a sense of his
own importance as a witness. "That's 'im that the lady kissed, and that
gev me tuppence and threatened to drownd me."

"And with a 'umble and contrite 'art do I regret that I did not drownd
you, you young rascal," said Smilash. "It ain't manners to interrupt a
man who, though common, might be your father for years and wisdom."

"Hold your tongue," said the inspector to the boy. "Now, Smilash, do you
wish to make any statement? Be careful, for whatever you say may be used
against you hereafter."

"If you was to lead me straight away to the scaffold, colonel, I could
tell you no more than the truth. If any man can say that he has heard
Jeff Smilash tell a lie, let him stand forth."

"We don't want to hear about that," said the inspector. "As you are a
stranger in these parts, nobody here knows any bad of you. No more do
they know any good of you neither."

"Colonel," said Smilash, deeply impressed, "you have a penetrating mind,
and you know a bad character at sight. Not to deceive you, I am that
given to lying, and laziness, and self-indulgence of all sorts, that the
only excuse I can find for myself is that it is the nature of the race
so to be; for most men is just as bad as me, and some of 'em worsen I do
not speak pers'nal to you, governor, nor to the honorable gentlemen here
assembled. But then you, colonel, are a hinspector of police, which
I take to be more than merely human; and as to the gentlemen here, a
gentleman ain't a man--leastways not a common man--the common man bein'
but the slave wot feeds and clothes the gentleman beyond the common."

"Come," said the inspector, unable to follow these observations, "you
are a clever dodger, but you can't dodge me. Have you any statement to
make with reference to the lady that was last seen in your company?"

"Take a statement about a lady!" said Smilash indignantly. "Far be the
thought from my mind!"

"What have you done with her?" said Agatha, impetuously. "Don't be
silly."

"You're not bound to answer that, you know," said the inspector,
a little put out by Agatha's taking advantage of her irresponsible
unofficial position to come so directly to the point. "You may if you
like, though. If you've done any harm, you'd better hold your tongue. If
not, you'd better say so."

"I will set the young lady's mind at rest respecting her honorable
sister," said Smilash. "When the young lady caught sight of me she
fainted. Bein' but a young man, and not used to ladies, I will not deny
but that I were a bit scared, and that my mind were not open to the
sensiblest considerations. When she unveils her orbs, so to speak, she
ketches me round the neck, not knowin' me from Adam the father of us
all, and sez, 'Bring me some water, and don't let the girls see me.'
Through not 'avin' the intelligence to think for myself, I done just
what she told me. I ups with her in my arms--she bein' a light weight
and a slender figure--and makes for the canal as fast as I could. When I
got there, I lays her on the bank and goes for the water. But what
with factories, and pollutions, and high civilizations of one sort and
another, English canal water ain't fit to sprinkle on a lady, much less
for her to drink. Just then, as luck would have it, a barge came along
and took her aboard, and--"

"To such a thing," said Wickens's boy stubbornly, emboldened by
witnessing the effrontery of one apparently of his own class. "I sor you
two standin' together, and her a kissin' of you. There worn's no barge."

"Is the maiden modesty of a born lady to be disbelieved on the word of a
common boy that only walks the earth by the sufferance of the landlords
and moneylords he helps to feed?" cried Smilash indignantly. "Why, you
young infidel, a lady ain't made of common brick like you. She don't
know what a kiss means, and if she did, is it likely that she'd kiss
me when a fine man like the inspector here would be only too happy to
oblige her. Fie, for shame! The barge were red and yellow, with a green
dragon for a figurehead, and a white horse towin' of it. Perhaps you're
color-blind, and can't distinguish red and yellow. The bargee was moved
to compassion by the sight of the poor faintin' lady, and the offer of
'arf-a-crown, and he had a mother that acted as a mother should. There
was a cabin in that barge about as big as the locker where your ladyship
keeps your jam and pickles, and in that locker the bargee lives, quite
domestic, with his wife and mother and five children. Them canal boats
is what you may call the wooden walls of England."

"Come, get on with your story," said the inspector. "We know what barges
is as well as you."

"I wish more knew of 'em," retorted Smilash; "perhaps it 'ud lighten
your work a bit. However, as I was sayin', we went right down the canal
to Lyvern, where we got off, and the lady she took the railway omnibus
and went away in it. With the noble openhandedness of her class, she
gave me sixpence; here it is, in proof that my words is true. And I wish
her safe home, and if I was on the rack I could tell no more, except
that when I got back I were laid hands on by these here bobbies,
contrary to the British constitooshun, and if your ladyship will kindly
go to where that constitooshun is wrote down, and find out wot it sez
about my rights and liberties--for I have been told that the working-man
has his liberties, and have myself seen plenty took with him--you
will oblige a common chap more than his education will enable him to
express."

"Sir," cried Mr. Jansenius suddenly, "will you hold up your head and
look me in the face?"

Smilash did so, and immediately started theatrically, exclaiming, "Whom
do I see?"

"You would hardly believe it," he continued, addressing the company at
large, "but I am well beknown to this honorable gentleman. I see it upon
your lips, governor, to ask after my missus, and I thank you for your
condescending interest. She is well, sir, and my residence here is
fully agreed upon between us. What little cloud may have rose upon our
domestic horizon has past away; and, governor,"---here Smilash's voice
fell with graver emphasis--"them as interferes betwixt man and wife now
will incur a heavy responsibility. Here I am, such as you see me, and
here I mean to stay, likewise such as you see me. That is, if what you
may call destiny permits. For destiny is a rum thing, governor. I came
here thinking it was the last place in the world I should ever set eyes
on you in, and blow me if you ain't a'most the first person I pops on."

"I do not choose to be a party to this mummery of--"

"Asking your leave to take the word out of your mouth, governor, I make
you a party to nothink. Respecting my past conduct, you may out with it
or you may keep it to yourself. All I say is that if you out with some
of it I will out with the rest. All or none. You are free to tell the
inspector here that I am a bad 'un. His penetrating mind have discovered
that already. But if you go into names and particulars, you will not
only be acting against the wishes of my missus, but you will lead to my
tellin' the whole story right out afore everyone here, and then goin'
away where no one won't never find me."

"I think the less said the better," said Mrs. Jansenius, uneasily
observant of the curiosity and surprise this dialogue was causing. "But
understand this, Mr.--"

"Smilash, dear lady; Jeff Smilash."

"Mr. Smilash, whatever arrangement you may have made with your wife, it
has nothing to do with me. You have behaved infamously, and I desire
to have as little as possible to say to you in future! I desire to have
nothing to say to you--nothing," said Mr. Jansenius. "I look on your
conduct as an insult to me, personally. You may live in any fashion
you please, and where you please. All England is open to you except one
place--my house. Come, Ruth." He offered his arm to his wife; she took
it, and they turned away, looking about for Agatha, who, disgusted at
the gaping curiosity of the rest, had pointedly withdrawn beyond earshot
of the conversation.

Miss Wilson looked from Smilash--who had watched Mr. Jansenius's
explosion of wrath with friendly interest, as if it concerned him as a
curious spectator only--to her two visitors as they retreated. "Pray, do
you consider this man's statement satisfactory?" she said to them. "I do
not."

"I am far too common a man to be able to make any statement that could
satisfy a mind cultivated as yours has been," said Smilash, "but I would
'umbly pint out to you that there is a boy yonder with a telegram trying
to shove hisself through the 'iborn throng."

"Miss Wilson!" cried the boy shrilly.

She took the telegram; read it; and frowned. "We have had all our
trouble for nothing, ladies and gentlemen," she said, with suppressed
vexation. "Mrs. Trefusis says here that she has gone back to London. She
has not considered it necessary to add any explanation."

There was a general murmur of disappointment.

"Don't lose heart, ladies," said Smilash. "She may be drowned or
murdered for all we know. Anyone may send a telegram in a false name.
Perhaps it's a plant. Let's hope for your sakes that some little
accident--on the railway, for instance--may happen yet."

Miss Wilson turned upon him, glad to find someone with whom she might
justly be angry. "You had better go about your business," she said. "And
don't let me see you here again."

"This is 'ard," said Smilash plaintively. "My intentions was nothing but
good. But I know wot it is. It's that young varmint a-saying that the
young lady kissed me."

"Inspector," said Miss Wilson, "will you oblige me by seeing that he
leaves the college as soon as possible?"

"Where's my wages?" he retorted reproachfully. "Where's my lawful wages?
I am su'prised at a lady like you, chock full o' moral science and
political economy, wanting to put a poor man off. Where's your wages
fund? Where's your remuneratory capital?"

"Don't you give him anything, ma'am," said the inspector. "The money
he's had from the lady will pay him very well. Move on here, or we'll
precious soon hurry you."

"Very well," grumbled Smilash. "I bargained for ninepence, and what with
the roller, and opening the soda water, and shoving them heavy tables
about, there was a decomposition of tissue in me to the tune of two
shillings. But all I ask is the ninepence, and let the lady keep the one
and threppence as the reward of abstinence. Exploitation of labor at
the rate of a hundred and twenty-five per cent., that is. Come, give us
ninepence, and I'll go straight off."

"Here is a shilling," said Miss Wilson. "Now go."

"Threppence change!" cried Smilash. "Honesty has ever been--"

"You may keep the change."

"You have a noble 'art, lady; but you're flying in the face of the law
of supply and demand. If you keep payin' at this rate, there'll be a
rush of laborers to the college, and competition'll soon bring you down
from a shilling to sixpence, let alone ninepence. That's the way wages
go down and death rates goes up, worse luck for the likes of hus, as has
to sell ourselves like pigs in the market."

He was about to continue when the policeman took him by the arm, turned
him towards the gate, and pointed expressively in that direction.
Smilash looked vacantly at him for a moment. Then, with a wink at
Fairholme, he walked gravely away, amid general staring and silence.



CHAPTER V

What had passed between Smilash and Henrietta remained unknown except to
themselves. Agatha had seen Henrietta clasping his neck in her arms,
but had not waited to hear the exclamation of "Sidney, Sidney," which
followed, nor to see him press her face to his breast in his anxiety to
stifle her voice as he said, "My darling love, don't screech I implore
you. Confound it, we shall have the whole pack here in a moment. Hush!"

"Don't leave me again, Sidney," she entreated, clinging faster to him
as his perplexed gaze, wandering towards the entrance to the shrubbery,
seemed to forsake her. A din of voices in that direction precipitated
his irresolution.

"We must run away, Hetty," he said "Hold fast about my neck, and don't
strangle me. Now then." He lifted her upon his shoulder and ran swiftly
through the grounds. When they were stopped by the wall, he placed her
atop of it, scrabbled over, and made her jump into his arms. Then he
staggered away with her across the fields, gasping out in reply to
the inarticulate remonstrances which burst from her as he stumbled and
reeled at every hillock, "Your weight is increasing at the rate of a
stone a second, my love. If you stoop you will break my back. Oh, Lord,
here's a ditch!"

"Let me down," screamed Henrietta in an ecstasy of delight and
apprehension. "You will hurt yourself, and--Oh, DO take--"

He struggled through a dry ditch as she spoke, and came out upon a
grassy place that bordered the towpath of the canal. Here, on the
bank of a hollow where the moss was dry and soft, he seated her, threw
himself prone on his elbows before her, and said, panting:

"Nessus carrying off Dejanira was nothing to this! Whew! Well, my
darling, are you glad to see me?"

"But--"

"But me no buts, unless you wish me to vanish again and for ever. Wretch
that I am, I have longed for you unspeakably more than once since I ran
away from you. You didn't care, of course?"

"I did. I did, indeed. Why did you leave me, Sidney?"

"Lest a worse thing might befall. Come, don't let us waste in
explanations the few minutes we have left. Give me a kiss."

"Then you are going to leave me again. Oh, Sidney--"

"Never mind to-morrow, Hetty. Be like the sun and the meadow, which are
not in the least concerned about the coming winter. Why do you stare
at that cursed canal, blindly dragging its load of filth from place to
place until it pitches it into the sea--just as a crowded street pitches
its load into the cemetery? Stare at ME, and give me a kiss."

She gave him several, and said coaxingly, with her arm still upon his
shoulder: "You only talk that way to frighten me, Sidney; I know you
do."

"You are the bright sun of my senses," he said, embracing her. "I feel
my heart and brain wither in your smile, and I fling them to you for
your prey with exultation. How happy I am to have a wife who does not
despise me for doing so--who rather loves me the more!"

"Don't be silly," said Henrietta, smiling vacantly. Then, stung by a
half intuition of his meaning, she repulsed him and said angrily, "YOU
despise ME."

"Not more than I despise myself. Indeed, not so much; for many emotions
that seem base from within seem lovable from without."

"You intend to leave me again. I feel it. I know it."

"You think you know it because you feel it. Not a bad reason, either."

"Then you ARE going to leave me?"

"Do you not feel it and know it? Yes, my cherished Hetty, I assuredly
am."

She broke into wild exclamations of grief, and he drew her head down and
kissed her with a tender action which she could not resist, and a wry
face which she did not see.

"My poor Hetty, you don't understand me."

"I only understand that you hate me, and want to go away from me."

"That would be easy to understand. But the strangeness is that I LOVE
you and want to go away from you. Not for ever. Only for a time."

"But I don't want you to go away. I won't let you go away," she said,
a trace of fierceness mingling with her entreaty. "Why do you want to
leave me if you love me?"

"How do I know? I can no more tell you the whys and wherefores of myself
than I can lift myself up by the waistband and carry myself into the
next county, as some one challenged a speculator in perpetual motion to
do. I am too much a pessimist to respect my own affections. Do you know
what a pessimist is?"

"A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."

"So, or thereabout. Modern English polite society, my native sphere,
seems to me as corrupt as consciousness of culture and absence of
honesty can make it. A canting, lie-loving, fact-hating, scribbling,
chattering, wealth-hunting, pleasure-hunting, celebrity-hunting mob,
that, having lost the fear of hell, and not replaced it by the love of
justice, cares for nothing but the lion's share of the wealth wrung by
threat of starvation from the hands of the classes that create it. If
you interrupt me with a silly speech, Hetty, I will pitch you into the
canal, and die of sorrow for my lost love afterwards. You know what I
am, according to the conventional description: a gentleman with lots of
money. Do you know the wicked origin of that money and gentility?"

"Oh, Sidney; have you been doing anything?"

"No, my best beloved; I am a gentleman, and have been doing nothing.
That a man can do so and not starve is nowadays not even a paradox.
Every halfpenny I possess is stolen money; but it has been stolen
legally, and, what is of some practical importance to you, I have no
means of restoring it to the rightful owners even if I felt inclined to.
Do you know what my father was?"

"What difference can that make now? Don't be disagreeable and full of
ridiculous fads, Sidney dear. I didn't marry your father."

"No; but you married--only incidentally, of course--my father's fortune.
That necklace of yours was purchased with his money; and I can almost
fancy stains of blood."

"Stop, Sidney. I don't like this sort of romancing. It's all nonsense.
DO be nice to me."

"There are stains of sweat on it, I know."

"You nasty wretch!"

"I am thinking, not of you, my dainty one, but of the unfortunate people
who slave that we may live idly. Let me explain to you why we are so
rich. My father was a shrewd, energetic, and ambitious Manchester man,
who understood an exchange of any sort as a transaction by which one man
should lose and the other gain. He made it his object to make as many
exchanges as possible, and to be always the gaining party in them. I do
not know exactly what he was, for he was ashamed both of his antecedents
and of his relatives, from which I can only infer that they were honest,
and, therefore, unsuccessful people. However, he acquired some knowledge
of the cotton trade, saved some money, borrowed some more on the
security of his reputation for getting the better of other people in
business, and, as he accurately told me afterwards, started FOR HIMSELF.
He bought a factory and some raw cotton. Now you must know that a man,
by laboring some time on a piece of raw cotton, can turn it into a piece
of manufactured cotton fit for making into sheets and shifts and the
like. The manufactured cotton is more valuable than the raw cotton,
because the manufacture costs wear and tear of machinery, wear and tear
of the factory, rent of the ground upon which the factory is built, and
human labor, or wear and tear of live men, which has to be made good by
food, shelter, and rest. Do you understand that?"

"We used to learn all about it at college. I don't see what it has to do
with us, since you are not in the cotton trade."

"You learned as much as it was thought safe to teach you, no doubt; but
not quite all, I should think. When my father started for himself, there
were many men in Manchester who were willing to labor in this way, but
they had no factory to work in, no machinery to work with, and no raw
cotton to work on, simply because all this indispensable plant, and the
materials for producing a fresh supply of it, had been appropriated by
earlier comers. So they found themselves with gaping stomachs, shivering
limbs, and hungry wives and children, in a place called their own
country, in which, nevertheless, every scrap of ground and possible
source of subsistence was tightly locked up in the hands of others and
guarded by armed soldiers and policemen. In this helpless condition, the
poor devils were ready to beg for access to a factory and to raw cotton
on any conditions compatible with life. My father offered them the
use of his factory, his machines, and his raw cotton on the following
conditions: They were to work long and hard, early and late, to add
fresh value to his raw cotton by manufacturing it. Out of the value thus
created by them, they were to recoup him for what he supplied them with:
rent, shelter, gas, water, machinery, raw cotton--everything, and to pay
him for his own services as superintendent, manager, and salesman. So
far he asked nothing but just remuneration. But after this had been
paid, a balance due solely to their own labor remained. 'Out of this,'
said my father, 'you shall keep just enough to save you from starving,
and of the rest you shall make me a present to reward me for my virtue
in saving money. Such is the bargain I propose. It is, in my opinion,
fair and calculated to encourage thrifty habits. If it does not strike
you in that light, you can get a factory and raw cotton for yourselves;
you shall not use mine.' In other words, they might go to the devil and
starve--Hobson's choice!--for all the other factories were owned by men
who offered no better terms. The Manchesterians could not bear to starve
or to see their children starve, and so they accepted his terms and went
into the factory. The terms, you see, did not admit of their beginning
to save for themselves as he had done. Well, they created great wealth
by their labor, and lived on very little, so that the balance they gave
for nothing to my father was large. He bought more cotton, and more
machinery, and more factories with it; employed more men to make wealth
for him, and saw his fortune increase like a rolling snowball. He
prospered enormously, but the work men were no better off than at first,
and they dared not rebel and demand more of the money they had made, for
there were always plenty of starving wretches outside willing to take
their places on the old terms. Sometimes he met with a check, as, for
instance, when, in his eagerness to increase his store, he made the men
manufacture more cotton than the public needed; or when he could not get
enough of raw cotton, as happened during the Civil War in America. Then
he adapted himself to circumstances by turning away as many workmen as
he could not find customers or cotton for; and they, of course, starved
or subsisted on charity. During the war-time a big subscription was got
up for these poor wretches, and my father subscribed one hundred pounds,
in spite, he said, of his own great losses. Then he bought new machines;
and, as women and children could work these as well as men, and were
cheaper and more docile, he turned away about seventy out of every
hundred of his HANDS (so he called the men), and replaced them by their
wives and children, who made money for him faster than ever. By this
time he had long ago given up managing the factories, and paid clever
fellows who had no money of their own a few hundreds a year to do it for
him. He also purchased shares in other concerns conducted on the same
principle; pocketed dividends made in countries which he had never
visited by men whom he had never seen; bought a seat in Parliament from
a poor and corrupt constituency, and helped to preserve the laws by
which he had thriven. Afterwards, when his wealth grew famous, he had
less need to bribe; for modern men worship the rich as gods, and will
elect a man as one of their rulers for no other reason than that he is
a millionaire. He aped gentility, lived in a palace at Kensington, and
bought a part of Scotland to make a deer forest of. It is easy enough to
make a deer forest, as trees are not necessary there. You simply drive
off the peasants, destroy their houses, and make a desert of the land.
However, my father did not shoot much himself; he generally let the
forest out by the season to those who did. He purchased a wife of gentle
blood too, with the unsatisfactory result now before you. That is
how Jesse Trefusis, a poor Manchester bagman, contrived to be come a
plutocrat and gentleman of landed estate. And also how I, who never did
a stroke of work in my life, am overburdened with wealth; whilst the
children of the men who made that wealth are slaving as their fathers
slaved, or starving, or in the workhouse, or on the streets, or the
deuce knows where. What do you think of that, my love?"

"What is the use of worrying about it, Sidney? It cannot be helped now.
Besides, if your father saved money, and the others were improvident, he
deserved to make a fortune."

"Granted; but he didn't make a fortune. He took a fortune that others
made. At Cambridge they taught me that his profits were the reward of
abstinence--the abstinence which enabled him to save. That quieted my
conscience until I began to wonder why one man should make another pay
him for exercising one of the virtues. Then came the question: what did
my father abstain from? The workmen abstained from meat, drink, fresh
air, good clothes, decent lodging, holidays, money, the society of their
families, and pretty nearly everything that makes life worth living,
which was perhaps the reason why they usually died twenty years or so
sooner than people in our circumstances. Yet no one rewarded them for
their abstinence. The reward came to my father, who abstained from
none of these things, but indulged in them all to his heart's content.
Besides, if the money was the reward of abstinence, it seemed logical to
infer that he must abstain ten times as much when he had fifty thousand
a year as when he had only five thousand. Here was a problem for my
young mind. Required, something from which my father abstained and in
which his workmen exceeded, and which he abstained from more and more as
he grew richer and richer. The only thing that answered this description
was hard work, and as I never met a sane man willing to pay another for
idling, I began to see that these prodigious payments to my father were
extorted by force. To do him justice, he never boasted of abstinence.
He considered himself a hard-worked man, and claimed his fortune as the
reward of his risks, his calculations, his anxieties, and the journeys
he had to make at all seasons and at all hours. This comforted me
somewhat until it occurred to me that if he had lived a century earlier,
invested his money in a horse and a pair of pistols, and taken to the
road, his object--that of wresting from others the fruits of their labor
without rendering them an equivalent--would have been exactly the
same, and his risk far greater, for it would have included risk of
the gallows. Constant travelling with the constable at his heels, and
calculations of the chances of robbing the Dover mail, would have given
him his fill of activity and anxiety. On the whole, if Jesse Trefusis,
M.P., who died a millionaire in his palace at Kensington, had been a
highwayman, I could not more heartily loathe the social arrangements
that rendered such a career as his not only possible, but eminently
creditable to himself in the eyes of his fellows. Most men make it their
business to imitate him, hoping to become rich and idle on the same
terms. Therefore I turn my back on them. I cannot sit at their feasts
knowing how much they cost in human misery, and seeing how little they
produce of human happiness. What is your opinion, my treasure?"

Henrietta seemed a little troubled. She smiled faintly, and said
caressingly, "It was not your fault, Sidney. _I_ don't blame you."

"Immortal powers!" he exclaimed, sitting bolt upright and appealing to
the skies, "here is a woman who believes that the only concern all
this causes me is whether she thinks any the worse of me personally on
account of it!"

"No, no, Sidney. It is not I alone. Nobody thinks the worse of you for
it."

"Quite so," he returned, in a polite frenzy. "Nobody sees any harm in
it. That is precisely the mischief of it."

"Besides," she urged, "your mother belonged to one of the oldest
families in England."

"And what more can man desire than wealth with descent from a county
family! Could a man be happier than I ought to be, sprung as I am from
monopolists of all the sources and instruments of production--of land on
the one side, and of machinery on the other? This very ground on which
we are resting was the property of my mother's father. At least the law
allowed him to use it as such. When he was a boy, there was a fairly
prosperous race of peasants settled here, tilling the soil, paying him
rent for permission to do so, and making enough out of it to satisfy
his large wants and their own narrow needs without working themselves to
death. But my grandfather was a shrewd man. He perceived that cows and
sheep produced more money by their meat and wool than peasants by their
husbandry. So he cleared the estate. That is, he drove the peasants from
their homes, as my father did afterwards in his Scotch deer forest. Or,
as his tombstone has it, he developed the resources of his country. I
don't know what became of the peasants; HE didn't know, and, I presume,
didn't care. I suppose the old ones went into the workhouse, and the
young ones crowded the towns, and worked for men like my father in
factories. Their places were taken by cattle, which paid for their food
so well that my grandfather, getting my father to take shares in the
enterprise, hired laborers on the Manchester terms to cut that canal for
him. When it was made, he took toll upon it; and his heirs still take
toll, and the sons of the navvies who dug it and of the engineer who
designed it pay the toll when they have occasion to travel by it, or
to purchase goods which have been conveyed along it. I remember my
grandfather well. He was a well-bred man, and a perfect gentleman in his
manners; but, on the whole, I think he was wickeder than my father, who,
after all, was caught in the wheels of a vicious system, and had either
to spoil others or be spoiled by them. But my grandfather--the old
rascal!--was in no such dilemma. Master as he was of his bit of merry
England, no man could have enslaved him, and he might at least have
lived and let live. My father followed his example in the matter of the
deer forest, but that was the climax of his wickedness, whereas it was
only the beginning of my grandfather's. Howbeit, whichever bears the
palm, there they were, the types after which we all strive."

"Not all, Sidney. Not we two. I hate tradespeople and country squires.
We belong to the artistic and cultured classes, and we can keep aloof
from shopkeepers."

"Living, meanwhile, at the rate of several thousand a year on rent and
interest. No, my dear, this is the way of those people who insist that
when they are in heaven they shall be spared the recollection of such a
place as hell, but are quite content that it shall exist outside their
consciousness. I respect my father more--I mean I despise him less--for
doing his own sweating and filching than I do the sensitive sluggards
and cowards who lent him their money to sweat and filch with, and asked
no questions provided the interest was paid punctually. And as to your
friends the artists, they are the worst of all."

"Oh, Sidney, you are determined not to be pleased. Artists don't keep
factories."

"No; but the factory is only a part of the machinery of the system.
Its basis is the tyranny of brain force, which, among civilized men, is
allowed to do what muscular force does among schoolboys and savages. The
schoolboy proposition is: 'I am stronger than you, therefore you shall
fag for me.' Its grown up form is: 'I am cleverer than you, therefore
you shall fag for me.' The state of things we produce by submitting to
this, bad enough even at first, becomes intolerable when the mediocre or
foolish descendants of the clever fellows claim to have inherited their
privileges. Now, no men are greater sticklers for the arbitrary dominion
of genius and talent than your artists. The great painter is not
satisfied with being sought after and admired because his hands can do
more than ordinary hands, which they truly can, but he wants to be fed
as if his stomach needed more food than ordinary stomachs, which it does
not. A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man
who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose, and due leisure,
whether he be painter or ploughman. But the rascal of a painter,
poet, novelist, or other voluptuary in labor, is not content with
his advantage in popular esteem over the ploughman; he also wants an
advantage in money, as if there were more hours in a day spent in the
studio or library than in the field; or as if he needed more food to
enable him to do his work than the ploughman to enable him to do his. He
talks of the higher quality of his work, as if the higher quality of it
were of his own making--as if it gave him a right to work less for his
neighbor than his neighbor works for him--as if the ploughman could not
do better without him than he without the ploughman--as if the value of
the most celebrated pictures has not been questioned more than that
of any straight furrow in the arable world--as if it did not take an
apprenticeship of as many years to train the hand and eye of a mason or
blacksmith as of an artist--as if, in short, the fellow were a god, as
canting brain worshippers have for years past been assuring him he is.
Artists are the high priests of the modern Moloch. Nine out of ten of
them are diseased creatures, just sane enough to trade on their own
neuroses. The only quality of theirs which extorts my respect is a
certain sublime selfishness which makes them willing to starve and to
let their families starve sooner than do any work they don't like."

"INDEED you are quite wrong, Sidney. There was a girl at the Slade
school who supported her mother and two sisters by her drawing. Besides,
what can you do? People were made so."

"Yes; I was made a landlord and capitalist by the folly of the people;
but they can unmake me if they will. Meanwhile I have absolutely no
means of escape from my position except by giving away my slaves to
fellows who will use them no better than I, and becoming a slave myself;
which, if you please, you shall not catch me doing in a hurry. No, my
beloved, I must keep my foot on their necks for your sake as well as for
my own. But you do not care about all this prosy stuff. I am consumed
with remorse for having bored my darling. You want to know why I am
living here like a hermit in a vulgar two-roomed hovel instead of
tasting the delights of London society with my beautiful and devoted
young wife."

"But you don't intend to stay here, Sidney?"

"Yes, I do; and I will tell you why. I am helping to liberate those
Manchester laborers who were my father's slaves. To bring that
about, their fellow slaves all over the world must unite in a vast
international association of men pledged to share the world's work
justly; to share the produce of the work justly; to yield not a
farthing--charity apart--to any full-grown and able-bodied idler
or malingerer, and to treat as vermin in the commonwealth persons
attempting to get more than their share of wealth or give less than
their share of work. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish,
because working-men, like the people called their betters, do not always
understand their own interests, and will often actually help their
oppressors to exterminate their saviours to the tune of 'Rule
Britannia,' or some such lying doggerel. We must educate them out of
that, and, meanwhile, push forward the international association
of laborers diligently. I am at present occupied in propagating its
principles. Capitalism, organized for repressive purposes under pretext
of governing the nation, would very soon stop the association if it
understood our aim, but it thinks that we are engaged in gunpowder plots
and conspiracies to assassinate crowned heads; and so, whilst the police
are blundering in search of evidence of these, our real work goes on
unmolested. Whether I am really advancing the cause is more than I can
say. I use heaps of postage stamps, pay the expenses of many indifferent
lecturers, defray the cost of printing reams of pamphlets and hand-bills
which hail the laborer flatteringly as the salt of the earth, write and
edit a little socialist journal, and do what lies in my power generally.
I had rather spend my ill-gotten wealth in this way than upon an
expensive house and a retinue of servants. And I prefer my corduroys and
my two-roomed chalet here to our pretty little house, and your pretty
little ways, and my pretty little neglect of the work that my heart is
set upon. Some day, perhaps, I will take a holiday; and then we shall
have a new honeymoon."

For a moment Henrietta seemed about to cry. Suddenly she exclaimed
with enthusiasm: "I will stay with you, Sidney. I will share your work,
whatever it may be. I will dress as a dairymaid, and have a little pail
to carry milk in. The world is nothing to me except when you are with
me; and I should love to live here and sketch from nature."

He blenched, and partially rose, unable to conceal his dismay. She,
resolved not to be cast off, seized him and clung to him. This was the
movement that excited the derision of Wickens's boy in the adjacent
gravel pit. Trefusis was glad of the interruption; and, when he gave
the boy twopence and bade him begone, half hoped that he would insist
on remaining. But though an obdurate boy on most occasions, he proved
complaisant on this, and withdrew to the high road, where he made over
one of his pennies to a phantom gambler, and tossed with him until
recalled from his dual state by the appearance of Fairholme's party.

In the meantime, Henrietta urgently returned to her proposition.

"We should be so happy," she said. "I would housekeep for you, and you
could work as much as you pleased. Our life would be a long idyll."

"My love," he said, shaking his head as she looked beseechingly at him,
"I have too much Manchester cotton in my constitution for long idylls.
And the truth is, that the first condition of work with me is your
absence. When you are with me, I can do nothing but make love to you.
You bewitch me. When I escape from you for a moment, it is only to groan
remorsefully over the hours you have tempted me to waste and the energy
you have futilized."

"If you won't live with me you had no right to marry me."

"True. But that is neither your fault nor mine. We have found that
we love each other too much--that our intercourse hinders our
usefulness--and so we must part. Not for ever, my dear; only until you
have cares and business of your own to fill up your life and prevent you
from wasting mine."

"I believe you are mad," she said petulantly. "The world is mad
nowadays, and is galloping to the deuce as fast as greed can goad it. I
merely stand out of the rush, not liking its destination. Here comes a
barge, the commander of which is devoted to me because he believes that
I am organizing a revolution for the abolition of lock dues and tolls.
We will go aboard and float down to Lyvern, whence you can return to
London. You had better telegraph from the junction to the college;
there must be a hue and cry out after us by this time. You shall have my
address, and we can write to one another or see one another whenever we
please. Or you can divorce me for deserting you."

"You would like me to, I know," said Henrietta, sobbing.

"I should die of despair, my darling," he said complacently. "Ship
aho-o-o-y! Stop crying, Hetty, for God's sake. You lacerate my very
soul."