One May morning in London, when I had just completed a fortnight of political speaking in Fifeshire, a friend of mine, Ernest Beckett (afterward the second Lord Grimthorpe), came in a state of obvious excitement to see me, and talk, so he said, about something of great importance. He had, it appeared, been spending some weeks in the south of France, and was full of a project the value of which had, so he said, been amply proved by experiment. To me at first sight it seemed no better than lunacy. I could not for some time even bring myself to consider it seriously. This project was to play a new system at Monte Carlo. It was a system founded on one which, devised by Henry Labouchere, had been--such was Beckett"s contention--greatly improved by himself, and he and a companion had been playing it with absolutely unbroken success. The two, with only a small capital in their pockets, had won during the course of a week or so something like a thousand pounds--not in a few large gains (for in this there would have been nothing to wonder at), but by a regular succession day after day of small ones. They had tested the system further by applying it, after their departure, to the records, published daily in a Monte Carlo journal, of the order in which colors or numbers had turned up throughout the day preceding at some particular table. Adjusting their imaginary stakes, in accordance with the rules of the system, to these series of actual sequences, the two experimenters had discovered that their original successes were, as a matter of theory, infallibly reproduced. So certain, said Beckett, did all this seem that he would himself be in a position to secure some thousands of pounds of capital for the purpose of renewing the enterprise on a very much larger scale.
He would not be able till Christmas to go out to Monte Carlo himself, and for several reasons he desired to remain at first in the background; but the capital in question would, he said, include a sum sufficient to defray the expenses of a few suitable friends, who would set to work meanwhile, and be ent.i.tled, as a business matter, to a share of the eventual profits. The coadjutors whom he had in view were myself, the late Lord Greenock, Charles Bulpett, and Charles Edward Jerningham.
Moreover, as everything would depend on a correct calculation of the stakes--the amount of which at each coup would vary with the results of the coups preceding--and as this calculation would often be extremely complicated, and have in every case to be made with extreme rapidity, a good deal of preliminary practice on the part of the intending players would be necessary. Would this little group of players be, as he hoped, forthcoming? I still regarded the project as something of the wildcat kind; but I was struck by the undoubted success of Beckett"s own experiments, actual and theoretical, so far; and, as the four players would at all events lose nothing, even if they gained nothing, by renewing them, I and the three others at last consented to take part in the venture.
As soon, therefore, as the London season was over we began our preparations, which would necessarily be somewhat lengthy. From the beginning of August up to the end of October we met again and again at Beckett"s house in Yorkshire, our proceedings being shrouded in serio-comic secrecy. In order that we might perfect ourselves in the use of our mathematical weapons, each day after breakfast the dining-room table was cleared and covered with a large green cloth divided into numbered s.p.a.ces, like the green roulette board at Monte Carlo. In the middle of this was placed a large roulette. Rakes were provided of the true Monte Carlo pattern. One of us played the part of croupier, while to each of the others was allotted a certain number of counters indistinguishable in aspect from twenty-franc gold pieces. Each of us made his own calculations on cards provided for the purpose; each day we played solemnly for four hours on end, and then examined the results. We sometimes varied this routine by taking one of the Monte Carlo records, our croupier not turning the wheel, but calling out the numbers or colors seriatim which had actually turned up at the tables on this day or that. The general results were, I must say, most extraordinary. On only two occasions did the operations of an entire day leave any of the players bankrupt or without a substantial gain, though they all started their work at different moments, and the actual details of the staking were in no two cases the same. Throughout a long series of these experimental meetings, the winnings were as a whole about 20 per cent.
daily on the total capital risked.
Encouraged by these results, we had no sooner mastered the system as a mathematical scheme than we promptly made arrangements for beginning the work in earnest. We all thought it desirable that, until it was crowned with success, our enterprise should remain unknown to anybody except ourselves. It was therefore settled that our journey should take place at once--that is to say, about the end of October, at which time Monte Carlo would be nearly empty, and we should run least risk of encountering loquacious acquaintances or of having our secret stolen from us by inquisitive and sinister rivals. We accordingly secured in advance--since all the great hotels at the time in question were closed--a suite of four bedrooms and a sitting room at a small establishment called the Hotel de Russie. Its appointments, when we arrived, proved to be so simple that the floor of the restaurant was sanded; but the rooms upstairs were comfortable; and not even at the Hotel de Paris could anything better have been found in the way of wine or cooking.
Accordingly on a certain night we, the four precursors, were duly a.s.sembled on the platform of Victoria Station; and Beckett, with the air of a conspirator, appeared at the last moment, thrust into our keeping certain notes of credit, and gave us his blessing as we seated ourselves in the continental train. Had we been agents of a plot organized to convulse Europe we could not have been in a condition of greater and more carefully subdued excitement, though there was not absent from any of us an underlying sense of comedy. In the dead of night we were having supper at Calais, and, scanning the few other travelers who were engaged in the same task, we were rejoicing in a sense of having escaped all curious observation, when Jerningham gripped my arm and said: "Did you see the man who has just gone through the door? Wasn"t he your friend W----?" He had named one of the most intimate of the Catholic connections of my family, who was, moreover, the greatest gossip in Europe. Never would a dear friend have to us been less welcome than he.
Happily, however, I was able to a.s.sure Jerningham that his fears were groundless, and we settled ourselves in peace among the cushions of the Paris train without having seen a soul who was otherwise than a stranger to all of us. Having reached the Gare du Nord at six o"clock in the morning, we scrutinized the faces at the exit with the same gratifying result.
Thus freed from anxiety, we enjoyed at the Hotel Continental a prolonged sleep, which was haunted by pleasing dreams. By eight o"clock that evening we found ourselves at the Gare de Lyon, disposing our belongings in a compartment of the wagon-lit which ended its course at Ventimiglia.
My own arrangements having been made, I was smoking a cigarette in the corridor when a well-known voice over my shoulder was e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. my Christian name. I turned round, and there was the very friend whom Jerningham had identified but too correctly at Calais. I took the bull by the horns. I greeted him with the utmost enthusiasm; and when he asked me what I was doing I told him that I and three companions were going to amuse ourselves in the south of France till Christmas, and should--such, I think, was my phrase--have "a look in" at Monte Carlo as one incident of our program. I begged him to come and be introduced to my friends, as soon as our compartment was in order, and I managed meanwhile to inform them as to what had happened. In due time he visited us. He was full of good spirits and conversation, and one of the first facts that he communicated to us was that he was on his way to Monte Carlo himself, to play an infallible system. With sublime presence of mind we expressed a hope that we might meet there, adding that, if we did, he might find that the place had seduced us into trying a little system likewise. He was, however, so much taken up with his own that he had no time or inclination to propound any questions as to ours; and when he got out at Nice he never suspected that, so far as play was concerned, we were more than casual triflers.
When we reached Monte Carlo it was dark. The only vehicle in waiting was the omnibus of the Hotel de Russie; and into its well of blackness one other pa.s.senger followed us. Four hearts were at once set beating by the thought that this man might be a spy, who had already heard of our enterprise, and whose mission was to appropriate or else to thwart our secret. The following day two of us drove into Nice and deposited our notes of credit at one of the most important banks, the manager looking at us with an oddly repressed smile, as though he detected in us a new contingent of dupes. We went back to Monte Carlo armed with two small steel safes, one for such capital as was needed for our immediate purposes, the other for our prospective winnings. Jerningham, who had a curious talent for initiating intimacies everywhere, had meanwhile managed to ascertain from somebody that, if we desired to secure preferential civility from the croupiers, the right thing to do was to make each of them a present of fairly good cigars, gifts of money being naturally not allowed. This was done, and ultimately we began our play feeling as children do when they first put their feet into sea water.
We played in couples, one player calculating the stakes, the other placing them on the table. The couples were to play alternately, one giving place to another as soon as the winnings amounted to fifty pounds. When the total winnings of both reached a hundred pounds we stopped. We played it for that day no longer.
For three weeks the whole thing went like clockwork. We ground out our daily gains--a hundred pounds on an average--as though they were coffee from a coffee mill. But at the beginning of the fourth week the fates were for the first time against us. We lost in the course of a morning about half the sum which it had cost us the labor of three weeks to win.
We were not, however, daunted. We resolved that for the future no couple of players should bring into the rooms more than five hundred pounds, and should this sum be lost we would suspend our proceedings for the day and start afresh next morning. This arrangement being made, our successes began again. A risked capital of five hundred pounds regularly yielded a return of 10 per cent. in not much more than an hour, and we had nearly recovered the whole of our previous loss when a catastrophe occurred owing to causes which had not come into our calculations. One of our couples, not finding that they were winning as fast as they had hoped to do, completely lost their heads, and began throwing money on the tables without any system at all. The result was that in less than a quarter of an hour every penny which they had brought with them had disappeared. Beckett, as the only person who could possibly lose through the enterprise, was promptly consulted by telegram. His answer was that he was coming out himself in a month or so, and begged us to stay where we were, but to suspend our play till the situation could be discussed more fully. By this prudent decision on his part I was not myself displeased; for system-playing, even when successful, I discovered to be a very tedious matter.
Meanwhile, in respect of amus.e.m.e.nts, we four were by no means derelicts.
Empty as Monte Carlo was, some villas were already occupied, one of these being Le Nid, of which Laura, Lady Wilton was the mistress--a woman whose hospitalities were no less agreeable than herself. Having found out enough about us to show her that we were at least presentable, she inaugurated an acquaintance with us by sending a little box to myself, which proved to contain, on being opened, something in the nature of a valentine. It contained a spray of mimosa packed in cotton wool, and lying like an elf among the petals was a little sleeping bat.
Lady Wilton a week before had appeared as the Evening Star at a fancy ball at Nice. In return for her valentine I bought a microscopic puppy, which, packed in cotton wool and inclosed in a box as the bat was, was transmitted to her by a florist with a card attached to its person, and bearing the words, "From the bat to the Evening Star." Among other friends whom I discovered at Monte Carlo, I may mention a certain family whom I had once known well at Homburg, but had never seen again till now--a father, a mother, and an eminently beautiful daughter. Their home at Monte Carlo was a villa, small, but so curtained with velvet that it looked like a French jewel box. It was smothered in Banksia roses, and it overlooked the sea. By one of its windows the daughter would play the harp.
At length Beckett arrived, bringing his wife with him. Apart from the matter of the system, their coming effected a change which to me was extremely grateful. The Becketts and I before long migrated from Monte Carlo, and took a villa between us for a couple of months at Beaulieu.
As for the system, Beckett, who was by no means disheartened, played it himself for many nights in succession, and ultimately admitted that there were defects in it which its late breakdown had revealed rather than caused. Not long afterward he was persuaded into adopting another, commended to him by Butler Johnson, once a prominent Member of Parliament. This system, mechanical rather than mathematical, was based on the a.s.sumption that the roulettes used at Monte Carlo were in all probability not accurate implements--that the bearings, unless constantly rectified, would soon be so worn with use that the wheel during a long enough period would bring out certain numbers in more than their due proportion. Hence, anyone backing these--so the argument ran--was necessarily bound in the long run to win. This conclusion, reached by a feat of _a priori_ reasoning, was due to the ingenuity of an English engineer called Jaggers, and it was verified by the fact that a system having this mechanical basis was ultimately, with astounding success, played by a syndicate of persons who, before the officials of the Casino managed to detect its nature, had won no less than eighty thousand pounds between them. The secret, however, was found out at last. Before the players were aware of it, the construction of the roulettes was amended. Each was built up of a number of interchangeable parts, the construction of no wheel being for any two days the same. The spell was broken; the players began to lose. One or two of them, suspecting what had actually happened, withdrew from the enterprise and carried off their gains along with them. Less prudent and more sanguine, the rest persisted till all that they had gained was gone. An Italian professor of mathematics, however, declared that, despite the officials, he had discovered how this system might be revived in a new and more delicate form; and Beckett, with renewed hopes, was induced to finance for a time the second experiment out of some of the capital which he had got together for his first. The money, however, melted away as though by a slow hemorrhage; before very long he refused to produce more, and the history of both systems thus came to an end.
But the pleasantness of our life at Beaulieu was sufficient to counterbalance the disappointments inflicted on us by Fortune at the gaming tables. Our fantastic villa was embowered in flowers and foliage.
Buginvillaeas made a purple flame on the walls. An avenue of palms led down from the house to the flashings of a minute harbor, on which fishing boats rocked their gayly painted prows, while woods of olive made a mystery of the impending hills behind. Friends and acquaintances from Cannes often came to lunch with us, Alfred Montgomery and the d.u.c.h.ess of Montrose among them. Beckett"s spirits rose. Singularly sensitive as he always was to poetry, I could hear him (for the walls which divided our rooms were thin) reciting pa.s.sages from "Paradise Lost" in his tub. Though he had done with systems, he, his wife, and I frequently went to Monte Carlo for dinner, our inducements being mainly the chance of meeting friends whose scrutiny we no longer feared, and the beauty of the homeward drive by the Lower Corniche road. The Prince"s palace, pale on its rocky promontory, seemed like some work of enchantment as we swept by in the moonlight, and our horses carried us into strange, fantastic solitudes, with mountainous woods on one side and the waves just below us on the other. In stillnesses broken only by the noise of our own transit, the murmur of the waves was merely a stillness audible, as they whispered along crescents of sand with a sound like a sleeping kiss.
The Becketts, however, had to go back to England some weeks sooner than they expected, and I was left till the expiration of our lease, to occupy the villa alone. It was during the weeks for which I was thus left to myself that a letter reached me from St. Andrews, announcing that if I wished to retire I was honorably free to do so, as a suitable subst.i.tute had been found. The news was extremely welcome to me. I had many books with me at Beaulieu, for the most part dealing with economic and social science; and once more, when I was left to myself, the study of these absorbed me, and led me to begin the planning of a kind of political novel, of which I shall speak presently. But my solitude was not enlivened by political speculation only. Two or three times a week I went to Monte Carlo to enjoy the society of the R----s in their villa, which I have already described, and which, still remains in my memory as a.s.sociated with flowers and harp strings. Out of my intimacy with the R----s an incident arose which may be regarded as a fitting conclusion to the drama of Monte Carlo, so far as I myself was concerned with it.
The R----s had a friend, Mrs. P----, a not very prosperous widow, who was spending the winter and spring with them. She was far from beautiful, and her manners perhaps were deficient in polish, but her temper was singularly sweet. She was willing to oblige everybody. She accompanied Miss R---- and myself on many interesting expeditions, and was pleased by our seeking her companionship. Otherwise she was much alone, and was left to amuse herself; her only amus.e.m.e.nt--so I gathered from her chance conversation--being the winning or losing of a five-franc piece at the tables. One day, when I called at the villa, I saw by the butler"s face that something unusual must have happened. I learned a few minutes later that Mrs. P---- was dead. The cause of her death turned out to have been this. Having begun her exploits at the gambling rooms with winning or losing a five-franc piece occasionally, she had, unsuspected by anybody, succ.u.mbed by slow degrees to the true gambler"s pa.s.sion. In order to gratify this, everything she could sell--and it was not much--she had sold. Not many hours ago she had placed her last louis on the table, and had seen it disappear under the traction of the croupier"s rake. She had nothing left in her bedroom but the clothes which she had worn yesterday, a hairbrush, and a bottle of laudanum. The bottle that morning had been found in her hand, empty. The last incident of my visit to Monte Carlo was her burial. In the mists of a rainy morning a surpliced English clergyman saw her put out of sight and mind in a little obscure cemetery. There were only two mourners. I myself was one; Miss R----, with her fair hair and her black dress, was the other.
A few days later I left Beaulieu for England by way of the Italian lakes. I had managed to hire at Nice a great old-fashioned traveling carriage--a relic of pre-railway days. By way of a parting dissipation I picked up the R----s at their villa, and took them with me as far as San Remo. There I joined the train, the R----s going back in the carriage.
Next morning I was at Cadennabia, and Monte Carlo and the system, and Beaulieu and its Buginvillaeas, were behind me.
CHAPTER XI
"THE OLD ORDER CHANGES"
Intellectual Apathy of Conservatives--A Novel Which Attempts to Harmonize Socialist Principles with Conservative
In spite of the severance of my connection with the St. Andrews Boroughs, I found, when I returned to England from Monte Carlo, that my active connection with politics was not by any means at an end.
Politics, as a mere fight over details, or as a battle between rival politicians, appealed to me no more than it had done during my experience of electioneering in Fifeshire; but presently by family events I was drawn once more into the fray. My cousin, Richard Mallock of c.o.c.kington, had been asked, and had consented, to stand as Conservative candidate for the Torquay division of Devonshire. His local popularity, which was great, depended mainly on the engaging and somewhat shy simplicity of his manner, on his honesty, which was recognized by all, and on his generosity and sound sense as a landlord.
These latter qualities had lately been made conspicuous by his administration of those parts of his property which were now, one after another, being quickly covered with buildings. He was no student, however, of statistics or political theory; as a speaker his practice had been small, and he and his advisers asked me to give what a.s.sistance I could.
One night early in July I had, at a large ball in London, spent a most agreeable hour with a companion who was, like myself, no dancer, in watching and discussing with her the brilliantly lighted company. At last, catching sight of a clock, I found myself obliged to go. "I have,"
I said, "to be at Paddington at five o"clock in the morning. To-morrow I must speak in Devonshire to a meeting of agricultural laborers." She expressed approval and sympathy, and I presently found myself in the dimness of the still streets, happy in the thought that soon I should be among the smell of meadows and listening to the noise of rooks. The following evening at a village on Richard Mallock"s property, his political campaign was to be inaugurated, and I was to be one of the orators.
When the time for the meeting came I found myself erect in a wagon, with a world of apple trees in front of me and a thatched barn behind, and heard myself discussing the program of "three acres and a cow," of which my listeners understood nothing, and I not more than a little. Compared with such an audience the Liberals of St. Andrews were sages. The most intelligent of the Conservative audiences in the const.i.tuency were those got together under the auspices of the Primrose League. But Conservatism even with them was no more than a vague sentiment, healthy so far as it went, but incapable of aiding them in controversy with any glib Radical opponent. I tried again and again during the following few weeks to call their attention to the sources from which our national wealth generally, and most of their own food, was derived, and particularly to the economic significance of a town such as Torquay, much of the wealth of which had its origin in foreign countries. In dealing, however, with these matters, I met with no response more encouraging than puzzled smiles; but whenever, for want of something better to say, I alluded to "this great Empire on which the sun never sets," I was greeted with volume of cheers sufficient, one might almost have thought, to have secured the election of a Conservative candidate on the spot. Besides myself, two other workers were active, who began their political life as Richard Mallock"s supporters at Torquay, and who subsequently rose to eminence of a wider kind--George Lane Fox, as Chancellor of the Primrose League, and J. Sandars as secretary and adviser to Mr. Arthur Balfour.
But they, so it seemed to me, found it no easier than I did to vitalize the non-Radical or temperamentally Conservative cla.s.ses with any definite knowledge of the main conditions and forces on which their own livelihood depended, and which Radicals and revolutionaries would destroy. Of this state of mind I remember an amusing ill.u.s.tration.
Many Primrose League meetings, at the time of which I now speak and later, were held at c.o.c.kington Court, which was now a political center for the first time since the days of William and Mary. The proceedings on one occasion were to begin with a few preliminary speeches, delivered from some steps in a garden which adjoined the house. The chair was to be taken by the d.u.c.h.ess (Annie) of Sutherland, who for many years spent part of the summer at Torquay. Her opening speech consisted of five words: "I declare this meeting open." Subsequently George Lane Fox moved a vote of thanks to the d.u.c.h.ess "for the very able way in which she had taken the chair." Never did appropriate brevity receive a more deserved tribute. These preliminaries having been accomplished, the business of the day began. The slopes surrounding the house were dotted with various platforms, from each of which addresses were delivered to all who cared to listen. The audience which cl.u.s.tered round one of them was soon of such exceptional size that I joined it in the hope of discovering to what this fact was due. The platform was occupied by two county members, both men of worth and weight, but not even the highest talents which their warmest friends could attribute to them would account, so it seemed to me, for the outbursts of uproarious applause which greeted from time to time the one who was now speaking. In the applauded pa.s.sages I failed to detect anything more cogent or pungent than the general substance of those which were pa.s.sed by in silence. I could find no explanation of this perplexing fact till I realized that behind the platform was a tall, greased pole, up which successive compet.i.tors were doing their best to climb, the victor"s reward being a large leg of mutton at the top of it, and the applause being excited by the feats, not of the orator, but of the acrobats.
The word "acrobats," indeed, represents not inaptly the character which I had from the first imputed to the extreme reformers (whether Radicals or Socialists) as a whole. These extremists were, in my opinion, at once wrong and popular, not because they actually invented either the facts or principles proclaimed by them, but because they practiced the art of contorting facts into any shape they pleased, no matter what, so long as this amounted to a grimace which was calculated to attract attention, and which, in the absence of any opponents who could counter them by detailed exposure, could, by constant repet.i.tion, be invested with the prestige of truth. And why was exposure of the requisite kind wanting?
Simply because the Conservatives as a whole were so ignorant that they did not know, or so timorous or apathetic that they did not dare to use, the true facts, figures, or principles by the promulgation of which alone the false might be systematically discredited. The need of a scientific Conservatism equipped with these weapons of precision was not so urgent at that time as it has since then become. But I felt it even then. I foresaw how rapidly this need was bound to be aggravated. It had haunted me even at Beaulieu, when I wandered among the sleeping flowers by the light of Mediterranean moons.
The difficulties in the way of formulating a true scientific Conservatism, which the ma.s.ses shall be able to comprehend, I am the last person to ignore. There is the difficulty of formulating true general principles. There is the difficulty of collecting and verifying the statistical and historical facts, to which general principles must be accommodated. There is the difficulty of bringing moral and social sentiments into harmony with objective conditions which no sentiment can permanently alter. There is the difficulty of transforming many a.n.a.lyses of facts of different kinds into a synthesis moral and rational, by the light of which human beings can live; and, feeling my way slowly, I now attempted to indicate what the nature of such a synthesis would be. In so doing I felt that political problems of life reunited themselves with those which are commonly called religious, and with which, during my earlier years, my mind had been alone engaged.
This attempt at a synthesis was embodied ultimately in the form of another novel, which I have mentioned already, and to which I gave the name of _The Old Order Changes_. The scene of this story, like that of _A Romance of the Nineteenth Century_, was, for the most part, the Riviera, and the story itself was to a very great extent the product of many solitary hours at Beaulieu, during which Monte Carlo and the system became no more than a dream. _The Old Order Changes_, moreover, resembles its predecessor in this--that the love interest centers in a woman considered in relation to her higher beliefs and principles; but whereas in _A Romance of the Nineteenth Century_ such higher beliefs and principles are those connected with the mysticism of personal virtue, they are connected in _The Old Order Changes_ with a sense of social duty, as experienced by a well-born Catholic, to the ma.s.s of the common people in respect of their material circ.u.mstances.
The heroine, who had come across the writings of modern agitators, in which the ma.s.ses are depicted as brutalized by an almost universal poverty, most of the fruits of their industry being stolen from them by the rapacious rich, becomes gradually possessed by the conviction that this picture, even if exaggerated, is in the main true. Such being the case, another conviction dawns on her, which troubles her nature to its depth--namely, that the Catholic Church--her own religion by inheritance--will for her have lost all meaning unless it absorbs into the body of virtues enjoined by its doctrines on the rich a corporate sense of their overwhelming obligations to the poor.
She lays bare the state of her mind to a highly connected and highly intellectual priest, Father Stanley (who figures in _A Romance of the Nineteenth Century_ also), and asks him if he thinks her wicked. The priest"s answer is No. "The Church," he says, "is always extending the sphere of duty as from age to age needs and conditions change. Political economy, as related to the conditions of labor, has indeed in our day become a part of theology--its youngest branch; and as such, I, a priest, have studied it. Every age has its riddle, and this riddle is ours."
He then goes on to explain to her that the relation of the rich to the ma.s.ses is not so simple as she thinks it. The poverty which agitators ascribe to all mankind, except a small body of plutocrats, is, he says, neither so deep nor so universal as these persons represent it; and, though in part it may arise from a robbery of the many by a rapacious few, this is not the whole of the story. He points out that if a hundred years ago the whole wealth of this country had been divided equally among all, the ma.s.ses would, as a whole, be poorer than they are now; and that most of the wealth which is monopolized now by the few consists not of abstractions which they perpetrate from a common stock, but of additions to it which they have made themselves by their own talents and enterprise. It is true, he proceeds, that if, having made these additions, the few gave them away instead of retaining them for themselves, as the principles of Socialism would demand, the wealth of the many would be so far increased for the moment; but here comes the practical question. If, of these additions, the few were to retain nothing--if exceptional talent secured no proportionate reward--would these additions, a part of which goes to the ma.s.s already, continue to be made by anybody? This might be so if the great leaders of industry had all of them the temperament of monks, whose one pa.s.sion was not to get, but to give; but to suppose this possible would be merely to dream a dream. "It would be easier," he says, in conclusion, "far easier, to make men Trappists than it would be to make them Socialists."
Animated by this last argument, the heroine is led to dream a dream of her own. Let it be granted, she says to herself, that the leaders of modern industry capable of accepting the Socialist gospel are few, and will always remain few. Still there may be some exceptions; and it may not be unreasonable to expect that, under the influence of the Catholic Church, certain great factories might be a.s.similated to Trappist or Franciscan monasteries, the profits of which the monks would consecrate to social purposes, voluntarily living the lives of the poorest of the poor themselves. Here, she argues, we should have examples, at all events, by which all might be moved, though all were not fit to follow them.
This outburst of a girl"s idealism is considered by the priest with a sympathetic, yet at the same time a cautious, interest. When, turning from the priest, she opens her mind to the hero, he regards some of her ideas as exaggerated; but the affection which he feels for her as a lover makes their appeal deeper. In _A Romance of the Nineteenth Century_, the hero"s love for the heroine resembles the affection of St.
Augustine for Monica--a love whose consummation is contingent on a mystical union of both with "the Selfsame, the everlasting One." In _The Old Order Changes_ the pa.s.sion is contingent on a partnership with her in some scheme of idealized political action for the social benefit of the ma.s.ses. But circ.u.mstances soon arise by which the two are estranged.
A mischief-maker, quite untruly, informs the heroine"s aunts, who are her guardians--Catholics of the strictest type--that the hero is still carrying on an old intrigue with a beautiful Frenchwoman, now living at Nice. This gossip is pa.s.sed on to the girl. The aunts forbid the hero to have any more communication with her; and the girl herself writes him a cold letter which is tantamount to an abrupt dismissal.
The aunts and the niece leave him to find out the reason for himself, which, since it is quite fict.i.tious, he is unable to do. Having received their letters, and smarting under a sense of wrong, he starts for a walk among the mountains on the slopes of which his house, an old chateau, is situated. He sprains his ankle, and some strangers bring him home in a carriage. These strangers consist of an American general, who is a Southerner, his attractive wife, and a singularly beautiful daughter.
Solitude being for him intolerable, he begs them to become his guests. A few days later they arrive, and round him, like a nave Circe, the beautiful daughter undesignedly weaves her spell. "Under her influence,"
as the words of the novel describe it, "the voices of men asking for spiritual guidance, the growth of a democracy uneasily chafing for change, dwindled in his ears till at last they were hardly audible."
This act of the drama is, however, abruptly interrupted by family business, which recalls the hero to England. Meanwhile the Catholic heroine and her aunts learn that he was wholly guiltless of the intrigue at Nice imputed to him, and a kindly mediator discreetly gives him to understand that if in a week or two he would meet them at the Italian lakes, all would be forgotten and forgiven, if indeed there were anything to forgive. It happens that an Italian cousin of his has put at his disposal a villa in the middle of Lago Maggiore; and there his reunion with the heroine and her Catholic kindred is accomplished. Other friends, who are staying at Baveno, join the group, Father Stanley among them. In the chapel of the villa he, by way of a sermon, gives them a sort of address on the social problems of the time; and this throughout has reference to the sort of ideas or projects of which the heroine had already spoken to him.
He takes for his text the following words from St. James: "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Behold, the hire of the laborers, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth. If a brother or sister be dest.i.tute, and if any of you say to them, "Depart in peace"; notwithstanding ye give not them those things needful for the body, what doth it profit? To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." The priest then proceeds to the question of what virtue and duty are. "To this," he says, "there are two answers. The first is, that virtue and duty have for their object G.o.d. The second answer is, that their object is our fellow men and the health of the social organism, while our inducement to practice them is in part the constant teasing of the tribal instinct or conscience, and in part our imaginative sympathies, as stimulated by a glow of emotion which is consequent on our contemplation of idealized Humanity as a whole. Within certain limits," he says, "this second answer I take to be entirely right; but if there were nothing further to add, I maintain that it would be right in vain." Summing up the ideas of the heroine, Miss Consuelo Burton, he says that the main duty which the Church to-day enjoins on us is "our spiritual duty to the material conditions of the poor"--our duty to adorn the cottage, though not to destroy the castle.
"Duty to the race as a subst.i.tute for duty to G.o.d is," he says, "worth nothing. It means nothing. But duty to the race regarded as a new and more definite interpretation of our duty to G.o.d is a conception which to us Catholics of the present day means everything. Though it relates to material things, it does not supersede spiritual. On the contrary, it represents the spiritual world taking the material world into itself as its minister, and the Catholic who realizes this will find that the echoes of the ma.s.s and of the confessional follow him into the street and mix themselves with the clatter of omnibuses. If any of you think that he or she individually can do little, after all, to alter the general condition of things, let them not be thereby disheartened. Let them carry in their minds this divine paradox, that it is far more important to every man that he should do his utmost for Humanity than it ever can be for Humanity that any one man should do his utmost for _it_."
Illuminated by thoughts like these, the hero and the heroine are once more drawn together; and when at night the guests go back to Baveno, and the hero is left in his island villa alone, he betakes himself to a boat, and awaits the approach of the morning. "At last," says the story, "he put the boat about, with thoughts of returning home, and there, far off, beyond the spikes of the mountains, he saw that the sky was pale with the first colors of dawn. There, too, was the star of morning, shining bright with a trembling steadfastness, and he knew that for him a star had risen also. On his spirit descended the hush of the solemn hour, which makes all the earth seem like some holy sanctuary, and there came back to him two lines of Goethe"s:
"The woman-soul leadeth us Upward and on.
"Meanwhile on the sliding and gla.s.sy waters, that moved to left and right at the touch of his dipping oars, there began to flicker a gleam of faint saffron and rose color, and the breeze of the daybreak laid its first touch on his cheek and gently stirred a straying lock of his hair.
The lights of Baveno, though still bright, looked belated, and the mounting saffron was clear in the dome over him. Thoughts thronged on his mind of many careers to which his life, with hers, might be dedicated. Visions also, though he knew them too bright to last, floated before him and made his being tingle--visions of great works done among the toiling ma.s.ses, of comfort and health invading the fastness of degradation, and the fire of faith shining on eyeb.a.l.l.s that had long been blind to it."
I am not alluding here to _The Old Order Changes_ with a view to discussing its merits or demerits as a novel. I am citing it merely as a record of how my own social philosophy step by step developed itself, the problems of economics and politics being step by step united with those of psychology, of religion, of ambition, and the higher romance of the affections. I am dealing with what took place in my own mind as an example of a.n.a.logous things which have probably taken place in the minds of most men who, however they may differ otherwise from myself, have been preoccupied in the same way. Thus the emotional optimism with which this novel of mine ends--the vision of the Old Order as capable of being born anew by a sudden reillumination of faith and new acquisitions of knowledge--represents, it has subsequently seemed to me, a mood a.n.a.logous to that which possessed Lord Beaconsfield when he wrote his romance _Sybil_, or when he seemed to insinuate that all social strife might be ended by doles to the poor, distributed week by week through the almoners of manorial lords.
Of Lord Beaconsfield"s visions this is not the place to speak, I am concerned here only with the growth and the defects of my own; and as to the general theory of things which is dramatized in _The Old Order Changes_, its merits and its defects seem to me to be these. As for its merits, if compared with my earlier works, _Is Life Worth Living?_ and _A Romance of the Nineteenth Century_--in which no cognizance is taken of social politics whatever--_The Old Order Changes_ represents a great extension of thought, social problems being brought to the fore as an essential part of the religious. If compared with _Social Equality_, it represents an extension of thought likewise, in that it shows (as _Social Equality_ does not) how these two parts are connected.