Ouida

“ Bertram smiles faintly.
“Flagellation was, I believe, most admirable discipline; but we have grown too effete for it. Our bodies are as tender as our hearts are hard.”
“I have always thought,” said Cicely Seymour, in a very soft voice, “that if everybody could be born with ten thousand a year, nobody would ever do anything wrong.”
Bertram looks at her approvingly. “You are on the right road, Miss Seymour. But as we cannot generalise property, we must generalise poverty. The result will be equally good.” ”

“ Sir Henry does not deign to reply. He takes his hat, and with a curt “good-day” goes out of the room.
“How impossible it is to live under a government which is utterly barbarian and unenlightened!” reflects Bertram; “and to think that Stanhope could become a member of it! [193] Such a fine scholar, such a devoted Hellenist, as he was at Eton! And now sunk to a Home Secretary!—a keeper of the ban-dogs of the law! It is so extraordinary that these Philistines never can comprehend the beauty of altruistic and collectivist views. They always confound them with anarchy! ”

“ I’ve heard you say, sir, that prevention is suggestion, and that if there was no constables there’d be no crime. In locking up this cabinet you put into my mind the idea of opening it. It is you, sir, who are to blame, not I.”
Critchett smiles demurely as he repeats these words.
“You have debased me, sir, by making me fill a servile office,” he adds. “No man should serve another. You’ve said so often.”
[158] Bertram is silent, unspeakably annoyed, mortified, and distressed. He cannot discuss ethics with a treacherous valet. ”

“ It seems to me so easy and so simple to go back to Folliott and Hake and say, ‘I have changed my mind; I accept.’”
[221] “But would it be right to do so?” says Bertram. “How can I be sure that the foul fiend of selfishness is not deluding me by taking the shape of duty?”
“You split straws!” growls Southwold. “The business of the world would never get done if men hemmed and hawed and tortured themselves as you do. Can you retract your refusal? That’s the main question.” ”

“ Fanshawe laughs aloud: “When Truth comes out of her well she is seldom polite! Never mind, Mrs. Brown, you can make your peace with your son-in-law some other time. Only tell us now, for we are going to the lawyers on this momentous errand. Ought he to accept or to refuse?”
Annie’s mother is flattered at the deference to her opinion.
“Well, sir, it ain’t for the like o’ me to judge for the likes o’ you. But, if ye want my plain opinion, it is this ’un: if he take the proputty he’ll look silly. But if he don’t take it he’ll be silly; and he’ll be sorry all his life.” ”

“ Sir, I ain’t more fit for you than my poor sun-browned throat be fit for a lady’s jewels. You’ve had a hobby, and you’ve rid it hard, and I was a part of it for awhile. But ’twas only a fancy. Lord! how clear I saw it all when you spoke so scornful-like o’ love! Love may be a ordinary valleyless sort o’ thing like buttercups and daisies, but how them little blossoms do make a glory on a dusty common! ”

“ Both the politician and Cicely Seymour look a little astonished.
“But how then would you control people?”
“Sane people do not require to be controlled.”
“But I have heard a man of science say that only one person out of every hundred is really sane?”
“We are bad judges of each other’s sanity. But since you [47] take an interest in serious subjects,” says Bertram, resting his eyes on her in approval, “I will, if you will allow me, send you some back numbers of the Age to Come.”
“Do you mean, Wilfrid, that an obtuse world is so ungrateful as to leave you any back numbers at all?” asks Southwold. ”

“ Meantime, Wilfrid Bertram, who has been speaking for more than an hour without contradiction, except such as he read on his friends’ faces, perceives at last that he has been wearying them; a knowledge which is always slow to steal upon the teacher of mankind. ”

“ The old duke nods very expressively.
“Your aunt’s right,” he mumbles. “Conscience-money can only come from cranks!”
“Come and dine with us, Wilfrid,” says his aunt; “we never see you now. I assure you a good dinner changes the colour of political opinions in a wonderful degree. I am dreadfully afraid that you have been living on boiled soles and carrot fritters.”
Bertram smiles slightly. [57] “The carrot fritters; not the soles. I am a vegetarian.”
“But we are justified in being carnivorous,” says Southwold, very eagerly. “Individualism justifies us.” ”

“ Cicely colours a little.
“One is not necessarily in love because one can see two sides to a question. It seems to me extremely unjust to quarrel with anybody for endeavouring loyally to carry out the views which they profess. You seem to admire Mr. Fanshawe’s opportunism: I do not.”
“Fanshawe is a shrewd man of the world, Wilfrid is a monomaniac who has gone daft on altruism.”
“Or Annie-ism, as Lord Marlow observed with such exquisite wit,” says Cicely from her retreat amongst the roses, whither she has returned after dispensing the tea. ”

“ Brown, briskly.
“How very sad!” murmurs Bertram. “But I have always feared that the whole system of modern education was one gigantic error. You cannot feed minds wholesale as you feed machines.”
“’Tis sad as poor folks should be made to pay for such gammon as them schools, sir,” says Mrs. Brown. ”

“ Folks that come out when there’s a riot and smash windows and lamps; never see ’em any other time; burrow, I suppose, like rabbits.”
“Darkest London? I fear the lamps when they are not smashed do not throw much light on their darkness.”
“How sententious you are, [110] Cicely!” says Lady Jane. “You ought to marry a rising politician.”
“Because I detest politics?”
“Bertram’s views aren’t politics, they’re red ruin,” repeats Marlow. “Red ruin to himself, too; he’s dropped such a pot o’ money over that revolutionary journal of his that he’ll be in the bankruptcy court before the season’s over.” ”

“ He is an [207] individualist, an altruist, a collectivist, a Mazzïnist, a Tolstoi-ist. How could such a man with any consistency, with any decency, accept a great fortune?”
“My dear Cicely,” said Lady Southwold, with unkind incisiveness. “Only a great fortune could get such opinions forgiven to him; and as he is going to marry a washerwoman’s daughter, if what you heard in the Park is true, he will certainly never get her into society on any income less than thirty thousand a year!”
“He will not want to get her into society. Nobody gathers a dog-rose to put it under a forcing-frame.” ”

“ Bertram replies stiffly: “I can assure you I have much more respect for Critchett than for any member of a St. James’ Street club.”
“And yet you give him carrot fritters!” cried Lady Southwold.
Bertram replies with great irritation: “He eats whatever he pleases, turtle and turbot for aught I know. I should never presume to impose upon him either my menu or my tenets, my beliefs or my principles.”
[60] “You do wisely if you wish to keep him!” says his aunt. “I hope you will keep him. He is your only link with civilised life.” ”

“ It was certainly not by the advice of our firm.”
“Are there any conditions [82] attached to this extraordinary bequest?”
“None, sir. You can realise at once and invest everything in dynamite and pyretic acid,” replies the solicitor, with a rasping scorn showing through the velvet of his admirable manners.
“Oh, my dear sir! Can you fall into the vulgar error of confounding collectivism and altruism with anarchy? They are as far apart as the Poles. One is love; the other hatred.”
“I confess, sir, that such love nauseates me. I prefer of the two the hatred. ”

“ Bertram plays wearily with his shut note-book.
“If you cannot see the theoretic beauty of united and universal work, it is hopeless to expect that you should desire [31] its practical adjustment to everyday life.”
“Well, but,” says the politician, who is nothing if not practical, “it is just the utter unworkableness of your system which damns it in the eyes of rational men. Pardon my saying so.”
Lady Southwold murmurs: “Give them some tea, Wilfrid; they are all growing cross.” ”

“ He is Sir Henry Stanhope, the Home Secretary of the actual Government. Bertram was his fag at Eton, and a good deal of cordial feeling [181] has always existed between them, despite the vast and irreconcilable difference of their political and social opinions. Sir Henry regards him as a maniac, but an interesting and lovable maniac. Bertram regards him in return as a hopeless Philistine, but a Philistine who means well and has good points, and who is, in the exercise of his horrible office, admirably conscientious. ”

“ Brown; “and if a poor woman may give ye a word of advice, take them cobwebs out of your brain, sir, and open your eyes and see the world as ’tis. That ere man as ye thought so much on was a raskill, as rotten as shellfish o’ Saturday nights. Ye’ve too good a ’eart, Mr. Bertram, a deal too good a ’eart; and if you make yourself honey flies will eat yer; that’s true as gospel, sir.”
“Wilfrid! Wilfrid!” shouts an excited voice in the anteroom, as a robust form and a ruddy face, the face and form of a country gentleman, are visible in the distance. ”

“ Miserable creatures that we are, we are [86] only tolerably respectable so long as we are commonly consistent.”
“Oh, Lord save us! You can’t possibly be serious?”
“I speak in entire sincerity.”
“A very dangerous thing to do at any time. People have such a shocking habit of taking one at one’s word! Old Folliott’s very shrewd too, though he’s a Tory.”
“What is his shrewdness to me?”
“Well, if you retain him as your man of business it may be a great deal. It is usual to retain the testator’s solicitors when they are as eminent and irreproachable as Folliott and Hake.”
Bertram grows impatient. ”

“ Solomon said so.”
“Am I the crocodile or the cur?” asks Southwold.
“Do you keep Critchett on carrot fritters?” asks Marlow, “and what does he have to drink? Hot water? Hot water is, I believe, the beverege which nowadays accompanies high thinking.”
“And how do you reconcile [58] your conscience and your creeds to keeping a Critchett at all?” repeats Lady Jane.
Bertram replies with distant chillness and proud humility: “The leaven of long habit is hard to get rid of; I entirely agree with you that I am in the wrong. To have a servant at all is an offence to humanity ”

“ Cicely and her cousin are sitting under a tree near the end of the Ladies’ Mile with some men standing before them and talking to them, when Marlow again approaches, diffident, but in ill-concealed triumph.
“Oh, Lady Jane,” he says eagerly, not venturing to address Cicely directly, “I’ve come back ’cos I’ve such a bit of news; am authorised to tell it; [141] may put it in the Morning Post to-morrow. I’ve seen ‘the penny bunch of violets,’ and by all that’s awful, she’s a washerwoman’s daughter, and Bertram’s going to marry her. It’s Annieism you see, not Altruism.” ”

“ Bertram!” says Annie. “Do pray forgive him. He is only a lad.”
“I would forgive him much heavier offences. He is your brother.”
“God bless you, sir,” she says, softly, looking back at him as she goes out of the door.
[179] “Dear little girl! Dear, honest little girl!” murmurs Bertram. “I will try and get her the kitchen, and the muffin, and the cat, which form her ideal, and some good fellow to sit with her by the hearth. Good Heavens! Can one ever be grateful enough for being saved from relationship to Sam? What an exciting and exhausting day! And I have been very Philistine!” ”

“ But poor folk don’t never take the bread out [164] of each other’s mouths. And, besides, you wouldn’t have believed anybody against Critchett, sir. You were that wrapped up in him.”
“How cruelly one may be deceived!”
“’Tis easy to deceive you, sir, as instead of seeing people as they is, you see ’em as you fancies ’em to be.”
“Perhaps so. I fear I am a greater fool than I thought.”
“Oh, no, sir; only too trustin’ like.”
“Well, well,” says Bertram, much irritated, “Critchett is a thing of the past. We will never speak of him. But why have you come to my rooms, my dear girl? ”

“ It is human nature.”
“Certainly not,” replies Bertram, very positively. “Nobody will even wish for an extra halfpenny, because when inequality shall be at an end envy and discontent will be unknown. [36] Besides, if all the property of the world was confiscated or realised and equally distributed, the individual portion would come more nearly to half a crown a head per diem. On half a crown a head per diem any one can live——”
Lord Southwold sighs. ”

“ Marlow digs holes in the gravel with his cane.
“What an opportunity lost of practical illustration of your doctrines, and—she’s got a smart pair of ankles; rather thick, but still——”
Bertram continues to gaze abstractedly at the hotel roof.
“But why, oh why, let her wear highlows?” continues Marlow. “They would deform a goddess.”
Suddenly, with the sense of [125] taking a plunge into water of unknown depth, the man whom he torments faces what he considers an imperative obligation.
“The young person in the highlows is my future wife,” he says between his teeth. ”

“ But it is to me absolutely frightful to see how unconscious of your own doom, and how indifferent to the great movements of the day you all are——”
“If they are really great movements, they’ll move without us; you can’t stop an iceberg or an earthquake with your little finger. But there’s a good deal of grit in the old order of things still,” says the [32] duke. “Yes, I’ll have a cup of tea, Wilfrid; I see you’ve got it there.”
Bertram murmurs wearily: “Critchett—tea!”
“Yes, sir,” says a person who is the perfection of all the virtues of valetdom. ”