Entering the hall, Mr. Farnaby discovered without difficulty the position of modest retirement of which he was in search.
The cheap seats were situated, as usual, on that part of the floor of the building which was farthest from the platform. A gallery at this end of the hall threw its shadow over the hindermost benches and the gangway by which they were approached. In the sheltering obscurity thus produced, Mr. Farnaby took his place; standing in the corner formed by the angle it which the two walls of the building met, with his dutiful wife at his side.
Still following them, unnoticed in the crowd, the old woman stopped at the extremity of the hindermost bench, looked close at a smartly-dressed young man who occupied the last seat at the end, and who paid marked attention to a pretty girl sitting by him, and whispered in his ear, “Now then, Jervy! can’t you make room for Mother Sowler?”
The man started and looked round. “You here?” he exclaimed, with an oath.
Before he could say more, Phoebe whispered to him on the other side, “What a horrid old creature! How did you ever come to know her?”
At the same moment, Mrs. Sowler reiterated her request in more peremptory language. “Do you hear, Jervy — do you hear? Sit a little closer.”
Jervy apparently had his reasons for treating the expression of Mrs. Sowler’s wishes with deference, shabby as she was. Making abundant apologies, he asked his neighbours to favour him by sitting a little nearer to each other, and so contrive to leave a morsel of vacant space at the edge of the bench.
Phoebe, making room under protest, began to whisper again. “What does she mean by calling you Jervy? She looks like a beggar. Tell her your name is Jervis.”
The reply she received did not encourage her to say more. “Hold your tongue; I have reasons for being civil to her — you be civil too.”
He turned to Mrs. Sowler, with the readiest submission to circumstances. Under the surface of his showy looks and his vulgar facility of manner, there lay hidden a substance of callous villainy and impenetrable cunning. He had in him the materials out of which the clever murderers are made, who baffle the police. If he could have done it with impunity, he would have destroyed without remorse the squalid old creature who sat by him, and who knew enough of his past career in England to send him to penal servitude for life. As it was, he spoke to her with a spurious condescension and good humour. “Why, it must be ten years, Mrs. Sowler, since I last saw you! What have you been doing?”
The woman frowned at him as she answered. “Can’t you look at me, and see? Starving!” She eyed his gaudy watch and chain greedily. “Money don’t seem to be scarce with you. Have you made your fortune in America?”
He laid his hand on her arm, and pressed it warningly. “Hush!” he said, under his breath. “We’ll talk about that, after the lecture.” His bright shifty black eyes turned furtively towards Phoebe — and Mrs. Sowler noticed it. The girl’s savings in service had paid for his jewelry and his fine clothes. She silently resented his rudeness in telling her to “hold her tongue”; sitting, sullen, with her impudent little nose in the air. Jervy tried to include her indirectly in his conversation with his shabby old friend. “This young lady,” he said, “knows Mr. Goldenheart. She feels sure he’ll break down; and we’ve come here to see the fun. I don’t hold with Socialism myself — I am for, what my favourite newspaper calls, the Altar and the Throne. In short, my politics are Conservative.”
“Your politics are in your girl’s pocket,” muttered Mrs. Sowler. “How long will her money last?”
Jervy turned a deaf ear to the interruption. “And what has brought you here?” he went on, in his most ingratiating way. “Did you see the advertisement in the papers?”
Mrs. Sowler answered loud enough to be heard above the hum of talking in the sixpenny places. “I was having a drop of gin, and I saw the paper at the public-house. I’m one of the discontented poor. I hate rich people; and I’m ready to pay my sixpence to hear them abused.”
“Hear, hear!” said a man near, who looked like a shoemaker.
“I hope he’ll give it to the aristocracy,” added one of the shoemaker’s neighbours, apparently a groom out of place.
“I’m sick of the aristocracy,” cried a woman with a fiery face and a crushed bonnet. “It’s them as swallows up the money. What business have they with their palaces and their parks, when my husband’s out of work, and my children hungry at home?”
The acquiescent shoemaker listened with admiration. “Very well put,” he said; “very well put.”
These expressions of popular feeling reached the respectable ears of Mr. Farnaby. “Do you hear those wretches?” he said to his wife.
Mrs. Farnaby seized the welcome opportunity of irritating him. “Poor things!” she answered. “In their place, we should talk as they do.”
“You had better go into the reserved seats,” rejoined her husband, turning from her with a look of disgust. “There’s plenty of room. Why do you stop here?”
“I couldn’t think of leaving you, my dear! How did you like my American friend?”
“I am astonished at your taking the liberty of introducing him to me. You knew perfectly well that I was here incognito. What do I care about a wandering American?”
Mrs. Farnaby persisted as maliciously as ever. “Ah, but you see, I like him. The wandering American is my ally.”
“Your ally! What do you mean?”
“Good heavens, how dull you are! don’t you know that I object to my niece’s marriage engagement? I was quite delighted when I heard of this lecture, because it’s an obstacle in the way. It disgusts Regina, and it disgusts You — and my dear American is the man who first brought it about. Hush! here’s Amelius. How well he looks! So graceful and so gentlemanlike,” cried Mrs. Farnaby, signalling with her handkerchief to show Amelius their position in the hall. “I declare I’m ready to become a Socialist before he opens his lips!”
The personal appearance of Amelius took the audience completely by surprise. A man who is young and handsome is not the order of man who is habitually associated in the popular mind with the idea of a lecture. After a moment of silence, there was a spontaneous burst of applause. It was renewed when Amelius, first placing on his table a little book, announced his intention of delivering the lecture extempore. The absence of the inevitable manuscript was in itself an act of mercy that cheered the public at starting.
The orator of the evening began.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thoughtful people accustomed to watch the signs of the times in this country, and among the other nations of Europe, are (so far as I know) agreed in the conclusion, that serious changes are likely to take place in present forms of government, and in existing systems of society, before the century in which we live has reached its end. In plain words, the next revolution is not so unlikely, and not so far off, as it pleases the higher and wealthier classes among European populations to suppose. I am one of those who believe that the coming convulsion will take the form, this time, of a social revolution, and that the man at the head of it will not be a military or a political man — but a Great Citizen, sprung from the people, and devoted heart and soul to the people’s cause. Within the limits assigned to me to-night, it is impossible that I should speak to you of government and society among other nations, even if I possessed the necessary knowledge and experience to venture on so vast a subject. All that I can now attempt to do is (first) to point out some of the causes which are paving the way for a coming change in the social and political condition of this country; and (secondly) to satisfy you that the only trustworthy remedy for existing abuses is to be found in the system which Christian Socialism extracts from this little book on my table — the book which you all know under the name of The New Testament. Before, however, I enter on my task, I feel it a duty to say one preliminary word on the subject of my claim to address you, such as it is. I am most unwilling to speak of myself — but my position here forces me to do so. I am a stranger to all of you; and I am a very young man. Let me tell you, then, briefly, what my life has been, and where I have been brought up — and then decide for yourselves whether it is worth your while to favour me with your attention, or not.”
“A very good opening,” remarked the shoemaker.
“A nice-looking fellow,” said the fiery-faced woman, “I should like to kiss him.”
“He’s too civil by half,” grumbled Mrs. Sowler; “I wish I had my sixpence back in my pocket.”
“Give him time.” whispered Jervy, “and he’ll warm up. I say, Phoebe, he doesn’t begin like a man who is going to break down. I don’t expect there will be much to laugh at to-night.”
“What an admirable speaker!” said Mrs. Farnaby to her husband. “Fancy such a man as that, being married to such an idiot as Regina!”
“There’s always a chance for him,” returned Mr. Farnaby, savagely, “as long as he’s not married to such a woman as You!”
In the mean time, Amelius had claimed national kindred with his audience as an Englishman, and had rapidly sketched his life at Tadmor, in its most noteworthy points. This done, he put the question whether they would hear him. His frankness and freshness had already won the public: they answered by a general shout of applause.
“Very well,” Amelius proceeded, “now let us get on. Suppose we take a glance (we have no time to do more) at the present state of our religious system, first. What is the public aspect of the thing called Christianity, in the England of our day? A hundred different sects all at variance with each other. An established church, rent in every direction by incessant wrangling — disputes about black gowns or white; about having candlesticks on tables, or off tables; about bowing to the east or bowing to the west; about which doctrine collects the most respectable support and possesses the largest sum of money, the doctrine in my church, or the doctrine in your church, or the doctrine in the church over the way. Look up, if you like, from this multitudinous and incessant squabbling among the rank and file, to the high regions in which the right reverend representatives of state religion sit apart. Are they Christians? If they are, show me the Bishop who dare assert his Christianity in the House of Lords, when the ministry of the day happens to see its advantage in engaging in a war! Where is that Bishop, and how many supporters does he count among his own order? Do you blame me for using intemperate language — language which I cannot justify? Take a fair test, and try me by that. The result of the Christianity of the New Testament is to make men true, humane, gentle, modest, strictly scrupulous and strictly considerate in their dealings with their neighbours. Does the Christianity of the churches and the sects produce these results among us? Look at the staple of the country, at the occupation which employs the largest number of Englishmen of all degrees — Look at our Commerce. What is its social aspect, judged by the morality which is in this book in my hand? Let those organised systems of imposture, masquerading under the disguise of banks and companies, answer the question — there is no need for me to answer it. You know what respectable names are associated, year after year, with the shameless falsification of accounts, and the merciless ruin of thousands on thousands of victims. You know how our poor Indian customer finds his cotton-print dress a sham that falls to pieces; how the savage who deals honestly with us for his weapon finds his gun a delusion that bursts; how the half-starved needlewoman who buys her reel of thread finds printed on the label a false statement of the number of yards that she buys; you know that, in the markets of Europe, foreign goods are fast taking the place of English goods, because the foreigner is the most honest manufacturer of the two — and, lastly, you know, what is worse than all, that these cruel and wicked deceptions, and many more like them, are regarded, on the highest commercial authority, as ‘forms of competition’ and justifiable proceedings in trade. Do you believe in the honourable accumulation of wealth by men who hold such opinions and perpetrate such impostures as these? I don’t! Do you find any brighter and purer prospect when you look down from the man who deceives you and me on the great scale, to the man who deceives us on the small? I don’t! Everything we eat, drink, and wear is a more or less adulterated commodity; and that very adulteration is sold to us by the tradesmen at such outrageous prices, that we are obliged to protect ourselves on the Socialist principle, by setting up cooperative shops of our own. Wait! and hear me out, before you applaud. Don’t mistake the plain purpose of what I am saying to you; and don’t suppose that I am blind to the brighter side of the dark picture that I have drawn. Look within the limits of private life, and you will find true Christians, thank God, among clergymen and laymen alike; you will find men and women who deserve to be called, in the highest sense of the word, disciples of Christ. But my business is not with private life — my business is with the present public aspect of the religion, morals, and politics of this country; and again I say it, that aspect presents one wide field of corruption and abuse, and rev............