XV
Back in the little study Bailly expressed his doubt.
"He may do it now, but later——"
"Remember you're not going, George," Mrs. Bailly cried.
"I think not."
She patted his hand, while Bailly looked on with his old expression of doubt and disapproval. When Mrs. Bailly had left them, George told the tutor of Wandel's surprising venture, asking his opinion.
"It's hard to form one," Bailly admitted. "He's always puzzled me. Would it surprise you if I said I think he at least has grafted on his brain some of Allen's generous views?"
"Oh, come, sir. You can't make war an ideal expression of the brotherhood of man. Far better that all men should be suspicious strangers."
Bailly drew noisily at his pipe.
"It often pleases you to misunderstand," he said. "Wandel, I fancy, would take Allen's theories and make something more practical of them. Understand I am a pacifist—thorough-paced. War is folly. War is dreadful. It cannot be conceived in a healthy brain. But when a fact rises up before you you'd better face it. Wandel probably does. The Allens probably don't—don't realize that we must win this war as the only alternative to the world pacing of an autocratic foot that would crush social progress like a serpent, that would boot back the brotherhood of man, since you seem to enjoy the phrase, unthinkable years."
"After admitting that," George asked, quickly, "you can still tell me that I ought to accept the point of view of your rotten, illogical Socialists?"
"Even in this war," Bailly confessed, "most socialists are pacifists. No, they're not an elastic crowd. It amuses me that a lot of the lords of the land, leading an unthinking portion of the proletariat, will permit them to carry on their work in spite of themselves."
"I despise such theorists," George burst out. "They are unsound. They are dangerous."
Bailly smiled.
"Just the same, the very ones they want to reform are going to give them the opportunity to do it."
"They're all like Allen," George sneered, "purchasable."
Bailly shook his head, waved his pipe vehemently.
"Virtue's flaws don't alter its really fundamental quality."
"Then you agree all Socialists are knaves or fools," George stormed.
"Perhaps, George," Bailly said, patiently, "you'll define a conservative for me. There. Never mind. Somewhere in between we may find an honest generosity, a wise sympathy. It may come from this war—a huge and wise balance of power of the right, an honest recognition of men as individuals rather than as members of classes. Perhaps your friend Wandel is on the track of something of the sort. I like to think it is really what the war is being fought for."
"The war," George said, "is being fought for men with fat paunches and pocket-books."
"Then you're quite sure you don't want to go?"
"Why should I as long as my stomach and my pocket-book are comfortable? But I'm not sure whether I'll go or not. That's what worries me."
"You've made," Bailly said, testily, "enough out of the war to warrant your giving it something."
George grinned. It was quite like old times.
"Even myself, on top of all the rest I might make out of it by staying back?"
"You're not as selfish as you'd have me believe," Bailly cried.
George quoted a phrase of Wandel's since Bailly seemed just now to approve of the adventurer.
"The man that keeps himself makes the world better."
Bailly drove him out of the room to dress for dinner.
"I won't talk to you any more," he said. "I won't curse the loiterer at the base until I am sure he isn't going to climb."