“Certainly! It is quite clear,” said North, with commendable gravity.
They were both calling at Thorpe, one cold afternoon early in October. Ruth had a big log fire burning in the grate, in the room which still seemed to belong to Dick Carey. Its warmth mingled with the scent from big bowls-full of late autumn roses, lent a pleasing illusion of summer. Lady Condor, wonderful to behold in the very latest thing in early autumn hats, on which every conceivable variety of dahlia seemed gathered together, sat by the fire talking of many things.
“So nice of you to understand!” she exclaimed, nodding at North genially. “That is the charm of talking to some one with brains. But where was I? Oh yes! I am quite satisfied with things, because I see the end of this horrible adoration of money. The Pithians have far surpassed my wildest hopes. It has become positively discreditable to be very wealthy. At last everyone begins to realize how truly vulgar has been their idea. I have always resented this kow-towing down to money. It gets the wrong people in everywhere, and no wonder the country goes to the dogs, as my poor dear father used to say. Now why have we got Dunlop Rancid as our member? Because he has brains to help govern? Certainly not! He is our member because his father made a large fortune in buttons—or was it bones?—perhaps it was bone buttons. But something like that. And he subscribed largely to the party funds, so he represents us, and when he took me into dinner last week he didn’t know where King Solomon’s Islands were. Nor did I! But of course that was different. My dear”—she looked suddenly at Violet Riversley—“why on earth don’t you make Fred stand for Parliament? He has a fund of common sense which would be invaluable to the country, and he has only to write a big cheque for the party funds and there he will be.”
Violet Riversley was curled—almost crunched—up in the armchair opposite her Ladyship. She lifted her head when directly questioned and laughed a little. It was not a nice laugh. It fell across the warm sweet-scented room like a note from a jarred string.
“Why should one bother?” she said. “The country is welcome to go to the dogs for all I care. I’m sorry for the dogs, that’s all.”
There was a little silence, a sense of discomfort. The bitterness underlying the words made them forceful—of account. Lady Condor felt they were in bad taste, and North got up, frowning irritably, and moved away to the window. Violet, however, was paying no attention to either of them. She was looking at Ruth, with her golden eyes full of something approaching malice.
“You go on playing with your little bits of kindness and your toys, and think everything in the garden is lovely!” She laughed again, that little hateful laugh. “And what do you suppose is really going on all the time! You human beings are the biggest fraud on the face of the earth!”
Ruth started a little at the pronoun. Her serenity was disturbed; she looked worried.
“You talk of righteousness, and justice, and brotherhood, and all the rest of the rotten humbug,” Violet Riversley went on, “and hold up your hands in horror when other people transgress against your paper ideals. But every nation is out for what it can make, every people will wade through oceans of blood and torture and infamy if it thinks it can reap any benefit from it. And why not? Survival of the fittest, that is nature’s law. But why can’t you say so? Instead of all this hypocrisy and pretence of high morals. You make me sick! What possible right have you to howl at the Germans? You are all the same—England and France and America—the whole lot of you. You have all taken by force or fraud. You have all driven out by arms and plots weaker peoples than yourselves. I don’t blame you for that—weaker people should go—it is the law of nature. But don’t go round whining about how good you are to them. You are just about as good to them as you are to your animals or anything else weaker than yourselves. Why can’t you have the courage of your brutality, and your lust, and your strength. It might be worth something then. You might be great. As it is you are only contemptible—the biggest fraud on the face of creation.”
She faltered suddenly, and stopped. Ruth’s eyes had met hers steadily, all the time she had been speaking; and now her hostess spoke slowly and quietly, as one speaks to a little child when one wants to impress something upon it.