"Macdonald," I said slowly, "I'm sorry you said that, for it means that you'll reject everything I bring forward. You'll grasp the idea that my views are useless because I tell you I can smite when I am angry, and you'll consequently reject everything I say. You're like the man who cries to a Socialist orator: 'Why don't you sell your watch and divide the proceeds among this crowd?' or like the man who tells a member of the no-hat brigade that he should go naked to be consistent. If I were to adopt your tactics I might ask why you don't get the School Boards to provide muzzles for the children on the plea that so much of your energy is taken up in keeping them silent. If you make them salute you I see no logical reason why you shouldn't carry respect to its extreme and force them to kneel down and kiss your boots. If you insist on perfect truthfulness why do you try to hide the truth about the sex of pigeons? You pretend to be a believer in perfect obedience to authority, and yet I saw you ride a bicycle without a light the other night. I am quite willing to prove that every man is inconsistent. Bernard Shaw would no doubt find some difficulty in explaining how his humanitarian vegetarianism blends with his wearing of leather boots; for I don't suppose that he has boots made from the hides of animals that died of old age. I gave up shooting and fishing because I saw that both were cruel, yet I will kill a wasp or a rat on occasion. If a tiger got loose down in the village I should at once borrow Frank Thomson's gun, but I should refuse to go tiger-hunting in Bengal. My dear chap, I am as full of inconsistencies as an egg's full of meat. So are you; so is every man. The best of us are but poor weaklings, for we are each carrying the instincts of millions of our tree- and cave-dwelling ancestors on our backs. My point, however, is that in spite of our weaknesses and animalisms we are predominantly good. I am a caveman once in five years; I am a reasoning humanitarian the rest of the time. You fasten on my elemental side and refuse to think that there can be any good in my humanitarian side.
"You see, I quite earnestly believe that your respect for law and authority is genuine, almost religious, and the fact that I saw you break the law by riding without a light doesn't make me doubt your respect for law."
"I had had a puncture," he explained.
"Exactly! Extenuating circumstances. That's what I might plead when I kick the boy who deliberately punctures my machine ... but you would laugh. Why, I think I should start in to lecture you on your inconsistencies!"
I find that the worst man to answer is the fundamental antagonist. I used to be stumped by the anti-socialist cry: Socialism will destroy enterprise!... until I discovered that the best answer to this was: If enterprise has made modern capitalism and industrialism, by all means let it be destroyed. Macdonald will crow over what he considers my failure to be consistent, but it will never once strike him that my frank self-analysis is a thing that he will never practise himself.
Confound Macdonald! He has led me into defending myself; he never defends himself when I attack him; he is far too cocksure to have any doubts about himself.
V.
I am losing Jim Jackson. The battle for his soul is unequal. Macdonald has him all the day, while I only see him at intervals. He came up to the farm to-night, and he was morose in manner. His face is gradually assuming a sneering expression, and his repartee is less spontaneous and more biting. I managed to bring back his better self to-night, but I fear that a day will soon come when he will sink his better self for ever. His father and mother are people after Macdonald's own heart. They are typical village folk, stupid and aggressive. Oh, I loathe the village; it reminds me of George Douglas's Barbie in The House with the Green Shutters; it is full of envy and malice and smallness. There are too many "friends" in the village. Mrs. Bell is Mrs. Webster's sister, and they have lived next door to each other for twenty-five years, during which time they have not exchanged a single word. They quarrelled over the division of their mother's goods. When the father dies they will meet and weep together over his coffin; they will be inseparable for a few days ... then they will have a row over the old grandfather clock, and they won't speak to each other again.