“Oh, no,” said Olive, crossly, “I don’t mean like that. I don’t want somebody to fight him; he wasn’t rude in a conventional sense. Simply horribly stuck-up and opinionated, and laying down the law in long words out of his horrid foreign pamphlets– shouting all sorts of nonsense about coordinated syndicalism and proletarian something–”
“Such words are not fit for a lady’s lips,” said Murrel, shaking his head, “but I’m afraid I don’t yet quite understand what it’s all about. As I’m not to fight him for saying coordinated syndicalism (which seems to me a jolly good reason for fighting a man), what in the world is it that you want?”
“I want him taken down a peg,” observed the young woman, with vindictive gloom. “I want somebody to hammer into his head that he’s really quite ignorant. Why, he’s never mixed with educated people at all. You can see that from the way he walks and dresses. I feel somehow as if I could stand anything if he wouldn’t thrust out that great bristly black beard. He might look quite all right without his beard.”
“Do I understand,” asked Murrel, “that you wish me to go and forcibly shave the gentleman?”
“Nonsense,” she replied, impatiently, “I only mean I want him, just for one little moment, to wish he was shaved. What I want is to show him what educated people are really like. It’s all for his own good. He could be–he could be ever so much improved.”
“Is he to go to a continuation class or a night school?” inquired Murrel innocently, “or possibly to a Sunday school.”
“Nobody ever learns anything at school,” she replied, “I mean the only place where anybody ever does learn anything– the world; the great world. I want him to see there are things much greater than his grumbling little fads–I want him to hear people talking about music and architecture and history, and all the things that really scholarly people know about. Of course, he’s got stuck-up by spouting in the streets and laying down the law in low public-houses–bullying people even more ignorant than himself. But if once he gets among really cultivated people, he is quite clever enough to feel stupid.”
“And so, wanting a stately scholar, cultured to his finger-tips, you naturally thought of me,” remarked Monkey, approvingly. “You want me to tie him to a drawing-room chair and administer tea and Tolstoy, or Tupper, or whoever is the modern favourite. My dear Olive, he wouldn’t come.”
“I’ve thought of all that,” she said, rather hurriedly, “that’s what I meant by calling it a favour–a favour to him and all my fellow creatures, of course. Look here, I want you to persuade Lord Seawood to ask him to some business interview about the strike. That’s the only thing he’d come for; and after that we’ll introduce him to some people who’ll talk right above his head, so that he’ll sort of grow–grow up. It’s really serious, Douglas. He’s got the most terrible power over these workmen. Unless we can make him see the truth they will all–he’s an orator in his way.”
“I knew you were a bloated aristocrat,” he said, contemplating the tense and tenuous little lady, “but I never knew you were such a diplomatist. Well, I suppose I must help in your horrid plot, if you really assure me that it’s all for his own good.”