“Don’t you know what the term Unionist means?” asked Olive.
“Nobody knows that,” replied the scene-painter, “why, I’ve been one myself.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t cut a fellow just because he was a Socialist,” cried the broad-minded Mr. Archer, “why there was–” and he was silent, lost in social reminiscences.
“He isn’t a Socialist,” observed Murrel impassively, “He breaks things if you call him a Socialist. He is a Syndicalist.”
“But that’s worse, isn’t it?” said the young lady, innocently.
“Of course we’re all for social questions and making things better,” said Archer in a general manner, “but nobody can defend a man who sets one class against another as he does; talking about manual labour and all sorts of impossible Utopias. I’ve always said that Capital has its duties as well as its–.”
“Well,” interposed Murrel hastily, “I’m prejudiced in the present case. Look at me; you couldn’t have anybody more manual than I am.”
“Well, he won’t act, anyhow,” repeated Archer, “and we must find somebody. It’s only the Second Troubadour, of course, and anybody can do it. But it must be somebody fairly young; that’s the only reason I thought of Braintree.”
“Yes, he is quite a young man yet,” assented Murrel, “and no end of the young men seem to be with him.”
“I detest him and his young men,” said Olive, with sudden energy. “In the old days people complained of young people breaking out because they were romantic. But these young men break out because they are sordid; just prosaic and low, and wrangling about machinery and money–materialists. They just want a world of atheists, that would soon be a world of apes.”