“My hat! Whatever for?”
“Because he’s a Socialist.”
“What difference does that make?”
Luke embarked on an explanation of the first principles underlying the code of equality; threw in a few cutting sentences regarding the palpable unfairness of “one law for the rich and another for the poor”; and wound up by reading his companion a column from the current issue of “Mine and Yours.”
“But that’s all balmy bosh,” was Jinny’s comment.
“Is it?” huffily. “As it happens, I’m a Socialist myself.”
“You are? Crumbs! Why?”
Luke fumbled in vain for words with which to express the queer gleam which had penetrated the murkiness of his schoolboy soul; soul hitherto stamped solely with football scores, surliness, and Jinny; with cheap cigarettes and brandyballs; canings, ink, and the “usual beastliness” of everything. Thereunto had lately to be added the astounding novelty of someone who sacrificed material advantages for the sake of an abstract idea; and the blended beauty and absurdity of the proceeding had uplifted Luke to a queer sense of gladness that such a miracle should actually take place within his ken; had even inspired him with an inarticulate desire to imitate ... somehow. His shyness had never permitted him to confide in Sebastian; otherwise he might have received another shock on hearing that in this case Socialism was not the motive of renunciation. Sebastian, for his part, might have found some difficulty in translating into Johnsonese the twisted asceticism of Stuart Heron.
But Luke only dogged in boorish silence his sister’s betrothed. And Sebastian thought his future brother-in-law rather an uncouth lad, with whom he could never have anything in common.
In the meantime, Luke realized the impossibility of laying before Jinny the wonder of a share-and-share-alike community, while she was very importantly calling for the bill, and clinking her coins on to the table; especially as he had absently overstepped his self-imposed limit, and eaten twopence off the half-crown.