‘That don’t hang together, you know,’ said Lord Glendover gravely.
‘It is like some hideous game, where each child has to speak a harmless word in turn, and the whole sentence is rank blasphemy and wickedness. Each of you goes through a foolish, innocent routine, with a clear conscience and the applause of the poor multitude; and the result is misery, misery, misery. Not random misery, here and there, such as you harmless creatures might chance on by the way, but a fearful consistent scheme of deeply-calculated, universal misery—a thing of hellish contrivance, worthy of the fiery genius of the sulphur pit. What am I, and what is this poor Lord Glendover? Makers and unmakers of men? Pah! We are pitiful pawns in the awful game, dreaming we move of our own accord only because the other pawns do not jostle us. Why do we stay cumbering the board? God knows! And yet without us there would be no game. It lies with us, it lies with us to put an end to it.’
She spoke with lifted arm and ringing voice, like a prophet of repentance; while Lord Glendover leaned back in his low chair, looking up over his brown clasped hands with frightened eyes. There was something comical in this big creature’s dependent, child-like look. Lady Wyse smiled suddenly at him:
‘We must kick over the board, my little man, and spoil the Devil’s game.’
The scared look spread downwards to his mouth. He did not understand any of the words she spoke; but a vague instinct of wisdom and alarm shot through him, as through a baby hare, which thought it was play, and suddenly finds death baying on every side.
‘You don’t mean reconstruction, do you, Lady Wyse? Dwala’s not going to....’
The awfulness was too sudden-spreading to be crumpled back into words. She smiled again.
‘Revolution, my child, revolution! We’ll make Old England stand on its head and shout.’
‘Good Gad! But he’s bound to us in honour. Dwala’s a gentleman—we look to him. We’d never have put him up if he hadn’t been pledged in honour. He can’t go back on us now.’
‘He’s pledged to nothing, any more than I am; any more than a ship is that you may charter to carry a cargo of slaves to Jamaica. And if the ship is turned round in mid-Atlantic, and carried back to the coast of Africa, what use is it your crying out: “You’re not a gentleman, you ship! We trusted you, we chartered you to carry our blacks to slavery, and here you are taking us back to be eaten by the cannibals.” I’m sorry for you, Lord Glendover, quite sorry enough. You’re a good man, and not more stupid than most. You might have been a decent farmer, or bricklayer, or gamekeeper; but you’ve gone along the beaten track that leads to villainy—unconscious, irreclaimable villainy. You don’t see it, and you never will. Go home and be obscure. I’m sorry for you; but I’m sorrier for the forty million blacks that we have on board, and now we mean to carry them back to Africa.’