"Don't be such a savage, Gerald," Lady Constance answered. "It was very rude, of course; but from what the duke says, the man was not exactly what you would call impudent, and he apologised at the end. And nowadays every one has a right to his own opinions. We don't live in the middle ages any longer."
Her voice was like a silver bell, the duke thought, as the girl voiced these somewhat republican sentiments. A silver bell, was it? No, it was like water falling into water, like a flute playing in a wood at a great distance.
"My daughter is quite a Radical, Paddington," said Lord Camborne, with a smile. "She'll grow out of it when she gets a little older. But I found her reading the Fabian Essays the other day; actually the Fabian Essays!"—the bishop said it with a shudder. "And she met John Burns at a ministerial reception, and said he was charming!"
"It's all very well for Constance," said Lord Hayle; "a girl plays at that sort of thing, and if it amuses her it hurts nobody else. However much Connie talks about equality, and all that, she'd never sit down to dinner with the butler. But it's quite another thing when all these chaps are getting elected to Parliament and making all these new laws. If it isn't stopped, no one will be safe. It's getting quite alarming. For my part, I wish a chap like Lord Kitchener could be made Dictator of England for a month. He'd have all the Socialists up against a wall and shoot them in no time. Then things would be right again."
Lord Hayle concluded in his best college debating society manner, and drank a glass of hock and seltzer in a bloodthirsty and determined manner.
The bishop, a tall, portly man, with a singularly fine face and extreme graciousness of manner—he was most popular at Court, and it was said would certainly go to Canterbury when Dr. —— died,—laughed a little at his son's vehemence.
"That would hardly solve the problem," he said. "But it will solve itself. I am quite sure that there is no real reason for alarm. The country is beginning to wake up to the real character of the Socialist leaders. It will no longer listen to them. Men of sense are beginning to perceive that the great fact of inequality as between man and man is everywhere stamped in ineffaceable characters. Men are not equal, and they never will be while talent, and talent alone, produces wealth. Democracy is nothing but a piece of humbug from beginning to end—a transparent attempt to flatter a mass of stupid mediocrity which is too dull to appreciate the language of its hypocritical and time-serving admirers. These contemptible courtiers of the mob no more believe in equality than the ruin-bringing demagogues of ancient Athens did. One only has to watch them to see how eager they are to feather their nests at the expense of all the geese that will stand plucking. Observe how they scheme and contrive to secure official positions so that they may lord it over the general herd of common workers. They have their own little game to play, and beyond their own self-interest they do not care a straw. Knowing that they are unfit to succeed either in commercial or industrial pursuits, they try to extend the sphere of governmental regulation. What for? To supply themselves with congenial jobs where they won't be subject to the keen test of industrial and commercial competition, and will be less likely to be found out for the worthless wind-bags that they are!"
The bishop paused. He had spoken as one having authority; quite in the grand manner, bland, serene, and a little pompous. He half-opened his mouth to continue, looked round to recognise that his audience was a young one, and thought better of it. He drank half a glass of port instead.
The conversation changed to less serious matters, and in another minute or so Gardener entered to say that coffee was ready in the other room.