“You do not dispute the facts about Hepplestall?”
“No. It’s your conclusions I find amazing.”
“Oh,” said Godalming, “this isn’t Almack’s Club at all. We’re in France, and Mr. Collinson is wearing a red cap, and Mr. Seccombe has no breeches and—rot me if I ever expected to hear such damned revolutionary sentiments from an Englishman.”
“Will you do me the favor, my lord, to consider the picture Mr. Verners has assented to be veracious?” Mr. Seccombe said, leaning back in his chair and looking like nothing so much as Maclise’s Talleyrand in the Fraser Portraits; elbows on the arms of his chair, hands caressing his stomach, knees wide apart, the sole of one shoe rubbing against the other, a look of placid benignity on his face. “That large factory, dominating a town of cottages where its workers live, under the owner’s eye, and that owner a gentleman who has extinguished the small lower-class manufacturers of his neighborhood. I ask you to consider that picture and to tell me what there is in it that you feel undesirable. To me, my lord, it is an almost feudal picture. The Norman Keep, with a village clustered around its walls, is to my mind the precedent of Mr. Hepplestall’s factory with its workers in their cottages about it. I confess to an admiration of this Hepplestall, whom you regard as a traitor to our order and I as a benefactor to that order. You will hardly assert that our order is unshaken by the deplorable events in France, you will hardly say that, even before that unparalleled outbreak of ruffianism, our order had maintained the high prestige of the Feudal days. A man in whose action I see possibilities of restoring in full our ancient privileges is a man to be approved and to be supported by us. If we do not support him, and others like him, what results? Abandoned by us, he must consort with somebody and he will consort naturally with other steam-power manufacturers, adding to their strength and weakening ours. It seems to me that this steam is a notable instrument for keeping in their places those classes who might one day follow the terrible French example: and the question is whether it is better for us ourselves, men of our order, directly to handle this instrument, or whether we are to trust it in the hands of the manufacturing class. For my own part, I distrust that class, I like a man who grasps his nettles boldly and I applaud Mr. Hepplestall.”
Several men had joined the circle by now, and Mr. Seecombe ended to find himself the center of an attention close but hostile. Phrases such as “rank heresy” and “devil’s advocate” made Mr. Collinson feel heroic when he said, “Speaking for myself, I stand converted by your argument, Seecombe.”
At which Godalming gave the theorist and his supporter the name of “a brace of begad trucklers to Satan,” and such a whoop of applause went up as caused Mr. Seccombe to look round quickly for cover. It was clear that to touch steam was not condoned as an attempt to revitalize the Feudal system: to touch steam was to defile oneself and to propose a defense of a gentleman who stooped to steam was to be unpopular. Mr. Seccombe liked his views very well, but liked popularity better and, catching sight of Whitworth in the crowd, saw in him a means of distracting attention from himself.
“Have you a word on this, Whitworth?” he asked. “You come from Lancashire.”
“My word on this,” he said, “is Mr. Verners’ word. Like him I am the victim of these steaming gentlemen, and I have only to remember my bailiff’s accounts to know how much I am mulcted in poor-rates.”
“Imagine Harry Whitworth perusing an account!” said Godalming.
“One has one’s duties, I believe,” said Sir Harry. “But I have been too long away from Lancashire to be a judge of this matter. I can tell you nothing of Hepplestall and his factory, for this is the first I heard of it, but I can tell you of Hepplestall and a parson.” And he told the tale of Mr. Bantison.