“Pray excuse me for breaking in upon your entertaining remarks, Miss Hartley, but do you not think you had better come to the point, and have done with it? You want to say something to me, and do not quite know how to begin. Is not that the fact?”
“Yes, Mr Troubridge, it is,” she acknowledged; “although how you managed to guess it, I am sure I don’t know.”
“Well,” said I, “let it suffice that I have guessed it. Now, go ahead and just tell me what it is.”
The girl hesitated for some time, and at length said, with a laugh of embarrassment:
“I know quite well what it is that I want to say; but my difficulty is that I do not know how you will take it, for I have only a very hazy idea what are your own ideas upon the subject.”
“Has it anything to do with Gurney, by any chance?” I asked.
“Well, yes, it has—in a way,” she answered. “The fact is, Mr Troubridge, that now, when that horrid man Wilde’s scheme seems to be nearing fruition, I am beginning to realise that I am in a very awkward and difficult position; and I am feeling very anxious. I have heard much talk, lately, that has greatly alarmed me; and I have been compelled to ask myself what is to be the outcome of this attempt to found a colony upon Socialistic lines. I admit that I have never very closely studied the doctrine of Socialism; but if Wilde’s views are to be accepted as its gospel, my common sense tells me that the experiment which we are about to make can result in nothing but a ghastly fiasco. The text of his preaching is Social Equality. Equality! There has never been, and never will be such a thing so long as this world endures and mankind is what it is; and all attempts to make and keep men equal are foredoomed to end in failure, even as they did in the days of the French Revolution. I foresee that one of the first results which will follow such an attempt here will be discontent; then will speedily follow dissension, and, finally, anarchy; and I look forward to that condition of things with the utmost dread. For anarchy means lawlessness, violence, the adoption of the doctrine that Might is Right; and in the midst of such a state of things what will happen to us unfortunate women?”
“Ah!” said I. “That is a question which I should think will affect you very closely, although, judging merely from what I have seen of the others, I doubt whether it will greatly trouble them. I imagine that, even if anarchy should come, they will know pretty well how to take care of themselves, even as the French Revolutionary women did. But what has all this got to do with Gurney?”
“Well, it concerns him in this way,” the girl answered. “He thinks upon this subject precisely as I do, and foresees—as I do—that grave troubles for us all loom in the not-far-distant future. Of course you know very little about George Gurney, Mr Troubridge; to you he is merely one of the crew of this ship; but,” with some little embarrassment which I very readily understood, “I have seen a great deal of him of late, and I assure you that he is a very remarkable man, intelligent, well-educated, refined; indeed, as a matter of fact, I believe—although he has never told me so—that he was born to a very different station in life from that which he now occupies. I may as well acknowledge that it is to conversations I have had with him that I have come to see things in the light that I have endeavoured to make clear to you; and it is partly at his suggestion that I finally decided to mention the subject to you, and endeavour to obtain your views upon it.”
“My views, Miss Hartley,” said I, “are in all essentials identical with your own—and Gurney’s—and, if you think fit, you may tell him so.”