The deputation went away not only contented but enthusiastic. They quite understood that their immediate cause was not advanced and could not be advanced by anything the Dictator could possibly have to say. But they had been impressed by his sincerity and by his sympathy. They had been deputed to wait on many a public official, many a head of a department, many a Secretary of State, many an Under-Secretary. They were familiar with the stereotyped official answers, the answers that assured them that the case should have consideration, and that if anything could be done—well, then, perhaps, something would be done. Possibly no other answer could have been given. The answer of the unofficial and irresponsible Dictator promised absolutely nothing; but it had the musical ring of sincerity and of sympathy about it, and the men grasped strongly his strong hand, and went away glad that they had seen him.
The Dictator did not usually receive deputations. But he had a great many requests from deputations that they might be allowed to wait on him and express their views to him. He was amazed sometimes to find what an important man he was in the estimation of various great organisations. Ho was assured by the committee of the Universal Arbitration Society that, if he would only appear on their platform and deliver a speech, the cause of universal arbitration would be secured, and public war would go out of fashion in the world as completely as the private duel has gone out of fashion in England. Of course, he was politely pressed to receive a deputation on behalf of several societies interested on one side or the other of the great question of Woman's Suffrage. The teetotallers and Local Optionists of various forms solicited the favour of a talk with him. The trade associations and the licensed victuallers eagerly desired to get at his views. The letters he received on the subject of the hours of labour interested him a great deal, and he tried to grapple with their difficulties, but soon found he could make little of them. By the strenuous advice of Hamilton he was induced to keep out of these complex English questions altogether. Ericson yielded, knowing that Hamilton was advising him for the best; but he had a good deal of the Don Quixote in his nature; and having now a sort of enforced idleness put upon him, he felt a secret yearning for some enterprise to set the world right in other directions than that of Gloria.
There was a certain indolence in Ericson's nature. It was the indolence which is perfectly consistent with a course of tremendous and sustained energy. It was the nature which says to itself at one moment, 'Up and do the work,' and goes for the work with unconquerable earnestness until the work is done, and then says, 'Very good; now the work is done, let us rest and smoke and talk over other things.' Nature is one thing; character is another. We start with a certain kind of nature; we beat it and mould it, or it is beaten and moulded for us, into character. Even Hamilton was never quite certain whether Nature had meant Ericson for a dreamer, and Ericson and Fortune co-operating had hammered him into a worker, or whether Nature had moulded him for a worker, and his own tastes for contemplation and for reading and for rest had softened him down into a dreamer.
'The condition of this country horrifies me, Hamilton,' he said, when left alone with his devoted follower. 'I don't see any way out of it. I find no one who even professes to see any way out of it. I don't see any people getting on well but the trading class.'
'But the trading class?' Hamilton asked, with a quiet smile.
'You mean that if the trading class are getting on well the country in the end will get on well?'
'It would look like that,' Hamilton answered; 'wouldn't it? This is a country of trade. If our trade is sound, our heart is sound.'
'But what is becoming of the land, what is becoming of the peasant? What is becoming of the East End population? I don't see how trade helps any of these. Read the accounts from Liverpool, from Manchester, from Sheffield, from anywhere: nothing but competition and strikes and general misery. And, look here, I can't bear the idea of everything in life being swallowed up in the great cities, and the peasantry of England totally disappearing, and being succeeded by a gaunt, ragged class of half-starved labourers in big towns. Take my word for it, Hamilton, a cursed day has come when we see that day.'
'What can be done?' Hamilton asked, in a kind of compassionate tone—compassion rather for the trouble of his chief than for the supposed national tribulation. Hamilton was as generous-hearted a young fellow as could be, but his affections were more evidenced in the concrete than in the abstract. He had grown up accustomed to all these distracting social questions, and he did not suppose that anything very much was likely to come of them—at any rate, he supposed that if anything were to come of them it would come of itself, and that we could not do much to help or hinder it. So he was not disposed to distress himself much about these social complications, although, if he felt sure that his purse or his labour could avail in any way to make things better, his help most assuredly would not be wanting. But he did not like the Dictator to be worried about such things. The Dictator's work, he thought, was to be kept for other fields.
'Nothing can be done, I suppose,' the Dictator said gloomily. 'But, my dear Hamilton, that is the trouble of the whole business. That does not help us to put it out of our minds—it only racks our minds all the more. To think that it should be so! To think that in this great country, so rich in money, so splendid in intellect, we should have to face that horrible problem of misery and poverty and vice, and, having stared at it long enough, simply close our eyes, or turn away and deliver it as our final utterance that there is nothing to be done!'