“What’s the law!” said Mr. Fisk contemptuously. “We’re going to alter all that; we’re going to make new laws by which man will have the right to live.”
“Yes, but not to stop others living,” said Teresa. “It’s silly; you know you can’t make laws; and who is going to carry them out if you do? You can’t make people do what you want just by telling them that you have made a law. There’s the army and navy too—but what is the good of arguing. You must know it is silly.”
“The army and navy are also learning to think, you’ll find,” said Mr. Fisk. “But I don’t wish to offend you, Miss—er. You are yourself of military stock, I believe?”
“Yes I am, but I don’t bother about that. It has got nothing to do with what I think,” she replied. “Don’t you know——” she went on, with passion beginning to rise in her as his words soaked in, “don’t you know, you stupid (she shook him delicately by the sleeve), that all the decent people in England—and English people are decent, not like the beastly people you try to make your hair like—are working their very hardest, day and night, to put things straight? And the fact that some of them have got white hands is all the better, for it means they have money and time to spend on it, and you have only the time to learn by heart what someone else has written. It does make me so angry when I know what the idle rich, as you call them, are doing.”
“Bah! charity!” said Mr. Fisk, and he spat some shreds of tobacco from his cigarette neatly into the grate.
“Oh, you can’t have thought I was talking about charity,” said Teresa with real distress. “Of course I wasn’t. It is the very thing I dislike most, except your muddle and murder. And besides that, some of the richest people boast of having been newsboys, and they are often the rudest to their servants and their wives are horrid lazy snobs.” Mr. Fisk’s little withered face twitched with his anxiety to collect some clear dignified retort.
“Have you ever read much on your subject, may I ask?” he inquired at last. “Have you studied economics? Perhaps you have attended Professor Cranston’s lectures?”
“No, I haven’t,” she replied.
“Then, pardon me, but I think you are hardly qualified for the argument. Capitalism is a highly intricate subject and should involve deep study. To judge how far it is advisable to submit the control of wages to the State, and also to consider to what extent the right of the individual to determine the extent of his earning capacity should be carried, requires a long training and arduous study. I should be pleased to continue our talk at some other time if convenient to you, and I should be happy to lend books if you are interested.”
“Yes,” said Teresa with a sigh of fatigue. “I want to know. And you are part of the faces in the fog, I suppose,” she added absently, looking at him.