“I beg pardon?”
“I said you were part of the faces in the fog. I used to wonder when we came here what was behind the sort of brick-wall expression that people in the streets and the trams had. When you go to speak in Hyde Park you will see how different your audience is—quite merry in comparison.”
“I don’t propose to do so at present,” said Kropotkin-Fisk, highly offended. “We leave that to the executive. Our body here is concerned at the moment exclusively with study and propaganda.” Emma came to look for Teresa and heard the end of the discussion.
“Aren’t you paving the way for a new set of class distinctions, Mr. Fisk?” she asked. “What you said just now sounded like it. I hope you will take a lesson from the present evil system and pay yourself properly if you are going to keep to the higher activities.”
“I don’t quite follow,” said Mr. Fisk, “but if you’ll favour us at the next debate and hear my paper, perhaps you will put your question then, and I shall do my best to parry your thrust.”
“I don’t know what Mrs. Potter would do if Fisk were made Chancellor of the Exchequer under the new régime,” said Emma, as she and Teresa walked back together.
“Yes, she would loathe it,” Teresa agreed. “But I don’t exactly know why. Why do they so often hate their own class in office?”
“Well,” said Emma, “I suppose if Eddie Fisk is Chancellor of the Exchequer there’s no reason why Albert Potter shouldn’t go one better and be King. Mrs. Potter ‘never would ’ave ’eld with them Fisks,’ you’d find, ‘—settin’ themselves up!’”
“But Communists don’t have a King; isn’t that the whole point?” Teresa objected.
“They don’t until one of them wants to be it,” said Emma. “They would call him something else, but some of them would develope an aptitude for ruling. Even apes do.”