"Nae doubt," went on the ticket-collector; "nae doubt. He was always giving me tracts. Tracts—faugh!—poor stuff, nae style, nae logic, and nae philosophee in them. But I aye took them and thanked him—for he is a nice man, though a perfect babe in matters of understanding. And I found them useful for spills. The other day he handed me this..." and he waved a blue paper-covered booklet.
"Mahn," he exclaimed, pushing his peaked cap back from his grey head, and sweeping his brass buttons down with his hand; "mahn, this has fair hit me between the eyes." Then he opened the pamphlet and began to read passages that he had heavily scored with blue pencil. The Czar has abolished the sale of vodka for ever! What is the result?
"The old women in the villages," read the ticket-collector, "can hardly believe their own eyes, so changed are their menfolk.... Everywhere peace, kindness and industry. War is said to be hell; but this is like a foretaste of heaven."
"Listen to this," cried the collector, his arm outstretched. "A newspaper correspondent writes, since the sale of vodka stopped the old night population (in the doss-houses) seems to have vanished." Every passage he read bore the same testimony.
"And what are we doing?" he exclaimed. "We have stopped nothing; we surround our soldiers with the old temptations, and we leave their defenceless wives exposed to the same temptations; I know all about it. Mahn, it was Ruskin that said, 'There is no wealth but life,' and we leave all our wealth of life at the mercy of every evil. It's a fair scandal. Do you ken the conclusion I've come to! It is that the best form of government is a benevolent despotism. Oor men are afraid of this and that—losing votes—but an autocrat with a stroke of a pen can sweep away the power of hell. If they would only make King George an autocrat for a few years.... That would be grand!"
He insisted on lending me the blue-covered pamphlet, and it being his hour off he walked with me across the bridge. The valley was now dark. The snuff-manufacturer's house down below was wrapped in gloom. Lights twinkled on the slopes. Below a lamp-post at the far end of the bridge two men stood. When he saw them the ticket-collector stood fast.
"Mahn," said he, "I've come to a great resolution. I'm too old to fight; and they canna get at me in ony way. No Income-tax for me; and threepence on the tea is naething, for I never take it; I want to feel that I am worth men dying for me; and I am going to be tee-total till the end of the war. I'll give the money to help the soldiers' weans. It's the weans that pull at my heart-strings."
And he turned on his heel and walked rapidly back across the bridge.
Under the lamp-post stood the roadman and the beadle, looking after him. I spoke to them, for since the war began we all speak to each other in our parish.
"Has he forgotten ony thin'?" asked the roadman, waving a hand towards the retreating form of the ticket-collector.