“Do you mean you want Local Option?” asks the duke, with some alarm. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known that.”
Bertram answers with irritation; “There is no question of local option or of total abstinence, Duke. If property were generally and duly distributed, wine would be so too; and if individualism were duly recognised, you would no more dare to interfere with the drunkard than with the genius.”
“African sherry all round—what a millennium!” cries his uncle. “Tipplers all over the place, and no lock-up to put ’em in! What an Arcadia!”
“Genius has frequently been rudely compared to inebriety,” remarks the practical politician; “but I have never known quite such a slap in the face given to it as this. Max Nardau is deferential in comparison.”
“Look, sir,” says Bertram, addressing the duke, but glancing at Cicely Seymour—“look at the utter debasement of our financial system! What are banks except incentives to crime? What are the Bourses, the Exchanges, or Wall Street, except large seething cauldrons of sin? What are the great speculating companies if not banded thieves for the stripping of a gullible public? What is the watch you wear, with its visible chain glaring across your waistcoat, except a base, mean, grinning mockery of the hungry man who meets you in the street?”
Marlow takes out his watch.
“My conscience is clear in that respect. My watch is a Waterbury, and wouldn’t fetch the hungry man a shilling if he pawned it.”
“And my chain,” says Lord Southwold, touching a steel one, “was my poor old Hector’s collar, and I wear it in memory of him. How he’d thresh out five acres of turnips before luncheon! We shall never see his like.”
Bertram grows impatient: “Individually you may wear Waterburys or dog-collars, but each is nevertheless a symbol of inequality between you and the man in the street, who is obliged to look at the church clock to see the hour at which he may seek the parish dole.”
“What profound philosophy!” cries Southwold. “What crimes one may commit without knowing it!”