He is the younger son of a peer, has a little money of his own, and makes a little more by writing for scholarly reviews; but beyond all he is an altruist, a collectivist, a Fourrierist, an Engelist, a Tolstoi-ist; and, in common with other theorists, he has imagined that to be told the truth is enough to make people believe in it and observe its gospel. He has been continually deceived in this impression; but he has always held it, and it is proportionately irritating to him when, after having shed the light of information upon his contemporaries, they still show no symptoms of being converted.
Even the old duke, who is his godfather, and is generally tender to his theories, does nothing but nod his head and repeat like a magpie: “Look before you leap!”
“I think you said that property was like a cancer in the body politic?” observes a lover of practical politics, a Unionist member of parliament, putting his glass in his eye.
“I said the consolidation and transmission of property was so,” replies Bertram, with some hauteur: people cannot even quote him correctly!
“Ah! seems to me the same thing.”
“No more the same thing than Seltzer and the Sellinger!” cries Marlow.
“Oh, indeed,” says the politician, humbly; “forgive my stupidity.”
Bertram implies by a gesture that his indulgence to human imbecility is inexhaustible, but sorely tried.
“I had hoped,” he says, sententiously, “that you would have gathered from my previous discourse how intense is my conviction that those who possess property should give it up, generously, spontaneously, for the good of all, before awaiting that inevitable retribution which will fall on them if they continue to insult the People by their display of wealth, unearned and unjustified; for the riches of the noble and the millionaire are as absolutely theft as any stolen goods obtained by violence and fraud, and do continually provoke the crimes which they so savagely denounce and punish——”
“Humph! That’s strong,” mutters the duke.