There had been an attempt to bring him into the fold of Christianity, but it broke down. He had been led to the gate by a member of a special mission who, without his knowing it, had given his colleague of the little toe a rendezvous at the same place. He endured the hateful presence as best he might, until the rite of Communion required him to touch the cup that had just been pressed by the other’s lips. Then he set down the untasted pledge of love and brotherhood, and turned away.
‘He had brought his lady over with him, and she lived in the seclusion of a Whitechapel zenana, in continual fear of the effect of our foggy climate on her lord’s remaining lung. She was far from her own people, and if she became a widow, how could she hope to be treated with the requisite indignity during the funeral rite? Burning was, of course, out of the question, but who would tear out her nose-ring, and the cartilage with it, in the regular respectable way, or buffet her, and load her with reproaches, for daring to survive him? She knew her Manu and her Sāstras as many of our own estimable poor know their own Holy Books, and they had taught her that great lesson of humility to man which, in the end, all such books are made to teach. “A woman is not to be relied on”—she had the text by heart—“a husband must be revered as a god by a virtuous wife.” Poor slaves of the slave! beautiful and tender creatures, ever the most apt in the learning of subjection! when will your turn come? Victoria, my tale is done.’
Victoria toyed with her scarf awhile as though to remember all the points, then untied it knot by knot, in sheer weariness of soul.
‘And is that England, is that the Empire?’ she said, fixing me with her eyes in a way I did not exactly like.
‘Oh no, not altogether. Don’t let me be unfair. There are hundreds of square miles of beauty, refinement, luxury; exquisitely ordered homes, fine-natured men, courteous, suave, poised, high-bred from the bone; white women, oh, so white! some of them able to read Greek—Learning robed and perfumed. And for parties, picture galleries, libraries, when they give their minds to such things, they are not to be matched. We are particularly proud of one square mile bounded by Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Regent Street, and Park Lane; and are wont to repeat the boast at public dinners that, for intelligence, culture, wit, and the high qualities of civilisation, it has not its territorial equivalent on the face of the earth.’
‘The greater shame for them; why do they leave the other square miles as they are?’
‘There are charities, you know.’
‘Charities!—ointment for a cancer. What makes the disease? There must be something going on that none of you find out. I know there must be. How can all those fine people live a day, an hour, till they do find it out? What do they talk about while they are having their dinners? I know they could find it out, if they tried. Let us try and find it out, before we go home: we have still half an hour left. I have been thinking, all the time you talked: it must be selfishness. Everybody gets what he can, instead of what he ought, and of course the clever people get most. Then they give a little of it back to the Poor Stupids in what you call charity, and go on making the money and the misery all the same. That is the way it strikes me. How do the rich people get rich? Don’t you know you can’t be rich without doing wrong, whether you know you are doing wrong, or not. Can you now? At the best, even, if you are not a robber, you are using your cleverness to take some one else’s share. And to think of all those people looking so nice, and smelling like flowers, and talking like expensive books, and trying to get richer than other people all the time; oh! the sly things! How do you grow rich? I wonder how it is done.’
‘Always, at the beginning, of course, by getting as much as you can for yourself, and giving as little as you can to others; buying in the cheapest, and selling in the dearest is the accepted phrase. Sometimes, this has happened so long ago that the possessors are able to forget it ever happened. They are usually put up to do the talking about unselfishness.’
‘Just what I thought; so the dealer that buys the match boxes made in Mr. Swart’s house buys them, not for what he ought, but for what he can.’