We say, “Be good, my child, and you will go to heaven.” The proposition is no doubt perfectly true. But it proposes a selfish motive for action. I would rather say to that child, “Be good, my dear, or else you will become an intolerable nuisance to other people.” Now, no child likes to consider himself an intolerable nuisance.
These lovers, therefore, wander about the Heath, sometimes up to their knees in bracken, sometimes sitting under the trees, not talking much, but, as the old phrase has it, “enjoying themselves” very much indeed. At the end of the Spaniards’ Road—that high causeway whence one can see, in clear weather, the steeple of Harrow Church on one side and the dome of St. Paul’s on the other—there is a famous clump of firs, which have been represented by painters over and over again. Benches have been placed under these trees, where one can sit and have a very fine view indeed, with the Hendon Lake in the middle distance, and a range of hills beyond, and fields and rills between.
On one of these benches were sitting this evening two—Adam and Eve, boy and girl—newly entered into paradise. Others were sitting there as well—an ancient gentleman whose thoughts were seventy years back, a working man with a child of three on his knee, and beside him his wife, carrying the baby. But these lovers paid no heed to their neighbors. They sat at the end of the bench. The boy was holding the girl’s hand, and he was talking eagerly.
“Lily,” he said, “you must come some evening to our debating society when we begin again and hear me speak. No one speaks better. That is acknowledged. There is to be a debate on the House of Lords in October. I mean to come out grand. When I’m done there will be mighty little left of the Lords.” He was a handsome lad, tall and well set up, straight featured and bright eyed. The girl looked at him proudly. He was her own lad—this handsome chap. Not that she was bad-looking either. Many an honest fellow has to put up with a girl not nearly so good-looking, if you were to compare.
He was a clerk in the city. She was in the post-office. He attended at his office daily from half-past nine to six, doing such work as was set before him for the salary of a pound a week. She stood all day long at the counter, serving out postal orders, selling stamps, weighing letters, and receiving telegrams. When I add that she was civil to everybody you will understand that she was quite a superior clerk—one of the queen’s lucky bargains. It is not delicate to talk about a young lady’s salary, therefore I shall not say for how much she gave her services to the British Empire.
He was a clever boy, who read and thought. That is to say, he thought that he thought—which is more than most do. As he took his facts from the newspapers, and nothing else, and 442 as he was profoundly ignorant of English history, English law, the British Constitution, the duties of a citizen, and the British Empire generally, his opinions, after he had done thinking, were not of so much value to the country, it is believed. But still a clever fellow, and able to spout in a frothy way which carried his hearers along, if it never convinced or defeated an opponent.
To this kind of clever boy there are always two or three dangers. One is that he should be led on to think more and more of froth and less of fact; another, that he should grow conceited over his eloquence and neglect his business. A third temptation which peculiarly besets this kind is that he should take to drink. Oratory is thirsty work, and places where young men orate are often in immediate proximity to bars. As yet, however, Charley was only twenty. He was still at the first stage of everything—oratory, business, and love; and he was still at the stage when everything appears possible—the total abolition of injustice, privilege, class, capital, power, oppression, greed, sweating, poverty, suffering—by the simple process of tinkering the constitution.
“Oh,” he cried, “we shall have the most glorious, the most splendid time, Lily! The power of the people is only just beginning; it hasn’t begun yet. We shall see the most magnificent things....” He enumerated them as above indicated. Well, it is very good that young men should have such dreams and see such visions. I never heard of any girl being thus carried out of herself. The thing belongs exclusively to male man in youth, and it is very good for him. When he is older he will understand that over and above the law and the constitution there is something else more important still—namely, that every individual man should be honest, temperate, and industrious. In brief, he will understand the force of the admonition: “Be good, my child, or else you will become an intolerable nuisance to everybody.”
The sun sank behind Harrow-on-the-Hill. The red light of the west flamed in the boy’s bright eyes. Presently the girl rose.
“Yes, Charley,” she said, less sympathetic than might have been expected; “yes, and it will be a very fine time, if it comes. But I don’t know. People will always want to get rich, won’t they? I think this beautiful time will have to come after us. Perhaps we had better be looking after our own nest first.”