'No—no. I remember looking at the clock as I put on my hat. It was half-past five when I went out— Five. What did I do between half-past five o'clock and eight? I forget. You see, my trouble, Elsie—I forget. Perhaps I went to the Club: perhaps I strolled about: perhaps I came back here. There are three hours to account for—and I have forgotten them all.'
CHAPTER XXV
WILL HE REMEMBER?
Should she tell him? She could not. The way must somehow be prepared. No—she could not tell him just so—in cold blood. How would he look if she were to begin: 'I have found out the mystery. You are Edmund Gray. During the hours that you cannot recall, you are playing the part of a Socialist teacher and leader: you are actively propagating the doctrines that you hold to be dangerous and misleading'? What would he say? What would he feel when he realised the truth?
On the table lay a copy of the Times—a fortnight-old copy—open at the place where there was a certain letter from a certain Edmund Gray. Elsie pointed to it. Mr. Dering sighed. 'Again,' he said, 'they persecute me. Now it is a letter addressed to Edmund Gray, lying on my table: now it is the bill of a pernicious lecture by Edmund Gray: to-day it is this paper with the letter that appeared a week or two ago. Who brought it here? Checkley says he didn't. Who put it on my table?'
Elsie made no reply. It was useless to test her former theory of the boy under the table.
'As for the man who wrote this letter,' Mr. Dering went on, 'he bears the name of our forger and writes from the same address. Yet he is not the man. Of that I am convinced. This man is a fool because he believes in the honesty of mankind: he is a generous fool, because he believes that people would rather be good than bad. Nonsense! They would rather be stealing from each other's plates, like the monkeys, than dividing openly. He has what they call a good heart—that is, he is a soft creature—and he is full of pity for the poor. Now, in my young days, I was taught—what after-experience has only brought more home to me—that the poor are poor in consequence of their vices. We used to say to them: "Go away—practise thrift. Be sober—work hard. By exercising these virtues we rose out of your ranks. By continuing to exercise them we remain on these levels. Go away. There is no remedy for disease contracted by vice. Go away and suffer." That's what we said formerly. What they say now is: "Victims of greed! You are filled with every virtue possible to humanity. You are down-trodden by the Capitalist. You are oppressed. Make and produce for others to enjoy. We will change all this. We will put the fruits—the harvest—of your labour in your own hands, and you shall show the world your justice, your noble disinterestedness, your generosity, your love of the common weal." That's the new gospel, Elsie, and I prefer the old.'
Strange that a man should at one time hold and preach with so much fervour and earnestness the very creed which at another time he denounced as fiercely!
'This man, and such as he,' continued Mr. Dering, lifted out of his anxieties by that subject, 'would destroy Property in order to make the workman rich. Wonderful doctrine! He would advance the world by destroying the only true incentive and stimulant for work, invention, civilisation, association, and every good and useful thing. He would destroy Property. And then? Can he not see what would follow? Why, these people do not know the very alphabet of the thing. By Property they mean the possession by individuals of land or money. But that is only a part of Property. Take that away, and the individual remains. And he has got—what you cannot take away—the rest of his Property, by which he will speedily repair the temporary loss. Consider, child, if you can, what does a man possess? He has, I say, Property—all his own—which cannot be taken from him or shared with another—Property in his brain, his trade, his wit, his craft, his art, his skill, his invention, his enterprise, his quickness to grip an opportunity. Again, he has his wife and children—sometimes a very valuable Property: he has, besides, his memories, his knowledge, his experience, his thoughts, his hopes, his projects, and intentions: he has his past and he has his future: he has, or thinks he has, his inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven. Take away all these things bit by bit, what is left? Nothing. Not even the shadow of a man. Not even a naked figure. This, Elsie, is Property. These things separate the individual from the mass, and each man from his neighbour. A shallow fanatic, like this Edmund Gray, thinks that wealth is the whole of Property. Why, I say, it is only a part of Property: it is the external and visible side of certain forms of Property. Take all the wealth away to-day—even if you make ten thousand laws, the same qualities—the same forms of Property—the same lack of those qualities will produce like results to-morrow.—Do you now understand, child, what is meant by Property? It is everything which makes humanity. Wealth is only the symbol or proof of society so organised that all these qualities—the whole Property of a man, can be exercised freely and without injustice.'