‘You must clear out that den,’ she went on, after a pause. ‘A good many men are imprisoned there on the sole unsupported charge of their wives—innocent, no doubt; and if not innocent, then they have been punished enough.’
Lord Chester was being led gradually to regard himself, not as an intending rebel, but as a great reformer. Always the Professor spoke of the future as certain, and of his project, yet vague without a definite plan, as of a thing actually accomplished.
They left the dreary and deserted Liverpool, with its wretched convict-prison. They drove first across the country, which had once been covered with manufacturing towns, now all reduced to villages; they stopped at little country inns in places where there yet lingered traditions of former populousness; they passed sometimes gaunt ruins of vast brick buildings which had been factories; the roads were quiet and little used; the men they met were chiefly rustics going to or returning from their work; there was no activity, no traffic, no noise upon these silent highways.
‘How can we ever restore the busy past?’ asked Lord Chester.
‘First release your men; let them work together; let them be taught; the old creative energy will waken again in the brains of men, and life will once more go forward. It will be for you to guide the movement when you have started it.’
As their journey drew to a conclusion, the Professor gave utterance, one by one, to several maxims of great value and importance:—
‘Give men love,’ she said; ‘we women have killed love.’
‘There is no love without imagination. Now the imagination cannot put forth its flowers but for the sake of young and beautiful women.’
‘No true work without emulation; we have killed emulation.’
‘No progress without ambition; we have killed ambition.’