‘I give you my life, if so it must be,’ Lord Chester repeated.
‘We take what is offered cheerfully. You must know then, my lord, that the ground has been artfully prepared for us. This conspiracy, which you have hitherto thought confined to one old man’s house and half a dozen young men living with him, is in reality spread over the whole country. We have organisations, great or small, in nearly every town of England. Some of them have as yet only advanced to the stage of discontent; others have been pushed on to learn that the evil condition of men is due chiefly to the government of women; others have learned that the sex which rules ought to obey; others, that the worship of the Perfect Woman is a vain superstition: none have gone so far as you and your friends, who have learned more—the faith in the Perfect Man. That is because you are to be the leaders, you yourself to be the Chief.
‘Now, my lord, the thing having so far advanced, the danger is, that one or other of our secret societies may be discovered. True, they do not know the ramifications or extent of the conspiracy. They cannot, therefore, do us any injury by treachery or unlucky disclosures; yet the punishment of the members would be so severe as to strike terror into the rest of our members. Therefore, it is desirable to begin as soon as possible.’
‘To-day!’ cried the young Chief.
‘No—not to-day, nor to-morrow. The difficulty is, to find some pretext,—some reasonable pretext—under cover of which we might rise.’
‘Can we not invent something.’
‘There are the convicts. We might raise a force, and liberate those of the prisoners who are victims of the harsh laws of violence and the refusal to take a husband’s evidence when accused by a wife. Then the country would be with us. But I shrink from commencing this great rebellion with bloodshed.’
He paused and reflected for a time.
‘Then there is the labour cry. We might send our little force into the towns, and call on the workmen to rise for freedom. But suppose they would not rise? Then—more bloodshed.
‘Or we might preach the Faith throughout the land, as Clarence Veysey wants to do. But I incline not to the belief in wholesale miracles, and the age of faith is past, and the number of our preachers is very small.’