“Mr. Coleman, you are dull,” said Pauline. “What is the matter?”
“Dull!—that’s not exactly the word. I was thinking of tomorrow.”
“Ah! I thought so. Well?”
Zachariah hesitated a little. “Is it worth all the trouble?” at last he said, an old familiar doubt recurring to him—“Is it worth all the trouble to save them? What are they?—and, after all, what can we do for them? Suppose we succeed, and a hundred thousand creatures like those who blackguarded us last week get votes, and get their taxes reduced, and get all they want, what then?”
Pauline broke in with all the eagerness of a woman who is struck with an idea—“Stop, stop, Mr. Coleman. Here is the mistake you make. Grant it all—grant your achievement is ridiculously small—is it not worth the sacrifice of two or three like you and me to accomplish it? That is our error. We think ourselves of such mighty importance. The question is, whether we are of such importance, and whether the progress of the world one inch will not be cheaply purchased by the annihilation of a score of us. You believe in what you call salvation. You would struggle and die to save a soul; but in reality you can never save a man; you must be content to struggle and die to save a little bit of him—to prevent one habit from descending to his children. You won’t save him wholly, but you may arrest the propagation of an evil trick, and so improve a trifle—just a trifle—whole generations to come. Besides, I don’t believe what you will do is nothing. ‘Give a hundred thousand blackguard creatures votes’—well, that is something. You are disappointed they do not at once become converted and all go to chapel. That is not the way of the Supreme. Your hundred thousand get votes, and perhaps are none the better, and die as they were before they had votes. But the Supreme has a million, or millions, of years before Him.”
Zachariah was silent. Fond of dialectic, he generally strove to present the other side; but he felt no disposition to do so now, and he tried rather to connect what she had said with something which he already believed.
“True,” he said at last; “true, or true in part. What are we?—what are we?” and so Pauline’s philosophy seemed to reconcile itself with one of his favourite dogmas, but it had not quite the same meaning which it had for him ten years ago.
“Besides,” said Caillaud, “we hate Liverpool and all his crew. When I think of that speech at the opening of Parliament I become violent. There it is; I have stuck it up over the mantelpiece:
“Deeply as I lament the pressure of these evils upon the country, I am sensible that they are of a nature not to admit of an immediate remedy. But whilst I observe with peculiar satisfaction the fortitude with which so many privations have been borne, and the active benevolence which has been employed to mitigate them, I am persuaded that the great sources of our national prosperity are essentially unimpaired; and I entertain a confident expectation that the native energy of the country will at no distant period surmount all the difficulties in which we are involved.”
“My God,” continued Caillaud, “I could drive a knife into the heart of the man who thus talks!”
“No murder, Caillaud,” said Zachariah.
“Well, no. What is it but a word? Let us say sacrifice. Do you call the death of your Charles a murder? No; and the reason why you do not is what? Not that it was decreed by a Court. There have been many murders decreed by Courts according to law. Was not the death of your Jesus Christ a murder? Murder means death for base, selfish ends. What said Jesus—that He came to send a sword? Of course He did. Every idea is a sword. What a God He was! He was the first who ever cared for the people—for the real people, the poor, the ignorant, the fools, the weak-minded, the slaves. The Greeks and Romans thought nothing of these. I salute thee, O Thou Son of the People!” and Caillaud took down a little crucifix which, strange to say, always hung in his room, and reverently inclined himself to it. “A child of the people,” he continued, “in everything, simple, foolish, wise, ragged, Divine, martyred Hero.”
Zachariah was not astonished at this melodramatic display, for he knew Caillaud well; and although this was a little more theatrical than anything he had ever seen before, it was not out of keeping with his friend’s character. Nor was it insincere, for Caillaud was not an Englishman. Moreover, there is often more insincerity in purposely lowering the expression beneath the thought, and denying the thought thereby, than in a little exaggeration. Zachariah, although he was a Briton, had no liking for that hypocrisy which takes a pride in reducing the extraordinary to the commonplace, and in forcing an ignoble form upon that which is highest. The conversation went no further. At last Caillaud said:
“Come, Pauline, a tune; we have not had one for a long time.”
Pauline smiled, and went into her little room. Meanwhile her father removed chairs and table, piling them one on another so as to leave a clear space. He and Zachariah crouched into the recess by the fireplace. Pauline entered in the self same short black dress trimmed with red, with the red artificial flower, wearing the same red stockings and dancing-slippers, but without the shawl. The performance this time was not quite what it was when Zachariah had seen it in London. Between herself and the corner where Zachariah and her father were seated she now had an imaginary partner, before whom she advanced, receded, bowed, displayed herself in the most exquisitely graceful attitudes, never
