Mr. Waddington of Wyck Part 15

"Pater'll be a picnic, if you like," said Horace.

Mr. Waddington waved him away with a gesture as if he flicked a teasing fly, and went out to collect his papers.

f.a.n.n.y turned to her son. "Horry dear, you mustn't rag your father like that. You mustn't laugh at him. He doesn't like it."

"I can't help it," Horry said. "He's so furiously funny. He _makes_ me giggle."

"Well, whatever you do, don't giggle at the meeting, or you'll give him away."

"I won't, mater. Honour bright, I won't. I'll hold myself in like--like anything. Only you mustn't mind if I burst."

2

Mr. Waddington had spoken for half an hour, expounding, with some necessary repet.i.tions, the principles and objects of the League.

He was supported on the platform by his Chairman, Sir John Corbett, and by the other members of his projected Committee: by Lady Corbett, by f.a.n.n.y, by the Rector, by Mr. Thurston of the Elms, Wyck-on-the-Hill; by Mr. Bostock of Parson's Bank; Mr. Jackson, of Messrs. Jackson, Cleaver and Co., solicitors; Major Markham of Wyck Wold, Mr. Temple of Norton-in-Mark, and Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicott; and by his secretary, Miss Barbara Madden. The body of the hall was packed. Beneath him, in the front row, he had the wives and daughters of his committeemen; in its centre, right under his nose, he was painfully aware of the presence of young Horace and Ralph Bevan. Colonel Grainger sat behind them, conspicuous and, Mr. Waddington fancied, a little truculent, with his great square face and square-clipped red moustache, and on each side of Colonel Grainger and behind him were the neighbouring gentry and the townspeople of Wyck, the two grocers, the two butchers, the drapers and hotel keeper, and behind them again the servants of the Manor and a crowd of shop a.s.sistants; and further and further back, farm labourers and artisans; among these he recognized Ballinger with several of Colonel Grainger's and Hitchin's men. A pretty compact group they made, and Mr. Waddington was gratified by their appearance there.

And well in the centre of the hall, above the women's hats, he could see Mr. Hitchin's bush of hair, his shrewd, round, clean-shaven and rosy face, his grey check shoulders and red tie. Mr. Hitchin had the air of being supported by the entire body of his workmen. Mr. Waddington was gratified by Mr. Hitchin's appearance, too, and he thought he would insert some expression of that feeling in his peroration.

He was also profoundly aware of Mrs. Levitt sitting all by herself in an empty s.p.a.ce about the middle of the third row.

From time to time Ralph Bevan and young Horace fixed on f.a.n.n.y Waddington and Barbara delighted eyes in faces of a supernatural gravity. Young Horace was looking odd and unlike himself, with his jaws clamped together in his prodigious effort not to giggle. Whenever Barbara's eyes met his and Ralph's, a faint smile quivered on her face and flickered and went out.

Once Horace whispered to Ralph Bevan: "Isn't he going it?" And Ralph whispered back: "He's immense."

He was. He felt immense. He felt that he was carrying his audience with him. The sound of his own voice excited him and whipped him on. It was a sort of intoxication. He was soaring now, up and up, into his peroration.

"It is a gratification to me to see so many working men and women here to-night. They are specially welcome. We want to have them with us. Do not distrust the working man. The working man is sound at heart. Sound at head too, when he is let alone and not carried away by the treacherous arguments of ignorant agitators. We--myself and the founders of this League--have not that bad opinion of the working man which his leaders--his misleaders, I may call them--appear to have. We believe in him, we know that, if he were only let alone, there is no section of the community that would stand more solid for order and good government than he."

"Hear! Hear!" from Colonel Grainger. Ralph whispered, "Camouflage!" to Horace, who nodded.

"There is nothing in the aims of this League contrary to the interests of Labour. On the contrary"--he heard, as if somebody else had perpetrated it, the horrible repet.i.tion--"I mean to say--" His brain fought for another phrase madly and in vain. "On the contrary, it exists in order to safeguard the true interests, the best interests, of every working man and woman in the country."

"Hear! Hear!" from Sir John Corbett. Mr. Waddington smiled.

"President Wilson"--he became agitated and drank water--"President Wilson talked about making the world safe for democracy. Well, if we, you and I, all of us, don't take care, the world won't be safe for anything else. It certainly won't be safe for the middle cla.s.ses, for the great business and professional cla.s.ses, for the cla.s.s to which I, for one, belong: the cla.s.s of English gentlemen. It won't be safe for _us_.

"Not that I propose to make a cla.s.s question of it. To make a cla.s.s question of it would be more than wrong. It would be foolish. It would be a challenge to revolution, the first step towards letting loose, unchaining against us, those forces of disorder and destruction which we are seeking to keep down. I am not here to insist on cla.s.s differences, to foment cla.s.s hatred. Those differences exist, they always will exist; but they are immaterial to our big purpose. This is a question of principle, the great principle of British liberty. Are we going to submit to the tyranny of one cla.s.s over all other cla.s.ses, of one interest over all other interests in the country? Are we going to knock under, I say, to a minority, whether it is a Labour minority or any other?

"Are--we--going--to tolerate Bolshevism and a Soviet Government here? If there are any persons present who think that that is our att.i.tude and our intention, I tell them now plainly--it is _not_. In their own language, in our good old county proverb: 'As sure as G.o.d's in Gloucester,' it is not and never will be. The sooner they understand that the better. I do not say that there are any persons present who would be guilty of so gross an error. I do not believe there are. I do not believe that there is any intelligent person in this room who will not agree with me when I say that, though it is just and right that Labour should have a voice in the government, it is not just and it is not right that it should be the only voice.

"It has been the only voice heard in Russia for two years, and what is the consequence? Bloodshed. Anarchy and bloodshed. I don't _say_ that we should have anarchy and bloodshed here; England, thank G.o.d, is not Russia. But I do not say that we shall _not_ have them. And I _do_ say that it rests with us, with you and me, ladies and gentlemen, to decide whether we shall or shall not have them. It depends on the action we take to-night with regard to this National League of Liberty, on the action taken on--on other nights at similar meetings, all over this England of ours; it depends, in two words, on our _united action_, whether we shall have anarchy or stable government, whether this England of ours shall or shall not continue to be a free country.

"Remember two things: the League is National, and it is a League of Liberty. It would not be one if it were not the other.

"You will say, perhaps many of you _are_ saying: 'This League is all very well, but what can _I_ do?' Perhaps you will even say: 'What can Wyck do? After all, Wyck is a small place. It isn't the capital of the county.'"

"Well, I can tell you what Wyck can do. It can be--it _is_ the first town in Gloucestershire, the first provincial town in England to start a National League of Liberty. They've got a League in London, the parent League; they may have another branch League anywhere any day, but I hope that--thanks to the very n.o.ble efforts of those ladies and gentlemen who have kindly consented to serve on my Committee--I hope that before long we shall have started Leagues in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Cirencester, Nailsworth and Stroud; in every town, village and hamlet in the county.

I hope, thanks to your decision to-night, ladies and gentlemen, to be able to say that Wyck--little Wyck--has got in first. All round us, for fifteen--twenty miles round, there are hamlets, villages and towns that haven't got a League, that know nothing about the League.

Wyck-on-the-Hill will be the centre of the League for this part of the Cotswolds.

"It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the principle at stake. Impossible, therefore, to exaggerate the importance of this League, therefore impossible to exaggerate the importance of this meeting, of every man and woman who has come here to-night. And when you rise from your seats and step up to this platform to enroll your names as members of the National League of Liberty, I want you to feel, every one of you, that you will be doing an important thing, a thing necessary to the nation, a thing in its way every bit as necessary and important as the thing the soldier does when he rises up out of his trench and goes over the top."

It was then, and then only, that young Horace giggled. But he covered his collapse with a shout of "Hear! Hear!" that caused f.a.n.n.y and Barbara to blow their noses simultaneously. As for Ralph, he hid his face in his hands.

"Like him," said Mr. Waddington, "you will be helping to save England.

And what can any of us do more?"

He sat down suddenly in a perfect uproar of applause, and drank water.

In spite of the applause he was haunted by a sense of incompleteness.

There was something he had left out of his speech, something he had particularly wanted to say. It seemed to him more vital, more important, than anything he _had_ said.

A solitary pair of hands, Mrs. Levitt's hands, conspicuously lifted, were still clapping when Mr. Hitchin's face rose like a red moon behind and a little to the left of her; followed by the grey check shoulders and red tie. He threw back his head, stuck a thumb in each armhole of his waistcoat, and spoke. "Ladies and gentlemen. The speaker has quoted President Wilson about the world being made safe for democracy. He seems to be concerned about the future, to be, if I may say so, in a bit of a funk about the future. But has he paid any attention to the past? Has he considered the position of the working man in the past? Has he even considered the condition of many working men at the present time, for instance, of the farm labourer now in this country? If he had, if he knew the facts, if he cared about the facts, he might admit that, whether he's going to like it or not, it's the working man's turn. Just about his turn.

"I needn't ask Mr. Waddington if he knows the parable of Dives and Lazarus. But I should like to say to him what Abraham said to the rich man: 'Remember that thou in thy life-time receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted and thou art tormented.'

"I don't want Mr. Waddington to be tormented. To be tormented too much.

Not more than is reasonable. A little torment--say, his finger scorched for the fraction of a second in that hot, unpleasant place--would be good for him if it made him think. I say I don't want to torment him, but I'll just ask him one question: Does he think that a world where it's possible for a working man, just because he _is_ a working man and not an English gentleman, a world where it's still possible for him, and his wife and his children, to be turned out of house and home to suit the whim of an English gentleman; does he think that a world where things like that can happen is a safe place for anybody?

"I can tell him it isn't safe. It isn't safe for you and me. And if it isn't safe for you and me, it isn't safe for the people who make these things happen; and it isn't any safer for the people who stand by and let them happen.

"And if the Socialist--if the Bolshevist is the man who's going to see to it that they don't happen, if a Soviet Government is the only Government that'll see to that, then the Socialist, or the Bolshevist, is the man for my money, and a Soviet Government is the Government for my vote. I don't say, mind you, that it _is_ the only Government--I say, if it were.

"Mr. Waddington doesn't like Bolshevism. None of us like it. He doesn't like Socialism. I think he's got some wrong ideas about that. But he's dead right when he tells you, if you're afraid of Bolshevism and a Soviet Government, that the remedy lies in your own hands. If there ever is a day of reckoning, what Mr. Waddington would call a revolution in this country, you, we, ay, everyone of us sitting here, will be done with according as we do."

He sat down, and Mr. Waddington rose again on his platform, solemn and a little pale. He looked round the hall, to show that there was no person there whom he was afraid to face. It might have been the look of some bold and successful statesman turning on a turbulent House, confident in his power to hold it.

"Unless I have misheard him, what Mr. Hitchin has just said, ladies and gentlemen, sounded very like a threat. If that is so, we may congratulate Mr. Hitchin on providing an unanswerable proof of the need for a National League of Liberty."

There were cries of "Hear! Hear!" from Sir John Corbett and from Mr.

Hawtrey of Medlicott.

Then a horrible thing happened. Slight and rustling at first, then gathering volume, there came a hissing from the back rows packed with Colonel Grainger's and Mr. Hitchin's men. Then a booing. Then a booing and hissing together.

Sir John scrabbled on to his little legs and cried: "Ordah, there!

Ordah!" Mr. Waddington maintained an indomitably supercilious air while Sir John brought his fist down on the table (probably the most energetic thing he had ever done in his life), with a loud shout of "Ordah!"

Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin were seen to turn round in their places and make a sign to their men, and the demonstration ceased.

Mr. Waddington then rose as if nothing at all had happened and said, "Any ladies and gentlemen wishing to join the League will please come up to the platform and give their names to Miss Madden. Any persons wishing to subscribe at once, may pay their subscriptions to Miss Madden.

"I will now call your attention to the last item on the programme, and ask you all to join with me very heartily in singing 'G.o.d Save the King.'"

Everybody, except Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hitchin, rose, and everybody, except the extremists of the opposition, sang. One voice--it was Mrs.

Levitt's voice--was lifted arrogantly high and clear above the rest.

"Send--him--vic-torious, Hap-py--and--glorious.

Long--to-oo rei-eign overious Gaw-aw-awd--Save--ther King."