The Beauty and the Bolshevist Part 5

"You don't really believe that he's come to--"

"No, Eddie, I don't. I think he's come like young Lochinvar--to dance a little late at the wedding. To try to persuade me to accept that lazy, good-looking brother of his as a son-in-law. He'll have quite a job over that." Then, as the door opened, Mr. Cord's eyes concentrated on it and his manner became a shade sharper. "Ah, Mr. Moreton, good morning. Mr. Verriman--Mr. Moreton."

Ben was a good-looking young man, but it was his expression--at once illuminated and determined--that made him unusual. And the effect of his night and morning had been to intensify this, so that now, as he stood a moment in the doorway, he was a very attractive and compelling figure.

"I came to see my brother, Mr. Cord," he said, simply, "but I hear he's not here any more. If I could speak to you alone for a few minutes--" He glanced at Eddie, whom he instantly recognized as the man who had not known how to talk to the woman in the world best worth talking to.

"Oh, you may speak before Mr. Verriman," said Cord. "He knows the situation--knows your brother--knows my children--knows about you.

In fact, we were just speaking about your paper when you came in. However, I must tell you that Mr. Verriman doesn't approve of _Liberty_. At least, I believe I understood you right, Eddie." And Mr.

Cord, having thus a.s.sured himself a few minutes to regain his poise, leaned back comfortably in his chair.

"What's wrong with the paper, Mr. Verriman?" said Ben, pleasantly.

Eddie did not love the adventure of mental combat, but he was no coward. "It seems to me," he said, "that it preaches such radical changes in our government that it is seditious. To be frank, Mr.

Moreton, I think the government ought to suppress it."

"But we don't break the law. The government can't suppress us."

"Then the laws ought to be changed so that it can."

"That's all we advocate, Mr. Verriman, the changing of the law. It isn't any more seditious for me to say it than for you to, is it?"

Of course in Eddie's opinion it was--much, much more seditious. Only somehow it was a difficult point to make clear, if a person was so wrongheaded he couldn't see it for himself. The point was that he, Eddie, was right in wanting the laws changed and Moreton was wrong.

Anyone, it seemed to Eddie, would agree to that, unless he happened to agree with Moreton beforehand, and those were just the people who ought to be deported, imprisoned, or even perhaps in rare instances, as examples, strung up to lamp-posts. Only each time he tried to put these very natural opinions in words, they kept sounding wrong and tyrannical and narrow--qualities which Eddie knew he was entirely without. In order to counteract this effect, he tried at first to speak very temperately and calmly, but, unhappily, this only had the effect of making him sound patronizing to Ben's ears.

In short, it was hardly to be expected that the discussion would be amicable, and it was not. Each man began to be angry in his own way.

Eddie shouted a little, and Ben expressed himself with turns of phrase quite needlessly insulting. Ben found Verriman's a.s.sumption that the profits of capital were bound up with patriotism, family life, and the Christian religion almost as irritating as Verriman found Ben's a.s.sumption that the government of labor as a cla.s.s would be entirely without the faults that have always marked every form of cla.s.s government.

"And suppose you got socialism," said Eddie, at last, "suppose you did divide everything up equally, don't you suppose that in a few years the clever, strong, industrious men would have it all in their own hands?"

"Very likely," said Ben, "but that would be quite a change from the present arrangement, wouldn't it?"

Mr. Cord had a narrow escape from laughing out loud, which would have cost him the friendship of the man with whom on the whole he really agreed. He thought it was time to interfere.

"This is very interesting, Mr. Moreton," he said, "but I fancy it wasn't about the general radical propaganda that you came to see me."

"No," said Ben, turning slowly. He felt as a dog feels who is dragged out of the fight just as it begins to get exciting. "No, I came to see you about this unfortunate engagement of my brother's."

"Unfortunate?" asked Mr. Cord, without criticism.

"I should consider it so, and I understand you do, too."

Cord did not move an eyelash; this was an absolutely new form of attack. It had certainly never crossed his mind that any objection could come from the Moreton family.

"You consider it unfortunate?" said Eddie, as if it would be mere insolence on Ben's part to object to his brother's marrying anyone.

"Will you give me your reasons for objecting?" said Cord.

Ben smiled. "You ought to understand them," he said, "for I imagine they're pretty much the same as your own. I mean they are both founded on cla.s.s consciousness. I feel that it will be destructive to the things I value most in David to be dependent on, or a.s.sociated with, the capitalistic group. Just as you feel it will be destructive to your daughter to be married to a tutor--a fellow with radical views and a seditious brother--"

"One moment, one moment," said Cord; "you've got this all wrong so far as I'm concerned. I do most emphatically disagree with the radical propaganda. I think the radical is usually just a man who hasn't got something he wants."

"And the conservative is a man who wants to keep something he's got,"

said Ben, less hostilely than he had spoken to Eddie.

"Exactly, exactly," said Cord. "In ideality there isn't much to choose between them, but, generally speaking, I have more respect for the man who has succeeded in getting something to preserve than for the man who hasn't got anything to lose."

"If their opportunities were equal."

"I say in general. There is not much to choose between the two types; but there is in my opinion a shade in favor of the conservative on the score of efficiency, and I am old-fashioned perhaps, but I like efficiency. If it came to a fight, I should fight on the conservative side. But this is all beside the point. My objections to your brother, Mr. Moreton, are not objections to his group or cla.s.s. They are personal to him. d.a.m.ned personal."

"You don't like David?"

"Why, he's an attractive young fellow, but, if you'll forgive my saying so, Mr. Moreton, I don't think he's any good. He's weak, he's idle, he entirely lacks that aggressive will that--whether we have your revolution or not--is the only bulwark a woman has in this world.

Why, Mr. Moreton, you are evidently a very much more advanced and dangerous radical than your brother, but I should not have half the objection to you that I have to him. There is only one thing that makes a difference in this world--character. Your brother hasn't got it."

For an instant the perfect accuracy of Cord's statements about David left Ben silent. Then he pulled himself together and said, with a firmness he did not wholly feel:

"You hardly do David justice. He may not have great force, but he has talent, great sweetness, no vices--"

"Oh, quite, quite, quite, quite," said Cord, with a gesture of his long hand that should somehow have recalled to Ben the motion of a hand he had recently kissed.

"However," said Ben, "there is no use in arguing about our differences. The point is we are agreed that this marriage ought not to be. Let us co-operate on that. Where could I find David? I believe if I could see him I'd have some effect on him."

"You mean you could talk him out of marrying the girl he loves?"

"I might make him see the folly of it."

"Well, I haven't said anything as bad about your brother as that, Mr.

Moreton. But you do him injustice. You couldn't talk him out of it, and if you could, she'd talk him right back into it again. But there is one thing to consider. I understand you make him an allowance. How about stopping that?"

"I wouldn't consider that for a moment," said Ben, with more temper than he had so far shown. "I don't make him that allowance so that I can force him to do what I think best. I give it to him because he needs it. I don't believe in force, Mr. Cord."

"Oh yes, you do, Mr. Moreton."

"What do you mean?"

"You were proposing to use a much more pernicious kind of force when you proposed talking the boy out of his first love. However, to be candid with you, I must tell you that the issue is dead. They ran off yesterday and were married in Boston."

There was a short silence and then Ben moved toward the door.

"Won't you stay to lunch?" said Mr. Cord, politely.

"Thank you, no," said Ben. He wanted to be alone. Like all dominating people who don't get their own way in an altruistic issue, his feelings were deeply wounded. He took his hat from the disapproving Tomes, and went out to the sea to think. He supposed he was going to think about David's future and the terrible blow his paper had just received.

As the door closed behind him, Eddie turned to Mr. Cord with a world of reproach in his eyes.

"Well," he said, "I must say, sir, I think you were unnecessarily gentle with that fellow."