The Socialist

When he referred to his own novels, which he often did, he always rated them high above Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, and Sir Walter Scott. When he spoke in public of his plays – no infrequent occurrence – it was generally with a word of pity for Shakespeare. He was the head of a large and enthusiastic following of intellectual people, and the anathema of all slow thinkers. Apropos of this last, he would quote Swift's saying that the appearance of a man of genius in the world may always be known by the virulence of dunces.

Beneath all his extravagances and pose – and their name was legion – his whole life and earnestness were devoted to the cause in which he believed. One of the most unconventional, and, at the same time, one of the most prominent men of his day, he had two real passions.

One was to shock the obese-brained of this world, the other to do all he could to leave the world better than he found it.

This was the extraordinary person, genius and buffoon, reformer and wit, who sat laughing on one side of Mary Marriott's little fire.

"I've surprised you, Miss Marriott!" said Mr. James Fabian Rose.

"I saw you at the agent's this morning," she answered, and then – "I think I am not mistaken – I saw you at the theatre at Swindon a few weeks ago."

"Yes, I was there with Peter Conrad, the parson," said Mr. Rose. "I'd been addressing a meeting of the Great Western Railway Company's men in the afternoon – the younger men – trying to teach them that the youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity, and in the evening I came to the theatre. That's why I'm here."

Mary said nothing. She waited for him to speak again, but her heart began to beat violently.

"I took away the programme," Rose went on, "and I put a mark against your name. I was quite delighted with your work, really delighted. I was in a fury at the crass stupidity of the play, and as for the rest of the company they bore about the same relation to real artists as the pawnbroker does to the banker. But you, my dear child, were very good indeed. I kept you in mind for a certain project of mine which was then maturing. It is now settled, and this morning I called at one or two agents to find out where you were. You were not on Blackdale's books, but I found you, or, rather, heard of you, at Seaton's, and so here I am."

"You want me to – "

"To act, of course. To become a leading lady in a West End theatre, in a new play. That's all!"

For a moment or two Mary could not speak. "But such a thing never happened before," she answered at length in a faltering voice. "It is – "

He cut her short. "My experience of the stage is at least twenty times more profound than yours," he said, "and I have known the thing happen six times within my own experience. Who found Dolores Rainforth? I did. Who found Beatrice Whittingham? – little wretch, she's deserted art and is making a squalid fortune in drawing-room comedy – I did! I could give you many more names. However, that's neither here nor there. I want you for a certain purpose. I know that if I searched the provinces all over I should not find any one who so exactly fits the leading part – my own conception of it! – in my new play as you do. Therefore you are coming to me. And the amusing part of it is that I have actually stormed the citadel of rank and fashion itself. I have gained a stronghold in the hostile country of the capitalists – in short, I and my friends have secured a lease of the Park Lane Theatre!"

Mary leant back in her chair. Her face had suddenly grown white. She was overwhelmed by all this. And, though she forgot this, her lunch had consisted of a cheap and not very succulent luxury known as a "Vienna steak," a not very nutritious mass of compressed mince-meat, but cheap, very cheap. It was now seven o'clock.

There were those who said that James Fabian Rose was a dreamer. People who knew him intimately were aware that if he was an idealist, he was also practical in the ordinary affairs of life.

"Now, I sha'n't tell you a word more," he said. "They're all waiting for you, and I promised to bring you for dinner. My wife was most insistent about it, and, besides, there are half a dozen people anxious to meet you. In absolute contradiction to all true socialistic principles I've been paying rent for a cab which has been standing outside your front door for ever so long. Put on your hat and come at once."

Mary sat up. "But I can't come like this," she said helplessly, "to dinner!"

Mr. Rose made a gesture of impatience. "The old stupid heresy of Carlyle," he said, "complicated by the fact that if a woman looks nice in one sort of costume she can't realise that she looks nice on whatever occasion she wears it. You must grow superior to such nonsense if we are to enlist you among us! But, come, you'll soon understand, and, besides, I know you are not really the ordinary fluffy little duffer one meets in the stage world."

She fell in with his humour and quickly pinned on her hat. She knew that she was on the threshold of stimulating experiences, that her chance had come, no matter how strange and fantastic the herald of its advent.

As Rose had said, a hansom was waiting. They got into it and trotted slowly away into the fog towards the great man's house at Westminster.

They arrived at last, though it was a somewhat perilous journey. More than once the driver descended from his seat, took one of the lamps from its bracket, and led his horse through this or that misty welter of traffic. Parliament Street was a broad hurry of confusion, but when they had passed the Abbey on the right and turned into the small network of quiet streets behind the Norman tomb of ancient kings, the house of the Socialist in Great College Street – that quiet and memorable backwater of London – was easily found.

Rose opened a big green door with his latch-key, and at once a genial yellow glow poured out and painted itself upon the curtain of the fog. Mary stood on the steps as a young woman of middle height, pretty and vivacious, came hurrying to the door. "My dear girl!" she cried, "so here you are! Fabian swore that he would find you and bring you. Come in quick out of the cold."

Then she stopped, still holding the door open – something was going on outside, the not infrequent altercation with the London cabman, Mary thought.

This is what she heard. "Don't be so foolish, my friend" – it was Rose's voice.

"Foolish!" said the cabman. "Bit of oil right ter call me foolish, I don't fink! Nah, I don't tyke no money from you, J. F. R., stryke me Turnham Green, if I do! I've 'eard you speak, I read your harticles, hi do, and it's a fair exchynge. In the dyes ter come no one won't pye anyfink for anyfink. The Styte'll do it all. I've your word for it. I'm a practical Socialist, I am. So long, and keep 'ammering awye at them as keeps the land from the rightful howners, wich is heverybody."

He cracked his whip and disappeared into the fog.

Mr. Rose came into the hall, shut the door, and looked at the half sovereign in his hand with a sigh. His manner seemed a little subdued.

"A little in advance of the future," he said in a meditative voice; "dear, good fellow! And now, Lucia, take Miss Marriott upstairs."

When her hostess took her into the drawing-room Mary found several people there. All of them seemed to expect her, she had the sense of that at once. Her welcome was singularly cordial, she was in some subtle way made to feel that she was somebody. She did not quite realise this at the moment because the whole thing was too sudden and exciting. She perceived it afterwards when she thought everything over.

The drawing-room on the first floor was large, low-ceilinged, and singularly beautiful. Mary had never seen such a room before. She had a sort of idea that Socialists liked to live in places like the hall of a workhouse, or the class-room of a board school – drab and whitewash places. She did not know till some time afterwards that the room she was in had been arranged and designed for the Roses by William Morris and Walter Crane themselves.

It was, in truth, a lovely room.

The walls were covered with brown paper for two-thirds of their height. A wooden beading painted white divided the warm and sober brown from a plain white frieze. All along one side of the room were shelves covered with gleaming pewter – an unusually fine collection. Here was a seventeenth-century bénitier from Flanders, there a set of "Tappit hens," found in a Scotch ale-house. There was a gleaming row of massive English plates of the Caroline period stamped with the crowned rose. The dull gleam, set thus against the brown background, was curiously effective, and the old Davenport and Mason china upon the white frieze above – deep blues, golds, and old cardinal reds, – the drawings by Walter Crane upon the walls, the tawny orange and reds of the Teheran carpets, and the open brick fire-place, all blended and refined themselves into a delightful harmony.

Besides the host and hostess three other people were present.

One of them was the Reverend Peter Conrad, the clergyman who had been with Rose in the box at the Swindon Theatre. Mary recognised him at once.

He was tall and thin with a clear-cut and somewhat ascetic face and a singularly humorous mouth. She had heard vaguely of him as a leader among that branch of the party which called itself, "Christian Socialistic," a large and growing group of earnest people, of all sects and shades of Christian opinion, representing every school of thought, but which, nevertheless, united in the endeavour to adapt the literal Socialistic teachings of the Sermon on the Mount to modern life. Christ, they said, was the Master Socialist, and all their aspirations and teachings were founded upon this axiom.

Sitting next to Mr. Conrad was a small, pale-faced man with a rather heavy light moustache and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. He would have been almost insignificant in appearance had it not been for the high-domed forehead and fine cranial development. This was Charles Goodrick, the editor-in-chief of the great Radical daily paper – the most "advanced" of all the London journals, – and a man with great political influence.

The third man, Aubrey Flood, Mary recognised at once. He was a young and enthusiastic actor-manager, possessed of large private means, who was in the forefront of the modern movement for the reformation of the stage. He was at the head of the band of enthusiasts who were sworn foes of musical comedy and futile melodrama, and he enjoyed a definite place and cachet in society.

When they all went in to dinner, which they did almost at once, Mary found that he was seated at her left. On her right was Mr. Rose himself.

The meal was quite simple, but exquisitely served and cooked. The consommé would not have disgraced Vatel or Carème, the omelette was light as a feather, and, above all, hot! The wild ducks had been properly basted with port wine and stuffed with minced chestnuts and ham. To poor Mary it was a banquet for the gods!

"You see, Miss Marriott," said Rose, with a queer little twinkle in his eye, "we don't eat out of a common trough, though we are Socialists, nor are we vegetarians, as poor, dear Bernard Shaw would like us all to be."

Mary laughed. "I don't think I ever imagined Socialists were like that," she said. "In fact, though it may seem very terrible, I must confess that my mind has hitherto been quite a blank upon the subject."

"Then it will be all the easier to write the truth upon it," Rose answered.

"Then Miss Marriott doesn't quite know what we want her for yet?" Aubrey Flood asked.

"She only knows that she is going to play lead at the Park Lane Theatre in a new play of mine."

"And that is overwhelming, simply," Mary said with a blush. "It's impossible to believe. But, all the same, I am longing to hear all there is for me to know."

"So you shall after dinner," said Rose, "you shall have full details. Meanwhile, to sum the whole thing up, you are not only going to take a part in a play, but you are going to inaugurate a Revolution!"

CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT NEW PLAN

"J. F. R." had spoken with unusual seriousness, and his manner was reflected in the faces of the other guests as they looked towards Mary Marriott.

The girl's brain reeled at the words. A Revolution! What could they mean – what did it all mean? Was she not in truth asleep in her dingy little attic sitting-room? Wouldn't she wake up soon to find the old familiar things around her – all these new surroundings but a dream, a phantom of the imagination?