Part 15 (1/2)
”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 Gloucesters.h.i.+re, 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.”