Lord of the World | Page 9

two, husband and wife after a fashion--for they had entered into that terminable
contract now recognised explicitly by the State--these two were very far from sharing in
the usual heavy dulness of mere materialists. The world, for them, beat with one ardent
life blossoming in flower and beast and man, a torrent of beautiful vigour flowing from a
deep source and irrigating all that moved or felt. Its romance was the more appreciable
because it was comprehensible to the minds that sprang from it; there were mysteries in it,
but mysteries that enticed rather than baffled, for they unfolded new glories with every
discovery that man could make; even inanimate objects, the fossil, the electric current,
the far-off stars, these were dust thrown off by the Spirit of the World--fragrant with His
Presence and eloquent of His Nature. For example, the announcement made by Klein, the
astronomer, twenty years before, that the inhabitation of certain planets had become a
certified fact--how vastly this had altered men's views of themselves. But the one
condition of progress and the building of Jerusalem, on the planet that happened to be
men's dwelling place, was peace, not the sword which Christ brought or that which
Mahomet wielded; but peace that arose from, not passed, understanding; the peace that
sprang from a knowledge that man was all and was able to develop himself only by
sympathy with his fellows. To Oliver and his wife, then, the last century seemed like a
revelation; little by little the old superstitions had died, and the new light broadened; the
Spirit of the World had roused Himself, the sun had dawned in the west; and now with
horror and loathing they had seen the clouds gather once more in the quarter whence all
superstition had had its birth.
* * * * *
Mabel got up presently and came across to her husband.
"My dear," she said, "you must not be downhearted. It all may pass as it passed before. It
is a great thing that they are listening to America at all. And this Mr. Felsenburgh seems
to be on the right side."
Oliver took her hand and kissed it.

II
Oliver seemed altogether depressed at breakfast, half an hour later. His mother, an old
lady of nearly eighty, who never appeared till noon, seemed to see it at once, for after a
look or two at him and a word, she subsided into silence behind her plate.
It was a pleasant little room in which they sat, immediately behind Oliver's own, and was

furnished, according to universal custom, in light green. Its windows looked out upon a
strip of garden at the back, and the high creeper-grown wall that separated that domain
from the next. The furniture, too, was of the usual sort; a sensible round table stood in the
middle, with three tall arm-chairs, with the proper angles and rests, drawn up to it; and
the centre of it, resting apparently on a broad round column, held the dishes. It was thirty
years now since the practice of placing the dining-room above the kitchen, and of raising
and lowering the courses by hydraulic power into the centre of the dining-table, had
become universal in the houses of the well-to-do. The floor consisted entirely of the
asbestos cork preparation invented in America, noiseless, clean, and pleasant to both foot
and eye.
Mabel broke the silence.
"And your speech to-morrow?" she asked, taking up her fork.
Oliver brightened a little, and began to discourse.
It seemed that Birmingham was beginning to fret. They were crying out once more for
free trade with America: European facilities were not enough, and it was Oliver's
business to keep them quiet. It was useless, he proposed to tell them, to agitate until the
Eastern business was settled: they must not bother the Government with such details just
now. He was to tell them, too, that the Government was wholly on their side; that it was
bound to come soon.
"They are pig-headed," he added fiercely; "pig-headed and selfish; they are like children
who cry for food ten minutes before dinner-time: it is bound to come if they will wait a
little."
"And you will tell them so?"
"That they are pig-headed? Certainly."
Mabel looked at her husband with a pleased twinkle in her eyes. She knew perfectly well
that his popularity rested largely on his outspokenness: folks liked to be scolded and
abused by a genial bold man who danced and gesticulated in a magnetic fury; she liked it
herself.
"How shall you go?" she asked.
"Volor. I shall catch the eighteen o'clock at Blackfriars; the meeting is at nineteen, and I
shall be back at twenty-one."
He addressed himself vigorously to his entree, and his mother looked up with a patient,