The Complete Works of George Bernard Shaw. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

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СКАЧАТЬ her family and Trefusis were not cordial ones, she asked deliberately, “Did Mr. Jansenius speak to you?”

      Gertrude looked up, as if she thought this scarcely ladylike.

      “Yes,” said Trefusis. “We are the best friends in the world — as good as possible, at any rate. He wanted me to subscribe to a fund for relieving the poor at the east end of London by assisting them to emigrate.”

      “I presume you subscribed liberally,” said Erskine. “It was an opportunity of doing some practical good.”

      “I did not,” said Trefusis, grinning at the sarcasm. “This Transcanadian Railway Company, having got a great deal of spare land from the Canadian government for nothing, thought it would be a good idea to settle British workmen on it and screw rent out of them. Plenty of British workmen, supplanted in their employment by machinery, or cheap foreign labor, or one thing or another, were quite willing to go; but as they couldn’t afford to pay their passages to Canada, the Company appealed to the benevolent to pay for them by subscription, as the change would improve their miserable condition. I did not see why I should pay to provide a rich company with tenant farmers, and I told Jansenius so. He remarked that when money and not talk was required, the workmen of England soon found out who were their real friends.”

      “I know nothing about these questions,” said Sir Charles, with an air of conclusiveness; “but I see no objection to emigration.” “The fact is,” said Trefusis, “the idea of emigration is a dangerous one for us. Familiarize the workman with it, and some day he may come to see what a capital thing it would be to pack off me, and you, with the peerage, and the whole tribe of unprofitable proprietors such as we are, to St. Helena; making us a handsome present of the island by way of indemnity! We are such a restless, unhappy lot, that I doubt whether it would not prove a good thing for us too. The workmen would lose nothing but the contemplation of our elegant persons, exquisite manners, and refined tastes. They might provide against that loss by picking out a few of us to keep for ornament’s sake. No nation with a sense of beauty would banish Lady Brandon, or Miss Lindsay, or Miss Wylie.”

      “Such nonsense!” said Jane.

      “You would hardly believe how much I have spent in sending workmen out of the country against my own view of the country’s interest,” continued Trefusis, addressing Erskine. “When I make a convert among the working classes, the first thing he does is to make a speech somewhere declaring his new convictions. His employer immediately discharges him— ‘gives him the sack’ is the technical phrase. The sack is the sword of the capitalist, and hunger keeps it sharp for him. His shield is the law, made for the purpose by his own class. Thus equipped, he gives the worst of it to my poor convert, who comes ruined to me for assistance. As I cannot afford to pension him for life, I get rid of him by assisting him to emigrate. Sometimes he prospers and repays me; sometimes I hear no more of him; sometimes he comes back with his habits unsettled. One man whom I sent to America made his fortune, but he was not a social democrat; he was a clerk who had embezzled, and who applied to me for assistance under the impression that I considered it rather meritorious to rob the till of a capitalist.”

      “He was a practical Socialist, in fact,” said Erskine.

      “On the contrary, he was a somewhat too grasping Individualist. Howbeit, I enabled him to make good his defalcation — in the city they consider a defalcation made good when the money is replaced — and to go to New York. I recommended him not to go there; but he knew better than I, for he made a fortune by speculating with money that existed only in the imagination of those with whom he dealt. He never repaid me; he is probably far too good a man of business to pay money that cannot be extracted from him by an appeal to the law or to his commercial credit. Mr. Erskine,” added Trefusis, lowering his voice, and turning to the poet, “you are wrong to take part with hucksters and money-hunters against your own nature, even though the attack upon them is led by a man who prefers photography to etching.”

      “But I assure you — You quite mistake me,” said Erskine, taken aback. “I—”

      He stopped, looked to Sir Charles for support, and then said airily: “I don’t doubt that you are quite right. I hate business and men of business; and as to social questions, I have only one article of belief, which is, that the sole refiner of human nature is fine art.”

      “Whereas I believe that the sole refiner of art is human nature. Art rises when men rise, and grovels when men grovel. What is your opinion?”

      “I agree with you in many ways,” replied Sir Charles nervously; for a lack of interest in his fellowcreatures, and an excess of interest in himself, had prevented him from obtaining that power of dealing with social questions which, he felt, a baronet ought to possess, and he was consequently afraid to differ from anyone who alluded to them with confidence. “If you take an interest in art, I believe I can show you a few things worth seeing.”

      “Thank you. In return I will some day show you a remarkable collection of photographs I possess; many of them taken by me. I venture to think they will teach you something.”

      “No doubt,” said Sir Charles. “Shall we return to the gallery? I have a few treasures there that photography is not likely to surpass for some time yet.”

      “Let’s go through the conservatory,” said Jane. “Don’t you like flowers, Mr. Smi — I never can remember your proper name.”

      “Extremely,” said Trefusis.

      They rose and went out into a long hothouse. Here Lady Brandon, finding Erskine at her side, and Sir Charles before her with Gertrude, looked round for Trefusis, with whom she intended to enjoy a trifling flirtation under cover of showing him the flowers. He was out of sight; but she heard his footsteps in the passage on the opposite side of the greenhouse. Agatha was also invisible. Jane, not daring to rearrange their procession lest her design should become obvious, had to walk on with Erskine.

      Agatha had turned unintentionally into the opposite alley to that which the others had chosen. When she saw what she had done, and found herself virtually alone with Trefusis, who had followed her, she blamed him for it, and was about to retrace her steps when he said coolly:

      “Were you shocked when you heard of Henrietta’s sudden death?”

      Agatha struggled with herself for a moment, and then said in a suppressed voice: “How dare you speak to me?”

      “Why not?” said he, astonished.

      “I am not going to enter into a discussion with you. You know what I mean very well.”

      “You mean that you are offended with me; that is plain enough. But when I part with a young lady on good terms, and after a lapse of years, during which we neither meet nor correspond, she asks me how I dare speak to her, I am naturally startled.”

      “We did not part on good terms.”

      Trefusis stretched his eyebrows, as if to stretch his memory. “If not,” he said, “I have forgotten it, on my honor. When did we part, and what happened? It cannot have been anything very serious, or I should remember it.”

      His forgetfulness wounded Agatha. “No doubt you are well accustomed to—” She checked herself, and made a successful snatch at her normal manner with gentlemen. “I scarcely remember what it was, now that I begin to think. Some trifle, I suppose. Do you like orchids?”

      “They have nothing to do with our affairs at present. You are not in earnest about the orchids, and you are trying to run away from a mistake instead of clearing it up. That is a СКАЧАТЬ