social questions?"
"In social questions?" William repeated blankly. "I'm afraid I don't—— What sort of questions do you mean?"
It was Faraday's turn to be taken aback, and, though he did not say it, his eyes looked. "Then what the devil——?" William's fell before them nervously, and he shifted in his chair like a child detected in a blunder.
"I'm afraid I don't——" he said again—and halted.
"Then you didn't know," his companion queried, "that I am 'Vindex' of The Torch?"
"I'm afraid not," muttered William, who had heard neither of one nor the other.
"Vindex" of The Torch sighed inwardly. He was young, ambitious, fiercely in earnest and ever on the look-out for his Chance; and, the wish being father to the thought, he had momentarily mistaken William for an embodiment of his Chance and dreamed dreams since the morning—dreams of a comrade like-minded and willing to be led, whose newly-inherited riches might be used to endow a periodical that should preach a purer and more violent rebellion even than The Torch itself. With the aid of William's three pounds a week—magnified many times over in the eyes of his eager mind—he had seen himself casting the hated insurance behind him and devoting himself heart and pen to the regeneration of the State and Race by means of the Class War. And lo!—as a couple more searching questions revealed to him—in place of a patron and comrade was a nervous little nincompoop, bewildered at finding himself for the first time out of leading-strings, to whom a hundred and fifty a year was wealth untold and who had never so much as heard of the Class War! For a moment he was more than half inclined to be angry with the nervous little nincompoop whose blundering, egoistic attempt at confidence had induced him to believe that the secret of his identity had been penetrated by an ardent sympathizer. (It was an open secret in "advanced" circles, though carefully guarded in the office.) Then, more justly, he softened, recognizing that the blunder was his own, the mistake of his own making—and, pitying William's dropped jaw and open confusion, poured him out a whisky and endeavoured to set him at his ease.
That evening in the company of Faraday and his first whisky was the turning-point in the career of William Tully. Any man stronger than himself could at that juncture in his life have turned him to right or left; a push in the wrong direction would have made of him an idler and a wastrel, and fate was in a kindly mood when she placed him mentally and morally in charge of "Vindex" of The Torch. She might, as her reckless way is, have handed over his little soul to some flamboyant rogue or expert in small vices; instead, she laid it in the keeping of a man who was clean-living, charged with unselfish enthusiasm and never consciously dishonest. The product of a Board School Scholarship and a fiercely energetic process of self-education (prompted in part by the desire to excel those he despised) Faraday, when William made his acquaintance, was beginning to realize some of his cherished ambitions, beginning, in certain Labour and Socialist circles, to be treated as a man of mark. His pen was fluent as well as sarcastic, and if his numerous contributions to the "rebel" press had been paid for at ordinary rates he would have been a prosperous journalist.
It was somewhat of a shock to William to discover on the top of the whisky that his new acquaintance was a Socialist; but after the first and momentary shock he swallowed the fact as he had swallowed the alcohol—not because he liked it, but because it was something the narrow circle of his mother's friends would have heartily and loudly disapproved of. This reactionary and undutiful attitude of mind was not deliberate or conscious; on the contrary, he would certainly have been horrified to learn that it was the dominant factor in his existence during the first few weeks of his emancipation from maternal supervision and control—urging him to drink deeply of Faraday's brand of Socialism as it urged him to partake with unnecessary sumptuousness of the best that Lyons could provide.
He acquired the taste for Faraday's political views more thoroughly and easily than the taste for Faraday's whisky. The man's authoritative and easy manner, the manner which stood him in good stead with his audiences, of assuming (quite honestly) that his statements were proven facts which no sane human being could dispute, would have made it impossible for William to combat his opinions even had his limited reading and thinking supplied him with material for the contest. He was impressed with Faraday's erudition no less than with Faraday's manner; and impressed still more when, later in the evening, a colleague of The Torch dropped in for a smoke and a chat. The pair talked Labour and International movements with the careless ease of connoisseurs and bandied the names of politicians contemptuously from mouth to mouth—William sitting by in a silence dazed and awed, drinking in a language that attracted by its wild incomprehensibility and suggestion. His mind was blank and virgin for the sowing of any seed; and under Faraday's influence his dull, half-torpid resentment against the restrictions, physical and mental, of his hitherto narrow life became merged in a wider sympathy with the general discomfort, in an honest and fiery little passion for Justice, Right and Progress. That, of course, was not the affair of one evening's talk; but even the one evening's talk sowed the seeds. He went away from it uncomfortably conscious that as yet he had lived solely for himself, never troubling his head concerning the evils that men like Faraday were fighting to overcome. The manner of his future living was decided for him when he knocked at the door of Faraday's Bloomsbury lodging.
His simple and awed admiration for his new-found friend and faith had in all probability more than a little to do with Faraday's readiness to allow the acquaintance to continue—even a rebel prophet is not insensible to flattery. William became for a time his satellite and pupil, the admiring sharer of his schemes, of his hatreds and laudable ambitions; he read Faraday's vehement articles and accepted each word and line. His very blankness of mind made him an apt pupil, and within a month of his mother's death he was living, out of office hours, in a whirl of semi-political agitation, attending meetings and cramming his head with pamphlets. In three months more all his hours were out-of-office hours; in his enthusiasm for his new creed and interests his neglect of his professional duties had become so marked that the manager, after one or two warnings, called him into his room for a solemn and last reprimand. As it happened, Faraday, the night before, had confided to William the news of his approaching appointment to the post of organizing secretary of the Independent Socialist Party, an appointment which would entail a speedy retirement from his hated desk in the City. The news, naturally, had not increased the attraction of the office for William, in whom the spirit of revolt had already fermented to some purpose; thus, to the infinite surprise of his superiors, who had known him hitherto as the meekest of meek little clerks, the threat of dismissal failing improvement was countered by a prompt resignation as truculent as William could make it. In fact, in the exhilaration of the moment, he treated the astonished representative of capitalism to something in the nature of a speech—culled principally from the writings of "Vindex."
From that day onwards he devoted himself to what he termed public life—a ferment of protestation and grievance; sometimes genuine, sometimes manufactured or, at least, artificially heightened. He was an extremist, passionately well-intentioned and with all the extremist's, contempt for those who balance, see difficulties and strive to give the other side its due. He began by haunting meetings as a listener and a steward; Faraday's meetings at first, then, as his circle of acquaintance and interest widened, any sort of demonstration that promised a sufficiency of excitement in the form of invective. The gentlest of creatures by nature and in private life, he grew to delight in denunciation, and under its ceaseless influence the world divided itself into two well-marked camps; the good and enlightened who agreed with him, and the fools and miscreants who did not.... In short, he became a politician.
As I have said, at the outset of his career he modestly confined his energies to stewarding—to the sale of what propagandist bodies insist on describing as "literature," the taking of tickets, ushering to seats and the like; but in a short time ambition fired him and the fighting spirit thereby engendered led him to opposition meetings where, on Faraday's advice, he tried heckling the enemy speakers. His first and flustered attempts were not over-successful, but, sustained by revolutionary enthusiasm, he refused to be
