indeed. Why did you leave me, Sidney?”
“Lest a worse thing might befall. Come, don’t let us waste in explanations the few minutes we have left. Give me a kiss.”
“Then you are going to leave me again. Oh, Sidney—”
“Never mind tomorrow, Hetty. Be like the sun and the meadow, which are not in the least concerned about the coming winter. Why do you stare at that cursed canal, blindly dragging its load of filth from place to place until it pitches it into the sea — just as a crowded street pitches its load into the cemetery? Stare at ME, and give me a kiss.”
She gave him several, and said coaxingly, with her arm still upon his shoulder: “You only talk that way to frighten me, Sidney; I know you do.”
“You are the bright sun of my senses,” he said, embracing her. “I feel my heart and brain wither in your smile, and I fling them to you for your prey with exultation. How happy I am to have a wife who does not despise me for doing so — who rather loves me the more!”
“Don’t be silly,” said Henrietta, smiling vacantly. Then, stung by a half intuition of his meaning, she repulsed him and said angrily, “YOU despise ME.”
“Not more than I despise myself. Indeed, not so much; for many emotions that seem base from within seem lovable from without.”
“You intend to leave me again. I feel it. I know it.”
“You think you know it because you feel it. Not a bad reason, either.”
“Then you ARE going to leave me?”
“Do you not feel it and know it? Yes, my cherished Hetty, I assuredly am.”
She broke into wild exclamations of grief, and he drew her head down and kissed her with a tender action which she could not resist, and a wry face which she did not see.
“My poor Hetty, you don’t understand me.”
“I only understand that you hate me, and want to go away from me.”
“That would be easy to understand. But the strangeness is that I LOVE you and want to go away from you. Not for ever. Only for a time.”
“But I don’t want you to go away. I won’t let you go away,” she said, a trace of fierceness mingling with her entreaty. “Why do you want to leave me if you love me?”
“How do I know? I can no more tell you the whys and wherefores of myself than I can lift myself up by the waistband and carry myself into the next county, as some one challenged a speculator in perpetual motion to do. I am too much a pessimist to respect my own affections. Do you know what a pessimist is?”
“A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.”
“So, or thereabout. Modern English polite society, my native sphere, seems to me as corrupt as consciousness of culture and absence of honesty can make it. A canting, lie-loving, fact-hating, scribbling, chattering, wealth-hunting, pleasure-hunting, celebrity-hunting mob, that, having lost the fear of hell, and not replaced it by the love of justice, cares for nothing but the lion’s share of the wealth wrung by threat of starvation from the hands of the classes that create it. If you interrupt me with a silly speech, Hetty, I will pitch you into the canal, and die of sorrow for my lost love afterwards. You know what I am, according to the conventional description: a gentleman with lots of money. Do you know the wicked origin of that money and gentility?”
“Oh, Sidney; have you been doing anything?”
“No, my best beloved; I am a gentleman, and have been doing nothing. That a man can do so and not starve is nowadays not even a paradox. Every halfpenny I possess is stolen money; but it has been stolen legally, and, what is of some practical importance to you, I have no means of restoring it to the rightful owners even if I felt inclined to. Do you know what my father was?”
“What difference can that make now? Don’t be disagreeable and full of ridiculous fads, Sidney dear. I didn’t marry your father.”
“No; but you married — only incidentally, of course — my father’s fortune. That necklace of yours was purchased with his money; and I can almost fancy stains of blood.”
“Stop, Sidney. I don’t like this sort of romancing. It’s all nonsense. DO be nice to me.”
“There are stains of sweat on it, I know.”
“You nasty wretch!”
“I am thinking, not of you, my dainty one, but of the unfortunate people who slave that we may live idly. Let me explain to you why we are so rich. My father was a shrewd, energetic, and ambitious Manchester man, who understood an exchange of any sort as a transaction by which one man should lose and the other gain. He made it his object to make as many exchanges as possible, and to be always the gaining party in them. I do not know exactly what he was, for he was ashamed both of his antecedents and of his relatives, from which I can only infer that they were honest, and, therefore, unsuccessful people. However, he acquired some knowledge of the cotton trade, saved some money, borrowed some more on the security of his reputation for getting the better of other people in business, and, as he accurately told me afterwards, started FOR HIMSELF. He bought a factory and some raw cotton. Now you must know that a man, by laboring some time on a piece of raw cotton, can turn it into a piece of manufactured cotton fit for making into sheets and shifts and the like. The manufactured cotton is more valuable than the raw cotton, because the manufacture costs wear and tear of machinery, wear and tear of the factory, rent of the ground upon which the factory is built, and human labor, or wear and tear of live men, which has to be made good by food, shelter, and rest. Do you understand that?”
“We used to learn all about it at college. I don’t see what it has to do with us, since you are not in the cotton trade.”
“You learned as much as it was thought safe to teach you, no doubt; but not quite all, I should think. When my father started for himself, there were many men in Manchester who were willing to labor in this way, but they had no factory to work in, no machinery to work with, and no raw cotton to work on, simply because all this indispensable plant, and the materials for producing a fresh supply of it, had been appropriated by earlier comers. So they found themselves with gaping stomachs, shivering limbs, and hungry wives and children, in a place called their own country, in which, nevertheless, every scrap of ground and possible source of subsistence was tightly locked up in the hands of others and guarded by armed soldiers and policemen. In this helpless condition, the poor devils were ready to beg for access to a factory and to raw cotton on any conditions compatible with life. My father offered them the use of his factory, his machines, and his raw cotton on the following conditions: They were to work long and hard, early and late, to add fresh value to his raw cotton by manufacturing it. Out of the value thus created by them, they were to recoup him for what he supplied them with: rent, shelter, gas, water, machinery, raw cotton — everything, and to pay him for his own services as superintendent, manager, and salesman. So far he asked nothing but just remuneration. But after this had been paid, a balance due solely to their own labor remained. ‘Out of this,’ said my father, ‘you shall keep just enough to save you from starving, and of the rest you shall make me a present to reward me for my virtue in saving money. Such is the bargain I propose. It is, in my opinion, fair and calculated to encourage thrifty habits. If it does not strike you in that light, you can get a factory and raw cotton for yourselves; you shall not use mine.’ In other words, they might go to the devil and starve — Hobson’s choice! — for all the other factories were owned
