'I was talking last night to an old gentleman who said much the same. He has Chambers where he goes to write: he has a Lecture Hall--where he preaches to the people----'

Mr. Dering looked at her in mild surprise. What did she mean? Elsie coloured.

'Of course,' she said, 'this has nothing to do with you.'

'How I spent the evening I know very well,' Mr. Dering went on. 'Yet I forget. That is the trouble with me. My housekeeper will not give me dinner on Sunday evening, and on that day I go to my Club. I get there about five or six: I read the magazines till seven. Sometimes I drop off to sleep--we old fellows will drop off, you know--about seven I have dinner. After dinner I take my coffee, and read or talk if there is any one I know. About nine I walk home. That has been my custom for many years. Therefore, that is how I spent the evening of yesterday.--But, you see, I cannot remember it. Breakfast I remember, and the Church service afterwards. Luncheon I remember: getting home at ten I remember.

But the interval between I cannot remember.'

'Do you forget other things? Do you remember Sat.u.r.day afternoon, for instance?'

'Yes--perfectly. I left the office about five. I walked straight home.--No--no--that isn't right. It was nearly eight when I got home. I remember. The dinner was spoiled.--No--I did not go straight home.'

'Perhaps you stayed here till past seven?'

'No--no. I remember looking at the clock as I put on my hat. It was half-past five when I went out-- Five. What did I do between half-past five o'clock and eight? I forget. You see, my trouble, Elsie--I forget.

Perhaps I went to the Club: perhaps I strolled about: perhaps I came back here. There are three hours to account for--and I have forgotten them all.'

CHAPTER XXV

WILL HE REMEMBER?

Should she tell him? She could not. The way must somehow be prepared.

No--she could not tell him just so--in cold blood. How would he look if she were to begin: 'I have found out the mystery. You are Edmund Gray.

During the hours that you cannot recall, you are playing the part of a Socialist teacher and leader: you are actively propagating the doctrines that you hold to be dangerous and misleading'? What would he say? What would he feel when he realised the truth?

On the table lay a copy of the _Times_--a fortnight-old copy--open at the place where there was a certain letter from a certain Edmund Gray.

Elsie pointed to it. Mr. Dering sighed. 'Again,' he said, 'they persecute me. Now it is a letter addressed to Edmund Gray, lying on my table: now it is the bill of a pernicious lecture by Edmund Gray: to-day it is this paper with the letter that appeared a week or two ago. Who brought it here? Checkley says he didn't. Who put it on my table?'

Elsie made no reply. It was useless to test her former theory of the boy under the table.

'As for the man who wrote this letter,' Mr. Dering went on, 'he bears the name of our forger and writes from the same address. Yet he is not the man. Of that I am convinced. This man is a fool because he believes in the honesty of mankind: he is a generous fool, because he believes that people would rather be good than bad. Nonsense! They would rather be stealing from each other's plates, like the monkeys, than dividing openly. He has what they call a good heart--that is, he is a soft creature--and he is full of pity for the poor. Now, in my young days, I was taught--what after-experience has only brought more home to me--that the poor are poor in consequence of their vices. We used to say to them: "Go away--practise thrift. Be sober--work hard. By exercising these virtues we rose out of your ranks. By continuing to exercise them we remain on these levels. Go away. There is no remedy for disease contracted by vice. Go away and suffer." That's what we said formerly.

What they say now is: "Victims of greed! You are filled with every virtue possible to humanity. You are down-trodden by the Capitalist. You are oppressed. Make and produce for others to enjoy. We will change all this. We will put the fruits--the harvest--of your labour in your own hands, and you shall show the world your justice, your n.o.ble disinterestedness, your generosity, your love of the common weal."

That's the new gospel, Elsie, and I prefer the old.'

Strange that a man should at one time hold and preach with so much fervour and earnestness the very creed which at another time he denounced as fiercely!

'This man, and such as he,' continued Mr. Dering, lifted out of his anxieties by that subject, 'would destroy Property in order to make the workman rich. Wonderful doctrine! He would advance the world by destroying the only true incentive and stimulant for work, invention, civilisation, a.s.sociation, and every good and useful thing. He would destroy Property. And then? Can he not see what would follow? Why, these people do not know the very alphabet of the thing. By Property they mean the possession by individuals of land or money. But that is only a part of Property. Take that away, and the individual remains. And he has got--what you cannot take away--the rest of his Property, by which he will speedily repair the temporary loss. Consider, child, if you can, what does a man possess? He has, I say, Property--all his own--which cannot be taken from him or shared with another--Property in his brain, his trade, his wit, his craft, his art, his skill, his invention, his enterprise, his quickness to grip an opportunity. Again, he has his wife and children--sometimes a very valuable Property: he has, besides, his memories, his knowledge, his experience, his thoughts, his hopes, his projects, and intentions: he has his past and he has his future: he has, or thinks he has, his inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven. Take away all these things bit by bit, what is left? Nothing. Not even the shadow of a man. Not even a naked figure. This, Elsie, is Property. These things separate the individual from the ma.s.s, and each man from his neighbour. A shallow fanatic, like this Edmund Gray, thinks that wealth is the whole of Property. Why, I say, it is only a part of Property: it is the external and visible side of certain forms of Property. Take all the wealth away to-day--even if you make ten thousand laws, the same qualities--the same forms of Property--the same lack of those qualities will produce like results to-morrow.--Do you now understand, child, what is meant by Property? It is everything which makes humanity. Wealth is only the symbol or proof of society so organised that all these qualities--the whole Property of a man, can be exercised freely and without injustice.'

'I see,' said Elsie, gazing with wonder undisguised. Was this last night's Prophet? Could the same brain hold two such diverse views'?

'You are surprised, child. That is because you have never taken or understood this larger view of Property. It is new to you. Confess, however, that it lends sacredness to things which we are becoming accustomed to have derided. Believe me, it is not without reason that some of us venerate the laws which have been slowly, very slowly, framed: and the forms which have been slowly, very slowly, framed: as experience has taught us wisdom for the protection of man--working man, not loafing, lazy man. It is wise and right of us to maintain all those inst.i.tutions which encourage the best among us to work and invent and distribute. By these forms alone is industry protected and enterprise encouraged. Then such as this Edmund Gray'--he laid his hand again upon the letter--'will tell you that Property--Property--causes certain crimes--ergo, Property must be destroyed. Everything desirable causes its own peculiar cla.s.s of crime. Consider the universal pa.s.sion of Love.

It daily causes crimes innumerable. Yet no one has yet proposed the abolition of Love--eh?'

'I believe not,' Elsie replied, smiling. 'I hope no one will--yet.'

'No. But the desire for Property, which is equally universal--which is the most potent factor in the cause of Law and Order--they desire and propose to destroy. I have shown you that it is impossible. Let the companies pay no dividends, let all go to the working men: let the lands pay no rent: the houses no rent: let the merchants' capital yield no profit: to-morrow the clever man will be to the front again, using for his own purposes the dull and the stupid and the lazy. That is my opinion.--Forgive this sermon, Elsie. You started me on the subject. It is one on which I have felt very strongly for a long time. In fact, the more I think upon it the more I am convinced that the most important thing in any social system is the protection of the individual--personal liberty: freedom of contract: right to enjoy in safety what his ability, his enterprise, and his dexterity may gain for him.'

Elsie made no reply for a moment. The conversation had taken an unexpected turn. The vehemence of the upholder of Property overwhelmed her as much as the earnestness of its destroyer. Besides, what chance has a girl of one-and-twenty on a subject of which she knows nothing with a man who has thought upon it for fifty years? Besides, she was thinking all the time of the other man. And now there was no doubt--none whatever--that Mr. Dering knew nothing of Mr. Edmund Gray--nothing at all. He knew nothing and suspected nothing of the truth. And which should she believe? The man who was filled with pity for the poor and saw nothing but their sufferings, or the man who was full of sympathy with the rich, and saw in the poor nothing but their vices? Are all men who work oppressed? Or are there no oppressed at all, but only some lazy and stupid and some clever?

'Tell me more another time,' she said, with a sigh. 'Come back to the case--the robbery. Is anything discovered yet?'

'I have heard nothing. George refuses to go on with the case out of some scruple because----'

'Oh! I know the cause. Very cruel things have been said about him. Do you not intend to stand by your own partner, Mr. Dering?'

'To stand by him? Why, what can I do?'

'You know what has been said of him--what is said of him--why I have had to leave home----'

'I know what is said, certainly. It matters nothing what is said. The only important thing is to find out--and that they cannot do.'

'They want to connect Edmund Gray with the forgeries, and they are trying the wrong way. Checkley is not the connecting link--nor is George.'

'You talk in riddles, child.'

'Perhaps. Do you think, yourself, that George has had anything whatever to do with the business?'

'If you put it so, I do not. If you ask me what I have a right to think--it is that everything is possible.'

'That is what you said about Athelstan. Yet now his innocence is established.'

'That is to say, his guilt is not proved. Find me the man who forged that cheque, and I will acknowledge that he is innocent. Until then, he is as guilty as the other man--Checkley--who was also named in connection with the matter. Mind, I say, I do not believe that my Partner could do this thing. I will tell him so. I have told him so. If it had to be done over again, I would ask him to become my partner. But all things are possible. My brother is hot upon it. Well--let him search as he pleases. In such a case the solution is always the simplest and the most unexpected. I told him only this morning--he had lunch with me--that he was on a wrong scent--but he is obstinate. Let him go on.'

'Yes--let him divide a family--keep up bitterness between mother and son--make a lifelong separation between those who ought to love each other most---- Oh! it is shameful! It is shameful! And you make no effort--none at all--to stop it.'

'What can I do? What can I say, more than I have said? If they would only not accuse each other--but find out something!'

'Mr. Dering--forgive me--what I am going to say'--she began with jerks.

'The honour of my brother--of my lover--are at stake.'

'Say, child, what you please.'

'I think that perhaps'--she did not dare to look at him--'if you could remember sometimes those dropped and forgotten evenings--those hours when you do not know what you have said and done--if you could only remember a little--we might find out more.'

He watched her face blushing, and her eyes confused, and her voice stammering, and he saw that there was something behind--something that she hinted, but would not or could not express. He sat upright, suspicious and disquieted.

'Tell me what you mean, child.'

'I cannot--if you do not remember anything. You come late in the morning--sometimes two hours late. You think it is only ten o'clock when it is twelve. You do not know where you have been for the last two hours. Try to remember that. You were late on Sat.u.r.day morning. Perhaps this morning. Where were you?'

His face was quite white. He understood that something was going--soon--to happen.

'I know not, Elsie--indeed--I cannot remember. Where was I?'