CHAPTER VIII.

THE REPUBLICAN KISS.

“I’ve never felt so before,” said Ned.  “For about ten minutes I wanted to go back and kill him.”

“Why?”

“Because he is like a wall of iron in front of one.  If he were a fat hulking brute, as some of them are, I wouldn’t have minded.  I could have pitied him and felt that he wasn’t a fair specimen of Humanity.  But this man is a fair specimen in a way.  He looks like a man and he talks like a man and you feel him a man, only he’s absolutely unable to understand that the crowd are the same flesh and blood as he is and you know that he’d wipe us down like ninepins if he could see he’d gain by it.  He’s all brains and any heart he’s got is only for his own friends.  He is Capitalism personified.  He made me feel sick at heart at the hopelessness of fighting such men in the old ways.  I felt for a little while that the only thing to do was to clear them out of the way as they’d clear us if they were in our shoes.”

“You’ve got over it soon.”

“Of course,” admitted Ned, with a laugh.  “He can live for ever, for me, now.  It was a fool’s thought.  It’s the system we’re fighting, not the products of it, and he’s only a product just like the fat beasts we abuse and the ignorant drunken bushmen he despises.  I was worrying, as you call it, or I shouldn’t have even thought of it.”

Ned was talking to Connie.  After having had dinner at a restaurant with his Trades Hall friend, to whom he related part of his morning’s interview, he had found himself with two or three hours on his hands.  So he had turned his steps towards the Strattons, longing for sympathy and comfort, being strangely depressed and miserable without being able to think out just how he felt.

He found Mrs. Stratton writing in her snug parlour.  The rooms had the same general appearance that they had two years before.  The house, seen by daylight for the first time, was embowered in trees and fringed back and front with pretty flower beds and miniature lawns.  Connie herself was fair and fresh as ever and wore a loose robe of daintily flowered stuff; the years had passed lightly over her, adding to rather than detracting from the charms of her presence.  She welcomed him warmly and with her inimitable tact, seeing his trouble, told him how they all were, including that Josie had married and had a beautiful baby, adding with a flush that she herself had set Josie a bad example and bringing in the example for Ned to admire.  The other children were boating with George and Josie, she explained, George not having yet escaped from that horrible night-work.  Harry was well and would be home after a while.  He was painting a series of scenes from city life, the sketches of which she showed him.  Arty was married to a very nice girl, who knew all his poetry, every line, by heart.  Ford was well, only more bitter than ever.  When Ned asked after Geisner, she said he had not been back since and she had only heard once, indirectly, that he was well.  Thus she led him to talk and he told her partly what took place between Strong and himself.  Strong’s offer he could not tell to anyone.