‘All that strikes me as very good and true,’ remarked Hubert; ’but can it be helped?  Or do you refuse to believe in the modern conception of laws ruling social development?’

’I wish I could do so.  No; when I spoke of the right to curse, I should have said, from their point of view.  In truth, I fear we must accept progress.  But I cannot rejoice in it; I will even do what little I can in my own corner to support the old order of things.  You may be aware that I was on very friendly terms with the Mutimers, that I even seemed to encourage them in their Socialism.  Yes, and because I felt that in that way I could best discharge my duty.  What I really encouraged was sympathy and humanity.  When Mutimer came asking me to be present at his meetings I plainly refused.  To have held apart from him and his wife would have been as wrong in me as to publicly countenance their politics.’

Mr. Wyvern was on the point of referring to his private reasons for befriending Adela, but checked himself.

’What I made no secret of approving was their substitution of human relations between employer and employed for the detestable “nexus of cash payment,” as Carlyle calls it.  That is only a return to the good old order, and it seems to me that it becomes more impossible every day.  Thus far I am with the Socialists, in that I denounce the commercial class, the bourgeois, the capitalists—­call them what you will—­as the supremely maleficent.  They hold us at their mercy, and their mercy is nought.  Monstrously hypocritical, they cry for progress when they mean increased opportunities of swelling their own purses at the expense of those they employ, and of those they serve; vulgar to the core, they exalt a gross ideal of well-being, and stink in their prosperity.  The very poor and the uncommercial wealthy alike suffer from them; the intellect of the country is poisoned by their influence.  They it is who indeed are oppressors; they grow rich on the toil of poor girls in London garrets and of men who perish prematurely to support their children.  I won’t talk of these people; I should lose my calm views of things and use language too much like this of the “Fiery Cross."’

Hubert was thoughtful.

‘What is before us?’ he murmured.

’Evil; of that I am but too firmly assured.  Progress will have its way, and its path will be a path of bitterness.  A pillar of dark cloud leads it by day, and of terrible fire by night.  I do not say that the promised land may not lie ahead of its guiding, but woe is me for the desert first to be traversed!  Two vices are growing among us to dread proportions—­indifference and hatred:  the one will let poverty anguish at its door, the other will hound on the vassal against his lord.  Papers like the “Fiery Cross,” even though such a man as Westlake edit them, serve the cause of hatred; they preach, by implication at all events, the childish theory of the equality of men, and seek to make discontented a whole class which only needs regular employment on the old conditions to be perfectly satisfied.’