Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [52]
“I think you are being a trifle harsh, Josiah,” his wife said soothingly. “I daresay Stephen did not mean anything by it.”
“Of course he did.” Hatch would not be placated. “He is always making derisory remarks which he imagines to be amusing.” His voice rose and he looked at Celeste. “He did not even wish to donate to the window. Can you imagine? And he supports that wretched man Lindsay in his revolutionary paper which questions the very foundations of decent society.”
“No it doesn’t,” Shaw said. “It merely puts out certain ideas on reform which would distribute wealth more equitably.”
“More equitably than what?” Hatch demanded. “Our present system? That amounts to overthrow of the government—in fact, revolution, as I said.”
“No it does not.” Shaw was overtly annoyed now and he swung around in his chair to face Hatch. “They believe in a gradual change, through legislation, to a system of collectivist state ownership of the means of producing wealth, with workers’ control—full employment and appropriation of unearned increment—”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Stephen,” Angeline said with her face screwed up in concentration.
“Neither do I,” Celeste agreed. “Are you speaking about George Bernard Shaw and those fearful Webbs?”
“He is talking about anarchy and the total change or loss of everything you know!” Hatch replied with very real anger.
This was far deeper than the reopening of an old family quarrel. They were profound issues of morality. And turning from him to Shaw, Charlotte believed that in his eyes also she saw a fire of seriousness beneath the perception of a very surface absurdity. Humor was always with him, it was deep in all the lines of his face, but it was only the outer garment of a passionate mind.
“People can get away with anything these days,” Grandmama said unhelpfully. “In my youth, Bernard Shaw, Mr. Webb, and their like would have been put in prison before they were permitted to speak of such ideas—but today they are quite openly quoted. And of course Mrs. Webb is quite beyond the pale.”
“Be quiet,” Caroline said sharply. “You are making bad into worse.”
“It is already worse,” the old lady retorted in a stage whisper audible to everyone in the room.
“Oh dear.” Angeline wrung her hands nervously, looking from one to the other of her nephews-in-law.
Charlotte attempted to repair some of the damage.
“Mr. Hatch, do you not think that when people read the ideas proposed in these pamphlets they will consider them, and if they are truly evil or preposterous then they will see them for what they are, and reject them out of hand? After all, is it not better they should know what they stand for and so find them the more repellent and frightening, than merely by our recounting of them? Truth cannot but benefit from the comparison.”
Hatch stopped with his breath drawn in and his mouth open. Her premise was one he could not possibly deny, and yet to do so would rob him of his argument against Shaw.
For seconds the silence hung. A carriage rattled past the street going up Highgate Hill. A snatch of song came from somewhere upstairs and was hushed instantly, presumably some young housemaid disciplined for levity.
“You are very young, Mrs. Pitt,” Hatch said at last. “I fear you do not fully grasp the weakness of some people, how easily greed, ignorance and envy can draw them to espouse values that are quite obviously false to those of us who have had the advantage of a moral upbringing. Unfortunately there are an increasing number”— here he shot