The Ivory Gate, a new edition

CHAPTER XXIII

THE HALL OF THE NEW FAITH

The Place, as Mr. Edmund Gray modestly called it, was a meek and unpretending Structure. The word is used advisedly, because no one could call it anything else. Not an Edifice; not a Building – a Structure. It turned its gabled front to the street, with a door below and a window above. It was of gray brick with a slate roof – a very plain and simple Structure. It might have been a Primitive Methodist Chapel – the Connexion are fond of such neat and unpretending places: or a room belonging to the Salvation Army: or one of those queer lecture halls affected by Secularists and generally called the Hall of Science. On the doorpost was affixed a small handbill, announcing that every Sunday evening at seven o'clock an address would be pronounced by Edmund Gray, on the subject of 'Property.' On the same bill, below the line of the principal title, were suggestive sub-titles. Thus:

'Property and its Origin.'

'Property and its Evils.'

'Property and its Dangers.'

'Property and Liberty.'

'Property and Progress.'

'Property and its Decay.'

The Master pointed to the Bill. 'Read it,' he said. 'There you have my mission clearly announced. No mistake about it. A bold pronouncement, which cannot be mistaken. I make war against Property – I am the enemy irreconcilable – the enemy to the death – of Property. I am almost alone against the world, for my followers are a feeble folk and without power. All the interests, all the prejudices, all the powers, all the intellect, of the whole world are against me. I stand alone. But I fear nothing, because the future is given over to me and to mine – yea – though I do not live to see the day of Victory.'

He opened the door, and Elsie entered. She found herself in a room about sixty feet long by twenty broad, and lofty – a fine and goodly room. It was furnished with a long and narrow table running down the middle, and a few benches. Nothing else. The table was laid with a white cloth, and provided with plates of ham and beef, cold sausages, hard-boiled eggs, cakes, toast, muffins, bread and butter, marmalade, jam, shrimps, water-cresses, and teacups. In fact, there was spread out a Tea of generous proportions.

The room was half filled with thirty or forty people, mostly young, though there were some elderly men. Among them Elsie remarked, without surprise, the decayed Barrister of Gray's Inn. Perhaps he was attracted as much by the loaves as by the sermon. Three-quarters of them were young men. Elsie noticed that they were young men of a curious type – their faces keen, their eyes hard, their manner aggressive. They belonged to a Church Militant. They longed to be fighting. On the appearance of their preacher they flocked about him, shaking hands and inquiring after his health. At least, therefore, he had the affection of his followers.

'My friends,' said the Prophet, 'I bring you a new Disciple. She comes to us from the very stronghold of Property. Her friends' – yet he had shown no sign of recognition – 'are either those who pillage the producer, or those who rob the possessor on pretence of defending him. She is at present only a recruit. She comes to listen and to learn. She will go home to remember and to meditate. She is a recruit now who will be hereafter a Leader.'

The people received her with curiosity. They were not of the higher classes, to put it mildly, and they had never had a young lady among them before. Two or three girls who were present – girls from the dressmaker's workrooms – looked at her frock with envy, and at her bonnet and her gloves with a yearning, helpless, heart-sinking admiration. To the young men she seemed a goddess, unapproachable. They stood at a distance: men of the rank above them would have worshipped. These young men only gaped. Such a girl had nothing to do with their lives.

Apparently they had been waiting for the Master, for at the moment a stout woman and a girl appeared bearing trays with teapots and jugs of hot water, which they placed upon the board. Mr. Edmund Gray took the chair. Elsie began to feel like Alice in Wonderland. She came to see a 'Place': she expected to hear a sermon or a lecture; and behold a Tea!

'Sit beside me,' said the Master. 'We begin our evening on Sunday with a simple feast, which I provide. It is a sign of brotherhood. Every Sunday we begin with this renewal of fraternity. Those who break bread together are brothers and sisters. In the good time to come every meal shall be in common, and every evening meal shall be a Feast. Eat and drink with us, my daughter. So you will understand that you belong to a Brotherhood.'

'Try some shrimps, Miss,' said her neighbour on the right, an elderly man, who was a builder's foreman.

History does not concern itself with what Elsie took. She found the meal very much to the purpose after a long afternoon of talk, argument, and emotion. She was young and she was hungry. The tea was good: the things to eat were good: the cake and toast were admirable. Elsie ate and drank and wondered what was coming next.

After a little, she began to look round her and to watch the company. There were now, she counted, forty-five of them – forty-five disciples of Mr. Edmund Gray. What had he to teach them? The destruction of Property. Out of the four millions of London, forty-five were found who wanted to destroy Property – only forty-five. But perhaps all who advocated that step were not present. Her ancient prejudices whispered that this was a reassuring fact, considering that the Preacher had preached his doctrine for nine long years. Only forty-five. Next to her the foreman began to talk to her of Fourier and Owen, and a dozen half-forgotten leaders in the old experiments. He had been a Chartist in the Forties: he was a Socialist in these, the Nineties: but he confessed that before any real reform was attempted, Property must first be destroyed.

'It's the selfishness,' he whispered earnestly, 'that's got to be torn out by the roots. Take that away, and there's a chance for the world. It never can be taken away till a man finds that he can't work no longer for himself, and that he must work for all, whether he likes it or lumps it. Don't give him the choice nor the chance, I say. Take away Property, and there's neither choice nor chance left. You hear Mr. Gray upon that. Oh, he's powerful! What do they say? Naked we came into the world. Naked we enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. There's a wonderful lot of fine things hangin' to that. You must wait till you hear Mr. Gray upon that theme. – Kingdom of Heaven! To hear the parsons talk, it's away above the clouds. Not so. It's here – close beside us – on this earth. All we've got to do is to put out our hands and reach it.'

'You may put out your hands as much as you like,' said one of the younger men; 'but you won't reach it, all the same. Property stands between.'

'At our place,' said a girl sitting opposite – a girl of intelligent face, pale and thin, – 'we work from eight till eight, and sometimes longer, for twelve shillings a week. I know what things cost and what they sell for. I could produce enough to keep me – ah! a good deal better than I live now – if I could sell what I made myself – for four hours' work a day. So I work eight hours a day, not counting the dinner hour, just to keep the boss and to make Property for him. My Property it is – well – I know – in here, we say, our Property: outside we say, my Property. Where's your Kingdom of Heaven, then, if you reach out your hand ever so far, so long as I've got to work to make somebody else rich? Let's destroy Property, and then we shall see.'

A desire – a foolish concealed desire, born of prejudice, seized Elsie to argue. For she perceived in the girl's reasoning certain confusions and intricacies. But she had the courage to suppress the inclination: she refrained. She was a disciple. She must listen.

'I am a slave, like all the rest of us,' another young man remarked cheerfully. 'My Master owns me. He can sell me if he likes, only he calls it by another name; he can't take a whip and lash me, though he'd like to, because, if he did, I'd break every bone in his body for him, but he can cut down the work and the money. I do editing and reporting for a local paper. Thirty shillings a week. The proprietor makes ten pounds a week out of it. And I'm not allowed to tell the truth for fear of advertisers.' He added a few words not commonly heard in a place that looks like a chapel on a Sunday evening.

Elsie observed that their faces showed two variations of expression – only two. The majority of the company had the eyes of the dreamer, the theorist, the enthusiast. They are soft eyes, and in repose are heavy, and they look through stone walls into space, far away – space where their dreams are realised and men and women live according to their theories. In moments of enthusiasm and passion they become flaming fires. These eyes belonged to most of those present. The rest – the minority – were those who are angry and restless and eager for the practical application of the doctrine. These want revolution: they are impatient: they feel for themselves the injustices and impressions which enthusiasts feel for others: these are always resentful: the others are always hopeful: these want to convert the world at once with bludgeon and with gun: the others are certain that before long the world will be converted by reason. The one despairs of anything but force: the other will have no force: the one hates his enemy: he would kill him if he could: he has no words too bad for him: the enthusiast, on the other hand, regards his enemy with pity, and would at any moment welcome him, forgive him, and – well – invite him to a Fraternal Tea if he would only desert his ranks and come over. And these are the two divisions in every party, and such is the nature of man that there must always be these two divisions.

The Fraternal Tea finished, the company cleared the tables, everybody lending a hand, perhaps as another sign or pledge of fraternity. It was then nearly seven o'clock, the hour appointed for the address. The door was thrown wide open for the admission of the world; but there was no sign that the world took the least interest in the subject of Property. No one came at all. Elsie learned afterwards that the world outside the Hall had long since grown tired of the subject on which Mr. Gray had been preaching for nine years. Those who came to the Tea were the inner circle of believers or disciples, a small but faithful company, to whose members there was rarely any addition.

At seven Mr. Edmund Gray rose to commence his address, standing at the head of the table, so that it was like an after-dinner speech. Outside, the sun was hot and bright and the air clear. Within the Hall, there were the mingled odours and steams of long-protracted and hearty Fraternal Tea: the air was heavy and the room dark. When the Master began to speak, a young man – one of the ardent and wrathful kind – drew out a note-book and took everything down: all listened with respect, some with rapt interest. Some nodded – some groaned – some said 'Hear' softly – to encourage the preacher and to show their adhesion to principle.

Elsie sat at the right hand of the speaker. His discourses moved her much less in this public place than in his chambers. The persuasive voice was there, but it did not persuade her – moreover, she could not meet his eyes. Their magnetism failed to touch her. So much the better, because she could listen with cold judgment and watch the people.

'My friends,' he began, 'my brothers and my sisters – we are all long since agreed that the root of all evil, the first form of disease, the first fatal step that was leading to so many other mischiefs, was the beginning of Property. We have proved that so often – we are all so entirely agreed upon this vital principle, that we seldom, and only on rare occasions, find it necessary to do more than assume its truth. That occasion, however, is the present, when we have among us one who comes as a stranger, yet a disciple: one who has a mind open to the influence of reason: one who is anxious to clear herself of the prejudices and absurdities in which she has been from infancy brought up. Let us, therefore, briefly, for her instruction and for the strengthening of our own faith, point out some of the arguments which support this position. It is to us an axiom. To the world it still requires proof. And the world refuses to accept the proof, because it is given over to the Chase of the Abominable Thing.'

He proceeded to parade the reasons which made his School regard Property as the root of all evil. The line which lie pursued was not new: many men have pointed out before Mr. Edmund Gray the selfishness of mankind as illustrated by the universal game of Grab: others, with equal force, have shown that the protection of Things causes an immense expenditure and a great shrinkage in Things: others have shown that it is the continual efforts of men to get without working the Things for which others have worked, that fill our jails and keep up an army of police.

'We start with a false principle,' the Master went on, 'which has ruined the world and still keeps it down. If there are to be rich men, they must become rich at the expense of the rest: they must be few and the poor must be many. Therefore, the protection of Property is the robbery of the poor by law. We all know that: in this place we have agreed, so far a thousand times: the rich can only become rich by robbing the poor: they rob their land: they rob their work: they rob their whole lives – and they are permitted and encouraged by the Law. Shall we, then, change the Law? No: it would be a work too vast. Shall we change the minds of men? Not by reason: it is impossible by any argument so long as by law and custom they can still rob the producer of his work. The only way is to destroy all Property. When men can no longer by any kind of thought get richer than their neighbours, then they will cease to think for themselves, and think for the whole community. You will say – some one may object – that some are not the same in strength of mind or of body: there will be many, then, who will refuse to work at all, and become burdens on the community. We have thought of that objection. At first, there would be many such; but not for long. Because we should kill them. Yes, my friends,' he added with a smile of the sweetest benevolence. 'For the good of the community it will be necessary, without any sentimental considerations, to kill all those who refuse to work, all those who shirk their work, all those who persistently do scamped and bad work. They must die. So the commonwealth shall contain none but those who are vigorous, loyal, and true. For the rest – Death – if it means the death of a million who were once rich – Death is the only escape from the difficulty which is so often objected.

'It has been asked again how we differ from the Socialists. In this. We would begin with no theories, no constitution, no code. Only let every man give all his strength, all his heart, all his mind, to the good of the commonwealth, without the least power of enriching himself, saving money – of course there would be no money – without the chance of getting better food and better clothes than the rest – and we may safely leave the world to take care of itself. Why – my brothers – why – my sisters – should we poor purblind creatures, unable to comprehend more than a glimpse of that glorious future which awaits the world when Property shall be destroyed – why – I say – should we dare to lay down schemes and invent systems for that glorified humanity? Let us leave them to themselves. They will be as far above us, my brothers, as we are already above the holders and the defenders of Property.'

Elsie looked at the little gathering – five-and-forty – with a little smile. They were then already far above the holders and the defenders of Property, and again she thought, 'What if these words were heard in Lincoln's Inn?'

'How, then, can Property be destroyed?'

At this practical question every one sat upright, coughed, and looked interested. Their Preacher had often enough declaimed upon the evils of Property. He seldom spoke of a practical way. Perhaps the time had come.