A Sovereign Remedy Part 50

"That is all I have to say. Now for the payment. This is a free deed of gift of these works, made out, with a few necessary legal restrictions, in the name of you delegates, to be held in trust for the workers therein, and this is a cheque for the capital necessary to work it for six months. I have already signed both. I was so certain, you see, that your friend and leader, Mr. Green, would reject my other very reasonable proposals that I came prepared. Will you take them, Mr. Green? My solicitor is here, and you can arrange with him: my part is done!"

"Am I to understand----" almost gasped Mr. Green.

Lord Blackborough's face sharpened to the keenest edge of contempt.

"Yes! You are to understand, sir, that, tired of being abused up hill and down dale in your organs for behaving like a sensible man, I am behaving like a fool. Well, men! Labour and Capital have for once met and kissed each other. See that they don't fall out again!"

Mr. Green stood with the papers in his hand for a second then he flung them on the table.

"You fling our own money to us as if we were dogs!" he began hotly.

"Dogs!" echoed Ned Blackborough in the same tone. "I would far liefer give it to the dogs than to you--you men who will have the handling of it. It is you who starved those poor children, not I. Their fathers could keep them in comfort for five-and-twenty s.h.i.+llings a week; you made them stand for out six-and-twenty--as if it mattered--as if money, physical comfort, even freedom, counted for anything in a man's search for happiness. That----." He pulled himself up quivering, feeling the uselessness of speech. "Come, Woods!" he said, "it is time I left this Temple of Mammon! Good-day, gentlemen."

"That is a clear waste of a hundred thousand pounds," mourned Mr.

Woods as they crossed the courtyard; "you can't get beyond human nature, my lord. Each man will naturally go for that gold, the cleverest of them will get it, and so capital will re-arise out of its own ashes. You must begin further down--with the children."

"Set up a school, eh? Woods, in which they would be taught the truth--that work and play are merely interchangeable terms for occupation. Hullo! What's up?"

A small crowd of women, mostly carrying babies, but a few of them carrying baskets, stood at the gates blocking the way. Beyond them waited the motor-car, the chauffeur standing at the crank ready to start.

Ned Blackborough walked on until he nearly touched the first woman.

She was better dressed than the rest, but who for all that had a coa.r.s.e, violent face.

"Do you want anything?" he asked quietly. "If you don't, you might let me pa.s.s."

"Do we want!" she began in a rhetorical voice. "Yes! we want the bread you have stole from our children."

"Why not give them some of your husband's dinner?" he replied, pointing to her basket, on the top of which lay several knives and forks. There was a t.i.tter, for she was, in truth, carrying refreshment for Mr. Green and his colleagues. She flushed scarlet.

"My husband!" she echoed. "Yes! where is the money you have stole from our husbands? But you'll find that we aren't slaves like the ones you drove in the Indies before you were kicked out! The British workpeople are not to be treated like black n.i.g.g.e.rs or Chinese coolies."

"Good G.o.d! woman," cried Ned, losing patience, "if you have nothing better to say than to trump up the last scurrilous article in the _Taskmaster_--Here! Woods, follow on--I'm not going to be stopped."

In an instant they were the centre of a band of excited women, the next they were in the car, and the _chauffeur_ was running back to take his seat.

"I don't want to hurt you," called Ned as he turned on power, "but if some of you don't stand back there will be an accident!"

"Cowards! Fools! Don't let him go without an answer," shrieked the woman with the basket, who was entangled two deep in the backward rush. The next moment there very nearly was an accident, since, failing of all else, the angry orator flung the first thing she could lay her hands upon--the handful of knives and forks--at the car with her full force, and one of the missiles, a three-p.r.o.nged iron fork, buried itself in the fleshy part of Ned's right hand, as it held the steerer, making him and it swerve.

The fork quivered as he steadied the wheel. Then he turned and raised his hat with his other hand.

"Thank you!" he said, and the word fell on a half-awed, half-alarmed silence.

"She didn't mean to do it," began Woods hurriedly. "Shall I pull it out, my lord?"

"Of course she didn't," replied Ned coolly. "If she had meant to do it, she would have killed a baby. That sort of woman is built that way. Wait a bit, Woods, till we are through the works. I look like a blessed St. Sebastian with it quivering in my fles.h.!.+"

"You ought to have that seen to," said little Woods when the surgical operation was over, and they had had to call on the _chauffeur's_ handkerchief as well as their own. "It has gone very deep."

"I'll get Ramsay to tie it up properly. We can go back by Egworth,"

replied Lord Blackborough.

They met Peter Ramsay on the steps, carrying a leathern instrument-bag.

"Come along to my room," he said cheerfully. "I've everything I want in here."

As they opened the door a woman's figure rose hurriedly from an evidently searching inquiry into the contents of a bottom drawer, for under-vests and stockings lay strewn about.

Both Helen Tressilian and Dr. Ramsay blushed scarlet, but Ned's eyes twinkled. "Caught in the act, my dear! Caught in the act!" he said amusedly.

"I thought--I hoped--he had gone out for a long while on an urgent call," retorted Mrs. Tressilian, looking quite viciously at the doctor, who, to hide his vexation, was searching in his bag.

"I am sorry I disappointed your expectations, Mrs. Tressilian," he said stiffly, "but when I arrived I was not wanted. The man was dead."

Helen looked as if she had received a blow in the face. Her lip quivered.

"Undo these rags, will you?" said Ned to her kindly, wis.h.i.+ng in his heart that he could take them and shake them together once and for all. "I haven't much time to lose."

She had forgotten her annoyance in sympathy when Dr. Ramsay looked up from his task.

"I'm afraid I shall have to hurt you a bit. I don't like those very deep holes, possibly from a dirty fork----"

"It wasn't very clean," admitted Ned.

"Perhaps I had better call Sister Ann----" began the doctor doubtfully, and Helen flushed up in a second.

"I have done some work of the kind, Dr. Ramsay," she said; "but if you prefer----"

The challenge was too direct. "If you do not mind, I shall be glad,"

he replied, bending over a little array of instruments on the table.

"Will you stand here, Lord Blackborough. Hold the hand so, Nurse Helen, and be ready, please, with the carbolised gauze."

Half-way through Ned winced; and the doctor said sharply, "That was my fault. Move your hand a little, Nurse Helen; it gets in my way."

"There! that's done!" he continued at last. "Now for the bandages."

Was it only fancy, or was Ned Blackborough right in thinking that the supple, skilful hands were not quite so skilful as usual, that there was an unwonted nervousness about them?

He pondered over this as, being hurried, he went downstairs, leaving Helen tidying up, Peter Ramsay sterilising his instruments before putting them away. He left behind him also a sense of stress in the air, a feeling on the part of both those busy people that things could no longer go on as they had been going on. Suddenly Peter Ramsay flung aside a probe, and walked up to Helen decisively.

"Helen!" he said. "I shall have to go away if you won't marry me.

Think me as much a fool as you like--the fact remains. You saw--you must have seen how disgracefully I did that simple little thing. Why?

Because you were there--because your hand touched mine."

"I will never offer to interfere with your work again!" she said coldly.

"Interfere!" he echoed with a bitter little laugh. "You always interfere! I feel the very touch of your hands upon my clothes."

A slow crimson stained her very forehead. "I am sorry, I will never touch them again."