was over he hardly knew whether he had eaten any of it or not, and he
certainly hadn’t heard any of the conversation. His heart had been
dancing all the time, his thoughts had been faraway from these things,
and in the visions of his mind the sumptuous appointments of his father’s
castle had risen before him without rebuke. Even the plushed flunkey,
that walking symbol of a sham inequality, had not been unpleasant to his
dreaming view. After the meal Barrow said,
“Come with me. I’ll give you a jolly evening.”
“Very good. Where are you going?”
“To my club.”
“What club is that?”
“Mechanics’ Debating Club.”
Tracy shuddered, slightly. He didn’t say anything about having visited
that place himself. Somehow he didn’t quite relish the memory of that
time. The sentiments which had made his former visit there so enjoyable,
and filled him with such enthusiasm, had undergone a gradual change, and
they had rotted away to such a degree that he couldn’t contemplate
another visit there with anything strongly resembling delight. In fact
he was a little ashamed to go; he didn’t want to go there and find out by
the rude impact of the thought of those people upon his reorganized
condition of mind, how sharp the change had been. He would have
preferred to stay away. He expected that now he should hear nothing
except sentiments which would be a reproach to him in his changed mental
attitude, and he rather wished he might be excused. And yet he didn’t
quite want to say that, he didn’t want to show how he did feel, or show
any disinclination to go, and so he forced himself to go along with
Barrow, privately purposing to take an early opportunity to get away.
After the essayist of the evening had read his paper, the chairman
announced that the debate would now be upon the subject of the previous
meeting, “The American Press.” It saddened the backsliding disciple to
hear this announcement. It brought up too many reminiscences. He wished
he had happened upon some other subject. But the debate began, and he
sat still and listened.
In the course of the discussion one of the speakers–a blacksmith named
Tompkins–arraigned all monarchs and all lords in the earth for their
cold selfishness in retaining their unearned dignities. He said that no
monarch and no son of a monarch, no lord and no son of a lord ought to be
able to look his fellow man in the face without shame. Shame for
consenting to keep his unearned titles, property, and privileges–at the
expense of other people; shame for consenting to remain, on any terms, in
dishonourable possession of these things, which represented bygone
robberies and wrongs inflicted upon the general people of the nation.
He said, “if there were a laid or the son of a lord here, I would like to
reason with him, and try to show him how unfair and how selfish his
position is. I would try to persuade him to relinquish it, take his
place among men on equal terms, earn the bread he eats, and hold of
slight value all deference paid him because of artificial position, all
reverence not the just due of his own personal merits.”
Tracy seemed to be listening to utterances of his own made in talks with
his radical friends in England. It was as if some eavesdropping
phonograph had treasured up his words and brought them across the
Atlantic to accuse him with them in the hour of his defection and
retreat. Every word spoken by this stranger seemed to leave a blister on
Tracy’s conscience, and by the time the speech was finished he felt that
he was all conscience and one blister. This man’s deep compassion for
the enslaved and oppressed millions in Europe who had to bear with the
contempt of that small class above them, throned upon shining heights
whose paths were shut against them, was the very thing he had often
uttered himself. The pity in this man’s voice and words was the very
twin of the pity that used to reside in his own heart and come from his
own lips when he thought of these oppressed peoples.