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Mine, I gather, is not nearly so real as that of a performer in a travelling circus. I do not know why this should be so, but I have no doubt that it is. Mrs. Ascher is not by any means the only person who thinks so. Tim Gorman's life was apparently real enough to attract her greatly.
"But we never talk about such things," she said. "Never, never. Our life together is sacred, hallowed, a thing apart, "'Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call earth." It surprised me to hear Mrs. Ascher quote Milton. I did not somehow expect to find that she knew or liked that particular poet. I am nearly sure he would not have liked her.
Then with another swift change of mood the boy turned to me and began to plead again. "Tell him to give me the money," he said. "Or make him let me ask Ascher for it. He'll do it if you speak to him. I don't want to quarrel with Michael. I don't want to do anything he says is wrong. But I must have that money. Don't you see I must? I can't get on without it?"
It seemed to me foolish to lay a complicated scheme before a man who has just been severely tried in temper by unaccustomed kinds of food and drink. However, Gorman set out the case of the cash register in a few words. He did not go into details, and I do not know whether Ascher understood what was expected of him.
For the moment I felt nothing but a sense of exultation, strangely out of harmony with the grave melancholy with which Ascher spoke. I suppose the soldier instinct survives in me, an inheritance from generations of my forefathers, all of whom have worn swords, many of whom have fought.
"Why should we delay any longer?" "We must trust our leaders," said Gorman. "They will tell us when the time for action comes." That would have been good enough for any ordinary constituency. It did not satisfy Mrs. Ascher. I saw her looking a little doubtfully at Gorman. She is a curious woman.
Neither the wanderings of Ulysses nor the discoveries of a traveller through Paradise and Purgatory make so splendid an appeal to the imagination as this vastly complex machine which Ascher and men like him guide. The oceans of the world are covered thick with ships. Long freight trains wind like serpents across continents. Kings build navies. Ploughmen turn up the clay.
Battleships are to be towed across the ocean, from the ship yards of the Clyde to these far-off seas, at the ends of the gossamer threads which Ascher spins. The Gospel and international politics are caught in the same web.
"She'd have done it all right," said Gorman. "I hear she's a splendid organiser in spite of her clothes. Always was a remarkable woman, though you didn't care for her. There's been a lot of trouble about Ascher." "Did he go bankrupt?" "Oh, dear no. Quite the contrary. All that financial part of the business was well managed and there wasn't any serious smash-up.
Nor should I want to argue with any one who said that beauty and art are the only true realities, and that the struggle of the manufacturing classes for wealth is a striving after wind. But I felt slightly irritated with Mrs. Ascher for not seeing that she cannot have it both ways. Gorman, of course, was simply trying to be agreeable.
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