From Wimbledon to Surbiton is comparatively but a step. An enterprising train, bent on accomplishing the feat, can do the distance in seven or eight minutes, and even the slowest of “locals” takes but twelve. Barney was an energetic young man, and, where a cheque was concerned, knew the dangers of delay; so he resolved, being in the neighbourhood, to go to Surbiton, see his mother, and settle the business. The young man often reassured himself by saying inwardly that he was no fool, and the few minutes he had to meditate on the situation, as he paced up and down No. 3 platform waiting for the train, enabled him to formulate a course of action.

Barney had a well-defined mental process by which he arrived at any plan of procedure. “The great thing, my boy,” he used to say, “is to know exactly what you want, and then go for it.” In going for it the young fellow trampled on anything that came in his path: truth, for example. His one object was success—the kind that succeeds. Having attained that, he was careless of the means.

In this instance what he wanted was to prevent any interference with Sartwell, and he knew, if he boldly opposed his mother’s scheme, such opposition would inevitably bring about the meddling he desired to avoid, and at the same time place himself in her bad books, which was financially undesirable.

“It will take a bit of thinking,” said Barney to himself, thus showing that he correctly estimated the difficulties of the situation, and realized the shortness of the distance between Wimbledon and Surbiton.

Surbiton is a most attractive Surrey suburb with an excellent service of trains. The houses are large, detached, and of the class known in the estate agents’ vocabulary as “desirable.” Stockbrokers in the city are attracted thither as much by the rapid train service as by the desirable residences; thus many of them live there. The rich and retired tradesman and the manufacturer in a large way have given the place an exclusiveness which it could never have attained if it had been a mere resort of noblemen, or a place for the housing of the working classes. It is the rich and retired tradesman who has given England its reputation as a cold and dignified nation. Nothing can compare with a first-class compartment from Surbiton—“Vaux-hall and Waterloo only”—for frigid exclusiveness. Sometimes an unfortunate duke or marquis, coming from his estates in the southwest, chances upon the Surbiton contingent, and makes an innocent and friendly remark. He is frozen into silence by the icy stare of the other five occupants of the compartment.

Surbiton, to a stranger, has the look of a sea-side place. Some of the streets are broad and divided by narrow railed-in parks. There are benches here and there, and trees everywhere, while an assembly hall in the centre of the town, and a sort of marine parade along the river, and a band-stand and military concert every Wednesday evening during the summer, give to this charming suburb the air of a coast resort, lacking only the long, spidery, cast-iron pier, which Surbiton may yet build over the river into the Hampton Court grounds, where in spring the waters lie like a broad yellow ocean. When that pier is built, the charge for admission will doubtless be fourpence—double the Brighton price, for Surbiton is prone to attest its exclusiveness in a manner that appeals to the financial imagination. It is proud of the fact that its local rates are high. The Surbiton improvement committee being elected to attend to that matter, and that a first-class season ticket costs two pounds more than to any other place an equal distance from London.

The Hope residence was a large, square, yellow house, rather old-fashioned—“an imposing mansion” was the phrase that caught Mrs. Hope’s eye, in the Times, before she induced her husband to buy it—and it stood in extensive well-wooded grounds. Barney drove up to it in one of the open victorias which stand for hire at the station, a class of vehicle that adds to the sea-side appearance of Surbiton.

Telling the man to wait, he sprang up the steps and knocked, for there was nothing so modern as a bell at the front door. He found his mother in the drawingroom, and with her Lady Mary Fanshaw, who had driven over from her father’s country place in the Dorking direction. Lady Mary was a nice girl, rather shy, who blushed prettily when Barney came in, and had a great admiration for the young man’s hitherto unappreciated artistic talents, liking a painter better than a manufacturer. Her father, having ascertained definitely that Barney’s possession of a studio would in no way interfere with his ultimate coming into the proprietorship of the remunerative factory, made no objection to the acquaintanceship between the Hope family and his own.

“How-de-do, Lady Mary,” cried the young man, shaking hands with her. “How are you, mater?” he added to his mother, kissing her on the cheek.

“Barnard,” said the elder lady, with a touch of severity in her tone, “I did not expect to see you in Surbiton so soon. I thought you would attend to the business I spoke of.”

“It’s all been attended to, mater. I don’t let the grass grow under my feet—not that it’s a good day for grass either,” continued the young man cheerfully, warming his hands at the fire. “Beastly weather,” he remarked to Lady Mary, who assented to the terse statement.

“Yes, mater; my motto is, what is worth doing is worth doing quickly—speedily done is twice done—I think there’s a proverb to that effect, don’t you know. If there’s not, there ought to be.”

Lady Mary rose to leave the room, as mother and son had evidently something to discuss together.

“Sit down, child,” said Mrs. Hope. “It is nothing private. The men at the ‘works’ talk of going on strike. The manager is a stubborn, unyielding man, given even to browbeating his employers—”

“Bullying, I call it,” interrupted Barney, who now stood with his back to the fire, his feet well apart on the hearth-rug.

His mother went on calmly, without noticing her son’s interpolation—“So it seems to me that such a man, utterly lacking in tact, might not perhaps be mindful of the feelings of those under him. We all have our duties towards the working class, a fact many, alas! appear to forget.”

Lady Mary said softly, with her eyes cast down, that this was indeed the case.

“So you saw Mr. Sartwell, Barnard?”

“Oh, yes, I saw Sartwell, and had a talk with some of the men—with the—ah—ringleaders, don’t you know.”

“You mean the leaders, Barnard.”

“Yes, something of that sort. I don’t pretend to understand the bally workingman, you know, but there’s lots of sense in what they say. They know what they want.”

“Did you find Mr. Sartwell obdurate?”

“Oh, bless you, no, mater. Sartwell’s the most reasonable of men.”

“Indeed? It never occurred to me to place him in that category.”

“Don’t you make any mistake about Sartwell, mater; you won’t find him stand in your way at all. He’s perfectly willing to do whatever you want done. ‘Barney, my boy,’ he said to me, when I told him what you thought about this trouble, ‘Barney,’ says he, ‘after all is said and done, it’s the women’s affair more than ours.’”

“The women’s affair!” said Mrs. Hope, drawing herself severely up. “Do I understand you to mean, Barnard, that the man was referring to Mrs. Monkton and myself?”

“Well, mater, you see we were talking freely together as man to man—and—hang it all! you know, it is your affair and Mrs. Monkton’s, more than old Monkton’s and father’s. I don’t suppose they care so very much.”

Mrs. Hope slowly raised her glasses to her eyes and stared at her son, who was looking at the hearth-rug now, resting his weight on his toes and then coming down on his heels.

“I haven’t the least idea what you are talking about, Barnard.”

“I am talking about the proposed strike, mater; about the demands of the men.”

“Requests, my son. The men request an audience with Mr. Sartwell, and he refuses it, as if he were Prime Minister.”

“That’s just what I said to Sartwell. ‘Sartwell,’ said I, ‘you’re high-handed with the men.’ He admitted it, but held that if he had a conference with them, no good would be accomplished unless he acceeded to their dem——requests.”

“He could compromise—he could make some concessions and then everything would go smoothly again. He has no tact.”

“Quite so, quite so. But you see the men want only one thing, not several. They are perfectly logical about it—I had a talk with them and they were very much gratified to hear that you were on their side. There will be no trouble with them in future if Sartwell is only reasonable. They look at it like this: they work ten hours a day and get on an average a pound a week—or—ah—something like that—I forget the exact amount, although they had it there in shillings and pence. Now father and Monkton work four or five hours a day—not very hard either—and go to Switzerland in the summer and Algiers in the winter, yet they draw twenty thousand pounds a year each out of the business. This, the men claim, is unjust, and of course I quite agree with them. It’s outrageous, and I said so. Well, the men are prepared to do the most generous things. In order to compromise, they will allow the partners ten times what the real workers get; Monkton and father are each to draw five hundred pounds a year out of the business, and the forty thousand pounds is to be divided among the workers. I thought that it was an exceedingly liberal proposal, and I told them so.”

During this able, if mythical, exposition of the workmen’s views, Mrs. Hope gazed at her son with ever-increased amazement. When he had concluded, she was standing up, apparently speechless, with an ominous frown on her brow. Lady Mary looked with timid anxiety from one to the other. There seemed to be a sweet reasonableness in the young man’s argument, and yet something hopelessly wrong about the proposition.

“Five hundred pounds a year!—to me!” cried Mrs. Hope, at last.

“Well—to father, technically—same thing, of course.”

“Five hundred a year! Barnard, if anyone had told me an hour ago that you were a fool I—five hundred a year!—how can people exist on five hundred a year?”

Barney looked reproachfully at his mother. He was evidently hurt.

“That’s just the way Sartwell talks, and I suppose he thinks I’m a fool, too, merely because I’m trying to understand the labour problem. It seemed to me that if a workman with twelve children to support can live on fifty pounds a year, an elderly pair with but one child, and he about to make a fortune in painting, could get along on ten times that amount.”

“Oh, I’ve no patience with you, Barnard.”

“And then, Sartwell says, look at the capital invested——”

“Certainly. He is perfectly right, and anyone with a grain of sense would see that. There are thousands and thousands expended in the buildings and in the development of the business. The workmen never think of that—nor you either, it appears.”

“You see, mater, it’s out of my line. But what Sartwell said about investment made me think——”

“Think!” exclaimed his mother, with withering contempt.

“Yes,” continued Barney, placidly; “so I went to the workmen to see what they had to say about it. They said at once that the capital had been refunded over and over again. I went back to Sartwell to see if this were true, and it was true. Well, then——”

“What then?”

“Under the circumstances it seemed to me that the workmen had made a most magnanimous proposal. If a man would paint a picture for me which I could sell for five hundred pounds and he was content to take fifty for it and leave me the other four hundred and fifty, I should think him the most generous of men.”

“Stop talking nonsense, please. Is Sartwell going to receive the men?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then you must instantly go back to the city and tell him he is to do nothing of the sort.”

“But, mater—” protested the young man. He looked uneasily around the room and saw that Lady Mary had slipped away unperceived.

“Don’t talk. You’ve done enough harm already. Try and undo it.”

“But I say! It’s rather rough on me, mater. When you promised me a cheque for three hundred, I didn’t imagine I would have to see old Sartwell a second time and take back all I said. He would think me an ass then.”

“He thinks it already. But it doesn’t matter what he thinks. It is what he does that you have to deal with. You must see him at once and stop this nonsense about a conference.”

Barney shook his head dolefully.

“I don’t see how I can face him again, mater. I’d rather lose the three-hundred-pound cheque.”

“The cheque has nothing to do with the question. I should hope you are not attending to this for the three hundred pounds. But I’ll write you a cheque for five hundred, if that will satisfy you. Then I hope to hear no more about five hundred a year. Be consistent at least, Barnard.”

“Thanks, mater, I’ll try. And while you are writing out the cheque I’ll have a word with Lady Mary.”

“Very well,” said his mother, rising. The request did not seem to displease her.

When the young lady came in Barney was wonderfully bright after his long discussion.

“I was afraid I was in the way,” said Lady Mary, modestly, “I don’t know much about work-people.”

“The labour question,” said Barney, “is an exceedingly intricate one, and I’m afraid I don’t quite understand it in all its bearings myself; but it’s most interesting, I assure you—most interesting. I’m a labouring man myself, now. I’ve got my studio all fitted upland I work like a—let’s see, is it a Turk—or a nigger?”

“I think a nailer is the simile you want.”

“Very likely. I don’t suppose a Turk works if he can help it. Oh, by the way, Lady Mary, I have ‘At Homes’ at my studio every Tuesday from three till five. I wish you would come. Get your father to bring you. I want a real live Lord, don’t you know, to—well—to give tone to the gathering.”

Lady Mary laughed.

“I should like to go very much. I was never in a studio since I had my portrait painted. I’ll ask my father, but he doesn’t go out very often.”

“Oh, I know you can get him to come, so that’s a promise.”

In the hall his mother handed Barney a cheque.

“Be sure you go at once to Sartwell,” she said, “and see that you don’t bungle the business a second time.”

And yet the poor boy had merely pretended that her former orders had been carried out! Barney made no remark about the inconsistency of woman. He kissed her on both cheeks, as a dutiful son should do, and departed.