Oliver had a
considerable position in the House, and was, moreover, a rich man. Rich
men had not, so far, been common in the advanced section of the party.
Lankester, in whom the idealist and the wire-puller were shrewdly mixed,
was well aware that the reforms he desired could only be got by
extensive organization; and he knew precisely what the money cost of
getting them would be. Rich men, therefore, were the indispensable tools
of his ideas; and among his own group he who had never possessed a
farthing of his own apart from the earnings of his brain and pen was
generally set on to capture them.
Was that really why he had come down?--to make sure of this rich
Laodicean? Lankester fell into a reverie.
He was a man of curious gifts and double personality. It was generally
impossible to lure him, on any pretext, from the East End and the House
of Commons. He lived in a block of model dwellings in a street opening
out of the East India Dock Road, and his rooms, whenever he was at home,
were overrun by children from the neighboring tenements. To them he was
all gentleness and fun, while his command of invective in a public
meeting was little short of terrible.
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