Part 16 (1/2)

_Paul Ruttledge._ Yes, I used to like once to see all the faces looking up at me. But now all that is gone from me. Now I think it is enough to be a witness for the truth, and to think the thoughts I like. G.o.d will bring the people to me. He will make of my silence a great wind that will shatter the s.h.i.+ps of the world.

_Colman._ That is all very well, but the people are not coming.

_Aloysius._ And more than that, they are driving us away from their doors now, Paul.

_Charlie Ward._ The way they do to us. But Paul was not born on the roads. [_Lights his pipe._

_Colman._ It's no use stopping waiting for a wind; if we have anything to say that's worth the people listening to, we must bring them to hear it one way or another. Now, it is what I was saying to Aloysius, we must begin teaching them to make things, they never had the chance of any instruction of the sort here.

_Paul Ruttledge._ To make things? This sort of things? [_Takes the half-made basket from_ COLMAN.

_Colman._ Those and other things, we got a good training in the old days. And we'll get a grant from the Technical Board. The Board pays up to four hundred pounds to some of its instructors.

_Paul Ruttledge._ And then?

_Aloysius._ Oh, then we'll sell all the things we make. I'm sure we'll get a market for them.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Oh, I understand; you will sell them. And what about the dividing of the money? You will need to make laws about that.

_Colman._ Of course; we will have to make rules, and to pay according to work.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Oh, we will grow quite rich in time. What are we to do then? we can't go on living in this ruin?

_Colman._ Of course not. We'll build workshops and houses for those who come to work from a distance, good houses, slated, not thatched.

_Paul Ruttledge._ [_Turning to_ ALOYSIUS _and_ CHARLIE WARD.] Yes, you see his plan. To gather the people together, to build houses for them; to make them rich too, and to keep their money safe. And the Kingdom of G.o.d too? What about that?

_Colman._ Oh, I'm just coming to that. They will think so much more of our teaching when we have got them under our influence by other things.

Of course we will teach them their meditations, and give them a regular religious life. We must settle out some little place for them to pray in--there's a high gable over there where we could hang a bell----

_Paul Ruttledge._ Oh yes, I understand. You would weave them together like this [_weaves the osiers in and out_], you would add one thing to another, laws and money and church and bells, till you had got everything back again that you have escaped from. But it is my business to tear things asunder like this [_tears pieces from the basket_], and this, and this----

_Aloysius._ I told him you'd never agree to it. He ought to have known that himself.

_Colman._ We must have something to offer the people.

_Paul Ruttledge._ You say that because you got nothing to-day. Aloysius has got nothing in his sack. [_Taking sack and turning it upside down._]

It is quite empty. Every religious teacher before me has offered something to his followers, but I offer them nothing. [_Plunging his arm down into the sack._] My sack is quite empty. I will never dip my hand into nature's full sack of illusions; I am tired of that old conjuring bag. [_He walks up and down muttering._

_Charlie Ward._ [_To_ COLMAN.] You may as well give up trying to settle him down to anything. He was a tinker once, and he'll be a tinker always; he has got the wandering into his blood. Will you come back to the roads, Paul, to your old friends and to Sabina?

_Paul Ruttledge._ [_Sitting down beside him._] Ah, my old friends, they were very kind to me; but these friends too are very kind to me.

_Charlie Ward._ Well, come and see them anyway; they'll be glad to see you, those that are left of us.

_Paul Ruttledge._ Those that are left of you? Where are the others?

_Charlie Ward._ Some are dead, and some are jailed, and some are on the roads here and there. Sabina is with us always, and Johneen is a great hand with the tools now, but Tommy the Song----