Volume I Part 26 (1/2)
”Let's walk on, then,” said George.
And they walked past the gate of Ferth, towards the railway-station, which was some two miles off.
About an hour later the two men returned along the same road. Both had an air of tension; both were rather pale.
”Well, it comes to this,” said George, as he stopped beside his own gate, ”you believe our case--the badness of trade, the disappearance of profits, pressure of contracts, and all the rest of it--and you still refuse on your part to bear the smallest fraction of the burden? You will claim all you can get in good times--you will give back nothing in bad?”
”That is so,” said Burrows, deliberately; ”that is so, _precisely_. We will take no risks; we give our labour and in return the workman must live. Make the consumer pay, or pay yourselves out of your good years”--he turned imperceptibly towards the barrack-like house on the hill. ”We don't care a ha'porth which it is!--only don't you come on the man who risks his life, and works like a galley-slave five days a week for a pittance of five-and-twenty s.h.i.+llings, or thereabouts, to pay--for he _won't_. He's tired of it. Not till you starve him into it, at any rate!”
George laughed.
”One of the best men in the village has been giving me his opinion this afternoon that there isn't a man in that place”--he pointed to it--”that couldn't live, and live well--aye, and take the masters' terms to-morrow--but for the drink!”
His keen look ran over Burrows from head to foot.
”And I know who _that_ is,” said Burrows, with a sneer. ”Well, I can tell you what the rest of the men in that place think, and it's this: that the man in that village who _doesn't_ drink is a mean skunk, who's betraying his own flesh and blood to the capitalists! Oh! you may preach at us till you're black in the face, but drink we _shall_ till we get the control of our own labour. For, look here! Directly we cease to drink--directly we become good boys on your precious terms--the standard of life falls, down come wages, and _you_ sweep off our beer-money to spend on your champagne. Thank you, Sir George! but we're not such fools as we look--and that don't suit us! Good-day to you.”
And he haughtily touched his hat in response to George's movement, and walked quickly away.
George slowly mounted his own hill. The chequered April day was declining, and the dipping sun was flooding the western plain with quiet light. Rooks were circling round the hill, filling the air with long-drawn sound. A cuckoo was calling on a tree near at hand, and the evening was charged with spring scents--scents of leaf and gra.s.s, of earth and rain. Below, in an oak copse across the road, a stream rushed; and from a distance came the familiar rattle and thud of the pits.
George stood still a moment under a ragged group of Scotch firs--one of the few things at Ferth that he loved--and gazed across the Ches.h.i.+re border to the distant lines of Welsh hills. The excitement of his talk with Burrows was subsiding, leaving behind it the obstinate resolve of the natural man. He should tell his uncles there was nothing for it but to fight it out. Some blood must be let; somebody must be master.
What poor limited fools, after all, were the best of the working men--how incapable of working out any serious problem, of looking beyond their own noses and the next meal! Was he to spend his life in chronic battle with them--a set of semi-civilised barbarians--his countrymen in nothing but the name? And for what cause--to what cry? That he might defend against the toilers of this wide valley a certain elegant house in Brook Street, and find the means to go on paying his mother's debts?--such debts as he carried the evidence of, at that moment, in his pocket.
Suddenly there swept over his mind with p.r.i.c.king force the thought of Mary Batchelor at her door, blind with weeping and pain--of the poor boy, dead in his prime. Did those two figures stand for the _realities_ at the base of things--the common labours, affections, agonies, which uphold the world?
His own life looked somehow poor and mean to him as he turned back to it.
The Socialist of course--Burrows--would say that he and Letty and his mother were merely living, and dressing, and enjoying themselves, paying butlers, and starting carriages out of the labour and pain of others--that Jamie Batchelor and his like risked and brutalised their strong young lives that Lady Tressady and her like might ”jig and amble”
through theirs.
Pure ignorant fanaticism, no doubt! But he was not so ready as usual to shelter himself under the big words of controversy. Fontenoy's favourite arguments had momentarily no savour for a kind of moral nausea.
”I begin to see it was a 'cursed spite' that drove me into the business at all,” he said to himself, as he stood under the trees.
What he was really suffering from was an impatience of new conditions--perhaps surprise that he was not more equal to them. Till his return home--till now, almost--he had been an employer and a coal-owner by proxy. Other people had worked for him, had solved his problems for him. Then a transient impulse had driven him home--made him accept Fontenoy's offer--worse luck!--at least, Letty apart! The hopefulness and elation about himself, his new activities, and his Parliamentary prospects, that had been his predominant mood in London seemed to him at this moment of depression mere folly. What he really felt, he declared to himself, was a sort of cowardly shrinking from life and its tests--the recognition that at bottom he was a weakling, without faiths, without true ident.i.ty.
Then the quick thought-process, as it flowed on, told him that there are two things that protect men of his stamp from their own lack of moral stamina: perpetual change of scene, that turns the world into a spectacle--and love. He thought with hunger of his travel-years; holding away from him, as it were, for a moment the thought of his marriage.
But only for a moment. It was but a few weeks since a woman's life had given itself wholly into his hands. He was still thrilling under the emotion and astonishment of it. Tender, melting thoughts flowed upon him.
His little Letty! Had he ever thought her perfect, free from natural covetousness and weaknesses? What folly! _He_ to ask for the grand style in character!
He looked at his watch. How long he had left her! Let him hurry, and make his peace.
However, just as he was turning, his attention was caught by something that was pa.s.sing on the opposite hillside. The light from the west was s.h.i.+ning full on a white cottage with a sloping garden. The cottage belonged to the Wesleyan minister of the place, and had been rented by Burrows for the last six months. And just as George was turning away he saw Burrows come out of the door with a burden--a child, or a woman little larger than a child--in his arms. He carried her to an armchair which had been placed on the little gra.s.s-plat. The figure was almost lost in the chair, and sat motionless while Burrows brought cus.h.i.+ons and a stool. Then a baby came to play on the gra.s.s, and Burrows hung over the back of the chair, bending so as to talk to the person in it.
”Dying?” said George to himself. ”Poor devil! he must hate something.”