Volume I Part 32 (2/2)

”Ah! well,”--she shrugged her shoulders with a sigh,--”don't let's talk of it. It's all too pressing--and sore--and hot. And to think of the weeks that are just coming on!”

George, hanging over the parapet beside her, felt reply a little awkward, and said nothing. For a minute or two the night made itself heard, the gentle slipping of the river, the fitful breathings from the trees. A swan pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed below them, and an owl called from the distant woods.

Presently Marcella lifted a white finger and pointed to the house.

”One wouldn't want a better parable,” she said. ”It's like the State as you see it--magnificent, inspiring, a thing of pomp and dignity. But we women, who have to drive and keep going a house like that--_we_ know what it all rests upon. It rests upon a few tired kitchen-maids and boot-boys and scullery-girls, hurrying, panting creatures, whom a guest never sees, who really run it all. I know, for I have tried to unearth them, to organise them, to make sure that no one was fainting while we were feasting. But it is incredibly hard; half the human race believes itself born to make things easy for the other half. It comes natural to them to ache and toil while we sit in easy chairs. What they resent is that we should try to change it.”

”Goodness!” said George, pulling at his moustaches. ”I don't recognise my own experience of the ordinary domestic polity in that summary.”

”I daresay. You have to do with the upper servant, who is always a greater tyrant than his master,” she retorted, her voice expressing a curious medley of laughter and feeling. ”I am speaking of the people that are not seen, like the tailoress and s.h.i.+rtmaker, in your drum-and-trumpet State.”

”Well, you may be right,” said George, drily. ”But I confess--if I may be quite frank--that I don't altogether trust you to judge. I want at least, before I strike the balance between my Dalhousie and your tailoress, to hear what those people have to say who have not crippled their minds--by pity!”

”Pity!” she said, her lip trembling in spite of herself. ”Pity!--you count pity a disease?”

”As you--and others--practise it,” he replied coolly, turning round upon her. ”It is no good; the world can't be run by pity. At least, living always seems to me a great brutal, rus.h.i.+ng, rough-and-tumble business, which has to be carried on whether we like it or no. To be too careful, too gingerly over the separate life, brings it all to a standstill.

Meddle too much, and the Demiurge who set the machine going turns sulky and stops working. Then the nation goes to pieces--till some strong ruffian without a scruple puts it together again.”

”What do you mean by the Demiurge?”

He laughed.

”Why do you make me explain my flights? Well, I suppose, the natural daimonic power in things, which keeps them going and set them off; which is not us, or like us, and cares nothing for us.”

His light voice developed a sudden energy during his little speech.

”Ah!” said Marcella, wistfully. ”Yes, if one thought that, I could understand. But, even so, if the power behind things cares nothing for us, I should only regard it as challenging us to care more for each other. Do you mind my asking you a few plain questions? Do you know anything personally of the London poor? I mean, have you any real friends among them, whose lives you know?”

”Well, I sit with Fontenoy while he receives deputations from all those tailoresses and s.h.i.+rtmakers and fur-sewers that _you_ want to put in order. The hara.s.sed widow streams through his room perpetually--wailing to be let alone!”

Marcella made a sound of amused scorn.

”Oh! you think that nothing,” said George, indignant. ”I vow I could draw every type of widow that London contains--I know them intimately.”

She shook her head.

”I give up London. Then, in the North, aren't you a coal-owner? Do you know your miners?”

”Yes, and I detest them!” said George, shortly; ”pig-headed brutes! They will be on strike next month, and I shall be defrauded of my lawful income till their lords.h.i.+ps choose to go back. Pity _me_, if you please--not them!”

”So I do,” she said with spirit--”if you hate the men by whom you live!”

There was silence. Then suddenly George said, in another tone:

”But sometimes, I don't deny, the beggars wring it out of one--your pity.

I saw a mother last week--Suppose we stroll on a little. I want to see how the river gets out of the wood.”

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