Part 14 (2/2)

”But wasn't that the Lord's idea,” he said; ”when He gave Eve to Adam to be his helpmeet?”

”Yes, that was all right,” she answered. ”He fas.h.i.+oned Eve for Adam and saw that Adam got her. The ideal marriage might have been the ideal solution. If the Lord had intended that, he should have kept the match- making in His own hands: not have left it to man. Somewhere in Athens there must have been the helpmeet G.o.d had made for Socrates. When they met, it was Xanthippe that she kissed.”

A servant brought the coffee and went out again. Her father lighted a cigar and handed her the cigarettes.

”Will it shock you, Dad?” she asked.

”Rather late in the day for you to worry yourself about that, isn't it?”

he answered with a smile.

He struck a match and held it for her. Joan sat with her elbows on the table and smoked in silence. She was thinking.

Why had he never ”brought her up,” never exacted obedience from her, never even tried to influence her? It could not have been mere weakness.

She stole a sidelong glance at the tired, lined face with its steel-blue eyes. She had never seen them other than calm, but they must have been able to flash. Why had he always been so just and kind and patient with her? Why had he never scolded her and bullied her and teased her? Why had he let her go away, leaving him lonely in his empty, voiceless house?

Why had he never made any claim upon her? The idea came to her as an inspiration. At least, it would ease her conscience. ”Why don't you let Arthur live here,” she said, ”instead of going back to his lodgings? It would be company for you.”

He did not answer for some time. She had begun to wonder if he had heard.

”What do you think of him?” he said, without looking at her.

”Oh, he's quite a nice lad,” she answered.

It was some while again before he spoke. ”He will be the last of the Allways,” he said. ”I should like to think of the name being continued; and he's a good business man, in spite of his dreaminess. Perhaps he would get on better with the men.”

She seized at the chance of changing the subject.

”It was a foolish notion,” she said, ”that of the Manchester school: that men and women could be treated as mere figures in a sum.”

To her surprise, he agreed with her. ”The feudal system had a fine idea in it,” he said, ”if it had been honestly carried out. A master should be the friend, the helper of his men. They should be one family.”

She looked at him a little incredulously, remembering the bitter periods of strikes and lock-outs.

”Did you ever try, Dad?” she asked.

”Oh, yes,” he answered. ”But I tried the wrong way.” ”The right way might be found,” he added, ”by the right man, and woman.”

She felt that he was watching her through his half-closed eyes. ”There are those cottages,” he continued, ”just before you come to the bridge.

They might be repaired and a club house added. The idea is catching on, they tell me. Garden villages, they call them now. It gets the men and women away from the dirty streets; and gives the children a chance.”

She knew the place. A sad group of dilapidated little houses forming three sides of a paved quadrangle, with a shattered fountain and withered trees in the centre. Ever since she could remember, they had stood there empty, ghostly, with creaking doors and broken windows, their gardens overgrown with weeds.

”Are they yours?” she asked. She had never connected them with the works, some half a mile away. Though had she been curious, she might have learnt that they were known as ”Allway's Folly.”

”Your mother's,” he answered. ”I built them the year I came back from America and gave them to her. I thought it would interest her. Perhaps it would, if I had left her to her own ways.”

”Why didn't they want them?” she asked.

<script>