第70章

On Sunday Clifford wanted to go into the wood.It was a lovely morning,the pear-blossom and plum had suddenly appeared in the world in a wonder of white here and there.

It was cruel for Clifford,while the world bloomed,to have to be helped from chair to bath-chair.But he had forgotten,and even seemed to have a certain conceit of himself in his lameness.Connie still suffered,having to lift his inert legs into place.Mrs Bolton did it now,or Field.

She waited for him at the top of the drive,at the edge of the screen of beeches.His chair came puffing along with a sort of valetudinarian slow importance.As he joined his wife he said:

'Sir Clifford on his roaming steed!'

'Snorting,at least!'she laughed.

He stopped and looked round at the facade of the long,low old brown house.

'Wragby doesn't wink an eyelid!'he said.'But then why should it!Iride upon the achievements of the mind of man,and that beats a horse.'

'I suppose it does.And the souls in Plato riding up to heaven in a two-horse chariot would go in a Ford car now,'she said.

'Or a Rolls-Royce:Plato was an aristocrat!'

'Quite!No more black horse to thrash and maltreat.Plato never thought we'd go one better than his black steed and his white steed,and have no steeds at all,only an engine!'

'Only an engine and gas!'said Clifford.

'I hope I can have some repairs done to the old place next year.I think I shall have about a thousand to spare for that:but work costs so much!'

he added.

'Oh,good!'said Connie.'If only there aren't more strikes!'

'What would be the use of their striking again!Merely ruin the industry,what's left of it:and surely the owls are beginning to see it!'

'Perhaps they don't mind ruining the industry,'said Connie.

'Ah,don't talk like a woman!The industry fills their bellies,even if it can't keep their pockets quite so flush,'he said,using turns of speech that oddly had a twang of Mrs Bolton.

'But didn't you say the other day that you were a conservative-anarchist,'

she asked innocently.

'And did you understand what I meant?'he retorted.'All I meant is,people can be what they like and feel what they like and do what they like,strictly privately,so long as they keep the form of life intact,and the apparatus.'

Connie walked on in silence a few paces.Then she said,obstinately:

'It sounds like saying an egg may go as addled as it likes,so long as it keeps its shell on whole.But addled eggs do break of themselves.'

'I don't think people are eggs,'he said.'Not even angels'eggs,my dear little evangelist.'

He was in rather high feather this bright morning.The larks were trilling away over the park,the distant pit in the hollow was fuming silent steam.

It was almost like old days,before the war.Connie didn't really want to argue.But then she did not really want to go to the wood with Clifford either.So she walked beside his chair in a certain obstinacy of spirit.

'No,'he said.'There will be no more strikes,it.The thing is properly managed.'

'Why not?'

'Because strikes will be made as good as impossible.'

'But will the men let you?'she asked.

'We shan't ask them.We shall do it while they aren't looking:for their own good,to save the industry.'

'For your own good too,'she said.

'Naturally!For the good of everybody.But for their good even more than mine.I can live without the pits.They can't.They'll starve if there are no pits.I've got other provision.'

They looked up the shallow valley at the mine,and beyond it,at the black-lidded houses of Tevershall crawling like some serpent up the hill.

From the old brown church the bells were ringing:Sunday,Sunday,Sunday!

'But will the men let you dictate terms?'she said.'My dear,they will have to:if one does it gently.'

'But mightn't there be a mutual understanding?'

'Absolutely:when they realize that the industry comes before the individual.'

'But must you own the industry?'she said.

'I don't.But to the extent I do own it,yes,most decidedly.The ownership of property has now become a religious question:as it has been since Jesus and St Francis.The point is not :take all thou hast and give to the poor,but use all thou hast to encourage the industry and give work to the poor.It's the only way to feed all the mouths and clothe all the bodies.Giving away all we have to the poor spells starvation for the poor just as much as for us.And universal starvation is no high aim.Even general poverty is no lovely thing.Poverty is ugly.'

'But the disparity?'

'That is fate.Why is the star Jupiter bigger than the star Neptune?

You can't start altering the make-up of things!'

'But when this envy and jealousy and discontent has once started,'she began.

'Do,your best to stop it.Somebody's got to be boss of the show.'

'But who is boss of the show?'she asked.

'The men who own and run the industries.'

There was a long silence.

'It seems to me they're a bad boss,'she said.

'Then you suggest what they should do.'

'They don't take their boss-ship seriously enough,'she said.

'They take it far more seriously than you take your ladyship,'he said.

'That's thrust upon me.I don't really want it,'she blurted out.He stopped the chair and looked at her.

'Who's shirking their responsibility now!'he said.'Who is trying to get away now from the responsibility of their own boss-ship,as you call it?'

'But I don't want any boss-ship,'she protested.

'Ah!But that is funk.You've got it:fated to it.And you should live up to it.Who has given the colliers all they have that's worth having:

all their political liberty,and their education,such as it is,their sanitation,their health-conditions,their books,their music,everything.

Who has given it them?Have colliers given it to colliers?No!All the Wragbys and Shipleys in England have given their part,and must go on giving.

There's your responsibility.'

Connie listened,and flushed very red.