The Frobishers/Chapter 29

"HE WENT AWAY SORROWFUL, HAVING GREAT POSSESSIONS"

"I will take you," said Joan.

If the woman would have thanked she could not, owing to an interruption. Hector Beaudessart entered, and the woman, with tact, withdrew to collect her goods and bring them to No. 16.

"What," exclaimed Joan, "you here! And not with your mother!"

"I cannot leave you without another attempt to induce you to come to Pendabury. Joan, come with me. I want you. I feel that I cannot do without you. You do not know how I love you. You fill all my heart and mind."

"You are my dear cousin, Hector," answered Joan, with a tremor of her lip and a quiver in her voice. "I feel your kindness, but&mdash;allow me to be frank with you&mdash;I am sure that we could not be happy together, so long as our views of what is before us are so divergent. You look forward to a life without care, full of harmless pleasures&mdash;hunting, shooting, fishing, filling your greenhouses with choice exotics, reading an occasional novel, and so passing your existence&mdash;perhaps half a century&mdash;without blemish. I had no other idea for my future till my father died, and then I was brought face to face with some stern actualities, of which I may have heard, but to which I gave no heed. Look at Pendabury, Hector, with all its loveliness and its luxury, enjoyed by not half a dozen persons; then turn your eyes on this pottery district, with its teeming thousands pent up in sordid streets and narrow habitations under a dingy sky, and with nothing to look on to make life lovely. Do you think this is just?"

"My dear cousin, you have become a socialist?"

"No, I have not. Socialism is bred of a realisation of the agonies of life resultant from modern civilisation, which converts men and women not into machines, but into parts, members, of a machine which takes the young of both sexes, kills all initiative out of them, and mechanises them till it has used them up, body, mind, and soul, and then casts them aside as so much refuse. The socialist sees all this, it grieves him to the heart, and he proposes desperate remedies, crude and impracticable. He has seen no more than one side of every question, and he would undo all that centuries have done to build up the great fabric of European greatness. The socialist's heart aches, and he cries out at the suffering which everywhere surrounds him; but his suggested remedies would make existence insufferable, and, if carried out, could not last a generation. I believe in no isms. Every ism is a half truth. May I tell you my thoughts? My brain has been working while my heart has been quivering since I came here, and I am full of ideas&mdash;whether practicable or not I cannot say."

"Speak your mind and open your heart, Joan. In me you will find a ready listener."

"Well, Hector, there are thousands upon thousands in the manufacturing portions of England that are being used as blind tools for the production of certain indispensable articles&mdash;indispensable to our modern civilisation, and which the world will never do without. But the manufacture is stunting to the faculties of mind and soul, where not injurious to the body. It is destructive of all true enjoyment of life, and I take it God created every creature to be happy. Many of the workers are aware of this, and resent it; others jog on, crushed by a blind fatalism that forbids hope of escape. Possibly, some day, the masses may burst forth in revolt against the system, as the Sicilian slaves rose in the Servile war of Italy. They may be put down, as were the serfs of old, decimated and enchained afresh. They may compass their emancipation, and attempt to realise their wild dreams and carry out their undigested plans, and in so doing will wreck modern civilisation and destroy culture past recovery, and leave Europe open to invasion by some nation that advances automatically stage by stage and not by wholesale revolution. It appears to me that we have in England, in our body of operatives, men and women, a magnificent material, incomparably superior to any that exists elsewhere on the face of the earth. It possesses a healthy heart, full of honesty, generosity of feeling, heroic perseverance, and a touching tenderness of soul. But the class has its defects, which sadly mar its greatness. It lacks self-restraint. Its members act upon impulse, sometimes blind, sometimes intelligent. The father drinks himself drunk because he cannot restrain himself when in company with his mates; the wife scolds on the smallest provocation, and never knows when to bridle her nagging tongue, because her temper is under no control. The children cast aside their obligations to their parents when these latter attempt to cross their wills. The father and mother hold their offspring in check, not by example but by the stick, and when the children grow beyond the dread of a beating they no longer respect their parents. I have heard a mother say of her daughter, 'If she goes wrong it won't be for want of my wopping her'&mdash;that is about typical of the way in which a multitude of the working class regard education. Where there is not undue severity there is over-indulgence, and the young grow up under either system self-willed and undisciplined. Of course there are exceptions, but exceptions prove the rule." Joan paused a moment, then she went on: "Now we have in our upper classes, in our country parsonages and manor houses, in town mansion and suburban villa, among our gentry generally, the very finest material in the world for infusing into the working classes that very element which it lacks. Every gentleman's house, great or small, is a reservoir of healthy, health-giving self-control. Look at our young men and girls of the upper classes&mdash;where can you find their equals? Pure-minded, high-principled, full of courage and sense of honour and fair play. The whole fabric of culture among the classes is based on self-discipline. From earliest childhood boy and girl have it impressed on them that to be gentlemen and ladies they must keep themselves under restraint. It begins before they learn A B C. Courtesy is impressed on the very babe when taught to say 'Ta!' on receiving a bit of cake. The whole of our public school excellence depends on the inculcation of self-government. Among the classes, this teaching of self-control may not always be due to high principle; it may be merely owing to the fact that it is demanded by cultured society, and that such as do not possess it are kicked out. To what do our young men devote themselves? The youth born with a gold spoon in his mouth idles life away usually in harmless amusements, in some cases he sinks into dissipation. Of those without gold or silver spoons, most go to the Colonies, to ranches, or into the army or navy, and do good work wherever they go. It is they who have made the name of an Englishman proverbial with truth, justice, and humanity. Why does not some of this wholesome blood come down here&mdash;come and flow in these dark places of our native land?"

"What, Joan! have our gentlemen turn mechanics, and work in mine and factory?"

"Yes, Hector, why not? It will repay them a thousand times any little shock to old habits, any abandonment of old comforts. They will learn to know their brothers who toil that others may enjoy. The true huntsman cares for his hound and horse, and sees that they are well groomed, well housed, and well fed. The true gentleman should see that his fellow-men, who make his boots and weave the cloth of his coat, who grind his knives, turn his gun, make his cups and plates, his wineglasses and decanters, are treated as human beings and cared for as living souls."

"But, Joan, what can we do? How can we alter the whole condition of manufacturing life?"

"You can do a great deal by going among the people, living with them, working side by side with them. You would get to know, esteem, ay, and reverence them, the workers; and the workers would derive from you some of that high culture, that self-discipline, which has become, by a process that has gone on for centuries, the groundwork and the essence of high-class life."

"You think, Joan, that we shall see an upheaval of the working classes, and that the only way to stave this off is for us to fuse ourselves with them?"

Joan flushed crimson.

"Hector!" she said. "I would not for the world have you or any gentleman go down among the artisans and work, merely to save your class. All work that is worth account, all work that will lead to results that will be productive and last, must spring from a better motive than that&mdash;the love of God and of our fellow-men&mdash;our brothers and sisters, Hector, never forget that&mdash;our poor, toiling, overworked, ill-used brothers and sisters. Dear Sibyll said to me, 'I cannot bear to be at Pendabury and think of you here.' That is what I would have every man born with a gold or silver spoon in his mouth say, 'I cannot bear to live in ease, idleness, and luxury, and to have my poor brothers and sisters lapping up broth, like a dog.'"

"My dear cousin&mdash;you strain a case. I have learned, for I have been at some trouble to make inquiries, that the men who have the hardest work get the best pay. And as to lapping up their broth&mdash;why, I have been assured that some of the colliers and artisans, when flush of money, will indulge in champagne, eat their oysters when at three shillings a dozen, and buy strawberries at a penny apiece."

"That may be so. But why? Because they know not how else to get rid of their money. They are brutalised. No higher way of enjoyment has been shown them than that of their animal appetites. Pay them eight, ten, fifteen shillings a day they will squander it on luxuries, on the best of tipples, and the best tobaccos, and the daintiest of meat, and what they cannot spend, this they will throw away in bets. They have not been shown that man does not live only on the meat that perishes. That is precisely why I want some of you young men, some with fine prospects and some without, but with the reserve fund of your early education, you young men bred in an atmosphere of fine culture, to come among these people and show them the higher way. You are ready enough to endure privation and roughness for a bit of shooting in Central Africa or in the Rocky Mountains, why not for some higher purpose than the killing of wild beasts? Mind you, such an act of self-sacrifice will bring to you enormous compensations, if you are what I hold you to be. You will learn to know human nature, you will meet with reward, and, I doubt not, win love&mdash;only, for God's sake, do not undertake it merely to save your class."

"But, Joan, there are the clergy and doctors, who move among them, and there are Sisters of Mercy and district visitors as well. Surely they fulfil your requirements."

"No, they do not, for they are not of the people. Their professions, their very dress, differentiate them. If you want to raise the masses, and at the same time to steep yourself in a knowledge of human nature, and of the needs and desires of Lazarus, you must strip off your purple and lie down at his side. Hector! Do you recall some careless words that fell from you, the very first time we met, and which formed almost your first sentence? You said to me, 'Wherever an English gentleman sees need, perplexity, distress, thither he flies with an eager heart to assist.' The great Master of all, who worked the transformation of society, He did not become a high priest or a ruler of the Sanhedrim when He sought man's regeneration; but He made Himself of no reputation, and took on Him the form of a servant. And now, you must excuse me. I have little Tom Treddlehoyle to look after, and to relieve Cissie. I must go, but I trust I have made clear to you why I cannot accept your offer. We could not be happy together, for we look at life with different eyes."

She put out her hand to him, and he took it but turned his head away. Then she departed.

Against the wall hung a picture. It was an engraving from the painting by Watts of the young man who went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. A wonderful picture, telling so deep a story so simply.

Hector, left alone, walked across the room and stationed himself before this picture. He stood there immovable for full ten minutes, and his breath came in long inhalations.

He heard Joan speaking in a cheery voice to the sick lad upstairs. He heard Cissie laughing as she descended the steps.

Then he heaved a sigh, and went away sorrowful.