"We refuse your terms, your lordship," said the leader of the
deputation.
Outside the manager's office where the meeting of delegates was being
held, the works of the Biggie factory lay deserted in the autumn
sunlight. There was no sign of harvest there for man or beast. The
huge engines seemed asleep, the tall factory chimney showed a cenotaph
proclaiming a dead life. Here and there among the rows of workmen's
houses were knots of men despondently expectant, a shrill woman or two
voiced her wrongs aggressively, the children in the gutter looked
dirty, unkempt, pale.
Lord Blackborough stared steadily at the speaker. "Then you hold that
I am bound to start these works again, despite the fact that they have
been running at a loss for some years; and you hold also that I am
bound to give you a rise in wages?"
"The men in these works cannot accept a less wage than that
received in others which, excuse me, being better managed, pay their
owners well--far too well," replied Mr. Green. He was a singularly
able-looking man, curiously taut and trim in words, speech, manner,
apparently in soul.
"Then I am not only to receive no return on my capital, but I am to
spend other capital in paying you, until Germany ceases to make our
goods cheaper than we can. Is this fair?" asked Lord Blackborough.
"Quite fair, your lordship," replied the leader; "if only because the
capital you own has been wrung unjustly from us--from labour."
"All capital must be, as you call it, 'wrung' from labour. It does not
create itself. I offer you this capital at a very low rate of
interest, one and a half per cent. If labour cannot hope to make even
so much, over and above livelihood, that seems an end to any
enlargement of trade."
There was a pause; then Lord Blackborough smiled. "I cannot complain
if the figures before you make you hesitate; for to me they are
convincing. Let us, therefore, pass over that offer. My next is one to
re-open the works, but on a different system. An eight-hours' day,
piecework, and no limitations of trades-unions or any other
organisation regarding the out-run of any individual."
A faint stir could be heard amongst some of the older men; but Mr.
Green still stood spokesman.
"That is absolutely out of the question, your lordship," he said
decisively; "we are all of us trades-union men. Labour must reserve to
itself the right to legislate for the general good of the labourer; if
it does not, who will? No one!" His tone grew bitter. "We have no
right to accept a form of payment which will not give a living wage
to----"
"To the weakest, to the bad workmen, the laziest, the most drunken,"
put in Lord Blackborough. "Personally, I do not see any reason at all
why that class of worker should continue to live. You only have to
level down to them. But I am not here to combat your views, only to
receive your ultimatum. You refuse?"
Mr. Green brought his hand down on the table with dramatic force.
"In the name of Labour we refuse the unjust, iniquitous----"
"Thank you," said Lord Blackborough urbanely, then turned to the
secretary. "Mr. Woods! Have you those documents ready?"
"They are here, your lordship." Ned Blackborough threw off his
gravity, and holding the papers given him in his hand, smiled round
the company, which, as if moved thereto by some magic in his manner,
rose also. Mr. Green looked from one to the other. "What had this
tyrannical employer of labour up his sleeve?
"Men," said the employer of labour frankly, "I am going to pay you
with these," he waved the papers, "for listening to me for five
minutes. Labour, they say, is dissociating itself from Capital,
Capital from Labour. That may be so. I have nothing to do with that.
Personally I have money. I have no work. I don't want money and I do
want work. That is my position.
"But what I do see here in this England of ours is that labour is
dissociating itself from work. It is labouring all day, and bringing
forth--as little as it can! It claims the right to do this little.
Well! let it if it likes! But why should it deny to any man the right
to work at the rate of which he was born physically capable? Why
should it make a swift worker take eight hours to do what he can do in
four? If I were to put any one of you on oath, you would admit that it
is far harder work to dawdle through eight hours than to work through
eight hours. I've seen many bricklayers, painters, plasterers lately
hard put to it how to eke out the time, and yet preserve an air of
occupation, and I have no doubt you have most of you felt this. Now,
think what this means. It is labour, _hard labour!_ this, the
enslavement of free work. Neither body nor mind gain full exercise,
muscles and brain decay, the type goes down. But this is the system of
the day; we begin it in school, where we let children dawdle eleven
years over what they ought to learn in half the time. It greets the
boy in his first workshop--it dogs his footsteps everywhere, turning
work into labour. Work is--is play! Labour is--is the Devil! What
beats me is this. Why, instead of slaving and dawdling, shouldn't the
good workman, classed together, of course, be allowed to work, say,
four hours, and then go their way? It would give us some chance of
breeding a type of Englishman that is now fast dying out, that soon
must pass away altogether. Men! don't be fools! Men! don't be slaves.
"That is all I have to say. Now for the payment. This is a free deed
of gift of these works, made out, with a few necessary legal
restrictions, in the name of you delegates, to be held in trust for
the workers therein, and this is a cheque for the capital necessary to
work it for six months. I have already signed both. I was so certain,
you see, that your friend and leader, Mr. Green, would reject my other
very reasonable proposals that I came prepared. Will you take them,
Mr. Green? My solicitor is here, and you can arrange with him: my part
is done!"
"Am I to understand----" almost gasped Mr. Green.
Lord Blackborough's face sharpened to the keenest edge of contempt.
"Yes! You are to understand, sir, that, tired of being abused up hill
and down dale in your organs for behaving like a sensible man, I am
behaving like a fool. Well, men! Labour and Capital have for once met
and kissed each other. See that they don't fall out again!"
Mr. Green stood with the papers in his hand for a second then he flung
them on the table.
"You fling our own money to us as if we were dogs!" he began hotly.
"Dogs!" echoed Ned Blackborough in the same tone. "I would far liefer
give it to the dogs than to you--you men who will have the handling of
it. It is you who starved those poor children, not I. Their fathers
could keep them in comfort for five-and-twenty shillings a week; you
made them stand for out six-and-twenty--as if it mattered--as if
money, physical comfort, even freedom, counted for anything in a man's
search for happiness. That----." He pulled himself up quivering,
feeling the uselessness of speech. "Come, Woods!" he said, "it is time
I left this Temple of Mammon! Good-day, gentlemen."
"That is a clear waste of a hundred thousand pounds," mourned Mr.
Woods as they crossed the courtyard; "you can't get beyond human
nature, my lord. Each man will naturally go for that gold, the
cleverest of them will get it, and so capital will re-arise out of its
own ashes. You must begin further down--with the children."
"Set up a school, eh? Woods, in which they would be taught the
truth--that work and play are merely interchangeable terms for
occupation. Hullo! What's up?"
A small crowd of women, mostly carrying babies, but a few of them
carrying baskets, stood at the gates blocking the way. Beyond them
waited the motor-car, the chauffeur standing at the crank ready to
start.
Ned Blackborough walked on until he nearly touched the first woman.
She was better dressed than the rest, but who for all that had a
coarse, violent face.
"Do you want anything?" he asked quietly. "If you don't, you might let
me pass."
"Do we want!" she began in a rhetorical voice. "Yes! we want the bread
you have stole from our children."
"Why not give them some of your husband's dinner?" he replied,
pointing to her basket, on the top of which lay several knives and
forks. There was a titter, for she was, in truth, carrying refreshment
for Mr. Green and his colleagues. She flushed scarlet.
"My husband!" she echoed. "Yes! where is the money you have stole from
our husbands? But you'll find that we aren't slaves like the ones you
drove in the Indies before you were kicked out! The British workpeople
are not to be treated like black niggers or Chinese coolies."
"Good God! woman," cried Ned, losing patience, "if you have nothing
better to say than to trump up the last scurrilous article in the
_Taskmaster_--Here! Woods, follow on--I'm not going to be stopped."
In an instant they were the centre of a band of excited women, the
next they were in the car, and the _chauffeur_ was running back to
take his seat.
"I don't want to hurt you," called Ned as he turned on power, "but if
some of you don't stand back there will be an accident!"
"Cowards! Fools! Don't let him go without an answer," shrieked the
woman with the basket, who was entangled two deep in the backward
rush. The next moment there very nearly was an accident, since,
failing of all else, the angry orator flung the first thing she could
lay her hands upon--the handful of knives and forks--at the car with
her full force, and one of the missiles, a three-pronged iron fork,
buried itself in the fleshy part of Ned's right hand, as it held the
steerer, making him and it swerve.
The fork quivered as he steadied the wheel. Then he turned and raised
his hat with his other hand.
"Thank you!" he said, and the word fell on a half-awed, half-alarmed
silence.
"She didn't mean to do it," began Woods hurriedly. "Shall I pull it
out, my lord?"
"Of course she didn't," replied Ned coolly. "If she had meant to do
it, she would have killed a baby. That sort of woman is built that
way. Wait a bit, Woods, till we are through the works. I look like a
blessed St. Sebastian with it quivering in my flesh!"
"You ought to have that seen to," said little Woods when the surgical
operation was over, and they had had to call on the _chauffeur's_
handkerchief as well as their own. "It has gone very deep."
"I'll get Ramsay to tie it up properly. We can go back by Egworth,"
replied Lord Blackborough.
They met Peter Ramsay on the steps, carrying a leathern
instrument-bag.
"Come along to my room," he said cheerfully. "I've everything I want
in here."
As they opened the door a woman's figure rose hurriedly from an
evidently searching inquiry into the contents of a bottom drawer, for
under-vests and stockings lay strewn about.
Both Helen Tressilian and Dr. Ramsay blushed scarlet, but Ned's eyes
twinkled. "Caught in the act, my dear! Caught in the act!" he said
amusedly.
"I thought--I hoped--he had gone out for a long while on an urgent
call," retorted Mrs. Tressilian, looking quite viciously at the
doctor, who, to hide his vexation, was searching in his bag.
"I am sorry I disappointed your expectations, Mrs. Tressilian," he
said stiffly, "but when I arrived I was not wanted. The man was dead."
Helen looked as if she had received a blow in the face. Her lip
quivered.
"Undo these rags, will you?" said Ned to her kindly, wishing in his
heart that he could take them and shake them together once and for
all. "I haven't much time to lose."
She had forgotten her annoyance in sympathy when Dr. Ramsay looked up
from his task.
"I'm afraid I shall have to hurt you a bit. I don't like those very
deep holes, possibly from a dirty fork----"
"It wasn't very clean," admitted Ned.
"Perhaps I had better call Sister Ann----" began the doctor
doubtfully, and Helen flushed up in a second.
"I have done some work of the kind, Dr. Ramsay," she said; "but if you
prefer----"
The challenge was too direct. "If you do not mind, I shall be glad,"
he replied, bending over a little array of instruments on the table.
"Will you stand here, Lord Blackborough. Hold the hand so, Nurse
Helen, and be ready, please, with the carbolised gauze."
Half-way through Ned winced; and the doctor said sharply, "That was my
fault. Move your hand a little, Nurse Helen; it gets in my way."
"There! that's done!" he continued at last. "Now for the bandages."
Was it only fancy, or was Ned Blackborough right in thinking that the
supple, skilful hands were not quite so skilful as usual, that there
was an unwonted nervousness about them?
He pondered over this as, being hurried, he went downstairs, leaving
Helen tidying up, Peter Ramsay sterilising his instruments before
putting them away. He left behind him also a sense of stress in the
air, a feeling on the part of both those busy people that things could
no longer go on as they had been going on. Suddenly Peter Ramsay flung
aside a probe, and walked up to Helen decisively.
"Helen!" he said. "I shall have to go away if you won't marry me.
Think me as much a fool as you like--the fact remains. You saw--you
must have seen how disgracefully I did that simple little thing. Why?
Because you were there--because your hand touched mine."
"I will never offer to interfere with your work again!" she said
coldly.
"Interfere!" he echoed with a bitter little laugh. "You always
interfere! I feel the very touch of your hands upon my clothes."
A slow crimson stained her very forehead. "I am sorry, I will never
touch them again."
"That will do no good," he replied gloomily. "Can you not see that
your influence touches my life at every point? When I go through the
wards I hear you have just passed, I almost see the flutter of your
dress. I am always reminded, I am always thinking of you. If you will
not marry me, I must go away."
"I cannot marry you, and I have told you why. It is not as though I
did not know what love meant. I have known it, and--and I do not know
it now. But you need not go away. I will go."
"That, you shall not do," he replied, his chin setting itself long
and stern. "Besides it would be no good. This place is redolent of
you--your goodness, your sweetness. Oh! Helen, Helen! If you will only
marry me, love will come--for you like me--I don't believe there is
any one you like better--except perhaps Ned Blackborough."
"Ned!" she echoed, glad of evasion, "poor Ned! I have had such a
curious feeling lately that he is in some way maimed; and yet not
maimed. I don't know how to express it, but he seems to me to be using
his soul more and his body less."
"I wish I could get rid of my body," muttered Dr. Ramsay so quaintly
that Helen perforce had to smile; whereat, he said aggrievedly, "It
isn't all that either, Mrs. Tressilian; love----"
She checked him with a soft sympathising hand. "Do I not know what
love is? Dr. Ramsay! I cannot pity you."
"Then I shall have to go," he said obstinately. "I will not have my
work spoiled by any woman."
She felt small somehow; a trifle remorseful perhaps as she left the
room. He certainly had been rather dejected of late and it was such a
pity.
And Ned also! He was not dejected, but he was changed, curiously
changed.
In truth the past six weeks, since the night when he had outwatched
the stars, to be met in the dawn by the mischance of a confidence not
intended for his ears, had changed him a great deal. He had not seen
Aura since. He had purposely left New Park, before she was well enough
to receive visitors, and had only returned to it after she had been
moved for a freshening up at the seaside. But he had heard of her
constantly from Ted, who, after two or three days of intense anxiety,
had gone back to business with renewed zest. This time interruption
had apparently been beneficial; at least the first few days of Aura's
convalescence and disappointment had been cheered by him with the most
sanguine of outlooks on the future. He even went so far as to say
that, perhaps after all, things were best as they were. They would
move into a still better house, and be able to set up properly before
taking upon themselves the responsibilities of life.
Aura had said "Perhaps," and after he had gone had lain and cried
softly to herself. There is nothing in the wide world so sacred to a
woman as her grief for the child which has died to save her life. It
is grief of the most inward type, unknown, unrecognised by others,
which lasts through the years and grows no slighter than it was when
in the dim, between life and death, she first learns that her child
has paid the ransom for her.
In a way, therefore, the doubt, which by degrees grew into a
certainty, that Fate had denied motherhood to her, had at first almost
brought her comfort.
If there was no probability of her being more fortunate in the future,
happiness neither awaited her, nor could there be any rivalry between
the dead child and a living one. There was a tragedy in both lives,
not only in the one.
Such thoughts as these, aided by the very intensity of her grief, kept
her going until she began to face the world again at the sea-side.
Then came one of those fiery furnaces of the soul through which so few
pass unscathed. She used to wander down at the ebb low tide, past the
groups of children building castles in the sand, past the uttermost
outermost little waving fringe of sea-spoil left, but for a brief half
hour, by the regretful retreat of the waves, and gaze out over the
long, low sand-banks, claimed as their own by clouds of fluttering,
settling, fluttering seagulls.
The tide had truly ebbed--the mud-flats of life lay bare. Her thoughts
were like the gulls, never still for a second. Only in the slack tide
of the estuary there was rest for a moment, and the long, brown arms
of the seaweed waved sleepily, seeming to call her to rest with them.
So she would go back again to her lodgings, but in the night time she
would rise and draw up her blind and look out.
And lo! the tide was up again, the sea lay like a sheet of silver and
there was no more land, neither was there any sound of tears.
Thus, after a time, she came back to the new house on which Ted,
during her absence, had been lavishing enough money, he felt, to prove
his undying affection twice over. He was quite full of its many
advantages when she finally arrived there. For one thing, they would
be able to entertain in it; and entertainments would be a great
feature in his coming life. One of the chief reasons for Mr. Hirsch's
enormous success had been his genius for giving _recherche_ dinners.
Ted could not hope to rival him; still with the _cordon bleue's_
help--here he became exceedingly affectionate--much was possible. They
must certainly entertain Mr. Hirsch and his daughter. Oh yes! had not
Aura heard of the daughter? Mr. Hirsch had imported her ready-made,
grown-up--really a very nice-looking girl--from Berlin? She was about
twenty, and no one had had any idea Hirsch was a widower; but he
seemed devoted to the girl, and to have given up the search for a wife
which had been his pursuit for years.
The fact of the matter being, though Ted did not know it, that, having
failed once more in his endeavours to marry a well-connected
Englishwoman, Mr. Hirsch had fallen back on a less legal establishment
of his youth for which he had always paid with scrupulous honour.
Hence Miss Hirsch who, being a goodnatured creature like her father,
bid fair to fill up his affections and give him the home for which, as
he grew older, he was beginning to yearn.
Anyhow Mr. and Miss Hirsch would have to be entertained when they came
to Blackborough, and Aura should have the long talked-of pink satin
gown in which to receive them. It might even be possible to put them
up. There were two good rooms on the first floor which would not be
wanted yet awhile. Aura might see them after she had had her tea.
"Thanks, Ted," she replied hurriedly, "but--but perhaps I've done
enough for to-day. I can see them tomorrow."
Just those few minutes of facing the new house, the new life had
wearied her absolutely. And she had other things to face in the near
future. Sooner or later she felt that she ought to tell her husband
that those rooms would never in all human probability be wanted.
But she could not tell him now. That was beyond her strength.