"It is more than I deserve for mere companionship--pleasant drives and
theatres."
He did not accept her delicate reticence.
"But you have altered her wonderfully!" he cried.
"Oh, I have not," she cried, doubly startled. "It's just nothing that I
have done--nothing." Then she felt her modesty had put her foot in a
bog-hole. Unseeingly he helped her out.
"It is most kind of you to put it like that. But I see it in every
movement, every word. She imitates you unconsciously--I became curious to
see so excellent a model, though I had resolved not to meet you. No, no,
please, don't misunderstand."
"I don't," she said mischievously. "You have now given me three reasons
for seeing me. You need give me none for not seeing me."
"But you must understand," he said, colouring again, "how painful all
this has been for me--"
"Not seeing me?" she interpolated innocently.
"The--the whole thing," he stammered.
"Yes, parents are tiresome," she said sympathetically.
He came nearer the music-stool.
"Are they not? They came down every year for the Eights."
"Is that at Oxford?"
"Yes."
She was silent; her thumb flicked at a note on the keyboard behind her.
"But that's not what I mind in them most--"
She wondered at the rapidity with which his shyness was passing into
effusiveness. But then was she not the "Mother-Confessor"? Had not even
her favourite nuns told her things about their early lives, even when
there was no moral to be pointed? "They're very good-hearted," she
murmured apologetically. "I'm often companion--in charity expeditions."
"It's easy to be good-hearted when you don't know what to do with your
money. This place is full of such people. But I look in vain for the
diviner impulse."
Eileen wondered if he were a Dissenter. But then "the place was full of
such people."
"You don't think there's enough religion?" she murmured.
"There's certainly plenty of churches and chapels. But I find myself
isolated here. You see, I'm a Socialist."
Eileen crossed herself instinctively.
"You don't believe in God!" she cried in horror. For the good nuns had
taught her that "_les socialistes_" were synonymous with "_les athees_."
He laughed. "Not, if by God you mean Mammon. I don't believe in
Property--we up here in the sun and the others down there in the soot."
"But you _are_ up here," said Eileen, naively.
"I can't help it. My mother would raise Cain." He smiled wistfully. "She
couldn't bear to see a stranger helping father in the factory
management."
"Then you _are_ down there."
"Quite so. I work as hard as any one even if my labour isn't manual. I
dress like an ordinary hand, too, though my mother doesn't know that, for
I change at the office."
"But what good does that do?"
"It satisfies my conscience."
"And I suppose the men like it?"
"No, that's the strange part. They don't. And father only laughs. But one
must persist. At Oxford I worked under Ruskin."
"Oh, you're an artist!"
"No, I didn't mean that part of Ruskin's work. His gospel of labour--we
had a patch for digging."
"What--real spades!"
"Did you imagine we called a spoon a spade?" he said, a whit resentfully.
Eileen smiled. "No, but I can't imagine you using a common or garden
spade."
"You are thinking of my hands." He looked at them, not without
complacency, Eileen thought, as she herself wondered where he had got his
long white fingers from. "But it is a couple of years ago," he explained.
"It was hard work, I assure you."
"Did your mother know?" Eileen asked with a little whimsical look.
"Of course not. She would have been horrified."
"Well, but most people would be surprised."
"Yes. Put your muscle into an oar or a cricket bat and you are a hero;
put your muscle into a spade and you are a madman."
"You think it's _vice versa_?" queried Eileen, ingenuously.
"Much more. At least," he stammered and coloured again, "I don't pose as
a hero but simply--"
"As what?" Eileen still looked innocent.
"I simply think work is the noblest function of man," he burst forth.
"Don't you?"
"I do not," answered Eileen. "Work is a curse. If the serpent had not
tempted Eve to break God's commandment, we should still be basking in
Paradise."