THE ENEMIES OF SOCIETY
"That's all very well, but when you've said everything you know the
fact remains that you're not a farmer and never will be. You seem to
have spent your time at a large country-house where you were as far
removed from the agricultural classes as though you were in the moon,
and at Oxford where as far as I can make out you pretend to know
something about everything without having learnt it. And you've read a
few books by Germans and cranks, none of whom have done more than look
into a farm from across the hedge from the high-road. And now you come
to Anderby, and pretend you know more about farming than John and me,
who've done it all our lives, and our fathers before us for hundreds of
years! Just hold the end of this sheet, will you?"
Mary was turning linen sheets "sides to middle" and arguing with David
about the nationalization of land. David took the end of the sheet
solemnly while her scissors slipped along the middle.
"It all depends what you call knowledge," he said. "You only know
what your villagers are. I know what they might be. Perfect knowledge
recognizes capacity as well as achievement. That's why I know more
about it than you do."
Clip! Mary's scissors cut through the hem near David's fingers.
"What next?" he asked patiently. It was difficult to portray his pet
theories with becoming dignity when at any moment Mary might fill his
arms with yards of linen, or send him on to his knees after a strayed
cotton reel.
"Next you put the two pieces together like this--no, not that end, the
other, and then I sew them up the middle. You see, Mr. Rossitur, my
point is that Anderby has been pretty much the same for four hundred
years, and I don't see how talk is going to alter it. When it comes to
that, I don't see it wants altering. That idea of small holdings you
were talking about may do all right in some places, but, believe me,
it's absurd on farms where you grow wheat and rear sheep."
She took a pin from the sheet and placed it between her teeth, then
removed it to give greater emphasis to her statement.
"It's so _stupid_ to unsettle something that's quite happy as it is
just because of a silly theory."
"But they're not happy here, and it isn't silly."
"Of course you don't think so--just put some more coal on the fire
please--I've heard all that before. You've got heaps of statistics, but
you confessed yourself just now they were nearly all drawn up in the
last century. Don't you see how behind the times you are? Because fifty
years ago the labourers were underpaid, it doesn't mean they're not all
right to-day. Just you wait till your cold's quite better, and you can
have a look at my people in Anderby."
"It's not I who am behind the times, Mrs. Robson, it's you," he
responded hotly. "You've just acknowledged the evils of a benevolent
despotism, and now you deny that your rule is a despotism because it's
benevolent. Why, what hope is there for social stability when the
happiness of men is a matter of philanthropy, not of right? If you and
Mr. Robson were rotters, Anderby wouldn't be fit to live in."
Mary bent over her sewing-machine, and the wheel span with amazing
rapidity. David regarded her across the table. She was maddening, with
her amused complacency, her indifference to all his arguments. And yet
kind, and intelligent too in a way, and not without a sense of social
responsibility. Clearly a convert worth making. He started again.
"You think you're a queen because you govern this village and your
subjects seem to like you. The only real kings and queens are those who
stand above their generation and rule circumstance."
Mary looked up and smiled indulgently.
"Do sit down," she said. "You'll get another temperature with so much
talking."
"It's no argument, Mrs. Robson, either to send me after a cotton reel
or to tell me I've got a cold. The one is on the table. The other is on
my chest. You are shirking issues, and only robbing me of my dignity
without gaining any yourself!"
"But it's a great advantage to me to rob you of your dignity. Look at
you! A full blown author, who has published a book, though you do say
a lot of silly things in it. And who has been to college, though you
don't seem to have been taught much sense there! If I do try to bring
you to my level a bit, by making you mend the fire--and, by the way,
you've held that shovel in your hands for quite five minutes--surely
you can't complain, you, who so hotly uphold the cause of equality."
"You are cruel," groaned David. His mock-heroic voice was rendered
doubly effective by the cold in his throat, and Mary looked up to
laugh. But he, suddenly sat down, his elbows on the table, and his chin
resting on his hands. "Honestly though," he added seriously, "can't you
see a little bit what I'm driving at, or am I unutterably stupid and
boring? Or am I just rude? I don't want to be just rude, because you've
been kinder to me than I could possibly have imagined."
"What you call kindness," remarked Mary, with an airy gesture of
her scissors, "was merely a piece of propaganda on behalf of my
fellow-capitalists. What I'm really worried about is that you will
insist on going to-morrow. You're not fit to, you know. You had a
temperature till last night."
"But I can't stay here. I've taken up three of your days already, and
though _I_ may consider you waste your time, trying to pauperize a
village, and might spend it far more profitably restoring to health a
friend of society like myself, I can't exactly expect you to look at it
that way, can I?"
"Oh, do be serious for a minute. You know that you're not any trouble
here. John regards you as a harmless lunatic who would be quite a
pleasant fellow if he didn't pretend to know something of agricultural
conditions. And I find you very useful in folding sheets for me--to
say nothing of keeping my wits about me. You are a very strenuous
conversationalist."
"All right. I will be serious." He seated himself on the table. It
was always impossible for him to remain in the same attitude for two
consecutive minutes. "I can't stay here because I mean to blow up
this house, and this farm and, if necessary, this village. I think
that you and Mr. Robson are charming as people, but iniquitous as an
institution; and, if I stay here any longer, I shall like you both
so much that I shan't be able to hate you. As it is, every time you
are nice to me, I have to recite little pieces of Marx to myself to
convince me what an abomination you really are."
Mary's eyes twinkled.
"Oh, do recite some now," she begged.
"Oh, but you're not being particularly nice to me. Look how hard you've
been making me work! I'm sure I've sides-to-middled enough sheets to
stock the East Riding."
"Well then, stop working, and have a cigarette--oh, I forgot, you don't
smoke. Well, then, sit down and be at peace--and have some toffee."
They had made the toffee last night, after Mary discovered that David
had abjured smoking on principle, and adored sweet things. She had
declared it to be an essential item of the treatment for colds, and had
shown him how to mix sugar and treacle and vinegar over the dining-room
fire.
David passed her the tin, placed a large lump of toffee in the side of
his mouth, and lay back luxuriously in John's arm-chair. Presently he
began to chant:
"Nowhere does the antagonistic character of capitalist production
assert itself more brutally than in the progress of English agriculture
and the retrogression of the English agricultural labourer...."
There were voices in the hall, and a knock at the door. Violet entered
the room. Mary saw, to her horror, a smudge down one side of Violet's
nose, and her cap awry above her left ear. She announced spasmodically:
"Mr. and Mrs. Bannister, m'm!"
Sarah, in her bugled bonnet and calling cloak, sailed into the room.
"My God!" murmured David, under his breath.
Mary rose. She would have been more capable of dealing with the
situation had her mouth not been full of toffee, but her composure was
heroic.
"This is nice of you!" she said. "Good afternoon, Tom. Come along in,
Cousin Sarah. You'll excuse the room being rather upset. I'm mending
sheets. Mr. Rossitur--Mrs. Bannister, Mr. Bannister."
"Is John in?" asked Sarah, going briskly to the point.
"No, he's up the fields. He won't be long, though. I'm sorry."
"Oh, I'm sorry too. I particularly wished to see him." Sarah had bowed
stiffly to David, and paid him no further attention.
"He ought to be in about five, but he's gone to Littledale to see
how the new barley is doing--the sort that Burdass brought over from
Siberia."
"Quite."
"But you'll wait and have tea, won't you?"
"That depends how late it is."
Then they were all silent. It was dreadful, Mary thought. Sarah,
refusing to remove her cloak or bonnet, sat erect on one of the more
uncompromising leather-covered chairs. Tom hovered, ill at ease, in
the background. The only tranquil person was David, who stood silently
polite, but, Mary guessed, secretly entertained, on the hearth-rug.
Once he cast a look of whimsical inquiry at his hostess.
"Did you put your trap up?" asked Mary.
"Yes, thank you. There was no groom in the yard, so Tom had to unyoke
by himself."
"Oh. I'm sorry. You see, we only have one man to do the stable and the
garden, and he happens to be in the garden this afternoon."
She tried to sound indifferent; but she was wracked with anxiety. Sarah
was obviously annoyed about something. John might not be home for ever
so long. Then, worst of all, the Bannisters were the last people whom
she wished to encounter David Rossitur. They would disapprove of him
dreadfully.
"Which way did you come?" she asked.
"We came from Hardrascliffe. I have been to see Ursula."
"Oh, any news?"
Sarah cast a decorous eye at David.
"None," she remarked discreetly.
Mary smiled. David already knew all about Ursula. For a stranger whom
she had only known three days, he must have heard a good many queer
things, she thought.
"I think it was most inconsiderate of Ursula to go into a Hardrascliffe
nursing-home. It is a very long drive there."
"Perhaps she did not realize that so many of her relations would go to
call on her."
"She knew we would do our duty. She had no right to make it so
uncomfortable."
She may have thought she had a right to make it impossible, thought
Mary. Here for once she agreed with Ursula. She tried to change
the conversation. There were two topics she especially wished to
avoid--Ursula and socialism. She tried to escape from one without
encountering the other. If only she had had time to warn David not to
air his views in company!
"Were the roads very bad?" she asked.
Sarah ignored her efforts.
"Naturally," she continued, determined to air her grievance, "she must
realize that we take an interest in the only child in that generation
of Robsons."
"Of course."
"And naturally she realizes that we are glad for her to take every
precaution."
Mary resigned herself to the inevitable. At least this could hurt no
one but herself.
"It will be a comfort to know that Middlethorpe at least won't pass in
to the hands of strangers when Foster dies," continued Sarah.
Mary flushed. It wasn't fair, she thought, for Sarah to reproach her
for something that was not her fault. It wasn't fair to remind her of
one of the things she was always trying to forget.
"Aren't you a little premature?" she asked. "The child isn't born yet."
Tom who stood awkwardly looking out of the window coughed. David smiled
his twisted smile.
Sarah drew herself up. "It will be," she said. "Ursula's not the girl
to fail us in this kind of thing."
"No, I suppose not. I hear you've been having your house painted, Tom."
Sarah frowned. The house belonged to her, and she belonged to a people
that treats ownership seriously.
"We intended to paint," she replied for her husband. "It is the year
for painting. In fact when last we had it done I said to Tom, in 1913
we will have it done all over."
"But aren't you going to, then?"
Mary looked from Tom to Sarah. Painting was a safe topic. It afforded
no possible opening for David. If David started to tell Sarah what
he thought about capitalist farmers, it would be terrible. Strangely
enough, she was thinking, "It will be terrible for Mr. Rossitur. He's
never met anyone like Sarah before, I'm sure." She wanted to protect
him from the rigidity of her sister-in-law's defiance to progress. She
played for time.
"Why aren't you painting?"
"There are some things, Mary, which I never thought I should have to
put up with. And one of them is the insolence of local work people. A
Billings has painted houses for Robsons round Market Burton since my
grandfather's days, and never but what there was straight dealing all
round."
"Oh dear, have you been having trouble?" From the corner of her eye
she could see that David had cocked his head at the mention of "work
people," as a terrier pricks his ears when you mention rats.
"Trouble? I don't have trouble when there is any impertinence from my
dependents, Mary. I dismiss them."
"Yes, but what happened?"
"They had begun last Tuesday to scrape the paint off the front porch.
We were to have three coats of that good dark green. What I cannot
stand are those vulgar fawns and reds that people seem so fond of now.
We have always had green on the front door since I was a child."
"Did Billings want to paint you red, then?"
She was conscious of a sudden convulsive movement from David,
temporarily overcome by the idea of anyone painting Mrs. Bannister red.
"Well. I'll say nothing of that, though at the time we may have had
words." Sarah was eyeing David up and down, slowly and deliberately, a
habit of hers when encountering strangers in a relative's drawing-room.
If she had possessed a _lorgnette_, Mary was sure she would have
used it now. "I say nothing of the colour, but when I wanted them to
stay for five minutes longer in the evening to finish off round the
bell--you know what a mess it makes if you leave it overnight round
the bell--would they stay? They said, if you please and by your leave,
that their union wouldn't let them work overtime. Their union indeed!
A pretty pass we're coming to if we have to be told what's right by a
union! At my own front door too!"
Unions! Heavens, David's favourite opening! Three days had taught Mary
the danger signals. She rushed into the breach.
"Oh, yes, how trying! Now, Cousin Sarah, wouldn't you like"--she was
about to add--"to take your cloak off," but David forestalled her.
Turning from the fire-place towards Sarah he regarded her with his most
charming smile, and running one thin hand through his hair--a favourite
gesture, he began, with dangerous calm:
"But, Mrs. Bannister, don't you think there is something to be said for
the unions?"
"Now, young man, if you've anything to say for the unions you'd
better say it. You may be very clever. I'm sure I don't know. All you
young folk to-day think you know everything. I heard tell you were a
socialist or something at Hardrascliffe to-day----"
"So that's why she called," thought Mary. "Ursula told her, and she
wanted to see what he was like."
"And you may have written books, and met a lot of people and done a
deal of talking, but when you come up against Sarah Jane Bannister
you'll find yourself in a very different situation."
Well, of course, that settled it. There was no longer any hope of
leading Sarah gently away to remove her bonnet. An appealing glance at
David met with no response. Mary knew she might as well ask the wind to
stop blowing as ask David to stop talking once Sarah had practically
defied him to do his worst, her slow stare sweeping him from his red
head to his shabbily shod feet.
"At least he's a gentleman," thought Mary. "Thank Heaven she can't help
seeing that!"
And David spoke. For ten minutes not even Sarah was able to utter a
word. Standing on the hearth-rug as though it were a public platform,
his thin arms jerking with electric energy, he addressed them. At
first he argued quietly enough about the disadvantages of capitalism,
the need for co-operation among the lower classes, the slow growth of
organized resistance. Slowly his passion rose. "You can say what you
like," he cried. "You can shut yourself up in snug little houses locked
up against cold and change and misery, and you can say to yourselves
'No change will come. We and our fathers have seen the world as it is.
Only fools meant it to be, or think it can be any different. We, the
middle class, the half-cultured, half-emancipated half-refined middle
class, with our safe bank balance, and vested interests and comfortable
prosperity, we are the salt of the earth. We are in power--we are
happy. Fools and extremists may rage and storm outside our gates. We
are safe, fortified by the solidarity of human conservatism, battening
on the fruits of human folly.' But I tell you that your gates are shut,
not to shield you from the change, but to blind your eyes to it, till
it is too late to see. The nineteenth century has gone, and though you
and your class, unfortunately for England, have survived it, you can't
carry your century with you to the grave."
Sarah blinked at him with wide, indignant eyes.
"You stand for an ideal that is, thank Heaven, outworn. The new
generation knocks at your door--a generation of men, independent, not
patronized, enjoying their own rights, not the philanthropy of their
exploiters, respecting themselves, not their so-called superiors. You
can't stop them, but they may stop you. You can't shut them out, but
they may shut you in." He swept his hand round with a dramatic gesture,
that brought it into unpremeditated contact with one of Mary's china
jugs on the mantelpiece. A tragedy was narrowly averted. "I tell you
that you are locking yourselves up in a house of circumstance which
has been condemned as unsafe at the tribunal of progress. You've got
to move, and if you can't see that, there are those waiting who will
thrust realization upon you when it's too late to find a remedy."
He paused, out of breath, looking at Sarah with pleading eyes. He
really was sorry for her, as he was sorry for every one who could not
see his point of view. He wanted to help her, to counteract by his
eloquence opinions that were the deposit of generations. He was still
young enough to believe habit to be amenable to reason.
Mary, horror-stricken, bent forward.
"Oh, Mr. Rossitur," she begged below her breath, "do stop, please."
Sarah saw the action, though she could not hear the words. She rose
with dignity.
"Thank you, Mary," she said, "for this most unusual form of
entertainment. If John is not coming back soon, I think I'll be getting
home. Come, Tom."
Mary stood up, her hands full of linen sheets, her wide eyes troubled.
David saw that his conduct had in some way been disastrous. He came
forward.
"Mrs. Bannister, I'm awfully sorry. I shouldn't have ranted at you like
that. It was awfully bad manners. I had no right--only it's my chief
thought night and day and it makes me forget myself. If you'd rather
not stay in the same room as me after what I've said, I'll go. Mrs.
Robson only took me in out of kindness because I had a cold----"
"It's quite unnecessary to apologize, young man. I assure you it makes
no difference to me what you say or whether you stay or go. I'm sure my
sister-in-law chooses her guests without reference to the feelings of
her relations, and far be it from me to drive anyone away." She turned
to Mary. "I only wanted to give John a message from Tobias Robson."
"Well, won't I do? Or won't you stay? John's sure not to be long."
"Thank you. I really do not think I shall wait. I meant to get home
before it came quite dark." Seeing David's miserable face she added,
"Don't flatter yourself that I'm leaving on your account, young man.
Let me tell you I've read all that sort of stuff before in the papers
my maids leave about over Sunday. And, mark my words, you and your like
nearly always end in prison and a lot of fuss over nothing."
During the drive home Tom tried to pacify her.
"I'm sure it was rare nonsense that young fellow talked. But they don't
mean half what they say, those chaps. It just comes out with a gush and
there's no stopping it--like our old pump when the washer's gone."
Sarah snorted. "It's pretty clear that Anderby Wold's no place for
John. When Ursula told me to-day that Mary had gone and picked up a
sort of socialist tramp on the road I can't say I was surprised. Mary
would do anything. I always knew she'd make a fool of herself one
day. What he says to me is neither here nor there, though of all the
impertinence I'm sure I never heard such. But what I say is, mark my
words, if Mary takes up with folk like that, before long there'll be
trouble at Anderby Wold and John will be the one to suffer!"
Meanwhile in the dining-room at Anderby David, scarlet with
mortification, was standing among piles of linen.
"Oh, I can't tell you how sorry I am. Please forgive me! I can't think
why I did it. It was insufferable. I----"
But Mary, who had lived for ten years with one of those ninety and nine
just persons who had no need for repentance, found it sweet to forgive.
"Please don't be upset. It didn't matter. I'm sure it must do Sarah
good to have a mental shaking up now and then."
David was running his hands through his hair and changing colour from
grey to scarlet.
"You've been ripping to me--ripping. And I've been nothing but a
nuisance. I've upset this house for three days and now I go and am rude
to your guests. And I'm not going to stop at that either," he groaned.
"I've got to go out now into the village and tell your labourers that
they're ill-treated when they're not, and unsettle things that are
quite happy as they are. And there's no knowing where it'll all end."
There wasn't. David did not know. Mary did not know. They looked at
each other across the table, then David sat down and buried his face in
his hands, half laughing, half miserable.
It really was funny. The whole thing was funny. Mrs. Bannister's frigid
face and the nodding osprey in her bonnet, and her nervous little
husband clucking like a distracted hen in the background. And David, he
was funny too, swooping down out of the darkness upon Mrs. Robson, and
cramming his social ideas into Sarah Bannister's inhospitable brain,
or lack of brain--anyone so hopelessly enslaved to tradition must lack
brain. He could see again his lean arms swaying and the tuft of hair
rising with enthusiasm from his forehead.
It was always rather a trial to David that he could not help seeing how
funny he had been when it was too late to alter things.
"You're not going to be sick again, are you?" asked Mary anxiously.
"No, I don't think so. I'm not feeling ill now. Only penitent. I'm not
even surprised. I never am where I've done anything outrageous because
I'm always doing it. I talked rather like that one night at Oxford when
my father came as the 'distinguished visitor' to the Union. He's a Tory
M.P. you know. And after that we had a scene." David's eyes twinkled at
the recollection, though he found it sobering too, for he was as fond
of his father as he could be of anyone so alien to his ideal of life.
"And he said that if this was what I was learning at Oxford I should
be better away from it. And he'd only pay my fees if I'd promise to
stop propagating scurrilous politics. And of course I couldn't, and
there we were--and here I am. I can't think why I'm talking like this
about myself. You must be sick of the sight and sound of me."
"I'm not. You're very young. You can't help it."
"So you see I must leave you and to-night. I'd clear out of the village
if I could, only it's the very centre of this part of the wolds and
I've got to start somewhere--and even if I didn't some one else would."
"It's all right, Mr. Rossitur. You can't help it. You're made like
that. After all I suppose it's far better to be carried away by your
ideas than to have no ideas at all."
It was just then that John came in. He was in a hearty mood.
"Going, Rossitur? Now why ever?"
Preaching socialism was a fool's job. He'd far better give it up
and take on with something else. Of course if he felt he had to do
it, there was an end on't, but he wouldn't get much change out of
Anderby. He'd a deal better stay there and amuse Mary, who must be dull
sometimes. She was looking better already since he had come.
But David went.
Mary, drawing the curtains that night, thought of David and wondered if
they had aired his sheets at the _Flying Fox_. His cold wasn't nearly
well.
Poor boy! He cared so intensely for such silly things. Life was never
kind to people who cared as much as that.
If it was land they cared for, it denied them heirs; if it was ideas,
it proved them false.
Of course some people never wanted anything very much. Like John.
She could never imagine John eating out his heart in longing for
the unattainable. He was safe enough, securely fenced in behind his
limitations. But David--David who believed in such stupid things that
were bound to let him down one day, David who was such a child, who
needed so much some one who could help him when the inevitable hour of
disappointment came--what was one to do for him?
If John had been like David she would have watched and protected him.
If John had been like David ... If David had been John....
She snapped the fastener down decisively.
There were some things that it was wiser not to think about.