CHAPTER XXI.—DREAMS.
And there was a night of happy wonderment at Willowmere—for, of course, it was to Madge that Philip first carried his story of the Golconda mine which had been thrown open to him. The joy of Ali Baba when the secret of the robbers’ cave was revealed to him was great—and selfish. He thought of what a good time he would have, and how he would triumph over his ungracious brother. Philip’s joy was greater; for his treasure-trove set him dreaming fine dreams of being able to ‘hurry up’ the millennium. On his way from the city his mind was filled with a hailstorm of projects of which he had hitherto had no conception.
Naturally his imagination grew on what it fed; and as he earnestly strove to shape into words his visions of the noble works that could, would, and should be done in the near future, his pulse quickened and his cheeks glowed with enthusiasm.
They were in the oak parlour; the day’s work done; and the soothing atmosphere of an orderly household filling the room with the sense of contented ease. Aunt Hessy was sewing, and spoke little. Uncle Dick smoked one of his long churchwardens—a box of which came to him regularly every Christmas from a Yorkshire friend—and listened with genial interest, commenting in his own way on Philip’s schemes.
After the first breathless moment of astonishment, Madge’s eyes were as bright with enthusiasm as her lover’s: her face was alternately flushed and pale. She approved of everything he said; and she, too, was seeing great possibilities in this new Golconda.
‘The world,’ quoth Philip, ‘is big enough for us all; and there is work enough for everybody who is willing to work. It is not work which fails, but workers. We have classified and divided our labour until we have fallen into a social system of caste as rigid as that of the Hindu, but without his excuse. Men won’t turn their hands to whatever may be offered nowadays. They clamour that they starve for want of a job, when they mean that they cannot get the job which pleases them best. Everybody wants exactly what is “in his line,” and won’t see that he might get on well enough in another line till he found room again in his own.’
‘Human nature has a weakness for wanting the things it likes best, and that it’s most in the way of doing,’ said Uncle Dick, pressing down the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with a careful movement of the left hand’s little finger.
‘But human nature need not starve because it cannot get what it likes best,’ retorted Philip warmly. ‘If men will do with their might what their hands can find to do, they will soon discover that there is a heap of work lying undone in the world.’
And so, taking this principle as the basis of his argument, he went on to expound his views of the future conservative democracy of Universal Co-operation.
The first step to be taken was to start some enterprise in which every class of workmen should find employment—the skilled mechanic and the unskilled labourer; the inventor, the man of brains, and the mechanical clerk; the spinner, the weaver, the tailor; the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker—all would be required. Their banner would bear the homely legend, ‘Willing to work,’ and no man or boy who enlisted under it should ever again have a right to say: ‘I have got no work to do.’
There would be no drones in the hive; for every man would reap the full reward of what he produced according to its market value. No man should be paid for spending so many hours daily in a fixed place. That was an erroneous system—the incubator of strikes and of the absurd rules of trades-unions, by which the dull sluggard was enabled to hold down to his own level the quick-witted and industrious. Every man should have a direct interest in doing the best he could, and the most he could or the most he cared to do. Hear him!—the young heart beating with the fond hopes which others have proved so futile; and Madge listening with a smile of joyful conviction and confidence.
‘Another thing we shall sweep away altogether—the petty deceits—the petty strivings to overreach another by lies and tricks of trade, as they are called.’
‘And how may you be going to do that, I’d like to learn?’ was the sceptical query of the yeoman.
‘By making men feel that it isn’t worth while to tell lies or invent tricks.’
‘Seems to me you want to invent a new world,’ said Uncle Dick, a placid wreath of smoke encircling his brow, and a contented smile intimating that he was pretty well content to take things as they were.
‘Not at all,’ rejoined Philip. ‘I only want to bring the best of this world uppermost.’
‘But doesn’t the best find its own way uppermost?’ interposed Aunt Hessy; ‘cream does, and butter does.’
‘So does froth, and it ain’t the best part of the beer, mother,’ said Uncle Dick with his genial guffaw; ‘and for the matter of that, so does scum.’
‘They have their uses, though, like everything else,’ was the dame’s prompt check.
‘Not a doubt, and there’s where the mystery lies: things have to be a bit mixed in this world; and they get mixed somehow in spite of you. There ain’t nobody has found out yet a better plan of mixing them than nature herself.’
That was the counter-check; and Madge gave the checkmate.
‘But Philip does not want to alter the natural order of things: he only wants to help people to understand it, and be happy in obeying it.’
This pretty exposition of Philip’s purpose seemed to satisfy everybody, and so it was an evening of happy wonderment at Willowmere.
As he was about to go away, Aunt Hessy asked Philip how his uncle looked.
‘Oh—a good hearty sort of man,’ was the somewhat awkward answer, for he did not like to own even to himself that he had been somehow disappointed by the appearance and manner of Mr Shield; ‘but awfully quick and gruff. You will like him, though.’
‘I like him already,’ she said, smiling.