Chapter X
THE PROPHET AND THE MOON
At six o'clock the following evening all Anderby was having tea. From fifty chimneys in the valley rose columns of white smoke. In the Hinds' house at the Wold Farm, the foreman was carving a huge beef pie while Ezra Dawson buried his face in a mug of steaming tea. Mike O'Flynn, paying tribute to his military training, washed himself with indiscreet enthusiasm over the kitchen sink. Jack Greenwood, whose agricultural career had brightened somewhat after Waite's dismissal, sat by his mother's table stuffing his mouth with cold bacon while for the seventh time that evening he explained how he had "mothered up" in the horse pasture.
In the Wold Farm John and Mary faced each other across cold ham and boiled eggs. Both of them disliked cold ham and boiled eggs, but Mary had driven to Market Burton that afternoon and had found no time to prepare a hot meal. Besides for the last three days they had fared sumptuously on chickens and scrambled eggs in honour of a guest.
One of the few people in Anderby who was not having tea sat in the "smoke-room" of the Flying Fox and wished himself back at Oxford—or even Manchester.
David's omission of tea resulted from a disquieting interview he had had that morning with his account book, after which he had been convinced that only by the strictest economy could he afford to spend another fortnight on an unremunerative tour of research and propaganda. He had lunched at twelve o'clock on bread and cheese and beer. He would presently sup on similar wholesome fare. Tea was a superfluous luxury, easily foregone by one who was determined to live as the labourers lived. All the same, the scent of frying sausages and bacon from Mrs. Todd's kitchen across the passage was irritatingly savoury. Against his will, David found himself recalling memories of brekkers in Harcourt's rooms at the House, of dinners at the paternal table in Hampshire, even of beefsteaks eaten in the congenial company of Merryweather, the journalist, and Moore, the lecturer on economics, in a chop-house near the Manchester offices of the Northern Clarion.
This was not at all what he had intended to think about. Really, he must pull himself together and forget his physical demands for a little. Unfortunately, there was nothing particularly pleasant to distract his attention. The smoke-room of the Flying Fox was not a beautiful place. David had decided, when he first saw it, that romantic novelists describing the picturesque interiors of wayside taverns could never have dreamed of such a room.
It was hateful. David hated the bilious green of its painted walls. He hated the wooden table, covered with brown oilcloth. He hated the unfriendly outline of the high-backed settle, and the china spittoons, and the smoking lamp. Most of all, he hated the smoke-grimed placard that hung against the wall, and announced to all comers that Bass's Beer could be obtained on the premises. Why Bass? Why not Symond's Ale—no, he was Soups—or—David failed to recall other brewers of renown.
The only comfortable thing in the room was the fire, leaping and crackling like a live creature. David bent towards it, warming his hands.
"Praised by my Lord for our Brother Fire, through whom showest us light in the darkness, and he is bright and pleasant, and very mighty and strong," he quoted softly. David at that time cherished an ardent admiration for St. Francis of Assisi as poet; and communist, though, being a conscientious agnostic, he felt bound to regret the saint's theology.
The door opened, and Mrs. Todd entered bearing a bucket of coal-dust and damp slack.
"Oh, you here still, Mr. Rossitur," she remarked with suggestive irony. She disliked strange young men, who announced their intention of occupying the cheap back room for several nights, and who bought nothing more costly than bread and cheese and hung about as though they had eaten roast beef and Yorkshire's. Besides, he might have evil designs on Victoria, her buxom daughter. Mrs. Todd, being a person of small imagination, had divided mankind into two classes, those who had designs on Victoria, those who had designs on Beer. Last night she had come to the regrettable conclusion that David had no true appreciation of Beer.
"Yes, I'm still here, and probably will stay for a little if I'm not in the way."
Mrs. Todd by way of reply swung her bucket over the fire, smothering flames and glowing cinders in a torrent of black coal-dust.
"Oh, Mrs. Todd!" groaned David, lamenting the extinction of his brother Fire. "Must you?"
Mrs. Todd regarded him slowly and with dignity. "I don't say nothing about gentlemen coming and sitting all hours in the smoking room, and paying no more for their beer—when they gets it which is not as often as might be considering how good—than if they drank it at the bar. What I say is that this fire has to last until closing time, and there being others what comes at proper times and stays as is right and fitting, and goes away again to return when wanted, there being no call to keep a fire at all when they're not due till 7.30 if that, and mebbe later."
Having delivered this lucid exposition of economy, forethought and natural preference for regular customers, she departed. David fell on his knees before the hearth and tried with a rusty poker to rescue the fire from its smothering burden. His efforts only resulted in an avalanche of fire coal, that fell, rattling through the bars of the grate, on to the stone below. A few angry bursts of flame sputtered and hissed before they died away.
He smiled ruefully. It was all very well to start out from Manchester with a mission of prophecy, all afire to challenge the indifference of agricultural labourers to their own interests; but it was quite another matter to kneel, tealess and with a sore throat, before a choked fire in a hideous room, feeling utterly alien and unwanted.
He heard steps in the passage outside. Some one was entering the bar. In a moment, he might be faced by the magnificent opportunity of confronting the downtrodden and exploited. Surely now he should be elated and indomitable, ready with pregnant arguments to assault the calculating caution of Yorkshire stolidity!
"I'm not a genuine enthusiast really," he groaned to himself. "I want to go back to the Wold Farm, and sit in front of Mrs. Robson's fire, and drink hot whisky and eat roast chicken and tea-cakes swimming in butter! I don't want to talk to labourers about their souls."
This was a perilous state of affairs. He rose and glanced round the room. After all, its very ugliness bore witness to the tyranny of capitalism—capitalism that robbed the hired labourer of all approaches to beauty; that set him to manufacture, by the thousand, lamps of such detestable design; that drove him, his day's work done, to sit on chairs so unbeautiful, in a room decorated solely by the advertisement for the watery wares of a capitalist creature called Bass. And even the one decorative part of the advertisement, the scarlet triangle, had been obliterated by smoke and dust! That was more the sort of thing.
With sudden resolution, he crossed the room, snatched the placard from its nail and stuffed it, crumpled and torn, between the bars of the grate. Then he felt better.
The footsteps he had heard before resounded again down the passage. Some one rattled the latch of the door, and Waite, followed by Ted Wilson, entered the room. Waite looked ill and worried. Since his dismissal from the Wold Farm, he had obtained no further work. His fourth child had appeared prematurely in an unwelcoming world, and his wife's tongue was more bitter than ever. Just now he was in no amiable frame of mind. He flung himself down on the settle and glowered at the smoking fire.
David, watching the smouldering fragments of the placard, wondered whether he could examine the new-comers without discourtesy.
Here were two choice specimens of the exploited proletariat. Waite, red-bearded, stocky, unclean, Wilson, lean and saturnine. Neither appeared to be in love with life. Both were shabby and disconsolate. There was excellent virgin soil in which to sow the seeds of progress. David was perfectly well aware of that. Now was the time to prophesy, but the prophet was dumb. David, fidgeting with the poker, mentally suggested and rejected a dozen introductory remarks. He found himself unable to think of anything more intelligent than the grease spots on Waite's coat. There were five grease spots—five and a half, if you counted the little one near his collar.
Nobody spoke.
Victoria Todd bounced into the room, planked down on the table two glasses of ale, and retired.
David began to make bets with himself, which of the two would speak first. If only some one would start to talk, he was sure he could go on. He had hoped that his unexpected appearance might arouse comment, not having yet learned the indifference to strangers of a Yorkshire labourer. He tried to reason with himself. These men were the very ones for whom he had left Oxford and Hampshire, and all the quite desirable advantages of capitalist luxury. It was absurd, now that he was here, to find no opening for conversation, simply because the red haired man had five and a half grease spots on his coat.
Wilson raised his glass, and deliberately blew off the froth. Light as a feather, a flake floated on to David's coat sleeve, and rested there.
"Now isn't that too bad?" inquired David of the world in general. "I haven't got any beer. I haven't any money to get any beer; yet here the beer comes to me, and sits on my coat sleeve, jeering at me."
Wilson turned slowly, and regarded him as though he were a lion in a travelling menagerie. Then enlightenment dawned across his face.
"Travelling?" he asked laconically. Commercial travellers sometimes stopped at Anderby on their way from Market Burton to Hardrascliffe.
David nodded. "Yes, in a way. And precious cold it is too at this time of the year. And then, Mrs. Todd is such an economical housekeeper that she won't even let the fires burn."
"Mean old cat," murmured Wilson sympathetically. He felt conversational after a day's solitary gardening. "Had any luck lately?"
"Not much, but I hope to have some soon."
"Hope's a fond thing. It fills no bellies. We had a fellow travelling round selling laces and the like to my missus t' other day. 'Done much business lately?' I says. 'Ay,' says he. 'I sold two yards o' ribbon to a girl at Cattlesby back o' Thursday, and now I'm going to sell your missus these here cards o' buttons.' 'Is that all?' ah says. 'All?' says he. 'How much do you want? That makes 9d. and 2-1/2d. profit. And I spent 5/- since I sold the ribbon and that only means 4/8-1/2 loss in three days. Ain't that a lot o' business?' says he. Hope's a fond thing."
"He seems to have had a pretty rough time," said David.
"Rough time? Ay, poor chap. He tried travelling in shoes next, but that weren't no good."
"Does that help?"
"What?"
"Travelling in shoes? Why not boots. Had his worn out?"
Wilson looked on him pityingly. "He sold the shoes. Leastwise tried to. Drowned hisself last week. Poor chap. You new to these parts?"
"Yes. I came from Manchester."
If only there was something to say that would arrest their attention—or if only the inn was full! David was aware that his methods were best adapted for addressing large audiences. Here he felt stifled and stupid.
"Ay—hope!" sneered Waite irrelevantly. He was gazing into the sulky fire with brooding eyes.
"You down on your luck too?" asked David.
"Luck, d'you call it? Pretty sort o' luck I say when you're turned out o' your job at worst time o' year, without a month's notice and your missus with another little 'un coming. That's luck, isn't it? It's luck when t' master sends 'is missus up t' farm to spy on you. It's luck when you don't go down and lick her boots like other fond fools, and she turns on you and tells a pack o' lies and get you chucked out. That's all luck, ain't it?"
"Is that what happened to you?" David asked quietly.
"Happened? Oh, no. These things don't happen. This is a fine land this is, and we're all free labourers. There's a lot of brotherly love about this, an' psalm singing and the rest on't. And they come round at Christmas w' puddings and bits o' beef till it fair sickens you. What we wants is justice. We don't ask no bloody charity."
"Who was it turned you out?"
David looked gravely towards him. They sat on opposite sides of the fire-place; Waite on the settle, one hand on the empty mug, staring suspiciously at David to see if any guile lay behind his intent questioning. David sitting forward in his chair, his lean hands clasped round his knees, his grey eyes dancing now with excitement, sympathy and indignation, his lips a little parted, his bright hair flaming in the lamplight.
Waite spat into the hearth.
"Who done it? Ay, who does owt in this village? Who turned Schoolmaster out o' his better job, and keeps him here kicking his heels up o' top o' Church Hill? Who pays starvation wages, and then takes coals an' Christmas cake round to stop our mouths so that we shan't grumble? Who goes about preaching and lying and telling tales to our wives, and making men fairly sick with her bits o' sermons an' patronizing ways? You ask Wilson here if Willerbys weren't going to pay him three pound a year more till they heard tell what Robsons give'd their men, so they'd go no higher?"
"Ay," Wilson spoke with his usual deliberation. "It's all right for Robson's lads, an' it's all right fer Robsons noo, but one o' these fine days Missus'll sicken of playing providence an' then Anderby will know a bit o' which way its hens were laying."
"Robsons?" asked David. "Not the Robsons at the Wold Farm?"
An hour later, Mike O'Flynn and Ezra Dawson opened the door of the smoking room at the Flying Fox. There were about a dozen habitués of the tavern gathered round a generous fire; but to-night they no longer wore that air of independent exclusiveness which most Yorkshire men assume while drinking, just to show that they need no support from their fellows in their progress through life or through a pint of Guinness's stout.
Instead every face was turned in one direction, and the smoking lamps illuminated varying expressions of incredulity, bewilderment or vacuous attention. At one side of the fire-place, opposite the high backed settle, stood one of the thinnest people the shepherd had ever seen, his arms waving in grotesque gesticulations, his hair standing from his head in a fiery halo, a torrent of words pouring from his impassioned lips.
"Wages!" he cried. "The wages of sin is death and the wages of labour, of lifelong labour honestly given and painfully wraught out by the sweat of the labourer—that, too, is death! Death to social competence—when a man labours from daybreak to nightfall for a miserable pittance, which stands in no proportion to the service he has rendered—Death to initiative and enterprise! When it's no use ever trying to do anything better than it was done yesterday, because the only person who will profit is the capitalist. Death to progress! Since how should men progress, who have become machines, bodies and hands—not brains. Those were dead long ago.
"They say in the Bible which some of you may have read when you were at Sunday School, 'Ye are gods.' I say 'You are beasts,' animals who rise to labour for another man, who sell your souls and bodies, and all the fine things of which your growing manhood once was capable for eighteen shillings a week, and a dole of beef at Christmas. To labour till your backs ache and your hands stiffen and your brains decay, until when the day's work is done you are fit for nothing but to feed grossly like beasts round a sordid table and to swill down beer in a public house before you roll to your dens and fall into a sodden sleep. Beasts, beasts, beasts!" he cried. "And you were born to be gods!"
Half of David's audience had no idea of his meaning, but they realized that he was very angry and on their behalf. He was telling them in this strange way that it was a poor thing to work on a farm—which some of them had thought for long enough—and that the farmers were their enemies, and that something—they weren't quite sure what—had to happen before this distressing state of things could end.
But Elias Waite leaned forward from the settle hearing at last the true interpretation of many of his own half-formed ideas. His face was flushed by excitement; his hands twisted; a new look of hope and understanding lit his brooding eyes.
David had paused. He felt no longer like a cold, hungry boy, listening with apprehension to footsteps along the passage. He felt inspired—a prophet—upborne on the waves of his own eloquence. The idea that he might possibly be talking nonsense never seemed to occur to him, or, if it had entered his head, he must have waved it away with an airy "Never mind. It doesn't matter whether this is sense or not. We've got going."
Ezra approached Wilson, who sat near the door, and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Who's yon lad?" he asked.
"A sort o' preaching chap," murmured Wilson, his eyes still fixed upon David. "Ay, but he's a rare speaker."
Victoria Todd shouldered her way through the crowd, and handed the shepherd his mug of ale. Mike O'Flynn deftly intercepted it and drank it heartily, winking meanwhile at Ezra. The shepherd merely smiled indulgently, knowing Mike would pay for the next, and, anyway, it was no good crossing O'Flynn after he had tasted his second glass.
From the group about the fire came a voice, half jeering, half in earnest:
"Ay, young fellow. It's all very well for you to call us beasts, but who's to start righting matters? We can't do nowt. If we asks more wages, we'll only lose our jobs and stand waiting long enough next Martinmas for hiring."
"Whose going to right it? Why you, and you and you——! The power lies with you, and you alone. Why can't you get up now, and demand high wages? Why do you behave like frightened children instead of standing up for yourselves like men? Because each of you stands alone, and fights alone. There's no co-operation among you."
Abandoning his rhetoric, David began to speak more slowly and calmly, of the possibility of forming an agricultural union, of the progress towards self-government already made in industry, and of the suggested centres for labour organization.
Opposite him a square uncurtained window glowed, faintly luminous, like a pale jewel in the painted wall. A round moon rode across the window pane, followed by a trail of tattered clouds, smoke white on a clear sky of delicate blue. David, glancing up, saw it and stood fascinated by the contrast between the room, reeking with tobacco and oil, the red glow of firelight on faces and clothes and knotted hands, the oppressive clamour of that little company, and the cold perfection of the moon. It mocked him, that remote beauty. It made him suddenly aware of the emptiness of his rhetoric and of the hopelessness of his task, but he responded gallantly to the challenge of its indifference. He turned again to his audience, who were becoming restive now, bored by the duller description of practical details after the excitement of denunciation.
"Of course there will be difficulties," he added, smiling as though these would be welcomed rather than dreaded. "But since I came north I've discovered that nothing is impossible to a Yorkshire man except shooting a fox or riding over seeds."
"There's another thing I'll be telling you is impossible!" said Mike O'Flynn from his seat near the door.
"And what's that?" David inquired confidently. He was showing a brave face to the cynical moon, that still sneered from the window upon the folly of human aspirations.
"And that's for an interfering stranger like yourself to be blarneying us into thinking we could be better off than we are. And sure it isn't Mike O'Flynn you'll be telling is an animal, without feeling the weight of his fist!"
"Oh. This is interesting. You are satisfied with your condition then?"
"Satisfied, bedad! I'd like to know of anyone who isn't if he works for Robsons of Anderby Wold."
David gave a slight ironical bow. "Gentlemen," he said, "allow me to introduce to you an agricultural labourer without a grievance! May I congratulate you, sir, on your contented disposition, no less than on your unique blindness of the truth of your situation?"
It was a mistake. Mike had reached that border line between sobriety and intoxication, when the sense of personal dignity is most vulnerable. He became deeply incensed.
"And may I congratulate you, sir, on the boldness of your impertinence in talking against them who have done most in the world for us, and never a farthing's worth of harm to yourself?"
"I think you misunderstand me. The farmers have, in many cases, done their best according to their own ideas, for their labourers, but misplaced philanthropy does more harm than indifference. If ever you had read the works of a certain gentleman called Aristotle—which from your exclusive attention to the particular, when I am discussing the general, I gather you have not—you would have learnt that 'There comes a time when from a false good arises a true evil.'"
"I'll thank you not to mention your particulars and generals when talking with Mike O'Flynn. I've neither read the works of that gentleman you spake of nor do I want to. But what I do say is that if ye's got anything to say against farmers and their wives, the same including Mrs. Robson, God bless her, you'll just step outside the house and repeat it to me slow and careful like before I knock it back down your dhirty throat. For when I had pneumonia and like to die I was with a pain in my chest like a hot iron and seeing the gowlden gates——"
Dawson placed a restraining hand on Mike's shoulder.
"Coom now, Mike, we've heard all that before. Sure enough there's one way yon young chap has you fair beat—at least 'e stops when 'e's finished."
David had finished. His enthusiasm had burnt itself out, and he felt subdued and exhausted. After a few concluding remarks and a suggestion that he would be at the Flying Fox next evening, he left the inn.
The village crouched grey and ghostly in the moonlight under the circling hills. Beyond the road a frosty meadow gleamed like water frozen to white tranquillity. The cottages clustered together for company beside the ribbon of street. David stood at a turn in the road, between the Flying Fox and the Wold Farm. The air was cold, and he shivered a little, after the heat of the smoke-room. Always, when he had allowed himself to be carried away by his emotions in public, he suffered afterwards from depressing reaction. The worst of it was, he was never quite sure exactly what he might or might not have said. He could only remember hearing how the Robsons had treated that poor fellow, Waite, and then becoming violently excited. As the room filled, he had talked faster and faster and more and more wildly. He was as certain now as he had frequently been before that he had made a fool of himself, yet how, and why and to what extent he did not know. Only that Irishman, the discharged soldier, Mrs. Robson's protégé—perhaps one ought not to have been quite so ruthless. But then, as if he needed to be told that the Robsons had never done him any harm when all the time he was feeling such an unspeakable cad for criticizing, not them, no, not them, but the class to which they belonged, among the people whom Mrs. Robson believed to be adoring subjects.
"Well, Mr. Rossitur," called a clear voice, "it seems as if something meant us to meet on the road at night. How are you getting on, and how's your cold?"
Mary had emerged from the path which led to her garden through the smaller pasture. She was carrying a basket on her arm and in the moonlight looked taller than ever.
David stood stupidly silent, staring from Mary to the moon and back again to Mary. This was the woman who paid starvation wages and pauperized a whole village to satisfy her nauseated conscience. That was the moon which told him that he had just made a fool of himself and probably a cad and, anyway, it wasn't worth while forgetting that one was supposed to be a gentleman.
"Good gracious, Mr. Rossitur, you don't mean to say you've gone and lost your voice as well? Though I'm not surprised, sleeping at that inn where I'm sure they never air the sheets and standing about without a coat on."
"I—beg your pardon. Good evening. My cold really is better. Thank you very much—Yes, I must go—in a hurry——"
"In a hurry to be standing moonstruck again? You'd better by half go up and talk to John a bit and have a glass of hot lemonade. He's all by himself. I've got to go and see Mrs. Watts. She's rather ill to-night. But I shan't be long away and John would like the company. You go right on in. You look half starved. It's a real frost to-night."
"I'm all right. Really. It's awfully good of you, but I mustn't really."
He felt for his hat, remembered that he had lost it, bowed awkwardly, and hurried off down the road.
This was awful. Why on earth had he ever gone to the house, or even let them be kind to him? What would Mrs. Robson say if she knew how he had been talking at the inn? Really, it had not been necessary to say quite so much perhaps. Yet when he once started, the Lord only knew where he would stop.
He stumbled forward under the moon—the round white moon that had watched him through the window of the inn. It stared at him, unblinkingly, from a clear sky.
David stopped short and suddenly shook his fist at it.
"You may stare as hard as you like," he stormed. "Looking so wise, smiling in such a superior way! I know I'm an ass, but I know too that it's a good deal more sensible to make a fool of yourself over the right thing, than to be a model of decorum over the wrong ones. Mrs. Robson's as kind and sensible as anyone could be, but she's wrong, wrong, wrong, and you know it. And I'm right—though I some times wish to Heaven I weren't. So there!"
Then, because he was very tired and hungry, David went back to eat his bread and cheese at the inn. It was "after hours," so he missed his beer.
Mary, returning along the silent street from Mrs. Watts's cottage, was asking herself, miserably, "Why did he snub me? What's the matter? Why did he go away like that?"
Back in the Wold Farm, she scolded Violet with quite unnecessary rancour, because the coffee was cold.