“More. Chemistry will yet carry us further than this kind of metaphysical surmising.”
Taking part, even being with someone who took part in the proceedings, altered them. Some hidden chain of evidence was broken. Things no longer stood quietly in the air for acceptance or rejection. The memory of the evening would be a memory of social life, isolated revelations of personality.
CHAPTER VIII
When they emerged from the dusty shabbiness of the Euston Road it was suddenly a perfect June morning. Now was the moment. She opened the letter unnoticed, with her eyes on the sunlit park-lined vista...... “London owes much to the fact that its main thoroughfares run east and west; walk westward in the morning down any one of them, or in the afternoon towards the east and whenever the sun shines you will see” ..... and without arousing his attention hurriedly read the few lines. Was that man still in London, trying to explain it to himself, or had he been obliged to go away, or perhaps to die? London is heaven and can’t be explained. To be sent away is to be sent out of heaven.
“I’ve been telling,” useless words, coming thin and helpless out of darkness and pressing against darkness .... a desperate clutching at a borrowed performance to keep alive and keep on ... “my employers what I think of them just lately.”
“Excellent. What have you told?”
His unconscious voice steadied her; as the darkness drove nearer bringing thoughts that must not arrive. The morning changed to a painted scene, from which she turned away, catching the glance of the leaves near-by, trickily painted, as she turned to steer the eloquence flowing up in her mind.
“Well, it was a whole point of view I saw suddenly in the train coming back after Easter. I read an essay, about a superannuated clerk, an extraordinary thing, very simple and well written, not in the least like an essay. But there was something in it that was horrible. The employers gave the old man a pension, with humorous benevolence. He is so surprised and so blissfully happy in having nothing to do but look at the green world for the rest of the time, that he feels nothing but gratitude. That’s all right, from his point of view, being that sort of old man. But how dare the firm be humorously benevolent? It is no case for humour. It is not funny that prosperous people can use up lives on small fixed salaries that never increase beyond a certain point, no matter how well the employers get on, even if for the last few years they give pensions. And they don’t give pensions. If they do, they are thought most benevolent. The author, who is evidently in a way a thoughtful man, ought to have known this. He just wrote a thing that looks charming on the surface and is beautifully written and is really perfectly horrible and disgusting. Well, I suddenly thought employers ought to know. I don’t know what can be done. I don’t want a pension. I hate working for a salary as it is. But employers ought to know how fearfully unfair everything is. They ought to have their complacency smashed up.” He was engrossed. His foreign intelligence sympathised. Then she was right.
“Anyhow. The worst of it is that my employers are so frightfully nice. But the principle’s the same, the frightful unfairness. And it happened that just before I went away, just as Mr. Hancock was going off for his holiday, he had been annoyed by one of his Mudie books going back before he had read it, and no others coming that were on his list, and he suddenly said to me in a grumbling tone ‘you might keep an eye on my Mudie books.’ I was simply furious. Because before I began looking after the books—which he had never asked me to do, and was quite my own idea—it was simply a muddle. They all kept lists in a way, at least put down books when they hit upon one they thought they would like, and then sent the whole list in, and never kept a copy, and of course forgot what they’d put down. Well, I privately took to copying those lists and crossing off the books as they came and keeping on sending in the rest of the list again and again till they had all come. Well, I know a wise person would not have been in a rage and would meekly have rushed about keeping more of an eye than ever. But I can’t stand unfairness. It was the principle of the thing. What made it worse was that for some time I have had the use of one of his books myself, his idea, and of course most kind. But it doesn’t alter the principle. In the train I saw the whole unfairness of the life of employees. However hard they work, their lives don’t alter or get any easier. They live cheap poor lives in anxiety all their best years and then are expected to be grateful for a pension, and generally get no pension. I’ve left off living in anxiety; perhaps because I’ve forgotten how to have an imagination. But that is the principle and I came to the conclusion that no employers, however generous and nice, are entitled to the slightest special consideration. And I came back and practically said so. I told him that in future I would have nothing to do with his Mudie books. It was outside my sphere. I also said all sorts of things that came into my head in the train, a whole long speech. About unfairness. And to prove my point to him individually I told him of things that were unfair to me and their other employees in the practice; about the awfulness of having to be there first thing in the morning from the country after a week-end. They don’t. They sail off to their expensive week-ends without even saying good-bye, and without even thinking whether we can manage to have any sort of recreation at all on our salaries. I said that, and also that I objected to spend a large part of a busy Monday morning arranging the huge bunches of flowers he brought back from the country. That was not true. I loved those flowers and could always have some for my room; but it was a frightful nuisance sometimes, and it came into the principle, and I wound up by saying that in future I would do only the work for the practice and no odd jobs of any kind.”
“What was his reply?”