“Aye, but fair treated women don’t. What art doing now? I mean for the rest of the day. Looking at it from my point of view, I might as well tak’ the chance to get out o’ sight o’ yond hell-spot. I’m going on moors for a breath of air. Wilt come? Better nor settin’ to hoam brooding, tha’ knows.”
His point was simply to get John in his emotional crisis to himself, but luck was with him in his proposal further than he knew. For John, the moors were a reminder of Annie at her sunniest, but for the moment all that he was thinking of was that strange instinct for the sympathetic stranger rather than for the sympathy, too poignant to be borne, of his mother. And he did not wish to see his sons that day.
“‘Tis better nor brooding,” he agreed, and went. There was virtue, he thought, in talking. Phoebe was all reserve and action, and on this which resolved itself into a day off from the factory, she would be very active in her house. He was quite sure that he did not want to go home. Exercise for his legs, air for his lungs and the conversation, comprehending but naturally not too intimate, of this kindly stranger—these were the things to get him through the day.
But the conversation of Mr. Barraclough was not calculated to be an anodyne.
“Thank God, we’ve gotten our backs to it. We’re walking away from yond devilry, we’ve our faces to summat green.” How often had he not heard something like that from Annie! “It beats me to guess what folks are made of, both the folk that stand factories and t’other folks that drive ‘em into factories. I know I’ve gotten an answer to some of this under my bed where I lodge and I’ll mak’ the answer speak one of these days an’ all.”
“An answer? What answer? I’ve looked and found no answer.”
“No? They looked at Blackburn and found th’ wrong answer an’ all, th’ould answer that the Luddites found and failed wi’. Smashing machines! Burning factories! What’s, the good o’ that? They nobbut put up new factories bigger and more hellish than before and mak’ new machines that’ll do ten men’s work instead of two. Aye, they were on wrong tack in them days. They were afraid to get on right tack.”
“Is there a tack that’s right?” he asked.
“There’s shooting,” said Barraclough.
“Shooting? Tha’ canna shoot an engine, nor a factory.”