He was thinking of all the work that lay before them, and yet he had faith that a new and better civilization would arise. “We must get things going again,” had been the Americans’ phrase, and they apparently faced the future without a qualm.
But Jasper’s mind was perplexed with the detail of the mechanical work that must be faced, detail so intricate and confused that he was bewildered by its complexity. It appeared to him that the crux of the whole problem lay in the North, in the counties of coal and iron. Coal and steel were the first essentials, he thought. They must begin there in however small a way, and America must send out more men, continually more men. To-morrow he was going back in the motor, with two experts, to the cable hut in Sennen Cove. They were going to test the cable and hoped to re-establish communication with America, and then more ships would come and more men, ever more men.
And, even so, they could do little at first, and beyond lay the whole of Europe and still further the whole of Asia. Were women there, also, maintaining the terrible fight against Nature in the awful struggle to find food? Steel and coal we must have, was the burden of his thought, and in his imagination he pictured the waking of factories and mines, he had a vision of little engines running....
Eileen’s thought had flown ahead. With one magnificent leap she had passed from the contemplation of present necessity to a realization of the dim future. And her thought found words.
“Hope, lots of hope,” she said. “Hope of a new clean world. We’ve got such a chance to begin all over again, and do it better. No more sweated labour, Jasper, and no more living on the work of others. We’ve just got to pull together and work for each other. If we can get enough food, and we can now with all these dear men come to help us, we can do such wonderful things afterwards. There’ll be lots of children growing up in a few years’ time, and we shall teach them the things we’ve had to learn by the force of necessity. They’ll begin so differently because, although we have had the experience of all history, we sha’n’t be bound by all the foolish conventions that grew out of it. Such a silly incongruous growth, wasn’t it? But I suppose it couldn’t be helped in one way. We were so penned in. We all had our rotten little places to keep and that took all our time. We never had a chance to consider the broad issues, the real fundamental things. But you’ve got to consider the fundamental things when you start clean away from a new beginning.
“And, oh! Jasper, surely we have all learnt certain things to avoid, haven’t we? I mean class distinctions and sex distinctions, and things like that. Women won’t trouble any more about titles and all that rot now, and anyway there aren’t any left to trouble about. And social conditions will be so different now that there won’t be any more marriage. Marriage was a man’s prerogative; he wanted to keep his woman to himself, and keep his property for his children. It never really protected women, and anyway they were capable of protecting themselves if they’d been given a chance. I know the children were a difficulty in the old days, but they won’t be now. It’ll be everybody’s business to see that the children get looked after, and a woman won’t starve just because she hasn’t got a husband to keep her. She’ll get better wages than that. The women who have children will be the most precious things we shall have. They’ll live healthier lives, too, and they won’t be incapacitated as they used to be. They’ll work and be strong instead of spending all their time either in doing nothing or pottering about the house in an eternal round of cleaning the stupid, ugly things we used. We shall have to have all new houses, Jasper, when we get things going again.
“Oh, it will be splendid,” she broke out in a great burst of enthusiasm, “and we begin to-day. We have begun.”
Jasper nodded. “It’s a wonderful opportunity,” he said.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” repeated Eileen. “We all, men and women, start level again. Equality, Jasper, It’s a beautiful word—Equality. Of course I know how unequal we all are from one point of view, and there must come a sort of aristocracy of intellect and efficiency. But underneath there will be a true equality for all that, and we shall see to it that no man or woman can abuse their powers by making slaves again. What a world of slaves it used to be, and we weren’t even slaves to intellect and efficiency, only to wealth and to money, and to some foolish idea of position and power.”
“Well, we’ve got our work to do, here and now,” said Jasper after a long pause.