Sir George Tressady — Volume I

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

What poor limited fools, after all, were the best of the working men—how incapable of working out any serious problem, of looking beyond their own noses and the next meal! Was he to spend his life in chronic battle with them—a set of semi-civilised barbarians—his countrymen in nothing but the name? And for what cause—to what cry? That he might defend against the toilers of this wide valley a certain elegant house in Brook Street, and find the means to go on paying his mother's debts?—such debts as he carried the evidence of, at that moment, in his pocket.

Suddenly there swept over his mind with pricking force the thought of Mary Batchelor at her door, blind with weeping and pain—of the poor boy, dead in his prime. Did those two figures stand for the realities at the base of things—the common labours, affections, agonies, which uphold the world?

His own life looked somehow poor and mean to him as he turned back to it. The Socialist of course—Burrows—would say that he and Letty and his mother were merely living, and dressing, and enjoying themselves, paying butlers, and starting carriages out of the labour and pain of others—that Jamie Batchelor and his like risked and brutalised their strong young lives that Lady Tressady and her like might "jig and amble" through theirs.

Pure ignorant fanaticism, no doubt! But he was not so ready as usual to shelter himself under the big words of controversy. Fontenoy's favourite arguments had momentarily no savour for a kind of moral nausea.

"I begin to see it was a 'cursed spite' that drove me into the business at all," he said to himself, as he stood under the trees.

What he was really suffering from was an impatience of new conditions—perhaps surprise that he was not more equal to them. Till his return home—till now, almost—he had been an employer and a coal-owner by proxy. Other people had worked for him, had solved his problems for him. Then a transient impulse had driven him home—made him accept Fontenoy's offer—worse luck!—at least, Letty apart! The hopefulness and elation about himself, his new activities, and his Parliamentary prospects, that had been his predominant mood in London seemed to him at this moment of depression mere folly. What he really felt, he declared to himself, was a sort of cowardly shrinking from life and its tests—the recognition that at bottom he was a weakling, without faiths, without true identity.

Then the quick thought-process, as it flowed on, told him that there are two things that protect men of his stamp from their own lack of moral stamina: perpetual change of scene, that turns the world into a spectacle—and love. He thought with hunger of his travel-years; holding away from him, as it were, for a moment the thought of his marriage.

But only for a moment. It was but a few weeks since a woman's life had given itself wholly into his hands. He was still thrilling under the emotion and astonishment of it. Tender, melting thoughts flowed upon him. His little Letty! Had he ever thought her perfect, free from natural covetousness and weaknesses? What folly! He to ask for the grand style in character!

He looked at his watch. How long he had left her! Let him hurry, and make his peace.

However, just as he was turning, his attention was caught by something that was passing on the opposite hillside. The light from the west was shining full on a white cottage with a sloping garden. The cottage belonged to the Wesleyan minister of the place, and had been rented by Burrows for the last six months. And just as George was turning away he saw Burrows come out of the door with a burden—a child, or a woman little larger than a child—in his arms. He carried her to an armchair which had been placed on the little grass-plat. The figure was almost lost in the chair, and sat motionless while Burrows brought cushions and a stool. Then a baby came to play on the grass, and Burrows hung over the back of the chair, bending so as to talk to the person in it.