"Ye can that, Mr Darwen." A little colour came back into his face. "The meeting's on Wednesday," he said.
Outside Darwen clapped Carstairs on the back. "There you are, old chap! Now we'll go and compose your letter to the committee asking for a £50 rise."
"Thanks very much, but what's the bottom of this devil's business, Darwen? How was that man killed, and why isn't that beast in there in prison?"
"My dear fellow, 'that beast' has got brains. I consider Donovan a distinctly clever man. It's only the fools who go to prison. I wish you could come into the committee to hear old Donovan speak, Irishmen are born orators." Darwen spoke quite affectionately. They passed a policeman; he saluted Darwen respectfully.
"Fine, big, brawny chap, isn't he? Gets about thirty shillings a week, and what he can pinch. Truly the English are a mighty people. 'Set a fool to catch a fool.' That man touches his hat to the rogues and yanks honest simpletons off to gaol. I can't understand how you can be so wrapped up in simple, silly engines, when these great, complicated human machines called towns and cities are so vastly more interesting. They follow the same rules, it is well to study engines before you study men: the interdependence of parts, the distribution of stresses, and the vast invisible force which you call steam or electricity, and I call morals and sentiments. I never cease to wonder at the vastness and complexity of nature.
"Our little systems have their day.
They have their day and cease to be.
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."
Tennyson was essentially the modern poet. Nature, to him, meant the universe and the controller of the universe. So it does to me. I'm what you would call a truly religious man, Carstairs. Life is full of pleasure to me. I very seldom feel what you call anger. My emotions are well under control. The misery of the world is due to uncontrolled emotion. I had a most pleasant conversation with your guv'nor and Dr Bevengton on Sunday about the same thing." He turned and faced Carstairs suddenly. "You know I was never really in love with Isabel Jameson: the only way I could convince Pa, who was chairman of the electricity committee, that I was a good engineer, was by getting engaged to his daughter. She was simply a cog in the gearing that linked his intellect with mine. These things are necessary for universal peace."
"Quite so. And you're going to marry Bessie Bevengton for a similar reason."
Darwen laughed. "The Saxons used to fight with sledge hammers," he said. "They're still adept with the weapon. A woman is simply a ragged bundle of emotions badly tied up, with the ends trailing out in all directions, and it's those trailing ends that upset half the world. A man never loves as the men in books do."
"I think your remark about the policeman touching his hat to the rogues was most appropriate."