BY CHARLES GIBBON.
CHAPTER XXI.—DREAMS.
And there was a night of happy wonderment at Willowmere—for, of course, it was to Madge that Philip first carried his story of the Golconda mine which had been thrown open to him. The joy of Ali Baba when the secret of the robbers’ cave was revealed to him was great—and selfish. He thought of what a good time he would have, and how he would triumph over his ungracious brother. Philip’s joy was greater; for his treasure-trove set him dreaming fine dreams of being able to ‘hurry up’ the millennium. On his way from the city his mind was filled with a hailstorm of projects of which he had hitherto had no conception.
Naturally his imagination grew on what it fed; and as he earnestly strove to shape into words his visions of the noble works that could, would, and should be done in the near future, his pulse quickened and his cheeks glowed with enthusiasm.
They were in the oak parlour; the day’s work done; and the soothing atmosphere of an orderly household filling the room with the sense of contented ease. Aunt Hessy was sewing, and spoke little. Uncle Dick smoked one of his long churchwardens—a box of which came to him regularly every Christmas from a Yorkshire friend—and listened with genial interest, commenting in his own way on Philip’s schemes.
After the first breathless moment of astonishment, Madge’s eyes were as bright with enthusiasm as her lover’s: her face was alternately flushed and pale. She approved of everything he said; and she, too, was seeing great possibilities in this new Golconda.
‘The world,’ quoth Philip, ‘is big enough for us all; and there is work enough for everybody who is willing to work. It is not work which fails, but workers. We have classified and divided our labour until we have fallen into a social system of caste as rigid as that of the Hindu, but without his excuse. Men won’t turn their hands to whatever may be offered nowadays. They clamour that they starve for want of a job, when they mean that they cannot get the job which pleases them best. Everybody wants exactly what is “in his line,” and won’t see that he might get on well enough in another line till he found room again in his own.’
‘Human nature has a weakness for wanting the things it likes best, and that it’s most in the way of doing,’ said Uncle Dick, pressing down the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with a careful movement of the left hand’s little finger.
‘But human nature need not starve because it cannot get what it likes best,’ retorted Philip warmly. ‘If men will do with their might what their hands can find to do, they will soon discover that there is a heap of work lying undone in the world.’
And so, taking this principle as the basis of his argument, he went on to expound his views of the future conservative democracy of Universal Co-operation.