Changing Winds Part 53

"My cousin, Rachel Wynne," said Roger, introducing her to him.

Rachel Wynne was a tall, thin girl, with a curious tightened look, as if she were keeping a close hold on herself. When she held out her hand to him, he had a sensation of discomfort, not because her clasp was firm, but because she seemed to be looking, not through him, but into him. He was very sensitive to the opinion of people about him, feeling very quickly the dislike of any one who did not care for him, and in a moment he knew that Rachel Wynne was antipathetic to him. Henry was always rude to people whom he disliked ... he could not be civil to them, however hard he might try to be so, but his feeling in the presence of people who disliked him, was one of powerlessness: he was tongue-tied and nervous and very dull, and his faculties seemed to shrivel up. There was a look of cold efficiency about Rachel Wynne that frightened him. She seemed to be incapable of wasting time or of waywardness. Her career at Newnham, Roger had told him, had been one of steady brilliance. "There wasn't a flicker in it," he had said to Henry. "Rachel's always well-trimmed!"

There were no ragged edges about Rachel Wynne. Her frock was neatly made, so neatly that he was unaware of it, and her hair was bound tightly to her head by a black velvet ribbon. She had a look of cold tidiness, as if she had been frozen into her shape and could not be thawed out of it; but she was not cold in spirit, as he discovered during dinner when the conversation shifted from generalities about themselves to the work she had lately been doing. They had been talking about Gilbert's play, and then Mrs. Graham had turned to Henry and told him how much she liked his novels. Her tastes were simple, and she preferred "Broken Spears" to "Drusilla." "Of course, 'Drusilla' is very clever!" she said a little deprecatingly, and then she turned to Rachel and asked her whether she had read Henry's novels.

"No," Rachel answered. "I very seldom read novels!..."

He felt contempt for her. Now he knew why he had been chilled by her presence. She belonged to that order of prigs which will not read novels, preferring instead to read "serious" books. Such a woman would treat "Tom Jones" as a frivolous book, less illuminating than some tedious biography or history book. She might even deny that it had any illumination at all.... He could not prevent a sneer from his retort to her statement that she seldom read novels.

"I suppose," he said, "you think that novels are not sufficiently serious?"

"Oh, no," she answered quickly. "I just haven't time for novel-reading!"

That seemed to him to be worse than if she had said that she preferred to read solid books. A novel, in her imagination, was a light diversion in which one only indulged in times of unusual slackness. No wonder, he thought to himself, all reformers and serious people make such a mess of the social system when they despise and ignore the princ.i.p.al means of knowing the human spirit.

"That's a pity," he said aloud. "I should have thought that you'd find novels useful to you in your work. I mean, there's surely more chance of understanding the people of the eighteenth century if you read Fielding's 'Tom Jones' than there is if you read Lecky's 'England in the Eighteenth Century.'"

"Is there?" said Rachel.

"Of course, there is," Gilbert hurled at her from the other side of the table. "Fielding was an artist, inspired by G.o.d, but Lecky was simply a fact-pedlar, inspired by the Board of Education. Why even that dull a.s.s, Richardson, makes you understand more about his period than Lecky does!"

"Perhaps," said Rachel, in a tone which indicated that there was no doubt in her mind about the relative values of Lecky and Fielding. She turned to Henry. "I wish you'd write a book about the factory system,"

she said. "That would be worth doing!"

He disliked the suggestion that "Broken Spears" and "Drusilla" had not been worth doing, and he let his resentment of her att.i.tude towards his work affect the tone of his voice as he answered, "I don't know anything about factories!"

"You should learn about them," she retorted.

No, he did not like this woman, aggressive and a.s.sertive. He turned to speak to Mary ... but Rachel Wynne had not finished with him.

"I've spent six months in the north of England," she said, reaching for the salted almonds. "I've seen every kind of factory, model and otherwise!"

"Oh, yes," he answered, vaguely irritated by her. He wished that she would talk to her other neighbour and leave him in peace with Mary. As an Improved Tory, he knew that he ought to get all the information about factories out of her that he could, but as Henry Quinn, he had no other desire than to be quit of her as quickly as possible.

"And I think the model factories are no better than the rotten ones,"

she went on.

"What's that you say?" Roger called to her from the other side of the table.

She repeated her remark. "I went over a model factory last week ... a cocoa and chocolate works ... and I'd rather be a tramp than work in it," she went on.

"But isn't it rather wonderfully organised?" Roger asked.

"Oh, yes, it's marvellously arranged. There are baths and gymnasia and continuation cla.s.ses and free medical inspection and model houses and savings banks and all the rest of it ... but I'd rather be a tramp, I tell you.... You see, even with the best of employers, genuinely philanthropic people eager to deal justly with the workers who make their fortunes for them, the factory system remains a rotten one. You can't make a decent, human thing out of it because it's fundamentally vile!..."

"My dear Rachel!..." Roger began, but she would not listen to interruptions.

"They look just as pale and 'peeked' in model factories as they do in bad ones. They're cleaner, that's all. The firm sees that they wash, but it can't prevent them from becoming ill, and they're all ill. They don't look any better than the people in the bad factories. They look worse, because they're cleaner and you can see their illness more easily. But that isn't all. They have no hope of ever controlling the firm ...

they'll never be allowed to own the factory ... that will always belong to the Family. The best that the clever ones can look forward to is a little managership. Most of them can't look forward to anything but being drilled and washed and medically inspected and modelly housed and morally controlled.... Oh, it isn't worth it, it isn't worth it. I'd rather be a dirty, insanitary tramp!"

A kind of moral fury possessed her, and they sat still, listening to her without interrupting her.

"I saw three girls at a machine," she went on, "and one of them did some little thing to a chocolate box and then pa.s.sed it on to the second girl who did a further little thing to it and then pa.s.sed it to the third girl who did another little thing to it, and then it was finished, and that was all. They do that every day, and the man who took me round told me that the firm had to catch 'em young, otherwise they can't acquire the knack of it. I saw girls putting pieces of chocolate into tinfoil so quickly that you could hardly see their movements; and they do that all day. And they have to be caught young ... before they've properly tasted life. They wouldn't do it otherwise, I suppose. That's your factory system for you! And think of the things they produce.

Chocolate boxes full of sweets! There was one girl who spent the whole of her working days in pasting photographs of grinning chorus girls on to box-lids. I should go mad if I had to look at that soppy grin all day long...."

Mrs. Graham murmured gently, but her words were not audible. Rachel would not have heard them if they had been.

"Well," said Gilbert, "what do you want to do about it?"

"I'm a reactionary," Rachel answered. "I'm against all this ... this progress. We're simply eating up people's lives, and paying meanly for them. I'd destroy all these factories ... the whole lot. They aren't worth the price. And I'd go back to decent piggery. What is the good of a plate when it means that some girl has been poisoned so that it can be bought cheaply?"

"But we must have plates?" Henry said.

"Why?" she retorted.

"Well!" he rejoined, smiling at her as one smiles at a foolish child.

"Oh, I know," she went on, "you think I'm talking wildly. I've heard all about your Improved Toryism. Roger's told me about it. You all think that you are the anointed ones, and that the bulk of people are born to do what they're told. You won't have whips for your slaves ... you'll have statutes. You won't sell them ... you'll socialise them. Cogs in wheels, you'll make them! Oh, it isn't worth while living like that. You don't even let a man do a whole job ... you only let him do a part of one, and you're trying to turn him into an automaton more and more every day. He's to press a b.u.t.ton ... and that's all. Presently, he'll _be_ a b.u.t.ton!..."

"My dear Rachel," Roger said, "you don't imagine, do you, that the whole world's going to turn back to ... piggery as you call it? We've spent centuries in creating this civilisation...."

"Is it worth while?" she demanded.

"Yes...."

"Prove it," she insisted.

"Well, of course, that's a job, isn't it? I can't prove it in a few minutes...."

"You can't prove it, Roger," she interrupted. "If all this civilisation were worth while, you wouldn't need to prove it: it would be obvious.

We'd only have to look out of the door to see the proof."

"I don't say that the factory system is satisfactory at present. It isn't; but it can be improved...."

"No, it can't, Roger. It's unimprovable. I dare you to go to any model factory in England and study it with an honest mind and then say that it is worth while. It makes the people ill ... they get no pleasure out of their work...."

"We could shorten the hours in factories," Henry suggested.

"If you do that, you admit that the thing is rotten, and can only be endured in short shifts!" she retorted. "And who wants his hours reduced? A healthy man wants to work as long as he can stand up. I don't want my hours reduced. I'll go on working until I drop ... but I wouldn't work for two seconds if I didn't like the job!" She turned again to Henry. "Why don't you write a book exposing the factory system.

It would be much more useful than all this lovey-dovey stuff. I'd give the world for a book like that ... as good as Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'

or 'd.i.c.kens's 'Oliver Twist'!..."

3

Mary had not spoken at all while Rachel harangued them on the question of the factory system, but that was not surprising, for Rachel had not given any of them a chance to say more than two or three words. In Ninian's sitting-room, when Gilbert turned to her and asked her what she thought of factories, she blushed a little, conscious that they had all turned to look at her, and answered that she had never seen a factory.

"Never seen a factory!" Rachel exclaimed, and was off again in denunciation.