The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes Part 62

She was silent; her thumb flicked at a note on the keyboard behind her.

"But that's not what I mind in them most--"

She wondered at the rapidity with which his shyness was pa.s.sing into effusiveness. But then was she not the "Mother-Confessor"? Had not even her favourite nuns told her things about their early lives, even when there was no moral to be pointed? "They're very good-hearted," she murmured apologetically. "I'm often companion--in charity expeditions."

"It's easy to be good-hearted when you don't know what to do with your money. This place is full of such people. But I look in vain for the diviner impulse."

Eileen wondered if he were a Dissenter. But then "the place was full of such people."

"You don't think there's enough religion?" she murmured.

"There's certainly plenty of churches and chapels. But I find myself isolated here. You see, I'm a Socialist."

Eileen crossed herself instinctively.

"You don't believe in G.o.d!" she cried in horror. For the good nuns had taught her that "_les socialistes_" were synonymous with "_les athees_."

He laughed. "Not, if by G.o.d you mean Mammon. I don't believe in Property--we up here in the sun and the others down there in the soot."

"But you _are_ up here," said Eileen, naively.

"I can't help it. My mother would raise Cain." He smiled wistfully. "She couldn't bear to see a stranger helping father in the factory management."

"Then you _are_ down there."

"Quite so. I work as hard as any one even if my labour isn't manual. I dress like an ordinary hand, too, though my mother doesn't know that, for I change at the office."

"But what good does that do?"

"It satisfies my conscience."

"And I suppose the men like it?"

"No, that's the strange part. They don't. And father only laughs. But one must persist. At Oxford I worked under Ruskin."

"Oh, you're an artist!"

"No, I didn't mean that part of Ruskin's work. His gospel of labour--we had a patch for digging."

"What--real spades!"

"Did you imagine we called a spoon a spade?" he said, a whit resentfully.

Eileen smiled. "No, but I can't imagine you using a common or garden spade."

"You are thinking of my hands." He looked at them, not without complacency, Eileen thought, as she herself wondered where he had got his long white fingers from. "But it is a couple of years ago," he explained.

"It was hard work, I a.s.sure you."

"Did your mother know?" Eileen asked with a little whimsical look.

"Of course not. She would have been horrified."

"Well, but most people would be surprised."

"Yes. Put your muscle into an oar or a cricket bat and you are a hero; put your muscle into a spade and you are a madman."

"You think it's _vice versa_?" queried Eileen, ingenuously.

"Much more. At least," he stammered and coloured again, "I don't pose as a hero but simply--"

"As what?" Eileen still looked innocent.

"I simply think work is the n.o.blest function of man," he burst forth.

"Don't you?"

"I do not," answered Eileen. "Work is a curse. If the serpent had not tempted Eve to break G.o.d's commandment, we should still be basking in Paradise."

He looked at her curiously. "You believe that?"

"Isn't it in the Bible?" she answered, seriously astonished.

"Whatever the primitive Semitic allegorist may have thought, work is a blessing, not a curse."

"Then you _are_ an atheist!" Eileen recoiled from this strange young man.

"Ah, you shrink back!" he said in tones of bitter pleasure. "I told you I lived in isolation."

Eileen's humour shot forth candidly. "You'll not be isolated when you die."

His bitterness pa.s.sed into genial superiority. "You mean I'll go to h.e.l.l.

How can you believe anything so horrible?"

"Why is that horrible for me to believe? For you--" And she filled up the sentence with a smile.

"I don't believe you do believe it."

"There's nothing you seem to believe. I do honestly think that you can't be saved if you don't believe."

"I accept that. The question, however, is what kind of belief and what kind of saving. Do you suppose Plato is in h.e.l.l?"

"I don't know. He invented Platonic love, didn't he? So that might save him." She looked at him with her great grey eyes--he couldn't tell whether she was quizzing him or not.

"Is that all you know of Plato?"

"I know he was a Greek philosopher. But I only learned Greek roots at the Convent. So Plato is Greek to me."

"He has been beautifully Englished by the Master of my College. I wish you'd read him."

"Is the translation in the library?"