These Twain Part 38

"Ah! That makes it all the more interesting," Ingpen added roguishly: "I suppose you think you do know, Mrs. Benbow?"

Clara smiled the self-protective, non-committal smile of one who is not certain of having seen the point.

"It's very hot in here, Edwin," she said, glancing at the door. The family filed out, shepherded by Edwin.

"I'll be back in a sec," said he to Clara, on the stairs, and returned to the drawing-office.

Ingpen was in apparently close conversation with Karl.

"Yes," murmured Ingpen, thoughtfully tapping his teeth. "The whole process is practically a contest between grease and water on the stone."

"Yes," said Karl gruffly, but with respect.

And Edwin could almost see the tentacles of Ingpen's mind feeling and tightening round a new subject of knowledge, and greedily possessing it.

What a contrast to the vacuous indifference of Clara, who was so narrowed by specialisation that she could never apply her brain to anything except the welfare and the aggrandizement of her family! He dwelt sardonically upon the terrible results of family life on the individual, and dreamed of splendid freedoms.

"Mr. Clayhanger," said Ingpen, in his official manner, turning.

The two withdrew to the door. Invisible, at the foot of the stairs, could be heard the family, existing.

"Haven't seen much of lithography, eh?" said Edwin, in a voice discreetly restrained.

Ingpen, ignoring the question, murmured:

"I say, you know this place is much too hot."

"Well," said Edwin. "What do you expect in August?"

"But what's the object of all that gla.s.s roof?"

"I wanted to give 'em plenty of light. At the old shop they hadn't enough, and Karl, the Teuton there, was always grumbling."

"Why didn't you have some ventilation in the roof?"

"We did think of it. But Johnnie Orgreave said if we did we should never be able to keep it watertight."

"It certainly isn't right as it is," said Ingpen. "And our experience is that these skylighted rooms that are too hot in summer are too cold in winter. How should you like to have your private office in here?"

"Oh!" protested Edwin. "It isn't so bad as all that."

Ingpen said quietly:

"I should suggest you think it over--I mean the ventilation."

"But you don't mean to say that this shop here doesn't comply with your confounded rules?"

Ingpen answered:

"That may or may not be. But we're ent.i.tled to make recommendations in any case, and I should like you to think this over, if you don't mind.

I haven't any thermometer with me, but I lay it's ninety degrees here, if not more." In Ingpen's urbane, reasonable tone there was just a hint of the potential might of the whole organised kingdom.

"All serene," said Edwin, rather ashamed of the temperature after all, and loyally responsive to Ingpen's evident sense of duty, which somehow surprised him; he had not chanced, before, to meet Ingpen at work; earthenware manufactories were inspected once a quarter, but other factories only once a year. The thought of the ameliorating influence that Ingpen must obviously be exerting all day and every day somewhat clashed with and overset his bitter scepticism concerning the real value of departmental administrative government,--a scepticism based less upon experience than upon the persuasive tirades of democratic apostles.

They walked slowly towards the stairs, and Ingpen scribbled in a notebook.

"You seem to take your job seriously," said Edwin, teasing.

"While I'm at it. Did you imagine that I'd dropped into a sinecure?

Considering that I have to keep an eye on three hundred and fifty potbanks, over a thousand other factories, and over two thousand workshops of sorts, my boy...! _And_ you should see some of 'em. _And_ you should listen to the excuses."

"No wonder," thought Edwin, "he hasn't told me what a fine and large factory mine is! ... Still, he might have said something, all the same.

Perhaps he will."

When, after visiting the composing-room, and glancing from afar at the engine-house, the sight-seeing party reached the machine-room, Rupert was so affected by the tremendous din and the confusing whir of huge machinery in motion that he began to cry, and, seizing his mother's hand, pressed himself hard against her skirt. The realisation of his ambition had overwhelmed him. Amy protectingly took Lucy's hand. Bert and Clara succeeded in being very casual.

In the great lofty room there were five large or fairly large machines, and a number of small ones. The latter had chiefly to do with envelope and bill-head printing and with bookbinding, and only two of them were in use. Of the large machines, three were functioning--the cylinder printing-machine which had been the pride of Edwin's father, the historic "old machine," also his father's, which had been so called ever since Edwin could remember and which was ageless, and Edwin's latest and most expensive purchase, the "Smithers" litho-printer. It was on the guarded flank of the Smithers, close to the roller-racks, that Edwin halted his convoy. The rest of the immense shop with its complex ma.s.ses of metal revolving, sliding, or paralysed, its shabby figures of men, boys, and girls shifting mysteriously about, its smell of iron, grease, and humanity, and its fearful racket, was a mere background for the Smithers in its moving might.

The Smithers rose high above the spectators, and at one end of it, higher even than the top parts of the machine, was perched a dirty, frowsy, pretty girl. With a sweeping gesture of her bare arms this girl took a wide sheet of blank paper from a pile of sheets, and lodged it on the receiving rack, whereupon it was whirled off, caught into the clutches of the machine, turned, reversed, hidden away from sight among revolving rollers red and black, and finally thrust out at the other end of the machine, where it was picked up by a dirty, frowsy girl, not pretty, smaller and younger than the high-perched creature, indeed scarcely bigger than Amy. And now on the sheet was printed four times in red the words "Knype Mineral Water Mnfg. Co. Best and cheapest.

Trademark." Clara screeched a question about the trademark, which was so far invisible. Edwin made a sign to the lower dirty, frowsy girl, who respectfully but with extreme rapidity handed him a sheet as it came off the machine, and he shouted through the roar in explanation that the trademark, a soda-water syphon in blue, would be printed on the same sheet later from another stone, and the sheets cut into fours, each quarter making a complete poster. "I thought it must be like that,"

replied Clara superiorly. From childhood she had been well accustomed to printing processes, and it was not her intention to be perplexed by "this lithography." Edwin made a gesture to hand back the sheet to the machine-girl, but the machine would not pause to allow her to take it.

She was the slave of the machine; so long as it functioned, every second of her existence was monopolised, and no variation of conduct permissible. The same law applied to the older girl up near the ceiling. He put the sheet in its place himself, and noticed that to do so required appreciable care and application of the manipulative faculty.

These girls, and the other girls at their greasy task in the great shaking interior which he had created, vaguely worried him. Exactly similar girls were employed in thousands on the pot-banks, and had once been employed also at the pit-heads and even in the pits; but until lately he had not employed girls, nor had his father ever employed girls; and these girls so close to him, so dependent on him, so submissive, so subjugated, so soiled, so vulgar, whose wages would scarcely have kept his wife in boots and gloves, gave rise to strange and disturbing sensations in his heart--not merely in regard to themselves, but in regard to the whole of the workpeople. A question obscure and lancinating struck upwards through his industrial triumph and through his importance in the world, a question scarcely articulate, but which seemed to form itself into the words: Is it right?

"Is what right?" his father would have snapped at him. "Is what right?"

would have respectfully demanded Big James, who had now sidled grandiosely to the Smithers, and was fussing among the rollers in the rack. Neither of them would have been capable of comprehending his trouble. To his father an employee was an employee, to be hired as cheaply as possible, and to be exploited as completely as possible. And the att.i.tude of Big James towards the underlings was precisely that of his deceased master. They would not be unduly harsh, they would often be benevolent, but the existence of any problem, and especially any fundamental problem, beyond the direct inter-relation of wages and work could not conceivably have occurred to them. After about three quarters of a century of taboo trade-unions had now for a dozen years ceased to be regarded as a.s.sociations of anarchistic criminals. Big James was cautiously in favor of trade-unions, and old Darius Clayhanger in late life had not been a quite uncompromising opponent of them. As for Edwin, he had always in secret sympathised with them, and the trade-unionists whom he employed had no grievance against him. Yet this unanswerable, persistent question would pierce the complacency of Edwin's prosperity. It seemed to operate in a sort of fourth dimension; few even amongst trade-unionists themselves would have reacted to it.

But Edwin lived with it more and more. He was indeed getting used to it. Though he could not answer it, he could parry it, thanks to scientific ideas obtained from Darwin and Spencer, by the reflection that both he and his serfs, whatever their s.e.x, were the almost blind agencies of a vast process of evolution. And this he did, exulting with pride sometimes in the sheer adventure of the affair, and sharing his thoughts with none.... Strange that once, and not so many years ago either, he had been tempted to sell the business and live inert and ign.o.bly secure on the interest of invested moneys! But even to-day he felt sudden fears of responsibility; they came and went.

The visitors, having wandered to and fro, staring, trailed out of the machine-room, led by Edwin. A wide door swung behind them, and they were in the abrupt, startling peace of another corridor. Clara wiped Rupert's eyes, and he smiled, like a blossom after a storm. The mother and the uncle exchanged awkward glances. They had nothing whatever to say to each other. Edwin could seldom think of anything that he really wanted to say to Clara. The children were very hot and weary of wonders.

"Well," said Clara, "I suppose we'd better be moving on now." She had somewhat the air of a draught-animal about to resume the immense labour of dragging a train. "It's very queer about George. He was to have come with us for tea."

"Oh! Was he?"

"Of course he was," Clara replied sharply. "It was most distinctly arranged."

At this moment Tertius Ingpen and Hilda appeared together at the other end of the corridor. Hilda's unsmiling face seemed enigmatic. Ingpen was talking with vivacity.

Edwin thought apprehensively:

"What's up now? What's she doing here, and not George?"

And when the sisters-in-law, so strangely contrasting, shook hands, he thought:

"Is it possible that Albert looks on his wife as something unpredictable? Do those two also have moods, and altercations and antagonisms? Are they always preoccupied about what they are thinking of each other? No! It's impossible. Their life must be simply fiendishly monotonous." And Clara's inferiority before the erect, flashing individuality of Hilda appeared to him despicable. Hilda bent and kissed Rupert, Lucy, Amy and young Clara, as it were with pa.s.sion.

She was marvellous as she bent over Rupert. She scarcely looked at Edwin. Ingpen stood aside.

"I'm very sorry," said Hilda perfunctorily. "I had to send George on an errand to Hanbridge at the last moment."