CHAPTER XVII.
THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE
In Beldover, there was both for Ursula and for Gudrun an interval. Itseemed to Ursula as if Birkin had gone out of her for the time, he hadlost his significance, he scarcely mattered in her world. She had herown friends, her own activities, her own life. She turned back to theold ways with zest, away from him.
And Gudrun, after feeling every moment in all her veins conscious ofGerald Crich, connected even physically with him, was now almostindifferent to the thought of him. She was nursing new schemes forgoing away and trying a new form of life. All the time, there wassomething in her urging her to avoid the final establishing of arelationship with Gerald. She felt it would be wiser and better to haveno more than a casual acquaintance with him.
She had a scheme for going to St Petersburg, where she had a friend whowas a sculptor like herself, and who lived with a wealthy Russian whosehobby was jewel-making. The emotional, rather rootless life of theRussians appealed to her. She did not want to go to Paris. Paris wasdry, and essentially boring. She would like to go to Rome, Munich,Vienna, or to St Petersburg or Moscow. She had a friend in StPetersburg and a friend in Munich. To each of these she wrote, askingabout rooms.
She had a certain amount of money. She had come home partly to save,and now she had sold several pieces of work, she had been praised invarious shows. She knew she could become quite the 'go' if she went toLondon. But she knew London, she wanted something else. She had seventypounds, of which nobody knew anything. She would move soon, as soon asshe heard from her friends. Her nature, in spite of her apparentplacidity and calm, was profoundly restless.
The sisters happened to call in a cottage in Willey Green to buy honey.Mrs Kirk, a stout, pale, sharp-nosed woman, sly, honied, with somethingshrewish and cat-like beneath, asked the girls into her toocosy, tootidy kitchen. There was a cat-like comfort and cleanliness everywhere.
'Yes, Miss Brangwen,' she said, in her slightly whining, insinuatingvoice, 'and how do you like being back in the old place, then?'
Gudrun, whom she addressed, hated her at once.
'I don't care for it,' she replied abruptly.
'You don't? Ay, well, I suppose you found a difference from London. Youlike life, and big, grand places. Some of us has to be content withWilley Green and Beldover. And what do you think of our Grammar School,as there's so much talk about?'
'What do I think of it?' Gudrun looked round at her slowly. 'Do youmean, do I think it's a good school?'
'Yes. What is your opinion of it?'
'I DO think it's a good school.'
Gudrun was very cold and repelling. She knew the common people hatedthe school.
'Ay, you do, then! I've heard so much, one way and the other. It's niceto know what those that's in it feel. But opinions vary, don't they? MrCrich up at Highclose is all for it. Ay, poor man, I'm afraid he's notlong for this world. He's very poorly.'
'Is he worse?' asked Ursula.
'Eh, yes--since they lost Miss Diana. He's gone off to a shadow. Poorman, he's had a world of trouble.'
'Has he?' asked Gudrun, faintly ironic.
'He has, a world of trouble. And as nice and kind a gentleman as everyou could wish to meet. His children don't take after him.'
'I suppose they take after their mother?' said Ursula.
'In many ways.' Mrs Krik lowered her voice a little. 'She was a proudhaughty lady when she came into these parts--my word, she was that! Shemustn't be looked at, and it was worth your life to speak to her.' Thewoman made a dry, sly face.
'Did you know her when she was first married?'
'Yes, I knew her. I nursed three of her children. And proper littleterrors they were, little fiends--that Gerald was a demon if ever therewas one, a proper demon, ay, at six months old.' A curious malicious,sly tone came into the woman's voice.
'Really,' said Gudrun.
'That wilful, masterful--he'd mastered one nurse at six months. Kick,and scream, and struggle like a demon. Many's the time I've pinched hislittle bottom for him, when he was a child in arms. Ay, and he'd havebeen better if he'd had it pinched oftener. But she wouldn't have themcorrected--no-o, wouldn't hear of it. I can remember the rows she hadwith Mr Crich, my word. When he'd got worked up, properly worked uptill he could stand no more, he'd lock the study door and whip them.But she paced up and down all the while like a tiger outside, like atiger, with very murder in her face. She had a face that could LOOKdeath. And when the door was opened, she'd go in with her handslifted--What have you been doing to MY children, you coward. She waslike one out of her mind. I believe he was frightened of her; he had tobe driven mad before he'd lift a finger. Didn't the servants have alife of it! And didn't we used to be thankful when one of them caughtit. They were the torment of your life.'
'Really!' said Gudrun.
'In every possible way. If you wouldn't let them smash their pots onthe table, if you wouldn't let them drag the kitten about with a stringround its neck, if you wouldn't give them whatever they asked for,every mortal thing--then there was a shine on, and their mother comingin asking--What's the matter with him? What have you done to him? Whatis it, Darling? And then she'd turn on you as if she'd trample youunder her feet. But she didn't trample on me. I was the only one thatcould do anything with her demons--for she wasn't going to be botheredwith them herself. No, SHE took no trouble for them. But they must justhave their way, they mustn't be spoken to. And Master Gerald was thebeauty. I left when he was a year and a half, I could stand no more.But I pinched his little bottom for him when he was in arms, I did,when there was no holding him, and I'm not sorry I did--'
Gudrun went away in fury and loathing. The phrase, 'I pinched hislittle bottom for him,' sent her into a white, stony fury. She couldnot bear it, she wanted to have the woman taken out at once andstrangled. And yet there the phrase was lodged in her mind for ever,beyond escape. She felt, one day, she would HAVE to tell him, to seehow he took it. And she loathed herself for the thought.
But at Shortlands the life-long struggle was coming to a close. Thefather was ill and was going to die. He had bad internal pains, whichtook away all his attentive life, and left him with only a vestige ofhis consciousness. More and more a silence came over him, he was lessand less acutely aware of his surroundings. The pain seemed to absorbhis activity. He knew it was there, he knew it would come again. It waslike something lurking in the darkness within him. And he had not thepower, or the will, to seek it out and to know it. There it remained inthe darkness, the great pain, tearing him at times, and then beingsilent. And when it tore him he crouched in silent subjection under it,and when it left him alone again, he refused to know of it. It waswithin the darkness, let it remain unknown. So he never admitted it,except in a secret corner of himself, where all his never-revealedfears and secrets were accumulated. For the rest, he had a pain, itwent away, it made no difference. It even stimulated him, excited him.
But it gradually absorbed his life. Gradually it drew away all hispotentiality, it bled him into the dark, it weaned him of life and drewhim away into the darkness. And in this twilight of his life littleremained visible to him. The business, his work, that was goneentirely. His public interests had disappeared as if they had neverbeen. Even his family had become extraneous to him, he could onlyremember, in some slight non-essential part of himself, that such andsuch were his children. But it was historical fact, not vital to him.He had to make an effort to know their relation to him. Even his wifebarely existed. She indeed was like the darkness, like the pain withinhim. By some strange association, the darkness that contained the painand the darkness that contained his wife were identical. All histhoughts and understandings became blurred and fused, and now his wifeand the consuming pain were the same dark secret power against him,that he never faced. He never drove the dread out of its lair withinhim. He only knew that there was a dark place, and something inhabitingthis darkness which issued from time to time and rent him. But he darednot penetrate and drive the beast into the open. He had rather ignoreits existence. Only, in his vague way, the dread was his wife, thedestroyer, and it was the pain, the destruction, a darkness which wasone and both.
He very rarely saw his wife. She kept her room. Only occasionally shecame forth, with her head stretched forward, and in her low, possessedvoice, she asked him how he was. And he answered her, in the habit ofmore than thirty years: 'Well, I don't think I'm any the worse, dear.'But he was frightened of her, underneath this safeguard of habit,frightened almost to the verge of death.
But all his life, he had been so constant to his lights, he had neverbroken down. He would die even now without breaking down, withoutknowing what his feelings were, towards her. All his life, he had said:'Poor Christiana, she has such a strong temper.' With unbroken will, hehad stood by this position with regard to her, he had substituted pityfor all his hostility, pity had been his shield and his safeguard, andhis infallible weapon. And still, in his consciousness, he was sorryfor her, her nature was so violent and so impatient.
But now his pity, with his life, was wearing thin, and the dread almostamounting to horror, was rising into being. But before the armour ofhis pity really broke, he would die, as an insect when its shell iscracked. This was his final resource. Others would live on, and knowthe living death, the ensuing process of hopeless chaos. He would not.He denied death its victory.
He had been so constant to his lights, so constant to charity, and tohis love for his neighbour. Perhaps he had loved his neighbour evenbetter than himself--which is going one further than the commandment.Always, this flame had burned in his heart, sustaining him througheverything, the welfare of the people. He was a large employer oflabour, he was a great mine-owner. And he had never lost this from hisheart, that in Christ he was one with his workmen. Nay, he had feltinferior to them, as if they through poverty and labour were nearer toGod than he. He had always the unacknowledged belief, that it was hisworkmen, the miners, who held in their hands the means of salvation. Tomove nearer to God, he must move towards his miners, his life mustgravitate towards theirs. They were, unconsciously, his idol, his Godmade manifest. In them he worshipped the highest, the great,sympathetic, mindless Godhead of humanity.
And all the while, his wife had opposed him like one of the greatdemons of hell. Strange, like a bird of prey, with the fascinatingbeauty and abstraction of a hawk, she had beat against the bars of hisphilanthropy, and like a hawk in a cage, she had sunk into silence. Byforce of circumstance, because all the world combined to make the cageunbreakable, he had been too strong for her, he had kept her prisoner.And because she was his prisoner, his passion for her had alwaysremained keen as death. He had always loved her, loved her withintensity. Within the cage, she was denied nothing, she was given alllicence.
But she had gone almost mad. Of wild and overweening temper, she couldnot bear the humiliation of her husband's soft, half-appealing kindnessto everybody. He was not deceived by the poor. He knew they came andsponged on him, and whined to him, the worse sort; the majority,luckily for him, were much too proud to ask for anything, much tooindependent to come knocking at his door. But in Beldover, aseverywhere else, there were the whining, parasitic, foul human beingswho come crawling after charity, and feeding on the living body of thepublic like lice. A kind of fire would go over Christiana Crich'sbrain, as she saw two more pale-faced, creeping women in objectionableblack clothes, cringing lugubriously up the drive to the door. Shewanted to set the dogs on them, 'Hi Rip! Hi Ring! Ranger! At 'em boys,set 'em off.' But Crowther, the butler, with all the rest of theservants, was Mr Crich's man. Nevertheless, when her husband was away,she would come down like a wolf on the crawling supplicants:
'What do you people want? There is nothing for you here. You have nobusiness on the drive at all. Simpson, drive them away and let no moreof them through the gate.'
The servants had to obey her. And she would stand watching with an eyelike the eagle's, whilst the groom in clumsy confusion drove thelugubrious persons down the drive, as if they were rusty fowls,scuttling before him.
But they learned to know, from the lodge-keeper, when Mrs Crich wasaway, and they timed their visits. How many times, in the first years,would Crowther knock softly at the door: 'Person to see you, sir.'
'What name?'
'Grocock, sir.'
'What do they want?' The question was half impatient, half gratified.He liked hearing appeals to his charity.
'About a child, sir.'
'Show them into the library, and tell them they shouldn't come aftereleven o'clock in the morning.'
'Why do you get up from dinner?--send them off,' his wife would sayabruptly.
'Oh, I can't do that. It's no trouble just to hear what they have tosay.'
'How many more have been here today? Why don't you establish open housefor them? They would soon oust me and the children.'
'You know dear, it doesn't hurt me to hear what they have to say. Andif they really are in trouble--well, it is my duty to help them out ofit.'
'It's your duty to invite all the rats in the world to gnaw at yourbones.'
'Come, Christiana, it isn't like that. Don't be uncharitable.'
But she suddenly swept out of the room, and out to the study. There satthe meagre charity-seekers, looking as if they were at the doctor's.
'Mr Crich can't see you. He can't see you at this hour. Do you think heis your property, that you can come whenever you like? You must goaway, there is nothing for you here.'
The poor people rose in confusion. But Mr Crich, pale and black-beardedand deprecating, came behind her, saying:
'Yes, I don't like you coming as late as this. I'll hear any of you inthe morning part of the day, but I can't really do with you after.What's amiss then, Gittens. How is your Missis?'
'Why, she's sunk very low, Mester Crich, she's a'most gone, she is--'
Sometimes, it seemed to Mrs Crich as if her husband were some subtlefuneral bird, feeding on the miseries of the people. It seemed to herhe was never satisfied unless there was some sordid tale being pouredout to him, which he drank in with a sort of mournful, sympatheticsatisfaction. He would have no RAISON D'ETRE if there were nolugubrious miseries in the world, as an undertaker would have nomeaning if there were no funerals.
Mrs Crich recoiled back upon herself, she recoiled away from this worldof creeping democracy. A band of tight, baleful exclusion fastenedround her heart, her isolation was fierce and hard, her antagonism waspassive but terribly pure, like that of a hawk in a cage. As the yearswent on, she lost more and more count of the world, she seemed rapt insome glittering abstraction, almost purely unconscious. She wouldwander about the house and about the surrounding country, staringkeenly and seeing nothing. She rarely spoke, she had no connection withthe world. And she did not even think. She was consumed in a fiercetension of opposition, like the negative pole of a magnet.
And she bore many children. For, as time went on, she never opposed herhusband in word or deed. She took no notice of him, externally. Shesubmitted to him, let him take what he wanted and do as he wanted withher. She was like a hawk that sullenly submits to everything. Therelation between her and her husband was wordless and unknown, but itwas deep, awful, a relation of utter inter-destruction. And he, whotriumphed in the world, he became more and more hollow in his vitality,the vitality was bled from within him, as by some haemorrhage. She washulked like a hawk in a cage, but her heart was fierce and undiminishedwithin her, though her mind was destroyed.
So to the last he would go to her and hold her in his arms sometimes,before his strength was all gone. The terrible white, destructive lightthat burned in her eyes only excited and roused him. Till he was bledto death, and then he dreaded her more than anything. But he alwayssaid to himself, how happy he had been, how he had loved her with apure and consuming love ever since he had known her. And he thought ofher as pure, chaste; the white flame which was known to him alone, theflame of her sex, was a white flower of snow to his mind. She was awonderful white snow-flower, which he had desired infinitely. And nowhe was dying with all his ideas and interpretations intact. They wouldonly collapse when the breath left his body. Till then they would bepure truths for him. Only death would show the perfect completeness ofthe lie. Till death, she was his white snow-flower. He had subdued her,and her subjugation was to him an infinite chastity in her, a virginitywhich he could never break, and which dominated him as by a spell.
She had let go the outer world, but within herself she was unbroken andunimpaired. She only sat in her room like a moping, dishevelled hawk,motionless, mindless. Her children, for whom she had been so fierce inher youth, now meant scarcely anything to her. She had lost all that,she was quite by herself. Only Gerald, the gleaming, had some existencefor her. But of late years, since he had become head of the business,he too was forgotten. Whereas the father, now he was dying, turned forcompassion to Gerald. There had always been opposition between the twoof them. Gerald had feared and despised his father, and to a greatextent had avoided him all through boyhood and young manhood. And thefather had felt very often a real dislike of his eldest son, which,never wanting to give way to, he had refused to acknowledge. He hadignored Gerald as much as possible, leaving him alone.
Since, however, Gerald had come home and assumed responsibility in thefirm, and had proved such a wonderful director, the father, tired andweary of all outside concerns, had put all his trust of these things inhis son, implicitly, leaving everything to him, and assuming a rathertouching dependence on the young enemy. This immediately roused apoignant pity and allegiance in Gerald's heart, always shadowed bycontempt and by unadmitted enmity. For Gerald was in reaction againstCharity; and yet he was dominated by it, it assumed supremacy in theinner life, and he could not confute it. So he was partly subject tothat which his father stood for, but he was in reaction against it. Nowhe could not save himself. A certain pity and grief and tenderness forhis father overcame him, in spite of the deeper, more sullen hostility.
The father won shelter from Gerald through compassion. But for love hehad Winifred. She was his youngest child, she was the only one of hischildren whom he had ever closely loved. And her he loved with all thegreat, overweening, sheltering love of a dying man. He wanted toshelter her infinitely, infinitely, to wrap her in warmth and love andshelter, perfectly. If he could save her she should never know onepain, one grief, one hurt. He had been so right all his life, soconstant in his kindness and his goodness. And this was his lastpassionate righteousness, his love for the child Winifred. Some thingstroubled him yet. The world had passed away from him, as his strengthebbed. There were no more poor and injured and humble to protect andsuccour. These were all lost to him. There were no more sons anddaughters to trouble him, and to weigh on him as an unnaturalresponsibility. These too had faded out of reality All these things hadfallen out of his hands, and left him free.
There remained the covert fear and horror of his wife, as she satmindless and strange in her room, or as she came forth with slow,prowling step, her head bent forward. But this he put away. Even hislife-long righteousness, however, would not quite deliver him from theinner horror. Still, he could keep it sufficiently at bay. It wouldnever break forth openly. Death would come first.
Then there was Winifred! If only he could be sure about her, if only hecould be sure. Since the death of Diana, and the development of hisillness, his craving for surety with regard to Winifred amounted almostto obsession. It was as if, even dying, he must have some anxiety, someresponsibility of love, of Charity, upon his heart.
She was an odd, sensitive, inflammable child, having her father's darkhair and quiet bearing, but being quite detached, momentaneous. She waslike a changeling indeed, as if her feelings did not matter to her,really. She often seemed to be talking and playing like the gayest andmost childish of children, she was full of the warmest, most delightfulaffection for a few things--for her father, and for her animals inparticular. But if she heard that her beloved kitten Leo had been runover by the motor-car she put her head on one side, and replied, with afaint contraction like resentment on her face: 'Has he?' Then she tookno more notice. She only disliked the servant who would force bad newson her, and wanted her to be sorry. She wished not to know, and thatseemed her chief motive. She avoided her mother, and most of themembers of her family. She LOVED her Daddy, because he wanted heralways to be happy, and because he seemed to become young again, andirresponsible in her presence. She liked Gerald, because he was soself-contained. She loved people who would make life a game for her.She had an amazing instinctive critical faculty, and was a pureanarchist, a pure aristocrat at once. For she accepted her equalswherever she found them, and she ignored with blithe indifference herinferiors, whether they were her brothers and sisters, or whether theywere wealthy guests of the house, or whether they were the commonpeople or the servants. She was quite single and by herself, derivingfrom nobody. It was as if she were cut off from all purpose orcontinuity, and existed simply moment by moment.
The father, as by some strange final illusion, felt as if all his fatedepended on his ensuring to Winifred her happiness. She who could neversuffer, because she never formed vital connections, she who could losethe dearest things of her life and be just the same the next day, thewhole memory dropped out, as if deliberately, she whose will was sostrangely and easily free, anarchistic, almost nihilistic, who like asoulless bird flits on its own will, without attachment orresponsibility beyond the moment, who in her every motion snapped thethreads of serious relationship with blithe, free hands, reallynihilistic, because never troubled, she must be the object of herfather's final passionate solicitude.
When Mr Crich heard that Gudrun Brangwen might come to help Winifredwith her drawing and modelling he saw a road to salvation for hischild. He believed that Winifred had talent, he had seen Gudrun, heknew that she was an exceptional person. He could give Winifred intoher hands as into the hands of a right being. Here was a direction anda positive force to be lent to his child, he need not leave herdirectionless and defenceless. If he could but graft the girl on tosome tree of utterance before he died, he would have fulfilled hisresponsibility. And here it could be done. He did not hesitate toappeal to Gudrun.
Meanwhile, as the father drifted more and more out of life, Geraldexperienced more and more a sense of exposure. His father after all hadstood for the living world to him. Whilst his father lived Gerald wasnot responsible for the world. But now his father was passing away,Gerald found himself left exposed and unready before the storm ofliving, like the mutinous first mate of a ship that has lost hiscaptain, and who sees only a terrible chaos in front of him. He did notinherit an established order and a living idea. The whole unifying ideaof mankind seemed to be dying with his father, the centralising forcethat had held the whole together seemed to collapse with his father,the parts were ready to go asunder in terrible disintegration. Geraldwas as if left on board of a ship that was going asunder beneath hisfeet, he was in charge of a vessel whose timbers were all coming apart.
He knew that all his life he had been wrenching at the frame of life tobreak it apart. And now, with something of the terror of a destructivechild, he saw himself on the point of inheriting his own destruction.And during the last months, under the influence of death, and ofBirkin's talk, and of Gudrun's penetrating being, he had lost entirelythat mechanical certainty that had been his triumph. Sometimes spasmsof hatred came over him, against Birkin and Gudrun and that whole set.He wanted to go back to the dullest conservatism, to the most stupid ofconventional people. He wanted to revert to the strictest Toryism. Butthe desire did not last long enough to carry him into action.
During his childhood and his boyhood he had wanted a sort of savagedom.The days of Homer were his ideal, when a man was chief of an army ofheroes, or spent his years in wonderful Odyssey. He hated remorselesslythe circumstances of his own life, so much that he never really sawBeldover and the colliery valley. He turned his face entirely away fromthe blackened mining region that stretched away on the right hand ofShortlands, he turned entirely to the country and the woods beyondWilley Water. It was true that the panting and rattling of the coalmines could always be heard at Shortlands. But from his earliestchildhood, Gerald had paid no heed to this. He had ignored the whole ofthe industrial sea which surged in coal-blackened tides against thegrounds of the house. The world was really a wilderness where onehunted and swam and rode. He rebelled against all authority. Life was acondition of savage freedom.
Then he had been sent away to school, which was so much death to him.He refused to go to Oxford, choosing a German university. He had spenta certain time at Bonn, at Berlin, and at Frankfurt. There, a curiosityhad been aroused in his mind. He wanted to see and to know, in acurious objective fashion, as if it were an amusement to him. Then hemust try war. Then he must travel into the savage regions that had soattracted him.
The result was, he found humanity very much alike everywhere, and to amind like his, curious and cold, the savage was duller, less excitingthan the European. So he took hold of all kinds of sociological ideas,and ideas of reform. But they never went more than skin-deep, they werenever more than a mental amusement. Their interest lay chiefly in thereaction against the positive order, the destructive reaction.
He discovered at last a real adventure in the coal-mines. His fatherasked him to help in the firm. Gerald had been educated in the scienceof mining, and it had never interested him. Now, suddenly, with a sortof exultation, he laid hold of the world.
There was impressed photographically on his consciousness the greatindustry. Suddenly, it was real, he was part of it. Down the valley ranthe colliery railway, linking mine with mine. Down the railway ran thetrains, short trains of heavily laden trucks, long trains of emptywagons, each one bearing in big white letters the initials:
'C.B.&Co.'
These white letters on all the wagons he had seen since his firstchildhood, and it was as if he had never seen them, they were sofamiliar, and so ignored. Now at last he saw his own name written onthe wall. Now he had a vision of power.
So many wagons, bearing his initial, running all over the country. Hesaw them as he entered London in the train, he saw them at Dover. Sofar his power ramified. He looked at Beldover, at Selby, at Whatmore,at Lethley Bank, the great colliery villages which depended entirely onhis mines. They were hideous and sordid, during his childhood they hadbeen sores in his consciousness. And now he saw them with pride. Fourraw new towns, and many ugly industrial hamlets were crowded under hisdependence. He saw the stream of miners flowing along the causewaysfrom the mines at the end of the afternoon, thousands of blackened,slightly distorted human beings with red mouths, all moving subjugateto his will. He pushed slowly in his motor-car through the littlemarket-top on Friday nights in Beldover, through a solid mass of humanbeings that were making their purchases and doing their weeklyspending. They were all subordinate to him. They were ugly and uncouth,but they were his instruments. He was the God of the machine. They madeway for his motor-car automatically, slowly.
He did not care whether they made way with alacrity, or grudgingly. Hedid not care what they thought of him. His vision had suddenlycrystallised. Suddenly he had conceived the pure instrumentality ofmankind. There had been so much humanitarianism, so much talk ofsufferings and feelings. It was ridiculous. The sufferings and feelingsof individuals did not matter in the least. They were mere conditions,like the weather. What mattered was the pure instrumentality of theindividual. As a man as of a knife: does it cut well? Nothing elsemattered.
Everything in the world has its function, and is good or not good in sofar as it fulfils this function more or less perfectly. Was a miner agood miner? Then he was complete. Was a manager a good manager? Thatwas enough. Gerald himself, who was responsible for all this industry,was he a good director? If he were, he had fulfilled his life. The restwas by-play.
The mines were there, they were old. They were giving out, it did notpay to work the seams. There was talk of closing down two of them. Itwas at this point that Gerald arrived on the scene.
He looked around. There lay the mines. They were old, obsolete. Theywere like old lions, no more good. He looked again. Pah! the mines werenothing but the clumsy efforts of impure minds. There they lay,abortions of a half-trained mind. Let the idea of them be swept away.He cleared his brain of them, and thought only of the coal in the underearth. How much was there?
There was plenty of coal. The old workings could not get at it, thatwas all. Then break the neck of the old workings. The coal lay there inits seams, even though the seams were thin. There it lay, inert matter,as it had always lain, since the beginning of time, subject to the willof man. The will of man was the determining factor. Man was the archgodof earth. His mind was obedient to serve his will. Man's will was theabsolute, the only absolute.
And it was his will to subjugate Matter to his own ends. Thesubjugation itself was the point, the fight was the be-all, the fruitsof victory were mere results. It was not for the sake of money thatGerald took over the mines. He did not care about money, fundamentally.He was neither ostentatious nor luxurious, neither did he care aboutsocial position, not finally. What he wanted was the pure fulfilment ofhis own will in the struggle with the natural conditions. His will wasnow, to take the coal out of the earth, profitably. The profit wasmerely the condition of victory, but the victory itself lay in the featachieved. He vibrated with zest before the challenge. Every day he wasin the mines, examining, testing, he consulted experts, he graduallygathered the whole situation into his mind, as a general grasps theplan of his campaign.
Then there was need for a complete break. The mines were run on an oldsystem, an obsolete idea. The initial idea had been, to obtain as muchmoney from the earth as would make the owners comfortably rich, wouldallow the workmen sufficient wages and good conditions, and wouldincrease the wealth of the country altogether. Gerald's father,following in the second generation, having a sufficient fortune, hadthought only of the men. The mines, for him, were primarily greatfields to produce bread and plenty for all the hundreds of human beingsgathered about them. He had lived and striven with his fellow owners tobenefit the men every time. And the men had been benefited in theirfashion. There were few poor, and few needy. All was plenty, becausethe mines were good and easy to work. And the miners, in those days,finding themselves richer than they might have expected, felt glad andtriumphant. They thought themselves well-off, they congratulatedthemselves on their good-fortune, they remembered how their fathers hadstarved and suffered, and they felt that better times had come. Theywere grateful to those others, the pioneers, the new owners, who hadopened out the pits, and let forth this stream of plenty.
But man is never satisfied, and so the miners, from gratitude to theirowners, passed on to murmuring. Their sufficiency decreased withknowledge, they wanted more. Why should the master be soout-of-all-proportion rich?
There was a crisis when Gerald was a boy, when the Masters' Federationclosed down the mines because the men would not accept a reduction.This lock-out had forced home the new conditions to Thomas Crich.Belonging to the Federation, he had been compelled by his honour toclose the pits against his men. He, the father, the Patriarch, wasforced to deny the means of life to his sons, his people. He, the richman who would hardly enter heaven because of his possessions, must nowturn upon the poor, upon those who were nearer Christ than himself,those who were humble and despised and closer to perfection, those whowere manly and noble in their labours, and must say to them: 'Ye shallneither labour nor eat bread.'
It was this recognition of the state of war which really broke hisheart. He wanted his industry to be run on love. Oh, he wanted love tobe the directing power even of the mines. And now, from under the cloakof love, the sword was cynically drawn, the sword of mechanicalnecessity.
This really broke his heart. He must have the illusion and now theillusion was destroyed. The men were not against HIM, but they wereagainst the masters. It was war, and willy nilly he found himself onthe wrong side, in his own conscience. Seething masses of miners metdaily, carried away by a new religious impulse. The idea flew throughthem: 'All men are equal on earth,' and they would carry the idea toits material fulfilment. After all, is it not the teaching of Christ?And what is an idea, if not the germ of action in the material world.'All men are equal in spirit, they are all sons of God. Whence thenthis obvious DISQUALITY?' It was a religious creed pushed to itsmaterial conclusion. Thomas Crich at least had no answer. He could butadmit, according to his sincere tenets, that the disquality was wrong.But he could not give up his goods, which were the stuff of disquality.So the men would fight for their rights. The last impulses of the lastreligious passion left on earth, the passion for equality, inspiredthem.
Seething mobs of men marched about, their faces lighted up as for holywar, with a smoke of cupidity. How disentangle the passion for equalityfrom the passion of cupidity, when begins the fight for equality ofpossessions? But the God was the machine. Each man claimed equality inthe Godhead of the great productive machine. Every man equally was partof this Godhead. But somehow, somewhere, Thomas Crich knew this wasfalse. When the machine is the Godhead, and production or work isworship, then the most mechanical mind is purest and highest, therepresentative of God on earth. And the rest are subordinate, eachaccording to his degree.
Riots broke out, Whatmore pit-head was in flames. This was the pitfurthest in the country, near the woods. Soldiers came. From thewindows of Shortlands, on that fatal day, could be seen the flare offire in the sky not far off, and now the little colliery train, withthe workmen's carriages which were used to convey the miners to thedistant Whatmore, was crossing the valley full of soldiers, full ofredcoats. Then there was the far-off sound of firing, then the laternews that the mob was dispersed, one man was shot dead, the fire wasput out.
Gerald, who was a boy, was filled with the wildest excitement anddelight. He longed to go with the soldiers to shoot the men. But he wasnot allowed to go out of the lodge gates. At the gates were stationedsentries with guns. Gerald stood near them in delight, whilst gangs ofderisive miners strolled up and down the lanes, calling and jeering:
'Now then, three ha'porth o'coppers, let's see thee shoot thy gun.'Insults were chalked on the walls and the fences, the servants left.
And all this while Thomas Crich was breaking his heart, and giving awayhundreds of pounds in charity. Everywhere there was free food, asurfeit of free food. Anybody could have bread for asking, and a loafcost only three-ha'pence. Every day there was a free tea somewhere, thechildren had never had so many treats in their lives. On Fridayafternoon great basketfuls of buns and cakes were taken into theschools, and great pitchers of milk, the school children had what theywanted. They were sick with eating too much cake and milk.
And then it came to an end, and the men went back to work. But it wasnever the same as before. There was a new situation created, a new ideareigned. Even in the machine, there should be equality. No part shouldbe subordinate to any other part: all should be equal. The instinct forchaos had entered. Mystic equality lies in abstraction, not in havingor in doing, which are processes. In function and process, one man, onepart, must of necessity be subordinate to another. It is a condition ofbeing. But the desire for chaos had risen, and the idea of mechanicalequality was the weapon of disruption which should execute the will ofman, the will for chaos.
Gerald was a boy at the time of the strike, but he longed to be a man,to fight the colliers. The father however was trapped between twohalftruths, and broken. He wanted to be a pure Christian, one and equalwith all men. He even wanted to give away all he had, to the poor. Yethe was a great promoter of industry, and he knew perfectly that he mustkeep his goods and keep his authority. This was as divine a necessityin him, as the need to give away all he possessed--more divine, even,since this was the necessity he acted upon. Yet because he did NOT acton the other ideal, it dominated him, he was dying of chagrin becausehe must forfeit it. He wanted to be a father of loving kindness andsacrificial benevolence. The colliers shouted to him about histhousands a year. They would not be deceived.
When Gerald grew up in the ways of the world, he shifted the position.He did not care about the equality. The whole Christian attitude oflove and self-sacrifice was old hat. He knew that position andauthority were the right thing in the world, and it was useless to cantabout it. They were the right thing, for the simple reason that theywere functionally necessary. They were not the be-all and the end-all.It was like being part of a machine. He himself happened to be acontrolling, central part, the masses of men were the parts variouslycontrolled. This was merely as it happened. As well get excited becausea central hub drives a hundred outer wheels or because the wholeuniverse wheels round the sun. After all, it would be mere silliness tosay that the moon and the earth and Saturn and Jupiter and Venus havejust as much right to be the centre of the universe, each of themseparately, as the sun. Such an assertion is made merely in the desireof chaos.
Without bothering to THINK to a conclusion, Gerald jumped to aconclusion. He abandoned the whole democratic-equality problem as aproblem of silliness. What mattered was the great social productivemachine. Let that work perfectly, let it produce a sufficiency ofeverything, let every man be given a rational portion, greater or lessaccording to his functional degree or magnitude, and then, provisionmade, let the devil supervene, let every man look after his ownamusements and appetites, so long as he interfered with nobody.
So Gerald set himself to work, to put the great industry in order. Inhis travels, and in his accompanying readings, he had come to theconclusion that the essential secret of life was harmony. He did notdefine to himself at all clearly what harmony was. The word pleasedhim, he felt he had come to his own conclusions. And he proceeded toput his philosophy into practice by forcing order into the establishedworld, translating the mystic word harmony into the practical wordorganisation.
Immediately he SAW the firm, he realised what he could do. He had afight to fight with Matter, with the earth and the coal it enclosed.This was the sole idea, to turn upon the inanimate matter of theunderground, and reduce it to his will. And for this fight with matter,one must have perfect instruments in perfect organisation, a mechanismso subtle and harmonious in its workings that it represents the singlemind of man, and by its relentless repetition of given movement, willaccomplish a purpose irresistibly, inhumanly. It was this inhumanprinciple in the mechanism he wanted to construct that inspired Geraldwith an almost religious exaltation. He, the man, could interpose aperfect, changeless, godlike medium between himself and the Matter hehad to subjugate. There were two opposites, his will and the resistantMatter of the earth. And between these he could establish the veryexpression of his will, the incarnation of his power, a great andperfect machine, a system, an activity of pure order, pure mechanicalrepetition, repetition ad infinitum, hence eternal and infinite. Hefound his eternal and his infinite in the pure machine-principle ofperfect co-ordination into one pure, complex, infinitely repeatedmotion, like the spinning of a wheel; but a productive spinning, as therevolving of the universe may be called a productive spinning, aproductive repetition through eternity, to infinity. And this is theGodmotion, this productive repetition ad infinitum. And Gerald was theGod of the machine, Deus ex Machina. And the whole productive will ofman was the Godhead.
He had his life-work now, to extend over the earth a great and perfectsystem in which the will of man ran smooth and unthwarted, timeless, aGodhead in process. He had to begin with the mines. The terms weregiven: first the resistant Matter of the underground; then theinstruments of its subjugation, instruments human and metallic; andfinally his own pure will, his own mind. It would need a marvellousadjustment of myriad instruments, human, animal, metallic, kinetic,dynamic, a marvellous casting of myriad tiny wholes into one greatperfect entirety. And then, in this case there was perfection attained,the will of the highest was perfectly fulfilled, the will of mankindwas perfectly enacted; for was not mankind mysticallycontra-distinguished against inanimate Matter, was not the history ofmankind just the history of the conquest of the one by the other?
The miners were overreached. While they were still in the toils ofdivine equality of man, Gerald had passed on, granted essentially theircase, and proceeded in his quality of human being to fulfil the will ofmankind as a whole. He merely represented the miners in a higher sensewhen he perceived that the only way to fulfil perfectly the will of manwas to establish the perfect, inhuman machine. But he represented themvery essentially, they were far behind, out of date, squabbling fortheir material equality. The desire had already transmuted into thisnew and greater desire, for a perfect intervening mechanism between manand Matter, the desire to translate the Godhead into pure mechanism.
As soon as Gerald entered the firm, the convulsion of death ran throughthe old system. He had all his life been tortured by a furious anddestructive demon, which possessed him sometimes like an insanity. Thistemper now entered like a virus into the firm, and there were crueleruptions. Terrible and inhuman were his examinations into everydetail; there was no privacy he would spare, no old sentiment but hewould turn it over. The old grey managers, the old grey clerks, thedoddering old pensioners, he looked at them, and removed them as somuch lumber. The whole concern seemed like a hospital of invalidemployees. He had no emotional qualms. He arranged what pensions werenecessary, he looked for efficient substitutes, and when these werefound, he substituted them for the old hands.
'I've a pitiful letter here from Letherington,' his father would say,in a tone of deprecation and appeal. 'Don't you think the poor fellowmight keep on a little longer. I always fancied he did very well.'
'I've got a man in his place now, father. He'll be happier out of it,believe me. You think his allowance is plenty, don't you?'
'It is not the allowance that he wants, poor man. He feels it verymuch, that he is superannuated. Says he thought he had twenty moreyears of work in him yet.'
'Not of this kind of work I want. He doesn't understand.'
The father sighed. He wanted not to know any more. He believed the pitswould have to be overhauled if they were to go on working. And afterall, it would be worst in the long run for everybody, if they mustclose down. So he could make no answer to the appeals of his old andtrusty servants, he could only repeat 'Gerald says.'
So the father drew more and more out of the light. The whole frame ofthe real life was broken for him. He had been right according to hislights. And his lights had been those of the great religion. Yet theyseemed to have become obsolete, to be superseded in the world. He couldnot understand. He only withdrew with his lights into an inner room,into the silence. The beautiful candles of belief, that would not do tolight the world any more, they would still burn sweetly andsufficiently in the inner room of his soul, and in the silence of hisretirement.
Gerald rushed into the reform of the firm, beginning with the office.It was needful to economise severely, to make possible the greatalterations he must introduce.
'What are these widows' coals?' he asked.
'We have always allowed all widows of men who worked for the firm aload of coals every three months.'
'They must pay cost price henceforward. The firm is not a charityinstitution, as everybody seems to think.'
Widows, these stock figures of sentimental humanitarianism, he felt adislike at the thought of them. They were almost repulsive. Why werethey not immolated on the pyre of the husband, like the sati in India?At any rate, let them pay the cost of their coals.
In a thousand ways he cut down the expenditure, in ways so fine as tobe hardly noticeable to the men. The miners must pay for the cartage oftheir coals, heavy cartage too; they must pay for their tools, for thesharpening, for the care of lamps, for the many trifling things thatmade the bill of charges against every man mount up to a shilling or soin the week. It was not grasped very definitely by the miners, thoughthey were sore enough. But it saved hundreds of pounds every week forthe firm.
Gradually Gerald got hold of everything. And then began the greatreform. Expert engineers were introduced in every department. Anenormous electric plant was installed, both for lighting and forhaulage underground, and for power. The electricity was carried intoevery mine. New machinery was brought from America, such as the minershad never seen before, great iron men, as the cutting machines werecalled, and unusual appliances. The working of the pits was thoroughlychanged, all the control was taken out of the hands of the miners, thebutty system was abolished. Everything was run on the most accurate anddelicate scientific method, educated and expert men were in controleverywhere, the miners were reduced to mere mechanical instruments.They had to work hard, much harder than before, the work was terribleand heart-breaking in its mechanicalness.
But they submitted to it all. The joy went out of their lives, the hopeseemed to perish as they became more and more mechanised. And yet theyaccepted the new conditions. They even got a further satisfaction outof them. At first they hated Gerald Crich, they swore to do somethingto him, to murder him. But as time went on, they accepted everythingwith some fatal satisfaction. Gerald was their high priest, herepresented the religion they really felt. His father was forgottenalready. There was a new world, a new order, strict, terrible, inhuman,but satisfying in its very destructiveness. The men were satisfied tobelong to the great and wonderful machine, even whilst it destroyedthem. It was what they wanted. It was the highest that man hadproduced, the most wonderful and superhuman. They were exalted bybelonging to this great and superhuman system which was beyond feelingor reason, something really godlike. Their hearts died within them, buttheir souls were satisfied. It was what they wanted. Otherwise Geraldcould never have done what he did. He was just ahead of them in givingthem what they wanted, this participation in a great and perfect systemthat subjected life to pure mathematical principles. This was a sort offreedom, the sort they really wanted. It was the first great step inundoing, the first great phase of chaos, the substitution of themechanical principle for the organic, the destruction of the organicpurpose, the organic unity, and the subordination of every organic unitto the great mechanical purpose. It was pure organic disintegration andpure mechanical organisation. This is the first and finest state ofchaos.
Gerald was satisfied. He knew the colliers said they hated him. But hehad long ceased to hate them. When they streamed past him at evening,their heavy boots slurring on the pavement wearily, their shouldersslightly distorted, they took no notice of him, they gave him nogreeting whatever, they passed in a grey-black stream of unemotionalacceptance. They were not important to him, save as instruments, nor heto them, save as a supreme instrument of control. As miners they hadtheir being, he had his being as director. He admired their qualities.But as men, personalities, they were just accidents, sporadic littleunimportant phenomena. And tacitly, the men agreed to this. For Geraldagreed to it in himself.
He had succeeded. He had converted the industry into a new and terriblepurity. There was a greater output of coal than ever, the wonderful anddelicate system ran almost perfectly. He had a set of really cleverengineers, both mining and electrical, and they did not cost much. Ahighly educated man cost very little more than a workman. His managers,who were all rare men, were no more expensive than the old bunglingfools of his father's days, who were merely colliers promoted. Hischief manager, who had twelve hundred a year, saved the firm at leastfive thousand. The whole system was now so perfect that Gerald washardly necessary any more.
It was so perfect that sometimes a strange fear came over him, and hedid not know what to do. He went on for some years in a sort of tranceof activity. What he was doing seemed supreme, he was almost like adivinity. He was a pure and exalted activity.
But now he had succeeded--he had finally succeeded. And once or twicelately, when he was alone in the evening and had nothing to do, he hadsuddenly stood up in terror, not knowing what he was. And he went tothe mirror and looked long and closely at his own face, at his owneyes, seeking for something. He was afraid, in mortal dry fear, but heknew not what of. He looked at his own face. There it was, shapely andhealthy and the same as ever, yet somehow, it was not real, it was amask. He dared not touch it, for fear it should prove to be only acomposition mask. His eyes were blue and keen as ever, and as firm intheir sockets. Yet he was not sure that they were not blue falsebubbles that would burst in a moment and leave clear annihilation. Hecould see the darkness in them, as if they were only bubbles ofdarkness. He was afraid that one day he would break down and be apurely meaningless babble lapping round a darkness.
But his will yet held good, he was able to go away and read, and thinkabout things. He liked to read books about the primitive man, books ofanthropology, and also works of speculative philosophy. His mind wasvery active. But it was like a bubble floating in the darkness. At anymoment it might burst and leave him in chaos. He would not die. He knewthat. He would go on living, but the meaning would have collapsed outof him, his divine reason would be gone. In a strangely indifferent,sterile way, he was frightened. But he could not react even to thefear. It was as if his centres of feeling were drying up. He remainedcalm, calculative and healthy, and quite freely deliberate, even whilsthe felt, with faint, small but final sterile horror, that his mysticreason was breaking, giving way now, at this crisis.
And it was a strain. He knew there was no equilibrium. He would have togo in some direction, shortly, to find relief. Only Birkin kept thefear definitely off him, saved him his quick sufficiency in life, bythe odd mobility and changeableness which seemed to contain thequintessence of faith. But then Gerald must always come away fromBirkin, as from a Church service, back to the outside real world ofwork and life. There it was, it did not alter, and words werefutilities. He had to keep himself in reckoning with the world of workand material life. And it became more and more difficult, such astrange pressure was upon him, as if the very middle of him were avacuum, and outside were an awful tension.
He had found his most satisfactory relief in women. After a debauchwith some desperate woman, he went on quite easy and forgetful. Thedevil of it was, it was so hard to keep up his interest in womennowadays. He didn't care about them any more. A Pussum was all right inher way, but she was an exceptional case, and even she matteredextremely little. No, women, in that sense, were useless to him anymore. He felt that his MIND needed acute stimulation, before he couldbe physically roused.