Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (210 page)

“What made the streets come?” the child asked.

Riches had been discovered under the earth, so Anthony explained to him. Before this great discovery the people of the valley had lived in little cottages — just peasants, tilling their small farms, tending their flocks. A few hundred pounds would have bought them all up. Now it was calculated that the winding Wyndbeck flowed through the richest valley in all England.

“What are riches?” asked the child. “What do they do?”

Riches, his father explained to him, were what made people well off and happy.

“I see,” said John. But he evidently did not, as his next question proved conclusively.

“Then are all the people happy who live here now?” he asked. They had passed about a score of them during the short time they had walked in silence. “Why don’t they look it?”

It had to be further explained to John that the riches of the valley did not belong to the people who lived and died in the valley, who dug the coal and iron or otherwise handled it. To be quite frank, these sad-eyed men and women who now dwelt beside the foul, black Wyndbeck were perhaps worse off than their forbears who had dwelt here when the Wyndbeck flowed through sunlit fields and shady woods, undreaming of the hidden wealth that lay beneath their careless feet. But to a few who lived in fine houses, more or less far away, in distant cities, in pleasant country places. It was these few who had been made well off and happy by the riches of the valley. The workers of the valley did not even know the names of these scattered masters of theirs.

He had not meant to put it this way. But little John had continually chipped in with those direct questions that a child will persist in asking. And, after all, it was the truth.

Besides, as he went on to explain still further to little John, they were not all unhappy, these dirty, grimy, dull-eyed men and women in their ugly clothes, living in ugly houses in long ugly streets under a sky that rained soot. Some of them earned high wages — had, considering their needs, money to burn, as the saying was.

“I see,” said John again. It was an irritating habit of his to preface awkward questions with “I see.”

“Then does having money make everybody happy?”

It was on the tip of Anthony’s tongue. He was just about to snap it out. Little John mustn’t worry his little head about things little Jacks can’t be expected to understand. Little boys must wait till they are grown up, when the answer to all these seemingly difficult questions will be plain to them. But as he opened his lips to speak there sprang from the muddy pavement in front of him a little impish lad dressed in an old pair of his father’s trousers, cut down to fit him, so that the baggy part, instead of being about the knee, was round his ankles — a little puzzled lad who in his day had likewise plagued poor grown-up folk with questions it might have been the better for them had they tried to answer.

“No, John,” he answered. “It doesn’t make them happy. I wonder myself sometimes what’s the good of it. How can they be happy even if they do earn big money, a few of them. The hideousness, the vileness that is all around them. What else can it breed but a sordid, joyless race? They spend their money on things stupid and gross. What else can you expect of them. You bring a child up in the gutter and he learns to play with mud, and like it.”

They were walking where the streets crept up the hillside. Over a waste space where dust and ashes lay they could see far east and west. The man halted and flung out his arms.

“The Valley of the Wyndbeck. So they call it on the map. It ought to be the gutter of the Wyndbeck. One long, foul, reeking gutter where men and women walk in darkness and the children play with dirt.”

He had forgotten John. The child slipped a hand into his.

“Won’t the fields ever come back?” he asked.

Anthony shook his head. “They’ll never come back,” he said. “Nothing to do for it, John, but to make the best of things as they are. It will always be a gutter with mud underneath and smoke overhead and poison in its air. We must make it as comfortable a gutter as the laws of supply and demand will permit. At least we can give them rainproof roofs and sound floors and scientific drainage, and baths where they can wash the everlasting dirt out of their pores before it becomes a part of their skin.”

From where they were they could see the new model dwellings towering high above the maze of roofs around them.

“We’ll build them a theatre, John. They shall have poetry and music. We’ll plan them recreation grounds where the children can run and play. We’ll have a picture gallery and a big bright hall where they can dance.”

He broke off suddenly. “Oh, Lord, as if it hadn’t all been tried,” he groaned. “Two thousand years ago they thought it might save Rome. Bread and circuses, that is not going to save the world.”

They had reached, by chance, Platt’s Lane. The door of the workshop stood open as ever. They could hear the sound of Matthew’s hammer and see the red glow of the furnace fire. John slipped away from his father’s side, and going to the open door called to Matthew.

Matthew turned. There was a strange look in his eyes. The child laughed, and Matthew, coming nearer, saw who it was.

It was late, so after exchanging just a greeting with Matthew they walked on. Suddenly John caught his father by the sleeve.

“Do you think He is still alive,” he said, “Christ Jesus?”

Anthony was in a hurry. He had ordered the carriage to wait for them in Bruton Square.

“What makes you ask?” he said.

“Matthew thinks He is,” explained the child, “and that He still goes about. That is why he always leaves the door open, so that if Christ passes by He may see him and call to him.”

Anthony was still worried about the time. He had to see a man on business before going home. He promised little John they would discuss the question some other time. But, as it happened, the opportunity never came.

CHAPTER XVI

There came a day when Betty returned to take up her residence at The Priory. Since her father’s death she had been travelling. At first she and Anthony had corresponded regularly. They had discussed religion, politics, the science of things in general; he telling her of changes and happenings at home, and she telling him of her discoveries abroad. She wanted to see everything there was to be seen for herself, and then seek to make use of her knowledge. She would, of course, write a book. But after his eldest son’s death, which had happened when the child was about eight years old, Anthony for a time had not cared to write. Added to which there were long periods during which Betty had disappeared into ways untrodden of the postman. Letters had passed between them at ever-lengthening intervals, dealing so far as Anthony was concerned chiefly with business matters. It seemed idle writing about himself, his monotonous prosperity and unclouded domestic happiness. There were times when he would have been glad of a friend to whom he could have trusted secrets, but the thread had been broken. Conscious of strange differences in himself, he could not be sure that Betty likewise had not altered. Her letters remained friendly, often affectionate, but he no longer felt he knew her. Indeed there came to him the doubt that he ever had.

It was on a winter’s afternoon that Anthony, leaving his office, walked across to The Priory to see her. She had been back about a week, but Anthony had been away up north on business. She had received him in the little room above the hall that had always been her particular sanctum. Mr. Mowbray, when he had let the house furnished to his cousin, had stipulated that this one room should remain locked. Nothing in it had been altered. A wood fire was burning in the grate. Betty was standing in the centre of the room. She came forward to meet him with both hands.

“It’s good to see you again,” she said. “But what have you done to your hair, lad?” She touched it lightly with her fingers. She pushed him into the easy chair beside the blazing fire and remained herself standing.

He laughed. “Oh, we grow grey early in Millsborough,” he said.

He was looking up at her puzzled. “I’ve got it,” he said suddenly.

“Got what?” she laughed.

“The difference in you,” he answered. “You were the elder of us when I saw you last, and now you are the younger. I don’t mean merely in appearance.”

“It’s a shame,” she answered gravely. “You’ve been making money for me to spend. It’s that has made you old. They’re all so old, the moneymakers. I’ve met so many of them. Haven’t you made enough?”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” he answered. “It gets to be a habit. I shouldn’t know what else to do with myself now.”

She made him talk about himself. It was difficult at first, there seemed so little to tell. Jim was at Rugby and was going into the Guards. His uncle, Sir James, had married, and had three children, a boy and two girls. But the boy had been thrown from his pony while learning to ride and was a cripple. So it was up to young Strong’nth’arm to take over the Coomber tradition. As he would have plenty of money all would be easy. His uncle was still in India, but was coming back in the spring. He had been appointed to Aldershot.

Norah was at Cheltenham. The Coomber girls had always gone to Cheltenham. She had ideas of her own and was anxious herself to cut school life short and finish her education abroad in Vienna. One of the disadvantages of being rich was that it separated you from your children. But for that the boy could have gone to his old friend Tetteridge. So far as education was concerned, he would have done better. The girl could have gone to Miss Landripp’s at Bruton Square. They would have been all together and it would have been jolly.

Eleanor was wonderful. Betty would find her looking hardly a day older than when she had last seen her.

Betty laughed. “Good for you, lad,” she said. “It means you are still seeing her through lover’s eyes. It’s seventeen years ago, the date you are speaking of.”

Anthony could hardly believe it at first, but had to yield to facts. He still maintained that Eleanor was marvellous. Most women in her position would have clamoured for fashion and society, would have filled The Abbey with her swell friends and acquaintances, among whom Anthony would always have felt himself an outsider; would have insisted on a town house and a London season, Homburg and the Riviera, all that sort of thing, leaving Anthony to grind away at the money mill in Millsborough. That was what his mother had always feared. His mother had changed her opinion about Eleanor long ago. She had come to love her. Of course, when Norah came home there would have to be changes. But by that time it would all fit in. He would be done with money-making. He had discovered — or, rather, Eleanor had discovered it for him — that he was a good speaker. She had had to bully him at first into making the attempt, and the result had surprised even her. He might go into Parliament. Not with any idea of a political career, but to advocate reforms that he had in his mind. Parliament gave one a platform. One spoke to the whole country.

Tea had been brought. They were sitting opposite to one another at a small table near the fire.

“It reminds one of old times,” said Betty. “Do you remember our long walks and talks together up on the moor, we three. We had to shout to drown the wind.”

He did not answer immediately. He was looking at a reflection of himself in a small Venetian mirror on the opposite wall. It came back to him what old Mr. Mowbray had once said to him as to his growing likeness to Ted. There was a suggestion, he could see it himself, especially about the eyes.

“Yes,” he answered. “I remember. Ted was the dreamer. He dreamed of a new world. You were for the practical. You wanted improvements made in the old.”

“Yes,” she answered. “I thought it could be done.”

He shook his head.

“You were wrong,” he said. “We were the dreamers. It was Ted had all the common sense.”

“Oh, yes, I go on,” he said in answer to her look. “What else is to be done. There used to be hope in the world. Now one has to pretend to hope. I hoped model dwellings were going to do away with the slums. There are miles more slums in Millsborough to-day than there were ten years ago; and myself, if I had to choose now I’d prefer the slums. I’d feel less like being in prison. But we did all we could. We put them in baths. It was a new idea in Millsborough. The local Press was shocked. ‘Pampering the Proletariat,’ was one of their headlines. They could have saved their ink. Our bath was used to keep the coals in. If they didn’t do that they emptied their slops into it. It saved them the trouble of walking to the sink. We gave them all the latest sanitary improvements, and they block the drains by turning the places into dustbins. And those that don’t, throw their muck out of window. They don’t want cleanliness and decency. They were born and bred in mud and the dirt sticks to them; and they bring up their children not to mind it. And so it will go on. Of course, there are the few. You will find a few neat homes in the filthiest of streets. But they are lost among the mass, just as they were before. It has made no permanent difference. Millsborough is blacker, fouler, viler than it was when we started in to clean it. Garden suburbs. We began one of those five years ago on the slopes above Leeford, and already it has its Alsatia where its disreputables gather together for mutual aid and comfort. What is it all but clearing a small space and planting a garden in the middle of a jungle. Sooner or later the jungle closes in again. Every wind blows in seeds.

“This profit-sharing. I can see the end of that. They quarrel among themselves over the sharing. Who shall have the most. Who shall be forced to accept least. And the strong gather together; it is for them to dictate the division; and the weaker snarl and curse, but have to yield. And brother is against brother, and father is against son. And so the old game of greed and grab begins anew. Co-operative shops. And the staff is for ever insisting on the prices being raised to their own kith and kin, so that their wages may be increased out of the profits. And when I expostulate they talk to me about my own companies and the fine dividends we earn by charging high prices to our neighbours.” He laughed.