Demos. George Gissing
She was experiencing a sort of irritation against their guest, a feeling traceable to more than one source; Mutimer’s frequent glances did not tend to soothe it. She asked the question rather in a spirit of adverse criticism.
‘The working people don’t,’ was the reply, ‘except a Dissenting family here and there.’
‘Perhaps that is one explanation of the Sundays being useless to them.’
Adela would scarcely have ventured upon such a tone in reference to any secular matter; the subject being religion, she was of course justified in expressing herself freely.
Mutimer smiled and held back his rejoinder for a moment. By that time Alfred had taken his pipe from his lips and was giving utterance to unmeasured scorn.
‘But, Mr. Mutimer,’ said Mrs. Waltham, waving aside her son’s vehemence, ‘you don’t seriously tell us that the working people have no religion? Surely that would be too shocking!’
‘Yes, I say it seriously, Mrs. Waltham. In the ordinary sense of the word, they have no religion. The truth is, they have no time to think of it.’
‘Oh, but surely it needs no thought—’
Alfred exploded.
‘I mean,’ pursued his mother, ‘that, however busy we are, there must always be intervals to be spared from the world.’
Mutimer again delayed his reply. A look which he cast at Adela appeared to move her to speech.
‘Have they not their evenings free, as well as every Sunday?’
‘Happily, Miss Waltham, you can’t realise their lives,’ Richard began. He was not smiling now; Adela’s tone had struck him like a challenge, and he collected himself to meet her. ‘The man who lives on wages is never free; he sells himself body and soul to his employer. What sort of freedom does a man enjoy who may any day find himself and his family on the point of starvation just because he has lost his work? All his life long he has before his mind the fear of want—not only of straitened means, mind you, but of destitution and the workhouse. How can such a man put aside his common cares? Religion is a luxury; the working man has no luxuries. Now, you speak of the free evenings; people always do, when they’re asking why the working classes don’t educate themselves. Do you understand what that free evening means? He gets home, say, at six o’clock, tired out; he has to be up again perhaps at five next morning. What can he do but just lie about half asleep? Why, that’s the whole principle of the capitalist system of employment; it’s calculated exactly how long a man can be made to work in a day without making him incapable of beginning again on the day following—just as it’s calculated exactly how little a man can live upon, in the regulation of wages. If the workman returned home with strength to spare, employers would soon find it out, and workshop legislation would be revised—because of course it’s the capitalists that make the laws. The principle is that a man shall have no strength left for himself; it’s all paid for, every scrap of it, bought with the wages at each week end. What religion can such men have? Religion, I suppose, means thankfulness for life and its pleasures—at all events, that’s a great part of it—and what has a wage-earner to be thankful for?’
‘It sounds very shocking,’ observed Mrs. Waltham, somewhat disturbed by the speaker’s growing earnestness. Richard paid no attention and continued to address Adela.
‘I dare say you’ve heard of the early trains—workmen’s trains—that they run on the London railways. If only you could travel once by one of those! Between station and station there’s scarcely a man or boy in the carriage who can keep awake; there they sit, leaning over against each other, their heads dropping forward, their eyelids that heavy they can’t hold them up. I tell you it’s one of the most miserable sights to be seen in this world. If you saw it, Miss Waltham, you’d pity them, I’m very sure of that! You only need to know what their life means. People who have never known hardship often speak more cruelly than they think, and of course it always will be so as long as the rich and the poor are two different races, as much apart as if there was an ocean between them.’
Adela’s cheeks were warm. It was a novel sensation to be rebuked in this unconventional way. She was feeling a touch of shame as well as the slight resentment which was partly her class-instinct, partly of her sex.
‘I feel that I have no right to give any opinion,’ she said in an undertone.
‘Meaning, Adela,’ commented her brother, ‘that you have a very strong opinion and stick to it.’
‘One thing I dare say you are thinking, Miss Waltham,’ Richard pursued, ‘if you’ll allow me to say it. You think that I myself don’t exactly prove what I’ve been saying—I mean to say, that I at all events have had free time, not only to read and reflect, but to give lectures and so on. Yes, and I’ll explain that. It was my good fortune to have a father and mother who were very careful and hard-working and thoughtful people; I and my sister and brother were brought up in an orderly home, and taught from the first that ceaseless labour and strict economy were the things always to be kept in mind. All that was just fortunate chance; I’m not praising myself in saying I’ve been able to get more into my time than most other working men; it’s my father and mother I have to thank for it. Suppose they’d been as ignorant and careless as most of their class are made by the hard lot they have to endure; why, I should have followed them, that’s all. We’ve never had to go without a meal, and why? Just because we’ve all of us worked like slaves and never allowed ourselves to think of rest or enjoyment. When my father died, of course we had to be more careful than ever; but there were three of us to earn money, fortunately, and we kept up the home. We put our money by for the club every week, what’s more.’
‘The club?’ queried Miss Waltham, to whom the word suggested Pall Mall and vague glories which dwelt in her imagination.
‘That’s to make provision for times when we’re ill or can’t get work,’ Mutimer explained. ‘If a wage-earner falls ill, what has he to look to? The capitalist won’t trouble himself to keep him alive; there’s plenty to take his place. Well, that’s my position, or was a few months ago. I don’t suppose any workman has had more advantages. Take it as an example of the most we can hope for, and pray say what it amounts to! Just on the right side, just keeping afloat, just screwing out an hour here and there to work your brain when you ought to be taking wholesome recreation! That’s nothing very grand, it seems to me. Yet people will point to it and ask what there is to grumble at!’
Adela sat uneasily under Mutimer’s gaze; she kept her eyes down.
‘And I’m not sure that I should always have got on as easily,’ the speaker continued. ‘Only a day or two before I heard of my relative’s death, I’d just been dismissed from my employment; that was because they didn’t like my opinions. Well, I don’t say they hadn’t a right to dismiss me, just as I suppose you’ve a right to kill as many of the enemy as you can in time of war. But suppose I couldn’t have got work anywhere. I had nothing but my hands to depend upon; if I couldn’t sell my muscles I must starve, that’s all.’
Adela looked at him for almost the first time. She had heard this story from her brother, but it came more impressively from Mutimer’s own lips. A sort of heroism was involved in it, the championship of a cause regardless of self. She remained thoughtful with troublous colours on her face.
Mrs. Waltham was more obviously uneasy. There are certain things to which in good society one does not refer, first and foremost humiliating antecedents. The present circumstances were exceptional to be sure, but it was to be hoped that Mr. Mutimer would outgrow this habit of advertising his origin. Let him talk of the working-classes if he liked, but always in the third person. The good lady began to reflect whether she might not venture shortly to give him friendly hints on this and similar subjects.
But it was nearly tea-time. Mrs. Waltham shortly rose and went into the house, whither Alfred followed her. Mutimer kept his seat, and Adela could not leave him to himself, though for the moment he seemed unconscious of her presence. When they had been alone together for a little while, Richard broke the silence.
‘I hope I didn’t speak rudely to you; Miss Waltham. I don’t think I need fear