That evening after dinner they sat in the great room upstairs before a fire of logs in the Italianate fire-place, and Mr. Sempack without any allusion whatever to Lady Catherine talked about Thought and Action and the change of tempo as well as of scale that was coming upon human concerns. Mrs. Rylands lay on the big sofa and Mr. Sempack occupied an arm-chair beside her. Miss Fenimore assisted at the conversation on the other side of the fire-place. She played also a slow difficult patterning patience on a card table with two packs of cards, a patience that kept her lips moving, not always inaudibly with, “Black Knave goes on Queen and red ten on Knave, but what then? All these come up, nine, eight, seven, but does that free a space. Won’t do. Won’t do.”
She had excused herself for her patience. “I can hear just as well,” she said, “and it seems to steady my attention. I don’t think I miss the least little thing you say.”
Sometimes her patience kept her quite busy and sometimes she would leave it alone and just sit back with the residue of her deck in hand and take a long deep swig of whatever Mr. Sempack was saying. Then she would sigh and resume her attack on her cards, visibly refreshed.
Although Mr. Sempack never made the ghost of an allusion to Lady Catherine, it was quite plain to Mrs. Rylands that the gist of his talks with that lady lay under the rambling discourse like bones beneath the contours of a limb. When he talked of the greater importance of the man of science to the politician, he was really exonerating himself from her charge of political impotence and insignificance, and when he declared that with the abolition of distance through the increasing ease of communication in the world, there had come such an enlargement and complication of political issues that they could no longer be dealt with dramatically in a day or a week, she felt that he was still trying to disabuse Lady Catherine from her delusion that decisive incidents at elections, scenes in the House and displays of “personality” at Cabinet meetings could have any real influence any longer upon the course of human affairs. He talked casually and indolently as things came into his head, but Mrs. Rylands perceived that the green leather book would profit considerably by the things he was saying.
His remarks joined on very directly to that earlier talk, that successful social evening, that had so pleased her, that renewal of the legendary glories of the Souls — and it was still not a fortnight ago! He revived the vision of a greater civilisation ahead, a world civilisation, in which the pursuit of science would be the chief industry and increasing power an annual crop. That vision had a little faded from Mrs. Rylands’ mind. He restored it to probability and even to imminence. It became reality again and all the social and political conflicts of to-day mere temporary disorders, like battles and contests of hobbledehoys amidst advertisement-covered hoardings on the vacant site of some great building. War became a declining habit that mankind was shaking off. And those troubles in England were no more than a legacy of barbaric methods that would still win coal by hand labour and make a private profit out of a common necessity. Some day we should win our coal out of the earth in so different a fashion that there would be neither myriads of dingy toilers nor groups of owners concerned with it at all, and from the point of view of the larger issue therefore, the dispute between them was a false issue that led nowhere and settled nothing at all. Even as they disputed, the grounds of the differences were dissolving under their feet.
But there were certain things that the green leather book would want to know to-morrow morning and Mrs. Rylands sought elucidation.
“I see the world could be changed, ought to be changed, from all its present confusions,” she agreed. “Things do not change themselves. Much of this progress so far has taken people by surprise. Now the surprise is over and we see the steps, the enormous steps that have to be made, if we are to pass from this — this complex muddle of affairs — to the world civilisation. You speak as though that would certainly be brought about. But who are the people who are bringing it about?”
“The scientific minded people,” said Mr. Sempack. “The people who think ahead.”
“I see that people of that sort are adding to the vision of the great age coming, filling in details, helping our imaginations to smooth over difficulties. You alone have done wonderful things to make the prospectus credible. But it is still only a prospectus. Are people taking shares? Are any of these people who talk and wish so well, doing anything to bring the World Utopia about?”
“I think, yes,” said Mr. Sempack after a slight pause.
She felt she was pressing him, but she wanted to know. “How?” she asked.
“By making it increasingly evident that it is possible and bringing people to realise that it is desirable — a refuge from the vast dangers that threaten us all, while with the immensely powerful weapons of to-day we stick to antiquated moral and social traditions.”
“Yes, but ——” said Mrs. Rylands.
She gathered all her forces. She wasn’t trying to argue with him but she did want to be able to face the candid pages of the green leather book to-morrow without any inconvenient queries arising — finished and sure in what she had to write. She had to write it as plainly as she could and then she had to copy out her exercise and send it to her fellow student Philip, who would be, she felt certain, quite wonderful at jabbing in destructive questions.
“You see, Mr. Sempack, this is my difficulty. I see the world abounding in projects for doing things better. People who write about that sort of thing write about it, and we read it when we are in the reading mood and want our imaginations stirring. But the mass of people just go on. I suppose that if you told all that you are telling me to a miner and said that there were to be no miners at all in the new world, but only very clever boring machines, and ways of taking air into the pit to burn the coal and make power there instead of digging it out and so on, I doubt if he would be ready to bring the change about. He would think of himself and say that though it was bad enough to be an underpaid miner, perhaps not employed too regularly, but still getting a sort of living, it might be worse to be in a world where he wasn’t wanted at all.”
“He could be changed.”
“Not all at once. He’d have his missus and the kids and his dog and his habits. Would he want to be changed? Changed I mean in his nature, as you would change him. More money perhaps he would like and a rather better house. But what more? And take the mine-owner: you can’t expect him to welcome and help his own abolition.”
“The new things will come gradually enough to smooth over that sort of thing.”
“If somebody wants them. But who is going to want them? I’m asking, because I really want to know, Mr. Sempack, who is going to want them enough to take a lot of pains to bring them about? Many of us no doubt want them vaguely and generally but do any of us want them particularly and fiercely enough to get them past the awkward turns and difficult corners?”
“They involve the clear promise of an ampler life.”
“I don’t worry you with my persistent questions? They are silly questions I know, but they puzzle me.”
“Not a bit silly. You argue very closely. Go on.”
“Well, this clear promise of an ampler life. Suppose you said to a cat, ‘Come, I will teach you to swim and dive like a seal and fly like a bat,’ and so on, ‘if only you will stop catching th............