'I grant that the English seem, on the whole, whiter than most men, their records cleaner. But, good Lord, don't run away with the idea that I don't see the drawbacks--horrors-unmentionable things done in our very midst! I'm under no illusions. Few people, I suppose, have fewer illusions than I have. Have you ever been in a factory, Miss Vinrace!--No, I suppose not--I may say I hope not.'
As for Rachel, she had scarcely walked through a poor street, and always under the escort of father, maid, or aunts.
'I was going to say that if you'd ever seen the kind of thing that's going on round you, you'd understand what it is that makes me and men like me politicians. You asked me a moment ago whether I'd done what I set out to do. Well, when I consider my life, there is one fact I admit that I'm proud of; owing to me some thousands of girls in Lancashire-and many thousands to come after them--can spend an hour every day in the open air which their mothers had to spend over their looms. I'm prouder of that, I own, than I should be of writing Keats and Shelley into the bargain!'
It became painful to Rachel to be one of those who write Keats and Shelley. She liked Richard Dalloway, and warmed as he warmed. He seemed to mean what he said.
'I know nothing!' she exclaimed.
'It's far better that you should know nothing,' he said paternally, 'and you wrong yourself, I'm sure. You play very nicely, I'm told, and I've no doubt you've read heaps of learned books.'
Elderly banter would no longer check her.
'You talk of unity,' she said. 'You ought to make me understand.'
'I never allow my wife to talk politics,' he said seriously. 'For this reason. It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals. If I have preserved mine, as I am thankful to say that in great measure I have, it is due to the fact that I have been able to come home to my wife in the evening and to find that she has spent her day in calling, music, play with the children, domestic duties--what you will; her illusions have not been destroyed. She gives me courage to go on. The strain of public life is very great,' he added.
This made him appear a battered martyr, parting every day with some of the finest gold, in the service of mankind.
'I can't think,' Rachel exclaimed, 'how any one does it!'
'Explain, Miss Vinrace,' said Richard. 'This is a matter I want to clear up.' His kindness was genuine, and she determined to take the chance he gave her, although to talk to a man of such worth and authority made her heart beat.
'It seems to me like this,' she began, doing her best first to recollect and then to expose her shivering private visions.
'There's an old widow in her room, somewhere, let us suppose in the suburbs of Leeds.' Richard bent his head to show that he accepted the widow.
'In London you're spending your life, talking, writing things, getting bills through, missing what seems natural. The result of it all is that she goes to her cupboard and finds a little more tea, a few lumps of sugar, or a little less tea and a newspaper. Widows all over the country I admit do this. Still, there's the mind of the widow--the affections; those you leave untouched. But you waste you own.'
'If the widow goes to her cupboard and finds it bare,' Richard answered, 'her spiritual outlook we may admit will be affected. If I may pick holes in your philosophy, Miss Vinrace, which has its merits, I would point out that a human being is not a set of compartments, but an organism. Imagination, Miss Vinrace; use your imagination; that's where you young Liberals fail. Conceive the world as a whole. Now for your second point; when you assert that in trying to set the house in order for the benefit of the young generation I am wasting my higher capabilities, I totally disagree with you. I can conceive no more exalted aim--to be the citizen of the Empire. Look at it in this way, Miss Vinrace; conceive the state as a complicated machine; we citizens are parts of that machine; some fulfil more important duties; others (perhaps I am one of them) serve only to connect some obscure parts of the mechanism, concealed from the public eye. Yet if the meanest screw fails in its task, the proper working of the whole is imperilled.' It was impossible to combine the image of a lean black widow, gazing out of her window, and longing for some one to talk to, with the image of a vast machine, such as one sees at South Kensington, thumping, thumping, thumping. The attempt at communication had been a failure.
'We don't seem to understand each other,' she said.
'Shall I say something that will make you very angry?' he replied.
'It won't,' said Rachel.
'Well, then; no woman has what I may call the political instinct. You have very great virtues; I am the first, I hope, to admit that; but I have never met a woman who even saw what is meant by statesmanship. I am going to make you still more angry. I hope that I never shall meet such a woman. Now, Miss Vinrace, are we enemies for life?' Vanity, irritation, and a thrusting desire to be understood, urged her to make another attempt.
'Under the streets, in the sewers, in the wires, in the telephones, there is something alive; is that what you mean? In things like dust-carts, and men mending roads? You feel that all the time when you walk about London, and when
