amined the books, it had been a gamble of Bell's, and
once again he had made a complete fool of himself.
At first he could think of nothing but Bell's treachery.
That alone seemed black enough to account for the war.
If there was such evil as that in the world then there
must be wars, plagues, pestilences, famines. Then with
the war was associated Tom's retirement. Tom must
have known that it was coming : nothing else could have
made him renounce his ambition to have his statue along-
side Andrew Keith's in the Town Hall Square.
For a week or two Jamie was dazed and hid his con-
dition even from himself. He went down to his office
as though nothing had happened and kept his clerks
working at letters concerning imaginary transactions.
He could not realise the war as something actually hap-
500 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
pening among human beings: it was taking place for
him on the map of America, a conflict between political
principles, and conveyed no idea of bloodshed, or wounds
or men lying dead on the plains. And so many of the
men he met were in the same condition, dazed, stupefied,
not seeing how they were concerned, not realising the
ruin that had come upon them. Little by little excite-
ment grew. What was the Government doing? There
were hotheads who cried for war upon the Northern
States, elderly gentlemen consumed with bloodthirstiness
who declared that the time had come for the British
nation to recover her colonies and to crush the damned
Yankees, if necessary to exterminate them, burn them
out like wasps. There were even men who came into
Jamie's office, very white-faced and grim, to say good-
bye as they were off to have a shot either at the Yankees
or at the slave-drivers. And there went up from
Thrigsby a droning mighty note of thangsgiving that the
English were not as these and had no blood upon their
hands. But when the Southern ports were blockaded
and it became clear that no cotton was forthcoming,
then the cry was for war. England must declare for
the Southern States and liberty. England alone could
free the negroes. England was the sole champion of the
liberty of mankind and it was almost an impertinence
of the Northern States to pretend to be acting in the
name of liberty.
The clamour died down as a paralysis crept over
Thrigsby and the mills were closed down one after an-
other. The attitude of the Government to the suffering
States was forgotten. It became a matter of sauve qiti
pent.
Jamie implored Catherine to listen to him, to help him
to restore their marriage, their life together to a basis
BELL, LAWRIE & CO. 501
of understanding and sympathy and she was frightened
into acquiescence. He told her that .nothing else mat-
tered, and to him then nothing else did matter except
human comradeship: riches, poverty, intellect, art,
amusement, fun, kindliness, virtue, vice, good and evil, all
were to him vain without the central core of living sym-
pathy. That way lay liberty and towards that all efforts
should be directed with nothing spared for any other
until a little of it had been won and established. He
became like a man possessed and battered at the un-
fortunate Catherine with entreaties arguments, tears,
sobs. His was the cry of a soul in agony and it fright-
ened her. He told her that love was a sweet thing and
a dear pretty thing but in itself worthless unless it led
to that living sympathy without which joy itself was a
burden and a cruel hardship. And if love by itself was
worthless, what were pleasure and wealth and position,
all that she desired, all that she had lost in his ruin?
But she was too frightened to understand him: she was
frightened of poverty, of being dragged down with her
children. At last he understood, her and saw that he
must do what he could to comfort her. His ruin was
not utter. There need be no anxiety yet : not for many
months. He convinced her that he too had her welfare
at heart, but her relief was as overpowering as her fright
had been. That he loved her, that all the pleasantness
of life was not gone, was all she needed to know. His
passionate longing to break the sexual arrogance in her
was frustrated. She would not, could not look beyond
love or regard love as anything but an end in itself.
Love was her comfort against the fright she had had and
she insisted on his being wholly, violently, crazily her
lover. In the hope of more he acquiesced and seemed
502 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
to win more and during this period of concentration on
his marriage was absolutely indifferent to the ruin and
famine that were creeping over Thrigsby and the
kindred towns.
CHAPTER XL
DISASTER
FANNY SHAW had not been forgotten. She and
Tibby had remained great friends so that Fanny was
often at the house where she would linger in the hope of
seeing her adored Jamie. She had accepted the melan-
choly fact that his marriage must thrust her into the back-
ground, and she was content to be a kind of pensioner of
the family. Catherine would give her parcels of old
clothes and every Christmas Jamie would send her home
with a turkey and a plum-pudding for her mother. At
first she made herself ill with hatred of Catherine, but
Tibby soon talked and coaxed her out of that and as-
sumed responsibility for the girl who remained attached
to the theatre, sometimes acting, sometimes helping with
the wardrobe, doing everything she was told to do cheer-
fully, being paid irregularly and living for the most part
on gifts from the kind-hearted women of the theatre.
Jamie's marriage was really a tragedy to her. It ate into
her spirit and arrested her development. She was left
turned in upon herself, brooding and moody. Tibby
coaxed her gradually to talk of Jamie and found that she
had an extraordinary understanding of him and showed
him often in lights new to herself. That eased Fanny's
pain and relaxed the strain in her. She would take
refuge with Tibby from the theatre and from the mean
503
504 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
streets which she had begun to hold in horror. She clung
to the theatre because she did not know what else to do,
and imagined that she was pleasing Jamie by staying.
He did not forget her but was glad that Tibby should be
his substitute. However when Tibby returned to Mar-
garet and Fanny no longer came to his house he did
forget her except that he paid for her to have lessons in
singing and dancing.
She came to him one evening soon after his desperate
scene with Catherine. She came from the outer world
which just then seemed entirely remote as though he had
had nothing to do with it. "Why, Fanny," he said, "I
had almost forgotten you."- "Yes," she answered.
"I'm glad to see you," he said. "What a tall young
woman you have grown into." "Yes," she replied.
"They say I'm almost too tall for the stage and much
too thin. Though I don't think it matters much, as the
theatre will be closed very soon. Father's warehouse is
closed and mother has very little charing and I want to
know what I'm to do about it." Jamie stared at her,
hardly taking in what she had said. She went on:
"They've got about two pounds in the house and I don't
know what they'll do unless I go on the streets." Jamie
began to understand, to feel vaguely, the fury that she
was in. "It's the same everywhere," she said, "every-
thing is dearer and there's no money. What are you
going to do about it? They don't seem to mind, but I
can't bear it, I can't bear it." She began to beat her
fists up and down in the air, and he took her roughly
in his arms and held her tight until she began to weep
on his shoulder. Then he let her cry out her grief.
When she was calm again he promised that he would go
with her. They went down to the kitchen and made up
a parcel of food and with this under his arm they set
DISASTER 505
out and walked through the strangely silent streets, under
the deserted mills, and the empty warehouses down to the
black stews where the Shaws lived. There Jamie was
appalled. The house was almost destitute of furniture.
There remained one bed and in this Mr. Shaw was sleep-
ing. It was his habit to go to sleep when trouble came.
He had been known to sleep, when out of work, for three
months on end, getting up once a week to eat a slice of
bread and an onion. He was philosophical about it, say-
ing that in this way he was no drag upon his wife and
children. For half-a-second he woke up when Jamie
came, asked if he had brought work, and went to sleep
again when he received an answer in the negative. Mrs.
Shaw as usual was loquacious. She had always been an
honest woman, she had, and with lodgers had made both
ends meet; but now there were no lodgers and no work
and, though God knows there were sinful people in the
world, she was not one of them and could see no reason
why she should be so punished. There was Mrs. Kerry
at 35 who took men as well as the washing, but the world
was not composed of Mrs. Kerrys, but perhaps it was a
judgment on her for letting her eldest girl go out above
her station and give herself airs. Jamie let her talk and
fed the children, who, poor mites, could hardly eat, they
were so hungry. One of them said his belly was growl-
ing. "Vile, vile, vile!" said Jamie as he left. No
thought had been given to these poor wretches. He him-
self had given no thought to them, and there were thou-
sands of houses like that, thousands of families in such
straits. He cried within himself : "While there is a
child hungry in the land, not one of us has the right to
hold up his head. Freedom! Is this your freedom,
England? And you dare to reproach the Americans
while there is hunger in your land !" He wrote to both
506 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
his brothers, to Donald Greig, to Hubert. Hubert sent
him a cheque. The others replied that no doubt relief
would be undertaken by the proper authorities, and that
the collapse was only temporary. Work would be re-
sumed as soon as arrangements had been made for the
importation of cotton from Egypt and India. "On the
old terms?" asked Jamie. "On the terms that you make
as much as possible and give them as little as possible?
Have you no hearts? Will you not see that you are
responsible both for the slavery in America and the
destitution at home? You will have Thrigsby go back
to the old order of things, and on this ruin build more
squalor, more filth, more degradation?" All this made
Tom very angry and he replied from his comfortable
house in Westmorland: "If you had studied economics
instead of poetry you would have a better understanding
of what has happened, and would not be hysterical. The
good sense of the country will not allow the mill-hands
and warehousemen to starve." Jamie answered in three
words: "They are starving."
He tried in vain to procure some immediate organisa-
tion. There was individual charity in plenty but an
appalling waste of food through it. The churches and
chapels did all they could but they were jealous of each
other. It was soon clear that Thrigsby could not tackle
its own problem. Jamie was in such a fury that he could
find no one to co-operate with him. He condemned
charity. Gifts, he said, were not wanted, but a change
of system, and as all the charitable people were enjoying
their charity he was very unpopular. He wrote violent
exhortations to effort, but when he wrote what he really
felt he could not get his writings printed. The papers
had taken the line that everything possible was being
done. "Has any rich man," asked Jamie, "given even
DISASTER 507
a tenth of his income, or given up consuming in one day
food that would keep a working-class family for a
week?" That kind of thing the papers would not print,
and one editor, his friend, took him aside and said:
"Look here, my dear Lawrie, you are doing yourself no
good. What you are after would mean a change in
human nature." "I don't want a change," said Jamie, "I
want human nature to be given a chance. Change your
rotten ideas. Talk sense. What else are the newspapers
for ? Give up telling them what you think they think you
ought to think. Let decent people tell them what they
feel. Nothing else is any good. Tell them that things
in themselves are of no value, that all the value is given
to things by labour, that the only object of labour is that
we should give each other liberty." The editor shied at
the word. He patted Jamie on the shoulder: "I know
all that, my dear old fellow, but you won't get the Mayor,
Aldermen and Council to see it. Nobody wants liberty.
What everybody wants is comfort. You're a bit of a
genius and a thinker and all that, but the main object of
the average man is to avoid thinking. They'll stump
up to get the dirty old town out of this mess but they
won't think about it. Now you run along home and
write me an article about old Donald trying to think
and giving it up because it makes his mind ache and I'll
print it with pleasure." Jamie began to chuckle. His
friend had checked his frenzy, but he was not to be free
of it for many months to come. It would break in upon
him and set him reeling at the oddest and most unex-
pected moments. To what end was all this hideous raw
suffering?
One night he went to the Shaws. Fanny admitted
him. She looked strange and he soon saw that she was
light-headed. The house was in darkness and filled with
508 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
a strange sweetish smell. She told him in a cold matter-
of-fact voice that her father had risen from his bed, gone
out and come home drunk. Then he had cut his wife's
throat, smothered the two children who slept on the
mattress in his room, and gone out and flung himself into
the canal. "They're in there," she said. "All dead.
All dead. It's so easy to be dead. He was quite right.
It's better to be dead. He must have been thinking about
it when we thought he was asleep. He was always a
quiet one, was dad. But I don't want to die, because I
love you. Poor people don't love anybody, but I love
you." She crept to him and knelt by him and fondled
his knee. "It's wicked to love you. I'm the only wicked
one of them all and I'm alive." She kissed his hand and
her body writhed. He put his hand over her mouth to
stop her talking, and she tried to drag it down to her
throat, and to press his fingers into her flesh. He
shivered and was bitter cold. His throat was dry and
he could speak no word. His eyes burned but no tears
would come into them. "Hush, dear, hush," he said.
"You mustn't stay here. You must come away." He
half carried, half dragged her out of the house. On the
threshold they met one of the neighbours and a police-
man ; he told them what had happened, gave his name and
address and said that he was taking Fanny to be cared
for. "Quite right," said the neighbour. "Poor girl,
poor girl."
Fanny was half unconscious now. The fresh air had
been too much for her. Jamie carried her to a mews
he knew of round the corner, procured a fly and drove
out to his mother's house. He had no thought of going
to his own. His need was for Tibby.
They put Fanny to bed and Tibby wrapped her up in
a blanket to make her warm, for she was as cold as ice
DISASTER
509
and shaking horribly and convulsively. When Tibby
returned to the kitchen she found Jamie sitting with his
head in his hands sobbing. "You mustn't break down
too, Jamie," she said. "You mustn't break down now
when there's so much to do." "What can I do? What
can I do? Except undo the whole of my life?" "You
can't take the sins of the whole world on your shoulders,"
said she. "But we are all to blame, every one of us, for
we take and take and take and give nothing until we
are all separate and the whole world comes down about
our ears, and because we are separate there is nothing
to be done, only to feed hungry bellies. Fanny's mother
worked for a whole day for an apronful of stale crusts.
We are all separate and all starving. They'll feed them
with charity and then go on just the same as before.
The suffering of others is no suffering to them. Do you
think Tom will feel all this, or John? Not they!" He
raised his voice to a shout and Margaret who had just
come in from a consultation with her vicar hurried down
to see what the disturbance was about. Jamie told his
story and how and why he had brought Fanny to the
house. "She would have been better in hospital." "She
would not," cried Jamie. "She is devoted to Tibby and
the presence of her friends will be far more to her than
any physician's skill could be." "It is too ghastly," said
Margaret, "and I shall not sleep at night for thinking of
it." "That's fine!" said he. "Because you have rich
sons you are to be protected from all the suffering in
the world." Margaret was silent for a moment. He
went on: "And your sleep is of more importance than
the life and death of thousands. That's your ambition:
to be secure and indifferent." "You don't know what
you are saying," she said. "I haven't seen you like
this since you were a boy." "No," he muttered.
510 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
"You've shut your eyes and your heart to me." Mar-
garet turned and almost ran from the room. "That's the
worst you've ever done," said Tibby. "It's true! It's
true!" said he, almost angrily. "Words spoken in
anger," said Tibby gently, "are never true."
The anger in him melted and he went up to his mother,
whom he found grim and turned to stone, sitting gazing
out of the window. He spoke to her very gently and
she said: "If I have done wrong I have been punished.
My sin was pride and I have been punished in the misery
of my children. There is not in any of you the simple
joy that was in your father. Is it all my fault?"- -"We
are all at fault," said Jamie. "We have destroyed and
made nothing new. We have denied the love which is
God and have dwelt in the love which is of the earth.
It has destroyed us." Mother and son made moan to-
gether and bitter lamentation. Both were simple and
primitive. The storm passed through them and purged
them and Jamie was left with a clear desire for action.
He had no thought for his own affairs. They could
wait. Only the plight of Thrigsby mattered.
The next day he took train for Westmorland and
descended upon the Greigs and made them hold a council.
It was easy to frighten them. He drew terrible pictures
of the destruction that might take place in Thrigsby if
the starvation was not relieved. He described and en-
larged on the riot which had taken place outside Clibran
Hall when old Andrew Keith had played the tyrant.
Those days, he said, were over. There was no longer
room for tyranny. There was no longer any other neces-
sity than that the people should be fed. No prestige
could hold out against that. Donald was thoroughly
frightened when he thought that his mills and ware-
houses might be burned and that the streets of shops
DISASTER 511
from which he drew his rents might be sacked. Jamie
bullied him into starting a subscription list with two
thousand pounds. He made Tom fork out five hundred,
and felt like a dentist drawing a tooth. Agnes promised
to give him, secretly, two-thirds of her income every
quarter. With this for a beginning he went among the
merchants of Thrigsby and shamed them into subscrib-
ing. But still there was not enough.
He went out to see Hubert and got him to organise
his whole country-side to send in corn and vegetables
free. But still there was not enough.
When it seemed that Thrigsby could do no more then
he went to London where funds had been opened. Lon-
don was not yet awake to the necessity. The North of
England was remote from the Londoners who hardly
conceived of the Lancashire mill-hands being men and
women like themselves. Jamie went to see Acomb and
Selina and laid his case before them. They must give a
performance in aid of the suffering people of the North
and raise a subscription from the audience. Acomb
readily consented and put on Hamlet. Before the third
act he came forward and made a speech that was a
dramatic performance in itself. He described Thrigsby
quite wonderfully, beginning with his own first entry
into the place, how he had lodged in a certain gloomy
street where the children were like little old men. He
described his own early struggles. He showed how thou-
sands and thousands of men suffered these abominable
conditions to add to the wealth of the nation. Were
they not also a part of the nation and in their hour of
need was that wealth to be withheld from them?
"Good, good!" muttered Jamie, looking on, and seeing
the actor's words sink home into the audience of fashion-
able people, dandies and intellectuals. He met several
512 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
of them afterwards in Acomb's dressing-room and in his
raw condition was acutely sensitive to their insincerity
which chafed him. They had a new sensation and were
excited about it. Not one of them seemed to be moved,
not one of them was shaken in his complacency. Yet
they were interested and that was the great thing. Some
of them were men of powerful influence and they prom-
ised to do what they could. Jamie was a new type to
them, a wild man from the North. They eyed him much
as a few years before they had eyed General Tom
Thumb. They patronised him and pitied him. He was
so obviously suffering under his sincerity, an affliction
by which they were determined at all costs not to be
visited. They stripped him of the last vestiges of his
illusions about the wonders of London literary life and
he was glad to depart for the North again.
The performance was far-reaching in its consequences.
The uses of advertisement were yet undiscovered in
those days, and any advertisement had tremendous re-
sults. Money in plenty was soon forthcoming and the
difficulties of Thrigsby were met until supplies of cotton
were available and the mills could be got going again.
Not a word of thanks did Jamie receive. He had
made himself a nuisance and he had given vent to violent
and dangerous opinions. Henceforth and for ever he
was a stranger to respectability. He crept back into his
own home and even there found little welcome. Cath-
erine's friends had been careful to inform her of the
effect of his utterances and not of his doings. When
she found that out of the three thousand pounds he had
left in the world he had given one thousand to the
Mayor of Thrigsby 's fund she was furious. How could
it help the starving poor if they also starved? He said
he would work. What work? "There will be work,"
DISASTER 513
he said, "when the war is over." "And till then?"
"Till then there is no need for anxiety." "But I am
anxious." "Without reason. You can have the control
of what we have left, if you like."
She turned to Mrs. Halloran and plunged into the new
gaiety with which a certain section of Thrigsbeian so-
ciety had endeavoured to lighten the dark hours. Jamie
shut himself up with his old refuge The Faerie Queene
and for many weeks saw no one but his mother, Tibby
and Fanny, in the one house where he could feel any
stirring of the love of his vision. For he had become
visionary. The world of material things had dwindled.
He took so little interest in it that it was hardly even
comic. He had a terrible period when he thought of
human beings as mere animals controlled entirely by
their physical functions, having no connection with each
other save in the satisfaction of their lusts so that their
minds bred nothing but lies, in the accumulation of
which they were suffocated and brought to ruin : and
even when in appearance they had risen above this
brutish condition they were frozen by their hypocrisy.
It seemed to him true what his friend the editor had
said, that their main object in life, once they were fed,
was to avoid thinking. He was thoroughly exhausted
and reduced almost to apathy, through which there
thrilled slowly a tremulous happiness that brought with
it a strange child-like courage to bear injustice, evil, and
even spiritual failure with a stiffened lip and head erect.
His vision found the support of a rough hard-headed
common-sense, a belief that the confused appearance of
things was somehow an expression of a clear reality,
much as to his mother the world was an expression of
the God whom she so worshipped in her quiet devotion.
But life as he had known it was so much greater than
5H THREE SONS AND A MOTHER
that God, who had become only a limitation of life and
a drag upon it, so that an emotion fashioned in his image
was immediately abstracted from life and ceased to be
effective in it. It was absurd now that so many natural
forces had been released and the impact of men in the