Page 337 - women-in-love

‘Not of this kind of work I want. He doesn’t under-
stand.’
The father sighed. He wanted not to know any more. He
believed the pits would have to be overhauled if they were to
go on working. And after all, it would be worst in the long
run for everybody, if they must close down. So he could
make no answer to the appeals of his old and trusty ser-
vants, he could only repeat ‘Gerald says.’
So the father drew more and more out of the light. The
whole frame of the real life was broken for him. He had
been right according to his lights. And his lights had been
those of the great religion. Yet they seemed to have become
obsolete, to be superseded in the world. He could not un-
derstand. He only withdrew with his lights into an inner
room, into the silence. The beautiful candles of belief, that
would not do to light the world any more, they would still
burn sweetly and sufficiently in the inner room of his soul,
and in the silence of his retirement.
Gerald rushed into the reform of the firm, beginning
with the office. It was needful to economise severely, to
make possible the great alterations he must introduce.
‘What are these widows’ coals?’ he asked.
‘We have always allowed all widows of men who worked
for the firm a load of coals every three months.’
‘They must pay cost price henceforward. The firm is not a
charity institution, as everybody seems to think.’
Widows, these stock figures of sentimental humanitari-
anism, he felt a dislike at the thought of them. They were
almost repulsive. Why were they not immolated on the pyre

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