it'll be all machines. But they say that's what folks said when they had to
give up the old stocking frames. I can remember one or two. But my word, the
more machines, the more people, that's what it looks like! They say you
can't get the same chemicals out of Tevershall coal as you can out of Stacks
Gate, and that's funny, they're not three miles apart. But they say so. But
everybody says it's a shame something can't be started, to keep the men
going a bit better, and employ the girls. All the girls traipsing off to
Sheffield every day! My word, it would be something to talk about if
Tevershall Collieries took a new lease of life, after everybody saying
they're finished, and a sinking ship, and the men ought to leave them like
rats leave a sinking ship. But folks talk so much, of course there was a
boom during the war. When Sir Geoffrey made a trust of himself and got the
money safe for ever, somehow. So they say! But they say even the masters and
the owners don't get much out of it now. You can hardly believe it, can you!
Why I always thought the pits would go on for ever and ever. Who'd have
thought, when I was a girl! But New England's shut down, so is Colwick Wood:
yes, it's fair haunting to go through that coppy and see Colwick Wood
standing there deserted among the trees, and bushes growing up all over the
pit-head, and the lines red rusty. It's like death itself, a dead colliery.
Why, whatever should we do if Tevershall shut down---? It doesn't bear
thinking of. Always that throng it's been, except at strikes, and even then
the fan-wheels didn't stand, except when they fetched the ponies up. I'm
sure it's a funny world, you don't know where you are from year to year, you
really don't.'
It was Mrs Bolton's talk that really put a new fight into Clifford. His
income, as she pointed out to him, was secure, from his father's trust, even
though it was not large. The pits did not really concern him. It was the
other world he wanted to capture, the world of literature and fame; the
popular world, not the working world.
Now he realized the distinction between popular success and working
success: the populace of pleasure and the populace of work. He, as a private
individual, had been catering with his stories for the populace of pleasure.
And he had caught on. But beneath the populace of pleasure lay the populace
of work, grim, grimy, and rather terrible. They too had to have their
<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>