they would have been even more furious, I expect. And it's no use my
saying to myself 'I don't know the laborer, I don't know his hardships,'
because he is really just the country half of what I do know and see,
here in London, when I don't hide my eyes. One talk showed me how
desperately they feel; at night, in Sheila's room, when we had gone up,
just we four. Alan began it; they didn't want to, I could see; but he
was criticising what some of those Bigwigs had said--the 'Varsity makes
boys awfully conceited. It was such a lovely night; we were all in
the big, long window. A little bat kept flying past; and behind
the copper-beech the moon was shining on the lake. Derek sat in the
windowsill, and when he moved he touched me. To be touched by him gives
me a warm shiver all through. I could hear him gritting his teeth at
what Alan said--frightfully sententious, just like a newspaper: 'We
can't go into land reform from feeling, we must go into it from reason.'
Then Derek broke out: 'Walk through this country as we've walked; see
the pigsties the people live in; see the water they drink; see the tiny
patches of ground they have; see the way their roofs let in the rain;
see their peeky children; see their patience and their hopelessness; see
them working day in and day out, and coming on the parish at the end!
See all that, and then talk about reason! Reason! It's the coward's
excuse, and the rich man's excuse, for doing nothing. It's the excuse of
the man who takes jolly good care not to see for fear that he may come
to feel! Reason never does anything, it's too reasonable. The thing is
to act; then perhaps reason will be jolted into doing something.' But
Sheila touched his arm, and he stopped very suddenly. She doesn't trust
us. I shall always be being pushed away from him by her. He's just
twenty, and I shall be eighteen in a week; couldn't we marry now at
once? Then, whatever happened, I couldn't be cut off from him. If
I could tell Dad, and ask him to help me! But I can't--it seems
desecration to talk about it, even to Dad. All the way up in the train