"Well, then, don't," said the doctor, bent more perhaps on carrying his
point in argument than on promoting the actual establishment of the Social
Union. "But my idea is this: Take two-thirds or one-half of that money,
and go to Savor, and say: 'Here! This is what Mr. Brandreth's theatricals
swindled the shop-hands out of. It's honestly theirs, at least to control;
and if you want to try that experiment of Mr. Peck's here in Hatboro', it's
yours. We people of leisure, or comparative leisure, have really nothing
in common with you people who work with your hands for a living; and as we
really can't be friends with you, we won't patronise you. We won't advise
you, and we won't help you; but here's the money. If you fail, you fail;
and if you succeed, you won't succeed by our aid and comfort.'"
The plan that Annie and Doctor Morrell talked over half in joke took a more
and more serious character in her sense of duty to the minister's memory
and the wish to be of use, which was not extinct in her, however she mocked
and defied it. It was part of the irony of her fate that the people who
were best able to counsel with her in regard to it were Lyra, whom she
could not approve, and Jack Wilmington, whom she had always disliked. He
was able to contribute some facts about the working of the Thayer Club
at the Harvard Memorial Hall in Cambridge, and Lyra because she had been
herself a hand, and would not forget it, was of use in bringing the scheme
into favour with the hands. They felt easy with her, as they did with
Putney, and for much the same reason: it is one of the pleasing facts of
our conditions that people who are socially inferior like best those above
them who are morally anomalous. It was really through Lyra that Annie got
at the working people, and when it came to a formal conference, there
was no one who could command their confidence like Putney, whom they saw
mad-drunk two or three times a year, but always pulling up and fighting
back to sanity against the enemy whose power some of them had felt too.
No theory is so perfect as not to be subject to exceptions in the
experiment, and in spite of her conviction of the truth of Mr. Peck's
social philosophy, Annie is aware, through her simple and frank relations
with the hands in a business matter, of mutual kindness which it does
not account for. But perhaps the philosophy and the experiment were not
contradictory; perhaps it was intended to cover only the cases in which
they had no common interest. At anyrate, when the Peck Social Union, as its
members voted to call it, at the suggestion of one of their own number, got
in working order, she was as cordially welcomed to the charge of its funds
and accounts as if she had been a hat-shop hand or a shoe-binder. She is
really of use, for its working is by no means ideal, and with her wider
knowledge she has suggested improvements and expedients for making both
ends meet which were sometimes so reluctant to meet. She has kept a
conscience against subsidising the Union from her own means; and she even
accepts for her services a small salary, which its members think they
ought to pay her. She owns this ridiculous, like all the make-believe work
of rich people; a travesty which has no reality except the little sum it
added to the greater sum of her superabundance. She is aware that she is
a pensioner upon the real members of the Social Union for a chance to be
useful, and that the work they let her do is the right of some one who
needs it. She has thought of doing the work and giving the pay to another;
but she sees that this would be pauperising and degrading another. So she
dwells in a vicious circle, and waits, and mostly forgets, and is mostly
happy.