'
'I've got a man in his place now, father. He'll be happier out of it,
believe me. You think his allowance is plenty, don't you?'
'It is not the allowance that he wants, poor man. He feels it very
much, that he is superannuated. Says he thought he had twenty more
years of work in him yet.'
'Not of this kind of work I want. He doesn't understand.'
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 servants, 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seemed to have become obsolete, to be superseded in the world.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 understand. He only withdrew with his lights into an inner room,
into the silence.
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