Before we left I put in a question about Josella. Miss Durrant frowned.
“I seem to know that name. Now where——Oh, did she stand in the Conservative interest in the last election?”
“I don’t think so. She—er—she did write a book once,” I admitted.
“She——” she began. Then I saw recollection dawn. “Oh, oh, that——！ Well, really, Mr. Masen, I can scarcely think she would be the kind of person to care for the kind of community we are building here.”
In the corridor outside Coker turned to me. There was just enough of the twilight left for me to see his grin.
“A somewhat oppressive orthodoxy around these parts,” he remarked. The grin disappeared as he added: “Rum type, you know. Pride and prejudice. She’s wanting help. She knows she needs it badly, but nothing’s going to make her admit it.”
He paused opposite an open door. It was almost too dark now to make out anything in the room, but when we had passed it before there had been enough light to reveal it as a men’s dormitory.
“I’m going in to have a word with these chaps. See you later.”
I watched him stroll into the room and greet it collectively with a cheerful “Wotcher, mates! ’Ow’s it goin’？” and then made my own way back to the dining hall.
The only light there came from three candles set close together on one table. Beside them a girl peered exasperatedly at some mending.
“Hullo,” she said. “Awful, isn’t it? How on earth did they manage to do anything after dark in the old days?”
“Not such old days, either,” I told her. “This is the future as well as the past—provided there’s somebody to show us how to make candles.”
“I suppose so.” She raised her head and regarded me. “You came from London today?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“It’s bad there now?”
“It’s finished,” I said.
Of Josella, the girl could tell me nothing. Clearly she had never heard the name before, and my attempts at description roused no recollections.
While we were talking, the electric lights in the room suddenly went on. The girl looked up at them with the awed expression of one receiving a revelation. She blew out the candles, and as she went on with her mending she looked up at the bulbs occasionally as if to make certain they were still there.
A few minutes later Coker strolled in.
“That was you, I suppose?” I said, nodding at the lights.
“Yes,” he admitted. “They’ve got their own plant here. We might as well use up the gas as let it evaporate.”
“Do you mean to say we could have had lights all the time we’ve been here?” asked the girl.
“If you had just taken the trouble to start the engine,” Coker said, looking at her. “If you wanted light, why didn’t you try to start it?”
“I didn’t know it was there; besides, I don’t know anything about engines or electricity.”
Coker continued to look at her, thoughtfully.
“So you just went on sitting in the dark,” he remarked. “And how long do you think you are likely to survive if you just go on sitting in the dark when things need doing?”
She was stung by his tone.
“It’s not my fault if I’m not any good at things like that.”
“I’ll differ there,” Coker told her. “It’s not only your fault—it’s a self-created fault. Moreover, it’s an affectation to consider yourself too spiritual to understand anything mechanical. It is a petty and a very silly form of vanity. Everyone starts by knowing nothing about anything, but God gives him—and even her—brains to find out with. Failure to use them is not a virtue to be praised; even in women it is a gap to be deplored.”