“Slanderous,” I said. “What you mean is that her principles are so impeccable that everything is her responsibility—and so it becomes her duty to guide others.”
“Much the same thing,” he said.
“But it sounds a lot better,” I pointed out.
He was thoughtful for a moment.
“She’s going to run this place into one hell of a mess unless she gets right down to the job of organizing it pretty quickly. Have you looked the outfit over?”
I shook my head. I told him how my morning had been spent.
“You don’t seem to have got much change for it. So what?” he said.
“I’m going on after the Michael Beadley crowd,” I told him.
“And if she’s not with them?”
“At present I’m just hoping she is. She must be. Where else would she be?”
He started to say something and stopped. Then he went on:
“I reckon I’ll come along with you. It’s likely that crowd won’t be any more glad to see me than this one, considering everything—but I can live that down. I’ve watched one lot fall to bits, and I can see this one’s going to do the same—more slowly and, maybe, more nastily. It’s queer, isn’t it? Decent intentions seem to be the most dangerous things around just now. It’s a damned shame, because this place could be managed, in spite of the proportion of blind. Everything it needs is lying about for the taking, and will be for a while yet. It’s only organizing that’s wanted.”
“And willingness to be organized,” I suggested.
“That too,” he agreed. “You know, the trouble is that in spite of all that’s happened this thing hasn’t got home to these people yet. They don’t want to turn to—that’d be making it too final. At the back of their minds they’re all hanging on, waiting for something or other.”
“True—but scarcely surprising,” I admitted. “It took plenty to convince us, and they’ve not seen what we have. And, some way, it does seem less final and less—less immediate out here in the country.”
“Well, they’ve got to start realizing it soon if they’re going to get through,” Coker said, looking round the hall again. “There’s no miracle coming to save them.”
“Give ’em time. They’ll come to it, as we did. You’re always in such a hurry. Time’s no longer money, you know.”
“Money isn’t important any longer, but time is. They ought to be thinking about the harvest, rigging a mill to grind flour, seeing about winter feed for the stock.”
I shook my head.
“It’s not as urgent as all that, Coker. There must be huge stocks of flour in the towns, and, by the look of things, mighty few of us to use it. We can live on capital for a long while yet. Surely the immediate job is to teach the blind how to work before they really have to get down to it.”
“All the same, unless something is done, the sighted ones here are going to crack up. It only needs that to happen to one or two of them and the place’ll be a proper mess.”
I had to concede that.
* * *
—
Later in the afternoon I managed to find Miss Durrant. No one else seemed to know or care where Michael Beadley and his lot had gone, but I could not believe that they had not left behind some indications for those who might follow. Miss Durrant was not pleased. At first I thought she was going to refuse to tell me. It was not due solely to my implied preference for other company. The loss of even an uncongenial able-bodied man was serious in the circumstances. Nevertheless, she preferred not to show the weakness of asking me to stay. In the end she said curtly: