CHAPTER V.
Mr. Wimbush had taken them to see the sights of the Home Farm, and nowthey were standing, all six of them--Henry Wimbush, Mr. Scogan, Denis,Gombauld, Anne, and Mary--by the low wall of the piggery, looking intoone of the styes.
"This is a good sow," said Henry Wimbush. "She had a litter of fourteen.
"Fourteen?" Mary echoed incredulously. She turned astonished blue eyestowards Mr. Wimbush, then let them fall onto the seething mass of elanvital that fermented in the sty.
An immense sow reposed on her side in the middle of the pen. Her round,black belly, fringed with a double line of dugs, presented itself to theassault of an army of small, brownish-black swine. With a frantic greedthey tugged at their mother's flank. The old sow stirred sometimesuneasily or uttered a little grunt of pain. One small pig, the runt,the weakling of the litter, had been unable to secure a place at thebanquet. Squealing shrilly, he ran backwards and forwards, trying topush in among his stronger brothers or even to climb over their tightlittle black backs towards the maternal reservoir.
"There ARE fourteen," said Mary. "You're quite right. I counted. It'sextraordinary."
"The sow next door," Mr. Wimbush went on, "has done very badly. She onlyhad five in her litter. I shall give her another chance. If she does nobetter next time, I shall fat her up and kill her. There's the boar,"he pointed towards a farther sty. "Fine old beast, isn't he? But he'sgetting past his prime. He'll have to go too."
"How cruel!" Anne exclaimed.
"But how practical, how eminently realistic!" said Mr. Scogan. "In thisfarm we have a model of sound paternal government. Make them breed,make them work, and when they're past working or breeding or begetting,slaughter them."
"Farming seems to be mostly indecency and cruelty," said Anne.
With the ferrule of his walking-stick Denis began to scratch the boar'slong bristly back. The animal moved a little so as to bring himselfwithin easier range of the instrument that evoked in him such delicioussensations; then he stood stock still, softly grunting his contentment.The mud of years flaked off his sides in a grey powdery scurf.
"What a pleasure it is," said Denis, "to do somebody a kindness. Ibelieve I enjoy scratching this pig quite as much as he enjoys beingscratched. If only one could always be kind with so little expense ortrouble..."
A gate slammed; there was a sound of heavy footsteps.
"Morning, Rowley!" said Henry Wimbush.
"Morning, sir," old Rowley answered. He was the most venerable ofthe labourers on the farm--a tall, solid man, still unbent, with greyside-whiskers and a steep, dignified profile. Grave, weighty in hismanner, splendidly respectable, Rowley had the air of a great Englishstatesman of the mid-nineteenth century. He halted on the outskirts ofthe group, and for a moment they all looked at the pigs in a silencethat was only broken by the sound of grunting or the squelch of a sharphoof in the mire. Rowley turned at last, slowly and ponderously andnobly, as he did everything, and addressed himself to Henry Wimbush.
"Look at them, sir," he said, with a motion of his hand towards thewallowing swine. "Rightly is they called pigs."
"Rightly indeed," Mr. Wimbush agreed.
"I am abashed by that man," said Mr. Scogan, as old Rowley plodded offslowly and with dignity. "What wisdom, what judgment, what a sense ofvalues! 'Rightly are they called swine.' Yes. And I wish I could, withas much justice, say, 'Rightly are we called men.'"
They walked on towards the cowsheds and the stables of the cart-horses.Five white geese, taking the air this fine morning, even as they weredoing, met them in the way. They hesitated, cackled; then, convertingtheir lifted necks into rigid, horizontal snakes, they rushed off indisorder, hissing horribly as they went. Red calves paddled in the dungand mud of a spacious yard. In another enclosure stood the bull,massive as a locomotive. He was a very calm bull, and his face wore anexpression of melancholy stupidity. He gazed with reddish-brown eyes athis visitors, chewed thoughtfully at the tangible memories of an earliermeal, swallowed and regurgitated, chewed again. His tail lashed savagelyfrom side to side; it seemed to have nothing to do with his impassivebulk. Between his short horns was a triangle of red curls, short anddense.
"Splendid animal," said Henry Wimbush. "Pedigree stock. But he's gettinga little old, like the boar."
"Fat him up and slaughter him," Mr. Scogan pronounced, with a delicateold-maidish precision of utterance.
"Couldn't you give the animals a little holiday from producingchildren?" asked Anne. "I'm so sorry for the poor things."
Mr. Wimbush shook his head. "Personally," he said, "I rather like seeingfourteen pigs grow where only one grew before. The spectacle of so muchcrude life is refreshing."
"I'm glad to hear you say so," Gombauld broke in warmly. "Lots of life:that's what we want. I like pullulation; everything ought to increaseand multiply as hard as it can."
Gombauld grew lyrical. Everybody ought to have children--Anne ought tohave them, Mary ought to have them--dozens and dozens. He emphasised hispoint by thumping with his walking-stick on the bull's leather flanks.Mr. Scogan ought to pass on his intelligence to little Scogans, andDenis to little Denises. The bull turned his head to see what washappening, regarded the drumming stick for several seconds, then turnedback again satisfied, it seemed, that nothing was happening. Sterilitywas odious, unnatural, a sin against life. Life, life, and still morelife. The ribs of the placid bull resounded.
Standing with his back against the farmyard pump, a little apart, Denisexamined the group. Gombauld, passionate and vivacious, was its centre.The others stood round, listening--Henry Wimbush, calm and politebeneath his grey bowler; Mary, with parted lips and eyes that shone withthe indignation of a convinced birth-controller. Anne looked on throughhalf-shut eyes, smiling; and beside her stood Mr. Scogan, bolt uprightin an attitude of metallic rigidity that contrasted strangely with thatfluid grace of hers which even in stillness suggested a soft movement.
Gombauld ceased talking, and Mary, flushed and outraged, opened hermouth to refute him. But she was too slow. Before she could utter aword Mr. Scogan's fluty voice had pronounced the opening phrases of adiscourse. There was no hope of getting so much as a word in edgeways;Mary had perforce to resign herself.
"Even your eloquence, my dear Gombauld," he was saying--"even youreloquence must prove inadequate to reconvert the world to a belief inthe delights of mere multiplication. With the gramophone, the cinema,and the automatic pistol, the goddess of Applied Science has presentedthe world with another gift, more precious even than these--the means ofdissociating love from propagation. Eros, for those who wish it, is nowan entirely free god; his deplorable associations with Lucina may bebroken at will. In the course of the next few centuries, who knows?the world may see a more complete severance. I look forward to itoptimistically. Where the great Erasmus Darwin and Miss Anna Seward,Swan of Lichfield, experimented--and, for all their scientific ardour,failed--our descendants will experiment and succeed. An impersonalgeneration will take the place of Nature's hideous system. In vast stateincubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world withthe population it requires. The family system will disappear; society,sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros,beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly fromflower to flower through a sunlit world."
"It sounds lovely," said Anne.
"The distant future always does."
Mary's china blue eyes, more serious and more astonished than ever,were fixed on Mr. Scogan. "Bottles?" she said. "Do you really think so?Bottles..."