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Yet they seemed to have become obsolete, to be superseded in the world.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.
The beautiful candles of belief, that would not do to light the world any more, they would still burn sweetly and sufficiently in the inner room of his soul, and in the silence of his retirement.
Gerald rushed into the reform of the firm, beginning with the office.
It was needful to economise severely, to make possible the great alterations he must introduce.
'What are these widows' coals?' he asked.
'We have always allowed all widows of men who worked for the firm a load of coals every three months.'
'They must pay cost price henceforward.
The firm is not a charity institution, as everybody seems to think.'
Widows, these stock figures of sentimental humanitarianism, he felt a dislike at the thought of them.
They were almost repulsive.
Why were they not immolated on the pyre of the husband, like the sati in India?
At any rate, let them pay the cost of their coals.
In a thousand ways he cut down the expenditure, in ways so fine as to be hardly noticeable to the men.
The miners must pay for the cartage of their coals, heavy cartage too; they must pay for their tools, for the sharpening, for the care of lamps, for the many trifling things that made the bill of charges against every man mount up to a shilling or so in the week.
It was not grasped very definitely by the miners, though they were sore enough.
But it saved hundreds of pounds every week for the firm.
Gradually Gerald got hold of everything.
And then began the great reform.
Expert engineers were introduced in every department.
An enormous electric plant was installed, both for lighting and for haulage underground, and for power.
The electricity was carried into every mine.
New machinery was brought from America, such as the miners had never seen before, great iron men, as the cutting machines were called, and unusual appliances.
The working of the pits was thoroughly changed, all the control was taken out of the hands of the miners, the butty system was abolished.
Everything was run on the most accurate and delicate scientific method, educated and expert men were in control everywhere, the miners were reduced to mere mechanical instruments.
They had to work hard, much harder than before, the work was terrible and heart-breaking in its mechanicalness.
But they submitted to it all.
The joy went out of their lives, the hope seemed to perish as they became more and more mechanised.
And yet they accepted the new conditions.
They even got a further satisfaction out of them.
At first they hated Gerald Crich, they swore to do something to him, to murder him.
But as time went on, they accepted everything with some fatal satisfaction.
Gerald was their high priest, he represented the religion they really felt.
His father was forgotten already.
There was a new world, a new order, strict, terrible, inhuman, but satisfying in its very destructiveness.
The men were satisfied to belong to the great and wonderful machine, even whilst it destroyed them.
It was what they wanted.
It was the highest that man had produced, the most wonderful and superhuman.
They were exalted by belonging to this great and superhuman system which was beyond feeling or reason, something really godlike.
Their hearts died within them, but their souls were satisfied.