If Winter Comes Part 27

Something of these views he one day expressed to Pike, the Editor of the _Tidborough County Times_. He was taken into the _County Times_ office by business connected with an error in the firm's standing account for advertis.e.m.e.nt notices and, encountering Pike outside his room, entered with him and talked.

Pike was a man of nearly sixty with furiously black and luxuriant hair.

He had been every sort of journalist in America and in London, and some years previously had been brought into the editorship of the _County Times_. The Press, broad-based on the liberty of the English people and superbly impervious to whatever temptation to jump in the direction the cat jumps, is, on the other hand, singularly sensitive to apparently inconsequent trifles in the lives of its proprietary. Pike, with his reputation, was brought into the editorship of the _County Times_ solely because the proprietor late in life suddenly married. The wife of the proprietor desiring to share a knighthood with her husband, the proprietor, anxious to please but unwilling to pay, incontinently sacked the tame editor who was beguiling an amiable dotage with the _County Times_ and looked about for a wild editor, whom unquestionably he found in Mr. Pike.

The breath of the _County Times_ became as the breath of life to the Tory tradition and burst from its columns as the breath of a fiery furnace upon all that was opposed to the Tory tradition. The proprietor felt that his knighthood was a.s.sured as soon as the tide of liberalism turned; and the _County Times_, which could not notice even a Baptist harvest festival without snorting fire and brimstone upon it, said that the tide of radicalism--it did not print the words Liberal or Liberalism--was turning every day. About once a week the _County Times_ said that the tide of radicalism "definitely turned last night."

Pike was a man of extraordinarily violent language. Consequent, no doubt, on the restraint of having to write always in printable language, his vocal discussion of the subjects on which he wrote was mainly in unprintable. He spoke of trade-unionists always as "those swine and dogs" and of the members of the Government as "those dogs and swine",--swine and dogs being refined and temperate euphuisms for the epithets Mr. Pike actually employed.

However he heard Sabre's stumbling periods tolerantly out and tolerantly dealt with him.

"Excuse me, Sabre, but that sort of stuff's absolutely fatal--fatal.

It's simply compromise. Compromise. The most fatal defect in the English character."

Sabre happened to be stout enough on this particular point. "That's just what it isn't. Precisely what it isn't. I loathe compromise. More than anything. Compromise is accepting a little of what you know to be wrong in order to get a little of what you imagine to be right."

Pike made a swift note in shorthand on his blotting pad. "Exactly.

Well?"

"Well, that's just the opposite to what I mean. I mean accepting, admitting, what you know to be _right_."

Pike smote his hand upon the blotting pad. "But, d.a.m.n it, those dogs and swine never _are_ right."

"There you are!" said Sabre.

And there they were, shouting, smashing; and Sabre could not do either and retired dismayed from the arenas of both.

CHAPTER II

I

It much affected his relations with those nearest to him,--with Mabel, with Mr. Fortune, and with Twyning. In those months, and in the months following, the year changing and advancing in equal excitements and strong opinions through winter into spring, he found himself increasingly out of favour at The Precincts and increasingly estranged in his home. And it was his own fault. Detached and reflective in the fond detachment of the daily bicycle ride, awake at night mentally pacing about the a.s.sembled parts of his puzzles, he told himself with complete impartiality that the cause of these effects was entirely of his own making. "I can't stick shouting and smashing"--"I can't help seeing the bits of right in the other point of view": those were the causes. He was so difficult to get on with: that was the effect of the complaint.

"Really, Sabre, I find it most difficult to get on with you nowadays,"

Mr. Fortune used to say. "We seem never to agree. We are perpetually at loggerheads. Loggerheads. I do most strongly resent being perpetually b.u.mped and bruised by unwilling partic.i.p.ation in a grinding congestion of loggerheads."

And Twyning, "Well, I simply can't hit it off with you. That's all there is to it. I try to be friendly; but if you can't hear Lloyd George's name without taking up that kind of att.i.tude, well, all I can say is you're trying to put up social barriers in a place where there's no room for social barriers, and that's in business."

And Mabel: "Well, if you want to know what I think, I think you're getting simply impossible to get on with. You simply never think the same as other people think. I should have thought it was only common decency at a time like this to stand up for your own cla.s.s; but, no.

It's always your own cla.s.s that's in the wrong and the common people who are in the right."

"Always." He began to hate the word "always." But it was true. In those exciting and intensely opinionated days it seemed there was never a subject that came up, whether at The Precincts or at home, but he found himself on the other side of the argument and giving intense displeasure because he was on the other side. In Mabel's case--he did not particularly trouble himself about what Twyning and Fortune thought--but in Mabel's case, much set on his duty to give her happiness, he came to prepare with care for the dangerous places of their intercourse. But never with success. Places whose aggravations drove her to her angriest protestations of how utterly impossible he was to get on with never looked dangerous as they were approached: he would ride in to them with her amicably or with a slack rein,--and suddenly, mysteriously, unexpectedly, he would be floundering, the relations between them yet a little more deeply foundered.

Such utterly harmless looking places:

"And those are the people, mind you," said Mabel--not for the first time "those are the people that we have to lick stamps for Lloyd George for!"

This was because High Jinks had been seen going out for her afternoon with what Mabel described to Sabre as a trumpery, gee-gaw parasol.

The expression amused him. "Well, why in heaven's name shouldn't High Jinks buy a trumpery, gee-gaw parasol?"

"I do wish you wouldn't call her High Jinks. Because she can't afford a trumpery, gee-gaw parasol."

He spoke bemusedly. No need for caution that he could see. "Well, I don't know--I rather like to see them going out in a bit of finery."

Mabel sniffed. "Well, your taste! Servants look really nice in their caps and ap.r.o.ns and their black, if they only knew it. In their bit of finery, as you call it, they look too awful for words."

Signs of flying up. He roused himself to avert it. "Oh, rather. I agree.

What I meant was I think it's rather nice to see them decking themselves out when they get away from their work. Rather pathetic."

"Pathetic!"

She had flown up!

He said quickly, "No, but look here, Mabel, wait a bit. I ought to have explained. What I mean is they have a pretty rotten time, all that cla.s.s. When High Jinks puts up a trumpery, gee-gaw parasol, she's human.

That's pathetic, only being human once a week and alternate Sundays. And when you get a life that finds pleasure in a trumpery, gee-gaw parasol, well that's more pathetic still. See?"

Real anxiety in his "See?" But the thing was done. "No. I absolutely don't. Pathetic! You really are quite impossible to get on with. I've given up even trying to understand your ideas. Pathetic!" She gave her sudden laugh.

"Oh, well," said Sabre.

Deeper foundered!

II

And precisely the same word--pathetic--came up between them in the matter of Miss Bypa.s.s. Miss Bypa.s.s was companion to Mrs. Boom Bagshaw, the mother of Mr. Boom Bagshaw. Mabel hated Miss Bypa.s.s because Miss Bypa.s.s was, she said, the rudest creature she ever met. And "of course"

Sabre took the opposite view--the ridiculous and maddening view--that her abominably rude manner was not rude but pathetic.

The occasion was an afternoon call paid at the vicarage. Of all houses in the Garden Home Sabre most dreaded and feared the vicarage. He paid this call, with shuddering, in pursuance of his endeavour to do with Mabel things that gave her pleasure. (And in the most uncongenial of them, as this call at the vicarage, he used to think, characteristically, "After all, I haven't got the decency to do what she's specially asked--give up the bike ride.")

The Vicarage drawing-room was huge, handsomely furnished, much adorned with signed portraits of royal and otherwise celebrated persons, and densely crowded with devoted parishioners. Among them the Reverend Boom Bagshaw moved sulkily to and fro; amidst them, on a species of raised throne, Mrs. Boom Bagshaw gave impressive audience. The mother of the Reverend Boom Bagshaw was a ma.s.sive and formidable woman who seemed to be swaddled in several hundred garments of heavy crepe and stiff satin.

She bore a distinct resemblance to Queen Victoria; but there was stuff in her and upon her to make several Queen Victorias. About the room, but chiefly, as Sabre thought, under his feet, fussed her six very small dogs. There were called Fee, Fo and Fum, which were brown toy Poms; and Tee, To, Tum, which were black toy Poms, and the six were the especial care and duty of Miss Bypa.s.s. Every day Miss Bypa.s.s, who was tall and pale and ugly, was to be seen striding about Penny Green and the Garden Home in process of exercising the dogs; the dogs, for their part, shrilling their importance and decorating the pavements in accordance with the engaging habits of their lovable characteristics. In the drawing-room Miss Bypa.s.s occupied herself in stooping about after the six, extracting bread and b.u.t.ter from their mouths--they were not allowed to eat bread and b.u.t.ter--and raising them for the adoring inspection of visitors unable at the moment either to adore Mr. Boom Bagshaw or to prostrate themselves before the throne of Queen Victoria Boom Bagshaw.

Few spoke to Miss Bypa.s.s. Those who did were answered in the curiously defiant manner which was her habit and which was called by Mabel abominably rude, and by Sabre pathetic. As he and Mabel were taking their leave, he had Miss Bypa.s.s in momentary conversation, Mabel standing by.

"Hullo, Miss Bypa.s.s. Haven't managed to see you in all this crowd.

How're things with you?"

"I'm perfectly well, thank you."

"Been reading anything lately? I saw you coming out of the library the other day with a stack of books."

Miss Bypa.s.s gave the impression of bracing herself, as though against suspected attack. "Yes, and they were for my own reading, thank you. I suppose you thought they were for Mrs. Boom Bagshaw."

Certainly her manner was extraordinarily hostile. Sabre took no notice.