Kipps Part 44

"There's no imagination to make use of it."

"We've got to _make_ one," said Sid.

"In a couple of centuries perhaps," said Masterman. "But meanwhile we're going to have a pretty acute attack of confusion. Universal confusion.

Like one of those crushes when men are killed and maimed for no reason at all, going into a meeting or crowding for a train. Commercial and Industrial Stresses. Political Exploitation. Tariff Wars. Revolutions.

All the bloodshed that will come of some fools calling half the white world yellow. These things alter the att.i.tude of everybody to everybody.

Everybody's going to feel 'em. Every fool in the world panting and shoving. _We're_ all going to be as happy and comfortable as a household during a removal. What else can we expect?"

Kipps was moved to speak, but not in answer to Masterman's enquiry.

"I've never rightly got the 'eng of this Socialism," he said. "What's it going to do, like?"

They had been imagining that he had some elementary idea in the matter, but as soon as he had made it clear that he hadn't, Sid plunged at exposition, and in a little while Masterman, abandoning his pose of the detached man ready to die, joined in. At first he joined in only to correct Sid's version, but afterwards he took control. His manner changed. He sat up and rested his elbow on his knees, and his cheek flushed a little. He expanded his case against Property and the property cla.s.s with such vigour that Kipps was completely carried away, and never thought of asking for a clear vision of the thing that would fill the void this abolition might create. For a time he quite forgot his own private opulence. And it was as if something had been lit in Masterman.

His languor pa.s.sed. He enforced his words by gestures of his long, thin hands. And as he pa.s.sed swiftly from point to point of his argument it was evident he grew angry.

"To-day," he said, "the world is ruled by rich men; they may do almost anything they like with the world. And what are they doing? Laying it waste!"

"Hear, hear!" said Sid, very sternly.

Masterman stood up, gaunt and long, thrust his hands in his pockets and turned his back to the fireplace.

"Collectively, the rich to-day have neither heart nor imagination. No!

They own machinery, they have knowledge and instruments and powers beyond all previous dreaming, and what are they doing with them? Think what they are doing with them, Kipps, and think what they might do. G.o.d gives them a power like the motor car, and all they can do with it is to go careering about the roads in goggled masks killing children and making machinery hateful to the soul of man! ("True," said Sid, "true.") G.o.d gives them means of communication, power unparalleled of every sort, time and absolute liberty! They waste it all in folly! Here under their feet (and Kipps' eyes followed the direction of a lean index finger to the hearthrug) under their accursed wheels, the great ma.s.s of men festers and breeds in darkness, darkness those others make by standing in the light. The darkness breeds and breeds. It knows no better....

Unless you can crawl or pander or rob you must stay in the stew you are born in. And those rich beasts above claw and clutch as though they had nothing! They grudge us our schools, they grudge us a gleam of light and air, they cheat us and then seek to forget us.... There is no rule, no guidance, only accidents and happy flukes.... Our mult.i.tudes of poverty increase, and this crew of rulers makes no provision, foresees nothing, antic.i.p.ates nothing...."

He paused and made a step, and stood over Kipps in a white heat of anger. Kipps nodded in a non-commital manner and looked hard and rather gloomily at his host's slipper as he talked.

"It isn't as though they had something to show for the waste they make of us, Kipps. They haven't. They are ugly and cowardly and mean. Look at their women! Painted, dyed and drugged, hiding their ugly shapes under a load of dress! There isn't a woman in the swim of society at the present time, wouldn't sell herself, body and soul, who wouldn't lick the boots of a Jew or marry a n.i.g.g.e.r, rather than live decently on a hundred a year! On what would be wealth for you and me! They know it.

They know we know it.... No one believes in them. No one believes in n.o.bility any more. n.o.body believes in kingship any more. n.o.body believes there is justice in the law.... But people have habits, people go on in the old grooves, as long as there's work, as long as there's weekly money.... It won't last, Kipps."

He coughed and paused. "Wait for the lean years," he cried. "Wait for the lean years." And suddenly he fell into a struggle with his cough and spat a gout of blood. "It's nothing," he said to Kipps' note of startled horror.

He went on talking, and the protests of his cough interlaced with his words, and Sid beamed in an ecstasy of painful admiration.

"Look at the fraud they have let life become, the miserable mockery of the hope of one's youth. What have _I_ had? I found myself at thirteen being forced into a factory like a rabbit into a chloroformed box.

Thirteen!--when _their_ children are babies. But even a child of that age could see what it meant, that h.e.l.l of a factory! Monotony and toil and contempt and dishonour! And then death. So I fought--at thirteen!"

Minton's "crawling up a drain pipe until you die" echoed in Kipps'

mind, but Masterman, instead of Minton's growl, spoke in a high, indignant tenor.

"I got out at last--somehow," he said, quietly, suddenly plumping back in his chair. He went on after a pause. "For a bit. Some of us get out by luck, some by cunning, and crawl on to the gra.s.s, exhausted and crippled to die. That's a poor man's success, Kipps. Most of us don't get out at all. I worked all day and studied half the night, and here I am with the common consequences. Beaten! And never once have I had a fair chance, never once!" His lean, clenched fist flew out in a gust of tremulous anger. "These Skunks shut up all the university scholarships at nineteen for fear of men like me. And then--do _nothin'_.... We're wasted for nothing. By the time I'd learnt something the doors were locked. I thought knowledge would do it--I did think that! I've fought for knowledge as other men fight for bread. I've starved for knowledge.

I've turned my back on women; I've done even that. I've burst my accursed lung...." His voice rose with impotent anger. "I'm a better man than any ten princes alive! And I'm beaten and wasted. I've been crushed, trampled and defiled by a drove of hogs. I'm no use to myself or the world. I've thrown my life away to make myself too good for use in this huckster's scramble. If I had gone in for business, if I had gone in for plotting to cheat my fellow men--ah, well! It's too late.

It's too late for that, anyhow. It's too late for anything now! And I couldn't have done it.... And over in New York now there's a pet of society making a corner in wheat!

"By G.o.d!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely, with a clutch of the lean hand. "By G.o.d! If I had his throat! Even now I might do something for the world."

He glared at Kipps, his face flushed deep, his sunken eyes glowing with pa.s.sion, and then suddenly he changed altogether.

There was a sound of tea things rattling upon a tray outside the door, and Sid rose to open it.

"All of which amounts to this," said Masterman, suddenly quiet and again talking against time. "The world is out of joint, and there isn't a soul alive who isn't half waste or more. You'll find it the same with you in the end, wherever your luck may take you.... I suppose you won't mind my having another cigarette?"

He took Kipps' cigarette with a hand that trembled so violently it almost missed its object, and stood up, with something of guilt in his manner as Mrs. Sid came into the room.

Her eye met his and marked the flush upon his face.

"Been talking Socialism?" said Mrs. Sid, a little severely.

--5

Six o'clock that day found Kipps drifting eastward along the southward margin of Rotten Row. You figure him a small, respectably attired figure going slowly through a sometimes immensely difficult and always immense world. At times he becomes pensive and whistles softly. At times he looks about him. There are a few riders in the Row, a carriage flashes by every now and then along the roadway, and among the great rhododendrons and laurels and upon the greensward there are a few groups and isolated people dressed in the style Kipps adopted to call upon the Walshinghams when first he was engaged. Amid the complicated confusion of Kipps' mind was a regret that he had not worn his other things....

Presently he perceived that he would like to sit down; a green chair tempted him. He hesitated at it, took possession of it, and leant back and crossed one leg over the other.

He rubbed his under lip with his umbrella handle and reflected upon Masterman and his denunciation of the world.

"Bit orf 'is 'ead, poor chap," said Kipps, and added: "I wonder."

He thought intently for a s.p.a.ce.

"I wonder what he meant by the lean years?"

The world seemed a very solid and prosperous concern just here, and well out of reach of Masterman's dying clutch. And yet----

It was curious he should have been reminded of Minton.

His mind turned to a far more important matter. Just at the end Sid had said to him, "Seen Ann?" and as he was about to answer, "You'll see a bit more of her now. She's got a place in Folkestone."

It had brought him back from any concern about the world being out of joint or anything of that sort.

Ann!

One might run against her any day.

He tugged at his little moustache.

He would like to run against Ann very much....

"And it would be juiced awkward if I did!"

In Folkestone! It was a jolly sight too close....

Then, at the thought that he might run against Ann in his beautiful evening dress on the way to the band, he fluttered into a momentary dream, that jumped abruptly into a nightmare.

Suppose he met her when he was out with Helen! "Oh, Lor'!" said Kipps.

Life had developed a new complication that would go on and go on. For some time he wished with the utmost fervour that he had not kissed Ann, that he had not gone to New Romney the second time. He marvelled at his amazing forgetfulness of Helen on that occasion. Helen took possession of his mind. He would have to write to Helen, an easy, off-hand letter, to say that he had come to London for a day or so. He tried to imagine her reading it. He would write just such another letter to the old people, and say he had had to come up on business. That might do for _them_ all right, but Helen was different. She would insist on explanations.

He wished he could never go back to Folkestone again. That would settle the whole affair.