Potterism Part 18

'I wish she'd come back here and live with you,' he said.

To soothe him, I said I would ask her.

For nearly an hour longer he stayed, not talking much, but smoking hard, and from time to time jerking out a disconnected remark. I think he hardly knew what he was saying or doing that evening; he seemed dazed, and I noticed that his hands were shaking, as if he was feverish, or drunk, or something.

When at last he went, he held my hand and wrung it so that it hurt; this was unusual, too, because we never do shake hands, we meet much too often.

I thought it over and couldn't quite understand it all. It even occurred to me that it was a little Potterish of Arthur to make a conventional tragic situation out of what he couldn't really mind very much, and to make out that Jane was overwhelmed by what, I believed, didn't really overwhelm her. But that didn't do. Arthur was never Potterish. There must, therefore, be more to this than I understood.

Unless, of course, it was merely that Arthur was afraid of the effects of the shock and so on, on Jane's health, because she had a baby coming. But somehow that didn't really meet the situation. I remembered Arthur's voice when he said, 'There's more to it than you know.... It _is_ a mess.

A ghastly mess.'

And another rather queer thing I remembered was that, all through the evening, he hadn't once met my eyes. An odd thing in Arthur, for he has a habit of looking at the people he is talking to very straight and hard, as if to hold their minds to his by his eyes.

Well, I supposed that in about a year those two would marry, anyhow. And then they would talk, and talk, and talk.... And Arthur would look at Jane not only because he was talking to her, but because he liked to look at her.... They would be all right then, so why should I bother?

3

I went to see Jane, but found Lady Pinkerton in possession. I saw Jane for five minutes alone. She was much as I had expected, calm and rather silent. I asked her to come round to the flat any evening she could. She came next week, and after that got into the way of dropping in pretty often, both in the evenings, when I was at home, and during the day, when I was at the laboratory. She said, 'You see, old thing, mother has got it into her head that I need company. The only way I can get out of it is to say I shall be here.... Mother's rather much just now. She's got the Other Side on the brain, and is trying to put me in touch with it. She reads me books called _Letters from the Other Side_, and _Hands Across the Grave_, and so on. And she talks ...'

Jane pushed back her hair from her forehead and leant her head on her hand.

'In what mother calls "my condition,"' she went on, 'I don't think I ought to be worried, do you? I wish baby would come at once, so that I shouldn't be in a condition any more.... I'm really awfully fond of baby, but I shall get to hate it if I'm reminded of it much more.... What a rotten system it is, K. Why haven't we evolved a better one, all these centuries?'

I couldn't imagine why, except for the general principle that as the mental equipment of the human race improves, its physical qualities apparently deteriorate.

'And where will that land us in the end?' Jane speculated. 'Shall we be a race of clever crocks, or shall we give up civilisation and education and be robust imbeciles?'

'Either,' I said, 'will be an improvement on the present regime, of crocky imbeciles.'

We would talk like that, of things in general, in the old way. Jane, indeed, would have moods in which she would talk continuously, and I would suddenly think, watching her, 'You're trying to hide from something--to talk it down.'

4

And then one evening Arthur and she met at my flat. Jane had been having supper with me, and Arthur dropped in.

Jane said, 'Hallo, Arthur,' and Arthur said, 'Oh, hallo,' and I saw plainly that the last person either had wanted to meet was the other.

Arthur didn't stay at all. He said he had come to speak to me about a review he wanted me to do. It wasn't necessary that he should speak to me about it at all; he had already sent me the book, and I hadn't yet read it, and it was on a subject he knew nothing at all about, and there was nothing whatever to say. However, he succeeded in saying something, then went away.

Jane had hardly spoken to him or looked at him. She was reading an evening paper.

She put it down when he had gone.

'Does Arthur come in often?' she asked me casually, lighting another cigarette.

'No. Sometimes.'

After a minute or two, Jane said, 'Look here, K, I'll tell you something.

I'm not particularly keen on meeting Arthur for the present. Nor he me.'

'That's not exactly news, my dear.'

'No; it fairly stuck out just now, didn't it? Well, the fact is, we both want a little time to collect ourselves, to settle how we stand....

Sudden deaths are a bad jar, K. They break things up.... Arthur and I were more friends than Oliver liked, you know. He didn't like Arthur, and didn't like my going about with him.... Oh, well, you know all that as well as I do, of course.... And now he's dead.... It seems to spoil things a bit.... I hate meeting Arthur now.'

And then an extraordinary thing happened. Jane, whom I had never seen cry, broke down quite suddenly and cried. Of course it would have seemed quite natural in most people, but tears are as surprising in Jane as they would be in me. They aren't part of her equipment. However, she was out of health just now, of course, and had had a bad shock, and was emotionally overwrought; and, anyhow, she cried.

I mixed her some sal volatile, which, I understand, is done in these crises. She drank it, and stopped crying soon.

'Sorry to be such an a.s.s,' she said, more in her normal tone. 'It's this beastly baby, I suppose.... Well, look here, K, you see what I mean.

Arthur and I don't want to meet just now. If he's likely to come in much, I must give up coming, that's all.'

'I'll tell him,' I said, 'that you're often here. If he doesn't want to meet you either, that ought to settle it.'

'Thanks, old thing, will you?'

Jane was the perfect egotist. If it ever occurred to her that possibly Arthur would like to see me sometimes, and I him, she would not think it mattered. She wanted to come to my flat, and she didn't want to meet Arthur; therefore Arthur mustn't come. Life's little difficulties are very simply arranged by the Potter twins.

5

Then, for nine days, we none of us thought or talked much about anything but the railway strike. The strike was rather like the war. The same old cries began again--carrying on, doing one's bit, seeing it through, fighting to a finish, enemy atrocities (only now they were called sabotage), starving them out, gallant volunteers, the indomitable Britisher, cheeriest always in disaster (what a hideous slander!), innocent women and children. I never understood about these, at least about the women. Why is it worse that women should suffer than men? As to innocence, they have no more of that than men. I'm not innocent, particularly, nor are the other women I know. But they are always cla.s.sed with children, as sort of helpless imbeciles who must be kept from danger and discomfort. I got sick of it during the war. The people who didn't like the blockade talked about starving women and children, as if it was somehow worse that women should starve than men. Other people (quite other) talked of our brave soldiers who were fighting to defend the women and children of their country, or the dastardly air raids that killed women and children. Why not have said 'non-combatants,' which makes sense? There were plenty of male non-combatants, unfit or over age or indispensable, and it was quite as bad that they should be killed--worse, I suppose, when they were indispensable. Very few women or children are that.

So now the appeal to strikers which was published in the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of the papers at the expense of 'a few patriotic citizens'

said, 'Don't bring further hardship and suffering upon the innocent women and children.... Save the women and children from the terror of the strike.' Fools.

In another column was the N.U.R. advertis.e.m.e.nt, and that was worse. There was a picture of a railwayman looking like a consumptive in the last stages, and embracing one of his horrible children while his more horrible wife and mother supported the feeble heads of others, and under it was written, 'Is this man an anarchist? He wants a wage to keep his family,' and it was awful to think that he and his family would perhaps get the wage and be kept after all. The question about whether he was an anarchist was obviously unanswerable without further data, as there was nothing in the picture to show his political convictions; they might, from anything that appeared, have been liberal, tory, labour, socialist, anarchist, or coalition-unionist. And anyhow, supposing that he had been an anarchist, he would still, presumably, have wanted a wage to keep his family. Anarchists are people who disapprove of authority, not of wages.

The member of the N.U.R. who composed that picture must have had a muddled mind. But so many people have, and so many people use words in an odd sense, that you can't find in the dictionary. Bolshevist, for instance. Lloyd George called the strikers Bolshevists, so did plenty of other people. None of them seem to have any very clear conception of the political convictions of the supporters of the Soviet government in Russia. To have that you would need to think and read a little, whereas to use the word as a vague term of abuse, you need only to feel, which many people find much easier. Some people use the word capitalist in the same way, as a term of abuse, meaning really only 'rich person.' If they stopped to think of the meaning of the word, they would remember that it means merely a person who uses what money he has productively, instead of h.o.a.rding it in a stocking.

But 'capitalist' and 'Bolshevist' were both flung about freely during the strike, by the different sides. Emotional unrest, I suppose. People get excited, and directly they get excited they get sentimental and confused.

The daily press did, on both sides. I don't know which was worse. The Pinkerton press blossomed into silly chit-chat about n.o.blemen working on under ground trains. As a matter of fact, most of the volunteer workers were clerks and tradesmen and working men, but these weren't so interesting to talk about, I suppose.

The _Fact_ became more than ever precise and pedantic and clear-headed, and what people call dull. It didn't take sides: it simply gave, in more detail than any other paper, the issues, and the account of the negotiations, and had expert articles on the different currents of influence on both sides. It didn't distort or conceal the truth in either direction.

I met Lady Pinkerton one evening at Jane's. She would, of course, come up to town, though the amateur trains were too full without her. She said, 'Of course They hate us. They want a Cla.s.s War.'

Jane said, 'Who are They, and who are Us?' and she said 'The working cla.s.ses, of course. They've always hated us. They're Bolshevists at heart. They won't be satisfied till they've robbed us of all we have.

They hate us. That is why they are striking. We must crush them this time, or it will be the beginning of the end.'

I said, 'Oh. I thought they were striking because they wanted the principle of standardisation of rates of wages for men in the same grade to be applied to other grades than drivers and firemen.'

Lady Pinkerton was bored. I imagine she understands about hate and love and envy and greed and determination, and other emotions, but not much about rates of wages. So she likes to talk about one but not about the other. All, for instance, that she knows about Bolshevism is its sentimental side--how it is against the rich, and wants to nationalise women and murder the upper cla.s.ses. She doesn't know about any of the aspects of the Bolshevist const.i.tution beyond those which she can take in through her emotions. She would find the others dull, as she finds technical wage questions. That's partly why she hates the _Fact_. If she happened to be on the other side, she would talk the same tosh, only use 'capitalist' for 'Bolshevist.'

She said, 'Anyhow, whatever the issue, the blood of the country is up. We must fight the thing through. It is splendid the way the upper cla.s.ses are stepping into the breach on the railways. I honour them. I only hope they won't all be murdered by these despicable brutes.'

That was the way she talked. Plenty of people did, on both sides.