Potterism Part 32

'What should they want with me?'

'They'll think you're going to write about them, of course. That's why the Reds kidnapped Keeling, and the Whites W.T. Goode. They were quite right, too--except that they didn't go far enough and make a job of them.

Suppose they've learnt wisdom by now, and make a job of you?'

'Well then, I shall be made a job of. Also a placard for our sensational press, which would be worse. One must take a few risks.... It will be interesting, you know, to be there. I shall visit my father's old home near Odessa. Possibly some of his people may be left round there. I shall find things out--what the conditions are, why things are happening as they are, how the people live. I think I shall be better able after that to find out what the state of things is here. One's too provincial, too much taken up with one's own corner. Political science is too universal a thing to learn in that way.'

'And when you've found out? What next?'

'There's no next. It will take me all my life even to begin to find out.

I don't know where I shall be--in London, no doubt, mostly.'

'Do you mean, Arthur, that you're going to chuck work for good? Writing, I mean, or public work?'

'I hope so. I mean to. Oh, if ever, later on, I feel I have anything I want to say, I'll say it. But that won't be for years. First I'm going to learn.... You see, Jane, we can live all right. Thank goodness, I don't depend on what I earn.... You and I together--we'll learn a lot.'

'Oh, I'm going in for confused self-expression. I'm not taking any vows of silence. I'm going to write.'

'As you like. Every one's got to decide for themselves. It amuses you, I suppose.'

'Of course, it does. Why not? I love it. Not only writing, but being in the swim, making a kind of a name, doing what other people do. I'm not mother, who does but write because she must, and pipes but as the linnets do.'

'No, thank goodness. You're as intellectually honest as any one I know, and as greedy for the wrong things.'

'I want a good time. Why not?'

'Why not? Only that, as long as we're all out for a good time, those of us who can afford to will get it, and nothing more, and those of us who can't will get nothing at all. You see, I think it's taking hold of things by the wrong end. As long as we go on not thinking, not finding out, but greedily wanting good things--well, we shall be as we are, that's all--Potterish.'

'You mean I'm Potterish,' observed Jane, without rancour.

'Oh Lord, we all are,' said Gideon in disgust. 'Every profiteer, every sentimentalist, ever muddler. Every artist directly he thinks of his art as something marketable, something to bring him fame; every scientist or scholar (if there are any) who fakes a fact in the interest of his theory; every fool who talks through his hat without knowing; every sentimentalist who plays up to the sentimentalism in himself and other people; every second-hand ignoramus who takes over a view or a prejudice wholesale, without investigating the facts it's based on for himself. You find it everywhere, the taint; you can't get away from it. Except by keeping quiet and learning, and wanting truth more than anything else.'

'It sounds a dull life, Arthur. Rather like K's, in her old laboratory.'

'Yes, rather like K's. Not dull; no. Finding things out can't be dull.'

'Well, old thing, go and find things out. But come back in time for the wedding, and then we'll see what next.'

Jane was not seriously alarmed. She believed that this of Arthur's, was a short attack; when they were married she would see that he got cured of it. She wasn't going to let him drop out of things and disappear, her brilliant Arthur, who had his world in his hand to play with. Journalism, politics, public life of some sort--it was these that he was so eminently fitted for and must go in for.

'You mustn't waste yourself, Arthur,' she said. 'It's all right to lie low for a bit, but when you come back you must do something worth while.... I'm sorry about the _Fact_; I think you might have stayed on and saved it. But it's your show. Go and explore Central Europe, then, and learn all about it. Then come back and write a book on political science which will be repulsive to all but learned minds. But remember we're getting married in June; don't be late, will you. And write to me from Russia. Letters that will do for me to send to the newspapers, telling me not to spend my money on hats and theatres but on distributing anti-Bolshevist and anti-Czarist tracts. I'll have the letters published in leaflets at threepence a hundred, and drop them about in public places.'

'I'll write to you, no fear,' said Gideon. 'And I'll be in time for the wedding.... Jane, we'll have a great time, you and I, learning things together. We'll have adventures. We'll go exploring, shall we?'

'Rather. We'll lend Charles to mother and dad often, and go off.... I'd come with you now for two pins. Only I can't.'

'No. Charles needs you at present.' 'There's my book, too. And all sorts of things.' 'Oh, your book--that's nothing. Books aren't worth losing anything for. Don't you ever get tied up with books and work, Jane. It's not worth it. One's got to sit loose. Only one can't, to kids; they're too important. We'll have our good times before we get our kids--and after they've grown old enough to be left to themselves a bit.'

Jane smiled enigmatically, only obscurely realising that she meant, 'Our ideas of a good time aren't the same, and never will be.'

Gideon too only obscurely knew it. Anyhow, for both, the contemplation of that difference could be deferred. Each could hope to break the other in when the time came. Gideon, as befitted his s.e.x, realised the eternity of the difference less sharply than Jane did. It was just, he thought, a question of showing Jane, making her understand.... Jane did not think that it was just a question of making Gideon understand. But he loved her, and she was persuaded that he would yield to her in the end, and not spoil her jolly, delightful life, which was to advance, hand in hand with his, to notoriety or glory or both.

For a moment both heard, remotely, the faint clash of swords. Then they shut a door upon the sound, and the man, shaken with sudden pa.s.sion, drew the woman into his arms.

'I've been talking, talking all the evening,' said Gideon presently. 'I can't get away from it, can I. Preaching, theorising, holding forth. It's more than time I went away somewhere where no one will listen to me.'

'There's plenty of talking in Russia. You'll come back worse than ever, my dear.... I don't care. As long as you do come back. You must come back to me, Arthur.'

She clung to him, in one of her rare moments of demonstrated pa.s.sion. She was usually cool, and left demonstration to him.

'I shall come back all right,' he told her. 'No fear. I want to get married, you see. I want it, really, much more than I want to get information or anything else. Wanting a person--that's what we all want most, when we want it at all. Queer, isn't it? And hopelessly personal and selfish. But there it is. Ideals simply don't count in comparison.

They'd go under every time, if there was a choice.'

Jane, with his arms round her and his face bent down to hers, knew it.

She was not afraid, either for his career or her own. They would have their good time all right.

CHAPTER V

A PLACARD FOR THE PRESS

1

March wore through, and April came, and warm winds healed winter's scars, and the 1920 budget shocked every one, and the industrial revolution predicted as usual didn't come off, and Mr. Wells's _History of the World_ completed its tenth part, and blossom by blossom the spring began.

It was the second Easter after the war, and people were getting more used to peace. They murdered one another rather less frequently, were rather less emotional and divorced, and understood with more precision which profiteers it was worth while to prosecute and which not, and why the second cla.s.s was so much larger than the first; and, in general, had learnt to manage rather better this unmanageable peace.

The outlook, domestic and international, was still what those who think in terms of colour call black. The Irish question, the Russian question, the Italian-Adriatic question, and all the Asiatic questions, remained what those who think in terms of angles call acute. Economic ruin, political bankruptcy, European chaos, international hostilities had become accepted as the normal state of being by the inhabitants of this restless and unfortunate planet.

2

Such was the state of things in the world at large. In literary London, publishers produced their spring lists. They contained the usual hardy annuals and bi-annuals among novelists, several new ventures, including John Potter's _Giles in Bloomsbury_ (second impression); Jane Hobart's _Children of Peace_ (A Satire by a New Writer); and Leila Yorke's _The Price of Honour_. ('In her new novel, Leila Yorke reveals to the full the Glittering psychology combined with profound depths which have made this well-known writer famous. The tale will be read, from first page to last, with breathless interest. The end is unexpected and out of the common, and leaves one wondering.' So said the publisher; the reviewers, more briefly, 'Another Leila Yorke.')

There were also many memoirs of great persons by themselves, many histories of the recent war, several thousand books of verse, a monograph by K.D. Varick on Catalysers and Catalysis and the Generation of Hydrogen, and _New Wine_ by the Reverend Laurence Juke.

The journalistic world also flourished. The _Weekly Fact_ had become, as people said, quite an interesting and readable paper, brighter than the _Nation_, more emotional than the _New Statesman_, gentler than the _New Witness_, spicier than the _Spectator_, more chatty than the _Athenaeum_, so that one bought it on bookstalls and read it in trains.

There was also the new Pinkerton fourpenny, the _Wednesday Chat_, brighter, more emotional, gentler, spicier, and chattier than them all, and vulgar as well, nearly as vulgar as _John Bull_, and quite as sentimental, but less vicious, so that it sold in its millions from the outset, and soon had a poem up on the walls of the tube stations, saying--

'No other weeklies sell Anything like so well.'

which was as near the truth as these statements usually are. Lord Pinkerton had, in fact, with his usual ac.u.men, sensed the existence of a great Fourpenny Weekly Public, and given it, as was his wont, more than it desired or deserved. The sixpenny weekly public already had its needs met; so had the penny, the twopenny, the threepenny, and the shilling public. Now the fourpenny public, a shy and modest section of the community, largely clerical (in the lay sense of the word) looked up and was fed. Those brains which could only with effort rise to the solid political and economic information and cultured literary judgments meted out by the sixpennies, but which yet shrank from the crudities of our cheapest journals, here found something they could read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.

The Potterite press (not only Lord Pinkerton's) advanced, like an army terrible with banners, on all sections of the line.