Potterism Part 4

Jane was inclined, in her present phase, to think the Russians and the French the only novelists. They had manner and method. But they were both too limited in their field, too much concerned with s.e.xual relations, that most tedious of topics (in literature, not life), the very thought of which made one yawn. Queer thing, how novelists couldn't leave it alone. It was, surely, like eating and drinking, a natural element in life, which few avoid; but the most exciting, jolly, interesting, entertaining things were apart from it. Not that Jane was not quite willing to accept with approval, as part of the game of living, such episodes in this field as came her way; but she could not regard them as important. As to marriage, it was merely dowdy. Domesticity; babies; servants; the companionship of one man. The sort of thing Clare would go in for, no doubt. Not for Jane, before whom the world lay, an oyster asking to be opened.

She saw herself a journalist; a reporter, perhaps: (only the stories women were sent out on were usually dull), a special correspondent, a free-lance contributor, a leader writer, eventually an editor.... Then she could initiate a policy, say what she thought, stand up against the Potter press.

Or one might be a public speaker, and get into Parliament later on, when women were admitted. One despised Parliament, but it might be fun.

Not a permanent Civil Servant; one could not work for this ludicrous government more than temporarily, to tide over the Great Interruption.

7

So Jane looked with calm, weighing, critical eyes at life and its chances, and saw that they were not bad, for such as her. Unless, of course, the Allies were beaten.... This contingency seemed often possible, even probable. Jane's faith in the ultimate winning power of numbers and wealth was at times shaken, not by the blunders of governments or the defection of valuable allies, but by the unwavering optimism of her parent's press.

'But,' said Katherine Varick, 'it's usually right, your papa's press.

That's the queer thing about it. It sounds always wildly wrong, like an absurd fairy story, and all the sane, intelligent people laugh at it, and then it turns out to have been right. Look at the way it used to say that Germany was planning war; it was mostly the stupid people who believed it, and the intelligent people who didn't; but all the time Germany was.'

'Partly because people like daddy kept saying so, and planning to get in first.'

'Not much. Germany was really planning: we were only talking.... I believe in the Pinkerton press, and the other absurd presses. They have the unthinking rightness of the fool. Of course they have. Because the happenings of the world are caused by people--the ma.s.s of people--and the Pinkerton press knows them and represents them. Intellectual people are always thinking above the heads of the people who make movements, so they're nearly always out. The Pinkerton press _is_ the people, so it gets there every time. Potterism will outlive all the reformers and idealists. If Potterism says we're going to have a war, we have it; if it says we're going to win a war, we shall win it. "If you see it in _John Bull_, it _is_ so."'

It was not often that Katherine spoke of Potterism, but when she did it was with conviction.

8

Gideon was home, wounded. He had nearly died, but not quite. He had lost his right foot, and would have another when the time was ripe. He was discharged, and became, later on, a.s.sistant editor of a new weekly paper that was started.

He dined with Jane and Katherine at their flat, soon after he could get about. He was leaner than ever, white and gaunt, and often ill-tempered from pain. Johnny was there too, a major on leave, stuck over with coloured ribbons. Jane called him a pot-hunter.

They laughed and talked and joked and dined. When Gideon and Johnny had gone, and Katherine and Jane were left smoking last cigarettes and finishing the chocolates, Jane said, lazily, and without chagrin, 'How Arthur does hate us all, in these days.'

Katherine said, 'True. He finds us profiteers.'

'So we are,' said Jane. 'Not you, but most of us. I am.... You're one of the few people he respects. Some day, perhaps, you'll have to marry him, and cure him of biting his nails when he's cross.... He thinks Johnny's a profiteer, too, because of the ribbons and things. Johnny is. It's in the blood. We're grabbers. Can't be helped.... Do you want the last walnut chocolate, old thing? If so, you're too late.'

CHAPTER IV

JANE AND CLARE

1

In the autumn of 1918, Jane, when she went home for week-ends, frequently found one Oliver Hobart there. Oliver Hobart was the new editor of Lord Pinkerton's chief daily paper, and had been exempted from military service as newspaper staff. He was a Canadian; he had been educated at McGill University, admired Lord Pinkerton, his press, and the British Empire, and despised (in this order) the Quebec French, the Roman Catholic Church, newspapers which did not succeed, Little Englanders, and Lord Lansdowne.

'A really beautiful face,' said Lady Pinkerton, and so he had. Jane had seen it, from time to time during the last year, when she had called to see her father in the office of the _Daily Haste_.

One hot Sat.u.r.day afternoon in August, 1918, she found him having tea with her family, in the shadow of the biggest elm. Jane looked at them in her detached way; Lord Pinkerton, neat and little, his white-spatted feet crossed, his head c.o.c.ked to one side, like an intelligent sparrow's; Lady Pinkerton, tall and fair and powdered, in a lilac silk dress, her large white hands all over rings, amethysts swinging from her ears; Clare (who had given up nursing owing to the strain, and was having a rest), slim and rather graceful, a little flushed from the heat, lying in a deck chair and swinging a buckled shoe, saying something ordinary and Clare-ish; Hobart sitting by her, a pale, Gibson young man, with his smooth fair hair brushed back, and lavender socks with purple clocks, and a clear, firm jaw. He was listening to Clare with a smile. You could not help liking him; his was the sort of beauty which, when found in either man or woman, makes so strong an appeal to the senses of the s.e.x other than that of the possessor that reason is all but swamped. Besides, as Lord Pinkerton said, Hobart was a dear, nice fellow.

He was at Sherards for that week-end because Lord Pinkerton was just making him editor of the _Daily Haste_. Before that, he had been on the staff, a departmental editor, and a leader-writer. ('Mr. Hobart will go far,' said Lady Pinkerton sometimes, when she read the leaders. 'I hope, on the contrary,' said Lord Pinkerton, 'that he will stay where he is. It is precisely the right spot. That was the trouble with Carruthers; he went too far. So he had to go altogether.' He gave his thin little sn.i.g.g.e.r).

Anyhow, here was Hobart, this Sat.u.r.day afternoon, having tea in the garden. Jane saw him through the mellow golden sweetness of shadow and light.

'Here is Jane,' said Lady Pinkerton.

Jane's dark hair fell in damp waves over her hot, square, white forehead; her blue cotton dress was crumpled and limp. How neat, how cool, was this Hobart! Could a man have a Gibson face like that, like a young man on the cover of an ill.u.s.trated magazine, and not be a ninny? Did he take the Pinkerton press seriously, or did he laugh? Both, probably, like most journalists. He wouldn't laugh to Lord Pinkerton, or to Lady Pinkerton, or to Clare. But he might laugh to Jane, when she showed him he might.

Jane, eating jam sandwiches, looking like a chubby school child, with her round face and wide eyes and bobbed hair and cotton frock, watched the beautiful young man with her solemn unwinking stare that disconcerted self-conscious people, while Lady Pinkerton talked to him about some recent fiction.

On Sunday, people came over to lunch, and they played tennis. Clare and Hobart played together. 'Oh, well up, partner,' Jane could hear him say, all the time. Or else it was 'Well tried. Too bad.' Clare's happy eyes shone, brown and clear in her flushed face, like agates. Rather a pretty thing, Clare, if dull.

The Franks were there, too.

'Old Clare having a good time,' said Mrs. Frank to Jane, during a set they weren't playing in. Her merry dark eyes snapped. Instinctively, she usually said something to disparage the good time of other girls. This time it was, 'That Hobart thinks he's doing himself a good turn with pater, making up to Clare like that. Oh, he's a cunning fellow. Isn't he handsome, Jane? I hate these handsome fellows, they always know it so well. Nothing in his face really, if you come to look, is there? I'd rather have old Frank's, even if he does look like a half-starved bird.'

2

Jane was calmly rude to Hobart, showing him she despised his paper, and him for editing it. She let him see it all, and he was imperturbably, courteously amused, and, in turn, showed that he despised her for belonging to the 1917 Club.

'_You_ don't,' he said, turning to Clare.

'Gracious, no. I don't belong to a club at all. I go with mother to the Writers' sometimes, though; that's not bad fun. Mother often speaks there, you know, and I go and hear. Jolly good she is, too. She read a ripping paper last week on the "Modern Heroine."'

Jane's considering eyes weighed Hobart, whose courtesy was still impregnable. How far was he the complete Potterite, identified with his absurd press? Did he even appreciate Leila Yorke? She would have liked to know. But, it seemed, she was not to know from him.

3

The Armistice came.

Then the thing was to get to Paris somehow. Jane had, unusually, not played her cards well. She had neglected the prospect of peace, which, after all, must come. When she had, in May, at last taken thought for the morrow, and applied at the Foreign Office for one of those secret jobs which could not be mentioned because they prepared the doers to play their parts after the great unmentionable event, she was too late. The Foreign Office said they could not take over people from other government departments.

So, when the unmentionable took place, Jane was badly left. The Foreign Office Library Department people, many of them Jane's contemporaries at Oxford and Cambridge, were hurried across the Channel into Life, for which they had been prepared by a course of lectures on the Dangers of Paris. There also went the confidential secretaries, the clerks and shorthand typists, in their hundreds; degreeless, brainless beings, but wise in their generation.

'I wish I was a shorthand typist,' Jane grumbled, brooding with Katherine over their fire.

'Paris,' Katherine turned over the delightful word consideringly, finding it wanting. 'The last place in the world I should choose to be in just now. Fuss and foolishness. Greed and grabbing. The centre of the lunacies and crimes of the next six months. Politicians a.s.sembled together....

It's infinitely common to go there. All the vulgarest people.... You'd be more select at Southend or Blackpool.'

'History is being made there,' said Jane, quoting from her father's press.

'Thank you; I'd rather go to Birmingham and make something clean and useful, like gla.s.s.'

But Jane wanted to make history in Paris. She felt out of it, left, as she had felt when other people went to the war and she stayed at home.

On a yellow, foggy day just before Christmas, Lord Pinkerton, with whom Jane was lunching at his club (Lord Pinkerton was quite good to lunch with; you got a splendid feed for nothing), said, 'I shall be going over to Paris next month, Babs.' (That was what he called her). 'D'you want to come?'