What Not Part 10

"One can, you know," said Kitty. "I've been in and out before--more than once. Not so badly, perhaps, but quite badly enough. You too, probably?"

"Yes. Oh, yes," he admitted gloomily. "But it wasn't like this. Neither the circ.u.mstances, nor the--the emotion."

Kitty said, "Probably not. Why should it be? Nothing ever is exactly like anything else, luckily.... By the way, when did you begin to take notice of me? Don't worry, if you can't remember."

He thought for a minute, then shook his head.

"I'm bad at these things. Didn't we meet at Prideaux's one night in the spring? I observed you then; I remember you amused me. But I don't think the impression went deep.... Then--oh, we met about a good deal one way and another--and I suppose it grew without my noticing it. And then came that week-end, and that did the trick as far as I was concerned. I knew what I was doing after that, and I tried to stop it, but, as you see, I have failed. This evening I told you, I suppose, under the influence of shock.... I am not sorry. It is worth it, whatever comes of it."

"Nothing can come of it," said Kitty. "Not the least thing at all.

Except being friends. And you probably won't want that. Men don't."

"No," he said. "I don't want it at all. But I suppose I must put up with it." He began to laugh, with his suppressed, sardonic laughter, and Kitty laughed too.

"We're fairly hoist with our own petard, aren't we?" he said. "Think of the scandal we might make, if we did what we chose now.... I believe it would be the _coup de grace_ for the Brains Ministry." He stated a simple fact, without conceit.

"It's a rotten position," he continued moodily. "But there it is.... And you're A, aren't you? You'll have to marry someone, eventually. If only you were B2 or 3--only then you wouldn't be yourself. As it is, it would be criminally immoral of me to stand in your way. The right thing, I suppose, would be for us to clear out of each other's way and give each other a chance to forget. _The right thing...._ Oh d.a.m.n it all, I'm as bad as the most muddle-headed fool in the country, who doesn't care _that_ for the right thing if it fights against his individual impulses and desires.... I suppose moralists would say here's my chance to bear my witness, to stand by my own principles and show the world they're real.... They _are_ real, too; that's the mischief of it. I still am sure they matter more than anything else; but just now they bore me. I suppose this is what a moral and law-abiding citizen feels when he falls in love with someone else's wife.... What are you laughing at now?"

"You," said Kitty. "This is the funniest conversation.... Of course it's a funny position--it's straight out of a comic opera. What a pity Gilbert and Sullivan didn't think of it; they'd have done it beautifully.... By the way, I don't think I shall be marrying anyone anyhow, so you needn't worry about that. I've broken off my last engagement--at least I've done my best to; it became a bore. I don't really like the idea of matrimony, you know; it would be too much of a tie and a settling down. Yes, all right, I know my duty to my country, but my duty to myself comes first.... So there's no harm, from my point of view, in our going on seeing each other and taking each other out and having as good a time as we can in the circ.u.mstances. Shall we try that way, and see if it works?"

"Oh, we'll try," he said, and took her again in his arms. "It's all we can get, so we'll take it ... my dear."

"I think it's a good deal," said Kitty. "It will be fun.... You know, I'm frightfully conceited at your liking me--I can't get used to it yet; you're so important and superior. It isn't every day that a Minister of a Department falls in love with one of his clerks. It isn't really done, you know, not by the best Ministers."

"Nor by the best clerks," he returned. "We must face the fact that we are not the best people."

"And here's my flat. Will you come in and have something? There's only my cousin here, and she's never surprised; her own life is too odd."

"I think it would be inadvisable," said the Minister discreetly. "'We don't want to coddle our reputations, but we may as well keep an eye on them.'"

On that note of compromise they parted.

CHAPTER VII

THE BREAKING POINT

1

It was six months later: in fact, April. It was a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and many people were going home from work, including Kitty Grammont and Ivy Delmer, who were again in the Bakerloo tube, on their way to Marylebone for Little Chantreys.

The same types of people were in the train who had been in it on the Monday morning in May which is described in the opening chapter of this work. The same types of people always are in tube trains (except on the air-raid nights of the Great War, when a new and less self-contained type was introduced). But they were the same with a difference: it was as if some tiny wind had stirred and ruffled the face of sleeping waters. In some cases the only difference was a puzzled, half-awakened, rather fretful look, where had been peace. This was to be observed in the faces of the impa.s.sive shopping women. Still they sat and gazed, but with a difference. Now and then a little shiver of something almost like a thought would flicker over the calm, observing, roving eyes, which would distend a little, and darken with a faint annoyance and fear. Then it would pa.s.s, and leave the waters as still as death again; but it had been there. And it was quite certain there were fewer of these ruminating ladies. Some had perhaps died of the Mind Training Course, of trying to use their brains. (They say that some poor unfortunates who have never known the touch of soap and water on their bodies die of their first bath on being brought into hospital: so these.) Some who had been in the ruminating category six months ago were now reading papers.

Some others, who still gazed at their fellows, gazed in a different manner; they would look intently at someone for half a minute, then look away, and their lips would move, and it was apparent that they were, not saying their prayers, but trying to repeat to themselves every detail of what they had seen. For this was part of the Government Mind Training Course (observation and accuracy). And one large and cow-like lady with a shopping-bag containing circulating library books and other commodities said to her companion, in Kitty Grammont's hearing, two things that accorded strangely with her aspect.

"I couldn't get anything worth reading out of the library to-day--they hadn't got any of the ones I'd ordered. These look quite silly, I'm sure. There aren't many good books written, do you think?"

Doubtful she was, and questioning: but still, she had used the word "good" and applied it to a book, as she might have to b.u.t.ter, or a housemaid, or a hat, implying a possible, though still dimly discerned, difference between one book and another. And presently she said a stranger thing.

"What," she enquired, "do you think about the state of things between Bavaria and Prussia? Relations to-day seemed more strained than ever, I thought."

Her companion could not be said to rise to this; she replied merely (possibly having a little missed the drift of the unusual question) that in her view relations were very often a nuisance, and exhausting. So the subject was a little diverted; it went off, in fact, on to sisters-in-law; but still it had been raised.

Beyond these ladies sat another who looked as if she had obtained exemption from the Mind Training Course on the ground that her mind (if any) was not susceptible of training; and beyond her sat a little typist eating chocolates and reading the _Daily Mirror_. Last May she had been reading "The love he could not buy"; this April she was reading "How to make pastry out of nuts." Possibly by Christmas she might be reading "Which way shall I Vote and Why?"

Ivy Delmer, next her, was reading the notices along the walls. Between "Ask Mr. Punch into your home" and "Flee from the wrath to come" there was a gap, where a Safety if Possible notice had formerly offered the counsel "Do not sit down in the street in the middle of the traffic or you may get killed." A month ago this had been removed. It had, apparently, been decided by the Safety if Possible Council that the public had at last outgrown their cruder admonitions. The number of street accidents was, in fact, noticeably on the decline. It seemed as if people were learning, slowly and doubtfully, to connect cause and effect. A was learning why he would be killed, B why he would not. Ivy Delmer noticed the gap on the wall, and wondered what would take its place. Perhaps it would be another text; but texts were diminishing in frequency; one seldom saw one now. More likely it would be an exhortation to Take a Holiday in the Clouds, or Get to Watford in five minutes by Air (and d.a.m.n the risk).

Ivy, as she had a year ago, looked round at the faces of her fellow-travellers--mostly men and girls going home from business. Quite a lot of young men there were in these days; enough, you'd almost think, for there to be one over for Ivy to marry some day.... Ivy sighed a little. She hoped rather that this would indeed prove to be so, but hoped without conviction. After all, few girls could expect to get married in these days. She supposed that if she married at all, she ought to take a cripple, or a blind one, and keep him. She knew that would be the patriotic course; but how much nicer it would be to be taken by a whole one and get kept! She looked at the pale, maimed young men round her, and decided that they didn't, mostly, look like keeping anyone at all, let alone her; they were too tired. The older men looked more robust; but older men are married. Some of them looked quite capable and pleased with themselves, as if they were saying, "What have I got out of it, sir? Why, 100 more per annum, more self-confidence, and a clearer head."

There was also a brilliant-looking clergyman, engaged probably in reforming the Church; but clergymen are different, one doesn't marry them. Altogether, not a hopeful collection.

The train got to Marylebone pretty quickly, because it had almost abandoned its old habit of stopping half-way between every two stations.

No one had ever quite known why it had done this in the past, but, with the improvement in the brains of the employees of the electric railways, the custom had certainly gradually decreased.

Marylebone too had undergone a change: there was rather less running hither and thither, rather less noise, rather less smoke, and the clock was more nearly right. Nothing that would strike the eye of anyone who was not looking for signs, but little manifestations which made the heart, for instance, of Nicholas Chester stir within him with satisfaction when he came that way, or the way of any other station (excepting only the stations of the South Eastern line, the directors and employees of which had been exempted in large numbers from the Mind Training Act by the Railway Executive Committee, as not being likely to profit by the course).

Certainly the train to Little Chantreys ran better than of old, and with hardly any smoke. Someone had hit on a way of reducing the smoke nuisance; probably of, eventually, ending it altogether. Kitty Grammont and Ivy Delmer found themselves in the same compartment, and talked at intervals on the journey. Ivy thought, as she had thought several times during the last few months, that Kitty looked prettier than of old, and somehow more radiant, more lit up. They talked of whether you ought to wear breeches as near to town as West Ealing, and left it unsettled.

They talked of where you could get the best chocolates for the least money, and of what was the best play on just now. They talked of the excess of work in the office at the present moment, caused by the new Instruction dealing with the exemption of journalists whose mental category was above B2. (This was part of the price which had to be paid by the Brains Ministry for the support of the press, which is so important.) They began to talk, at least Ivy did, of whether you can suitably go to church with a dog in your m.u.f.f; and then they got to Little Chantreys.

2

Ivy found her parents in the garden, weeding the paths. Jane and John were playing football, and Jelly was trotting a lonely trail round the domains in a character apparently satisfactory to himself but which would have been uncertain to an audience.

"Well, dear," said the vicar, looking up at Ivy from his knees. The vicarage had not yet adopted the new plan of destroying weeds by electricity; they had tried it once, but the electricity had somehow gone astray and electrified Jelly instead of the weeds, so they had given it up. The one-armed soldier whom they employed as gardener occasionally pulled up a weed, but not often, and he was off this afternoon anyhow, somewhat to the Delmers' relief. Of course one must employ disabled soldiers, but the work gets on quicker without them.

"Have you had a hard day, darling?" enquired Mrs. Delmer, busy scrabbling with a fork between paving-stones.

"Rather," said Ivy, and sat down on the wheel-barrow. "The Department's frightfully rushed just now.... Mr. Prideaux says the public is in a state of unrest. It certainly seems to be, from the number of grumbling letters it writes us.... You're looking tired, Daddy."

"A little, dear." The vicar got up to carry away his basket of weeds to the bonfire. Mrs. Delmer said, "Daddy's had a worrying time in the parish. Two more poor little abandoned babies."

"Where were they left this time?" Ivy asked with interest.

"One at the Police Station, with a note to say the government had driven the parents to this; the other just outside our garden door, with no note at all, but I suppose it's the same old story. We've no clue to either yet; they're not from Little Chantreys, of course, but I suppose we shall trace them in time. Daddy's been making enquiries among the village people; none of them will say, if they know, but Daddy says they're all in a sad state of anger and discontent about the Baby Laws; he thinks they're working up worse every day. There's so much talk of different laws for rich and poor. Of course when people say that, what they always mean is that it's the same law for both, and ought to be different. Even that isn't true, of course, in this case, as the taxes are in proportion to the income; but it certainly does come very hard on the poor. Daddy thinks it his duty to preach about it again to-morrow, and that worries him, because he may get arrested and fined. But he feels it's right. He thinks the country is in real danger of risings and revolts if this goes on. He says the Stop It League is doing its best to stir up rebellion, and that would be _such_ a calamity. And all these poor little babies abandoned or disowned all over the country; it goes to one's heart.... Don't talk about it, darling, it worries Daddy so....

And poor Brown is _so_ little use with the vegetable garden. His Mind Training Course seems really to have quite upset him; he talks and looks so strangely now. And Daddy's worried about Mr. Hawtrey" (the curate), "who's joined the Church Improvement Society and has become dreadfully restless, and keeps saying Daddy ought to join it too."

Mrs. Delmer sighed, and changed the subject, as the vicar came back, to the amount of blossom there was on the white-heart cherry.

Ivy went indoors. She went up to the room she shared with Betty. Betty was there, staining a straw hat with Jackson's nut-brown hat-polish.

Ivy said, "A nice mess you're making. I should think you might remember it's my room as well as yours," and Betty said, "Socks." From which it may be inferred that these sisters, good-humoured in the main to others, were frequently short-tempered to one another.

Ivy said next, opening a drawer, "I won't stand it. You've been pinching my handkerchiefs."

Betty replied absently, and as if from habit rather than from reflection, "Haven't been near your old drawer."