What Not Part 13

But there were hours of the night when it seemed to Kitty that she could not go and be a Young Accomplished War Widow, that she could not be companion, however capable, to any travelling lady of taste, culture and means, or clerk, however confidential, to any peer, M.P., or even gentleman; that none of these careers (were they careers? She still sought to define that word) would pa.s.s the time at all; that nothing, in fact, would pa.s.s it except working for Nicholas Chester, seeing him sometimes, hearing his voice.... Always addicted to metaphysical speculation in the night, even in nights of anguish, she would speculate on this queer disease, so common to the race, which had overtaken (and not, as they had both candidly remarked, for the first time, possibly not even for the last) herself and Nicholas Chester. What was it, this extraordinary driving pressure of emotion, this quite disproportionate desire for companionship with, for contact with, one person out of all the world of people and things, which made, while it lasted, all other desires, all other emotions, pale and faint beside it? Which so perverted and wrenched from its bearings the mind of a man like Nicholas Chester that he was for throwing overboard the cherished principles which were the cargo he had for long been so desperately bent on carrying, through storm and stress, to the country of his dreams? Which made him say, "No one will find out, and if they do, let them and be d.a.m.ned to them"?... Desire for a person; it had, it had always had, an extraordinarily dynamic effect on the lives of men and women. When it came into play, principle, chivalry, common sense, intellect, humour, culture, sweetness and light, all we call civilisation, might crumple up like match-board so this one overwhelming desire, shared by all the animal creation, might be satisfied. On this rock the world, the pathetic, eager, clever, foolish, so heavily handicapped world, might be wrecked. It was, perhaps, this one thing that would always prevent humanity from being, in fact, a clever and successful race, would always keep them down somewhere near the level of the other animals.

Faces pa.s.sed before Kitty's wakeful eyes; the fatuous, contented faces of mothers bending over the rewards of love clinging to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s; slow, placid, married faces everywhere.... This thing was irresistible, and certainly inevitable; if it ceased, humanity itself would cease, since it is the one motive which impels the continued population of the already over-populated earth. There it was; one had to accept it; there was, perhaps, no one who grew to years of maturity who escaped it, no one whose life would not, at some period, be in some degree disorganised by this strange force. It was blind instinct; its indulgence did not, in the end, even make for good, so far as good meant adventure, romance, and the gay chances of life, the freedom of the cities of the world--anything beyond mere domesticity. For what, after all, was marriage? A tying down, a shutting of gates, the end of youth, the curbing of the spirit of adventure which seeks to claim all the four corners of the world for its heritage. It meant a circ.u.mscribed and sober life, in one place, in one house, with, perhaps, children to support and to mind; it meant becoming respectable, insured, mature, settled members of society, with a stake in the country. No longer may life be greeted with a jest and death with a grin; both these (of course important but not necessarily solemn) things have come to matter too much to be played with.

To this sedate end do the world's gay and careless free-lances come; they shut the door upon the challenging spirit of life, and Settle Down.

It is to this end that instinct, not to be denied, summons men and women, as the bit of cheese summons the mouse into the trap.

Musing thus, Kitty turned her pillow over and over, seeking a softer side. How she detested stupidity! How, even more, Nicholas Chester loathed stupidity! To him it was anathema, the root of all evil, the Goliath he was out to destroy, the blind beast squatting on men's bones, the idiot drivelling on the village green. And here he was, caught in the beast's destroying grip, just because he had, as they call it, fallen in love.... What a work is man!... And here was Kitty herself, all her gay love of living in danger, tottering unsteadily on its foundations, undermined by this secret gnawing thing.

At last, as a sop to the craving which would not be denied, she sat up, with aching, fevered head, and turned the light on, and wrote on a piece of paper, "Nicky, I'll marry you any time you like, if you want me to,"

and folded it up and laid it on the table at her side, and then lay quite quiet, the restless longing stilled in her, slow tears forcing themselves from under her closed lashes, because she knew she would not send it. She would not send it because Chester too, in his heart, knew that they had better part; he too was fighting for the cause he believed in; he wanted her, but wanted to succeed in doing without her. She must give him his chance to stick by his principles, not drag him down below them.

There were moments when Kitty wished that she could believe in a G.o.d, and could pray. It must, she thought, be a comfort. She even at times wished she were a Christian, to find fulfilment in loss. That was, at least, what she supposed Christians to do.

But she could not be a Christian, and she could not pray; all she could do was to nerve herself to meet life in the spirit of the gay pierrette, with cap and bells on her aching head, and a little powder to hide the tears, and to try not to snap at Elspeth or the people at the office.

This last endeavour usually failed. The little gaping messengers who answered (when they thought they would) Miss Grammont's bell, told each other Miss Grammont was cross. The typists grew tired of having letters sent back to be retyped because of some trifling misapprehension of Miss Grammont's caligraphy or some trifling misspelling on their own account.

Surely these things could be set right with a pen and a little skill.

These moods of impatience, when frustration vented itself in anger, alternated with the gaiety, the irreverent and often profane levity, which was Kitty's habitual way of braving life in its more formidable aspects. Some people have this instinct, to nail a flag of motley to the mast of the foundering ship and keep it flying to the last.

4

While Kitty was debating as to her future, toying with the relative advantages and entertainment to be derived from the careers of War Widow, Confidential Clerk, Travelling Companion, archaeological explorer in Macedonia or Crete, beginner on the music-hall stage, under Pansy's auspices, all of which seemed to have their bright sides, two suggestions were made to her. One was from a cousin of hers who was sub-editor of _Stop It_, and offered to get her a place on the staff.

"Would it bind me to a point of view?" Kitty enquired. "I can't be bound to a point of view."

"Oh dear no," her cousin a.s.sured her. "Certainly not. Rather the contrary," and Kitty said, "All right, I'll think it over." She was rather attracted by the idea.

You cannot, of course, exactly call it being bound to a point of view to be required to hint every week that certain things want stopping, in a world whose staunchest champions must admit that this is indeed so.

_Stop It_ was certainly eclectic, in its picking out, from all the recognised groups a.s.sociated for thought and action, activities whose cessation seemed good to it. The question that rather suggested itself to its readers was, if _Stop It_ had its way, what, if anything, would be left?

"Very little," the editor would have answered. "A clean sheet. Then we can begin again."

_Stop It_ had dropped some of the caution with which it had begun: it was now quite often possible to deduce from its still cryptic phraseology what were some of the things it wanted stopped. Having for some time successfully dodged Dora, it was now daring her. As in all probability it would not have a long life, and appeared to be having a merry one, Kitty thought she might as well join it while she could.

To desert abruptly from the ranks of the bureaucracy to those of the mutineers seemed natural to Kitty, who had always found herself at home in a number of widely differing situations. Really this is perhaps the only way to live, if all the various and so greatly different needs of complicated human nature are to be satisfied. It is very certain that they cannot be satisfied simultaneously; the best way seems, therefore, to alternate. It is indeed strange that this is not more done, that Radicals, Tories, and Labour members, for instance, do not more frequently interchange, play general post, to satisfy on Tuesday that side of their souls and intellects which has not been given free play on Monday; that Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and Lord Curzon do not, from time to time, deliver each other's speeches, not from any freakish desire to astonish, but from the sheer necessities of their natures; that Mr.

Ma.s.singham and Mr. Leo Maxse, or Mr. A. G. Gardiner and Mr. Gwynne, or Mr. J. C. Squire and Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey, or Mr. Garvin and Mr. J.

A. Spender, do not from time to time arrange together to change offices and run each other's papers; or that Mr. Arthur Ransome and Mr. Stephen Graham do not, during their tours of Russia, sometimes change pens with each other when they write home. There must be in many people some undemocratic instinct of centralisation, of autocratic subversion of the horde of their lesser opinions and impulses to the most dominant and commanding one, a lack of the true democrat's desire to give a chance to them all. They say with the Psalmist, "My heart is fixed," and "I have chosen the way and I will run it to the end," and this is called, by some, finding one's true self. Perhaps it may be so; it certainly entails the loss of many other selves; and possibly the dropping of these, or rather their continual denial and gradual atrophy, simplifies life.

But Kitty, whose heart was not fixed, entered upon all the changing scenes of life with a readiness to embrace any point of view, though not indeed to be bound to it, and an even greater willingness to tell anything in earth or heaven that it ought to be stopped.

She told Prideaux that she was considering this offer. Prideaux said, "That thing! Its very name condemns it. It's on the wrong tack. You shouldn't be out to stop things; they've got to go on.... If it's journalism you want, why don't you apply for a job on _Intelligence_?"

_Intelligence_, or the Weekly Bulletin of the Brains Ministry (to give it its sub-t.i.tle, humorously chosen by one who visualised either the public or the Ministry as a sick man) was a weekly journal issued by the Ministry, and its aim was, besides reporting the Ministry's work, decisions and p.r.o.nouncements for each week, to correlate all its local activities and keep them in touch with headquarters, and to collect reports from over the country as to the state of the public mind. It was for official circulation only. "Why not?" repeated Prideaux, struck by this idea. "It would be quite enough of a change: you would probably be one of the travelling reporters and send bright little anecdotes from the countryside; I know they want some more reporters. Why don't you apply? I'll speak to M.B.B. about you if you like." (M.B.B. was the department which edited the Bulletin.)

"Would it be interesting?" Kitty wondered.

Prideaux thought it would. "Besides," he added, "you'd remain attached to the Ministry that way, and could return to headquarters later on if you wanted to.... And meanwhile you'd see all the fun.... We're in for a fairly lively time, and it would be a pity to miss it. We're bound to slip up over the A.S.E. before the month's over. And probably over the exemption of Imbeciles and the Abandoned Babies, too. And the journalists; that's going to be a bad snag. Oh, it'll be interesting all right. If it wasn't for Chester's remarkable gift of getting on people's right side, it would be a poor look-out. But Chester'd pull most things through. If they'd put him at the head of the Recruiting job during the war, I believe he'd have pulled even the Review of Exceptions through without a row.... Well now, what about trying for this job?"

"All right," Kitty agreed. "If you think there's any chance of my getting it. I don't mind much what I do, so long as I have a change from this hotel."

On Prideaux's recommendation she did get the job, and was transferred from her branch to M.B.B. as a travelling reporter for _Intelligence_.

She renounced _Stop It_ with some regret; there was a whimsical element about _Stop It_ which appealed to her, and which must almost necessarily be lacking in an official journal; but the career of travelling reporter seemed to have possibilities. Besides the more weighty reports from the countryside, a page of _Intelligence_ was devoted each week to anecdotes related in the engagingly sudden and irrelevant manner of our cheaper daily Press; as, "A woman appealed before the Cuckfield Tribunal for exemption from the Mind Training Course on the grounds that she had made an uncertificated marriage and had since had twins, and must, therefore, be of a mental level which unfitted her to derive benefit from the Course." "Three babies have been found abandoned in a ditch between Amersham and Chesham Bois." "The Ess.e.x Farmers' a.s.sociation have produced a strain of hens which lay an egg each day all the year round.

The farmers ascribe this to the improvement in their methods caused by the Mind Training Course." "In reply to a tinplate worker who applied for Occupational Exemption from the Mental Progress Act, the Chairman of the Margam Tribunal said ..." (one of the witty things which chairmen do say, and which need not here be reported). It was, apparently, the business of the reporters to collect (or invent) and communicate these trivial anecdotes, as well as more momentous news, as of unrest at Nottingham, the state of intelligence or otherwise among Suffolk agriculturists, and so forth.

Kitty rather hoped to be sent to Ireland, which was, as often, in an interesting and dubious state. Ireland was excluded from the Brains Acts, as from other Acts. But she was being carefully watched, with a view to including her when it seemed that it might be safe to do so.

Meanwhile those of her population who were considered by the English government to be in no need of it were profiting by the Mind Training Course, while the ma.s.s of the peasantry were instructed by their priests to shun such unholy heretic learning as they would the devil. But on the whole it seemed possible that the strange paths pointed out by the Brains Ministry might eventually lead to the solution of the Irish Question. (What the Irish Question at that moment was, I will not here attempt to explain: it must be sufficient to remark that there will always be one.)

5

But Kitty was not sent to Ireland. She was sent about England; first to Cambridge. Cambridge was not averse to having its mind improved; there is a sweet reasonableness about Cambridge. It knows how important brains are. Also it had an affection for Chester, who had been at Trinity. So reports from Cambridge as regards the Brains Acts were on the whole favourable, in spite of some unrest (for different reasons) at Kings, Downing, and Trinity Hall, and slight ferment of revolt down at Barnwell. There was, indeed, a flourishing branch of the S.I.L. (Stop It League) in the University, but its attention was not directed at the moment particularly to stopping the work of the Ministry of Brains.

It was, of course, a queer and quite new Cambridge which Kitty investigated. She had known the pre-war Cambridge; there had intervened the war Cambridge, that desolated and desolating thing, and now there had sprung up, on the other side of that dividing gulf, a Cambridge new and without precedent; a Cambridge half full of young war veterans, with the knowledge of red horizons, battle, murder, and sudden death, in their careless, watchful, experienced eyes; when they lounged about the streets or hurried to lectures, they dropped, against their will, into step; they were brown, and hard, and tired, and found it hard to concentrate on books; they had forgotten their school knowledge, and could not get through Littlegoes, and preferred their beds to sleeping in the open, that joy of pampered youth which has known neither battle-fields or Embankment seats.

The other half were the boys straight from school; and between these two divisions rolled the Great European War, across which they could with difficulty make themselves understood each by the other.

It was a Cambridge which had broken with history, for neither of these sections had any links with the past, any traditions to hand down. The only people who had these were the dons and Fellows and the very few undergraduates who, having broken off their University career to fight, had, after long years, returned to it again. These moved like ghosts among their old haunts; but their number was so inconsiderable as hardly to count. It was, to all intents and purposes, a new Cambridge, a clean sheet; and it was interesting to watch what was being inscribed upon it.

But with such observations, apart from those of them which were connected with the att.i.tude of Cambridge towards the Brains Ministry, neither Kitty nor this story are concerned. The story of the new Cambridge will have to be written some day by a member of it, and should be well worth reading.

From Cambridge Kitty went to travel Cambridgeshire, which was in a state of quiet, albeit grudging, East Anglian acceptance and slow a.s.similation.

Far different were the northern midlands, which were her next destination. Here, indeed, was revolt in process of ferment; revolt which had to be continually uncorked and aired that it might not ferment too much. The uncorking and airing was done by means of conferences, at which the tyrannised and the tyrants each said their say. These heart-to-heart talks have a soothing effect (sometimes) on the situation; at other times not. As conducted by the Minister of Brains, they certainly had. Chester was something more than soothing; he was inspiring. While he was addressing a meeting, he made it believe that intelligence was the important thing; more important than liberty, more important than the satisfaction of immediate desires. He made intelligence a flaming idea, like patriotism, freedom, peace, democracy, the eight-hour day, or G.o.d; and incidentally he pointed out that it would lead to most of these things; and they believed him. When he showed how, in the past, the lack of intelligence had led to national ruin, economic bondage, war, autocracy, poverty, sweating, and vice, they believed that too. When he said, "Look at the European War," they looked. When he went on, "Without centuries of stupidity everywhere the war would never have been; without stupidity the war, if it had been, would have been very differently conducted; without stupidity we need never have another war, but with stupidity we inevitably shall, League of Nations or not," they all roared and cheered.

So he went about saying these things, convincing and propitiating labour everywhere; labour, that formidable monster dreaded and cajoled by all good statesmen; labour, twice as formidable since in the Great War it had learned the ways of battle and the possibility and the power of the union of arms and the man.

CHAPTER IX

THE COMMON HERD

1

It was after such a meeting, at Chesterfield, at the end of July, that Kitty and the Minister next met. Kitty was at that time writing up the Derbyshire towns for the Bulletin. She attended the Chesterfield meeting officially. It was a good one; Chester spoke well, and the audience (mainly colliers) listened well.

It was a very hot evening. The Town Hall was breathless, and full of damp, coal-grimed, imperfectly-cleaned faces. Kitty too was damp, though she was wearing even less than usual. Chester was damp and white, and looked, for all his flame and ardour, which carried the meeting along with him, fatigued and on edge. Kitty, herself fatigued and on edge, watched him, seeing the way his hands moved nervously on the table as he spoke.

It was while he was talking about the demand for increased wages among colliers to facilitate the payment of the taxes on uncertificated babies, that he saw Kitty. His eyes stayed on hers for a moment, and he paused in the middle of a sentence ... "defeat the whole purpose of the Act," he finished it, and looked elsewhere. Kitty was startled by his pause; it was not like him. Normally he, so used to public speaking, so steeled against emergencies, so accustomed to strange irruptions into the flow of his speech, would surely have carried on without a break or a sign. That he had not done so showed him to be in a highly nervous state, thought Kitty, something like her own in this hot weather, through her continual travellings by train and staying in lodgings and writing absurd reports.

Across the length of the hall she saw nothing now but that thin, slouching figure, the gestures of those nervous, flexible hands, that white, damp face, with its crooked eyebrows and smile.

It was so long since she had seen him and spoken to him; something in her surged up at the sight of him and turned her giddy and faint. It was perilously hot; the heat soaked all one's will away and left one limp.... Did he too feel like that?

2