What Not. A Prophetic Comedy Page 10

  Kitty sat on the edge of Prideaux's table and swore softly. She'd jolly well show him she thought no such thing.

  "These great men," she said, "are insufferable."

  7

  When they next met it was by chance, in a street aeroplane. The aero was full, and they didn't take much notice of each other till something went wrong with the machinery and they were falling street-wards, probably on the top of that unfortunate shop, Swan and Edgar's. In that dizzy moment the Minister swayed towards Kitty and said, "Relax the body and don't protrude the tongue," and then the crash came.

  They only grazed Swan and Edgar's, and came down in Piccadilly, amid a crowd of men who scattered like a herd of frightened sheep. No one was much hurt (street aeros were carefully padded and springed, against these catastrophes), but Kitty chanced to strike the back of her head and to be knocked silly. It was only for a moment, and when she recovered consciousness the Minister was bending over her and whispering, "She's killed. She's killed. Oh God."

  "Not at all," said Kitty, sitting up, very white. "It takes quite a lot more than that."

  His strained face relaxed. "That's all right, then," he said.

  "I'm dining in Hampstead in about ten minutes," said Kitty. "I must get the tube at Leicester Square."

  "A taxi," said the Minister, "would be better. Here is a taxi. I shall come too, in case there is another mischance, which you will hardly be fit for alone at present." He mopped his mouth.

  "You have bitten your tongue," said Kitty, "in spite of all you said about not protruding it."

  "It was while I was saying it," said the Minister, "that the contact occurred. Yes. It is painful."

  They got into the taxi. The Minister, with his scarlet-stained handkerchief to his lips, mumbled, "That was a very disagreeable shock. You were very pale. I feared the worst."

  "The worst," said Kitty, "always passes me by. It always has. I am like that."

  "I am not," he said. "I am not. I have bitten my tongue and fallen in love. Both bad things."

  He spoke so indistinctly that Kitty was not sure she heard him rightly.

  "And I," she said, "only feel a little sick.... No, don't be anxious; it won't develop."

  The Minister looked at her as she powdered her face before the strip of mirror.

  "I wouldn't put that on," he advised her. "You are looking too pale, already."

  "Quite," said Kitty. "It's pink powder, you see. It will make me feel more myself."

  "You need nothing," he told her gravely. "You are all right as you are. It is fortunate that it is you and not I who are going out to dinner. I couldn't talk. I can't talk now. I can't even tell you what I feel about you."

  "Don't try," she counselled him, putting away her powder-puff and not looking at him.

  He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, looking at her with his pained-humorist's face and watchful eyes.

  "I expect you know I've fallen in love with you?" he mumbled. "I didn't mean to; in fact, I've tried not to, since I began to notice what was occurring. It's excessively awkward. But ... I have not been able to avoid it."

  Kitty said "Oh," and swallowed a laugh. One didn't laugh when one was receiving an avowal of love, of course. She felt giddy, and seas seemed to rush past her ears.

  "There are a good many things to talk about in connection with this," said the Minister. "But it is no use talking about them unless I first know what you feel about it—about me, that is. Will you tell me, if you don't mind?"

  He asked it gently, considerately, almost humbly. Kitty, who did mind rather, said "Oh," again, and lay back in her corner. She still felt a little dizzy, and her head ached. It is not nice having to say what one feels; one would rather the other person did it all. But this is not fair or honourable. She remembered this and pulled herself together.

  "I expect," she said, swinging her glasses by their ribbon, cool and yet nervous, "I expect I feel pretty much the same as you do about it."

  After a moment's pause he said, "Thank you. Thank you very much for telling me. Then it is of use talking about it. Only not now, because I'm afraid we're just getting there. And to-morrow I am going to a conference at Leeds. I don't think I can wait till the day after. May I call for you to-night and we'll drive back together?"

  "Yes," said Kitty, and got out of the taxi.

  8

  When they were in it again they comported themselves for a little while in the manner customary on these occasions, deriving the usual amount of pleasurable excitement therefrom.

  Then the Minister said, "Now we must talk. All is not easy about our situation."

  "Nothing is easy about it," said Kitty. "In fact, we're in the demon of a mess."

  He looked at her, biting his lips.

  "You know about me, then? That I'm uncertificated? But of course you do. It is, I believe, generally known. And it makes the position exactly what you say. It means ..."

  "It means," said Kitty, "that we must get over this unfortunate passion."

  He shook his head, with a shrug.

  "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 circumstances, 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 grâce 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 damn 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 circumstances. 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 Saturday 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 impassive 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 pass, 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 butter, 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 damn 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 muff; 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."