What Not: A Prophetic Comedy Page 10

  CHAPTER IX

  THE COMMON HERD

  1

  It was after such a meeting, at Chesterfield, at the end of July, thatKitty and the Minister next met. Kitty was at that time writing up theDerbyshire towns for the Bulletin. She attended the Chesterfield meetingofficially. 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 ofdamp, coal-grimed, imperfectly-cleaned faces. Kitty too was damp, thoughshe was wearing even less than usual. Chester was damp and white, andlooked, for all his flame and ardour, which carried the meeting alongwith him, fatigued and on edge. Kitty, herself fatigued and on edge,watched him, seeing the way his hands moved nervously on the table as hespoke.

  It was while he was talking about the demand for increased wages amongcolliers to facilitate the payment of the taxes on uncertificatedbabies, that he saw Kitty. His eyes stayed on hers for a moment, and hepaused in the middle of a sentence ... "defeat the whole purpose of theAct," he finished it, and looked elsewhere. Kitty was startled by hispause; it was not like him. Normally he, so used to public speaking, sosteeled against emergencies, so accustomed to strange irruptions intothe flow of his speech, would surely have carried on without a break ora sign. That he had not done so showed him to be in a highly nervousstate, thought Kitty, something like her own in this hot weather,through her continual travellings by train and staying in lodgings andwriting absurd reports.

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

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

  2

  He looked at her once more, just before the end, and his eyes said,"Wait for me."

  She waited, in the front of a little group by the door through which hewas to come out. He came out with his secretary, and the mayor, andothers; he was talking to them. When he saw her he stopped openly, andsaid, so that all could hear, "How do you do, Miss Grammont. I haven'tseen you for some time. You're doing this reporting work for theBulletin now, aren't you? I want to talk to you about that. If you'llgive me the address I'll come round in about half an hour and see youabout it."

  She gave him the address of her rooms in Little Darkgate Street, and henodded and walked on. He had done it well; no one thought it strange, oranything but all in the way of business. Ministers have to be good atcamouflage, at throwing veils over situations; it is part of their job.

  Kitty went back to her lodgings, and washed again, for the seventeenthtime that day, and tried if she would feel less hot and less pale andmore the captain of her soul in another and even filmier blouse. But shegrew hotter, and paler, and less the captain of anything at all.

  At 9.30 Chester came. He too was hot and pale and captain of nothing. Hehad not even the comfort of a filmy blouse.

  He said, "My dear--my dear," and no more for a little time. Then hesaid, "My dearest, this has got to stop. I can't stand it. We've got tomarry."

  Kitty said, "Oh well. I suppose we have." She was too hot, too limp, tootired, to suppose anything else.

  "At once," said Chester. "I'll get a licence.... We must get it done atsome small place in the country where they don't know who we are. I musttake another name for it.... There's a place I sometimes stay at, in theChilterns. They are rather stupid there--even now," he added, with thetwist of a rueful smile. "I think it should be pretty safe. Anyhow Idon't think I much care; we're going to do it."

  They spoke low in the dim, breathless room, with its windows opened wideon to the breathless street.

  "I have wanted you," said Chester. "I have wanted you extremely badlythese last three months. I have never wanted anything so much. It hasbeen a--a hideous time, taking it all round."

  "You certainly," said Kitty, "look as if it had. So do I--don't I? It'spartly heat and dirt, with both of us--the black of this town _soaks_in--and partly tiredness, and partly, for you, the strain of yourministerial responsibilities, no doubt; but I think a little of it isour broken hearts.... Nicky, I'm too limp to argue or fight. I know it'sall wrong, what we're going to do; but I'm like you--I don't think Imuch care. We'll get married in your stupid village, under a false name.That counts, does it? Oh, all right. I shouldn't particularly mind if itdidn't, you know. I'll do without the registry business altogether ifyou think it's safer. After all, what's the odds? It comes to the samething in the end, only with less fuss. And it's no one's business butours."

  "No," Chester said. "I think that would be a mistake. Wrong. I don'tapprove of this omitting of the legal bond; it argues a lack of thesense of social ethics; it opens the door to a state of things which isessentially uncivilised, lacking in self-control and intelligence. Idon't like it. It always strikes me as disagreeable and behind thetimes; a step backwards. No, we won't do that. I'd rather take thegreater risk of publicity. I'm dropping one principle, but I don't wantto drop more than I need."

  Kitty laughed silently, and slipped her hand into his. "All right, youshan't. We'll get tied up properly at your country registry, and keepsome of our principles and hang the risk.... I oughtn't to let you, youknow. If it comes out it will wreck your career and perhaps wreck theMinistry and endanger the intellect of the country. We may be sowing theseeds of another World War; but--oh, I'm bored with beinghigh-principled about it."

  "It's too late to be that," said Chester. "We've got to go ahead now."

  He consulted his pocket-book and said that he was free on August 10th,and that they would then get married and go to Italy for a fortnight'sholiday together. They made the other arrangements that have to be madein these peculiar circumstances, and then Chester went back to hishotel.

  The awful, airless, panting night through which the Chesterfieldfurnaces flamed, lay upon the queer, crooked black city like a menace.Kitty, leaning out of her window and listening to Chester's retreatingsteps echoing up the street, ran her fingers through her damp dark hair,because her head ached, and murmured, "I don't care. I don't care.What's the good of living if you can't have what you want?"

  Which expressed an instinct common to the race, and one which would inthe end bring to nothing the most strenuous efforts of social andethical reformers.

  3

  They got married. Chester took, for the occasion, the name of GilbertLewis; it was surprising how easy this was. The witness lookedattentively at him, but probably always looked like that at the peoplegetting married. Neither he nor the registrar looked intelligent, or asif they were connecting Chester's face with anything they had seenbefore.

  After the performance they went to Italy for a fortnight. Italy inAugust is fairly safe from English visitors. They stayed at Cogoleto, atiny fishing town fifteen miles up the coast from Genoa, shut in alittle bay between the olive hills and the sea. To this sheltered coastthrough the summer months people come from the hot towns inland and fillevery lodging and inn and pitch tents on the shore, and pass serene,lazy, amphibious days in and out of a sea which has the inestimableadvantage over English seas that it is always at hand.

  The Chesters too passed amphibious days. They would rise early, whilethe sea lay cool and smooth and pale and pearly in the morning light,and before the sand burnt their feet as they walked on it, and slip inoff the gently shelving shore, and swim and swim and swim. They wereboth good swimmers. Chester was the stronger and faster, but Kitty coulddo more tricks. She could turn somersaults like an eel, and sit at thebottom of the sea playing with pebbles, with open eyes gazing up throughclear green depths. When they bathed from a boat, she turned head overheels backwards from the bows, and shot under the boat and came upneatly behind the stern. Chester too could perform fairly well; theirenergy and skill excited the amazed admiration of the _bagna
nti_, whoseldom did more than splash on the sea's edge or bob up and down withswimming belts a few yards out. Chester and Kitty would swim out for amile, then lie on their backs and float, gazing up into the sea-bluesky, before the sun had climbed high enough to burn and blind. Then theywould swim back and return to the inn and put on a very few clothes andhave their morning coffee, and then walk up the coast, taking lunch, tosome little lonely cove in the shadow of rocks, where they would spendthe heat of the day in and out of the sea. When they came out of thewater they lay on the burning sands and dried themselves, and talked orread. When the heat of the day had passed a little, and the sea lay verysmooth and still in the late afternoon, with no waves at all, only agentle, whispering swaying to and fro, they would go further afield;climbing up the steep stone-paved mule-tracks that wound up the hillsbehind, passing between grey olive groves and lemon and orange gardensand vineyards of ripening vines and little rough white farmhouses, tillthey reached the barer, wilder hill slopes of pines and rocks, where thehot sweetness of myrtle and juniper stirred with each tiny moving of seaair.

  They would climb often to the top of one or other of this row of hillsthat guarded the bay, and from its top, resting by some old pulley wellor little shrine, they would look down over hills and sea bathed inevening light, and see to the east the white gleam of Genoa shimmeringlike a pearl, like a ghost, between transparent sea and sky, to the westthe point of Savona jutting dark against a flood of fire.

  There was one hill they often climbed, a steep little pine-grownmountain crested by a little old chapel, with a well by its side. Thechapel was dedicated to the Madonna della Mare, and was hung aboutinside with votive offerings of little ships, presented to the Madonnaby grateful sailors whom she had delivered from the perils of the sea.Outside the chapel a shrine stood, painted pink, and from it the motherand child smiled kindly down on the withered flowers that nearly alwayslay on the ledge before them.

  By the shrine and the well Chester and Kitty would sit, while the lowlight died slowly from the hills, till its lower slopes lay in eveningshadow, and only they on the summit remained, as if en-chanted, in acircle of fairy gold.

  One evening while they sat there a half-witted contadino slouched out ofthe chapel and begged from them. Chester refused sharply, and turned hisface away. The imbecile hung about, mouthed a confused prayer, bowingand crossing, before the shrine, got no help from that quarter either,and at last shambled disconsolately down the hillside, crooning anunintelligible song to himself.

  Kitty, looking at Chester, saw with surprise that his face was rigidwith disgust; he looked as if he were trying not to shudder.

  "How you hate them, Nicky," she said curiously.

  He said "I do," grimly, and spoke of something else.

  But a little later he said abruptly, "I've never told you much about mypeople, Kitty, have I, or what are called my early years?"

  "You wouldn't, of course," she replied, "any more than I should. We'reneither of us much interested in the past; you live in the future, and Ilive in the present moment.... But I should be interested to hear, allthe same."

  "That imbecile reminded me," Chester said grimly. "I had a twin sisterlike that, and a brother not very far removed from it. You know that, ofcourse; but you'll never know, no one _can_ ever know who's notexperienced it, what it was like.... At first, when I began to do morethan just accept it as part of things as they were, it only made meangry that such things should be possible, and frightfully sorry forJoan and Gerald, who had to go about like that, so little use tothemselves or anyone else, and so tiresome to me and Maggie (she's myeldest sister; I'd like you to meet her one day). I remember evenconsulting Maggie as to whether it wouldn't be a good thing to take themout into a wood and lose them, like the babes in the wood. I honestlythought it would be for their own good; I knew I should have preferredit if I had been them. But Maggie didn't agree; she took a more patientline about it than I did; she always does. Then, as I grew older, Ibecame angry with my parents, who had no right, of course, to have hadany children at all; they were first cousins, and deficiency was in thefamily.... It was that that first set me thinking about the wholesubject. I remember I asked my father once, when I was about seventeen,how he had reconciled it with his conscience (he was a dean at thattime) to do such a thing. I must have been an irritating young prig, ofcourse; in fact, I remember that I was. He very properly indicated to methat I was stepping out of my sphere in questioning him on such a point,and also that whatever is must be sent by Providence, and thereforeright. I didn't drop it at once; I remember I argued that it hadn't"been" and therefore had not necessarily been right, until he and mymother made it so; but he closed the conversation; quite time too, Isuppose. It was difficult to argue with my father in those days; it'seasier now, though not really easy. I think the reduction of the worldlycondition of bishops has been good for him; it has put him in what Isuppose is called a state of grace. I don't believe he'd do it now, ifhe lived his life again. However, he did do it, and the result was twodeficient children and one who grew up loathing stupidity in the waysome few people (conceivably) loathe vice, when they've been broughtinto close contact with its effects. It became an obsession with me; Iseemed to see it everywhere, spoiling everything, blocking every path,tying everyone's hands. The Boer war happened while I was at school....Good Lord.... Then I went to Cambridge, and it was there that I reallybegan to think the thing seriously out. What has always bothered meabout it is that human beings are so astoundingly _clever_; miraculouslyclever, if you come to think of it, and compare us with the otheranimals, so like us in lots of ways. The things we've done; the animalstate we've grown out of; the things we've discovered and created--itmakes one's head reel. And if we can be clever like that, why not be alittle cleverer still? Why be so abysmally stupid about many things? The_waste_ of it.... The world might get anywhere if we really developedour powers to their full extent. But we always slip up somewhere:nothing quite comes off as it should. Think of all these thousands ofyears of house-managing, and the really clever arrangements which havebeen made in connection with it--and then visit a set of cottages andsee the mess; a woman trying to cook food and clean the house and lookafter children and wash clothes, all by hand, and with the mostinadequate contrivances for any of it. Why haven't we thought of someway out of that beastly, clumsy squalor and muddle yet? And why dohouses built and fitted like some of those still exist? If we're cleverenough to have invented and built houses at all, why not go one betterand do it properly? It's the same with everything. Medical science, forinstance. The advances it's made fill one with amaze and admiration; butwhy is there still disease? And why isn't there a cure for everydisease? And why do doctors fail so hopelessly to diagnose anything alittle outside their ordinary beat? There it is; we've been clever aboutit in a way, but nothing like clever enough, or as clever as we've gotto be before we've done. The same with statesmanship and government;only there we've very seldom been clever at all; that's still to come.And our educational system ... oh Lord.... The mischief is that peoplein general don't _want_ other people to become too clever; it wouldn'tsuit their turn. So the popular instinct for mucking along, for takingthings as you find them (and leaving them there), the popular taste forsuperficial twaddle in literature and politics and science and art andreligion is pandered to on its own level....

  "But I didn't mean to go off on to all this; I merely meant to tell youwhat first started me thinking of these things."

  "Go on," said Kitty. "I like it. It makes me feel at home, as if I wassitting under you at a meeting.... What I infer is that if your parents_hadn't_ been first cousins and had deficiency in their family, therewould have been no Ministry of Brains. I expect your father was right,and whatever is is best.... Of course the interesting question is, whatwould happen if ever we _were_ much cleverer than we are now? What wouldhappen, that is, besides houses being better managed and disease bettertreated and locomotion improved and books better written or not writtenat all, and all that? What wo
uld happen to nations and societies andgovernments, if people in general became much more intelligent? I can'timagine. But I think there'd be a jolly old row.... Perhaps we shallknow before long."

  "No," said Chester. "We shan't know that. There may be a jolly old row;I daresay there will; but it won't be because people have got tooclever; it will be because they haven't got clever enough. It'll be theshort-sighted stupidity of people revolting against their ultimategood."

  "As it might be you and me."

  "Precisely. As it might be you and me.... What we're doing is horriblytypical, Kitty. Don't let's ever blind ourselves to its nature. We'll doit, because we think it's worth it; but we'll do it with our eyes open.Thank heaven we're both clear-headed and hard-headed enough to know whatwe're doing and not to muddle ourselves with cant about it.... That'sone of the things that I suppose, I love you for, my dear--yourclear-headedness. You never muddle or cant or sentimentalise. You'rehard-headed and clear-eyed."

  "In fact, cynical," said Kitty.

  "Yes. Rather cynical. Unnecessarily cynical, I think. You could do withsome more faith."

  "Perhaps I shall catch some from you. You've got lots, haven't you? Asthe husband is the wife is; I am mated to, etc.... And you're a lotcleverer than I am, so you're most likely right.... We're awfullydifferent, Nicky, my love, aren't we?"

  "No doubt we are. Who isn't?"

  For a while they lay silent in the warm sweetness of the hill-top, whilethe golden light slipped from them, leaving behind it the pure greenstillness of the evening; and they looked at one another and speculatedon the strange differences of human beings each from each, and themystery of personality, that tiny point on to which all the age-longaccumulated forces of heredity press, so that you would suppose that theworld itself could not contain them, and yet they are contained in onesmall, ordinary soul, which does not break under the weight.

  So they looked at one another, speculating, until speculation faded intoseeing, and instead of personalities they became to one another persons,and Chester saw Kitty red-lipped and golden-eyed and black-lashed andtanned a smooth nut-brown by sun and sea, and Kitty saw Chester long andlean and sallow, with black brows bent over deep, keen, dreaming eyes,and lips carrying their queer suggestion of tragedy and comedy.

  "Isn't it fun," said Kitty, "that you are you and I am I? I think itmust be (don't you?) the greatest fun that ever was since the worldbegan. That's what I think ... and everywhere millions of people arethinking exactly the same. We're part of the common herd, Nicky--thevery, very commonest herd of all herds. I think I like it rather--beingso common, I mean. It's amusing. Don't you?"

  "Yes," he said, and smiled at her. "I think I do."

  Still they lay there, side by side, in the extraordinary hushedsweetness of the evening. Kitty's cheek was pressed against short warmgrass. Close to her ear a cicale chirped, monotonously bright; far off,from every hill, the frogs began their evening singing.

  Kitty, as she sometimes did, seemed to slip suddenly outside the circleof the present, of her own life and the life around her; far off she sawit, a queer little excited corner of the universe, where people playedtogether and were happy, where the funny world spun round and round andlaughed and cried and ran and slept and loved and hated, and everythingmattered intensely, and yet, as seen from outside the circle, did notmatter at all.... She felt like a soul unborn, or a soul long dead,watching the world's antics with a dispassionate, compassionateinterest....

  The touch of Chester's hand on her cheek brought her back abruptly intothe circle again.

  "Belovedest," he said, "let's come down the hill. The light is going."

  4

  One day they had a shock; they met someone they knew. They met him inthe sea; at least he was in a boat and they were in the sea. They wereswimming a mile from shore, in a pearl-smooth, golden sea, in the eye ofthe rising sun. Half a mile out from them a yacht lay, as idle as apainted ship upon a painted ocean. From the yacht a boat shot out, rowedby a man. It shot between the swimmers and the rising sun. Chester andKitty were lying on their backs, churning up the sun's path of gold withtheir feet, and Kitty was singing a little song that Greek goat-herdssing on the hills above Corinth in the mornings.

  Leaning over the side and resting on his oars, the man in the boatshouted, "_Hullo_, Chester!"

  An electric shock stabbed Kitty through at the voice, which was VernonPrideaux's. Losing her nerve, her head, and her sense of the suitable,she splashed round on to her chest, kicked herself forward, and divedlike a porpoise, travelling as swiftly as she could from Chester,Prideaux, and the situation. When she came up it was with a splutter,because she had laughed. Glancing backwards over her shoulder, she sawChester swimming towards the boat. What would he say? Would he speak ofher, or wrap her in discreet silence? And had Prideaux recognised her ornot?

  "Lunatic," said Kitty. "Of course he did. I have taken the worst way, inmy excitement."

  Promptly she retraced her path, this time on the water's surface, andhailed Prideaux as she came.

  "Hullo, Vernon. The top of the morning to you. I thought I'd show you Icould dive.... What brings you here? Oh the yacht, of course...." Shepaused, wondering what was to be their line, then struck one out on herown account. "Isn't it odd; Mr. Chester and I are both staying nearhere."

  Prideaux's keen, well-bred, perfectly courteous face looked for onemoment as if it certainly was a little odd; then he swallowed hissurprise.

  "Are you? It's a splendid coast, isn't it? Cogoleto in there, I suppose?We're not stopping at all, unfortunately; we're going straight on toGenoa.... I'm coming in."

  He dived neatly from the bows, with precision and power, as he wroteminutes, managed deputations, ignored odd situations, and did everythingelse. One was never afraid with Prideaux; one could rely on him not tobungle.

  They bathed together and conversed, till Kitty said she must go in, andswam shoreward in the detached manner of one whose people are expectingher to breakfast. Soon afterwards she saw that Prideaux was pulling backto the yacht, and Chester swimming westward, as if he were staying atVarazze.

  "Tact," thought Kitty. "This, I suppose, is how people behave whileconducting a vulgar intrigue. Ours is a vulgar marriage; there doesn'tseem much difference.... I rather wish we could have told Vernon allabout it; he's safe enough, and I should like to have heard his commentsand seen his face. How awful he would think us.... I don't know anyonewho would disapprove more.... Well, I suppose it's more interesting thana marriage which doesn't have to be kept dark, but it's much lesspeaceful."

  They met at the inn, at breakfast.

  "Did you have to swim right across the bay, darling?" Kitty enquired."I'm so sorry. By the way, I noticed that Vernon never asked either ofus where we were staying, nor invited us to come and visit the yacht. Doyou suppose he believed a word we said?"

  Chester lifted his eyebrows. "His mental category is A, I believe," hereplied.

  "Well," said Kitty, "anyhow he can't know we're married, even if he doesthink we've arranged to meet here. And Vernon's very discreet; he won'tbabble."

  Chester ate a roll and a half in silence. Then he remarked, withoutemotion, "Kitty, this thing is going to come out. We may as well make upour minds to it. We shall go on meeting people, and they won't all bediscreet. It will come out, as certainly as flowers in spring, or theClyde engineers next week."

  They faced one another in silence for a moment across the coffee androlls. Then, because there seemed nothing else which could meet thesituation, they both began to laugh helplessly.

  Three days later they returned to England, by different routes.