What Not: A Prophetic Comedy Read online

  CHAPTER XI

  THE STORMING OF THE HOTEL

  1

  In December Dora did a foolish thing. It is needless to say that she didother foolish things in other months; it is to be feared that she hadbeen born before the Brains Acts; her mental category must be well belowC3. But this particular folly is selected for mention because it had adisastrous effect on the already precarious destiny of the Ministry ofBrains. Putting out a firm and practised hand, she laid it heavily andsimultaneously upon four journals who were taking a rebellious attitudetowards the Brains Act--the _Nation_, _Stop It_, the _Herald_, and the_Patriot_. Thus she angered at one blow considerable sections of theThoughtful, the Advanced, the Workers (commonly but erroneously known asthe proletariat) and the Vulgar.

  "Confound the fools," as Chester bitterly remarked; but the deed wasthen done.

  "How long," Vernon Prideaux asked, "will it take governments to learnthat revolutionary propaganda disseminated all over the country don't doas much harm as this sort of action?"

  Chester was of opinion that, give the Ministry of Brains its chance, letit work for, say, fifty years, and even governments might at the end ofthat time have become intelligent enough to acquire such elementarypieces of knowledge. If only the Ministry _were_ given its chance, if itcould weather the present unrest, let the country get used to it....Custom: that was the great thing. People settled down under things atlast. All sorts of dreadful things. Education, vaccination, taxation,sanitation, representation.... It was only a question of getting used tothem.

  2

  Though the authorities were prepared for trouble, they did not foreseethe events of Boxing-day, that strange day in the history of theMinistry.

  The Ministry were so busy that many of the staff took no holiday beyondChristmas Day itself. Bank Holidays are, as everyone who has triedknows, an excellent time for working in one's office, because there areno interruptions from the outside world, no telephoning, no visitors, noregistry continually sending up incoming correspondence. The clamorous,persistent public fade away from sound and sight, and ministries areleft undistracted, to deal with them for their good in the academicseclusion of the office. If there was in this world an eternal BankHoliday (some, but with how little reason, say that this awaits us inheaven) ministries would thrive better; governing would then become likepure mathematics, an abstract science unmarred by the continual fret andjar of contact with human demands, which drag them so roughly, socontinually, down to earth.

  On Boxing Day the Minister himself worked all day, and about a quarterof the higher staff were in their places. But by seven o'clock only theMinister remained, talking to Prideaux in his room.

  The procession, at first in the form of four clouds each no bigger thana man's hand, trailed from out the north, south, east and west, andcoalesced in Trafalgar Square. From there it marched down Whitehall toWestminster, and along the Embankment. It seemed harmless enough; aholiday crowd of men and women with banners, like the people who used towant Votes, or Church Disestablishment, or Peace, or Cheap Food. Thechief difference to be observed between this and those old processionswas that a large number in this procession seemed to fall naturally andeasily into step, and marched in time, like soldiers. This was acharacteristic now of most processions; that soldier's trick, oncelearnt, is not forgotten. It might have set an onlooker speculating onthe advantages and the dangers of a nation of soldiers, that necessarysequence to an army of citizens.

  The procession drew up outside the Ministry of Brains, and resolveditself into a meeting. It was addressed in a short and stirring speechfrom the Ministry steps by the president of the Stop It League, a fieryyoung man with a megaphone, who concluded his remarks with "Isn't it upto all who love freedom, all who hate tyranny, to lose no time, but towreck the place where these things are done? That's what we're here todo to-night--to smash up this hotel and show the government what the menand women of England mean! Come on, boys!"

  Too late the watching policemen knew that this procession and thismeeting meant business, and should be broken up.

  The Minister and Prideaux listened, from an open window, to the speakingoutside. "Rendle," said Prideaux. "Scandalous mismanagement. What havethe police been about? It's too late now to do much.... Do they know weare here, by the way? Probably not."

  "They shall," replied Chester, and stepped out on to the balcony.

  There was a hush, then a tremendous shout.

  "It's the Minister! By God, it's Nicky Chester, the man who's made allthe trouble!"

  A voice rose above the rest.

  "Quiet! Silence! Let him speak. Let's hear what he's got to say forhimself."

  Silence came, abruptly; the queer, awful, terrifying silence of awaiting crowd.

  Into it Chester's voice cut, sharp and incisive.

  "You fools. Get out of this and go home. Don't you know that you'reheading for serious trouble--that you'll find yourselves in prison forthis? Get out before it's too late. That's all I have to say."

  "That's all he's got to say," the crowd took it up like a refrain."That's all he's got to say, after all the trouble he's made!"

  A suave, agreeable voice rose above the rest.

  "That is _not_ quite all he's got to say. There's something else. He'sgot to answer two plain questions. Number one: _Are you certificated formarriage, Mr. Chester, or have you got mental deficiency in yourfamily?_"

  There was an instant's pause. Then the Minister, looking down from thebalcony at the upturned faces, white in the cold moonlight, said,clearly, "I am not certificated for marriage, owing to the cause youmention."

  "Thank you," said the voice. "Have you all noted that, boys? TheMinister of Brains is not certificated for marriage. He has deficiencyin his family. Now, Mr. Chester, question number two, please. _Am Icorrect in stating that you--got--married--last--August?_"

  "You are quite correct, Mr. Jenkins."

  Chester heard beside him Prideaux's mutter--"Good God!" and then, belowhim, broke the roar of the crowd.

  "Come on, boys!" someone shouted. "Come on and wreck the blooming show,and nab the blooming showman before he slips off!"

  Men flung themselves up the steps and through the big doors, and surgedup the stairs.

  "This," remarked Prideaux, "is going to be some mess. I'll go and getRendle to see sense, if I can. He's leading them up the stairs,probably."

  "I fancy that won't be necessary," said Chester. "Rendle and his friendsare coming in here, apparently."

  The door was burst open, and men rushed in. Chester and Prideaux facedthem, standing before the door.

  "You fools," Chester said again. "What good do you think you're going todo yourselves by this?"

  "Here he is, boys! Here's Nicky Chester, the married man!"

  Chester and Prideaux were surrounded and pinioned.

  "Don't hurt him," someone exhorted. "We'll hang him out over the balconyand ask the boys down there what to do with him."

  They dragged him on to the balcony and swung him over the rail, danglinghim by a leg and an arm. One of them shouted, "Here's the Minister,boys! Here's Nicky, the Minister of Brains!"

  The crowd looked up and saw him, swinging in mid air, and a great shoutwent up.

  "Yes," went on the speaker from the balcony, "Here's Nicky Chester, theman who dares to dictate to the people of Britain who they may marry andwhat kids they may have, and then goes and gets married himself,breaking his own laws, and hushes it up so that he thought it wouldnever come out." ("I always knew it would come out," the Ministermuttered, inarticulately protesting against this estimate of hisintelligence.) "But it _has_ come out," the speaker continued. "And nowwhat are we to do with him, with this man who won't submit to the lawshe forces on other people? This man who dares to tell other people tobear what he won't bear himself? What shall we do with him? Drop himdown into the street?"

  For a moment it seemed that the Minister's fate, like himself, hungsuspended.

  They swung him gently to and fro, as if
to get an impetus....

  Then someone shouted, "We'll let him off this time, as he's justmarried. Let him go home to his wife, and not meddle with government anymore!"

  The crowd rocked with laughter; and in that laughter, rough,good-humoured, scornful, the Ministry of Brains seemed to dissolve.

  They drew Chester in through the window again. Someone said, "Now we'llset the blooming hotel on fire. No time to waste, boys."

  Chester and Prideaux were dragged firmly but not unkindly down thestairs and out through the door. Their appearance outside the building,each pinioned by two stalwart ex-guardsmen, was hailed by a shout,partly of anger, but three parts laughter. To Chester it was thelaughter, good-humoured, stupid, scornful, of the British public atideas, and particularly at ideas which had failed. But in it, sharp andstinging, was another, more contemptuous laughter, levelled at a man whohad failed to live up to his own ridiculous ideas, the laughter of thenone too honest world, which yet respected honesty, at the hypocrisy anddouble-dealing of others.

  "They're quite right to laugh," thought Chester. "It is funny: damnedfunny."

  And at that, standing pinioned on the steps of his discredited Ministry,looking down on the crowd of the injured, contemptuous British public,who were out to wreck the things he cared for, he began to laughhimself.

  His laughter was naturally unheard, but they saw his face, which shouldhave been downcast and ashamed, twist into his familiar, sad, cynicalsmile, which all who had heard him on platforms knew.

  "Laughing, are you," someone shouted thickly. "Laughing at the peopleyou've tricked! You've ruined me and my missus--taken every penny wehad, just because we had twins--and you--you stand there and laugh!You--you bloody married imbecile!"

  Lurching up the steps, he flung himself upon Chester and wrenched himfrom the relaxed hold of his captors. Struggling together, the Ministerand his assailant stumbled down the steps, and then fell headlong amongthe public.

  3

  When the mounted police finally succeeded in dispersing the crowd, theMinistry of Brains was in flames, like Sodom and Gomorrah, those wickedcities. Unlike Sodom and Gomorrah, the conflagration was at lastquenched by a fire engine. But far into the night the red wreckageblazed, testimony to the wrath of a great people, to the failure of agreat idea, to the downfall of him who, whatever the weakness he sharedin common with the public who downed him, was yet a great man.