What Not: A Prophetic Comedy Page 13

  CHAPTER XII

  DEBRIS

  1

  Chester lay with a broken head and three smashed ribs in his flat inMount Street. He was nursed by his elder sister Maggie, a kind, silent,plain person with her brother's queer smile and more than his cynicalpatience. With her patience took the form of an infinite tolerance; thetolerance of one who looks upon all human things and sees that they arenot much good, nor likely to be. (Chester had not his fair share of thispatience: hence his hopes and his faiths, and hence his downfall.) Shewas kind to Kitty, whose acquaintance she now made. (The majority of theMinistry of Brains staff were having a short holiday, during thetransference to other premises.)

  Maggie said to Kitty, "I'm not surprised. It was a lot to live up to.And it's not in our family, living up to that. Perhaps not in anyfamily. I'm sorry for Nicky, because he'll mind."

  She did not reproach Kitty; she took her for granted. Such incidents asKitty were liable to happen, even in the best regulated lives. WhenKitty reproached herself, saying, "I've spoilt his life," she merelyreplied tranquilly, "Nicky lets no one but himself spoil his life. Whenhe's determined to do a thing, he'll do it." Nor did she commit herselfto any indication as to whether she thought that what Nicky had gainedwould be likely to compensate for what he had lost.

  For about what he had lost there seemed no doubt in anyone's mind. Hehad lost his reputation, his office, and, for the time being, his publiclife. The Ministry of Brains might continue, would in fact, weaklycontinue, without power and without much hope, till it trailed intoignominious death; even the wrecked Hotel would continue, when repaired;but it was not possible that Chester should continue.

  The first thing he did, in fact, when he could do anything at allintelligent, was to dictate a letter to the Ministerial Counciltendering his resignation from office. There are, of course, diversestyles adopted by the writers of such letters. In the old days peopleused to write (according to the peculiar circumstances of their case)--

  "Dear Prime Minister,

  "Though you have long and often tried to dissuade me from this course ... etc., etc.... I think you will hardly be surprised ... deep regret in severing the always harmonious connection between us ..." and so forth.

  Or else quite otherwise--

  "Dear Prime Minister,

  "You will hardly be surprised, I imagine, after the strange occurrence of yesterday, when I had the interest of reading in a daily paper the first intimation that you desired a change at the Ministry I have the honour to adorn...."

  Neither of these styles was used by Chester, who wrote briefly, withoutcommitting himself to any opinion as to the probable surprise orotherwise of the Ministerial Council--

  "Dear Sirs,

  "I am resigning my office as Minister of Brains, owing to facts of which you will have doubtless heard, and which make it obviously undesirable for me to continue in the post."

  Having done this, he lay inert through quiet, snow-bound days andnights, and no one knew whether or not he was going to recover.

  2

  After a time he asked after Prideaux, and they told him Prideaux had notbeen hurt, only rumpled.

  "He calls to ask after you pretty often," said Kitty. "Would you like tosee him sometime? When the doctor says you can?"

  "I don't care," Chester said. "Yes, I may as well."

  So Prideaux came one afternoon (warned not to be political or exciting)and it was a queer meeting between him and Chester. Chester rememberedthe last shocked words he had had from Prideaux--"Good God!" andwondered, without interest, what Prideaux felt about it all now.

  But it was not Prideaux's way to show much of what he felt.

  They talked mainly of that night's happenings. Chester had already hadfull reports of these; of the fire, of the fight between the police andthe crowd, in which several lives had been lost, of the arrest of theringleaders and their trials. To Chester's own part in the proceedingsthey did not refer, till, after a pause, Chester suddenly said, "I havebeen wondering, but I can't make up my mind about it. How muchdifference to the business did the discovery about me make? Would theyhave gone to those lengths without it?"

  Prideaux was silent. He believed that Chester that night on the balcony,had his hands been clean, could have held the mob.

  Chester interpreted the silence.

  "I suppose they wouldn't," he said impassively. "However, I fancy itonly precipitated the catastrophe. The Ministry was down and under, inany case. People were determined not to stand laws that inconveniencedthem--as I was. I was merely an example, not a cause, of thatdisease...."

  That was the nearest he ever got with Prideaux to discussion of his ownaction.

  "Anyhow," said Prideaux sadly, "the Ministry is down and under now.Imagine Frankie Lyle, poor little beggar, trying to carry on, after allthis!" (This gentleman had been nominated as Chester's successor.)

  Chester smiled faintly. "Poor little Frankie.... I hear Monk wouldn'ttouch it, by the way. I don't blame him.... Lyle won't hold them for aweek; he'll back out on every point."

  There was regret in his tired, toneless voice, and bitterness, becausethe points on which Lyle would back out were all points which he hadmade. He could have held them for a week, and more; he might even--therewould have been a fighting chance of it--have pulled the Ministrythrough altogether, had things been otherwise. But things were nototherwise, and this was not his show any more. He looked at Prideauxhalf resentfully as Prideaux rose to leave him. Prideaux had not wreckedhis own career....

  To Kitty, the first time he had met her after the events of BoxingNight, Prideaux had shown more of his mind. He had come to ask afterChester, and had found Kitty there. He had looked at her sharply andcoolly, as if she had made a stupid mistake over her work in the office.

  "So you didn't guess, all this time," she had said to him, coolly too,because she resented his look.

  "Not," he had returned, "that things had gone as far as this. I knew youwere intimate, of course. There was that time in Italy.... But--well,honestly, I thought better of both your brains."

  She gave up her momentary resentment, and slipped again into remorse.

  "We thought better of them too--till we did it.... Have I spoilt hislife, Vernon? I suppose so."

  He shrugged his shoulders. "You've spoilt, and he's spoilt his own,career as Minister of Brains. There are other things, of course. Chestercan't go under; he's too good a man to lose. They'll stick on to himsomehow.... But ... well, what in heaven or earth or the other placepossessed you both to do it, Kitty?"

  To which she had no answer but "We just thought we would," and he lefther in disgust.

  Even in her hour of mortification and remorse, Kitty could still enjoygetting a rise out of Prideaux.

  3

  Pansy, who called often with showers of hot-house flowers, which Chesterdetested, was much more sympathetic. She was frankly delighted. Shecould not be allowed to see Chester; Kitty was afraid that herexuberance might send his temperature up.

  "You won't mind my tellin' you now, darlin', but I've been thinkin' itwas free love all this time. I didn't mind, you know. But this is morerespectable. This family couldn't really properly afford anotherscandal; it might lose its good name, then what would Cyril say? Itwould come hard on the Cheeper, too. Now this is some marriage. So_sensible_ of you both, to throw over those silly laws and do the jollything and have a good time. As I said to Tony, what _is_ the good ofmaking laws if you can't break them yourself? Now that your Nicky's seta good example, it really does seem as if all this foolishness was goin'to dwine away and be forgotten.... I guess it's doin' what we like andhavin' a good time that matters, in the long run, isn't it. Not keepin'laws or improvin' the silly old world."

  "Ask me another," said Kitty. "I haven't the slightest idea, Pansy, mylove. You're usually right, so I daresay you're right about this. Butyou mustn't talk like that to Nicky, or he'll have a relapse."

  "And fancy," P
ansy mused, "me havin' got the great Minister of Brainsfor a brother-in-law! Or anyhow somethin' of the sort; as near as makesno difference. I shall never hear the last of it from the girls andboys.... Good-bye, old thing; I'm ever so pleased you're a happy wifenow as well as me."

  4

  Chester handed Kitty a letter from his mother, the wife of a strugglingbishop somewhere in the west country. It said, "Directly you are wellenough, dear, you must bring Kitty to stay with us; She won't, I amsure, mind our simple ways.... My dear, we are so thankful you havefound happiness. We are distressed about your accident, and about yourloss of office, which I fear you will feel.... But, after all, love andhappiness are so much more important than office, are they not?..."

  "Important," Kitty repeated. "Queer word. Just what love and happinessaren't, you'd think. Comfortable--jolly--but not important.... Never youmind, Nicky, you'll be important always: Vernon is right about that.They'll put you somewhere where 'domestick selvishenesse' doesn'tmatter: perhaps they'll make you a peer...."

  Chester said he would not be at all surprised.

  Kitty said, "Shall we go and see your people?" and he replied gloomily,"I suppose we must. It will be ... rather trying."

  "Will they condole with you?" she suggested, and he returned, "No.They'll congratulate me."

  A fortnight later they went down to the west. Bishop Chester lived in alittle old house in a slum behind his cathedral. Bishops' palaces wereno longer bishops' homes; they had all been turned into communityhouses, clergy houses, retreat houses, alms houses, and so forth.Celibate bishops could live in them, together with other clergy of theirdiocese, but bishops with families had to find quarters elsewhere. And,married or unmarried, their incomes were not enough to allow of anystyle of living but that apostolic simplicity which the Church, directlyit was freed from the State and could arrange its own affairs, haddecided was right and suitable.

  Not all bishops took kindly to the new regime; some resigned, and had tobe replaced by bishops of the new and sterner school. But, to givebishops their due, which is too seldom done, they are for the most partgood Christian men, ready to do what they believe is for the good of theChurch. Many of their detractors were surprised at the amount ofgood-will and self-sacrifice revealed in the episcopal ranks when theywere put to the test. If some failed under it--well, bishops, if noworse than other men, are human.

  Bishop Chester had not failed. He had taken to plain living and plainerthinking (how often, alas, these two are to be found linked together!)with resignation, as a Christian duty. If it should bring any into theChurch who had been kept outside it by his purple and fine linen, hewould feel himself more than rewarded. If it should not, that was nothis look-out. Which is to say that Bishop Chester was a good man, if notclever.

  He and his wife were very kind to Chester and Kitty. Chester said hecould not spare more than a day and night; he had to get back to town,where he had much business on hand, including the instituting of anaction for malicious libel against Mr. Percy Jenkins and the publishersand proprietors of the _Patriot_. Kitty was not surprised at theshortness of the visit, for it was a humiliating visit. The bishop andMrs. Chester, as their son had known they would, approved of hiscontravention of his own principles. They thought them, had alwaysthought them, monstrous and inhuman principles.

  The bishop said, "My dear boy, I can't tell you how thankful I am thatyou have decided at last to let humanity have its way with you.Humanity; the simple human things; love, birth, family life. They're thesimple things, but, after all, the deep and grand things. No laws willever supersede them."

  And Mrs. Chester looked at Kitty with the indescribable look ofmothers-in-law who hope that one day they may be grandmothers, andwhispered to her when she said good-night, "And some day, dear...."

  And they saw Chester's twin sister. She was harmless; she was even doingcrochet work; and her face was the face of Chester uninformed bythought. Mrs. Chester said, "Nicky will have told you of our poor ailinggirl...."

  5

  They came away next morning. They faced each other in the train, butthey read the _Times_ (half each) and did not meet each other's eyes.They could not. They felt as thieves who still have consciences mustfeel when congratulated on their crimes by other thieves, who have not.Between them stood and jeered a Being with a vacant face and a phrasewhich it repeated with cynical reiteration. "You have let humanity haveits way with you. Humanity; the simple human things.... No laws willever supersede them...." And the Being's face was as the face ofChester's twin sister, the poor ailing girl.

  To this they had come, then; to the first of the three simple humanthings mentioned by the bishop. What now, since they had started downthe long slope of this green and easy hill, should arrest theirprogress, until they arrived, brakeless and unheld, into the valleywhere the other two waited, cynical, for all their simplicity, and grim?

  Kitty, staring helplessly into the problematical future, saw, as ifsomeone had turned a page and shown it to her, a domesticpicture--herself and Chester (a peer, perhaps, why not?) facing oneanother not in a train but in a simple human home, surrounded by FamilyLife; two feckless, fallen persons, who had made a holocaust of theoriesand principles, who had reverted to the hand-to-mouth shiftlessness andmental sloppiness of the primitive Briton. Kitty could hear Chester, inthat future, vaguer, family, peer's voice that might then be his,saying, "We must just trust to luck and muddle through somehow."

  Even to that they might come....

  In the next Great War--and who should stay its advent if such as thesefailed?--their sons would fight, without talent, their daughters wouldperhaps nurse, without skill. And so on, and so on, and so on....

  So turned the world around. Individual desire given way to, as usual,ruining principle and ideals by its soft pressure. What would ever getdone in such a world? Nothing, ever.

  Suddenly, as if both had seen the same picture, they met one another'seyes across the carriage, and laughed ruefully.

  That, anyhow, they could always do, though sitting among the debris ofruined careers, ruined principles, ruined Ministries, ruined ideals. Itwas something; perhaps, in a sad and precarious world, it was much....

  THE END

  NEW FICTION

  OH, MONEY! MONEY! By ELEANOR H. PORTER, Author of "Just David,""Pollyanna," etc.

  "This tale of an elderly millionaire who goes incognito among his poorrelations to discover to which of them he shall leave his fortune isextraordinarily soothing in these harassed times. The relations are mosthumorously studied."--_Westminster Gazette._

  THE ANCHOR. By M. T. H. SADLER.

  "All his people are interesting and all ring true." _Pall Mall Gazette._

  ANNE'S HOUSE OF DREAMS. By L. M. MONTGOMERY, Author of "Anne of GreenGables."

  "Miss Montgomery has a rare knack of making simple events and ordinarypeople both charming and moving; she can make her readers both laugh andweep."--_Westminster Gazette._

  IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE. By Mrs. GEORGE WEMYSS.

  "It is set in a captivating way among village folk drawn from life,treated with humour and sympathy, and decorated profusely with the talkand doings of real and interesting children." _Manchester Guardian._

  THE STARRY POOL and Other Tales. By STEPHEN G. TALLENTS.

  "It belongs to the class of literature which gives an intimate pictureof the writer himself, who, in this particular case, endears himself tothe reader by his humour, which is never cynical, and by his zest forthe simple, which is never forced."--_Westminster Gazette._

  THE WANDERERS. By MARY JOHNSTON.

  "A large theme of absorbing and growing interest is treated with greatimaginative and pictorial power; and the writer's faith and enthusiasm,as well as her knowledge and her skilful handicraft, aremanifest."--_Scotsman._

  REMNANTS. By DESMOND MACCARTHY.

  "It has its own clear point of view. It reveals an engaging personality,and its contents, though dealing with subjects as diverse as SamuelButler, Lord George Sanger, Meredith,
Dan Leno, Voltaire and Bostock'sMenagerie, are all of a piece. That is, it is a real book ofessays."--_The Bookman._

  BEYOND THE RHINE. Memories of Art and Life in Germany before the War. ByMARC HENRY.

  "M. Henry discourses most entertainingly on many subjects of Germansocial life, and his book may be cordially recommended to thoseamong us who seek for enlightenment on the mentality of ourenemies."--_Scotsman._

  TRIVIA. By LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH.

  "It is a piece of personal good luck to have read it. One goes in andout of one's hall door with a delicious sense of possessing a secret. Itincreases one's confidence in the world. If a book like this can bewritten, there is, we feel, hope for the future."--_The Athenaeum._

  THE LAST OF THE ROMANOFS. By CHARLES RIVET (Petrograd Correspondent ofthe "Temps").

  "'The Last of the Romanofs' can be recommended to one desirous ofunderstanding what has actually happened in Russia and what caused it tohappen."--_Globe._

  ON THE EDGE OF THE WAR ZONE. By MILDRED ALDRICH, Author of "A Hilltop onthe Marne."

  "They give a picture of peace in the midst of war that is bothfascinating and strange ... as an intimate sketch of one corner of theworld-war, viewed at close quarters over the garden-hedge, these littlebooks will have earned for themselves a place apart."--_Punch._

  THE POT BOILS. A Novel. By M. STORM JAMESON.

  In "The Pot Boils" the author has written a vivid and original study ofthe careers and the love-story of a modern young man and woman whom wefirst encounter as students at the same Northern University. Of life inthis Northern University the author gives a realistic account, andequally realistic and entertaining is the description of the world ofsocial reformers, feminists, journalists, vers-libristes in London, towhich the scene is shifted later. It is a brilliant provocative bookwhich will appeal to all those who are interested in appraising theworth and promise of modern movements and ideals.

  THE SHIP OF DEATH. A Romance of the World-War. By EDWARD STILGEBAUER,Author of "Love's Inferno."

  In "The Ship of Death," Dr. Stilgebauer has written a romance whichdepicts in all its horror the havoc wrought by war upon humanrelationships and values outside the actual sphere of the battle-field.The instrument of disaster is Captain Stirn, the captain of thesubmarine which torpedoes the 'Lusitania,' styled here the 'Gigantic.'The first part of the book depicts the company on board, when the firstpremonitions of catastrophe are beginning to fill the air. Then comesthe catastrophe itself; and the last section of this book presentsCaptain Stirn in the agony and delirium which seizes him after his deedof horror. The book is impressive and absorbing both by force andvividness of the author's style and imagination and by the vigoroussincerity and idealism which penetrate it throughout.

  THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHMAN. By W. L. GEORGE, New Edition with a NewPreface.

  _New Edition of a Famous Novel_

  This book was first published in 1914, and the author has now written anew preface, explaining how the War has modified his views, but sayingthat whatever the Englishman may become, he would still be "The man ofmy choice, with whom I wrangle because he is my brother, far from whom Icould not live, who quietly grins at my internationalism and makesallowances for me because, Englishman though I be, I was not born in hisdamned and dear little island."