What Not: A Prophetic Comedy Page 5

  CHAPTER IV

  OUR WEEK

  1

  Brains Week ("Our Week," as it was called by the ladies who sold flagsfor it) having opened thus auspiciously, flourished along its gallantway like a travelling fair urging people to come and buy, like a tankcoaxing people to come in and purchase war bonds, like the War Officebefore the Military Service Acts, like the Ministry of Food beforecompulsory rationing. It was, in fact, the last great appeal forvoluntary recruits for the higher intelligence; if it failed thencompulsion would have to be resorted to. Many people thought thatcompulsion should in any case be resorted to; what was the good of agovernment if not to compel? If the Great War hadn't taught it that, ithadn't taught it much. This was the view put forward in many prominentjournals; others, who would rather see England free than England clever,advocated with urgency the voluntary scheme, hoping, if it might be, tosee England both.

  It was a week of strenuous and gallant effort on the part of theGovernment and its assistants. Every Cinema showed dramas representingthe contrasted fates of the Intelligent and the Stupid. Kiosks ofPropaganda and Information were set up in every prominent shop.Trafalgar Square was brilliant with posters, a very flower-garden. TheMinistry of Brains' artists had given of their best. Pictorialpropaganda bloomed on every city wall, "Before and After," "The Rich Manand the Poor Man" (the Rich Man, in a faultless fur coat, observing tothe Poor Man in patched reach-me-downs, "Yes, I was always below you atschool, wasn't I? But since then I've taken the Mind Training Course,and now money rolls in. Sorry you're down on your luck, old man, but whydon't you do as I've done?") and a special poster for undergroundrailways, portraying victims of the perils of the streets--"A will besafe because he has taken the Mind Training Course and is consequentlyfacing the traffic. B will not, because he has refused to improve hismind and has therefore alighted from a motor bus in the wrong directionand with his back to oncoming traffic; he will also be crushed by astreet aero, having by his foolish behaviour excited the aviator. B willtherefore perish miserably, AND DESERVES TO."

  There were also pictures of human love, that most moving of subjects forart. "Yes, dear, I love you. But we are both C2" (they looked it). "Wecannot marry; we must part for ever. You must marry Miss Bryte-Braynes,who has too few teeth and squints, and I must accept Mr. Brilliantine,who puts too much oil on his hair. For beauty is only skin-deep, butwisdom endures for ever. We must THINK OF POSTERITY."

  Nor was Commerce backward in the cause. Every daily paper containedadvertisements from our more prominent emporiums, such as "Get ticketsfor the M.T. Course at Selfswank's. Every taker of a ticket will receivea coupon for our great L1000 lottery. The drawing will be performed in afortnight from to-day, by the late Prime Minister's wife." (To reassurethe anxious it should be said that the late Prime Minister was notdeceased but abolished; the country was governed by a United Council,five minds with but a single thought--if that.) "By taking our ticketsyou benefit yourself, benefit posterity, benefit your country, and standa good chance of winning A CASH PRIZE."

  And every patriotic advertiser of clothes, furs, jewellery, groceries,or other commodities, tacked on to his advertisement, "Take a ticketthis week for the M.T. Course." And every patriotic letter-writer boughta Brains Stamp, and stamped his envelopes with the legend "Improve yourBrains now."

  Railway bookstalls were spread with literature on the subject. The_Queen_, the _Gentlewoman_, the _Sketch_, and other such periodicalssuited, one imagines, to the simpler type of female mind, had articleson "Why does a woman look old sooner than a man?" (the answer to thiswas that, though men are usually stupid, women are often stupider still,and have taken even less pains to improve their minds), "Take care ofyour mind and your complexion will take care of itself," "Raise yourselfto category A, and you enlarge your matrimonial field," "How to trainBaby's intellect," and so forth. Side by side with these journals wasthe current number of the _Cambridge Magazine_, bearing on its cover thelegend "A Short Way with Fools; Pogrom of the Old Men. Everyone overforty to be shot." "We have always said," the article under thesehead-lines very truly began, "and we do not hesitate to say it again,that the only way to secure an intelligent government or citizenship inany nation is to dispose, firmly but not kindly, of the old and themiddle-aged, and to let the young have their day. There will then be nomore such hideous blunders as those with which the diplomacy of ourdoddering elders has wrecked the world again and again during the pastcenturies."

  The _Evening News_ had cartoons every day of the Combing Out of theStupid, whom it was pleased to call Algies and Dollies. The _NewWitness_, on the other hand, striking a different note, said that it wasthe fine old Christian Gentile quality of stupidity which had made OldEngland what it was; the natives of Merrie England had always resentedexcessive acuteness, as exhibited in the Hebrew race at their expense.The _Herald_, however, rejoiced in large type in the Open Door toLabour; the _Church Times_ reported Brains Sunday sermons by manydivines (in most of them sounded the protest raised by the vicar ofLittle Chantreys against interference with domestic rights, the Churchwas obviously going to be troublesome in this matter) and the otherjournals, from the _Hidden Hand_ down to _Home Chat_, supported thecause in their varying degrees and characteristic voices.

  Among them lay the Ministry of Brains pamphlets, "Brains. How to get andkeep them," "The cultivation of the Mind," etc. In rows among the booksand papers hung the Great Thoughts from Great Minds series--portraits ofeminent persons with their most famous remarks on this subject inscribedbeneath them. "It is the duty of every man, woman, and child in thiscountry so to order their lives in this peace crisis as to make theleast possible demand upon the intelligence of others. It is necessary,therefore, to have some of your own." (An eminent minister.) "I neverhad any assistance beyond my wits. Through them I am what I am. Whatthat is, it is for others rather than for myself to judge." (A greatjournalist.) "It was lack of brains (I will not say whose, but itoccurred before the first Coalition Government, mind you) which plungedEurope into the Great War. Brains--again, mark you, I do not saywhose--must make and keep the Great Peace." (One of our former PrimeMinisters.) "I have always wished I had some." (A Royal Personage.) "Imust by all means have a Brains Ministry started in Liberia." (TheLiberian Ambassador.) Then, after remarks by Shakespeare, Emerson,Carlyle, Mr. R. J. Campbell, Henry James, President Wilson, MarcusAurelius, Solomon, Ecclesiasticus ("What is heavier than lead, and whatis the name thereof but a fool?") and Miss Ella Wheeler Wilcox, theportrait gallery concluded with Mr. Nicholas Chester, the Minister ofBrains, looking like an embittered humorist, and remarking, "It's adamned silly world."

  2

  "Amen to that," Miss Kitty Grammont remarked, stopping for a momentafter buying _Truth_ at the bookstall and gazing solemnly into theMinister's disillusioned eyes. "And it would be a damned dull one if itwasn't." She sauntered out of Charing Cross tube station and boarded anEmbankment tram. This was the Monday morning after Brains Week had runits course.

  The fact had to be faced by the Ministry: Brains Week had proveddisappointing. The public were not playing up as they should.

  "We have said all along," said _The Times_ (anticipating the _HiddenHand_, which had not yet made up its mind), "that the Government shouldtake a strong line in this matter. They must not trust to voluntaryeffort; we say, and we believe that, as always, we voice the soundestopinion in the country, that it is up to the Government to take themeasures which it has decided, upon mature consideration, to be for thecountry's good. Though we have given every possible support to the greatvoluntary effort recently made, truth compels us to state that theresults are proving disappointing. Compulsion must follow, and thesooner the Government make up their minds to accept this fact the betteradvised it will be. Surely if there is one thing above all others whichthe Great War (so prolific in lessons) has taught us, it is thatcompulsion is not tyranny, nor law oppression. Let the Government, toolong vacillating, act, and act quickly, and they will find a responsiveand grateful nation ready to obey
."

  Thus _The Times_, and thus, in a less dignified choice of language, manylesser organs. To which the _Herald_ darkly rejoined, "If the Governmenttries this on, let it look to itself."

  "It'll have to come," said Vernon Prideaux to Kitty Grammont at lunch.They were lunching at one of those underground resorts about which, asKitty said, you never know, some being highly respectable, while othersare not. Kitty, with her long-lashed, mossy eyes and demure expression,looked and felt at home among divans for two, screens, powderedwaitresses, and rose-shaded lights; she had taken Prideaux there forfun, because among such environment he looked a stranger and pilgrim,angular, fastidious, whose home was above. Kitty liked to study herfriends in different lights, even rose-shaded ones, and especially onewho, besides being a friend, was her departmental superior, and acoming, even come, young man of exceptional brilliance, who might oneday be ruling the country.

  "If it does," said Kitty, "we shall have to go, that's all. No morecompulsion is going to be stood at present. Nothing short of anotherwar, with a military dictatorship and martial law, will save us."

  "We stood compulsory education when there was no war," Prideaux pointedout. "We've stood vaccination, taxation, every conceivable form ofinterference with what we are pleased to call our liberty. This is noworse; it's the logical outcome of State government of the individual.Little by little, precept upon precept, line upon line, these thingsgrow, till we're a serf state without realising it.... After all, whynot? What most people mean by freedom would be a loathsome condition;freedom to behave like animals or lunatics, to annoy each other anddamage the State. What's the sense of it? Human beings aren't up to it,that's the fact."

  "I quite agree with you," said Kitty. "Only the weak point is thathardly any human beings are up to making good laws for the rest, either.We shall slip up badly over this Mind Training Act, if we ever get itthrough; it will be as full of snags as the Mental Progress Act. Weshall have to take on a whole extra Branch to deal with the exemptionsalone. Chester's clever, but he's not clever enough to make a good Act.No one is.... By the way, Vernon, you nearly told me something the otherday about Chester's category. You might quite tell me now, as we're inthe Raid Shelter and not in the Office."

  "Did I? It was only that I heard he was uncertificated for marriage.He's got a brother and a twin sister half-witted. I suppose he collaredall the brains that were going in his family."

  "He would, of course, if he could. He's selfish."

  "Selfish," Prideaux was doubtful. "If you can call such a visionary andidealist selfish."

  "Visionaries and idealists are always selfish. Look at Napoleon, andWilhelm II, as Mr. Delmer would say. Visions and ideals are the mostselfish things there are. People go about wrapped in them, and keepthemselves so warm that they forget that other people need ordinaryclothes.... So the Minister is uncertificated.... Well, I'm going up toRegent Street to buy a birthday present for Pansy and cigarettes formyself."

  "I must get back," said Prideaux. "I've a Leeds Manufacturers'deputation coming to see me at 2.30 about their men's wages. Leedsworkmen, apparently, don't let the Mental Progress Act weigh on them atall; they go calmly ahead with their uncertificated marriages, and thenstrike for higher wages in view of the taxable family they intend toproduce. These fellows coming to-day have got wind of the new agreementwith the cutlers and want one like it. I've got to keep them at arm'slength."

  He emerged above ground, breathed more freely, and walked briskly backto the Ministry. Kitty went to Regent Street, and did not get back tothe office until 3.15.

  3

  Kitty had lately been returned from the Propaganda Branch to her own,the Exemption Branch. Being late, she slipped into her placeunostentatiously. Her in-tray contained a mass of files, as yet undealtwith. She began to look through these, with a view to relegating theless attractive to the bottom of the tray, where they could wait untilshe had nothing better to do than to attend to them. To-day there were agreat many letters from the public beginning "Dear Sir, Mr. Wilkinsonsaid in parliament on Tuesday that families should not be reduced todestitution through the baby-taxes...." That was so like Mr. Wilkinson(parliamentary secretary to the Brains Ministry). Whenever hethoughtlessly dropped these _obiter dicta_, so sweeping, so far removedfrom truth, which was almost whenever he spoke, there was trouble. Theguileless public hung on his words, waiting to pick them up and sendthem in letters to the Ministry. These letters went to the bottom of thetray. They usually only needed a stock reply, telling the applicants toattend their local tribunal. After several of these in succession, Kittyopened a file which had been minuted down from another branch, M.B. 4.Attached to it were two sheets of minutes which had passed betweenvarious individuals regarding the case in question; the last minute wasaddressed to M.B. 3, and said "Passed to you for information andnecessary action." It was a melancholy tale from an aggrieved citizenconcerning his infant, who was liable to a heavy tax, and who had beendrowned by his aunt while being washed, before he was two hours old, andthe authorities still demanded the payment of the tax. Kitty, who foundthe helplessness of M.B. 4 annoying, wrote a curt minute, "Neitherinformation nor action seems to us necessary," then had to erase itbecause it looked rude, and wrote instead, more mildly, "Seen, thankyou. This man appears to be covered by M.B.I. 187, in which case histaxation is surely quite in order and no action is possible. We see noreason why we should deal with the case rather than you."

  It is difficult always to be quite polite in minutes, cheap satirecosting so little and relieving the feelings, but it can and should bedone; nothing so shows true breeding in a Civil Servant.

  Kitty next replied to a letter from the Admiralty, about sailors' babies(the family arrangements of sailors are, of course, complicated, owingto their having a wife in every port). The Admiralty said that My LordsCommissioners had read the Minister of Brains' (i.e. Kitty's) lastletter to them on this subject with much surprise. The Admiralty'sfaculty of surprise was infinitely fresh; it seemed new, like mercy,each returning day. The Minister of Brains evoked it almost every timehe, through the pens of his clerks, wrote to them. My Lords viewed withgrave apprehension the line taken by the Minister on this importantsubject, and They trusted it would be reconsidered. (My Lords alwayswrote of themselves with a capital They, as if they were deities.) Kittydrafted a reply to this letter and put it aside to consult Prideauxabout. She carried on a chronic quarrel with My Lords, doubtless to thesatisfaction of both sides.

  Soothed and stimulated by this encounter, she was the better prepared intemper when she opened a file in which voluminous correspondenceconcerning two men named Stephen Williams had been jacketed together bya guileless registry, to whom such details as that one Stephen Williamsappeared to be a dentist's assistant and the other a young man in thediplomatic service were as contemptible obstacles, to be taken in aneasy stride. The correspondence in this file was sufficiently at crosspurposes to be more amusing than most correspondence. When she hadperused it, Kitty, sad that she must tear asunder this happily linkedpair, sent it down to the registry with a regretful note that "These twocases, having no connection, should be registered separately," and fellto speculating, as she often did, on the registry, which, amid thetrials that beset them and the sorrows they endured, and the manifoldconfusions and temptations of their dim life, were so strangely oftenright. They worked underground, the registry people, like gnomes in acave, opening letters and registering them and filing them and sendingthem upstairs, astonishingly often in the file which belonged to them.But, mainly, looking for papers and not finding them, and writing "Notrace," "Cannot be traced," on slips, as if the papers were wild animalswhich had got loose and had to be hunted down. A queer life, questing,burrowing, unsatisfied, underground.... No wonder they made somemistakes.

  Kitty opened one now--a bitter complaint, which should have gone to M.B.5, from one who considered himself placed in a wrong category. "When Itell you, sir," it ran, "that at the Leamington High School I carriedoff two prizes (geography and recit
ation) and was twice fourth in myform, and after leaving have given great satisfaction (I am told) as asolicitor's clerk, so that there has been some talk of raising mysalary, you will perhaps be surprised to hear that the LocalIntelligence Board placed me in class C1. I applied to the County Board,and (owing, as I have reason to know, to local feeling and jealousy) Iwas placed by them in C2. Sir, I ask you for a special examination bythe Central Intelligence Board. I should be well up in Class B. Thereare some walking about in this town who are classed B1 and 2, who arethe occasion of much local feeling, as it surprises all who know themthat they should be classed so high. To my knowledge some of thesepersons cannot do a sum right in their heads, and it is thought verystrange that they should have so imposed on the Intelligence Officers,though the reasons for this are not really far to seek, and should beenquired into...."

  A gay and engaging young man with a wooden leg (he had lost his own in1914, and had during the rest of the war worked at the War Office, andcarried the happy Q.M.G. touch) wandered in from M.B. 5 while Kitty wasreading this, and she handed it over to him. He glanced at it.

  "We shall perhaps be surprised, shall we.... How likely.... The publicoverestimate our faculty for surprise. They have yet to learn that theonly thing which would surprise the Ministry of Brains would be findingsomeone correctly classified.... I shall tell him I'm A2 myself, thoughI never got a prize in my life for geography or recitation, and I can'tdo sums in my head for nuts. I ought to be somewhere about B3; Isurprise all who know me.... What I came in to say was, do any of you inhere want a sure tip for the Oaks? Because I've got one. Silly Blighter;yes, you thought he was an absolute outsider, didn't you, so dideveryone else; but he's not. You take the tip, it's a straight one,first hand. No, don't mention it, I always like to do M.B. 3 a goodturn, though I wouldn't do it for everyone.... Well, I'm off, I'mbeastly busy.... Heard the latest Chester, by the way? Someone tried theWheeldon stunt on him--sent him a poisoned thorn by special messenger ina packet "To be opened by the Minister Himself." Jervis-Browne openedit, of course, and nearly pricked him self. When he took it to Chester,Chester did the Sherlock Holmes touch, and said he knew the thorn, itcame off a shrub in Central Africa or Kew Gardens or somewhere. I thinkhe knew the poison, too; he wanted Jervis-Browne to suck it, to makesure, but J.-B. wasn't having any, and Chester didn't like to riskhimself, naturally. His little P.S. would have done it like a shot, butthey thought it would be hard luck on the poor child's people. And whilethey were discussin' it, Chester ran the thing into his own finger bymistake. While J.-B. was waitin' to see him swell up and turn black, andfeelin' bad lest he should be told to suck it (he knows Chester doesn'treally value him at his true worth, you see), Chester whipped out hispenknife and gouged a great slice out of his finger as you'd cut cheese,all round the prick. He turned as white as chalk, J.-B. says, but neverscreamed, except to let out one curse. And when he'd done it, and hadthe shorthand typist in from J.-B.'s room to tie it up, he began togiggle--you know that sad, cynical giggle of his that disconcerts solemnpeople so much--and said he'd have the beastly weapon cleaned and takeit home and frame it in glass, with the other mementoes of a people'shate.... I say, I do waste your time in here, don't I? And my own;that's to say the government's. I'm off."

  "Gay child," Kitty murmured to her neighbour as he went. "He blooms inan office like an orchid in a dust-bin. And very nice too. I rememberbeing nearly as bright at his age; though, for my sins, I was never inQ.M.G. A wonderful Branch that is."

  Thereupon she threw away her cigarette, wrote five letters withextraordinary despatch and undepartmental conciseness of style, and wentto have tea in the canteen.

  4

  The Minister was having tea too, looking even paler than usual, with hisleft hand in a sling. Kitty put up her eye-glasses and looked at himwith increased interest. As ministers go, he was certainly of aninteresting appearance; she had always thought that. She rather likedthe paradoxical combination of shrewdness and idealism, sullenness andhumour, in his white, black-browed, clever face. He looked patient, butpatient perforce, as if he rode natural impatience on a curb. He lookedas if he might know a desperate earnestness, but preferred to keep it atarm's length with a joke; his earnestness would be too grim and violentto be an easy and natural companion to him. He looked as if he might getvery badly hurt, but would cut out the hurt and throw it away with thecold promptness of the surgeon. He was not yet forty, but looked more,perhaps because he enjoyed bad health. At this moment he was eating arock bun and talking to Vernon Prideaux. One difference between them wasthat Prideaux looked an intelligent success, like a civil servant, or arising barrister or M.P., and Chester looked a brilliant failure, andmore like a Sinn Feiner or a Bolshevist. Only not really like either ofthese, because he didn't look as if he would muff things. He might gounder, but his revolutions wouldn't. Kitty, who too greatly despisedpeople who muffed things, recognised the distinction. She had a friendwhose revolutions, which were many, always did go under....

  There was a queer, violent strength about the Minister.

  But when he smiled it was as if someone had flashed a torch on loweringcliffs, and lit them into extraordinary and elf-like beauty. Kitty knewalready that he could be witty; she suddenly perceived now that he couldbe sweet--a bad word, but there seemed no other.

  He ate another rock bun, and another. But they were small. His eyes fellon Kitty, eating a jam sandwich. But his thoughts were elsewhere.

  "Yes, it was me that had to tie it up for him," Ivy Delmer was saying toanother typist. "Luckily I've done First Aid. But I felt likefainting.... The _blood_.... I don't _like_ him, you know; his mannersare so funny and his dictating is so difficult; but I must say I didadmire his pluck.... He never thanked me or anything--he wouldn't, ofcourse. Not that I minded a scrap about that...."

  5

  When Kitty got home to her flat that evening, she found the Boomerang onthe floor. (It was on the floor owing to the lack of a letter-box.) TheBoomerang was a letter from herself, addressed to Neil Desmond, Esq.,and she wrote it and despatched it every few months or so, whenever, infact, she had, at the moment, nothing better to do. On such days as BankHolidays, when she spent them at the office but official work did notpress, Kitty tidied the drawers of her table and wrote to break off herengagement. The drawers got tidied all right, but it is doubtful whetherthe engagement could ever be considered to have got broken off, owing tothe letter breaking it being a boomerang. It was a boomerang becauseNeil Desmond, Esq. was a person of no fixed address. He wrote long andthrilling letters to Kitty (which, if her correspondence had been raidedby the police, would probably have subjected her to arrest--he hadhimself for long been liable to almost every species of arrest, so couldhardly be further incriminated), but when she wrote to the address hegave he was no longer ever there, and so her letters returned to herlike homing pigeons. So the position was that Neil was engaged to Kitty,and Kitty had so far failed to disengage herself from Neil. Neil wasthat friend who has been already referred to as one whose revolutionsalways went under. Kitty had met him first in Greece, in April, 1914.She had since decided that he was probably at his best in Greece. InJuly he had been arming to fight Carson's rebels when the outbreak ofthe European War disappointed him. The parts played by him in theEuropean War were many and various, and, from the British point of view,mostly regrettable. He followed Sir Roger Casement through manyadventures, and only just escaped sharing in the last of all. He partookin the Sinn Fein rising of Easter, 1916 (muffed, as usual, Kitty hadcommented), and had then disappeared, and had mysteriously emerged againin Petrograd a year later, to help with the Russian revolution.Wherever, in fact, a revolution was, Neil Desmond was sure to be. He hadhad, as may be imagined, a busy and satisfactory summer and autumnthere, and had many interesting, if impermanent, friends, such asKerensky, Protopopoff (whom, however, he did not greatly care for),Kaledin, Lenin, Trotzky, Mr. Arthur Ransome, and General Korniloff. (Itmight be thought that the politics of this last-named would not havebeen regarded b
y Neil with a favourable eye, but he was, anyhow, makinga revolution which did not come off.) In January, 1918, Neil had gottired of Russia (this is liable to occur) and gone off to America, wherehe had for some time been doing something or other, no doubtdiscreditable, with an Irish-American league. Then a revolution whichseemed to require his assistance broke out in Equador, which kept himoccupied for some weeks. After that he had gone to Greece, where Kittyvaguely believed him still to be (unless he was visiting, with seditiousintent, the island in the Pacific where the world's great Have-Beenswere harmoniously segregated).

  "The only thing for it," Kitty observed to the cousin with whom shelived, a willowy and lovely young lily of the field, who had had a jobonce but had lost it owing to peace, and was now having a long rest,"The only thing for it is to put it in the agony column of the--no, not_The Times_, of course he wouldn't read it, but the _Irish-AmericanBanner_ or something. 'K. G. to N. D. All over. Regret.'"

  "You'll have to marry him, darling. God means you to," sang her cousin,hooking herself into a flame-coloured and silver evening dress.

  "It certainly looks as if he did," Kitty admitted, and began to take herown clothes off, for she was going to see Pansy in a new revue. (Anthonywould have been the last man to wish to tie Pansy down to homeavocations when duty called; he was much too proud of her specialtalents to wish her to hide them in a napkin.)

  The revue was a good one, Pansy was her best self, lazy, sweet,facetious, and extraordinarily supple, the other performers alsoperformed suitably, each in his manner, and Kitty afterwards had supperwith a party of them. These were the occasions when office work, seenfrom this gayer corner of life, seemed incredibly dusty, tedious andsad....