campaign! It is based on urgent economic needs.”
Oswald would have none of that. Tariff Reform was a quack remedy. “A
Zollverein. Think of it! With an empire in great detached patches all
over the world. Each patch with different characteristics and different
needs. A child could see that a Zollverein is absurd. A child could see
it. Yet to read the speeches of Chamberlain you’d think a tariff could
work geographical miracles and turn the empire into a compact continent,
locked fast against the foreigner. How can a scattered host become a
band of robbers? The mere attempt takes us straight towards disaster.”
“Straight away from it!” Slingsby Darton contradicted.
Oswald went on regardlessly. “An empire—scattered like ours—run on
selfish and exclusive lines _must_ bring us into conflict with every
other people under the sun,” he asserted. “It must do. Apart from the
utter and wanton unrighteousness, apart from the treason to humanity.
Oh! I _hate_ this New Imperialism. I hate it and dread it. It spoils my
sleep at nights. It worries me and worries me....”
Slingsby Darton thought he would do better to worry about this free
trade of ours which was bleeding us to death.
“I do not speak as one ignorant of the empire,” said Oswald. “I have
been watching it——”
Slingsby Darton, disregarded, maintained that he, too, had been
watching.
But Oswald was now at the “I tell you, Sir,” stage.
He declared that the New Imperialism came from Germany. It was invented
by professors of Weltpolitik. Milner had grafted it upon us at Balliol.
But German conditions were altogether different from ours, Germany was a
geographical unity, all drawn together, unified by natural necessity,
like a fist. Germany was indeed a fist—by geographical necessity. The
British empire was like an open hand. Must be like an open hand. We were
an open people—or we were nothing. We were a liberalizing power or we
were the most pretentious sham in history. But we seemed to be
forgetting that liberal idea for which we stood. We swaggered now like
owners, forgetting that we were only trustees. Trustees for mankind. We
were becoming a boastful and a sprawling people. The idea of grabbing
half the world—and then shutting other peoples out with tariffs,
was—Oswald was losing self-control—“a shoving tradesman’s dream.” And we
were doing it—as one might expect “a trust-organizing nail-maker”—phrase
rubbed in with needless emphasis—to do it. We were shoving about,
treading on everybody’s toes—and failing to educate, failing to arm.
Yes—shoving. It was a good word. He did not mind how many times he used
it. “This dream of defying the world without an army, and dominating it
without education!” The Germans were at least logical in their swagger.
If they shoved about they also armed. And they educated. Anyhow they
trained. But we trod on everybody’s toes and tried to keep friends all
round....
So Oswald—under the moose—while Slingsby Darton did what he could by
stabbing an objection at him now and again. It became clearer and
clearer to Slingsby Darton that the only possibility before him of
holding his own, short of throwing knives and glasses at Oswald, was to
capture the offensive.
“You complain of a panacea,” he said, poking out two arresting fingers
at Oswald. “That Tariff Reform is a panacea. But what of education? What
of this education of yours? That also is a panacea.”
And just then apt to his aid came Walsall and the Bishop of Pinner from
their table under the big, black, clerical-looking hippopotamus. Walsall
was a naturalist, and had met Oswald in the days of his biological
enthusiasm; the Bishop of Pinner had formerly been the Bishop of
Tanganyika and knew Oswald by repute. So they came over to greet him and
were at once seized upon as auxiliaries by Slingsby Darton.
“We’re getting heated over politics,” said Slingsby Darton, indicating
that at least Oswald was.
“Every one is getting heated over politics,” said the bishop. “It’s as
bad as the Home Rule split.”
“Sydenham’s panacea is to save the world by education. He won’t hear of
economic organization.”
The bishop opened eyes and mouth at Oswald until he looked like the full
moon....
On that assertion of Slingsby Darton’s they drifted past the paying-desk
to the small smoking-room, and there they had a great dispute about
education beneath a gallery audience, so to speak, composed of antelope,
Barbary sheep, gnu, yaks, and a sea lion. Oswald had never realized
before how passionately he believed in education. It was a revelation.
He discovered himself. He wanted to tell these men they were uneducated.
He did succeed in saying that Mr. Chamberlain was “essentially an
uneducated man.”
Walsall was a very trying opponent for a disputant of swift and
passionate convictions. He had a judicial affectation, a Socratic pose.
He was a grey, fluffy-headed man with large tortoiseshell spectacles and
a general resemblance to a kind wise owl. He liked to waggle his head
slowly from side to side and smile. He liked to begin sentences with
“But have you thought——?” or “I think you have overlooked——” or “So far
from believing that, I hold the exact converse.” He said these things in
a very suave voice as though each remark was carefully dressed in oil
before serving.
He expressed grave doubts whether there was “any benefit in
education—any benefit whatever.”
But the argument that formed that evening’s entertainment for the sea
lion and those assorted ruminating artiodactyls was too prolonged and
heated and discursive to interest any but the most sedulous reader.
Every possible sort of heresy about education seemed loose that night
for the affliction of Oswald. Slingsby Darton said, “Make men prosperous
and education will come of its own accord.” Walsall thought that the
sort of people who benefited by education “would get on anyhow.” He
thought knowledge was of value according to the difficulty one
experienced in attaining it. (Could any sane man really believe that?)
“I would persecute science,” said Walsall, “and then it would be taken
care of by enthusiasts.”
“But do you know,” said Oswald, with an immense quiet in his manner,
“that there is a—a British Empire? An empire with rather urgent needs?”
(Suppressed murmur from Slingsby Darton: “Then I don’t see what your
position is at all!”)
Walsall disputed these “needs.” Weren’t we all too much disposed to make
the empire a thing of plan and will? An empire was a growth. It was like
a man, it grew without taking thought. Presently it aged and decayed. We
were not going to save the empire by taking thought.
(Slingsby Darton, disregarded, now disagreeing with Walsall.)
“Germany takes thought,” Oswald interjected.
“To its own undoing, perhaps,” said Walsall....
The bishop’s method of annoyance was even blander than Walsall’s, and
more exasperating to the fevered victim. He talked of the evils of an
“educated proletariat.” For a stable community only a certain proportion
of educated people was advisable. You could upset the social balance by
over-educating the masses. “We destroy good, honest, simple-souled
workers in order to make discontented clerks.” Oswald spluttered, “You
_must_ make a citizen in a modern population understand something of the
State he belongs to!”
“Better, Faith,” said the bishop. “Far better, Faith. Teach them a
simple Catechism.”
He had visited Russia. He had been to the coronation of the Tzar, a
beautiful ceremony, only a little marred by a quite accidental massacre
of some of the spectators. Those were the days before the Russo-Japanese
war and the coming of the Duma. There was much to admire in Russia, the
good bishop declared; much to learn. Russia was the land of Mary,
great-souled and blessed; ours alas! was the land of bustling Martha.
Nothing more enviable than the political solidarity of Russia—“after our
warring voices.... Time after time I asked myself, ’Aren’t we Westerns
on the wrong track? Here is something—Great. And growing greater.
Something simple. Here is obedience and a sort of primitive contentment.
Trust in the Little White Father, belief in God. Here Christianity
_lives indeed_.’”
About eleven o’clock Walsall was propounding a paradox. “All this talk
of education,” he said, “reminds me of the man who tried to lift himself
by his own ears. How, I ask myself, can a democracy such as ours take an
intelligent interest in its destiny unless it is educated, and how can
it educate itself unless it takes an intelligent interest in its
destiny? How escape that dilemma?”
“A community,” said Oswald, grappling with this after a moment, “a
community isn’t one mind, it’s a number of minds, some more intelligent,
some less. It’s a perpetual flow of new minds——”
Then something gave way within him.
“We sit here,” he said in a voice so full of fury that the mouth of the
bishop fell open, “and while we talk this half-witted, half-clever
_muck_ to excuse ourselves from getting the nation into order, the sands
run out of the glass. The time draws near when the empire will be
challenged——”
He stood up abruptly.
“Have you any idea,” he said, “what the empire might be? Have you
thought of these hundreds of millions to whom we might give light—_had_
we light? Are we to be a possessing and profit-hunting people because we
have not the education to be a leaderly people? Are we to do no better
than Rome and Carthage—and loot the provinces of the world? Loot or
education, that is the choice of every imperial opportunity. All
England, I find, is echoing with screams for loot. Have none of us
vision? None?”
The bishop shook his head sadly. The man, he thought, was raving.
“What _is_ this vision of yours?” sneered Walsall. “Ten thousand
professors?”
“After all,” said Slingsby Darton with a weary insidiousness, “we do not
differ about our fundamental idea. You must have funds. You must endow
your schools. Without Tariff Reform to give you revenue——”
But Oswald was not going to begin over again.
“I ought to be in bed,” he said, looking at his watch. “My doctor sends
me to bed at ten....”
“My God!” he whispered as he put on his coat under the benevolent
supervision of an exceptionally fine Indian buffalo.
“What is to happen to the empire,” he cried, going out into the night
and addressing himself to the moon, to the monument which commemorates
the heroic incompetence of the Duke of York, and to an interested hansom
cabby, “what is to happen to the empire—when these are its educated
opinions?”
§ 5
But it is high time that Joan and Peter came back into this narrative.
For this is their story, it bears their names on its covers and on its
back and on its title-page and at the head of each left-hand page. It
has been necessary to show the state of mind, the mental condition, the
outlook, of their sole guardian when their affairs came into his hands.
This done they now return by telephone. Oswald had not been back in the
comfortable sitting-room at the Climax Club for ten minutes before he
was rung up by Mr. Sycamore and reminded of his duty to his young
charges. A club page called Mr. Sydenham to the receiver in his bedroom.
In those days the telephone was still far from perfection. It had not
been in general use for a decade.... Mr. Sycamore was audible as a still
small voice.
“Mr. Sydenham? Sycamore speaking.”
“No need to be,” said Oswald. “You haven’t been speaking to me.”
“Who am I speaking to? I want Mr. Sydenham. Sycamore speaking.”
“I’m Mr. Sydenham. Who are you? No need to be sick of your speaking so
far as I’m concerned. I’ve only just been called to the telephone——”
“Your solicitor, Sycamore. S.Y.C.A.M.O.R.E.”
“Oh! Right O. How are you, Mr. Sycamore? I’m Sydenham. How are those
children?”
“Hope you’re well, Mr. Sydenham?”
“Gaudy—in a way. How are you?”
“I’ve been with Lady Charlotte today. I don’t know if you’ve heard
anything of——”
Whop! Whop. Bunnik. _Silence._
After a little difficulty communication with Mr. Sycamore was partially
restored. I say partially because his voice had now become very small
and remote indeed. “I was saying, I don’t know if you understand
anything of the present state of affairs.”
“Nothing,” said Oswald. “Fire ahead.”
“Can you hear me distinctly? I find you almost inaudible.”
Remonstrances with the exchange led after a time to slightly improved
communications.
“You were saying something about a fire?” said Mr. Sycamore.
“I said nothing about a fire. You were saying something about the
children?”
“Well, well. Things are in a very confused state, Mr. Sydenham. I hope
you mean to take hold of their education. These children are not being
educated, they are being fought over.”
“Who’s thinking over them?”
“No one. But the Misses Stubland and Lady Charlotte are fighting over
them.... F.I.G.H.T.I.N.G. I want _you_ to think over them....
You—yes.... Think, yes. Both clever children. Great waste if they are
not properly educated.... Matters are really urgent. I have been with
Lady Charlotte today. You know she kidnapped them?”
“Kidnapped?”
A bright girlish voice, an essentially happy voice, cut into the
conversation at this point. “Three minutes _up_,” it said.
Empire-building language fell from Oswald. In some obscure way this
feminine intervention was swept aside, and talk was resumed with Mr.
Sycamore.
It continued to be a fragmentary talk, and for a time the burthen of
some unknown lady complaining to an unknown friend about the behaviour
of a third unknown named George, stated to lack “gumption,” interwove
with the main theme. But Mr. Sycamore did succeed in conveying to Oswald
a sense of urgency about the welfare of his two charges. Immediate
attention was demanded. They were being neglected. The girl was ill. “I
would like to talk it over with you as soon as possible,” said Mr.
Sycamore.
“Can you come and breakfast here at eight?” said the man from the
tropics.
“Half past nine,” said the Londoner, and the talk closed.
The talk ended, but for a time the bell of Oswald’s telephone remained
in an agitated state, giving little nervous rings at intervals. When he
answered these the exchange said “Number please,” and when he said, “You
rang _me_,” the exchange said, “Oh, no! we didn’t....”
“An empire,” whispered Oswald, sitting on the edge of his bed, “which
cannot even run a telephone service efficiently....”
“Education....”
He tried to recall his last speech at the club. Had he ranted? What had
they thought of it? What precisely had he said? While they sat and
talked _muck_—his memory was unpleasantly insistent upon that
“_muck_”—the sands ran out of the hour-glass, a new generation grew up.
Had he said that? That was the point of it all—about the new generation.
A new generation was growing up and we were doing nothing to make it
wiser, more efficient, to give it a broader outlook than the generation
that had blundered into and blundered through the Boer war. Had he said
that? That was what he ought to have said.
§ 6
For a long time he sat on his bed, blank-minded and too tired to finish
undressing. He got to bed at last. But not to sleep. He found that the
talk in the club had disturbed his mind almost unendurably. It had
pointed and endorsed everything that he had been trying not to think
about the old country. Now, too weary and too excited to sleep, he
turned over and over again, unprofitably and unprogressively, the
tangled impressions of his return to England.
How many millions of such hours of restless questioning must have been
spent by wakeful Englishmen in the dozen years between the Boer war and
the Great war; how many nocturnally scheming brains must have explored
the complicated maze of national dangers, national ambitions, and
national ineptitude! If “Wake up, England,” sowed no great harvest of
change in the daylight, it did at any rate produce large phantom crops
at night. He argued with Walsall over and over again, sometimes wide
awake and close to the point, sometimes drowsily with the discussion
becoming vague and strangely misshapen and incoherent. Was Walsall
right? Was it impossible to change the nature and quality of a people?
Must we English always be laggards in peace and blunderers in war? Were
our achievements accidents, and our failures essential? Was slackness in
our blood? Surely a great effort might accomplish much, a great effort
to reorganize political life, to improve national education, to make the
press a better instrument of public thought and criticism. To which
Walsall answered again with, “How can a democratic community take an
intelligent interest in its destinies unless it is educated, and how can
it educate itself unless it takes an intelligent interest in its
destinies?”
Oswald groaned and turned over in bed.
Thought passed by insensible degrees into dreaming and dreaming
shallowed again to wakefulness. Always he seemed to be arguing with
Walsall and the bishop for education and effort; nevertheless, now
vaguely apprehended as an atmospheric background, now real and close,
the black forest of his African nightmare was about him. Always he was
struggling on and always he was hoping to see down some vista the warm
gleam of daylight, the promise of the open. And Walsall, a vast forest
owl with enormous spectacles, kept getting in the way, flapping hands
that were really great wings at him and assuring him that there was no
way out. None. “This forest is life. This forest will always be life.
There is no other life. After all it isn’t such a very bad forest.”
Other figures, too, came and went; a gigantic bishop sitting back in an
easy chair blocked one hopeful vista, declaring that book-learning only
made the lower classes discontented and mischievous, and then a stupidly
contented fat man smoking a fat cigar drove in a gig athwart the line of
march. He said nothing; he just drove his gig. Then somehow an
automobile came in, a most hopeful means of escape, except that it had
broken down; and Oswald was trying to repair it in spite of the jeering
of an elderly gentleman in a white waistcoat. Suddenly the whole forest
swarmed with children. There were countless children; there were just
two children. Instead of a multitudinous expedition Oswald found himself
alone in the black jungle with just two children, two white and stunted
children who were dying for the air and light. No one had cared for
them. One was ill, seriously ill. Unless the way out was found they
could not live. They were Dolly’s children, his wards. But what was he
to do for them?...
Then far ahead he saw that light of the great conflagration, that light
that promised to be daylight and became a fire....
“Black coffee,” said Oswald during one of the wide-awake intervals.
“Cigars. Talk. Over-excited.... I ought to be more careful.... I forget
how flimsy I am still....
“I must get my mind off these things. I’ll talk to old Sycamore tomorrow
and see about this little master Peter Stubland and his foster-sister.
I’ll go into the matter thoroughly. I haven’t thought of them before.
“I wonder if the boy still takes after Dolly....
“After all,” he said, rolling over, “it’s true. Education is the big
neglected duty of the time. It’s fundamental. And what am I doing? It’s
just England—England all over—to let that boy be dragged up. I ought to
see about him—now. I’ll go down there....
“I’ll go and stay with Aunt Charlotte for a day or so. I’ll send her a
wire tomorrow.”
§ 7
The quiet but observant life of old Cashel at Chastlands was greatly
enlivened by the advent of Oswald.
Signs of a grave and increasing agitation in the mind of Cashel’s
mistress became evident immediately after the departure of Mr. Sycamore.
Manifestly whatever that gentleman had said or done—old Cashel had been
able to catch very little—had been of a highly stimulating nature. So
soon as he was out of the house, Lady Charlotte abandoned her sofa and
table, upsetting her tonic as she did so, and still wearing her
dressing-gown and cap, proceeded to direct a hasty packing for Italy.
Unwin became much agitated, and a housemaid being addressed as a
“perfect fool” became a sniffing fount of tears. There was a running to
and fro with trunks and tea-baskets, a ringing of bells, and minor
orders were issued and countermanded; the carriage was summoned twice
for an afternoon drive and twice dismissed. When at last the lace
peignoir was changed for a more suitable costume in which to take tea,
Lady Charlotte came so near to actual physical violence that Unwin
abruptly abandoned her quest of a perfect pose for wig and cap, and her
ladyship surprised and delighted Cashel with a blond curl cocked
waggishly over one eye. She did not have tea until half-past five.
She talked to herself with her hard blue eyes fixed on vacancy. “I will
not stay here to be insulted,” she said.
“Rampageous,” whispered Cashel on the landing. “Rumbustious. What’s it
all about?”
“Cashel!” she said sharply as he was taking away the tea-things.
“M’lady.”
“Telephone to Mr. Grimes and ask him to take tickets as usual for myself
and Unwin to Pallanza—for tomorrow.”
It was terrible but pleasing to have to tell her that Mr. Grimes would
now certainly have gone home from his office.
“See that it is done tomorrow. Tomorrow I must catch the eleven
forty-seven for Charing Cross. I shall take lunch with me in the train.
A wing of chicken. A drop of claret. Perhaps a sandwich. Gentleman’s
Relish or shrimp paste. And a grape or so. A mere mouthful. I shall
expect you to be in attendance to help with the luggage as far as
Charing Cross....”
So she was going after all.
“Like a flight,” mused Cashel. “What’s after the Old Girl?”...
He grasped the situation a little more firmly next day.
The preparations for assembling Lady Charlotte in the hall before
departure were well forward at eleven o’clock, although there was no
need to start for the station until the half hour. A brief telegram from
Oswald received about half-past ten had greatly stimulated these
activities....
Unwin, very white in the face—she always had a bilious headache when
travelling was forward—and dressed in the peculiar speckled black dress
and black hat that she considered most deterrent to foreign depravity,
was already sitting stiffly in the hall with Lady Charlotte’s
purple-coloured dressing-bag beside her, and Cashel having seen to the
roll of rugs was now just glancing through the tea-basket to make sure
that it was in order, when suddenly there was the flapping, rustling
sound of a large woman in rapid movement upon the landing above, and
Lady Charlotte appeared at the head of the stairs, all hatted, veiled
and wrapped for travelling. Her face was bright white with excitement.
“Unwin, I want you,” she cried. “Cashel, say I’m in bed. Say I’m ill and
must not be disturbed. Say I’ve been taken ill.”
She vanished with the agility of a girl of twenty—except that the
landing was of a different opinion.
The two servants heard her scuttle into her room and slam the door.
There was a great moment of silence.
“Oh, _Lor’_!” Unwin rose with the sigh of a martyr, and taking the
dressing-bag with her—the fittings alone were worth forty pounds—and
pressing her handkerchief to her aching brow, marched upstairs.
Cashel, agape, was roused by the ringing of the front door bell. He
opened to discover Mr. Oswald Sydenham with one arm in a sling and a rug
upon the other.
“Hullo, Cashel,” he said. “I suppose my room isn’t occupied? My telegram
here? How’s Lady Charlotte?”
“Very poorly, sir,” said Cashel. “She’s had to take in her bed, sir.”
“Pity. Anything serious?”
“A sudden attact, sir.”
“H’m. Well, tell her I’m going to inflict myself upon her for a day or
so. Just take my traps in and I’ll go on with this fly to Limpsfield.
Say I’ll be back to dinner.”
“Certainly, sir.”
The old man bustled out to get in the valise and Gladstone bag that
constituted Oswald’s luggage. When he came into the hall again he found
the visitor scrutinizing the tea-basket and the roll of rugs with his
one penetrating eye in a manner that made him dread a question. But
Oswald never questioned servants; on this occasion only he winked at
one.
“Nothing wrong with the arm, sir?” asked old Cashel.