the British community in 1913. For example there was the violent unrest
of the women. That may exercise the historian in the future profoundly.
Probably he will question the facts. Right up to the very outbreak of
the war there was not a week passed without some new ridiculous outrage
on the part of the militant suffragettes. Now it was a fine old church
would be burnt, now a well-known country house; now the mania would take
the form of destroying the letters in pillar-boxes, now the attack was
upon the greens of the golf links. Public meetings ceased to be public
meetings because of the endless interruptions by shrill voices crying
“Votes for women!” One great triumph of the insurgents was a raid with
little hammers upon the west-end shop-windows. They burnt the tea
pavilion in Kew Gardens, set fire to unoccupied new buildings,
inaugurated a campaign of picture-slashing at the public exhibitions.
For a time they did much mischief to the cushions and fittings of
railway carriages. Churches had to be locked up and museums closed on
account of them. Poor little Pelham Ford church had had to buy a new
lock against the dangers of some wandering feminist. And so on and so
on. But this revolt of the women was more than a political revolt. That
concentration upon the Vote was the concentration of a vast confused
insurgence of energy that could as yet find no other acceptable means of
expression. New conditions had robbed whole strata of women of any
economic importance, new knowledge had enormously diminished the need
for their domestic services, the birth-rate had fallen, the marriage age
had risen, but the heedless world had made no provision for the vitality
thus let loose. The old ideals of a womanly life showed absurd in the
light of the new conditions. Why be pretty and submissive when nobody
wants you? Why be faithful with no one to be faithful to? Why be devoted
in a world which has neither enough babies nor lovers nor even its old
proportion of helpless invalids to go round? Why, indeed, to come to the
very heart of the old ideal, keep chaste when there is no one to keep
chaste for? Half the intelligent women in that world had stood as Joan
had done, facing their own life and beauty and asking desperately “What
is the Good of it?”
But while the old nets rotted visibly, there were no new nets being
woven. There was everywhere the vague expectation of new nets, of a new
comprehensiveness, a new way of life, but there was no broad movement
towards any new way of life. Everywhere the old traditions and standards
and institutions remained, discredited indeed and scoffed at, but in
possession of life. Energetic women were reaching out in a mood of the
wildest experiment towards they knew not what. It was a time of chaotic
trials. The disposition of the first generation of released women had
been towards an austere sexlessness, a denial of every feminine
weakness, mental and physical, and so by way of Highmorton and hockey to
a spinsterish, bitter competition with men. A few still bolder spirits,
and Aunt Phœbe Stubland was among these pioneers, carried the
destructive “Why not?” still further. Grant Allen’s _Woman Who Did_ and
Arthur’s infidelities were but early aspects of a wide wave of
philoprogenitive and eugenic sentimentality. The new generation carried
“why not?” into the sphere of conduct with amazing effect.
Women are the custodians of manners, and mothers and hostesses who did
not dream of the parallelism of their impulse with militancy, were
releasing the young to an unheard-of extravagance of dress and festival.
Joan could wear clothes at a Chelsea dance that would have shocked a
chorus girl half a century before; she went about London in the small
hours with any casual male acquaintance; so far as appearances went she
might have been the most disreputable of women. She yielded presently to
Huntley’s persistence and began dancing the tango with him. It was the
thing to slip away from a dance in slippers and a wrap, and spend an
hour or so careering about London in a taxi or wandering on Hampstead
Heath. Joan’s escapades fretted the sleeping tramps upon the Thames
Embankment. London, which had hitherto dispersed its gatherings about
eleven and got to bed as a rule by midnight, was aspiring in those days
to become nocturnal. The restaurants were obliged to shut early, but a
club was beyond such regulations. Necessity created the night club,
which awoke about eleven and closed again after a yawning breakfast of
devilled bones.
A number of night clubs were coming into existence, to the particular
delight of young Winterbaum. His boyish ambition for Joan was returning.
He had seen her dance and heard her dancing praised. Vulgar people made
wild vulgar guesses in his hearing at what lay behind her grave and
sometimes sombre prettiness. He pretended to be very discreet about
that. It became the pride of his life to appear at some crowded night
club in possession of Joan; he did not know what people thought of her
or of him but he hoped for the worst. He wore the most beautiful buttons
on his white waistcoat and the most delicate gold chain you can imagine.
In the cloakroom he left a wonderful overcoat and a wonderful cane.
Sometimes he encouraged the ringlets in his hair and felt like Disraeli,
and sometimes he restrained them and felt like a cold, cynical
Englishman of the darker sort. He would sit swelling with pride beside
Joan, and nod to painted women and heavy men; he knew no end of people.
He did not care what sort of people they were so long as he knew them.
It was always his ambition to be seen drinking champagne with Joan. Joan
had no objection in the world, but she could not bring herself to
swallow a drink that tasted, she thought, like weak vinegar mixed with a
packet of pins and that went up your nose and made your brain swing
slowly to and fro on its axis for the rest of the evening. So she just
drank nothing at all.
She would sit at her table with her pretty bare arms folded under her
like the paws of a little cat, with her face, that still had the
delicacy and freshness of a child’s, as intent as any intelligent
child’s can be on the jumble of people before her, and her sombre eyes,
calm and beautiful, looking at smart London trying at last to take its
pleasures gaily. Perhaps some fortunate middle-aged gentleman of
Winterbaum’s circle would be attempting to charm her by brilliant
conversation, as, for instance Sir Joseph Lystrom, with a full-mouthed
German flavour in his voice, in this style: “Pretty cheap here this
evening somehow, eh? _What?_” Somewhere in the back of Sir Joseph’s mind
was the illusion that by barking in this way and standing treat
profusely, lay the road to a girl’s young love. Somewhen perhaps—who
knows?—he may have found justification for that belief. Joan had long
since learnt how to turn a profile to these formal attentions, and
appear to be interested without hearing or answering a word.
Or sometimes it would be Huntley. Huntley had lately taken to dodging
among the night clubs to which he had access, when Joan was in London.
Usually such nights ended in futility, but occasionally he was lucky and
found Joan. Then he would come and talk and suggest ideas to her. He
still remained the most interesting personality in her circle. She
pretended to Winterbaum and herself to be bored by his pursuit, but
indeed she looked for it. Except for Winterbaum and Huntley and
Winterbaum’s transitory introductions, she remained a detached figure in
these places. Sometimes quite good-looking strangers sat a little way
off and sought to convey to her by suitable facial expression the growth
of a passionate interest in her. She conveyed to them in return that
they were totally invisible to her, resisting at times a macabre
disposition to take sights at them suddenly and amazingly or put out her
tongue. Sometimes women of the great Winterbaum circle would make a fuss
of her. They called her a “dear child.” They would have been amazed at
the complete theoretical knowledge a dear child of unrestricted reading
could possess of them and their little ways.
“So this is the life of pleasure,” thought the dear child. “_Well!_”
And then that same question that Peter seemed always to be asking of
Oswald: “Is this _all_?”
When she danced in these places she danced with a sort of contempt. And
the sage, experienced men who looked at her so knowingly never realized
how much they imagined about her and how little they knew.
She would sit and think how indecent it was to be at the same time old
and dissipated. Some of these women here, she perceived, were older than
her aunts Phœbe and Phyllis, years older. Their faces were painted and
done most amazingly—Joan knew all about facial massage and the rest of
it—and still they were old faces. But their poor bodies were not nearly
so old as their faces, that was the tragedy of them. Joan regarded the
tremendous V decolletage of a lively grandmother before her, and the
skin of the back shone as young as her own. The good lady was slapping
the young gentleman next to her with a quite smooth and shapely arm.
Joan speculated whether the old fashion of the masked ball and the
Venetian custom of masks which she had been reading about that day in
Voltaire’s _Princesse de Babylone_, might not have something to do with
that. But—she reverted—only young people ought to make love at all. Her
aunts didn’t; Oswald didn’t. And Oswald was years younger than some of
the men here, and in Joan’s eyes at least far more presentable. He had a
scarred face indeed but a clean skin; some of the old men here had skins
one would shiver to touch, and the expressions of evil gargoyles. She
let her thoughts dwell—not for the first time—on Oswald and a queer
charm he had for her. Never in all her life had she known him do or say
a mean, dishonest, unjust, or unkind thing. In some ways he was oddly
like Peter, but wise and gentle—and not exasperating....
But all this playing with love in London was detestable, all of it. This
was really a shameful place. It was shameful to be here. Love—mixed up
with evening dress and costly clothes and jewellery and nasty laughter
and cigars, strong cigars and drink that slopped about. It was
disgusting. These people made love after their luncheons and dinners and
suppers. Pigs! They were all pigs. They looked like pigs. If ever she
made love it should be in the open air, in some lovely place with blue
mountains in the distance, where there were endless wild flowers, where
one could swim. No man she had ever talked with of love had really
understood anything of the beauty of love and the cleanness of
love—except Mir Jelaluddin. And he had a high-pitched voice and a
staccato accent—and somehow.... One ought not to be prejudiced against a
dark race, but somehow it was unthinkable....
Joan sat in the night club dreaming of a lover, and the men about her
glanced furtively at her face, asking themselves, “Can it be I?” men
with red ears, men with greasy hair, men with unpleasing necks and
clumsy gestures; bald men, fat men, watery-eyed men, cheats, profiteers,
usurers, snobs, toadies, successful old men of every sort and young men
who had done nothing and for the most part never would. “Can it be I?”
they surmised dimly, seeing her pensive eyes. And she was dreaming of a
lithe, white, slender figure, strong and clean. He would hunt among the
mountains, he would swim swift rivers; he would never drink strong drink
nor reek of smoke....
At this moment young Winterbaum became urgent with his beautiful gold
cigarette case. Joan took a cigarette and lighted it, and sat smoking
with her elbows side by side on the table.
“You’re not bored?” said young Winterbaum.
“Oh, no. I’m watching people. I don’t want to talk.”
“Oh! not at all?” said young Winterbaum.
“So long as one has to talk,” he said after reflection and with an air
of cleverness, “one isn’t really friends.”
“Exactly,” said Joan, and blew smoke through her nose.
What was it she had been thinking about? She could not remember, the
thread was broken. She was sorry. She had a vague memory of something
pleasant.... She fell into a fresh meditation upon Jews. All Jews, she
thought, ought to grow beards. At least after they were thirty. They are
too dark to shave, and besides there is a sort of indignity about their
beaked shaven faces. A bearded old Jew can look noble, a moustached old
Jew always looked like an imitation of a Norman gentleman done in
cheaper material. But that of course was exactly what he was....
Why did men of forty or fifty always want to dance with and make love to
flappers? Some of these girls here must be two or three years younger
than herself. What was the interest? They couldn’t talk; they weren’t
beautiful; one could see they weren’t beautiful. And they laughed, good
God! how they laughed! Girls ought to be taught to laugh, or at any rate
taught not to laugh offensively. Laughter ought to be a joyful,
contagious thing, jolly and kind, but these shrieks! How few of these
people looked capable of real laughter! They just made this loud
chittering sound. Only human beings laugh....
In this manner the mind of Joan was running on the evening when she saw
Peter and Hetty come into the club which tried to live up to the name of
“The Nest of the Burning Phœnix.” Some tango experts had just
relinquished the floor and there was a space amidst the throng when
Hetty made her entry. Hetty had made a great effort, she was in full
London plumage, and her effect was tremendous.
About her little bold face was a radiant scheme of peacock’s feathers,
her slender neck carried a disc a yard and a quarter wide; her slender,
tall body was sheathed in black and peacock satin; she wore enormous
earrings and a great barbaric chain. Her arms were bare except for a
score of bangles, and she had bare sandalled feet. She carried her arrow
point of a chin triumphantly. Peter was not her only attendant. There
was also another man in her train whom every one seemed to recognize, a
big, square-faced, handsome man of thirty-five or so who made Peter look
very young and flimsy. “She’s got Fred Beevor!” said Winterbaum with
respect, and dropped the word “Million.” Peter’s expression was stony,
but Joan judged he was not enjoying himself.
There were very few unoccupied chairs and tables, but opposite Joan were
two gilt seats and another disengaged at a table near at hand. Hetty was
too busy with her triumph to note Joan until Beevor had already chosen
this place. With a slight awkwardness the two parties mingled. Young
Winterbaum at least was elated. Beevor after a few civilities to Joan
let it appear that Hetty preoccupied him. Peter was evidently not
enjoying himself at all. Joan found him seated beside her and silent.
Joan knew that it is the feminine rôle to lead conversation, but it
seemed to her rather fun to have to encourage a tongue-tied Peter. A
malicious idea came into her head.
“Well, Petah,” she said; “why don’t you say I oughtn’t to be here?”
Peter regarded her ambiguously. He had an impulse.
“No decent people ought to be here,” he said quietly. “Let’s go home,
Joan.”
Her heart jumped at the suggestion. All her being said yes. And then she
remembered that she had as much right to have a good time as Peter. If
she went back with him it would be like giving in to him; it would be
like admitting his right to order her about. And besides there was
Hetty. He wasn’t really disgusted. All he wanted to do really was to
show off because he was jealous of Hetty. He didn’t want to go home with
Joan. She wasn’t going to be a foil for Hetty anyhow. And finally, once
somewhere he had refused her almost exactly the same request. She
checked herself and considered gravely. A little touch of spite crept
into her expression.
“No,” she said slowly. “No.... I’ve only just come, Petah.”
“Very well,” said Peter. “_I_ don’t mind. If you like this sort of
thing——”
He said no more, sulking visibly.
Joan resolved to dance at the first opportunity, and to dance in a bold
and reckless way—so as thoroughly to exasperate Peter. She looked about
the room through the smoke-laden atmosphere in the hope of seeing
Huntley....
She and Peter sat side by side, feeling very old and experienced and
worldly and up-to-date. But indeed they were still only two children who
ought to have been packed off to bed hours before.
§ 7
The disorder in the world of women, the dissolution of manners and
restraints, was but the more intimate aspect of a universal drift
towards lawlessness. The world of labour was seething also with the same
spirit of almost aimless insurrection. In a world of quickened
apprehensions and increasing stimulus women were losing faith in the
rules of conduct that had sufficed in a less exacting age. Far
profounder and more dangerous to the established order were the
scepticisms of the workers. The pretensions of the old social system
that trade unionism had scarcely challenged were now being subjected
throughout all western Europe to a pitiless scrutiny by a new and more
educated type of employé.
The old British trade unionism had never sought much more than increased
wages and a slightly higher standard of life; its acceptance of
established institutions had been artlessly complete; it had never
challenged the authority nor the profits of the proprietor. It had never
proposed more than a more reasonable treaty with the masters, a fairer
sharing of the good gifts of industry. But infatuated by the evil
teachings of an extreme individualism, a system of thought which was
indeed never more than a system of base excuses dressed up as a
philosophy, the directing and possessing classes had failed altogether
to agree with their possible labour adversary quickly while they were
yet in the way with him. They had lacked the intelligence to create a
sympathetic industrial mentality, and the conscience to establish a
standard of justice. They left things alone until the grit of a formless
discontent had got into every cog of the industrial machinery. Too late,
the employers were now conceding the modest demands that labour had made
in the ’eighties and ’nineties, they were trying to accept the offers of
dead men; they found themselves face to face with an entirely less
accommodating generation. This new labour movement was talking no longer
of shorter hours and higher pay but of the social revolution. It did not
demand better treatment from the capitalist; it called him a profiteer
and asked him to vanish from the body politic. It organized strikes now
not to alter the details of its working conditions as its predecessor
had done, but in order to end the system by making it impossible. In
Great Britain as on the Continent, the younger generation of labour was
no longer asking to have the harness that bound it to the old order made
easier and lighter; it was asking for a new world.
The new movement seemed to men of Oswald’s generation to come as
thunderstorms will sometimes come, as the militant suffragette had
seemed to come, suddenly out of a clear sky. But it was far more ominous
than the suffragette movement, for while that made one simple explicit
demand, this demanded nothing short of a new economic order. It asked
for everything and would be content with nothing. It was demanding from
an old habitual system the supreme feat of reconstruction. Short of that
vague general reconstruction it promised no peace. Higher wages would
not pacify it; shorter hours would not pacify it. It threatened sabotage
of every sort, and a steady, incessant broadening antagonism of master
and man. Peter, half sympathetic and half critical, talked about it to
Oswald one day.
“They all say, ’I’m a Rebel!’” said Peter. “’Rebel’ is their cant word.”
“Yes, but rebel against what?”
“Oh! the whole system.”
“They have votes.”
“They get humbugged, they say. They do, you know. The party system is a
swindle, and everybody understands that. Why don’t we clean it up?
P.R.’s the only honest method. They don’t understand how it is rigged,
but they know it is rigged. When you talk about Parliament they laugh.”
“But they have their Unions.”
“They don’t trust their leaders. They say they are got at. They say they
are old-fashioned and bluffed by the politicians.... They are....”
“Then what do they want?”
“Just to be out of all this. They are bored to tears by their work, by
the world they have to live in, by the pinched mean lives they have to
lead—in the midst of plenty and luxury—bored by the everlasting dulness
and humbug of it all.”
“But how are they going to alter it?”
“That’s all vague. Altogether vague. Cole and Mellor and those Cambridge
chaps preach Guild Socialism to them, but I don’t know how far they take
it in—except that they agree that profit is unnecessary. But the
fundamental fact is just blind boredom and the desire to smash up
things. Just on the off chance of their coming better. The employer has
been free to make the world for them, and this is the world he has made.
Damn him! That’s how they look at it. They are bored by his face, bored
by his automobile, bored by his knighthood, bored by his country house
and his snob of a wife——”
“But what can they do?”
“Make things impossible.”
“They can’t run things themselves.”
“They aren’t convinced of that. Anyhow if they smash up things the
employer goes first, and he’s the chap they seem to be principally
after——”
Peter reflected. Then he gave a modern young Englishman’s view of the
labour conflict. “The employers have been pretty tidy asses not to see
that their workpeople get a better, more amusing life than they do. It
was their business and their interest to do so. It could have been
managed easily. But they’re so beastly disloyal. And so mean. They not
only sweat labour themselves but they won’t stir a finger to save it
from jerry-built housing, bad provisioning, tally-men, general ugliness,
bad investments, rotten insurance companies—every kind of rotten old
thing. Any one may help kill _their_ sheep. They’ve got no gratitude to
their workers. They won’t even amuse them. Why couldn’t they set up
decent theatres for them, and things like that? It’s so stupid of them.
These employers are the most dangerous class in the community. There’s
enough for every one nowadays and over. It’s the first business of
employers to see workpeople get their whack. What good are they if they
don’t do that? But they never have. Labour is convinced now that they
never will. They run about pretending to be landed gentry. They’ve got
their people angry and bitter now, they’ve destroyed public confidence
in their ways, and it serves them jolly well right if the workmen make
things impossible for them. I think they will. I hope they will.”
“But this means breaking up the national industries,” said Oswald.
“Where is this sort of thing going to end?”
“Oh! things want shaking up,” said Peter.
“Perhaps,” he added, “one _must_ break up old things before one can hope
for new. I suppose the masters won’t let go while they think there’s a
chance of holding on....”
He had not a trace left of the Victorian delusion that this might after
all be the best of all possible worlds. He thought that our politicians
and our captains of industry were very poor muddlers indeed. They
drifted. Each one sat in his own works, he said, and ran them for profit
without caring a rap whither the whole system was going. Compared with
Labour even their poverty of general ideas was amazing. Peter, warming
with his subject, walked to and fro across the Pelham Ford lawn beside
Oswald, proposing to rearrange industrialism as one might propose to
reshuffle a pack of cards.
“But suppose things smash up,” said Oswald.
“Smash up,” did not seem to alarm Peter.