found your true vocation. One sees now how the new world will be
arranged after the war. The women will continue to do all the
bureaucratic jobs, all that entails routine and neatness and
interfering with other people's affairs. And man, it is to be hoped,
will be left free for the important statesman's business, free for
creation and thought. He will stay at home and give proper education
to the children, too. He is fit to do these things, because his mind
is disinterested and detached. It's an arrangement which will liberate
all man's best energies for their proper uses. The only flaw I can see
in the system is that you women will be so fiendishly and ruthlessly
tyrannical in your administration."
"You can't seriously expect me to argue with you," said Millicent.
"No, please don't. I am not strong enough. My dung-carrying has taken
the edge off all my reasoning powers."
Millicent spent the next morning in completely rearranging Dick's
furniture. By lunch-time every article in the cottage was occupying a
new position.
"That's much nicer," said Millicent, surveying her work and seeing
that it was good.
There was a knock at the door. Dick opened it and was astonished to
find Hyman.
"I just ran down to see how you were getting on," he explained.
"I'm getting on very well since my sister rearranged my furniture,"
said Dick. He found it pleasing to have an opportunity of exercising
his long unused powers of malicious irony. This was very mild, but
with practice he would soon come on to something more spiteful and
amusing.
Hyman shook hands with Millicent, scowling as he did so. He was
irritated that she was there; he wanted to talk with Dick alone. He
turned his back on her and began addressing Dick.
"Well," he said, "I haven't seen you since the fatal day. How is the
turnip-hoeing?"
"Pretty beastly," said Dick.
"Better than doing hard labour in a gaol, I suppose?"
Dick nodded his head wearily, foreseeing what must inevitably come.
"You've escaped that all right," Hyman went on.
"Yes; you ought to be thankful," Millicent chimed in.
"I still can't understand why you did it, Greenow. It was a blow to
me. I didn't expect it of you." Hyman spoke with feeling. "It was
desertion; it was treason."
"I agree," said Millicent judicially. "He ought to have stuck to his
principles."
"He ought to have stuck to what was right, oughtn't he, Miss Greenow?"
Hyman turned towards Millicent, pleased at finding someone who shared
his views.
"Of course," she replied--"of course. I totally disagree with you
about what is right. But if he believed it right not to fight, he
certainly ought to have gone to prison for his belief."
Dick lit a pipe with an air of nonchalance. He tried to disguise the
fact that he was feeling extremely uncomfortable under these two pairs
of merciless, accusing eyes.
"To my mind, at any rate," said Millicent, "your position seems quite
illogical and untenable, Dick."
It was a relief to be talked to and not about.
"I'm sorry about that," said Dick rather huskily--not a very
intelligent remark, but what was there to say?
"Of course, it's illogical and untenable. Your sister is quite right."
Hyman banged the table.
"I can't understand what induced you to take it up----"
"After you'd said you were going to be one of the absolutes," cried
Hyman, interrupting and continuing Millicent's words.
"Why?" said Millicent.
"Why, why, why?" Hyman echoed.
Dick, who had been blowing out smoke at a great rate, put down his
pipe. The taste of the tobacco was making him feel rather sick. "I
wish you would stop," he said wearily. "If I gave you the real
reasons, you wouldn't believe me. And I can't invent any others that
would be in the least convincing."
"I believe the real reason is that you were afraid of prison."
Dick leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. He did not mind being
insulted now; it made no difference. Hyman and Millicent were still
talking about him, but what they said did not interest him; he
scarcely listened.
They went back to London together in the evening.
"Very intelligent woman, your sister," said Hyman just before they
were starting. "Pity she's not on the right side about the war and so
forth."
Four weeks later Dick received a letter in which Hyman announced that
he and Millicent had decided to get married.
"I am happy to think," Dick wrote in his congratulatory reply, "that
it was I who brought you together."
He smiled as he read through the sentence; that was what the Christian
martyr might say to the two lions who had scraped acquaintance over
his bones in the amphitheatre.
* * * * *
One warm afternoon in the summer of 1918, Mr. Hobart, Clerk to the
Wibley Town Council, was disturbed in the midst of his duties by the
sudden entry into his office of a small dark man, dressed in corduroys
and gaiters, but not having the air of a genuine agricultural
labourer.
"What may I do for you?" inquired Mr. Hobart.
"I have come to inquire about my vote," said the stranger.
"Aren't you already registered?"
"Not yet. You see, it isn't long since the Act was passed giving us
the vote."
Mr. Hobart stared.
"I don't quite follow," he said.
"I may not look it," said the stranger, putting his head on one side
and looking arch--"I may not look it, but I will confess to you,
Mr.--er--Mr.--er----"
"Hobart."
"Mr. Hobart, that I am a woman of over thirty."
Mr. Hobart grew visibly paler. Then, assuming a forced smile and
speaking as one speaks to a child or a spoiled animal, he said:
"I see--I see. Over thirty, dear me."
He looked at the bell, which was over by the fireplace at the other
side of the room, and wondered how he should ring it without rousing
the maniac's suspicions.
"Over thirty," the stranger went on. "You know my woman's secret. I am
Miss Pearl Bellairs, the novelist. Perhaps you have read some of my
books. Or are you too busy?"
"Oh no, I've read several," Mr. Hobart replied, smiling more and more
brightly and speaking in even more coaxing and indulgent tones.
"Then we're friends already, Mr. Hobart. Anyone who knows my books,
knows me. My whole heart is in them. Now, you must tell me all about
my poor little vote. I shall be very patriotic with it when the time
comes to use it."
Mr. Hobart saw his opportunity.
"Certainly, Miss Bellairs," he said. "I will ring for my clerk and
we'll--er--we'll take down the details."
He got up, crossed the room, and rang the bell with violence.
"I'll just go and see that he brings the right books," he added, and
darted to the door. Once outside in the passage, he mopped his face
and heaved a sigh of relief. That had been a narrow shave, by Jove. A
loony in the office--dangerous-looking brute, too.
* * * * *
On the following day Dick woke up and found himself in a bare
whitewashed room, sparsely furnished with a little iron bed, a
washstand, a chair, and table. He looked round him in surprise. Where
had he got to this time? He went to the door and tried to open it; it
was locked. An idea entered his mind: he was in barracks somewhere;
the Military Authorities must have got hold of him somehow in spite of
his exemption certificate. Or perhaps Pearl had gone and enlisted.
. . . He turned next to the window, which was barred. Outside, he
could see a courtyard, filled, not with soldiers, as he had expected,
but a curious motley crew of individuals, some men and some women,
wandering hither and thither with an air of complete aimlessness. Very
odd, he thought--very odd. Beyond the courtyard, on the farther side
of a phenomenally high wall, ran a railway line and beyond it a
village, roofed with tile and thatch, and a tall church spire in the
midst. Dick looked carefully at the spire. Didn't he know it?
Surely--yes, those imbricated copper plates with which it was covered,
that gilded ship that served as wind vane, the little gargoyles at the
corner of the tower there could be no doubt; it was Belbury church.
Belbury--that was where the . . . No, no; he wouldn't believe it. But
looking down again into that high-walled courtyard, full of those
queer, aimless folk, he was forced to admit it. The County Asylum
stands at Belbury. He had often noticed it from the train, a huge,
gaunt building of sausage-coloured brick, standing close to the
railway, on the opposite side of the line to Belbury village and
church. He remembered how, the last time he had passed in the train,
he had wondered what they did in the asylum. He had regarded it then
as one of those mysterious, unapproachable places, like Lhassa or a
Ladies' Lavatory, into which he would never penetrate. And now, here
he was, looking out through the bars, like any other madman. It was
all Pearl's doing, as usual. If there had been no bars, he would have
thrown himself out of the window.
He sat down on his bed and began to think about what he should do. He
would have to be very sane and show them by his behaviour and speech
that he was no more mad than the commonalty of mankind. He would be
extremely dignified about it all. If a warder or a doctor or somebody
came in to see him, he would rise to his feet and say in the calmest
and severest tones: "May I ask, pray, why I am detained here and upon
whose authority?" That ought to stagger them. He practised that
sentence, and the noble attitude with which he would accompany it, for
the best part of an hour. Then, suddenly, there was the sound of a key
in the lock. He hastily sat down again on the bed. A brisk little man
of about forty, clean shaven and with pince-nez, stepped into the
room, followed by a nurse and a warder in uniform. The doctor! Dick's
heart was beating with absurd violence; he felt like an amateur actor
at the first performance of an imperfectly rehearsed play. He rose,
rather unsteadily, to his feet, and in a voice that quavered a little
with an emotion he could not suppress, began:
"Pray I ask, may . . ."
Then, realizing that something had gone wrong, he hesitated,
stammered, and came to a pause.
The doctor turned to the nurse.
"Did you hear that?" he asked. "He called me May. He seems to think
everybody's a woman, not only himself."
Turning to Dick with a cheerful smile, he went on:
"Sit down, Miss Bellairs, please sit down."
It was too much. Dick burst into tears, flung himself upon the bed,
and buried his face in the pillow. The doctor looked at him as he lay
there sobbing, his whole body shaken and convulsed.
"A bad case, I fear."
And the nurse nodded.
* * * * *
For the next three days Dick refused to eat. It was certainly
unreasonable, but it seemed the only way of making a protest. On the
fourth day the doctor signed a certificate to the effect that forcible
feeding had become necessary. Accompanied by two warders and a nurse,
he entered Dick's room.
"Now, Miss Bellairs," he said, making a last persuasive appeal, "do
have a little of this nice soup. We have come to have lunch with you."
"I refuse to eat," said Dick icily, "as a protest against my unlawful
detention in this place. I am as sane as any of you here."
"Yes, yes." The doctor's voice was soothing. He made a sign to the
warders. One was very large and stout, the other wiry, thin, sinister,
like the second murderer in a play. They closed in on Dick.
"I won't eat and I won't be made to eat!" Dick cried. "Let me go!" he
shouted at the fat warder, who had laid a hand on his shoulder. His
temper was beginning to rise.
"Now, do behave yourself," said the fat warder. "It ain't a bit of use
kicking up a row. Now, do take a little of this lovely soup," he added
wheedlingly.
"Let me go!" Dick screamed again, all his self-control gone. "I will
not let myself be bullied."
He began to struggle violently. The fat warder put an arm round his
shoulders, as though he were an immense mother comforting an irritable
child. Dick felt himself helpless; the struggle had quite exhausted
him; he was weaker than he had any idea of. He began kicking the fat
man's shins; it was the only way he could still show fight.
"Temper, temper," remonstrated the warder, more motherly than ever.
The thin warder stooped down, slipped a strap round the kicking legs,
and drew it tight. Dick could move no more. His fury found vent in
words--vain, abusive, filthy words, such as he had not used since he
was a schoolboy.
"Let me go," he screamed--"let me go, you devils! You beasts, you
swine! beasts and swine!" he howled again and again.
They soon had him securely strapped in a chair, his head held back
ready for the doctor and his horrible-looking tubes. They were pushing
the horrors up his nostrils. He coughed and choked, spat, shouted
inarticulately, retched. It was like having a spoon put on your tongue
and being told to say A-a-h, but worse; it was like jumping into the
river and getting water up your nose--how he had always hated
that!--only much worse. It was like almost everything unpleasant, only
much, much worse than all. He exhausted himself struggling against his
utterly immovable bonds. They had to carry him to his bed, he was so
weak.
He lay there, unmoving--for he was unable to move--staring at the
ceiling. He felt as though he were floating on air, unsupported, solid
no longer; the sensation was not unpleasant. For that reason he
refused to let his mind dwell upon it; he would think of nothing that
was not painful, odious, horrible. He thought about the torture which
had just been inflicted on him and of the monstrous injustice of which
he was a victim. He thought of the millions who had been and were
still being slaughtered in the war; he thought of their pain, all the
countless separate pains of them; pain incommunicable, individual,
beyond the reach of sympathy; infinities of pain pent within frail
finite bodies; pain without sense or object, bringing with it no hope
and no redemption, futile, unnecessary, stupid. In one supreme
apocalyptic moment he saw, he felt the universe in all its horror.
They forcibly fed him again the following morning and again on the day
after. On the fourth day pneumonia, the result of shock, complicated
by acute inflammation of the throat and pleura, set in. The fever and
pain gained ground. Dick had not the strength to resist their ravages,
and his condition grew hourly worse. His mind, however, continued to
work clearly--too clearly. It occurred to him that he might very
likely die. He asked for pencil and paper to be brought him, and
putting forth all the little strength he had left, he began to make
his testament.
"I am perfectly sane," he wrote at the top of the page, and underlined
the words three times. "I am confined here by the most intol. injust."
As soon as he began, he realized how little time and strength were
left him; it was a waste to finish the long words. "They are killing
me for my opins. I regard this war and all wars as utter bad.
Capitalists' war. The devils will be smashed sooner later. Wish I
could help. But it won't make any difference," he added on a new line
and as though by an afterthought. "World will always be hell. Cap. or
Lab., Engl. or Germ.--all beasts. One in a mill. is GOOD. I wasn't.
Selfish intellect. Perhaps Pearl Bellairs better. If die, send corp.
to hosp. for anatomy. Useful for once in my life!"
Quite suddenly, he lapsed into delirium. The clear lucidity of his
mind became troubled. The real world disappeared from before his eyes,
and in its place he saw a succession of bright, unsteady visions
created by his sick fantasy. Scenes from his childhood, long
forgotten, bubbled up and disappeared. Unknown, hideous faces crowded
in upon him; old friends revisited him. He was living in a bewildering
mixture of the familiar and the strange. And all the while, across
this changing unsubstantial world, there hurried a continual,
interminable procession of dromedaries--countless high-domed beasts,
with gargoyle faces and stiff legs and necks that bobbed as though on
springs. Do what he could, he was unable to drive them away. He lost
his temper with the brutes at last, struck at them, shouted; but in
vain. The room rang with his cries of, "Get away, you beasts. Bloody
humps. None of your nonconformist faces here." And while he was
yelling and gesticulating (with his left hand only), his right hand
was still busily engaged in writing. The words were clear and legible;
the sentences consecutive and eminently sane. Dick might rave, but
Pearl Bellairs remained calm and in full possession of her deplorable
faculties. And what was Pearl doing with her busy pencil, while Dick,
like a frenzied Betsy Trotwood, shouted at the trespassing camels? The
first thing she did was to scratch out all that poor Dick had said
about the war. Underneath it she wrote:
"We shall not sheathe the sword, which we have not lightly . . ." And
then, evidently finding that memorable sentence too long, particularly
so since the addition of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia to the list of
Allies, she began again.
"We are fighting for honour and the defence of Small Nationalities.
Plucky little Belgium! We went into the war with clean hands."
A little of Pearl's thought seemed at this moment to have slopped over
into Dick's mind; for he suddenly stopped abusing his dromedaries and
began to cry out in the most pitiable fashion, "Clean hands, clean
hands! I can't get mine clean. I can't, I can't, I can't. I
contaminate everything." And he kept rubbing his left hand against the
bed-clothes and putting his fingers to his nose, only to exclaim,
"Ugh, they still stink of goat!" and then to start rubbing again.
The right hand wrote on unperturbed. "No peace with the Hun until he
is crushed and humiliated. Self-respecting Britons will refuse to
shake a Hunnish hand for many a long year after the war. No more
German waiters. Intern the Forty-Seven Thousand Hidden Hands in High
Places!"
At this point, Pearl seemed to have been struck by a new idea. She
took a clean page and began:
"To the Girls of England. I am a woman and proud of the fact. But,
girls, I blushed for my sex to-day when I read in the papers that
there had been cases of English girls talking to Hun prisoners, and
not only talking to them, but allowing themselves to be kissed by
them. Imagine! Clean, healthy British girls allowing themselves to be
kissed by the swinish and bloodstained lips of the unspeakable Hun! Do
you wonder that I blush for my sex? Stands England where she did? No,
emphatically no, if these stories are true, and true--sadly and with a
heavy bleeding heart do I admit it--true they are."
"Clean hands, clean hands," Dick was still muttering, and applying his
ringers to his nose once more, "Christ," he cried, "how they stink!
Goats, dung . . ."
"Is there any excuse for such conduct?" the pencil continued. "The
most that can be said in palliation of the offence is that girls are
thoughtless, that they do not consider the full significance of their
actions. But listen to me, girls of all ages, classes and creeds, from
the blue-eyed, light-hearted flapper of sixteen to the stern-faced,
hard-headed business woman--listen to me. There is a girlish charm
about thoughtlessness, but there is a point beyond which
thoughtlessness becomes criminal. A flapper may kiss a Hun without
thinking what she is doing, merely for the fun of the thing; perhaps,
even, out of misguided pity. Will she repeat the offence if she
realizes, as she must realize if she will only think, that this
thoughtless fun, this mawkish and hysterical pity, is nothing less
than Treason? Treason--it is a sinister word, but . . ."
The pencil stopped writing; even Pearl was beginning to grow tired.
Dick's shouting had died away to a hoarse, faint whisper. Suddenly her
attention was caught by the last words that Dick had written--the
injunction to send his body, if he died, to a hospital for an anatomy.
She put forth a great effort.
"NO. NO," she wrote in huge capitals. "Bury me in a little country
churchyard, with lovely marble angels like the ones in St. George's at
Windsor, over Princess Charlotte's tomb. Not anatomy. Too horrible,
too disgus . . ."
The coma which had blotted out Dick's mind fell now upon hers as well.
Two hours later Dick Greenow was dead; the fingers of his right hand
still grasped a pencil. The scribbled papers were thrown away as being
merely the written ravings of a madman; they were accustomed that sort
of thing at the asylum.
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
I
AT the best of times it is a long way from Chicago to Blaybury in
Wiltshire, but war has fixed between them a great gulf. In the
circumstances, therefore, it seemed an act of singular devotion on the
part of Peter Jacobsen to have come all the way from the Middle West,
in the fourth year of war, on a visit to his old friend Petherton,
when the project entailed a single-handed struggle with two Great
Powers over the question of passports and the risk, when they had been
obtained, of perishing miserably by the way, a victim of
frightfulness.
At the expense of much time and more trouble Jacobsen had at last
arrived; the gulf between Chicago and Blaybury was spanned. In the
hall of Petherton's house a scene of welcome was being enacted under
the dim gaze of six or seven brown family portraits by unknown masters
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Old Alfred Petherton, a grey shawl over his shoulders--for he had to
be careful, even in June, of draughts and colds--was shaking his
guest's hand with interminable cordiality.
"My dear boy," he kept repeating, "it _is_ a pleasure to see you. My
dear boy . . ."
Jacobsen limply abandoned his forearm and waited in patience.
"I can never be grateful enough," Mr. Petherton went on--"never
grateful enough to you for having taken all this endless trouble to
come and see an old decrepit man--for that's what I am now, that's
what I am, believe me."
"Oh, I assure you . . ." said Jacobsen, with vague deprecation. "Le
vieux crétin qui pleurniche," he said to himself. French was a
wonderfully expressive language, to be sure.
"My digestion and my heart have got much worse since I saw you last.
But I think I must have told you about that in my letters."
"You did indeed, and I was most grieved to hear it."
"Grieved"--what a curious flavour that word had! Like somebody's tea
which used to recall the most delicious blends of forty years ago. But
it was decidedly the _mot juste_. It had the right obituary note about
it.
"Yes," Mr. Petherton continued, "my palpitations are very bad now.
Aren't they, Marjorie?" He appealed to his daughter who was standing
beside him.
"Father's palpitations are very bad," she replied dutifully.
It was as though they were talking about some precious heirloom long
and lovingly cherished.
"And my digestion. . . . This physical infirmity makes all mental
activity so difficult. All the same, I manage to do a little useful
work. We'll discuss that later, though. You must be feeling tired and
dusty after your journey down. I'll guide you to your room. Marjorie,
will you get someone to take up his luggage?"
"I can take it myself," said Jacobsen, and he picked up a small
gladstone-bag that had been deposited by the door.
"Is that all?" Mr. Petherton asked.
"Yes, that's all."
As one living the life of reason, Jacobsen objected to owning things.
One so easily became the slave of things and not their master. He
liked to be free; he checked his possessive instincts and limited his
possessions to the strictly essential. He was as much or as little at
home at Blaybury or Pekin. He could have explained all this if he
liked. But in the present case it wasn't worth taking the trouble.
"This is your humble chamber," said Mr. Petherton, throwing open the
door of what was, indeed, a very handsome spare-room, bright with
chintzes and cut flowers and silver candlesticks. "A poor thing, but
your own."
Courtly grace! Dear old man! Apt quotation! Jacobsen unpacked his bag
and arranged its contents neatly and methodically in the various
drawers and shelves of the wardrobe.
* * * * *
It was a good many years now since Jacobsen had come in the course of
his grand educational tour to Oxford. He spent a couple of years
there, for he liked the place, and its inhabitants were a source of
unfailing amusement to him.