At the club he found a message from Mrs. Hannibal that Lord Ottercove
expected him to tea at five o’clock at his house. Frank, who was late,
having failed by sheer strength of will to accelerate the movement of
the train in the Inner Circle, jumped into a taxi at Dover-street,
imploring the driver to make a dash for Stonedge House. But the
vehicle, freighted with his dismay and anxiety, got jammed in a mesh of
other vehicles. A march through London by the Unemployed, the
taxi-driver put him wise: a call to Direct Action. Not for the first
time. Frank jumped out, paid the fare, and made a dash through the
crowd. A cordon of policemen barred his way into the square. Gaping
suspiciously at him, they none the less let him pass through to Stonedge
House.
The butler informed him that his lordship was expecting him, but had not
yet come in from his walk, and conducted him into a great bare lounge
with windows overlooking the Park, a huge marble chimney-piece, as in a
club room, with an oil portrait of a member of the Royal family hung
over it, and a lady sitting by the log fire. She smiled to him and said
Lord Ottercove had asked her to meet him so that she might write an
article about him for one of Lord Ottercove’s newspapers, probably the
_Evening Ensign_. They had barely exchanged a few words when Lord
Ottercove strolled in somberly across the soft carpet with a cloud on
his face.
Frank wondered whether the cause of it was not his cashing forthwith one
hundred pounds of Lord Ottercove’s money. “Why aren’t you having any
tea?” asked the host, and rang for the butler. “Well, have you talked it
over?” he asked rather wearily.
“Mr. Dickin has only just come,” said the lady, thus giving her partner
away, Frank felt, rather cruelly.
Lord Ottercove gave his visitor a searching look, as though he thought
this was a bad beginning. “They wouldn’t let me pass through the crowd,”
Frank proffered his excuses.
“Nor would they let me,” said Lord Ottercove.
“A bewildering procession of the Unemployed,” the lady journalist
remarked. “More ominous than the last one.”
“Yes. I don’t know what is going to happen. Processions are indelicate
manifestations and are best discouraged by indifference. But an idle
curiosity sends everyone out into the streets to see what is happening
and swells the ranks of the dissatisfied. It is the same with
revolutions. Mankind is periodically beset by mass dissatisfaction when,
at some obscure, unmeaning signal, men suddenly begin to air their
private grievances in a mass--as though that could possibly help them;
and then, growing hearty, and with that corporate look in their eyes,
they are ready to track down the Evil in their life to any handy
bogey--the capitalist, the Jew, the profiteer, the Bolshevik, or any
foreigner. It used to be religion--the Jesuit, the Pope, the Turk, or
the Free-Mason--but that is now out of fashion. I do not see that
anything is likely to side-track their present agitation saving some big
stunt which would appeal to their imagination--such as the increased
crop-growing scheme which Lord de Jones and myself have in mind. Miss
Henderson, will you make a note of that for your Sunday article. Lord de
Jones, who is a scientist by training, and myself, under the auspices of
the re-dressed and re-bandaged Liberal Party (with Joe pleased as Punch
at last to have a party policy) are travelling round the world to
agitate public opinion in the countries concerned in favour of the
closing of craters, wherever such are known to exist, to increase the
crop-growing capacity of weary Mother Earth, for the general benefit of
the human race, irrespective of class or nationality. The policy is to
be launched in the broadest Liberal terms, and I want my newspapers to
give it the widest possible publicity.”
“When do you hope to start on your journey, Lord Ottercove?”
“I cannot tell you. We have to time it with the General Election. It
wouldn’t do to have it all behind us before the General Election begins.
A policy is only a policy if it is a promise. A difficulty is only a
difficulty if it needs overcoming. A difficulty overcome is like your
last year’s birthday present. You cannot talk of it with any credit to
yourself. And in politics you must boast in order to get credit, and
though you cannot boast of what you have done, you can boast of what you
will do, if they let you do it for them.”
“Do you expect any difficulties ahead of you?”
“Our difficulty is that there will not be any to enable us to overcome
them with glory. But I expect we will be able to overcome that
difficulty by creating a few difficulties of the spectacular order we
require to swing old Joe back into the saddle at the next General
Election, which cannot now be long delayed.”
“Is it an established scientific fact,” Frank ventured, “that the
closing of the craters _would_ increase the crop?”
Lord Ottercove frowned. “You’ve asked me that before. I cannot tell you.
It’s a journalistic fact, anyhow.” He paused. “But I have no reason to
doubt it. It stands to reason if you reflect. More heat, more pressure
from the bowels of the earth, and the quicker the blades pushed to the
surface. That’s how I read the scientific aspect of it. But de Jones
ought to know; he is a scientist.”
“Rather a genius by the looks of him,” said Frank, in order to hear Lord
Ottercove reply with deliberation:
“A Genius of the Untried.”
“I see,” said Frank, “you will leave nothing untried, not even
questionable science, if you may thereby alleviate the lot of the
people.”
“I am a man of the people,” said Lord Ottercove, “and my sympathies are
with the people. But here it is not a case of alleviating the lot of the
people. Increased crops will cheapen bread, undoubtedly, but only to
lower wages. I know my capitalists!”
“But there are socialist weapons for that.”
“Strikes,” said Lord Ottercove. “Direct action. Revolutions.”
Frank was not so much disarmed as submerged by the intensity of Lord
Ottercove’s self-assurance.
“No,” said Lord Ottercove. “My aim is somewhat different. In ancient
Rome the people were given bread and shows. They will have their bread
and plenty of it, the Lord and Lord de Jones willing; but I am out to
give them shows, grip their attention, side-track the vicious trend of
idle minds--or I am not a journalist.”
He paused to give both listeners an opportunity to survey the boldness
and originality of his vision.
“I am a journalist, and I love my newspapers. You, Miss Henderson, and
you, Mr. Dickin, must have known love in the course of your lives; my
love is akin to yours, but rather than being wasted on a mistress” (he
looked at Dickin), “or on a lover” (he looked at Miss Henderson
enquiringly), “_my_ love is lavished on my newspapers. I love my
newspapers.” Tears stood in his eyes as he spoke, and Miss Henderson and
Frank lowered their heads as though they were in church. “I am amazed,
with a sweet amazement, when I suddenly look into my heart and discover
the depth of my love for these journals of mine.” Miss Henderson and
Frank suspended their breath and continued suspending it so far as this
is possible. “They were nothing. I witnessed and sponsored their birth;
guarded their adolescence; tended their youth; exulted in their
maturity....” He paused as if having revealed too much of his heart.
“There is also an intellectual side to it,” he said at last, as if to
prove that such things were not foreign to him. “I have slowly come to
the realisation that things, the ordinary common things we see and grip,
_are_ not: they only seem.... They are phantoms, dreams of some one
great Dreamer who has dreamt us and presently awakes to congratulate
himself.”
“And are we the dream or the dreamer?”
“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, pensively, “I haven’t so far rounded off my
philosophy, though now that you have put this question it is already
clear to me that two courses of enquiry are feasible.”
“I mean, are we included in the congratulation?”
“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “my original thesis was in the negative.
But now I have come to think that for a series of Sunday articles in
which I want to incorporate my philosophy the notion that we are the
Dreamer and everything unpleasant in life the Dream about to be
dissolved in the reality of our awakening is rather more cheerful and
more suitable from a journalistic point of view and I will pursue the
Dreamer as against the Dream course.”
“But is that a ground?”
“Certainly. A journalistic ground.”
“But I thought you were going to write philosophy.”
“Journalism, as I was going to explain, is philosophy. Life is a dream,
according to my philosophy, a dream of illusions. And this faculty of
creating illusions in a world of appearances is, I claim, the function
of the journalist.”
“Make-belief?”
“If you like to--to put it so crudely,” said Lord Ottercove, evidently
hurt. It seemed strange to see this rich, successful, powerful,
middle-aged newspaper magnate, once Cabinet Minister, hurt. So it seemed
he was vulnerable?
Miss Henderson rose, and her host and employer, in his double capacity,
saw her out into the hall, murmuring, “So you have grasped the trend of
the Wheat-Growing Story?”--completing his instructions in an undertone.
“And will you do a story on Mr. Dickin? Dwell on the strange similarity
of his name to another famous novelist?”
“Which one, Lord Ottercove?”
“Dickens, my girl. Author of _David Copperfield_, _The Pickwick Papers_,
_Oliver Twist_, _The Tale of Two Cities_. You might work Mr. Dickin into
these tales. Perhaps suggest a common ancestry. Here’s a title for you:
‘Is Genius Hereditary?: The Unpublished Story of the Dickens Issue.’ You
might add that modesty, a fastidious dislike to shine in the blinding
light of his grandparent caused this shy, blinking, unassuming-looking
youth who, nevertheless, in the course of years is groping after the
crown of his illustrious forbear, to drop the ‘s’ in his name--and
substitute ‘i’ for ‘e’.”
“I see.”
“Well, I’ve given you two stories. Write them to-night and send them in
to me before breakfast to-morrow. I will read them in bed directly on
waking. Good-bye to you.”
* * * * *
Frank was about to follow Miss Henderson, and rose; but “Don’t go,” said
the host, and each sank back into an enormous leather chair, Lord
Ottercove opening his mouth to pose a question--perhaps why had Frank
cashed so much money--when the butler strode in, announcing:
“Mr. Atkinson, my lord.”
“Come in! Come in, Atkinson!” roared Lord Ottercove. “You bloody ruffian
... come right in. Well, how’s New Zealand? Gone to hell, I suppose,
since I left it, what? This is Mr. Dickin. You’ve read his books, of
course. _The Tale of Two Cities. David Copperfield._”
“Of course, of course.”
“Bloody liar, you’ve read nothing!”
“Too busy, too busy ...” murmured Mr. Atkinson.
“How would you like turning out twenty motor-cars a day Mr. Dickin? This
man here earns more money in an hour of his sleep by growing fat than
you with all your artistry and intelligence and talent can earn in a
year!”
“I assure you,” Mr. Atkinson protested, “there is great artistry in
designing a new model ... and the machinery, too, trickish ...
devilishly trickish.... At least Archie thinks so. But then Archie--”
“Is a liar,” supplied Lord Ottercove, looking humorously at Frank, who,
not knowing Archie, smiled at them both noncommittally.
“Did I tell you Archie’s latest?” asked the guest.
“No.”
“He’d gone out hunting lions in East Africa. ‘I advance,’ he says,
‘under cover, and straight before me sits a lion. I aim--and bang! down
goes the lion. But there, a few paces off, if you please, sits a second
lion. Bang! And down he goes. I shoulder my gun and advance under cover,
and there, just in front, sits the third lion--’”
The telephone at Lord Ottercove’s feet rang discreetly, and taking it
up, “Of course,” he said. “Use your judgment. What’s the use of my
having a great editor like you if I am to do all the work? Quite. In the
question of National Defence I am supporting the Admiralty against the
Air Force. All you need know. Good-bye to you.”
The motor-car manufacturer was evidently only waiting for the host to
put down the receiver, for:
“‘And there to the side of me was the fourth lion,’” he said, smiling
all over.
Lord Ottercove looked pensive. “Excuse me,” he said, and taking up the
telephone from the floor spoke, “Give me Lady de Jones. How are you,
Eleonor? Look here, you’d better have Admiral Battersea to your right
and the Emir to your left to-morrow night. I want to mark my support of
the Admiralty. What? You would rather I gave you the £30,000 necklace
for your birthday? You’re welcome to it, of course. But I advise you
against it. Why? I don’t think it will do you any good having it. Why?
It would not make you happy. Why not? The remorse at imposing on your
uncle. Not a bit, you are welcome to it, my dear; it is only advice.
Good day, to you.”
“‘And there,’” said Mr. Atkinson, watching his friend put down the
telephone, “‘was the fifth lion.’”
“Excuse me,” said the host, and uttered forth a strange wood-note like a
bird (which he must have learnt when as a boy he tended to spend his
school hours in the wood behind Ottercove); in answer to which vocal
sign Mrs. Hannibal came into his presence. “Tell Franklin,” said Lord
Ottercove, completing his instructions in an undertone with an almost
silent movement of his robust lips. The instructions were so long and
explicit that the car manufacturer, despairing of securing Lord
Ottercove’s attention, buttonholed Frank Dickin and was saying to him in
a tone hushed to a level likely not to interfere with their host’s
business conversation but adequately forceful and dramatic:
“‘And there,’ says he, ‘to either side of me were the sixth and seventh
lion. Bang! Bang! Down they went.’”
“What’s that?” Lord Ottercove questioned, Mrs. Hannibal having gone to
execute his instructions.
“‘Down they went....’”
“Who?”
“The sixth and the seventh lions.”
“H’m.”
“‘And there,’ he says, ‘to the front of me ... was ... the eighth
lion!’”
Here the car manufacturer paused for appreciation, a little tardy in
coming; and then, not waiting for it and holding his curved sides to
prevent them from splitting, burst out into a Homeric roar.
“Well,” he said, cheerily, linking this his leave-taking to the humorous
anecdote, but his face growing serious, “thank you for your hospitality.
What message have you for me to take back with me to New Zealand? Is the
Old Country all right? Will keep the flag flying? Eh? What?”
“Sure!” from Lord Ottercove, more forced than spontaneous.
“If,” said the car manufacturer, “you can keep Labour down and their
wages you’ll be all right in this old country yet.”
“This is a point,” Lord Ottercove said coldly, “on which I differ from
you,” looking to Frank for recognition of this sympathetic attitude to
the workers.
“But ain’t we both of us Conservatives?”
“In New Zealand, yes, but not in this country, Atkinson.”
“How so?” the dull, blood-shot look of an uncomprehending bull coming
into the manufacturer’s face.
“In so far as I wish to conserve the liberties won by the Liberals in
the past, I am a Conservative; but in as much as I would gain new
liberties worth the conservation, I am a Liberal.”
He paused, and added:
“I stand for tolerance--for the complete toleration of everything short
of the intolerable.”
The car manufacturer, shaking his head at the brainy madcapness that
overtakes some successful business men, made for the door, followed
cheerily by Ottercove, proffering, with subversive gusto, advice to a
man he knew incapable of following it. “Atkinson, you should stop making
money and go in for Thought.”
“Why should I, if it keeps me occupied?”
“It’s a vice. A man should stop when he has made enough. I’ve stopped.”
Frank made a mental picture of Lord Ottercove stopping. “You don’t make
any more money, Lord Ottercove?” he asked.
“No. Except for such as makes itself. Of course, every year I am called
upon to invest fresh capital. But that is not for want of any facility
of imagination in the art of spending it.”
Lord Ottercove followed Mr. Atkinson into the hall, and as he waited for
his host’s return Frank Dickin’s mind sang and tingled at the thought of
money. Money! Money! Money! How did Lord Ottercove make so much money?
“Business ability,” was the saying. But what was it? Frank’s ideas were
vague and nebulous. Lord Ottercove, he thought, bought consols, sold
them at valuation, at contango, and depreciation; bought debentures at
quotation; accumulated stock, multiplied it by going into liquidation
... and made a fortune. Frank believed High Finance to be closely allied
with Mysticism. It was ineffable and inutterable: it could be revealed,
but not explained; its priests were inspired. As Lord Ottercove returned
to him, with a smile, he blessed Lord Ottercove’s entire organisation
for the kindly light that emanated from him. Lord Ottercove’s bias, he
was pleased to note, was artistic. He turned his turnovers like a
virtuoso, delighting in what he could do with so little effort. His
friendships, his natural disposition, were all for artists. His collar
and negligent tie bore witness to it. Whenever Frank was about to rise
Lord Ottercove would say, “Don’t go.” And when at last the guest,
feeling the indecency of lingering any longer, rose convincingly, Lord
Ottercove reminded him that he was dining with him to-morrow night.
“I am afraid for my own sake,” said the visitor, “that the more you see
of me, the sooner will the reaction in you, to borrow the language of
critics, make itself felt.”
“My dear fellow,” said Lord Ottercove, “you don’t know how all this
delights me. Are you,” he asked in the hushed tones of a doctor who
enquires if your stomach is in order, “drawing all the money you want?”
“Yes. Thanks awfully.”
“Good-bye to you!”