THE SIMPLE HUMAN EMOTIONS
1
During the period which followed the Explanation Campaign, Kitty
Grammont was no longer bored by her work, no longer even merely
entertained. It had acquired a new flavour; the flavour of adventure and
romance which comes from a fuller understanding and a more personal
identification; from, in fact, knowing more about it at first-hand.
Also, she got to know the Minister better. At the end of August they
spent a week-end at the same country house. They were a party of four,
besides their host's family; a number which makes for intimacy. Their
hostess was a Cambridge friend of Kitty's, their host a man high up in
the Foreign Office, his natural force of personality obscured
pathetically by that apprehensive, defiant, defensive manner habitual
and certainly excusable in these days in the higher officials of that
department and of some of the other old departments; a manner that
always seemed to be saying, "All right, we know we've made the devil of
a mess for two centuries and more, and we know you all want to be rid of
us. But we'd jolly well like to know if you think you could have worked
things any better yourselves. Anyhow, we mean to stick here till we're
chucked out."
How soon would it be, wondered Kitty, before the officials of the
Ministry of Brains wore that same look? It must come to them; it must
come to all who govern, excepting only the blind, the crass, the
impervious. It must have been worn by the members of the Witan during
the Danish invasions; by Strafford before 1642; by Pharaoh's councillors
when Moses was threatening plagues; by M. Milivkoff before March, 1917;
by Mr. Lloyd George during much of the Great War.
But it was not worn yet by Nicholas Chester.
2
He sat down by Kitty after dinner. They did not talk shop, but they were
linked by the strong bond of shop shared and untalked. There was between
them the relationship, unlike any other (for no relationship ever is
particularly like any other) of those who are doing, though on very
different planes, the same work, and both doing it well; the
relationship, in fact, of a government official to his intelligent
subordinates. (There is also the relationship of a government official
to his unintelligent subordinates; this is a matter too painful to be
dwelt on in these pages.)
But this evening, as they talked, it became apparent to Kitty that,
behind the screen of this relationship, so departmental, so friendly, so
emptied of sex, a relationship quite other and more personal and human,
which had come into embryo being some weeks ago, was developing with
rapidity. They found pleasure in one another this evening as human
beings in the world at large, the world outside ministry walls. That was
rather fun. And next morning Chester asked her to come a walk with him,
and on the walk the new relationship burgeoned like flowers in spring.
They did not avoid shop now that they were alone together; they talked
of the Department, of the new Act, of the efforts of other countries on
the same lines, of anything else they liked. They talked of Russian
politics (a conversation I cannot record, the subject being too
difficult for any but those who have the latest developments under their
eyes, and, indeed, not always quite easy even for them). They talked of
the National Theatre, of animals they had kept and cabinet ministers
they had known; of poets, pictures, and potato puddings; of, in fact,
the things one does talk about on walks. They told each other funny
stories of prominent persons; she told him some of the funny stories
about himself which circulated in the Ministry; he told her about his
experiences when, in order to collect information as to the state of the
intelligence of the country before the ministry was formed, he had
sojourned in a Devonshire fishing village disguised as a fisherman, and
in Hackney Wick disguised as a Jew, and had in both places got the
better of everyone round him excepting only the other Hackney Jews, who
had got the better of him. (It was in consequence of this that
Jews--such Jews as had not yet been forcibly repatriated in the Holy
City--were exempted from the provisions of the Mental Progress Act and
the Mind Training Act. It would be a pity if Jews were to become any
cleverer.)
It will be seen, therefore, that their conversation was of an ordinary
description, that might take place between any two people of moderate
intelligence on any walk. The things chiefly to be observed about it
were that Chester, a silent person when he was not in the mood to talk,
talked a good deal, as if he liked talking to-day, and that when Kitty
was talking he watched her with a curious, interested, pleased look in
his deep little eyes.
And that was all, before lunch; the makings, in fact, of a promising
friendship.
After tea there was more. They sat in a beech wood together, and told
each other stories of their childhoods. He did not, Kitty observed,
mention those of his family who were less intelligent than the rest; no
doubt, with his views on the importance of intellect, he found it too
depressing a subject. And after dinner, when they said good-night, he
held her hand but as long as all might or so very little longer, and
asked if she would dine with him on Thursday. It was the look in his
eyes at that moment which sent Kitty up to bed with the staggering
perception of the dawning of a new and third relationship--not the
official relationship, and not the friendship which had grown out of it,
but something still more simple and human. He, probably, was unaware of
it; the simple human emotions were of no great interest to Nicholas
Chester, whose thoughts ran on other and more complex businesses. One
might surmise that he might fall very deeply in love before he knew
anything much about it. Kitty, on the other hand, would always know,
had, in fact, always known, everything she was doing in that way, as in
most others. She would track the submersion, step by step, amused,
interested, concerned. This way is the best; not only do you get more
out of the affair so, but you need not allow yourself, or the other
party concerned, to be involved more deeply than you think advisable.
So, safe in her bedroom, standing, in fact, before the looking-glass,
she faced the glimpse of a possibility that staggered her, bringing
mirth to her eyes and a flutter to her throat.
"Good God!" (Kitty had at times an eighteenth-century emphasis of
diction, following in the steps of the heroines of Jane Austen and Fanny
Burney, who dropped oaths elegantly, like flowers.) "Good God! He begins
to think of me." Then, quickly, followed the thought, to tickle her
further, "Is it right? Is it _convenable_? _Should_ ministers look like
that at their lady clerks? Or does he think that, as he's uncertificated
and no hopes of an outcome can be roused in me, he may look as he
likes?"
She unhooked her dress, gazing at her reflection with solemn eyes, which
foresaw the potentialities of a remarkable situation.
But what was, in fact, quite obvious, was that no situation could
possibly be allowed to arise.
Only, if it did.... Well, it would have its humours. And, after all,
should one turn one's back on life, in whatever curious guise it might
offer itself? Kitty, at any rate, never yet had done this. She had once
accepted the invitation of a Greek brigand at Thermopylae to show her,
and her alone, his country home in the rocky fastnesses of Velukhi, a
two days' journey from civilisation; she had spent a week-end as
guest-in-chief of a Dervish at Yuzgat; she had walked unattended through
the Black Forest (with, for defence, a walking-stick and a hat-pin) and
she had become engaged to Neil Desmond. Perhaps it was because she was
resourceful and could trust her natural wits to extricate her, that she
faced with temerity the sometimes awkward predicaments in which she
might find herself involved through this habit of closing no door on
life. The only predicament from which she had not, so far, succeeded in
emerging, was her engagement; here she had been baffled by the elusive
quality which defeated her efforts not by resistance but by merely
slipping out of hearing.
And if this was going to turn into another situation ... well, then, she
would have had one more in her life. But, after all, very likely it
wasn't.
"Ministers," Kitty soliloquised, glancing mentally at the queer, clever,
humorous face which had looked at her so oddly, "ministers, surely, are
made of harder stuff than that. And prouder. Ministers, surely, even if
they permit themselves to flirt a little with the clerks of their
departments, don't let it get serious. It isn't done. You flatter
yourself, my poor child. Your head has been turned because he laughed
when you tried to be funny, and because, for lack of better company or
thinking your pink frock would go with his complexion, he walked out
with you twice, and because he held your hand and looked into your eyes.
You are becoming one of those girls who think that whenever a man looks
at them as if he liked the way they do their hair, he wants to kiss them
at once and marry them at last...."
3
"What's amusing you, Kate?" her hostess enquired, coming in with her
hair over her shoulders and her Cambridge accent.
"Nothing, Anne," replied Kitty, after a meditative pause, "that I can
possibly ever tell you. Merely my own low thoughts. They always were
low, as you'll remember."
"They certainly were," said Anne.
4
This chapter, as will by this time have been observed, deals with the
simple human emotions, their development and growth. But it will not be
necessary to enter into tedious detail concerning them. They did
develop; they did grow; and to indicate this it will only be necessary
to select a few outstanding scenes of different dates.
On September 2nd, which was the Thursday after the week-end above
described, Kitty dined with Chester, and afterwards they went to a
picture palace to see "The Secret of Success," one of their own
propaganda dramas. It had been composed by the bright spirits in the
Propaganda Department of the Ministry, and was filmed and produced at
government expense. The cinematograph, the stage, and the Press were now
used extensively as organs to express governmental points of view; after
all, if you have to have such things, why not make them useful? Chester
smiled sourly over it, but acquiesced. The chief of such organs were of
course the new State Theatre (anticipated with such hope by earnest
drama-lovers for so many years) and the various State cinemas, and the
_Hidden Hand_, the government daily paper; but even over the unofficial
stage and film the shadow of the State lay black.
The Secret of Success depicted lurid episodes in the careers of two
young men; the contrast was not, as in other drama, between virtue and
vice, but between Intelligence and the Reverse. Everywhere Intelligence
triumphed, and the Reverse was shamed and defeated. Intelligence found
the hidden treasure, covered itself with glory, emerged triumphant from
yawning chasms, flaming buildings, and the most suspicious situations,
rose from obscure beginnings to titles, honours and position, and
finally won the love of a pure and wealthy girl, who jilted the
brainless youth of her own social rank to whom she had previously
engaged herself but who had, in every encounter of wits with his
intelligent rival, proved himself of no account, and who was finally
revealed in a convict's cell, landed there by his conspicuous lack of
his rival's skill in disengaging himself from compromising situations.
Intelligence, with his bride on his arm, visited him in his cell, and
gazed on him with a pitying shake of the head, observing, "But for the
Government Mind Training Course, I might be in your shoes to-day."
Finally, their two faces were thrown on the screen, immense and
remarkable, the one wearing over his ethereal eyes the bar of Michael
Angelo, the other with a foolish, vacant eye and a rabbit mouth that was
ever agape.
This drama was sandwiched between The Habits of the Kola Bear, and How
his Mother-in-law Came to Stay, and after it Chester and Kitty went out
and walked along the Embankment.
It was one of those brilliant, moonlit, raidless nights which still
seemed so strange, so almost flat, in their eventlessness. Instinctively
they strained their ears for guns; but they heard nothing but the
rushing of traffic in earth and sky.
5
"The State," said Chester, "is a great debaucher. It debauches
literature, art, the press, the stage, and the Church; but I don't think
even its worst enemies can say it has debauched the cinema stage....
What a people we are; good Lord, what a people!"
"As long as we leave Revue alone, I don't much mind what else we do,"
Kitty said. "Revue is England's hope, I believe. Because it's the only
art in which all the forms of expression come in--talking, music,
singing, dancing, gesture--standing on your head if nothing else will
express you at the moment.... I believe Revue is going to be tremendous.
Look how its stupidities and vulgarities have been dropping away from it
lately, this last year has made a new thing of it altogether; it's
beginning to try to show the whole of life as lived.... Oh, we must
leave Revue alone.... I sometimes think it's so much the coming thing
that I can't be happy till I've chucked my job and gone into it, as one
of a chorus. I should feel I was truly serving my country then; it would
be a real thing, instead of this fantastic lunacy I'm involved in
now...."
At times Kitty forgot she was talking to the Minister who had created
the fantastic lunacy.
"You can't leave the Ministry," said the Minister curtly. "You can't be
spared."
Kitty was annoyed with him for suddenly being serious and literal and
even cross, and was just going to tell him she should jolly well leave
the Ministry whenever she liked, when some quality in his abrupt gravity
caught the words from her lips.
"We haven't got industrial conscription to that extent yet," she merely
said, weakly.
It was all he didn't say to her in the moment's pause that followed
which was revealing; all that seemed to be forced back behind his
guarded lips. What he did say, presently, was "No, more's the pity.
It'll come, no doubt."
And, talking of industrial conscription, they walked back.
What stayed with Kitty was the odd, startled, doubtful look he had given
her in that moment's pause; almost as if he were afraid of something.
6
Kitty took at this time to sleeping badly; even worse, that is to say,
than usual. In common with many others, she always did so when she was
particularly interested in anyone. She read late, then lay and stared
into the dark, her thoughts turning and twisting in her brain, till, for
the sake of peace, she turned on the light again and read something;
something cold, soothing, remote from life as now lived, like
Aristophanes, Racine, or Bernard Shaw. Attaining by these means to a
more detached philosophy, she would drift at last from the lit stage
where life chattered and gesticulated, and creep behind the wings, and
so find sleep, so little before it was time to wake that she began the
day with a jaded feeling of having been up all night.
On one such morning she came down to find a letter from Neil Desmond in
its thin foreign envelope addressed in his flat, delicate hand. He wrote
from a Pacific island where he was starting a newspaper for the benefit
of the political prisoners confined there; it was to be called "Freedom"
(in the British Isles no paper of this name would be allowed, but
perhaps the Pacific Island censorship was less strict) and he wanted
Kitty to come and be sub-editor....
Kitty, instead of lunching out that day, took sandwiches to the office
and spent the luncheon-hour breaking off her engagement again. The
reason why Neil never got these letters was the very reason which
impelled her to write them--the lack of force about him which made his
enterprises so ephemeral, and kept him ever moving round the spinning
world to try some new thing.
Force. How important it was. First Brains, to perceive and know what
things we ought to do, then Power, faithfully to fulfil the same. In
another twenty or thirty years, perhaps the whole British nation would
be full of both these qualities, so full that the things in question
really would get done. And then what? Kitty's mind boggled at the answer
to this. It might be strangely upsetting....
She stamped her letter and lit a cigarette. The room, empty but for her,
had that curious, flat, dream-like look of arrested activity which
belongs to offices in the lunch hour. If you watch an office through
that empty hour of suspension you may decipher its silent, patient,
cynical comment (slowly growing into distinctness like invisible ink) on
the work of the morning which has been, and of the afternoon which is to
be. Kitty watched it, amused, then yawned and read _Stop It_, the newest
weekly paper. It was a clever paper, for it had succeeded so far (four
numbers) in not getting suppressed, and also in not committing itself
precisely to any direct statement as to what it wanted stopped. It was
produced by the Stop It Club, and the government lived in hopes of
discovering one day, by well-timed police raids on the Club premises,
sufficient lawless matter to justify it in suppressing both the Club and
the paper. For Dora had recently been trying to retrieve her character
in the eyes of those who blackened it, and was endeavouring to act in a
just and temperate manner, and only to suppress those whose guilt was
proven. Last Sunday, for instance, a Stop It procession had been allowed
to parade through the city with banners emblazoned with the ambiguous
words. There were, of course, so many things that, it was quite obvious,
should be stopped; the command might have been addressed to those of the
public who were grumbling, or to the government who were giving them
things to grumble at; to writers who were producing books, journalists
producing papers, parliaments producing laws, providence producing the
weather, or the agents of any other regrettable activity at the moment
in progress. Indeed, the answer to the enquiry "Stop what?" might so
very plausibly be "Stop it all," that it was a profitless question.
It was just after two that the telephone on Prideaux's table rang.
(Kitty was working in Prideaux's room now.) "Hullo," said a voice in
answer to hers, "Mr. Prideaux there? Or anyone else in his room I can
speak to? The Minister speaking."
Not his P.S. nor his P.A., but the Minister himself; an unusual, hardly
seemly occurrence, due, no doubt, to lunch-time. Kitty was reminded of a
story someone had told her of a pert little office flapper at one end of
a telephone, chirping, "Hullo, who is it?" and the answer, slow,
dignified, and crushing, from one of our greater peers--"Lord
Blankson ..." (pause) "HIMSELF."
"Mr. Prideaux isn't in yet," said Kitty. "Can I give him a message?"
There was a moment's pause before the Minister's voice, somehow grown
remote, said, "No, thanks, it's all right. I'll ring him up later."
He rang off abruptly. (After all, how can one ring off in any other
way?) He had said, "Or anyone else in his room I can speak to," as if he
would have left a message with any chance clerk; but he had not,
apparently, wished to hold any parley with her, even over the telephone,
which though it has an intimacy of its own (marred a little by a
listening exchange) is surely a sufficiently remote form of intercourse.
But it seemed that he was avoiding her, keeping her at a distance,
ringing her off; his voice had sounded queer, abrupt, embarrassed, as if
he was shy of her. Perhaps he had thought things over and perceived that
he had been encouraging one of his clerks to step rather too far out of
her position; perhaps he was afraid her head might be a little turned,
that she might think he was seeking her out....
Kitty sat on the edge of Prideaux's table and swore softly. She'd jolly
well show him she thought no such thing.
"These great men," she said, "are insufferable."
7
When they next met it was by chance, in a street aeroplane. The aero was
full, and they didn't take much notice of each other till something went
wrong with the machinery and they were falling street-wards, probably on
the top of that unfortunate shop, Swan and Edgar's. In that dizzy moment
the Minister swayed towards Kitty and said, "Relax the body and don't
protrude the tongue," and then the crash came.
They only grazed Swan and Edgar's, and came down in Piccadilly, amid a
crowd of men who scattered like a herd of frightened sheep. No one was
much hurt (street aeros were carefully padded and springed, against
these catastrophes), but Kitty chanced to strike the back of her head
and to be knocked silly. It was only for a moment, and when she
recovered consciousness the Minister was bending over her and
whispering, "She's killed. She's killed. Oh God."
"Not at all," said Kitty, sitting up, very white. "It takes quite a lot
more than that."
His strained face relaxed. "That's all right, then," he said.
"I'm dining in Hampstead in about ten minutes," said Kitty. "I must get
the tube at Leicester Square."
"A taxi," said the Minister, "would be better. Here is a taxi. I shall
come too, in case there is another mischance, which you will hardly be
fit for alone at present." He mopped his mouth.
"You have bitten your tongue," said Kitty, "in spite of all you said
about not protruding it."
"It was while I was saying it," said the Minister, "that the contact
occurred. Yes. It is painful."
They got into the taxi. The Minister, with his scarlet-stained
handkerchief to his lips, mumbled, "That was a very disagreeable shock.
You were very pale. I feared the worst."
"The worst," said Kitty, "always passes me by. It always has. I am like
that."
"I am not," he said. "I am not. I have bitten my tongue and fallen in
love. Both bad things."
He spoke so indistinctly that Kitty was not sure she heard him rightly.
"And I," she said, "only feel a little sick.... No, don't be anxious; it
won't develop."
The Minister looked at her as she powdered her face before the strip of
mirror.
"I wouldn't put that on," he advised her. "You are looking too pale,
already."
"Quite," said Kitty. "It's pink powder, you see. It will make me feel
more myself."
"You need nothing," he told her gravely. "You are all right as you are.
It is fortunate that it is you and not I who are going out to dinner. I
couldn't talk. I can't talk now. I can't even tell you what I feel about
you."
"Don't try," she counselled him, putting away her powder-puff and not
looking at him.
He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, looking at her with his
pained-humorist's face and watchful eyes.
"I expect you know I've fallen in love with you?" he mumbled. "I didn't
mean to; in fact, I've tried not to, since I began to notice what was
occurring. It's excessively awkward. But ... I have not been able to
avoid it."
Kitty said "Oh," and swallowed a laugh. One didn't laugh when one was
receiving an avowal of love, of course. She felt giddy, and seas seemed
to rush past her ears.
"There are a good many things to talk about in connection with this,"
said the Minister. "But it is no use talking about them unless I first
know what you feel about it--about me, that is. Will you tell me, if you
don't mind?"
He asked it gently, considerately, almost humbly. Kitty, who did mind
rather, said "Oh," again, and lay back in her corner. She still felt a
little dizzy, and her head ached. It is not nice having to say what one
feels; one would rather the other person did it all. But this is not
fair or honourable. She remembered this and pulled herself together.
"I expect," she said, swinging her glasses by their ribbon, cool and yet
nervous, "I expect I feel pretty much the same as you do about it."
After a moment's pause he said, "Thank you. Thank you very much for
telling me. Then it is of use talking about it. Only not now, because
I'm afraid we're just getting there. And to-morrow I am going to a
conference at Leeds. I don't think I can wait till the day after. May I
call for you to-night and we'll drive back together?"
"Yes," said Kitty, and got out of the taxi.
8
When they were in it again they comported themselves for a little while
in the manner customary on these occasions, deriving the usual amount of
pleasurable excitement therefrom.
Then the Minister said, "Now we must talk. All is not easy about our
situation."
"Nothing is easy about it," said Kitty. "In fact, we're in the demon of
a mess."
He looked at her, biting his lips.
"You know about me, then? That I'm uncertificated? But of course you do.
It is, I believe, generally known. And it makes the position exactly
what you say. It means ..."
"It means," said Kitty, "that we must get over this unfortunate
passion."
He shook his head, with a shrug.
"One can, you know," said Kitty. "I've been in and out before--more than
once. Not so badly, perhaps, but quite badly enough. You too, probably?"
"Yes. Oh, yes," he admitted gloomily. "But it wasn't like this. Neither
the circumstances, nor the--the emotion."
Kitty said, "Probably not. Why should it be? Nothing ever is exactly
like anything else, luckily.... By the way, when did you begin to take
notice of me? Don't worry, if you can't remember."
He thought for a minute, then shook his head.
"I'm bad at these things. Didn't we meet at Prideaux's one night in the
spring? I observed you then; I remember you amused me. But I don't think
the impression went deep.... Then--oh, we met about a good deal one way
and another--and I suppose it grew without my noticing it. And then came
that week-end, and that did the trick as far as I was concerned. I knew
what I was doing after that, and I tried to stop it, but, as you see, I
have failed. This evening I told you, I suppose, under the influence of
shock.... I am not sorry. It is worth it, whatever comes of it."
"Nothing can come of it," said Kitty. "Not the least thing at all.
Except being friends. And you probably won't want that. Men don't."
"No," he said. "I don't want it at all. But I suppose I must put up with
it." He began to laugh, with his suppressed, sardonic laughter, and
Kitty laughed too.
"We're fairly hoist with our own petard, aren't we?" he said. "Think of
the scandal we might make, if we did what we chose now.... I believe it
would be the _coup de grace_ for the Brains Ministry." He stated a
simple fact, without conceit.
"It's a rotten position," he continued moodily. "But there it is.... And
you're A, aren't you? You'll have to marry someone, eventually. If only
you were B2 or 3--only then you wouldn't be yourself. As it is, it would
be criminally immoral of me to stand in your way. The right thing, I
suppose, would be for us to clear out of each other's way and give each
other a chance to forget. _The right thing...._ Oh damn it all, I'm as
bad as the most muddle-headed fool in the country, who doesn't care
_that_ for the right thing if it fights against his individual impulses
and desires.... I suppose moralists would say here's my chance to bear
my witness, to stand by my own principles and show the world they're
real.... They _are_ real, too; that's the mischief of it. I still am
sure they matter more than anything else; but just now they bore me. I
suppose this is what a moral and law-abiding citizen feels when he falls
in love with someone else's wife.... What are you laughing at now?"
"You," said Kitty. "This is the funniest conversation.... Of course it's
a funny position--it's straight out of a comic opera. What a pity
Gilbert and Sullivan didn't think of it; they'd have done it
beautifully.... By the way, I don't think I shall be marrying anyone
anyhow, so you needn't worry about that. I've broken off my last
engagement--at least I've done my best to; it became a bore. I don't
really like the idea of matrimony, you know; it would be too much of a
tie and a settling down. Yes, all right, I know my duty to my country,
but my duty to myself comes first.... So there's no harm, from my point
of view, in our going on seeing each other and taking each other out and
having as good a time as we can in the circumstances. Shall we try that
way, and see if it works?"
"Oh, we'll try," he said, and took her again in his arms. "It's all we
can get, so we'll take it ... my dear."
"I think it's a good deal," said Kitty. "It will be fun.... You know,
I'm frightfully conceited at your liking me--I can't get used to it yet;
you're so important and superior. It isn't every day that a Minister of
a Department falls in love with one of his clerks. It isn't really done,
you know, not by the best Ministers."
"Nor by the best clerks," he returned. "We must face the fact that we
are not the best people."
"And here's my flat. Will you come in and have something? There's only
my cousin here, and she's never surprised; her own life is too odd."
"I think it would be inadvisable," said the Minister discreetly. "'We
don't want to coddle our reputations, but we may as well keep an eye on
them.'"
On that note of compromise they parted.