THE BREAKING POINT
1
It was six months later: in fact, April. It was a Saturday afternoon,
and many people were going home from work, including Kitty Grammont and
Ivy Delmer, who were again in the Bakerloo tube, on their way to
Marylebone for Little Chantreys.
The same types of people were in the train who had been in it on the
Monday morning in May which is described in the opening chapter of this
work. The same types of people always are in tube trains (except on the
air-raid nights of the Great War, when a new and less self-contained
type was introduced). But they were the same with a difference: it was
as if some tiny wind had stirred and ruffled the face of sleeping
waters. In some cases the only difference was a puzzled, half-awakened,
rather fretful look, where had been peace. This was to be observed in
the faces of the impassive shopping women. Still they sat and gazed, but
with a difference. Now and then a little shiver of something almost like
a thought would flicker over the calm, observing, roving eyes, which
would distend a little, and darken with a faint annoyance and fear. Then
it would pass, and leave the waters as still as death again; but it had
been there. And it was quite certain there were fewer of these
ruminating ladies. Some had perhaps died of the Mind Training Course, of
trying to use their brains. (They say that some poor unfortunates who
have never known the touch of soap and water on their bodies die of
their first bath on being brought into hospital: so these.) Some who had
been in the ruminating category six months ago were now reading papers.
Some others, who still gazed at their fellows, gazed in a different
manner; they would look intently at someone for half a minute, then look
away, and their lips would move, and it was apparent that they were, not
saying their prayers, but trying to repeat to themselves every detail of
what they had seen. For this was part of the Government Mind Training
Course (observation and accuracy). And one large and cow-like lady with
a shopping-bag containing circulating library books and other
commodities said to her companion, in Kitty Grammont's hearing, two
things that accorded strangely with her aspect.
"I couldn't get anything worth reading out of the library to-day--they
hadn't got any of the ones I'd ordered. These look quite silly, I'm
sure. There aren't many good books written, do you think?"
Doubtful she was, and questioning: but still, she had used the word
"good" and applied it to a book, as she might have to butter, or a
housemaid, or a hat, implying a possible, though still dimly discerned,
difference between one book and another. And presently she said a
stranger thing.
"What," she enquired, "do you think about the state of things between
Bavaria and Prussia? Relations to-day seemed more strained than ever, I
thought."
Her companion could not be said to rise to this; she replied merely
(possibly having a little missed the drift of the unusual question) that
in her view relations were very often a nuisance, and exhausting. So the
subject was a little diverted; it went off, in fact, on to
sisters-in-law; but still it had been raised.
Beyond these ladies sat another who looked as if she had obtained
exemption from the Mind Training Course on the ground that her mind (if
any) was not susceptible of training; and beyond her sat a little typist
eating chocolates and reading the _Daily Mirror_. Last May she had been
reading "The love he could not buy"; this April she was reading "How to
make pastry out of nuts." Possibly by Christmas she might be reading
"Which way shall I Vote and Why?"
Ivy Delmer, next her, was reading the notices along the walls. Between
"Ask Mr. Punch into your home" and "Flee from the wrath to come" there
was a gap, where a Safety if Possible notice had formerly offered the
counsel "Do not sit down in the street in the middle of the traffic or
you may get killed." A month ago this had been removed. It had,
apparently, been decided by the Safety if Possible Council that the
public had at last outgrown their cruder admonitions. The number of
street accidents was, in fact, noticeably on the decline. It seemed as
if people were learning, slowly and doubtfully, to connect cause and
effect. A was learning why he would be killed, B why he would not. Ivy
Delmer noticed the gap on the wall, and wondered what would take its
place. Perhaps it would be another text; but texts were diminishing in
frequency; one seldom saw one now. More likely it would be an
exhortation to Take a Holiday in the Clouds, or Get to Watford in five
minutes by Air (and damn the risk).
Ivy, as she had a year ago, looked round at the faces of her
fellow-travellers--mostly men and girls going home from business. Quite
a lot of young men there were in these days; enough, you'd almost think,
for there to be one over for Ivy to marry some day.... Ivy sighed a
little. She hoped rather that this would indeed prove to be so, but
hoped without conviction. After all, few girls could expect to get
married in these days. She supposed that if she married at all, she
ought to take a cripple, or a blind one, and keep him. She knew that
would be the patriotic course; but how much nicer it would be to be
taken by a whole one and get kept! She looked at the pale, maimed young
men round her, and decided that they didn't, mostly, look like keeping
anyone at all, let alone her; they were too tired. The older men looked
more robust; but older men are married. Some of them looked quite
capable and pleased with themselves, as if they were saying, "What have
I got out of it, sir? Why, L100 more per annum, more self-confidence,
and a clearer head."
There was also a brilliant-looking clergyman, engaged probably in
reforming the Church; but clergymen are different, one doesn't marry
them. Altogether, not a hopeful collection.
The train got to Marylebone pretty quickly, because it had almost
abandoned its old habit of stopping half-way between every two stations.
No one had ever quite known why it had done this in the past, but, with
the improvement in the brains of the employees of the electric railways,
the custom had certainly gradually decreased.
Marylebone too had undergone a change: there was rather less running
hither and thither, rather less noise, rather less smoke, and the clock
was more nearly right. Nothing that would strike the eye of anyone who
was not looking for signs, but little manifestations which made the
heart, for instance, of Nicholas Chester stir within him with
satisfaction when he came that way, or the way of any other station
(excepting only the stations of the South Eastern line, the directors
and employees of which had been exempted in large numbers from the Mind
Training Act by the Railway Executive Committee, as not being likely to
profit by the course).
Certainly the train to Little Chantreys ran better than of old, and with
hardly any smoke. Someone had hit on a way of reducing the smoke
nuisance; probably of, eventually, ending it altogether. Kitty Grammont
and Ivy Delmer found themselves in the same compartment, and talked at
intervals on the journey. Ivy thought, as she had thought several times
during the last few months, that Kitty looked prettier than of old, and
somehow more radiant, more lit up. They talked of whether you ought to
wear breeches as near to town as West Ealing, and left it unsettled.
They talked of where you could get the best chocolates for the least
money, and of what was the best play on just now. They talked of the
excess of work in the office at the present moment, caused by the new
Instruction dealing with the exemption of journalists whose mental
category was above B2. (This was part of the price which had to be paid
by the Brains Ministry for the support of the press, which is so
important.) They began to talk, at least Ivy did, of whether you can
suitably go to church with a dog in your muff; and then they got to
Little Chantreys.
2
Ivy found her parents in the garden, weeding the paths. Jane and John
were playing football, and Jelly was trotting a lonely trail round the
domains in a character apparently satisfactory to himself but which
would have been uncertain to an audience.
"Well, dear," said the vicar, looking up at Ivy from his knees. The
vicarage had not yet adopted the new plan of destroying weeds by
electricity; they had tried it once, but the electricity had somehow
gone astray and electrified Jelly instead of the weeds, so they had
given it up. The one-armed soldier whom they employed as gardener
occasionally pulled up a weed, but not often, and he was off this
afternoon anyhow, somewhat to the Delmers' relief. Of course one must
employ disabled soldiers, but the work gets on quicker without them.
"Have you had a hard day, darling?" enquired Mrs. Delmer, busy
scrabbling with a fork between paving-stones.
"Rather," said Ivy, and sat down on the wheel-barrow. "The Department's
frightfully rushed just now.... Mr. Prideaux says the public is in a
state of unrest. It certainly seems to be, from the number of grumbling
letters it writes us.... You're looking tired, Daddy."
"A little, dear." The vicar got up to carry away his basket of weeds to
the bonfire. Mrs. Delmer said, "Daddy's had a worrying time in the
parish. Two more poor little abandoned babies."
"Where were they left this time?" Ivy asked with interest.
"One at the Police Station, with a note to say the government had driven
the parents to this; the other just outside our garden door, with no
note at all, but I suppose it's the same old story. We've no clue to
either yet; they're not from Little Chantreys, of course, but I suppose
we shall trace them in time. Daddy's been making enquiries among the
village people; none of them will say, if they know, but Daddy says
they're all in a sad state of anger and discontent about the Baby Laws;
he thinks they're working up worse every day. There's so much talk of
different laws for rich and poor. Of course when people say that, what
they always mean is that it's the same law for both, and ought to be
different. Even that isn't true, of course, in this case, as the taxes
are in proportion to the income; but it certainly does come very hard on
the poor. Daddy thinks it his duty to preach about it again to-morrow,
and that worries him, because he may get arrested and fined. But he
feels it's right. He thinks the country is in real danger of risings and
revolts if this goes on. He says the Stop It League is doing its best to
stir up rebellion, and that would be _such_ a calamity. And all these
poor little babies abandoned or disowned all over the country; it goes
to one's heart.... Don't talk about it, darling, it worries Daddy so....
And poor Brown is _so_ little use with the vegetable garden. His Mind
Training Course seems really to have quite upset him; he talks and looks
so strangely now. And Daddy's worried about Mr. Hawtrey" (the curate),
"who's joined the Church Improvement Society and has become dreadfully
restless, and keeps saying Daddy ought to join it too."
Mrs. Delmer sighed, and changed the subject, as the vicar came back, to
the amount of blossom there was on the white-heart cherry.
Ivy went indoors. She went up to the room she shared with Betty. Betty
was there, staining a straw hat with Jackson's nut-brown hat-polish.
Ivy said, "A nice mess you're making. I should think you might remember
it's my room as well as yours," and Betty said, "Socks." From which it
may be inferred that these sisters, good-humoured in the main to others,
were frequently short-tempered to one another.
Ivy said next, opening a drawer, "I won't stand it. You've been pinching
my handkerchiefs."
Betty replied absently, and as if from habit rather than from
reflection, "Haven't been near your old drawer."
"Liar. There were twelve here this morning and now there are only ten.
I've told you before I won't stand having my things pinched. If you're
too slack to earn enough to keep yourself in handkerchiefs, you must do
without, that's all."
"I suppose you'd rather I'd used my sleeve at the Whites' tennis this
morning, wouldn't you?"
"_I_ shouldn't care if you had.... Tennis in the morning's a pretty
rotten idea anyhow, if you ask me. You're the biggest slacker I ever
came across. If I was Daddy I wouldn't keep you eating your head off,
even if you aren't clever. You're going on like a girl before the war.
Your Training Course doesn't seem to have done you the slightest good,
either. It's people like you who'll rot up the whole plan."
"It's rot anyhow," Betty returned, without interest, turning her hat
about critically. "You should just hear the way they're all going on
about it in the village. Stuff and nonsense, I call it. And as long as
people like me and the village--normal, ordinary people--think it's
stuff and nonsense, ... well, it _will_ be stuff and nonsense, that's
all."
"People like you," Ivy retorted witheringly, as she changed her skirt
for her country breeches.
But, after all, that retort didn't dispose of Betty, or the people like
Betty ... or the whole vicarage family ... or most of Little
Chantreys.... Those people, after all, were going to take more disposing
of than that.... They were, quite possibly, going to take more disposing
of than anyone yet knew.
"Silly ass," said Ivy, but with a touch of doubt.
She thought her new green breeches were rather nice, anyhow, and that
seemed to matter more.
3
Kitty found her brother Cyril at the End House. Cyril was in a poor way.
His publishing business was on the edge of bankruptcy.
"So much for your abominable Brains Ministry," he complained. "The mass
of safe, mediocre stuff on which publishers count for a living while
they adventure with the risks is being gradually withdrawn. It simply
doesn't come in. Its producers are becoming--many of them--just too
intelligent. I'm not imagining this; I know of several cases in which it
has happened; of people who have developed just enough distaste for
their own work to dry them up altogether. What's worse, there isn't the
same sale for such stuff as there was. When the process has gone much
further (if ever it does)--so far that a lot of really good stuff is
turned out, and read by large numbers of people, business will be all
right again. Till then, publishers are in a poor way.... Verse is
dropping off, too, like autumn leaves. That's all to the good.... I
daresay in another year or two (unless you're wrecked first, which seems
probable, by the way) there'll only be about a hundred people left in
the country writing anything at all.... Newspapers, of course, go on
much the same; that's because you're afraid of them and exempt their
staff. Insignificant verse and meaningless novels may die a natural
death (though I think it improbable), but _Myosotis_ and the _Patriot_
and the _Daily Idiot_ will go on for ever. You're all such cowards at
Whitehall. You dare to ruin unoffending publishers, to browbeat the poor
and simple, and to extract gold from the innocent babe unborn, but you
daren't risk the favour of the press."
"No," Kitty agreed. "We certainly daren't.... Not that we've got it, you
know, quite the contrary; but we strive for it. I was reading the
_Herald_ and _Stop It_ in the train, till I was cold with fear. _Stop
It_ veils its meaning delicately, as usual; but it means business....
However, I thought we should have been downed six months ago, yet here
we are still. It's like skating on rotten ice so fast that it never
breaks. It's fun; it's exciting. And I believe if we go on skating fast,
it won't break at all. You see, the government are getting cleverer and
cleverer themselves, which will help them to do it skilfully. Chester
says his head really does feel clearer after taking the Course; he says
so in private life, I mean, not only when he's soft-soaping the public."
"He'll need," said Anthony, "a jolly clear head before he's through with
this job. With every door-step in our towns and villages piled with
exposed babies ... it's worse than China. Much worse, because I believe
in China they don't get put on door-steps, but left harmlessly out of
the way in open fields and no one meddles with them. It's becoming a
public nuisance."
"There is a new branch at the Ministry," said Kitty, "which is concerned
exclusively with Uncertificated Babies, how to deal with them."
"An' how _do_ they deal with them, the poor little ducks?" enquired
Pansy, who had just come in from the garden looking more than usually
gay and lovely and fantastic in a pink sunbonnet and the kind of dress
affected by milkmaids in a chorus.
Kitty looked at her thoughtfully.
"I should hardly like to tell you. You mightn't like it. Besides, it's a
private department, like the secret room in jam factories where they
make the pips. No, Pansy love, I can't possibly tell you.... But they
_do_ deal with them, quite effectively."
Pansy tossed her Cheeper up and down to a gentle music-hall ditty.
"Who'll buy babies--
Babies better dead?
Here's every mental category,
From C3 down to Z...."
It was a taking song as she crooned it on the stage, nursing an infant
on each arm, and with a baby-chorus crying behind her.
4
After breakfast on Sunday morning Kitty remarked that she was going by
train to Beaconsfield, where she had arranged to meet Chester for a walk
through Burnham Beeches. She as a rule made no secret of her walks with
Chester, only occasionally, when self-consciousness took her. After all,
why should she? One went walks with all sorts of people, with any man or
woman who liked walking and talking and whom one liked as a companion;
it implied nothing. Kitty at times, with all it meant in this instance
burning and alive in her consciousness, had to pause to tell herself how
little it did imply to others, how she might mention it freely and
casually, without fear. Yet might she? The intimacy of the Minister of a
Department with one of his clerks _was_, no doubt, out of the ordinary,
not quite like other intimacies; perhaps it did seem odd, and imply
things. Perhaps Kitty might have thought so herself, in another case.
She announced her plan this morning with an extra note of casualness in
her voice.
Pansy said, "Oh, you two. You'll be goin' baby-huntin' in the ditches, I
should think, instead of pickin' primroses. I should say you jolly well
ought, and you'd better take the Cheeper's pram with you."
Anthony said, "Exactly what I always try _not_ to do, going out on
Sundays with the people from my shop. It spoils the Sabbath rest, the
Pisgah's mountain touch. You'd much better come out with Cyril and Pansy
and me."
"I," said Cyril, in his detached manner, "shall be going to Mass."
5
They walked up through the depraved mushroom growth round Beaconsfield
station to the old town that city set on a hill, lying wide and
spacious, with its four Ends stretched out like a cross. Old
Beaconsfield is an enchanted city; as it was in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, so it is to-day, an ancient country town, full of
brick walls and old houses, and courtyards and coaching inns, and
dignity and romance and great elms. But they left it behind them, and
took the lane that runs to Hedgerley, with the cold April wind in their
faces.
They came, four miles on, to the forest of great beeches, where broad
glades and grassy rides run in and out through thickets of wild
undergrowth and bracken, and ancient twisted boles and slim smooth
grey-green stems are set close together under a rustling singing roof of
brilliant green, the young, new-born, radiant green of beeches in April.
In every hollow and dip of the forest's mossy floor, primroses glimmered
in pale pools.
They sat down by one of these pools to have their lunch.
After lunch they lay on there and smoked. Chester lay on his back, his
hands clasped behind his head, staring up at the green roof. Kitty, her
round chin cupped in her two hands, lay and watched his lean, sallow,
clever face, foreshortened, with the shadows of the leaves moving on it
and his eyes screwed against the sun.
"Kitty," said Chester presently, "I want to talk to you."
"M--m." Kitty, having finished her cigarette, was chewing grass.
He sat up and looked at her, and as he looked his face grew more sallow
and his smile died. He stabbed into the soft, damp earth with his stick,
and frowned.
"It's this, my dear. I can't go on any longer with this--this farce. We
must end it. I've been meaning to tell you so for some time, but I
thought I'd give it a fair trial, just to satisfy us both. Well, we've
given it a trial, and it won't work. It isn't good enough. We've got to
be more to each other--or less. This--this beastly half-way house was
all right for a bit; but we've got on too far now for it.... I should
like to know what _you_ think about it."
Kitty pulled a primrose to pieces, petal by petal, before she answered.
"One thing I think," she said slowly, "is that I'm different from you.
Or is it that women are different from men? Never mind; it doesn't
really matter which. But I fancy it's women and men. Anyhow there it is.
And the difference is that for me a half-way house would always be
better than nothing, while for you it would be worse. Men seem to value
being married so much more than women do--and friendship, going about
together, having each other to talk to and play with, and all that,
seems to matter to them so little. Love seems to take different forms
with men and women, and to want different ways of expression.... So it's
not much use trying to understand one another about it.... That's the
chief thing I think, Nicky."
He moved impatiently.
"In fact, you're contented with the present state of things."
"Oh, no. Not a bit. I want much more. But--if it's all we can have...."
"It isn't," he said. "We can get married."
She shook her head, with decision.
"No. No. No."
"Quite quietly," he pleaded. "No one would know but ourselves and the
registrar and a witness whom we'd murder after the ceremony. Why
shouldn't we? What are the reasons why not? There are only two; you
ought to marry a certificated person and have an intelligent family; and
I oughtn't to have a family at all. Well, you say you don't mean to
marry anyone else; so you may as well marry me. So much for the first
reason. And of course we wouldn't have a family; so much for the second.
Well, then?"
"There's a third," said Kitty. "And the only important one. There's the
look of the thing. I don't care how many people we murder, the secret
will leak out. Things always do leak out. Never, in the course of
twenty-nine years of endeavour, have I been able to keep anything shady
from coming to light sooner or later. It isn't done. You ought to know
that, as a government servant. Has any government ever succeeded in
keeping its own dark doings secret for long? No; they come out
like--like flowers pushing up towards daylight; and then there's the
devil to pay. All our shadiest departmental transactions emerge one by
one; nothing is hid that shall not be revealed. And our marriage would
be the same. Be sure our sin would find us out. And that would be the
end of your career, and probably of the Ministry as well; I believe the
Ministry will stand or fall with you; and it's already pretty
tottery.... It's a pity you can't get exemption; but of course your case
is one in which it's absolutely never given.... No, we can't do this
thing. You're the Minister of Brains first, and poor Nicky Chester, who
would like to marry his girl, a long, long way behind. And the poor girl
who would like to marry Nicky Chester--she's not got to count at all....
I don't want to be high-falutin and to talk about principles, only to
have a little sense."
He was watching her moodily from under bent brows, leaning back against
a beech-trunk and pulling up little handfuls of damp moss with his thin,
unusual fingers.
"Sense," he repeated. "It is sense, to have what one wants, if it
doesn't harm anything or anyone. And I'll tell you another thing--not
having it is rotting me up altogether--me and my work. I didn't want to
fall in love again; I hoped I'd done with all that; I tried not to take
any notice of you. But it was no go, and I can't fall out again, and I'm
dead sick of going on like this. And my experience of life, both private
and public, has been longer than yours, and, as it happens, I've known
of several transactions which haven't come to light and never will; I've
perpetrated some myself in the Ministry, which even that clear light
which beats upon a hotel hasn't yet exposed, and, heaven helping us,
won't. You don't suppose all the dark secrets of the war ever came out?
Of course they didn't. There are some that will wait till ... well, till
the next war, let's say.... Kitty, let's try it. It's worth the risk,
surely. Let's be sporting. We're missing--we're missing the best thing
in the world, just out of funk. I thought you always did things, just
for the sake of doing them. I thought you never turned your back on
life. It isn't like you."
"Oh," murmured Kitty. "Life.... There's so much of that. This is just
one thing out of it."
"While you want it," he returned, indubitably correct as to this, "it
seems a long way the most important thing."
"It does," she agreed. "There's no comparison at all.... It's queer,
isn't it, how strong it is, this odd, desperate wanting of one person
out of all the world. It's an extraordinary, enormously strong thing....
But there _are_ other things. There are jokes, and shops, and music, and
plays, and pictures, and nice clothes, and Russian politics, and absurd
people, and Greek poetry, and the world's failures caged together on one
island, and things to eat and to drink, and our careers, and primroses
in woods, and the censor.... Good gracious, it's all like an idiotic,
glorified revue. We mustn't let the one thing, just because it matters
most, matter alone. It's so commonplace. Our hearts aren't broken, and
won't break. We're out to have a good time, and we'll let love and
marriage go to the--anywhere they like, if we can't have them.... By the
way, if it's any comfort to you (it is to me) I shouldn't make at all a
good wife; I'm much nicer as a friend. I want too much out of life. I'm
grasping and selfish. You'd find me tiring."
"I do," he returned. "You're tiring me to death now. I've plenty of
friends already, thank you. And what does it matter to me what sort of a
wife you'd make? You talk as if you were refusing a secretarial
appointment. I want _you_, not a wife."
"You've got me," said Kitty, "only not as a wife.... If that's no use to
you, we'll give it up. Nicky, I suppose we'd _better_ give it up. It
isn't working. I'll go right away. I'll get another job."
"No," he said gloomily. "There's no need for that. Why should you mess
up your career? We needn't meet. We shouldn't naturally meet, unless we
made opportunities. I think you're right, that we'd better not meet.
What's the good of meeting, just to repeat this sort of scene again and
again, and hurt each other? We've reached the breaking point; I can't
bear any more.... I think we'd better leave it that you let me know when
you change your mind and will marry me. You will, won't you, when you
do?"
"Yes," said Kitty, and could say no more than that because she was on
the edge of tears.
For a moment they clung together, holding each other close. He said, "My
dearest dear, I love you. Can't you?... can't you?..." and she
whispered, very pale, "I love you. I think I worship you," and laid her
cheek on his hand, so that he felt her tears.
They walked on together through the April afternoon, and it cried to
them like a child whom they were betraying and forsaking. There would
not be another day like this day, through all the lovely awakening
spring and summer.
6
Ivy and Betty Delmer, who had been spending the afternoon at
Beaconsfield, saw them at Beaconsfield station.
Betty said, "Surely that's your Minister with Miss Grammont."
Ivy looked at them, down the length of the platform. It seemed to her
that Miss Grammont's walk with the Minister hadn't been altogether a
success; they both looked so pale and tired, and Miss Grammont, surely,
had been crying.
Something suddenly passed into Ivy's consciousness about these two
people whom she admired, and her soft mouth dropped open a little with
the amazement of her thoughts. The Minister--and Miss Grammont! It was
surely incredible. Ministers didn't; they were too high, too superior.
Besides, what had love to do with this Minister, who was uncertificated
for matrimony? Ivy told herself she was mistaken, she had misread the
look with which they had looked at each other as they parted.
"Are they thick?" Betty was asking, with careless, inquisitive interest.
Betty wouldn't think it odd; Betty didn't know anything about ministers
in general or this minister in particular.
"Oh, I think they know each other quite well," replied Ivy. "Miss
Grammont's jolly clever, you know. I shouldn't wonder if he talks about
quite important things to her."
"How dull," returned Betty, swinging her primroses. "Don't let's get
into the same carriage as her. I never know if I know those End House
people or not; Daddy and mother think I don't, and it's awkward.... I'd
rather enjoy knowing Miss Ponsonby and that ducky baby, even if they
aren't respectable, she looks so sweet, and I'd like to hear all about
the stage. But I've no use for your Miss Grammont. Her clothes are all
right, but I'm sure she's stuck up.... Fancy going out for Sunday with
the Minister of a government department! Rather her than me."
Ivy said, "Don't you worry, my child. No Minister'll ever trouble _you_
to go out with him. As for Chester, I should think he'd have you
executed after one talk; he's great on ridding the world of the mentally
deficient." But what she was thinking was, "How fearfully interesting if
there is anything between them." She wondered what the other people at
the office thought about it, or if they had ever thought about it at
all.