ON FIXED HEARTS AND CHANGING SCENES
1
To Kitty it was manifest that the time had come for a change of
employment. Such times came frequently in her life; often merely because
she got bored, yawned, wanted a change, heard life summoning her to
fresh woods and pastures new, and obeyed the call. Many occupations she
had thus thrown up lightly; this is one reason why those who regard life
as a variety entertainment do not really get on; they forget that life
is real, life is earnest, and departing leave behind them no footprints
on the sands of time. They do not make a career; they do not make good;
they do not, in the long run, even make much money, though that rolls in
by fits and starts, and at times plentifully. They do not so much hide
their talents in napkins as play ball with them.
This is as much as to say that it was not to Kitty Grammont the effort
and the wrench that it would have been to many people to contemplate a
change of avocation. And it certainly seemed desirable. Chester had
said, "We needn't meet"; but the fact remained that when two people who
love each other work in the same building, however remote their spheres,
they disturb each other, are conscious of each other's nearness. And
Chester's presence pervaded the whole Ministry; he had stamped himself
everywhere; there was no getting away from him. His name was constantly
on the lips and on the pens of his subordinates, and clicked forth from
every typewriter; you could not so much as write an official letter
without beginning "I am directed by the Minister of Brains to state,"
and signing it "for the Minister of Brains." Besides which, he was to be
seen going out and coming in, to be met in passages and lifts, to be
observed taking his food in the canteen, and his Personal Assistant
demanded continual attention to him on the telephone. No, there was no
getting away from the Minister. And that meant no peace of mind, none of
the old careless light-hearted living and working; nothing but a
continual, disturbing, restless, aching want. Kitty had no intention of
facing this, so she told Vernon Prideaux that when she found another job
she was going to leave. He looked at her in annoyance and dismay, and
said, "Good lord, why?"
Kitty said, "I'm bored. I want a change. I'm tired of working for this
autocratic government. I want something with more variety in it, and
more soul--a travelling circus, or a companionship to a rich American
seeing the world; or any old thing, so long as it amuses me."
"There's going to be quite enough amusement in _this_ circus," said
Prideaux, "before we're through with it, to satisfy anyone, I should
say.... Really, Kitty, I think you're foolish. You're throwing up your
chances; you're climbing up, and will climb higher if you stay. Even if
the thing founders, as is quite likely, you'll climb out of it into
another job, you're good enough. You ought to think of your career. And
besides, you can't be spared. Who on earth do you think is going to do
your job? I think you ought to see this thing through."
But Kitty did not think so. "It will go to its own place quite quickly
enough without my help. And as for my career--funny word--I'm not sure
I've got one. If I have it's such a chequered one that a few more ups
and downs won't make much difference to it. And as for being spared, oh
anyone can be spared, out of any ministry; there are too many of us.
Anyhow--well anyhow I must go."
Prideaux thought this so frivolous, so foolish, so unworthy, so
tiresome, and so like a woman, that he was exasperated. He rang for a
shorthand typist, remarking, "If you must you must. Miss Egerton" (Miss
Egerton had succeeded Miss Pomfrey, and was better), "send to the
Establishment Branch for Miss Grammont's papers sometime," which closed
the subject for the present.
Kitty went back to her table and wrote a letter to the A.S.E. about some
unfortunate agreement which had been made with them concerning the
exemption of some of their members from the Mind Training Course.
Personally Kitty was of the opinion that it was a pity the agreement had
not been made as extensive as the A.S.E. desired; she thought that this
Union were already too clever by half. She almost went to the length of
thinking it was a pity the promises made to them had not been kept; a
revolutionary opinion which in itself indicated that it was time she
left. Having dealt with the A.S.E. she turned her attention to a file
sent down from M.B. 1 and minuted "Passed to you to deal with this man's
imaginary grievance." The imaginary grievance was that the wife of the
man in question had been killed by a motor bus, and he wanted a week's
postponement of his Mind Training Course in order that he might arrange
about the funeral. M.B. 1 were like that; they did not mean to be
unkind, but were a little lacking in flexibility and imagination.
Ivy Delmer, who had answered Prideaux's bell, sat with her pencil ready
and her round face bent over her notebook. She had heard Prideaux's
order to his secretary, and concluded, correctly, that Miss Grammont was
either going to have her pay raised or to leave, and from Prideaux's
manner and voice she thought it was the second. She wondered whether
this could have anything to do with the Minister, and what he had been
saying to Miss Grammont on Sunday. She was curious and interested, even
more so than she had been on Sunday, because the people to whom she had
mentioned the subject had all noticed the intimacy; everyone seemed to
have seen the Minister out with Miss Grammont at one time or another. No
one but Ivy thought it was anything more than friendship, but no one
else had seen them look at one another on Beaconsfield platform. Ivy
had, and said so....
Kitty was right; nothing remained hidden in government departments, or,
indeed, anywhere else. Healthily, persistently, inevitably, everything
pushed up towards the clear light of day; and quite right, too.
2
In the evenings Kitty, seeking jobs, studied the advertisement columns
of the daily papers. She had always read them; they, with Mr. Selfridge
and the Pelman system, form the lighter and more entertaining part of
any daily paper; but now she took to perusing them with care. The
personal column of the _Times_ she found peculiarly edifying.
"Quiet, refined gentleman (served in war, musical) would like to get
into touch with bright and sympathetic lady." Kitty rejected that; she
was not sure that she was sympathetic, and the terms were too vague.
Better was "Lady, high standard of taste and culture and large means,
wants capable travelling companion. Knowledge of art essential, good
breeding preferred. Must talk continental languages fluently and
understand railway guides." Kitty, making a mental note of that (for,
with the possible exception of the breeding, she had all these
qualifications), ran her eyes down the column, past "Write to me,
darling, all is forgiven," "Will the lady in a fur toque riding in a
Hammersmith aero on Saturday last at 3.30 communicate with A.C.", "No
man hath seen God, at any time," until she came to "Young, accomplished,
well-educated War Widow would like position as secretary or confidential
clerk to nobleman, member of parliament, or gentleman." She rested her
finger on that. "I'll put one in like this," she remarked to her cousin.
"War Widow. That's what I've always wanted to be. It sounds so well.
Elspeth, I shall buy some weeds and commence widow. A war widow...."
"If you want a new job, and a job with travel and life in it," said her
cousin, sounding her, "I don't know why you don't go out to the Pacific
Islands and join Neil. You may be sure that wherever Neil is there'll be
travel enough and life enough." She watched Kitty idly through a little
whirl of cigarette smoke. But Kitty looked no more than bored, bending
over the _Times_ and manicuring her nails.
"Neil would tire me. I've grown too old for Neil. Besides, it wouldn't
be proper; I've broken off my engagement. I've not had the last letter
back yet, you know, so he may have got it. Besides..." Kitty paused only
for a moment, and added in the same casual tone, "besides, I'm too much
in love with Nicky Chester, though I can't have him, to have any use for
anyone else just now."
Her cousin nodded. "I knew that, darling, of course. And so you've
renounced each other. How silly. But it won't last. It never does. Go
and be a Young Accomplished War Widow, then, to pass the time."
3
But there were hours of the night when it seemed to Kitty that she could
not go and be a Young Accomplished War Widow, that she could not be
companion, however capable, to any travelling lady of taste, culture and
means, or clerk, however confidential, to any peer, M.P., or even
gentleman; that none of these careers (were they careers? She still
sought to define that word) would pass the time at all; that nothing, in
fact, would pass it except working for Nicholas Chester, seeing him
sometimes, hearing his voice.... Always addicted to metaphysical
speculation in the night, even in nights of anguish, she would speculate
on this queer disease, so common to the race, which had overtaken (and
not, as they had both candidly remarked, for the first time, possibly
not even for the last) herself and Nicholas Chester. What was it, this
extraordinary driving pressure of emotion, this quite disproportionate
desire for companionship with, for contact with, one person out of all
the world of people and things, which made, while it lasted, all other
desires, all other emotions, pale and faint beside it? Which so
perverted and wrenched from its bearings the mind of a man like Nicholas
Chester that he was for throwing overboard the cherished principles
which were the cargo he had for long been so desperately bent on
carrying, through storm and stress, to the country of his dreams? Which
made him say, "No one will find out, and if they do, let them and be
damned to them"?... Desire for a person; it had, it had always had, an
extraordinarily dynamic effect on the lives of men and women. When it
came into play, principle, chivalry, common sense, intellect, humour,
culture, sweetness and light, all we call civilisation, might crumple up
like match-board so this one overwhelming desire, shared by all the
animal creation, might be satisfied. On this rock the world, the
pathetic, eager, clever, foolish, so heavily handicapped world, might be
wrecked. It was, perhaps, this one thing that would always prevent
humanity from being, in fact, a clever and successful race, would always
keep them down somewhere near the level of the other animals.
Faces passed before Kitty's wakeful eyes; the fatuous, contented faces
of mothers bending over the rewards of love clinging to their breasts;
slow, placid, married faces everywhere.... This thing was irresistible,
and certainly inevitable; if it ceased, humanity itself would cease,
since it is the one motive which impels the continued population of the
already over-populated earth. There it was; one had to accept it; there
was, perhaps, no one who grew to years of maturity who escaped it, no
one whose life would not, at some period, be in some degree disorganised
by this strange force. It was blind instinct; its indulgence did not, in
the end, even make for good, so far as good meant adventure, romance,
and the gay chances of life, the freedom of the cities of the
world--anything beyond mere domesticity. For what, after all, was
marriage? A tying down, a shutting of gates, the end of youth, the
curbing of the spirit of adventure which seeks to claim all the four
corners of the world for its heritage. It meant a circumscribed and
sober life, in one place, in one house, with, perhaps, children to
support and to mind; it meant becoming respectable, insured, mature,
settled members of society, with a stake in the country. No longer may
life be greeted with a jest and death with a grin; both these (of course
important but not necessarily solemn) things have come to matter too
much to be played with.
To this sedate end do the world's gay and careless free-lances come;
they shut the door upon the challenging spirit of life, and Settle Down.
It is to this end that instinct, not to be denied, summons men and
women, as the bit of cheese summons the mouse into the trap.
Musing thus, Kitty turned her pillow over and over, seeking a softer
side. How she detested stupidity! How, even more, Nicholas Chester
loathed stupidity! To him it was anathema, the root of all evil, the
Goliath he was out to destroy, the blind beast squatting on men's bones,
the idiot drivelling on the village green. And here he was, caught in
the beast's destroying grip, just because he had, as they call it,
fallen in love.... What a work is man!... And here was Kitty herself,
all her gay love of living in danger, tottering unsteadily on its
foundations, undermined by this secret gnawing thing.
At last, as a sop to the craving which would not be denied, she sat up,
with aching, fevered head, and turned the light on, and wrote on a piece
of paper, "Nicky, I'll marry you any time you like, if you want me to,"
and folded it up and laid it on the table at her side, and then lay
quite quiet, the restless longing stilled in her, slow tears forcing
themselves from under her closed lashes, because she knew she would not
send it. She would not send it because Chester too, in his heart, knew
that they had better part; he too was fighting for the cause he believed
in; he wanted her, but wanted to succeed in doing without her. She must
give him his chance to stick by his principles, not drag him down below
them.
There were moments when Kitty wished that she could believe in a God,
and could pray. It must, she thought, be a comfort. She even at times
wished she were a Christian, to find fulfilment in loss. That was, at
least, what she supposed Christians to do.
But she could not be a Christian, and she could not pray; all she could
do was to nerve herself to meet life in the spirit of the gay pierrette,
with cap and bells on her aching head, and a little powder to hide the
tears, and to try not to snap at Elspeth or the people at the office.
This last endeavour usually failed. The little gaping messengers who
answered (when they thought they would) Miss Grammont's bell, told each
other Miss Grammont was cross. The typists grew tired of having letters
sent back to be retyped because of some trifling misapprehension of Miss
Grammont's caligraphy or some trifling misspelling on their own account.
Surely these things could be set right with a pen and a little skill.
These moods of impatience, when frustration vented itself in anger,
alternated with the gaiety, the irreverent and often profane levity,
which was Kitty's habitual way of braving life in its more formidable
aspects. Some people have this instinct, to nail a flag of motley to the
mast of the foundering ship and keep it flying to the last.
4
While Kitty was debating as to her future, toying with the relative
advantages and entertainment to be derived from the careers of War
Widow, Confidential Clerk, Travelling Companion, archaeological explorer
in Macedonia or Crete, beginner on the music-hall stage, under Pansy's
auspices, all of which seemed to have their bright sides, two
suggestions were made to her. One was from a cousin of hers who was
sub-editor of _Stop It_, and offered to get her a place on the staff.
"Would it bind me to a point of view?" Kitty enquired. "I can't be bound
to a point of view."
"Oh dear no," her cousin assured her. "Certainly not. Rather the
contrary," and Kitty said, "All right, I'll think it over." She was
rather attracted by the idea.
You cannot, of course, exactly call it being bound to a point of view to
be required to hint every week that certain things want stopping, in a
world whose staunchest champions must admit that this is indeed so.
_Stop It_ was certainly eclectic, in its picking out, from all the
recognised groups associated for thought and action, activities whose
cessation seemed good to it. The question that rather suggested itself
to its readers was, if _Stop It_ had its way, what, if anything, would
be left?
"Very little," the editor would have answered. "A clean sheet. Then we
can begin again."
_Stop It_ had dropped some of the caution with which it had begun: it
was now quite often possible to deduce from its still cryptic
phraseology what were some of the things it wanted stopped. Having for
some time successfully dodged Dora, it was now daring her. As in all
probability it would not have a long life, and appeared to be having a
merry one, Kitty thought she might as well join it while she could.
To desert abruptly from the ranks of the bureaucracy to those of the
mutineers seemed natural to Kitty, who had always found herself at home
in a number of widely differing situations. Really this is perhaps the
only way to live, if all the various and so greatly different needs of
complicated human nature are to be satisfied. It is very certain that
they cannot be satisfied simultaneously; the best way seems, therefore,
to alternate. It is indeed strange that this is not more done, that
Radicals, Tories, and Labour members, for instance, do not more
frequently interchange, play general post, to satisfy on Tuesday that
side of their souls and intellects which has not been given free play on
Monday; that Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and Lord Curzon do not, from time to
time, deliver each other's speeches, not from any freakish desire to
astonish, but from the sheer necessities of their natures; that Mr.
Massingham and Mr. Leo Maxse, or Mr. A. G. Gardiner and Mr. Gwynne, or
Mr. J. C. Squire and Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey, or Mr. Garvin and Mr. J.
A. Spender, do not from time to time arrange together to change offices
and run each other's papers; or that Mr. Arthur Ransome and Mr. Stephen
Graham do not, during their tours of Russia, sometimes change pens with
each other when they write home. There must be in many people some
undemocratic instinct of centralisation, of autocratic subversion of the
horde of their lesser opinions and impulses to the most dominant and
commanding one, a lack of the true democrat's desire to give a chance to
them all. They say with the Psalmist, "My heart is fixed," and "I have
chosen the way and I will run it to the end," and this is called, by
some, finding one's true self. Perhaps it may be so; it certainly
entails the loss of many other selves; and possibly the dropping of
these, or rather their continual denial and gradual atrophy, simplifies
life.
But Kitty, whose heart was not fixed, entered upon all the changing
scenes of life with a readiness to embrace any point of view, though not
indeed to be bound to it, and an even greater willingness to tell
anything in earth or heaven that it ought to be stopped.
She told Prideaux that she was considering this offer. Prideaux said,
"That thing! Its very name condemns it. It's on the wrong tack. You
shouldn't be out to stop things; they've got to go on.... If it's
journalism you want, why don't you apply for a job on _Intelligence_?"
_Intelligence_, or the Weekly Bulletin of the Brains Ministry (to give
it its sub-title, humorously chosen by one who visualised either the
public or the Ministry as a sick man) was a weekly journal issued by the
Ministry, and its aim was, besides reporting the Ministry's work,
decisions and pronouncements for each week, to correlate all its local
activities and keep them in touch with headquarters, and to collect
reports from over the country as to the state of the public mind. It was
for official circulation only. "Why not?" repeated Prideaux, struck by
this idea. "It would be quite enough of a change: you would probably be
one of the travelling reporters and send bright little anecdotes from
the countryside; I know they want some more reporters. Why don't you
apply? I'll speak to M.B.B. about you if you like." (M.B.B. was the
department which edited the Bulletin.)
"Would it be interesting?" Kitty wondered.
Prideaux thought it would. "Besides," he added, "you'd remain attached
to the Ministry that way, and could return to headquarters later on if
you wanted to.... And meanwhile you'd see all the fun.... We're in for a
fairly lively time, and it would be a pity to miss it. We're bound to
slip up over the A.S.E. before the month's over. And probably over the
exemption of Imbeciles and the Abandoned Babies, too. And the
journalists; that's going to be a bad snag. Oh, it'll be interesting all
right. If it wasn't for Chester's remarkable gift of getting on people's
right side, it would be a poor look-out. But Chester'd pull most things
through. If they'd put him at the head of the Recruiting job during the
war, I believe he'd have pulled even the Review of Exceptions through
without a row.... Well now, what about trying for this job?"
"All right," Kitty agreed. "If you think there's any chance of my
getting it. I don't mind much what I do, so long as I have a change from
this hotel."
On Prideaux's recommendation she did get the job, and was transferred
from her branch to M.B.B. as a travelling reporter for _Intelligence_.
She renounced _Stop It_ with some regret; there was a whimsical element
about _Stop It_ which appealed to her, and which must almost necessarily
be lacking in an official journal; but the career of travelling reporter
seemed to have possibilities. Besides the more weighty reports from the
countryside, a page of _Intelligence_ was devoted each week to anecdotes
related in the engagingly sudden and irrelevant manner of our cheaper
daily Press; as, "A woman appealed before the Cuckfield Tribunal for
exemption from the Mind Training Course on the grounds that she had made
an uncertificated marriage and had since had twins, and must, therefore,
be of a mental level which unfitted her to derive benefit from the
Course." "Three babies have been found abandoned in a ditch between
Amersham and Chesham Bois." "The Essex Farmers' Association have
produced a strain of hens which lay an egg each day all the year round.
The farmers ascribe this to the improvement in their methods caused by
the Mind Training Course." "In reply to a tinplate worker who applied
for Occupational Exemption from the Mental Progress Act, the Chairman of
the Margam Tribunal said ..." (one of the witty things which chairmen do
say, and which need not here be reported). It was, apparently, the
business of the reporters to collect (or invent) and communicate these
trivial anecdotes, as well as more momentous news, as of unrest at
Nottingham, the state of intelligence or otherwise among Suffolk
agriculturists, and so forth.
Kitty rather hoped to be sent to Ireland, which was, as often, in an
interesting and dubious state. Ireland was excluded from the Brains
Acts, as from other Acts. But she was being carefully watched, with a
view to including her when it seemed that it might be safe to do so.
Meanwhile those of her population who were considered by the English
government to be in no need of it were profiting by the Mind Training
Course, while the mass of the peasantry were instructed by their priests
to shun such unholy heretic learning as they would the devil. But on the
whole it seemed possible that the strange paths pointed out by the
Brains Ministry might eventually lead to the solution of the Irish
Question. (What the Irish Question at that moment was, I will not here
attempt to explain: it must be sufficient to remark that there will
always be one.)
5
But Kitty was not sent to Ireland. She was sent about England; first to
Cambridge. Cambridge was not averse to having its mind improved; there
is a sweet reasonableness about Cambridge. It knows how important brains
are. Also it had an affection for Chester, who had been at Trinity. So
reports from Cambridge as regards the Brains Acts were on the whole
favourable, in spite of some unrest (for different reasons) at Kings,
Downing, and Trinity Hall, and slight ferment of revolt down at
Barnwell. There was, indeed, a flourishing branch of the S.I.L. (Stop It
League) in the University, but its attention was not directed at the
moment particularly to stopping the work of the Ministry of Brains.
It was, of course, a queer and quite new Cambridge which Kitty
investigated. She had known the pre-war Cambridge; there had intervened
the war Cambridge, that desolated and desolating thing, and now there
had sprung up, on the other side of that dividing gulf, a Cambridge new
and without precedent; a Cambridge half full of young war veterans, with
the knowledge of red horizons, battle, murder, and sudden death, in
their careless, watchful, experienced eyes; when they lounged about the
streets or hurried to lectures, they dropped, against their will, into
step; they were brown, and hard, and tired, and found it hard to
concentrate on books; they had forgotten their school knowledge, and
could not get through Littlegoes, and preferred their beds to sleeping
in the open, that joy of pampered youth which has known neither
battle-fields or Embankment seats.
The other half were the boys straight from school; and between these two
divisions rolled the Great European War, across which they could with
difficulty make themselves understood each by the other.
It was a Cambridge which had broken with history, for neither of these
sections had any links with the past, any traditions to hand down. The
only people who had these were the dons and Fellows and the very few
undergraduates who, having broken off their University career to fight,
had, after long years, returned to it again. These moved like ghosts
among their old haunts; but their number was so inconsiderable as hardly
to count. It was, to all intents and purposes, a new Cambridge, a clean
sheet; and it was interesting to watch what was being inscribed upon it.
But with such observations, apart from those of them which were
connected with the attitude of Cambridge towards the Brains Ministry,
neither Kitty nor this story are concerned. The story of the new
Cambridge will have to be written some day by a member of it, and should
be well worth reading.
From Cambridge Kitty went to travel Cambridgeshire, which was in a state
of quiet, albeit grudging, East Anglian acceptance and slow
assimilation.
Far different were the northern midlands, which were her next
destination. Here, indeed, was revolt in process of ferment; revolt
which had to be continually uncorked and aired that it might not ferment
too much. The uncorking and airing was done by means of conferences, at
which the tyrannised and the tyrants each said their say. These
heart-to-heart talks have a soothing effect (sometimes) on the
situation; at other times not. As conducted by the Minister of Brains,
they certainly had. Chester was something more than soothing; he was
inspiring. While he was addressing a meeting, he made it believe that
intelligence was the important thing; more important than liberty, more
important than the satisfaction of immediate desires. He made
intelligence a flaming idea, like patriotism, freedom, peace, democracy,
the eight-hour day, or God; and incidentally he pointed out that it
would lead to most of these things; and they believed him. When he
showed how, in the past, the lack of intelligence had led to national
ruin, economic bondage, war, autocracy, poverty, sweating, and vice,
they believed that too. When he said, "Look at the European War," they
looked. When he went on, "Without centuries of stupidity everywhere the
war would never have been; without stupidity the war, if it had been,
would have been very differently conducted; without stupidity we need
never have another war, but with stupidity we inevitably shall, League
of Nations or not," they all roared and cheered.
So he went about saying these things, convincing and propitiating labour
everywhere; labour, that formidable monster dreaded and cajoled by all
good statesmen; labour, twice as formidable since in the Great War it
had learned the ways of battle and the possibility and the power of the
union of arms and the man.