Morganatic alliance for the chauffeur.”
We all agreed that there was no other way out of it.
_CHAPTER XIII_: HOW NAUGHTY
The deliberate pursuit of naughtiness may seem absurd to those who have
a natural superfluity of it, but, all the same, it is much in vogue.
And, as in other matters besides naughtiness, the amateurs who most
wish to excel are those who are the least likely to do anything of the
sort. Every one knows theoretically that possession is nine points of
desire, that in love there is always _l’un qui baise et l’autre qui
tend la joue_, but how many have realized that the Evil one is also
human, and pursues those who shun him, while he turns a deaf ear to
those who really long to be naughty. It is the nice, mousy dears whom
he runs after with some brilliant new devilment in his pocket. When the
young desperado or the middle-aged lady with nothing in particular to
do runs up to him and exclaims, “Oh, Mr. Satan, do let us have some of
your lovely, wicked suggestions!” he turns green, and says, “Go away to
a supper club. I will send my junior assistant to you there.” And off
he flies to refresh himself at the nearest rectory.
Equally incomprehensible are certain other folk who, themselves
incapable of any vice, set forth armed to the teeth against a spiritual
enemy who knows them not; just as innocent old ladies in silk mantles
cling together at railway stations for fear of being abducted to
San Francisco. Many sensitive young clergymen have been known to
speak in an uncommonly plucky way about a hot bath as if it were a
sporting enterprise; showing no delicacy whatever on the subject, but
attacking it as man to man, without any of that nonsensical reserve
which, as they say, drives so many good people out of the Church. It
is difficult to explain why boasting of having had a hot bath should
imply a defensive attitude towards Satan; but, in fact, these heroes
seem to cry aloud, “Parsons are not such old ladies as you think. I
could ruffle it with the best of you dog foxes if I chose, and, as it
is, a feller gets jolly hot sprintin’ round the parish if he’s not in
good condition, I can tell you.” When they behave in this wild fashion
they are consciously playing with danger. Not exactly ringing Satan’s
front-door bell and then running away as one type of woman does, but
rather showing how, properly armed, one may walk through his domains
and take no harm. But suppose that after coming down from the heights
of the life apart, and proclaiming himself an ordinary person, he
should discover that he may walk in “the flesh” all day and be as
safe as if he were in the Albert Hall. If it is “influence” that he
wants, shall we suggest that man’s respect is more easily roused by
something different from himself than by a half-baked imitation; that
non-churchgoers are not really surprised into admiration by learning
that a clergyman washes more than his hands; and that a sailor who is
already intimate with the reckless elements will not believe more
readily in God because His exponent has been seen to gather up his
petticoats and play football or to take a hand at whist? In fact, if
details of the toilet are to come into it at all, a verminous hermit
must seem almost more spiritually detached than a young gentleman who
makes such a fuss about “boiling himself” after a game of tennis.
This dare-devil attitude has perhaps been adopted by some men who have
taken to the profession of the Church partly because their natural
inclination is towards a life so harmless that they might feel it to
be not quite manly unless it were supposed to be compulsory. So they
hide their mildness by eating a bun as if it were horseflesh, assuring
the bad boys that their own tastes are extremely dashing, but that
they have chosen to throw away the forbidden fruit and keep only the
skin; to reject the germinating kernel and nibble the husks, which are
really most enjoyable. The truth being that the fruit as the boys
eat it would give our friends “with no nonsense about them” the most
horrible indigestion. There are of course others who passionately
loved the fruit and threw it away deliberately; but you never find
them nibbling the husks, any more than Brutus would have had his son
whom he sacrificed stuffed for a drawing-room ornament. It is quite
one thing for a lion to find a baby in its path, and to refuse, from
conscientious motives, to eat it, and another for a chicken to plume
itself on having had such a jolly run after the cat without killing it.
We have referred, in passing, to the lady who rings Satan’s front-door
bell and then runs away. In considering what Miss Corelli has taught
us to call the “Sorrows of Satan,” even so small an annoyance as this
very hackneyed trick must have its place. The ladies who practise it
are those who make an appointment with a man whom they know to be
in love with them, and then--turn up with a chaperon. They are the
ladies who like their relatives to be respectable and their friends
to be disreputable, so that they may have all the fun and none of the
responsibility; who devour all the indecent books they can get hold of
during the week, and then go to church on Sunday; who would run miles
to be introduced to a murderer at dinner, but would feel really hurt if
their parlour-maid so much as cracked the commandment which comes next
to the one about murder.
[Illustration]
People of such various types, those who wheedle the Devil for no
particular purpose, those who assume the defensive when the poor fellow
wasn’t looking at them, and those who call him down from his study to
answer the bell and then make a bolt for sanctuary, are examples of a
class whom the Evil one leaves to his subordinates.
A promising young assistant of his works, disguised as a waiter, at one
of the supper clubs to which we have supposed the naughty ladies to be
so contemptuously relegated. I caught his eye one night when he was
cynically winding up the strands of coloured paper that are sometimes
thrown about at the end of the proceedings. “Another evening wasted!”
he exclaimed with uncontrollable displeasure, “They might be a lot of
blooming anarchists for all the harm they’ve done to-night. And here
am I, who have waited on the House of Commons from its earliest years,
and put ’em up to all their best tricks, literally throwing myself
away.” He stopped to brush aside a yellowish tear. “Mr. Satan himself,”
he continued, “won’t come down here at all; he says they’re not worth
it. Look at that there innocent mother of a family a-dancing the
Tango! We’ll never do any good with her, yet she likes to come here
and waste my time a-calling for cigarettes. Look at her and her party
now, Miss--turn your head so--now then you see? One of our clients is
there, with the bald head, behind the pillar. We’d have had him anyhow,
without the club, so it doesn’t even pay us that way. Hair, did you
say, Miss? No, the gentlemen with a good deal of hair aren’t as a rule
much good to us, and they encourage the women.”
“Encourage them in what?” I asked.
“Toasting their toes at the mouth of hell, they thinks, Miss, though
it’s nothing of the kind really; it’s just pestering Mr. Satan
something awful.”
“Then where does your real work lie?” I asked. “Where is hell?”
It was some moments before I could get an answer, as the noise suddenly
became terrific. A negro at the piano had begun to play, accompanied by
guitars, tambourines, and a howling chorus of tired-looking equatorials
of some sort. Three or four scandalous old women, with transformations
on their heads, and trophies from the bargain sales on their backs,
were joylessly smoking and applauding in a frightful state of nerves.
They looked fish-out-of-wool-shops, and my heart ached to pop them
gently back behind the counter and draw down the blinds while they had
a little nap. My friend was very busy opening bottles of champagne.
Presently he stood beside me once more, napkin on arm.
[Illustration]
“What was that you asked me just now, Miss?” he said.
“I asked you where hell was,” I replied.
“Well, I couldn’t say exactly, Miss. Mr. Satan, like, he takes the
interesting cases--very quiet folk mostly; you’d hardly believe what a
powerful lot of harm they do in a lifetime. A different lot altogether
from these ’ere naughty cards, Miss. They ain’t no manner of good to
us.”
He disappeared then, but I met him again later. He was still a waiter,
brought in on the occasion of a small dinner-party in the suburbs of
London. I thought he looked much happier, but I wondered what he found
worth his attention in the present company. My host I knew to be an
angel, scarcely disguised, as incorruptible as fire. The guests seemed
nothing in particular. They left at the hour decreed by good taste; we
left an hour later. I had a moment’s conversation in the hall with my
friend, while my husband was saying his last “Well now, look here,”
over a drink.
“Who is it to-night?” I said. “Do tell me before they come out.”
“A gentleman as Mr. Satan has set his heart on, Miss,” he replied,
with a careful eye on the open door of the smoking-room. “Third on
your left as you sat at dinner. [I remembered his face after we got
home, a blue-eyed, nervous little father with a drooping moustache.]
He’s a gentleman in business, Miss, and would like to do right, I
feel sure of that. That’s why I’ve been sent. Fortunately for us his
trade’s a speculative one, in which it’s easy to make suggestions. A
little intelligence is all that’s needed, and that, as a rule, they
haven’t got. Mr. Satan’s a good deal interested in this case because of
the gentleman’s principles. He’s been brought up with a great fear of
anything like dishonesty. I’m afraid it’s upsetting his health a good
deal. Good night, Miss; here they come. Your carriage up now, sir.”
_CHAPTER XIV_: ELECTIONEERING
I turned the corner of the street in a tremendous hurry and ran into
Reginald and Polly. They both looked as if they had had news of a
death, although they did not actually show signs of grief. It was a
peculiar look they had, half importance, half vexation. I stopped for
a moment in surprise, and Polly said to her husband, “I think we shall
want Martha, Reginald.”
“Now, be careful,” I said, a little shortly. “I have had almost enough
of you two. If you want to have your photographs taken again you must
go by yourselves. Polly! [It was a dreadful idea, but quite likely.]
You weren’t going to ask me to help you to have the baby taken?”
“Baby!” Polly said contemptuously. “It will be a long time before I
think of having baby taken anywhere. I certainly won’t take it round
canvassing with a blue ribbon round its neck like those other dreadful
people did.”
“I have got to have an election, Martha,” Reginald explained. “It is
my turn to come out, and they are going to oppose me. It is nothing
personal; they are fighting all they can this year all over the town.”
“I forgot that you were on the City Council,” I said.
“You wouldn’t forget if you were me,” observed Polly. “Here, come into
this café and have tea, and we’ll make things as clear as possible to
you.”
It was a large café, with a band, where you get the kind of tea that
doesn’t include bread-and-butter. You can get tea-cake that is like hot
skin and oil, and you can put aniline raspberry jam on it, and follow
it down with dandelion-coloured cake that has a suspicious flavour. But
if you ask for bread-and-butter, the rather spent young person with the
apron says, “Cut bread-and-butter, did you mean?” and makes it sound
like a faddy temperance food. If you are brave enough to admit that you
do mean cut bread-and-butter, she brings something thin and mottled
like German sausage. But it was only for convenience that we turned in
there; it is not like criticizing Polly’s tea.
“We have only got a week or two to do it in,” said Reginald, “and there
is a lot to do. The organization is not up to much.”
“But look here,” I said; “I don’t know anything at all about politics,
and I can’t argue, because I always agree with what anybody says; it
always seems so sensible until one thinks it over quietly at home.”
“Well, common sense will teach you the main line of what you have got
to drum into them,” said Reginald. “You see, there are always no end
of things that they want ‘put down.’ Very well, then. I am the man to
put them down, whatever they are, because I have a good deal of time to
give to the job, see? Then there’s the Church. There’s Canon Black--you
know the man I mean--they all know him, and he’s very much liked. If
he speaks for me, we’ll get a lot of votes; do you know him, by the
way?”
“No,” I said, “I’ve never heard of him.”
“Yes, you have,” Reginald corrected me, “because I have just told
you about him; so you can say that you know he approves of me--he
does, really--I’m not joking. Well then, you know, I haven’t got any
fads--temperance or such things--but if any one wants you to say that
I’ll support their fads, you must just use tact, and, if necessary, say
I’ll call. You write on the card--here, I’ll show you.”
He pulled a card out of his pocket and showed it to me. It was a drab
little article, with the mysteriously depressing influence which always
accompanies a space for a name and address. Anything which emphasizes
the fact that we are one of millions of similar works of the Almighty
has the same dingy effect. To be one of numberless leaves on a tree
is delightful enough, but to have a caterpillar come round with a
note-book and enter, “Name of tree, number of branch, time of fall in
preceding year,” etc., gives an air of squalor to the whole tree. There
was, unhappily for my peculiar talent, no space in which to record the
appearance of the voter, but the canvasser was instructed to classify
her victims as “Conservative,” “Liberal,” or “doubtful,” and was
encouraged, besides, to add such code signals of distress as “Mr. ----
call,” “won’t say,” “dead,” “at sea,” “carriage on day of election,” or
anything else likely to be helpful in the committee rooms.
For the benefit of those who have never canvassed, I here explain the
spiritual meaning of these different signals. “Mr. ---- call” means
that it is impossible for the candidate to blandish each of his four
thousand or so of voters, so he reserves himself for the very good
and the very bad, and those who are described in the jargon of the
committee rooms as “the doubtful ones.” But beware of the trap which
underlies the fair word “doubtful”! There are no doubtful ones. People
who express doubts on any subject are rarely concerned with the merits
of the case on either side. All they are waiting for is something
that will turn up to give a picturesque glow to whichever side their
instinct favours; and they are seldom disappointed. Except in certain
spots, where some common interest--like nationality or sectarianism,
or the nature of their employment--makes a group of people definite
and outspoken in their political feelings, it is remarkable what a lot
of ratepayers one may fawn upon without being thrown off the door-step
or welcomed with open arms. This alleged indecision is a pastime and
a trap which the canvasser provides and falls into with unfailing
regularity. The attitude of the voter is generally that of the tease
among school-children. “Ticky, ticky, tack, which hand will you have?”
he asks, and the coveted apple or vote shifts about with hardly a show
of deception. Now and then they are secret, like a dog with a bone. “We
have the benefit of the ballot,” they say, with the most aggressive
purity-in-politics face, all pursed up. But if no one came prying to
find out where their sympathies were hidden, they would be the first
to throw out hints of “hot and cold” to promote the game. The voters
who throw the “benefit of the ballot” in our teeth are regular old
chase-me-Charlies.
But it took me three cold, wet, weary, underfed weeks in October to
discover all this. Reginald took his election very seriously; so did
his rival. Millport was shaken by the warfare of other excellent
gentlemen in different parts of the town, and they were all serious.
So far as one can see, it is only bad men who go into politics or
administration with a light heart. Playful minds are so easily led
astray. Reginald made all his canvassers take it seriously too. He put
the fear of John Bull into them. Our faces grew long or wide with the
timid earnestness of the perfect lady, convinced of the honesty of her
commander. So did the faces of the Liberal candidate’s assistants, only
they were of a rather different build from ours--very nice, but bonier
than ours as a rule; and when we met them on the opposite side of the
street, sometimes actually on the same door-step, they looked to me the
sort of women who can carve a duck for eight people.
“Will you take these cards, please, Mrs. Molyneux?” said a fat, cheery
man at the committee rooms when I presented myself there for the first
time. The room seemed full of men, strangely shaped like fancy breads;
some of them writing at a bare table; all of them as active as dry
leaves at that time of year.
“You will,” continued the agent, shuffling the cards with the help of a
moistened thumb, “do these houses not marked with a tick. The rest have
been done, but these were either not at home when our canvasser called,
or there was some other reason why they have to be done again.”
Reginald came in then, looking as if the fate of continents were
secreted under his hat, and Polly arrived at the same moment. “Ah,
Martha,” Reginald said, with the smile of a clever actor playing a
crisis in the Foreign Office, “that’s good of you. You’d better take
Polly and go round together. How are we getting on, Hoppes?” He leaned
over the table in an absorbed attitude, so I left with my cards and
Polly.
Christabel Street was a quiet little neighbourhood of yellow brick
fronts, red stone steps, and brown doors, at the back of the main line
of frowsy shops which ran across Reginald’s ward. I found number 102,
next door to an inquisitive young person with a pail of dirty water and
a cold in the head. We knocked at the door. The name on the card was
Eliza Wickham. It will probably save explanation if I add a picture of
Eliza Wickham and Polly (I kept in the background to learn experience),
and record the conversation exactly as it took place.
ELIZA: “Is’t for the votin’? Well, ’oo is he?”
[Illustration]
POLLY: “Oh such a good man! I expect you know all about him.” (I asked
her afterwards why she did not explain that he was her husband, and she
said she had done so in a great many cases, but found that it sometimes
prejudiced them. They drew personal comparisons between her and the
Liberal candidate’s wife, who ran clubs and concerts in that district.)
“You know Canon Black? Well, Mr. Ashfield knows him _very_ well, and
he has had so much experience on the School Board--Oh no, that is the
Liberal candidate that you mean--No, he has had no experience at all.
He couldn’t reduce the rates by a penny because, you see, he doesn’t
know how to do it. Now, I am sure you will get your husband to vote for
him; a good-looking woman like you can always get round her husband,
and we can call for him at any hour. Good-bye, and you’ll say I called,
won’t you?”
“What shall we mark her?” she asked, as we turned away.
“She didn’t give us much clue, did she?” I answered. “She hardly said
anything. But she had a very firm eye. Suppose we say ‘doubtful.’”
We came upon Mrs. Henry at the bottom of Christabel Street, and Polly
took her away, sending me alone to Llewellyn Street, and promising to
join me at the other end.
“But surely John Hughes won’t be in at this time,” I protested, hoping
for respite.
“He may be a sailor or a policeman,” said Polly; “you find them at all
sorts of queer times. But mind: if he is in bed you must rout him out
all the same; he has been visited a great many times.”
John Hughes, to my surprise and alarm, was on his door-step, smoking a
pipe. I gathered together in my head all the directions that Reginald
had given me, and we conversed as follows:
[Illustration]
JOHN HUGHES: “Don’t know anything about him. What’s his views on this
’ere Irish business?”
ME (Aside: “Dash it! Reginald never told me that!”) “Oh, you had better
ask him yourself. That is just the sort of question he delights in. Do
you know Canon Black?”
JOHN HUGHES: “Never heard of ’im.”
ME: “Oh, well, I will send Mr. Ashfield to you. You are Conservative,
aren’t you?”
JOHN HUGHES: “I’m not particular. I vote for the best man.”
ME (eagerly): “Oh, he’s _far_ the best. You see, he has done so much
work before. But he will call on you, and then you will be able to hear
everything he says.”
JOHN HUGHES: “You needn’t trouble. They all talk alike. I’ll make
inquiries, and if I find he’s the best man I’ll vote for him.... No, I
don’t want no fetchin’; I can walk. And I’ll vote one way or the other.
We ’ave the benefit of the ballot, you see.”
“There is only one way to mark John Hughes,” I said to myself, as
I retraced my steps, “and that is ‘WON’T SAY!’” I wrote it very
distinctly and felt that I had done my duty.
I looked at my card and found a dozen names in Confucius Street, of
which the only one unticked was that of Robert Taylor. But on Mr.
Taylor’s door-step another of our canvassers was already waiting for
admittance. I thought, at first, that she belonged to the opposite
camp, but a second glance at her face and figure reassured me. “Church
school teacher,” I said to myself, and waited patiently to go to her
assistance if Mr. Taylor became restive, and, in any case, to enter the
result of the interview on my card. Mr. Taylor was not at home, and my
brave young lady did her best to gain the sympathy of his wife, who was
a little chilly and preoccupied, I thought. The conversation, though
delightfully friendly, was almost one-sided.
[Illustration]
“You know Canon Black, don’t you? (“Ah,” I thought, “she has got our
trump card too, has she?”) Mr. Ashfield knows him _very_ well. He
thinks so much of him.... Yes, I quite agree with you, there’s a great
deal too much of it, and Mr. Ashfield is just the sort of man you want
to put it down. He gives so much time to the work, too. (“I must
remember always to put that in,” I said to myself.) You have no idea
the trouble he takes with it.... No, I don’t think the other gentleman
does; you see, he has hardly the time for it. That is why we are trying
to get Mr. Ashfield in; just because of that. He is such a sound man
and can give the time to it. Thank you very much.... Oh, we shall
certainly get him in if they all help us as much as you!”
“What do you think?” I said to her, card in hand, “doubtful?”
“No,” she replied brightly, her inextinguishable optimism shining
through her glasses. “I think it will be better to say, ‘Not at home,
but probably Conservative.’”
One of the greatest blows to my pride was Clarissa Scholefield. I wound
up with her before lunch, and it had to be a good lunch! No amount
of buns could have repaired my body after the humiliating loss of
stamina--what I call “sawdust”--caused by that astonishingly powerful
Clarissa with the butterfly in her cap. It had come on to rain, too,
and, altogether, I cut a sorry figure in her well-ordered apartment
with the mats and the shells.
“No, I don’t hold with the votin’,” she pronounced, grasping my
offering of a shiny card, decorated with Reginald’s portrait, the
names of his supporters, and seven reasons for preferring him before
all other candidates. “No, I don’t hold with the votin’, and, what’s
more, if I did vote I must see first what he’s goin’ to do when he is
in. I always was and have been Conservative, but I haven’t voted for
forty years and I don’t care to undertake it. Besides, I’m not at all
sure he’s the right man. There’s a great deal of mischief goes on in
public-houses, and the question is ‘who’s goin’ to stop it?’ I was
sayin’ to a gentleman as was in here the other day that I hoped they
was going to send men on to the Council as _would_ put a stop to it....
Yes, it’s very wet: I dare say you find it tirin’.”
[Illustration]