1
Gilbert did not leave London, as he had intended, for Sir Geoffrey
Mundane definitely decided to produce "The Magic Casement" in succession
to the play which was then being performed at his theatre. He had
already discussed the caste with Gilbert, and on the morning after the
scene on the Embankment, he telephoned to Gilbert, telling him that he
had made engagements for the play, and would like to fix a date on which
he should read the manuscript to the company. "Any day'll suit me,"
Gilbert had informed him, and Sir Geoffrey thereupon settled that the
reading should take place two days later. "I suppose," he said, "you'd
like to attend the rehearsals?" and Gilbert, forgetting his resolution
to fly from Lady Cecily, said that he would. He thought that the
experience would be very valuable to him. He became so excited at the
prospect of seeing a play of his performed at a West End theatre that he
was unable to sit still, and his language, always extravagant, became
absurd. He broke every rule that Roger had invented. "It'll take all the
royalties you'll receive to pay off this score!" Roger said, thrusting
the fine-book before him.
"Poo!" said Gilbert. "I'll buy up the Ten Commandments with one night's
royalty! Oh, it's going to be a success, I tell you. It'll run for a
year ... more than that ... two years!..." He began to estimate the
number of performances the play would receive. "Six evening performances
and two matinees every week for fifty-two weeks! Eight times fifty-two,
Roger ... you were a Second Wrangler, you ought to know that! Four
hundred and sixteen! Lordy God, what a lot! And if I get ten pounds
every time it's done ... Oh-h-h! Four thousand, one hundred and sixty
pounds! And then there'll be American rights and provincial rights....
I'll tell you what I'll do, coves! I'll buy you all a stick of
barley-sugar each, or a penn'orth of acid-drops ... which 'ud you
like?..."
It was during the rehearsals of "The Magic Casement" that "Broken
Spears" was published.
"It isn't as good as 'Drusilla,'" they said to Henry, when they had read
it, "but it'll be more popular!"
It was. The critics who had praised "Drusilla" were not impressed by
"Broken Spears," but the critics who had been indifferent to "Drusilla"
praised "Broken Spears" so extravagantly that six thousand copies of it
were sold in six months, apart from the copies which were sold to the
lending libraries, and the sale of "Drusilla," in consequence of the
success of "Broken Spears," increased from three hundred and
seventy-five copies to one thousand five hundred and eighty. Mr. Quinn,
in thanking Henry for a copy of it, merely said, in direct reference to
the book, "_I see you've been tickling the English. Don't go on doing
it!_" and the effect of this criticism was so stimulating that Henry
destroyed the three chapters of "Turbulence" which were in manuscript
and started to re-write the book. Literary agents now began to write to
him, telling him how charmed they were with his work and how certain
they were of their ability to increase his income considerably; and a
publisher of some enterprise and resource wrote to him and said that he
would like to see his third book.
"You look as if you were established, Quinny!" said Roger, and Henry
blushed and murmured deprecatingly about himself.
"How's the Bar?" he said.
"Oh, it's not bad. I got a fellow off to-day who ought to have had six
months hard," Roger answered. "And a new solicitor has given me a
brief. We ought to ask him to dinner and feed him well. F. E. Robinson
always tells his butler to bring out the second-quality wine for
solicitors. Snob!"
"We seem to be getting on, don't we, coves?" Gilbert interjected. "Look
at all these press-cuttings!..."
He held out a fistful of slips which had come that evening from a
Press-Cutting Agency. "All about me," he said, "and the play. Mundane
knows more about the preliminary puff than any one else in England. He
calls me 'this talented young author from whom much may be expected.' I
never thought I should get pleasure out of a trade advertisement, but I
do. I'm lapping up this stuff like billy-o. I saw a poster on the side
of a 'bus this afternoon, advertising 'The Magic Casement.' Mundane's
name was in big letters, and you could just see mine with the naked eye.
I hopped on to the 'bus and went for a fourpenny ride on it, so's I
could touch the damn thing ... and I very nearly told the conductor who
I was. It's no good pretending I'm not conceited. I am, and I don't
care. Where's Ninian?"
"Not come in yet. How'd the rehearsals go to-day?" Roger answered.
"Better than any other day. They're beginning to feel their parts. It's
about time, too. I felt sick with fright yesterday, they were so wooden.
Mundane might have been the village idiot, instead of the fine actor he
is ... but they're better now. Ninian's late!"
"Is he? He'll be here presently. By the way, my Cousin Rachel's coming
to town to-morrow. She's been investigating something or other ...
factory life, I think. I thought I'd bring her here to dinner. She may
be interesting."
"Do," said Gilbert, and then, as he heard the noise of the street-door
being closed, he added, "There's Ninian now!"
Ninian, on his way to his room, stopped for a moment or two, to shout
at them, "I say, the mater and Mary've come up from Devon. I got a wire
this afternoon. I'm not grubbing with you to-night. They want to go to a
theatre, and I've got to climb into gaudy garments and go with them...."
He closed the door and ran up the stairs, but before he reached the
first landing, Gilbert called after him, "I say, Ninian!"
"Yes," he answered, pausing on the stairs.
"Bring them to dinner to-morrow night. Roger's Cousin Rachel is coming,
and we may as well make a party of it. Gaudy garments and liqueurs. Do
you think they'll stay for the first night of my play?"
"That's one of the reasons why they've come up," Ninian answered.
2
Rachel Wynne and Mrs. Graham and Mary dined with them on the following
evening, and it seemed to Henry when he saw Mary entering Ninian's
sitting-room that she was a stranger to him. He had known her as a child
and as a young, self-conscious girl, but this Mary was a woman. He felt
shy in her presence, and when, for a few moments, he was left alone with
her, he hardly knew what to say to her. They had been "Quinny" and
"Mary" to each other before, but now they avoided names.... He spoke
tritely about her journey to London, reminding her of the slowness of
the train between Whitcombe and Salisbury, and wondered whether she
liked London better than Boveyhayne. His old disability to say the
things that were in his mind prevented him from re-establishing his
intimacy with her. He tried to say, "Hilloa, Mary!" but could not do so,
and his shyness affected her so that she stood before him, fingering her
fan nervously, and answering "Yes" and "Oh, yes!" and "No" and "Oh, no!"
to all that he said. He liked the sweep of her hair across her brow and
the soft flush in her cheeks and the slender lines of her neck and the
gleam of a gold chain that held a pendant suspended about her throat. He
thought, too, that her eyes shone like lustres in the light, and
suddenly, as he thought this, he felt that he could speak to her with
his old freedom. He moved towards her, shaping his lips to say, "Oh,
Mary, I ..." but the door opened before he could speak, and Rachel Wynne
entered the room with Roger and Mrs. Graham.
"Yes, Quinny?" Mary said, saying his name quite easily now.
He laughed nervously and looked at the others. "I've forgotten what I
was going to say," he said, and went forward to greet Mrs. Graham.
"My cousin, Rachel Wynne," said Roger, introducing her to him.
Rachel Wynne was a tall, thin girl, with a curious tightened look, as if
she were keeping a close hold on herself. When she held out her hand to
him, he had a sensation of discomfort, not because her clasp was firm,
but because she seemed to be looking, not through him, but into him. He
was very sensitive to the opinion of people about him, feeling very
quickly the dislike of any one who did not care for him, and in a moment
he knew that Rachel Wynne was antipathetic to him. Henry was always rude
to people whom he disliked ... he could not be civil to them, however
hard he might try to be so, but his feeling in the presence of people
who disliked him, was one of powerlessness: he was tongue-tied and
nervous and very dull, and his faculties seemed to shrivel up. There was
a look of cold efficiency about Rachel Wynne that frightened him. She
seemed to be incapable of wasting time or of waywardness. Her career at
Newnham, Roger had told him, had been one of steady brilliance. "There
wasn't a flicker in it," he had said to Henry. "Rachel's always
well-trimmed!"
There were no ragged edges about Rachel Wynne. Her frock was neatly
made, so neatly that he was unaware of it, and her hair was bound
tightly to her head by a black velvet ribbon. She had a look of cold
tidiness, as if she had been frozen into her shape and could not be
thawed out of it; but she was not cold in spirit, as he discovered
during dinner when the conversation shifted from generalities about
themselves to the work she had lately been doing. They had been talking
about Gilbert's play, and then Mrs. Graham had turned to Henry and told
him how much she liked his novels. Her tastes were simple, and she
preferred "Broken Spears" to "Drusilla." "Of course, 'Drusilla' is very
clever!" she said a little deprecatingly, and then she turned to Rachel
and asked her whether she had read Henry's novels.
"No," Rachel answered. "I very seldom read novels!..."
He felt contempt for her. Now he knew why he had been chilled by her
presence. She belonged to that order of prigs which will not read
novels, preferring instead to read "serious" books. Such a woman would
treat "Tom Jones" as a frivolous book, less illuminating than some
tedious biography or history book. She might even deny that it had any
illumination at all.... He could not prevent a sneer from his retort to
her statement that she seldom read novels.
"I suppose," he said, "you think that novels are not sufficiently
serious?"
"Oh, no," she answered quickly. "I just haven't time for novel-reading!"
That seemed to him to be worse than if she had said that she preferred
to read solid books. A novel, in her imagination, was a light diversion
in which one only indulged in times of unusual slackness. No wonder, he
thought to himself, all reformers and serious people make such a mess of
the social system when they despise and ignore the principal means of
knowing the human spirit.
"That's a pity," he said aloud. "I should have thought that you'd find
novels useful to you in your work. I mean, there's surely more chance of
understanding the people of the eighteenth century if you read
Fielding's 'Tom Jones' than there is if you read Lecky's 'England in the
Eighteenth Century.'"
"Is there?" said Rachel.
"Of course, there is," Gilbert hurled at her from the other side of the
table. "Fielding was an artist, inspired by God, but Lecky was simply a
fact-pedlar, inspired by the Board of Education. Why even that dull ass,
Richardson, makes you understand more about his period than Lecky does!"
"Perhaps," said Rachel, in a tone which indicated that there was no
doubt in her mind about the relative values of Lecky and Fielding. She
turned to Henry. "I wish you'd write a book about the factory system,"
she said. "That would be worth doing!"
He disliked the suggestion that "Broken Spears" and "Drusilla" had not
been worth doing, and he let his resentment of her attitude towards his
work affect the tone of his voice as he answered, "I don't know anything
about factories!"
"You should learn about them," she retorted.
No, he did not like this woman, aggressive and assertive. He turned to
speak to Mary ... but Rachel Wynne had not finished with him.
"I've spent six months in the north of England," she said, reaching for
the salted almonds. "I've seen every kind of factory, model and
otherwise!"
"Oh, yes," he answered, vaguely irritated by her. He wished that she
would talk to her other neighbour and leave him in peace with Mary. As
an Improved Tory, he knew that he ought to get all the information about
factories out of her that he could, but as Henry Quinn, he had no other
desire than to be quit of her as quickly as possible.
"And I think the model factories are no better than the rotten ones,"
she went on.
"What's that you say?" Roger called to her from the other side of the
table.
She repeated her remark. "I went over a model factory last week ... a
cocoa and chocolate works ... and I'd rather be a tramp than work in
it," she went on.
"But isn't it rather wonderfully organised?" Roger asked.
"Oh, yes, it's marvellously arranged. There are baths and gymnasia and
continuation classes and free medical inspection and model houses and
savings banks and all the rest of it ... but I'd rather be a tramp, I
tell you.... You see, even with the best of employers, genuinely
philanthropic people eager to deal justly with the workers who make
their fortunes for them, the factory system remains a rotten one. You
can't make a decent, human thing out of it because it's fundamentally
vile!..."
"My dear Rachel!..." Roger began, but she would not listen to
interruptions.
"They look just as pale and 'peeked' in model factories as they do in
bad ones. They're cleaner, that's all. The firm sees that they wash, but
it can't prevent them from becoming ill, and they're all ill. They don't
look any better than the people in the bad factories. They look worse,
because they're cleaner and you can see their illness more easily. But
that isn't all. They have no hope of ever controlling the firm ...
they'll never be allowed to own the factory ... that will always belong
to the Family. The best that the clever ones can look forward to is a
little managership. Most of them can't look forward to anything but
being drilled and washed and medically inspected and modelly housed and
morally controlled.... Oh, it isn't worth it, it isn't worth it. I'd
rather be a dirty, insanitary tramp!"
A kind of moral fury possessed her, and they sat still, listening to her
without interrupting her.
"I saw three girls at a machine," she went on, "and one of them did some
little thing to a chocolate box and then passed it on to the second
girl who did a further little thing to it and then passed it to the
third girl who did another little thing to it, and then it was finished,
and that was all. They do that every day, and the man who took me round
told me that the firm had to catch 'em young, otherwise they can't
acquire the knack of it. I saw girls putting pieces of chocolate into
tinfoil so quickly that you could hardly see their movements; and they
do that all day. And they have to be caught young ... before they've
properly tasted life. They wouldn't do it otherwise, I suppose. That's
your factory system for you! And think of the things they produce.
Chocolate boxes full of sweets! There was one girl who spent the whole
of her working days in pasting photographs of grinning chorus girls on
to box-lids. I should go mad if I had to look at that soppy grin all day
long...."
Mrs. Graham murmured gently, but her words were not audible. Rachel
would not have heard them if they had been.
"Well," said Gilbert, "what do you want to do about it?"
"I'm a reactionary," Rachel answered. "I'm against all this ... this
progress. We're simply eating up people's lives, and paying meanly for
them. I'd destroy all these factories ... the whole lot. They aren't
worth the price. And I'd go back to decent piggery. What is the good of
a plate when it means that some girl has been poisoned so that it can be
bought cheaply?"
"But we must have plates?" Henry said.
"Why?" she retorted.
"Well!" he rejoined, smiling at her as one smiles at a foolish child.
"Oh, I know," she went on, "you think I'm talking wildly. I've heard all
about your Improved Toryism. Roger's told me about it. You all think
that you are the anointed ones, and that the bulk of people are born to
do what they're told. You won't have whips for your slaves ... you'll
have statutes. You won't sell them ... you'll socialise them. Cogs in
wheels, you'll make them! Oh, it isn't worth while living like that. You
don't even let a man do a whole job ... you only let him do a part of
one, and you're trying to turn him into an automaton more and more every
day. He's to press a button ... and that's all. Presently, he'll _be_ a
button!..."
"My dear Rachel," Roger said, "you don't imagine, do you, that the whole
world's going to turn back to ... piggery as you call it? We've spent
centuries in creating this civilisation...."
"Is it worth while?" she demanded.
"Yes...."
"Prove it," she insisted.
"Well, of course, that's a job, isn't it? I can't prove it in a few
minutes...."
"You can't prove it, Roger," she interrupted. "If all this civilisation
were worth while, you wouldn't need to prove it: it would be obvious.
We'd only have to look out of the door to see the proof."
"I don't say that the factory system is satisfactory at present. It
isn't; but it can be improved...."
"No, it can't, Roger. It's unimprovable. I dare you to go to any model
factory in England and study it with an honest mind and then say that it
is worth while. It makes the people ill ... they get no pleasure out of
their work...."
"We could shorten the hours in factories," Henry suggested.
"If you do that, you admit that the thing is rotten, and can only be
endured in short shifts!" she retorted. "And who wants his hours
reduced? A healthy man wants to work as long as he can stand up. I don't
want my hours reduced. I'll go on working until I drop ... but I
wouldn't work for two seconds if I didn't like the job!" She turned
again to Henry. "Why don't you write a book exposing the factory system.
It would be much more useful than all this lovey-dovey stuff. I'd give
the world for a book like that ... as good as Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'
or 'Dickens's 'Oliver Twist'!..."
3
Mary had not spoken at all while Rachel harangued them on the question
of the factory system, but that was not surprising, for Rachel had not
given any of them a chance to say more than two or three words. In
Ninian's sitting-room, when Gilbert turned to her and asked her what she
thought of factories, she blushed a little, conscious that they had all
turned to look at her, and answered that she had never seen a factory.
"Never seen a factory!" Rachel exclaimed, and was off again in
denunciation.
Henry went and sat beside Mary while Rachel told tales of sweaters that
caused Mrs. Graham to cry out with pain.
"Mary!" he said to her under his breath.
"Yes, Quinny," she answered, turning towards him and speaking as softly
as he had spoken.
He fumbled for words. "It's ... it's awfully nice to see you again," he
said.
"It's nice to see you all again," she replied.
"You're ... you're so different," he went on.
"Am I?" She paused a moment, and then, smiling at him, said, "So are
you."
"Am I very different?" he asked.
"In some ways. You're quite famous now, aren't you?"
"Famous?" he said vaguely.
"Yes. Your novels...."