Chapter 16

"We've got to get a group of fellows together on much the same principle as the Fabian Society ... no one to be admitted unless he has brains and is willing to work without payment. _Look_ at the work that Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw and all those people did for Socialism _for nothing_, even paying for it out of their own pockets when they weren't over-flush ... my goodness, if we can only get people with that kind of spirit into our group, we'll mould the world! By the way, we ought to pinch some ideas from the Fabians! We could meet somewhere ... here, to begin with. And when we've got a group of fellows together with some notion of what we all want to do, we can start inviting eminent ones to talk to us ... and heckle the stuffing out of them!"

Gilbert was able to tell them a great deal about the origin of the Fabian Society ... for his father was one of the founders of it ... and he told them how the Society had invited Mr. Haldane to talk to them ... and of the way in which they had fallen on him in the discussion and left all his arguments in shreds when the meeting ended.... "If we can get Balfour or Asquith or some other Eminent Pot here," he said, "and simply argue hell's blazes out of him ... my Lordy God, that 'ud be great!"

"They're not likely to come," said Ninian.

"I don't know. Eminent Ones sometimes do the most unusual things!"

Ninian yawned and stretched his arms. "I move that this House be now adjourned!" he said.

But they ignored his sleepiness, and he would not move away from their company.

"Well, we've settled what our future is to be," said Gilbert.

"What is it to be?" Ninian interrupted, stifling another yawn.

"Weren't you listening? We're to be Improved Tories ... and we're to improve the Universe, so to speak. We've just settled it. All the Old Birds are to be hoofed out of office, and we're to take their places, and I thoroughly approve of that. In my opinion, any man who wants to occupy a place of authority after the age of sixty should be publicly and cruelly pole-axed. I can't stand old men ... they're so cowardly and so obstinate and so conceited!"

"The great thing," said Roger, "is to keep ourselves from sloppiness. We mustn't make fools of ourselves!"

"The principal way in which a man makes a fool of himself," Gilbert added, "is in connexion with the female species. Is that what you mean, Roger?" Roger nodded his head. "Pay attention to that, Ninian," Gilbert went on. "You have a weakness for females, I've noticed!"

Ninian, suddenly forgetting his fatigue, sat up in his seat. "I say, let's jaw about women," he said.

"No," Gilbert replied. "We won't ... not at this hour of the morning!" But, disregarding his decision, he went on, "My view of women is that we all make too much fuss about 'em! Either we damn them excessively or we praise them excessively. They're a cursed nuisance in literature. All the writers seem to think that man was made for woman or woman for man, and they write and write about sex and love as if there weren't other things in the world besides women!"

"I'd like to know what else we were made for?" Henry said.

"We were made to do our jobs," Roger answered. "I believe in what I may call the modified anchorite ... women are too emotional and get between a man and his work. Love is an excellent thing ... excellent ... but there are other things!..."

"What else is there?" Henry demanded almost crossly. He felt vaguely stirred by what was being said, vaguely antagonistic to it.

"Oh, lots of things," Roger answered. "Fighting for your place, moving multitudes to do your will ... oh, lots of things!"

Gilbert had read some of Henry's novel, and he now began to talk about it.

"You turn on the Slop-tap too often," he said. "Quinny, my son, you're a clever little chap, but you're frightfully sloppy. I've read a lot more of your novel...."

"Yes?" said Henry, nervously anxious to hear his criticism.

"Slop!" Gilbert continued. "Just slop, Quinny! Women aren't like lumps of dough that a baker punches into any shape he likes, and they aren't sticks of barley sugar...."

"No, they aren't," Roger interrupted. "Wait till you see my cousin Rachel...."

"Have you got a cousin, Roger? How damned odd!" said Gilbert.

"Yes. I must bring her round here one evening. She's not a bad female ... quite intelligent for her sex. Go on!"

"They're like us, Quinny!" Gilbert continued. "They're good in parts and bad in parts. That's the vital discovery of the twentieth century, and I've made it!..."

Henry had been eager to hear Gilbert's criticism of his novel, but this kind of talk irritated him, though he could not understand why it irritated him, and his irritation drove him to sneers.

"I suppose," he said, "you want to substitute Social Reform and Improved Toryism for Romance. Lordy God, man, do you want to put eugenics and blue-books in place of the love of woman?"

"You're getting cross, Quinny!..."

"No, I'm not!"

"Oh, yes, you are ... very cross ... and you know what the fine for it is. If you want my opinion, here it is. I _am_ prepared to accept eugenics and blue-books as a substitute for the love of women ... if they're interesting, of course. That's all I ask of any one or anything ... that it shall interest me. I don't care what it is, so long as it doesn't bore me. Women bore me ... women in books and plays, I mean ... because they're all of a pattern: lovebirds. I've never seen a play in which the women weren't used for sloppy emotional purposes. The minute I see a woman walking on to the stage, I say to myself, 'Here comes the Slop-tap!' and as sure as I'm alive, the author immediately turns the tap on and the woman is over ears and head in slop before we're two-thirds through the first act. And they're not like that in real life, any more than we are. We aren't continually making goo-goo eyes, nor are they. I'm going to write a play one of these days that will stagger the civilised world, I tell you! It'll be bung full of women but it won't have a word of slop from beginning to end!..."

"It'll be a failure," said Ninian.

"Oh, from the box-office point of view, no doubt!..."

"No, from the common sense point of view. I'm on the side of Quinny in this matter, and I'm as much of an authority on women as you are, Gilbert. I've loved three different barmaids and a young woman in a tobacconist's shop, and I say, what the hell is the good of talking all this rubbish about men and women trotting round as if male and female He had not created them. When I see a woman, if she's got any femininity about her at all, I want to hug her and kiss her, and I do so, if I can, and so does any man if he is a man. I belong to the masculine gender and she belongs to the feminine ... and that's all there's to be said about it. If we were neuters, we'd be characters in your play, Gilbert...."

"I don't want to kiss every girl I meet," said Gilbert.

They howled at him in derision. "Oh, you liar!" said Henry, forgetting his anger.

"You hug women all day long, you Mormon!" Ninian roared, "or you would if they'd let you!"

"That's why you react so strongly from love in your plays," Roger said judicially. "You can't leave them alone in real life...."

"I don't mean to say I haven't kissed a girl or two," Gilbert admitted.

"_A girl or two!_ Listen to him!" Ninian went on. "Oh, listen to the innocent babe and suckling. A girl or two! Look here, let's make a census of 'em. What was the name of that girl whose brother got sent down? Lady Something?..."

"Lady Cecily!..."

"Shut up!" Gilbert shouted at them, and his voice was full of rage. He stood over them, glaring at them fiercely....

"I say, Gilbert!" said Henry, "what's up?"

He recovered himself. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to lose my temper!"

"That's all right, Gilbert," Ninian murmured. "It was my fault. I oughtn't to have rotted you like that!"

"It doesn't matter," Gilbert answered.

5

They were silent for a while, disconcerted by Gilbert's strange outburst of anger, and for a few moments it seemed as if their argument must end now. Ninian began to yawn again, and he was about to propose once more that they should go to bed, when Gilbert resumed the discussion.

"You make no allowance for reticence," he said to Henry. "That's what Roger really wants in politics ... reticence!"

"In everything," Roger exclaimed

"I know," Gilbert went on. "When I first went in to the _Daily Echo_ office, I saw a notice in the sub-editor's room which tickled me to death. Elsden, the night editor, had put it up, and it said that the word 'gutted' was not to be used in describing the state of a house after a fire. I went to Elsden ... I like him better than any one else in the _Echo_ office ... and asked him what was the matter with the word. 'Well, my dear chap,' he said, 'think of guts! I mean to say, _Guts_! Hang it all, we must cover up something!' I thought he was being rather old-maidish then, but I'm not sure now that Elsden's point of view hasn't got something behind it. He just wanted to be decently quiet about things that aren't pretty! I don't think it's necessary to blurt out everything, and I'm certain that if you keep on washing your dirty linen in public, people will end up by thinking you've got nothing else but dirty linen. Your characters," he added, turning to Henry, "go about, splashing in their emotions as if they were trick swimmers or ... or damn little journalists. I tell you, Quinny, love's a private, furtive thing, a secret adventure, and open exposure of it is a sort of profanity...."

"No," said Henry emphatically. "Love's made nasty by secrecy!" He began to spread himself. He had been reading some of the authors of the Yellow Book period. "It seems to me," he said, "that the marriage rite is broken, incomplete. In a healthy state, the whole function would be performed in public ... in ... in a cathedral, say. There'd be a procession of priests in golden chasubles, and acolytes swinging carved censers, and boys with banners, and hidden choirs chanting long litanies...."

"I shall be sick in a minute!" said Gilbert. "You're talking like an over-ripe Oscar Wilde, Quinny, and if you were really that sort of animal I'd have you hoofed out of this. Get out the whisky, Ninian, for the love of the Lordy God! This æsthetic stuff makes my inside wobble!"

Ninian went to the sideboard and took hold of the whisky bottle. "I don't much like that sort of talk myself," he said. "It's too clever-clever for my taste. I shouldn't let it grow on me, Quinny, if I were you. You'll get a reputation like bad eggs, and people'll think you've strayed out of your period and got lost. As a matter of fact, Gilbert, you don't really want whisky, and you're only going to drink it for effect, so you shan't have any!"

He returned to his seat, as he spoke, and sat down. Henry had a quick sense of shame. He had spoken insincerely, for effect ... in order to impress them with his cleverness, and their answer to him filled him with a sense of inferiority. He felt that they must despise him, and feeling that, he began to despise himself.

"My own feeling about these things," said Ninian, "is perfectly simple. I believe in lust. I'm a lustful man myself, and so, I believe, is Roger!..."

"No, I'm not," Roger exclaimed.

"Well, I am," Ninian proceeded. "Lust is the motor force of the world...."

"No, it isn't," Gilbert interrupted. "The whole of civilisation depends upon the human stomach. If men would live without eating ... the whole of this society would dissolve. Lust is subordinate to the stomach, Ninian. You've never seen a starving man in a purple passion, have you?"

Ninian leant forward and tapped the table with his knuckles. "I say that lust is the motor force of the world," he said, "and I think you might let me finish my sentences, Gilbert. You are so eager to vent your own views that you won't let any one else vent his...."

"What's the good of venting your views if they're wrong, damn it!" said Gilbert.

"Well, let me finish venting 'em anyhow. Assuming that I'm right, I say you should treat lust exactly as you treat the circulation of your blood: don't fuss about it. It's a natural function, neither beautiful nor ugly. It's just there, and that's all about it. The fellow who dithers about it as if he'd invented a new philosophy on the day he first slept with a woman, is a dirty, neurotic ass. So is the fellow who pretends that there's no such thing as sex in the world. Male and female created He them, and I can tell you, He jolly well knew what He was up to!"

Roger flicked the ash from his cigarette and coughed slightly.

"I think," he said, "we talk too much about these things. They pass the time, of course, but not very profitably. Whatever the Universal Motive may be ... I'm talking, of course, without prejudice ... it'll express itself in complete disregard of our feelings and views. I have had no experience of women otherwise than in the capacity of a mother, several aunts, a nurse, a number of cousins, and also some waitresses in restaurants...."

"Roger's never kissed a woman in a sexual sense in his life," Gilbert interrupted.

"I have never seen the necessity of it," Roger said.

"But aren't you curious to know what it's like? After all, it's a form of experience," Henry asked, looking at Roger with curiosity.

"Having scarlet fever is a form of experience, but I don't wish to know what it's like," Roger answered.

"My God, you are a prig, Roger!" said Gilbert simply.

"I know that," Roger answered. "That's why I don't get on with women. They find me out. No," he continued, "I've no experience of women in that way. I daresay I shall get experience some day, but in the meantime, I've got my job to do...."

"We shall have a virgin Lord Chancellor on the woolsack," said Gilbert, "and then may God have mercy on all poor litigants!"

"We really ought to go to bed," Ninian protested.

"Not yet," Henry exclaimed.

He had recovered from his feeling of dejection, and he was eager to retrieve the good opinion which he thought he had lost.

"My own view," he said, beginning as they always began their oracular pronouncements, "my own view is that we make the mistake of thinking in masses instead of in individuals. Everybody who tries to reform the world, tries to make it uniform, but what we want is the most complete diversity that's obtainable. It's the variations from type that make type bearable!..."

"That's a good phrase, Quinny. Where'd you get it from?" Gilbert interrupted.

Henry flushed with pleasure. "I made it up," he answered. "All men are different," he went on, "and therefore the morals that suit one person are unlikely to suit another person. Roger doesn't bother about women. He looks upon them as a ... a sideline. Don't you, Roger? He'll marry in due course, and he'll have one woman, and he'll have her all to himself. Won't you, Roger?"

"Probably," Roger replied, "but there's no certainty about these things."

Henry proceeded. "Gilbert wants lots and lots of women, but he doesn't want to talk about it, and he wants to keep his women and his work separate ... in watertight compartments, as it were. As if you could do that! And Ninian wants to have a good old hearty coarse time like ... like Tom Jones ... and then he'll repent and praise God and lay his stick about the backsides of all the young sinners he meets!"

"No, I don't, ..." said Ninian, but Henry, having started, would not let himself be interrupted. "I want to have lots and lots of women," he went on hurriedly, "but I don't care who knows about them. I like talking about my love-affairs...."

"Well, why don't you talk about 'em?" Gilbert demanded.

Henry was nonplussed. His speech became hesitant. "I ... I said I'd like to talk about them," he replied. "I didn't say I would do so...." He hurried away from the subject. "But chiefly," he said, "I don't want anything permanent in my life. Now, do you understand? Roger's like the Rock of Ages ... the same yesterday, to-day and forever, but I want to be different to-morrow from what I am to-day, and different again the day after. Endless variety for me!"

"It'll be an awful lot of trouble," said Gilbert.

"That doesn't matter. Now my argument is that I have a different nature from Roger and all of you, but I'm not a worse man than any of you are...."

"No, no, of course not," they asserted.

"I'm just different, that's all. The man who loves one woman and cleaves to her until death do them part isn't a better man or a worse man than the chap who loves a different woman every year, and doesn't cleave to any of them. He's just different. You see," he continued, pleased with the way he was enunciating his opinions, "we are of all sorts. There are lustful men and there are men who have scarcely any sex impulse at all, and there are coarse men and refined men, and ... and all sorts of men, and they're all necessary to the world. I say, why not recognise the differences between them and leave it at that! It's silly to try and fit us all with the same system of morals when nobody but a fool would try to fit us all with the same size hat!"

"You don't make any allowance for the views of women," Roger said.

"Oh, yes, I do," Henry retorted quickly. "There is as much variety among women as there is among men. Some of them are monogamous and some aren't. That's all!"

Gilbert stretched his legs out in front of him and then drew them back again. "Our little Quinny's got this world neatly parcelled out," he said. "Hasn't he, coves? There he sits, like a little Jehovah, handing out natures as if they were school-prizes. 'Here, my little lad, here's your set of morals. Now, run away and make a hog of yourself with the women!' 'Here, my little lad, here's your set of morals. Now, run away and be a bally monk!'"

"Exactly!" said Henry. "That's my view!"

"Well, all I can say," said Ninian, "is that it won't do. This may be a tom-fool sort of a world, but it gets along in its tom-fool way a lot better than it will in your neat arrangement of things...."

"Besides," Roger said, taking up the argument from Ninian, "there is a common measure in life. Oh, I know quite well that there are differences between man and man, but there are resemblances, too, and what we've got to do ... the Improved Tories, I mean ... is to discover which is the more important, the resemblances of men or the differences of men. As a lawyer, of course, I only know what's in my brief, but as a man, I'm interested!"

"The question is," said Gilbert, "are women a damned nuisance that ought to be put down, or are they not? I say they are, but I like 'em all the same, and that only shows what a blasted hole I'm in. I like kissing them ... it's no good pretending that I don't...."

"Not a bit," said Ninian.

"And I kiss 'em whenever I get a chance," Gilbert continued, "but all the same I'd like to be a whopping big icicle so as to be able to ignore 'em ... like Roger!"

Ninian got up, resolved on going to bed. "Come on," he said, stretching himself. "Our jaw about women doesn't appear to have solved anything!"

"It never will," Roger answered, rising too. "We shall still be jawing about them this day twelvemonth...."

"D.V.," said Gilbert.

"But we won't get any forrarder!"

"Rum things, women!" said Ninian, moving towards the door, "but very nice ... very nice, indeed!"

"My goodness me, I am tired," Gilbert yawned. "Oh, so tired! But we've settled everything, haven't we? The empire and women and so on? Great Scott," he exclaimed, "we forgot to say anything about God!"

"So we did," said Ninian, and he turned back from the door.

"The Improved Tories really ought to make up their minds about religion," Gilbert went on.

"Can't we leave that until to-morrow?" Roger complained. "We needn't talk about Him to-night, need we? I'm frightfully sleepy!..."

6

While Henry was undressing, he remembered how angry Gilbert had been with Ninian and Roger because they had mentioned the name of a girl for whom he had cared.

"Awfully rum, that!" he said to himself, sitting on the edge of his bed.

He tried to recall her name. "Lady something!" he said, and then said several times, "Lady ... Lady ... Lady!..." in the hope that the name would follow. But he could not remember it.

"Odd that I never heard of her before."

He put on his dressing-gown, and opened the door of his room. "I'll ask old Ninian," he said, as he went out.

Ninian, who had been yawning so heavily downstairs, was now sitting up in bed, reading a copy of the _Engineer_.

"Hilloa," he exclaimed as Henry entered the room in response to his "Come in!"

"I say, Ninian, what was the name of the girl that Gilbert was so gone on at Cambridge? Lady something or other! He was rather sick with you for mentioning her...."

"Oh, Lady Cecily Jayne!"

"Is that her name? Who is she?"

"Society female," said Ninian. "Takes an interest in literature and art in her spare time, but she doesn't know anything about either of them. Her brother was in our college until he got sent down. That was how Gilbert met her. She came up one May week and made eyes at Gilbert. She wasn't married then!..."

"Is she married?" Henry interrupted.

"Oh, yes. She used to be Lady Cecily Blandgate ... her father's the Earl of Bucklersbury. She's a big female...."

"What do you mean? Fat?"

"No. Tall," said Ninian.

"Is she good-looking?"

"Yes, she is, and rather amusing, too, in a footling sort of way. She's got a fearful appetite, and she thinks of herself all day long. I know because she damn near ruined me over cream buns once."

"I suppose Gilbert was in love with her?..."

"I suppose so. He didn't tell me and I didn't ask, but he mooned about with her and looked awfully sloppy when he passed her things. You know what I mean. He'd hand her a plate of bread and butter, and look at her as much as to say, 'This is really my heart I'm handing you!' I never saw a chap look such an ass!"

"Has she been married very long?"

"Oh, a year or two. I don't know. I'm not very interested in her. Too much of a female for my taste. Extremely entertaining in the evening and the afternoon, but awfully boring in the morning!..."

"Sounds like sour grapes, Ninian!"

"Oh, I've been in love with her if that's what you mean. We all were, even old Roger. In fact, I kissed her once ... or was it twice? She's the sort of woman a chap does kiss somehow. I couldn't think of anything else to do when I was with her. That's why she's so dull. She splashes her sex about as if she were distributing handbills. I'm surprised that you don't know her. She's a very well-known female...."

"I've been in Ireland, Ninian...."

"So you have. I'd forgotten that. Of course, if you will live in a place like that, you can't expect to be familiar with the wonders of civilisation. Ever see the _Daily Reflexion_?"

"Oh, yes, we get that in Ireland all right!"

"Do you, indeed! Well, praise God from Whom all blessings flow. If you buy a copy of to-morrow's _Daily Reflexion_, you'll probably see her photograph in it, or a paragraph about her. Roger says people pay to have themselves mentioned once a month in that sort of rag!"

"What's her husband like?" Henry asked.

"God made him, but nobody knows why. I believe chorus girls call him 'Chummie.' That's his purpose in life. I say, Henry, there's a ripping sketch of a new kind of engine in this paper. I wish you'd let me explain it to you...."

"Who is her husband?" said Henry.

"Who is who's husband?"

"Lady Cecily Jayne's!..."

"Lordy God, man, you're not talking about her still, are you? Her husband is ... let me see ... oh, yes, he's Lord Jasper Jayne. His name sounds like the hero of a servant's novelette, but he doesn't look like that. He looks like a chucker-out in a back-street pub. His father's the Marquis of Dulbury. He's the second son. The eldest is sillier, but it's all been hushed up. Anything else you want to know?"