Part 4

His own moodiness, his private doubts and difficulties, even his bigger apprehensions of political troubles at home and abroad, were made trivial by the intense world-ranging analysis of social disease threatening civilisation which Christy brought back from his journeys abroad.

He was seldom in London, and after a few days, or at most, a few weeks, in his rooms overlooking the river from Adelphi Terrace, would set out again for Paris, or Berlin, or Vienna, or Rome, with an insatiable desire to “see how things were getting on” in the spirit of peoples and in their social conditions. The results of his inquiries could be read in Radical weeklies under the heading of “Our Special Correspondent,” in articles written with a cold scientific touch, over-crammed with facts and statistics, and unemotional. They revealed nothing of the flame at the heart of this man, none of his whimsicality of expression in private conversation, not a gleam of his philosophy, but Bertram believed that they were valued as important contributions to knowledge by international groups of men and women outside his own set, and unknown to him except by references in newspapers and in satirical comment by men like Kenneth Murless.

Kenneth called them “long-haired idealists,” “Crawling Pacifists,” and “home-bred Bolshevists.” He had even referred to Christy once or twice by name, and had denounced an article of his as “a challenge to all established authority. The fellow ought to be shot.”

“He’s a friend of mine,” said Bertram.

Kenneth Murless raised his eyebrows in languid surprise.

“That so? Then you’re entertaining an enemy unawares. A viper in your bosom, old man. Christy and his crowd have declared war against our set and our ideals.”

“What ideals?” asked Bertram.

“Preserving the good old order of things,” said Kenneth. “The Stately Homes of England, our Prerogatives, our Very Pleasant Way of Life, which is already seriously threatened by tax-collectors and the greedy clamour of an insensate mob.”

Bertram objected violently.

“The mob did most of the dying in the Great War, and now ask for a decent living wage!”

“For high wages and no work!” answered Kenneth in his best unimpassioned, smiling, and supercilious manner, which had made him successful as President of the Union, during his third year at Oxford.

He begged Bertram not to be led astray by the snobbish witticisms of his friends in a pampered democracy, not to be spellbound by their facile and foolish catchwords. He disliked the suggestion that the mob did most of the dying in the great war. The gently of England, the old aristocracy, poured out their blood like water in a prodigal way at the outset as at the end, while crowds of lazy young hooligans had to be coaxed and bribed to do their duty, and then conscripted.

Even then they took refuge behind “special trades,” “essential occupations.” There were no essential occupations as an excuse for staying at home by boys from public schools and universities and county families. They just went out and died, if need be, without a whine.

“That’s true,” said Bertram; “they played up all right. None better.”

“I’m glad you admit that, Bertram!” said Joyce in her satirical voice, which Bertram knew was a challenge.

She was in the drawing-room of their house in Holland Street, lying back on the sofa among a heap of flaming cushions, with her legs tucked up, revealing her long silk stockings. A charming, slim, golden-crowned figure in a close-fitting jumper, so young and fresh that it was difficult even for Bertram to believe that she had been the mother of a child. How beautiful she was! How good to see her well again!

“Why shouldn’t I admit it? Why should I even ‘admit’ it? It’s an historical fact!”

“You’re always taking sides with the common people. Backing up Labour with a big L. It’s disloyalty to Us.”

Bertram shifted moodily in his seat—a low window seat looking out to the street where a Punch and Judy show was being performed to a small crowd of children and nursemaids.

“For God’s sake don’t talk about the common people as though they were dirt, Joyce! They saved England. England owes them something. Those fellows in my company—”

Joyce flicked some cigarette ash into the fireplace and put her hands round her knees.

“Those fellows in your company! I can’t think how you kept your authority, hob-nobbing with them so much!”

Bertram said in a low voice that they had saved his life more than once.

“That’s ancient history,” said Joyce. “You’re always harking back to the old war! Let’s forget it. We’re talking about the present situation. The working people are thoroughly lazy, utterly demoralised, and infected with Bolshevism. They ought to be kept in their places with a strong hand.”

“I agree!” said Kenneth Murless. “They’ve become tyrannical and snobbish.”

“Snobbish!” said Bertram, laughing, and making an effort to keep the temper that was rising in him.

“Yes,” said Kenneth, observing a paradoxical argument from afar; “the snobbishness of the working classes is disgusting. Because they don’t wear collars and ties, they won’t associate with men who are afflicted with stiff linen round their necks. Because they’re illiterate, they make a caste of illiteracy and condemn the Intellectual as a parasite and a pariah. Their Trade Unions are more exclusive than West-end clubs, more intolerant than mediæval Star Chambers. Their Labour leaders are enemies of the liberty so hardly won for England by English gentry—freedom of speech, equality before the law, justice for rich and poor alike, religious toleration, taxation according to wealth. Why these fellows are all for the suppression of liberty. Anybody who ventures to disagree with them is called a damned reactionary. If they had their way, as in Russia, they would prevent the free exercise of religion, and stifle all intellectual opposition with the hangman’s rope. Even now in England the working class is the only one exempt from taxation, getting their education for nothing, and blackmailing those who have accumulated a little money by hard toil.”

“Like you,” said Bertram.

“Like me,” answered Kenneth, calmly. “I confess my little job at the F.O. is not exacting, but don’t I toil over my sonnets—on official stationery—? Don’t I agonise in labour to produce a gem of thought for ‘The London Mercury’?”

“You ought to go into the House, Kenneth!” said Joyce. “Your eloquence would overwhelm Lloyd George himself. And I will say there’s a lot of sense in your head, in spite of your devastating beauty, and supercilious conceit.”

She spoke in the usual vein of irony with which she set her wit against Kenneth’s, yet with an underlying admiration which he perceived and liked.

His face crimsoned a little, and he laughed affectedly.

“For that tribute, dear lady, my heart’s thanks! But don’t tempt me to sully my bright soul with the dirt of politics. Diplomacy, yes, the higher Machiavellism, but, please, not politics! It’s impossible to keep clean within the precincts of Westminster.”

Two of Joyce’s girl friends called, followed by the Reverend Peter Fynde and an Italian countess who spoke detestable English and made enormous eyes to Kenneth Murless—enormous black eyes in a dead white face. Bertram noticed that her hands were dirty, though they glistened with wonderful rings. She called Joyce “_Carissima_.”—It was an opportunity for him to slip away and see old Christy again.

X

Luke Christy answered the rap of a little brass knocker on a door up three flights of stairs.

“Hullo, Major! I had an idea you’d come. You can’t keep away from my sinister influence.”

He saluted in an ungainly fashion, like a drunken Tommy, and then gripped Bertram’s hand in his long, bony fingers. He was a tall, thin, loosely-built man, with a clean-shaven face singularly ugly because of its long, lean jaw and bulging forehead. “An ugly mug,” as Bertram had often insulted it, but with a bright light within, shining out of dark, humorous, brooding eyes.

He was in his shirt sleeves, unpacking some hand-bags amidst a litter of dirty shirts, collars, socks, pyjamas, newspapers, and paper-backed books, and other salvage from a long journey.

“Just come back from Poland,” he said, “by way of Berlin. Put on a pipe and tell me all about life and London, while I stow this wreckage away. How’s Lady Joyce and the British aristocracy?”

He looked up at Bertram with the whimsical smile which always twisted his face when he chaffed Bertram about his close relationship with “bloated aristocrats.” His own family kept a little shop in a Warwickshire village.

“Joyce is pretty well,” said Bertram. “She had a baby . . . but it died.”

Luke Christy’s twisted smile left his face, and his eyes shone with sympathy.

“Oh, Lord! That’s tragic. I’m sorry.”

Bertram sat watching him “tidy up,” a process which seemed to consist in heaving his dirty linen into a cupboard, and flinging the paper-backed books on to a shelf already crowded with papers.

The whole room was framed in books, badly assorted in size, and mostly of tattered bindings. Above them were some rather good etchings and caricatures torn out of foreign newspapers, fastened to the walls with drawing pins. On the mantelpiece were photographs of several young soldiers, one of Bertram himself, and a “homely” elderly woman with grey hair, exactly like Luke Christy—who, as Bertram knew—was Christy’s mother.

A door opened into an inner room into which Christy plunged now and then with pairs of trousers, boots, and other bits of clothing. It was from this inner room that he began a monologue to which Bertram listened through the open door.

“Hard for a girl to bring a life into the world, and then see it flicker out. I’m sorry to hear that, Pollard. It’s the saddest thing for you and that exquisite little lady of yours. Good God, yes! But for myself, I couldn’t risk it, anyhow. I haven’t the pluck. I should be filled with dreadful forebodings.”

“About what?” asked Bertram.

He could not see Christy, but heard him moving about the inner room.

“Why, to bring a new life into the world. Was it a boy?”

“Yes,” said Bertram, “it was going to have my name.”

“A boy, eh? Oh, Lord, no! I couldn’t bring a boy into a world like this. It wouldn’t be fair. Not yet awhile, until we see how things are going to shape out. Major”—he still kept to Bertram’s old rank—“I’m afraid I’m becoming a coward.”

He came to the half open door, and leant against the frame of it, looking in at Bertram, who sat in a low leather chair with his back to a long casement window through which the dusk of a grey day crept from the darkening Thames below. So Christy had often stood in the entrance of a dug-out when he and Bertram lived in the earth not far from an enemy’s line.

“What are you afraid about?” asked Bertram, with a curious thrill, like the sensation he had had as a boy when his nurse told him ghost stories.

“I’m afraid of this civilisation of ours, and of all sorts of forces creeping up to destroy it.”

For an hour or more he talked of the things he had seen.

He had been to Eastern Europe, from which civilisation was passing. Poland was poverty-stricken, disease-stricken, and utterly demoralised.

Austria was no more than the corpse of a nation which had once been a mighty Empire, and now was a bulbous-headed thing without a body.

Vienna was its bulbous head, a great capital of over two million people without the means of life. He described the dance of death there, the starvation of women and children, the misery of the mean streets, the ruin of the intellectuals and the professional classes. In the hotels and restaurants and café concerts, foreigners were gathering like vampires to feed on the mortality of that old centre of civilisation. Austrian Jews and international gamblers, making paper fortunes out of the fluctuations of paper money, guzzled and gorged in an orgy of vice with girls who sold their smiles for the sake of a meal or an evening’s warmth.

The old palaces of Vienna still stood, the great mansions and cathedrals and churches and art galleries and museums remained as the heritage of a splendid past, but the life that made them had gone. When they began to crumble there would be no money to repair them. No man or woman could follow the pursuit of beauty and truth, painting or music or science, as in the old days. They must either get back to the land, and grub a sparse life out of the soil, or starve to death. So it was with other countries, the little new nations of the Baltic, the great Empire of Russia.

He’d not been into Russia—it pulled him tremendously, he must get there somehow—yet out on the frontier he’d met the refugees, and heard their tale of misery. In Russia civilisation was passing, had almost passed.

He would have to go to Russia before long to see the truth of things. There was a famine coming which would destroy millions of people. Disease was already rife, amounting to pestilence. Again, there, the only people who could live at all were those who stayed close to the soil, and were desperate in defence of their own produce.

Was Europe, a large part of it, going to return to the Peasant State? That might happen. That would be something to cling to, though not civilisation as it had been built up through centuries of struggle. But worse than that might happen.

He’d been to Berlin and other German towns. What was happening there? An immense industry of a people over-strained by war, crushingly defeated, beaten to the earth in pride, but desperate to regain their place in the world and defend their national existence. They were working with an astounding energy, adapting their immense genius to the necessities of this peace and its penalties. Krupps’ which had made great guns, were now turning out sewing-machines, reapers and binders, cash registers, razors, anything of metal for the markets of the world. But the indemnities put upon them by the victors made all their energy fruitless. The mark was dropping in value week by week. Every time they paid their indemnities it dropped lower with a rush. The printing presses poured out new marks. That enabled them to undercut their rivals in every market of the world, but at the same time they were bleeding themselves to death.

Meanwhile France was putting on the screw, goading the Germans to hatred again, making them vow vengeance, some time, some day, in the future, however far ahead. France was ready to ruin the whole world rather than let Germany get up again, and the whole world, and England first, would be ruined, if Germany were to go the way of Austria and plunge over the precipice into national bankruptcy.

There were evil forces at work everywhere, forces of cruelty, and greed, and stupidity, and hatred. The men of the Old Order were keeping a grip on the machinery of Government, arranging new balances of power, making new alliances for an “inevitable” war. Hostile to them, were those out to destroy all civilisation, at any cost, the revolutionaries for revolution’s sake, the fanatics allied with the murderers and the cave-men of life.

In between those two extremes, poor patient people, desiring peace, were bewildered by the non-fulfilment of all their hopes after so much sacrifice, and in their ignorance turning this way and that, to false gods, to those who appealed to their lower passions, to those who doped them with the greatest falsehoods. There was no truth-teller to whom the masses would listen. No high and noble leadership, but only corrupt and unclean men, holding on to power, or little men, honest in a little way, clinging to their jobs.

Other forces were at work, biological, evolutionary, and mysterious forces, which no man could understand or govern. There was a new restlessness in the soul of humanity. Some great change was happening, or about to happen. The old checks and balances had become unhinged, in the minds of men, in the spirit of peoples, in great races. The coloured peoples of the world were stirring. Some yeast in them was rising. Some passion of desire. India, Egypt, Africa, Mesopotamia, were seething with the spirit of revolt. He had been in the East. He had seen something of it. The white races would have to take care. There were other races waiting for their place. Japan and China were changing in “the unchanging East.”

What of the British Empire? Little old England, dependent on overseas trade, on world markets which had failed, on a mercantile marine which could not get its cargoes, would be hardest pressed of all. . . . And the spirit of revolution among men embittered by war, disillusioned by false promises, beaten back to a low standard of life, had touched even England, at last.

“Major,” said Luke Christy, “I wouldn’t care to bring a son into the world.”

Bertram rose, and did not answer for a while. He went to the window and stared out into the darkness creeping over the Thames. From Christy’s windows he could see the curve of the river, and the lights of the great old city gleaming through the purple dusk, and the red fire from the engine of a train passing over Charing Cross bridge, and the head-lights of motors and taxi-cabs streaming along the Embankment—all the glamorous life of London in the hour between dusk and darkness of an evening in May. A scene in modern civilisation as he knew and loved it.

He turned round to Christy and said: “You old ghoul! You make me shiver. It’s not as bad as all that!”

Christy laughed, and switched on the electric light, breaking the spell of darkness.

“It’s my morbid temperament! P’raps I’m all wrong. But I’m just watching, and trying to find out the drift of things.”

He’d found one curious thing wherever he went, in whatever country; he found men and women talking anxiously, analysing civilisation, uncertain of its endurance. Was that a good or a bad sign? The intellectuals of Greece and Rome used to talk like that before the “decline and fall.”

“Let’s drop the international situation and get down to home politics. What are you doing with yourself, Major?”

“Looking for a job,” said Bertram.

Luke Christy advised him to get a soft job, in one of the Government offices, with good pay out of the rate-payers’ pockets and no more work than an office boy could do without knowing it.

“I want to be an honest man,” said Bertram.

Christy seemed to find that uncommonly amusing.

“My dear Major! The only honest men in the world are those who are dying of starvation. All who have more than that are rogues. I’m one of the worst of hypocrites, for while I bleed at the heart for suffering humanity, I get a good price for the articles in which I describe its torture and disease.”

Bertram suddenly flushed a little, and spoke in a nervous way.

“Christy, I believe I could write, if I tried. In the old days at St. Paul’s, I had a notion—anyhow, I feel I might do something if I had a shot at it. What do you think?”

“You?” said Christy.

That word and its emphasis of surprise were not encouraging, and Bertram found it hard to confess to his friend that he had been writing a book, and believed that at last he had found his object in life, and the impulse he’d been seeking.

“What kind of book?” asked Christy.

“A book on the War.”

Christy groaned, and cried “Kamerad!” with raised hands.

XI

Joyce had gone out to a dance, leaving Bertram alone to write his book. She had made him a fair offer to come with her, telling him that it was his own fault if she had to rely on other company as an escape from boredom.

“What company?” he asked, and looked up sharply from his papers.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Some of the usual. The two Russian girls and Jack Hazeldeane, Kenneth.”

Bertram pushed his papers on one side.

“What’s the use of my coming? The two Russian girls bore me to death with their tales of the old régime and stories of Bolshevik atrocities. And I hate to see you dancing with Kenneth. He dances like an amorous ballet master. Besides—”

“Besides what—?”

“If there’s any dancing to be done, it’s I that want to dance with you.”

“All the time, Bertram?” She smiled at his greed.

“Yes. You’re _my_ wife.”

His damnable jealousy had got the better of him again.

“Not your property, my dear!” said Joyce.

“Not other people’s property,” grumbled Bertram. “I’m old-fashioned enough to object to your doing that jazz stuff with any fellow who likes to put his arms round you. It’s disgusting.”

“It’s you that are disgusting!” said Joyce.

Her face flamed with sudden anger, and Bertram saw the steel glint in her eyes. She was standing by the doorway in her evening frock, a thing of blue silk, showing her white neck and bare arms. The light of the electric candles on his desk played with her gold-spun hair. Bertram loved the look of her, and yet knew that temper was creeping up into his brain because he could not stop her from dancing with a man he loathed, nor hold her to himself alone, nor get from her the absolute love he desired, hungrily.

“That’s not a good word from any wife to any husband,” he said, heatedly.

“Your word!”

She laughed and lingered at the door, looking at her husband with a queer, half-scornful, half-enticing smile which he did not see because he was staring at his papers. There was even a little pity in her eyes.

“Better come! That book of yours is getting on your nerves.”

“It interests me,” said Bertram.

“I know I shall hate it anyhow. I want to forget the silly old war.”

“Everybody wants to forget it,” said Bertram, with a touch of passion in his voice. “The Profiteers, the Old Men who ordered the massacre, the politicians who spoilt the Peace, the painted flappers. I’m damned if I’m going to let them!”

“Painted flappers?” said Joyce. “Meaning me?”

“Not meaning you,” he answered.

“Thanks for that!”

She left the room, and Bertram heard Edith say the taxi was waiting. He rose and made a step towards the door, as though to join her after all. He wanted to go, in spite of Kenneth and the Russian girls. He wanted Joyce’s beauty, though he would have to share it with her friends. But it was too late. The door had clicked behind her, and he heard the taxi-cab drive away.

He was too rough with Joyce. Why shouldn’t she dance with other men? Was it some strain of his father in him that made him hate it so—his father’s harshness and intolerance. Or was it the passion of his love which Joyce seemed to deny him—did deny him—after the death of her baby? She did not respond to his endearments, and made no disguise of her dislike of his caresses. Or was this constant wrangling between them—becoming rather serious at times—due to an intellectual challenge between their different points of view—her patrician philosophy of life, his democratic leanings? Anyhow, it was all very difficult. He would have to be more careful, get a better grip on himself, rise to more selfless heights of love, if need be, and if possible, make a sacrifice of his very passion for Joyce’s sake. It was all very difficult!

He constrained himself to get to his writing again, now that he had refused her offer of companionship. Soon he lost himself in his task, glad of the swift flow of his pen and his savage strokes. It was strong stuff. It was a bitter indictment of the stupidities, the blunders, the unnecessary slaughter of men, which he had cursed in time of war because his own men had been the victims, with the others. Those orders from Corps Headquarters! Inconceivable! Unbelievable in their imbecility!

He had written for several hours, utterly absorbed, when he heard the electric bell ringing in the hall. Joyce back already? Hardly. The clock said midnight, and she was not back then, as a rule, from one of her dances. Edith had gone to bed, as Joyce had taken a key. He would have to open the door. Confound it! Who on earth—