Chapter VIII: Part III: Edwardian (2)

In 1904 there was, as usual, much talk of spiritualism, of establishing connection with the dead. The Psychical Research Society had been flourishing for many years, but papa had never, until now, taken much interest in it. There had been periods in his career when he had believed, with his Church, that God did not smile on such researches, or wish the Veil drawn from the unseen world, and that the researchers, if they too inquisitively drew it, got into shocking company, got, in fact, into touch with those evil spirits who were always waiting ready to pose as the deceased relatives and friends of enquirers. Other periods there had been when papa had believed that the thing was all pathetic buncombe (that was how papa spelt it), since there was unfortunately, nothing to get into touch with. But now he was sure that he had, in both these beliefs, erred. God could not frown on his bereaved children’s efforts to communicate with the beloved who had made life for them. And beyond the Veil waited not the great nothingness, but God and the dear dead. God and mamma. He must and would get into touch with mamma.

Papa attended séances, with what are called Results. Mamma came and talked with him, through the voice of a table or of a medium; she said all kinds of things that only she could have said; she even told him where a lost thimble of hers was, and sure enough, there it was, dropped behind the sofa cushions. And once materialisation occurred, and mamma, like a luminous wraith, floated about the room. It made papa very happy. He asked her how she did, and what it was like where she now was, and she told him that she did, on the whole, very well, but, as to what it was like, that he would never understand, did she tell him for a year.

“They can’t tell us. It’s too difficult, too different,” the lady who managed the séances explained to papa afterwards. Papa did not greatly care for this lady, and he always winced a little at the thought that mamma had become “They.” But he only said, “Yes, I suppose it is.”

The séances exhausted him a good deal, but it was worth while.

“So long as it makes him happier,” said Rome. “Poor _darling_.”

11

THE HAPPY LIBERALS

1905 was a year of great happiness, intelligence and virtue for the Liberal party in the state. It was to be their last happy, intelligent or virtuous year for many a long day; indeed, they have not as yet known another, for such a gracious state is only possible to oppositions, and the next time that the Liberals were the Opposition it was too late, for by then oppositions were, like other persons, too tired, war-spoilt, disillusioned and dispirited to practise anything but an unidealistic and unhopeful nagging. But in 1905, with the Tories executing, to the satisfaction of their opponents, the ungracious task of performance, which is, one may roughly say, never a success, the Liberals were very jolly, united, optimistic, and full of energy and plans. What would they not do when they should come, in their turn, into power? What Tory iniquities were there not, for them now to oppose, for them in the rosy future to reverse? What Aunt Sallies did not the governing party erect for them to shy at? Chinese labour, that yellow slavery which was degrading (were that possible) South Africa; the Licensing Act, the Education Act, the Little Loaf, which could be made so pitiable a morsel on posters--against all these they tilted. As to what they would do, once in power, it included the setting of trade again upon its legs, the enriching of the country, the reform of the suffrage, the relief of unemployment, the issue of an Education Bill which should distress no one. Ardent progressives hoped much from this party; they even hoped, without grounds, for the removal of sex disabilities in the laws relating to the suffrage, which unlikely matter was part of the programme drawn up in 1905 by the National Liberal Federation. Life was very glorious to any party, in those Edwardian days, before it got in. Liberals in opposition were democratic idealists, in office makeshift opportunists, backing out and climbing down.

Stanley Croft, in 1905, was ardent in Liberal hope. She hoped for everything, even for a vote. This sex disability in the matter of votes oppressed her very seriously. She saw no sense or reason in it, and resented the way the question, whenever it was raised in Parliament, was treated as a joke, like mothers-in-law, or drunkenness, or twins. Were women really a funny topic? Or rather, were they funnier than men? And if so, why? In vain her female sense of humour sought to probe this subject, but no female sense of humour, however acute, has ever done so. Women may and often do regard all humanity as a joke, good or bad, but they can seldom see that they themselves are more of a joke than men, or that the fact of their wanting rights as citizens is more amusing than men wanting similar rights. They can no more see it than they can see that they are touching, or that it is more shocking that women should be killed than that men should, which men see so plainly. Women, in fact, cannot see why they should not be treated like other persons. Stanley could not see it. To her the denial of representation in the governing body of her country on grounds of sex was not so much an injustice as a piece of inexplicable lunacy, as if all persons measuring, say, below five foot eight, had been denied votes. She saw no more to it than that, in spite of all the anti-suffrage speakers whom she heard say very much more. She became embittered on this subject, with a touch of the feminist bitterness that marked many of the early strugglers for votes. She admitted that men were, taking them in the main, considerably the wiser, the more capable and the more intelligent sex; that is to say that, though most people were ignorant fools, there were even more numerous and more ignorant fools among women than among men; but there it was, and there was no reason why the female fools should have less say than the male fools as to which of the other fools represented their interests in Parliament, and what measures were passed affecting their foolish lives. No; on the face of it, it was lunatic and irrational, and no excuse was possible, and that was that.

It certainly was, Rome agreed, but then, in a lunatic and irrational world, was any one extra piece of lunacy worth a fuss? Was, in fact, anything worth a fuss? In the answer to these questions, the sisters fundamentally differed, for Stanley believed very many things to be worth a fuss, and made it accordingly. She was busy now making fusses from most mornings to most evenings, sitting on committees for the improvement of the world, even of the Congo, and so forth. She was what is called a useful and public-spirited woman. Rome, on the other hand, grew with the years more and more the dilettante idler. At forty-six she found very few things worth bothering about. She strolled, drove or motored round the town, erect, slim and debonair, increasingly distinguished as grey streaked her fair hair and time chiselled delicate lines in her fine, clear skin. Rome cared neither for the happy Liberals nor for the unhappy Tories; she regarded both parties as equally undistinguished.

Fabianism became increasingly the fashion for young intellectuals. Girl and boy undergraduates flung themselves with ardour into this movement, sitting at the feet of Mr. Bernard Shaw and the Sidney Webbs. Stanley was a keen Fabian, and even attended summer schools. They were not attractive, but yet she hoped that somehow good would be the final goal of ill. She was sorry that none of her nephews and nieces joined her in this movement, though several had attained the natural age for it.

12

THE HAPPY YOUNG

Maurice’s Roger, who had not intellect and meant to be a novelist, was a gay youth now at Cambridge. His sister Iris had even less intellect and meant to be a wife. Nature had not fitted her for learning, and when she left school she merely came out (as the phrase goes). Parties: these were what Iris liked. Society, not societies. Stanley, aunt-like, thought it a great pity that Maurice’s offspring were thus, and blamed Maurice for leaving them too much to Amy. As to Vicky’s children, Phyllis, who had done quite adequately at Girton, now lived at home and helped her mother with entertaining and drawing-room meetings, and was in politics on the whole a Tory; Nancy, at twenty-one, was at the Slade, learning, so everyone but her teachers believed, to draw and paint; Hugh was at Cambridge, a lad of good intelligence which he devoted to the study of engineering; Tony was still at school; and Imogen was to leave it this summer. Imogen was not for college; she would, it was generally believed by her teachers and relatives, not make much of that. Imogen was quite content; she was, as always, busy writing stories and sunk deep in her own imaginings, which were still of a very puerile sort. Imogen read a great deal, but was not really intelligent; it was as if she had not yet grown up. She knew and cared little about politics or progress. Bernard Shaw was to her merely the most enchanting of playwrights. She was happy, drugged with poetry (her own and that of others), and adventurous dreams. She was a lanky slip of an undeveloped girl, light-footed, active as a cat, but more awkward with her hands than any creature before her; at once a romantic dreamer and a tomboyish child, loving school, her friends, active games, bathing, climbing, reading and writing, animals, W. B. Yeats, Conrad, Kipling, Henry Seton Merriman, Shelley, William Morris, Stevenson, “A Shropshire Lad,” meringues, battleships, marzipan, Irene Vanbrugh, Granville Barker and practically all drama; hating strangers, society, drawing-room meetings, needlework, love stories, people who talked about clothes, sentimentalists, and her Aunt Amy. She was at this time as sexless as any girl or boy may be. She was still, in all her imaginings, her continuous, unwritten stories about herself, a young man.

As to Stanley’s children, Irving’s and Una’s, they were still at school. Stanley watched her son and daughter with hope and joy; they were such delightful, exciting creatures, and one day they would take their place in the world and help to upset it and build it up again. _They_, at least, should certainly join the Fabians when they were old enough. Billy and Molly should not be slack, uninterested or Tory. They should join in the game of life as eagerly as now they joined in treasure hunts, that curious rage of this year which caused young and old to fall to digging up the earth, seeking for discs.

13

THE YEAR

The year and the government petered towards their end. In the east the Japanese were beating the Russians, hands down. In the Dogger Bank, the Russians fired on a fishing-fleet from Hull, and there was trouble. In European politics, the Anglo-French _entente_ throve, and Anglo-German rivalry swelled the navies. In Scotland, the Wee Frees split from the U.P.’s, and fought successfully for the lion’s share of the loot. In Wales, Evan Roberts’ odd religious revival swept the country, throwing strong men and women into hysteria and bad men and women into virtue, reforming the sinners and seriously annoying the publicans. In the Congo, rubber was grown and collected amid scenes of distressing cruelty, and reports of the horrid business were published in this country by Mr. Roger Casement and Mr. E. D. Morel. In India, Lord Curzon quarrelled with Lord Kitchener. In Thibet, the British expedition got to Lhassa. In Tangier, the Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany made a speech. In Ireland, Mr. Wyndham resigned. In London, the government apathetically stayed in office, the Tariff Reform campaign raged, treasure discs were dug for, bridge was much played, the Vedrenne-Barker company acted at the Court Theatre, many books were published and pictures painted, and money brightly changed hands. And in the provinces, by-election after by-election was lost to the government, until at last, in November, Mr. Balfour resigned.

14

ROCKETS

They stood in the new open space at Aldwych, watching the election results proclaimed by magic lanterns on great screens and flung to the sky in coloured rockets. They had made up a family election party--Maurice, Vicky, Charles, Rome, Stanley and Irving, and many of their young. Stanley had brought Billy and Molly, that they might rejoice in the great Liberal victory and always remember it. She had bought them each, at their request, a little clacker, with which to signal the triumph of right to the world. For to-night was to be a triumph indeed; liberalism was to sweep the country. Though even Stanley did not guess to what extent, or how far the inevitable pendulum had swung.

Imogen was entranced by the dark, clear night, the coloured lights, the crowd, the excitement, and little thrills ran up and down her as names and figures and rockets were greeted with cheers and hoots. She cared nothing for the results; to her the thing was a sporting event on which she had no money. Aunt Stanley, she knew, had her shirt on the Liberals. So had Uncle Maurice. But Aunt Rome had nothing either way. Imogen’s own parents were Conservatives. So, on the whole, was Phyllis, and Phyllis’s young man. So was Uncle Irving, who was for Tariff Reform. Probably, on the whole, Liberals were the more right, thought Imogen. But probably no party was particularly right. How excited they all got, anyhow, right or wrong!

The Liberals were forging ahead. There was another Manchester division going up on the screen. Three Manchester seats had already been lost to the Tories. “Bet you an even twopence it’s a Lib.” Tony was saying.

“Right you are. Oh, it’s Balfour’s....”

“Well, he’s lost it. Hand over.”

The crowd roared with laughter, distress and joy. Balfour out.... What next?

“Very badly managed,” Irving was complaining all the time, to no one in particular. “Shockingly mismanaged. The most comic election I ever saw. There’ll be no Front Bench left.”

“And a jolly good thing.” That was Stanley, getting more and more triumphant. “There goes Brodrick....”

Imogen felt dazed and happy, and as if she were in a fairy palace, all blue and red lights. Her upstrained face was stiff and cold, her mouth open with joy, so that the cold air flowed in. She wasn’t betting any more, for neither she nor Tony would bet on the Tories now. The Tories were a dead horse. One was sorry for them, but one couldn’t bet on them. Did the poor men who lost their seats mind much? Perhaps some of them were pleased. After all, they had none of them sought or desired office.... Statesmen always said that of themselves; they only wanted to get in because they thought they were the ones who would do most good; always they said that. Divine guidance, they said, had laid this heavy burden on them, though it was a most frightful bore, and though the thing they wanted to do was to live in the country and keep pigs.

“If I was in office,” thought Imogen, “I wouldn’t say that. I’d say, I sought and wanted office, and I’m jolly glad I’ve got it, though I expect I’ll be rotten at it. I simply love being in power, and thank you awfully for putting me in, and I hope I’ll stop in for ages.”

How shocked everyone would be. That wasn’t the way public men ever talked. Would women, if ever they got into Parliament, like Aunt Stanley wanted them to? Perhaps they would at first, not being used to proper public manners, but they would soon learn that it wasn’t nice to talk like that and would begin on the I-never-wanted-it stunt.

More rockets; more blue flares. Lovely. Like a great garden of coloured flowers. _Night is a garden gay with flowers...._ Hours. Showers. Dowers. Bowers. Cowers....

_Their flaring blinds the sleepy hours...._ No. _The small dim hours are lit, are starred._ Better. The rhymes alternately in the middle and end of the lines, all through. That made it chime, like bells beneath the sea....

“Lord, what a bungle!” Irving grunted. “It’s all up now. Nothing can save it now. We may as well go home and get warm. What?”

His fine, dark, clear-cut face was beautiful in the coloured flares, as he stared up, a cigar in the corner of his mouth. How interesting people were, thought Imogen, the way they all wanted different things, and in different ways. There was Uncle Maurice now, smiling over his briar, as pleased as anything.... And Billy and Molly, silly little goats, twirling away with their clackers and shouting with Liberal joy because Aunt Stanley told them to.... Anyhow it couldn’t really _matter_ who got in. Not matter, like the night, and the lights, and poetry, and the lovely thrill of it all. Results didn’t matter, only the thing itself.

“Brrr!” said Vicky, hunching herself together and hugging her muff. “It’s too cold to watch the wrong side winning any more. Charles, I’m going home to bed. Come along, all of you, or you’ll catch your deaths.”

“Oh, mother, mayn’t I stay as long as father does?”

“If you like. Very silly of you, Jennie, you’re blue and shivering already. Stanley, aren’t you going to take those noisy and misguided children of yours home? It’s nearly midnight.”

“I suppose I must. But what a night for them to remember always.”

What a night, thought Imogen, huddling up in her coat with a happy shiver, to remember always. Indeed yes. Ecstasy and gaudy blossoms of the night. _The gaudy blossoms of the night.... Sharp swords of light...._ Bloss, moss, doss, toss ... toss ought to do....

“There goes Lyttelton. So much for those beastly Chinamen,” cried Maurice.

15

ON PARTIES

So much for the beastly Chinamen, and so much for the beastly little loaf and the tax on the People’s Food, so much for class legislation and sectarian education bills. So much, in fact, for Toryism, for the happy Liberals were in, and would be in, growing ever less and less happy, for close on ten years.

“_Now_ we’ll show the world,” said Stanley.

Maurice cynically grinned at her.

“If you mean you think you’re going to get a vote, my dear, you’re off it. This cabinet hasn’t the faintest intention of accommodating you. Not the very faintest. And if ever they did put up a bill, they’d never get it through the Lords. You may send all the deputations you like, but you won’t move them. Woman’s suffrage is merely the House joke.”

“We’ll see,” said Stanley, who was of a hopeful colour.

“All you can say of Liberals,” said Maurice, who was not, “is that they’re possibly (not certainly) one better than Conservatives. However, I’m not crabbing them. They’ve got their chance, and let’s hope they take it. First they’ve got to undo all the follies the last government perpetrated. Every government ought to begin with that, always. Then they’ve got to concentrate on Home Rule. As you say, we shall see.”

“Anyhow,” said Stanley, “we’ve got our chance.... And there’s the _Tribune_. Penny liberalism at last.”

“I give it a year,” said Maurice. “If it takes longer dying, Thomasson is an even more stubborn lunatic than I think him. They’ve started all right; quite a good first number, only how any Liberal paper can publish a polite message from that damned Tsar beats one. I believe my paper is really the only one that insults the Russian government as it ought to be insulted. All the others either make up to the Tsar for his armies or butter him up because of the Hague Conference and his silly prattle about a world peace. It makes one sick. Liberals are as bad as the rest.”

It was edifying, during the election days, to learn from various authorities the reasons for the Liberal victory. The _Times_ said it was the effect, long delayed, of the suffrage reform bills; the working classes, at last articulate, had determined to dictate their own policy; no triumph for liberalism, no humiliation for conservatism, but an experiment on the part of Labour. The _Morning Post_ said the victory was due to the misrepresentation of Chinese labour by Liberals, false promises, and the inevitable swing of the pendulum. The _Daily Mail_ said it was the swing of the pendulum, Chinese labour, the over continuance in office of the last government, the Education Act, taxation, unfair food-tax cries, and a liking for antiquated methods of commerce. The _Daily News_ said it was a rebellion against reaction, protection and the Little Loaf. The _Tribune_ said it was a rebellion also against poverty, the direction of companies by Ministers, and the undoing of the great Victorian reforms; it was, in fact, the protest of Right against Force, of the common good against class interest, of the ideal element in political life against merely mechanical efficiency. (“Mechanical efficiency!” Maurice jeered. “Much there was of that in the last government. As to the ideal element, the Liberal ideal is a large loaf and low taxes. Quite a sound one, but nothing to be smug about.”) However, the whole press was smug, as always, and so were nearly all statesmen in public speeches; their cynicism they kept for private life. Mr. Asquith, for instance, said that this uprising of the people was due to moral reprobation of the double dealing of the late government; plain dealing was what they wanted. And Mr. Lloyd George, in his best vein, spoke of a fearful reckoning. A tornado, he called it, of righteous indignation with the trifling that had been going on in high places for years with all that was sacred to the national heart. The oppression of Nonconformists at home, the staining of the British flag abroad with slavery, the rivetting of the chains of the drink traffic on the people of this country--against all these had the people risen in wrath. It was a warning to ministers not to trifle with conscience, or to menace liberty in a free land. The people meant to save themselves; the dykes had been opened, and reaction in all its forms would be swept away by the deluge.

Mr. Balfour, less excited and more philosophic, observed, at his own defeat at Manchester, that, after all, the Tories had been in office ten years, and would doubtless before long be in office again, and that these oscillations of fortune would and did always occur. He was probably nearer the truth about the elections than most of those who pronounced upon them. It is a safe assertion that no government is popular for long; get rid of it and let’s try another, for anyhow another can’t be sillier, is the voter’s very natural and proper feeling. The sophisticated voter knows that it will almost certainly be as silly, but, after all, it seems only fair to let each side have its innings.

Anyhow, and whatever the reasons that brought liberalism into power, there it was. It was expressed by a House which was at present, and before its enthusiasms were whittled away in action, composed largely of political and social theorists, men new to politics and brimming with plans. Mr. H. W. Massingham said it was the ablest Parliament he had ever known, but not the most distinguished.

16

DREADNOUGHT

Imogen saved up her pocket money for the cheap excursion fare to Portsmouth, and slipped off there alone, on a raw February morning, by the special early train, to see the King launch the _Dreadnought_. The _Dreadnought_ was a tremendous naval event. She displaced 19,900 tons, beating the _Dominion_ and the _King Edward VII_ by 1,200 tons, and she would make 21 knots to their 16.5, and had turbine engines, and carried ten 12-inch guns, and her outline was smooth and lovely and unbroken by casemates, for she was built for speed. Imogen had to go. She slipped off without a word at home, for she had a cough and objections would have been raised. She stood wedged for hours in a crowd on the docks in cold rain that pitted the heaving green harbour seas, and coughed. She did not command a view of the actual launching, but would see the splendid creature as she left the slip and took the water. Before that there was a service; the service appointed to be used at the launching of the ships of His Majesty’s Navy. “They that go down to the sea in ships: and occupy their business in great waters; These men see the works of the Lord: and his wonders in the deep. For at his word the stormy wind ariseth: which lifteth up the waves thereof. They are carried up to the heaven, and down again to the deep: their soul melteth away because of the trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man: and are at their wit’s end....”

After this, Hymn 592 (A & M) was irritating and silly, but hymns cannot be helped, bishops will have them.

Then the King smashed the bottle of wine on her and, christened, she took the water. She left the slip and came into the view of the crowd, and a great shout went up. “She’s moving!”

Imogen, thrilled, gazed at the lovely, the amazing creature, the giant of the navy. What a battleship! With professional interest Imogen examined her points through her father’s field glasses. No openings in the bulkheads--it was that which gave her her smooth, fleet look. She was made for a running fight. She was glorious.

Imogen travelled home wet through, shivering, her cough tearing at her chest, and went to bed for a month with bronchitis. So much for the navy, said Vicky crossly. But the amazing grey ship was a comfort to Imogen through her fevered waking dreams.

17

AT THE FARM

Imogen, bow and arrows in hand, crawled through the wood, beneath overhanging boughs of oaks and elders and beeches and the deep green arms of pines, that shut the little copse from the August sun into a fragrant gloom. Every now and then she stopped, listened, and laid her ear to the mossy ground.

“Three miles off and making a bee line south,” she observed, frowning. “My God.”

“Michael crawled on,” she continued, “crawling, keeping his head low, so as not to afford a target for any stray arrows. Who knew what sinister shadows lurked in the forest, to right and to left?... Hist! What was that sound? Something cracked in the tangle of scrub near him.... A Cherokee on a lone trail, possibly.... A Cherokee: the most deadly of the Red Tribes.... Cold sweat stood out on Michael’s brow. Could he reach the camp in time? Again he laid his ear to the ground and listened. They were only two miles now, and still that swift, terrible, travelling.... The sun beat upon his head and neck; he felt dizzy and sick. Suppose he fainted before he reached his goal.... That damned cracking in the bushes again.... Good God!... out of the thicket sprang a huge Redskin, uttering the horrid war-whoop of the Cherokee, which, once heard, is never forgotten. Michael leaped to his feet, pulled his bow-string to his ear, let fly....”

Imogen too let fly.

“Missed him,” she muttered, and swarmed nimbly up the gnarled trunk of an oak until she reached the lower boughs, from whence she looked down into a fierce red face, eagle-nosed, feather-crowned.

“Oh, Big Buffalo,” she softly called. “Will you parley?”

Big Buffalo grunted, and they parleyed. If Michael would betray the whereabouts of his friends, Big Buffalo would grant him his life. If not, no such easy death as the arrow awaited him, “for we Cherokees well understand the art of killing....” Michael, sick with fear, betrayed his friends, and Big Buffalo left him, primed with information. (In common with other heroes of fiction, Michael never thought of giving incorrect or misleading information.)

“Michael lay in the forest, his head upon his arms. What had he done? There was no undoing it now. Why didn’t I choose the stake? Oh, damn, why didn’t I....”

It was too warm, sweet and drowsy for prolonged remorse. Michael forgot his shame. The breeze in the pine trees sang like low harps.... The shadowy copse was soaked in piney sweetness, golden and dim. Michael, with his bow, his Redskins, and his broken honour, faded out in the loveliness of the hour.

Ecstasy descended on the wood; enchantment held it, saturating it with golden magic. Ants and little wood-beetles scuttled over Imogen’s outstretched hands and bare, rough head. Rabbits bobbed and darted close to her. She was part of the woods, caught breathless into that fairy circle like a stolen, enchanted child.

“I am full of the Holy Ghost,” said Imogen. “This is the Holy Ghost....” And loveliness shook her, as a wind shakes a leaf. These strange, dizzy moments lurked hidden in the world like fairies in a wood, and at any hour they sprang forth and seized her, and the emotion, however often repeated, was each time as keen. They would spring forth and grip her, turning the dædal earth to magic, at any lovely hour, in wood or lane or street, or among the wavering candles and the bread and wine. She was stabbed through and through with beauty sweet as honey and sharp as a sword, and it was as if her heart must break in her at its turning. After this brief intensity of joy or pain, whichever it was, it was as if something in her actually did break, scattering loose a drift of pent-up words. That was how poems came. After the anguished joy, the breaking loose of the words, then the careful stringing of them together on a chain, the fastidious, conscious arranging. Then the setting them down, and reading them over, and the happy, dizzy (however erroneous) belief that they were good.... That was how poems came, and that was life at its sharpest, its highest intensity. Afterwards, one sent them to papers, and it was pleasant and gratifying if other people saw them and liked them too. But all that was a side-issue. Vanity is pleasant, gratified ambition is pleasant, earning money is very pleasant, but these are not life at its highest power. You might at once burn every poem you wrote, but you would still have known life.

The song the pines hummed became words, half formed, drifting, sweet.... Imogen listened, agape, like an imbecile. It was a lovely, jolly, woody thing that was being sung to her ... she murmured it over....

A bell rang, far away. Sharply time’s voice shivered eternity to fragments. Imogen yawned, got up, brushed pine needles out of her hair and clothes, took up her bow, and strolled out of fairyland. It was tea-time at the farm.

As she sauntered through the little wood, she shot arrows at the trees and stopped to retrieve them. Then she found a long, sharp stick, pointed, like a spear, and became a knight in a Norman forest. She encountered another knight, a hated foe. There was a fight _à outrance_. They fenced, parried, lunged....

“Swerve to the right, son Roger, he said,
When you catch his eye through the helmet’s slit;
Swerve to the right, then out at his head,
And the Lord God give you joy of it....”

A swinging thrust....

“Got him, pardie!”

“Hullo.”

Imogen faced about, and there, on the cart track between the wood and the home farm, stood her Uncle Ted, large and red in breeches and gaiters, his pipe between his teeth.

“Oh, hullo, Uncle Ted.”

Imogen had turned red. She had been seen making an ass of herself alone in the wood. Behaving like a maniac. Damn.

“Anything the matter? Got the staggers, have you?” asked Uncle Ted, as if she were a cow.

“No, I’m all right. Looking for arrows and things, that’s all.”

“Oh, I see.... Comin’ up to tea?”

They walked across the home field together. Imogen was sulky and ashamed. She was emptied of enchantment and the Holy Ghost, and was nothing but an abrupt, slangy, laconic girl, going sullenly in to tea, feeling an ass. Uncle Ted was thinking farmer’s thoughts, of crops and the like, not of Imogen.

But afterwards he said to Una, “Not quite all there, eh, that girl of Vicky’s? Flings herself about in the wood when she’s alone, like someone not right, and talks to herself, too. Nineteen, is she? It’d be right enough if she was twelve. But at eighteen or nineteen....”

“Oh, Imogen’s all right. She’s childish for her age, that’s all.”

Una took everyone for granted.

“Childish, yes. That’s what I say. They ought to have her seen to. Gabbles, too. I can’t make out half she’s saying.... Katie may do her good, I daresay. Katie’s got sense.... It’s against a girl, going on like that. No sensible young fellow would like it. They ought to have her seen to. What?”

“Oh, she’s all right,” said Una again. “There she is in the field playing rounders with the others quite sensibly, you see.”

“I daresay. She may be all right at games, but she oughtn’t to be let loose alone in woods. She’ll get herself talked about....”

Katie too thought Imogen mad. But quite nicely mad. Harmless. Like a kid. Katie was a few months younger, but she felt that Imogen was a kid. She said and did such mad things. And she lacked the most elementary knowledge; she didn’t know the first thing, for instance, about clothes, what they were made of, and how they should be made. She was like an imbecile about them; didn’t care, either. She would stare, pleased and admiring, at Katie, who had beauty, as if Katie were a lovely picture, but she never said the right things about her clothes. You’d think, almost, she didn’t know one material from another.

When they had done playing rounders, and when Imogen and Tony, who was staying at the farm too, had done damming the brook at the bottom of the field, and when Tony had gone off rook shooting with his cousin Dick, Imogen sat by the brook, her bare muddy legs in a pool scaring minnows, and brooded over life. Rotten it was, being grown up. Simply rotten. Because you weren’t really grown up. You hadn’t changed at all. You knew some more, and you cared for a lot of fresh books, but you liked doing all the things you had liked doing before you grew up. Climbing, and playing Red Indians, and playing with soldiers, and walking on stilts. But when you put your hair up, you had to hide all sorts of things away, like a guilty secret. You could play real games, like tennis and cricket and hockey and rounders, and even football, and you could perhaps do the other things with someone else, but not alone. If people found you alone up a tree, or climbing a roof, or listening with your ear to the ground, or astride on a wall, or pretending with a sword, they put up their eyebrows and thought you an ass. Your mother told people you were a tomboy. A tomboy. Imbecile word. As if girls didn’t like doing nice things as much as boys. Who started the idea they didn’t, or shouldn’t?... Oh, it was rotten, being grown up. Grown-up people had a hideous time. They became so queer, talking so much, wanting to go to parties, and even meetings, and all kinds of rotten shows. Mother held meetings in the drawing-room, for good objects. So did Aunt Stanley. Different objects, but equally good, no doubt. People came to the meetings and jabbered away, and sometimes you were made to be there, “to learn to take an interest.” Votes, cruelty to animals or children, sweated labour, bazaars, white slaves, the Conservative party, the Liberal party.... What did any of them matter? Phyllis was good at them. But now Phyllis was going to be married. And Nancy was at the Slade, and wouldn’t attend the meetings; she was too busy drawing and going to dances and parties. The modern girl, mother said; independent, selfish, dashing about with young men and no chaperons. The Edwardian young woman, so different from the Victorian young woman.... Only Aunt Rome said she was not different, but just the same.... Anyhow, Nancy wouldn’t take her turn at the meetings. So Imogen, younger and more docile, was being trained up. But she would never be any good. She hated them. Why shouldn’t the boys take their turn? No one made them. It wasn’t fair.

Imogen kicked viciously at the minnows. Rotten, being a girl.... Perhaps she would run away to sea ... round the world ... the South Sea Islands....

It was getting chilly. Imogen drew her legs out of the brook and dried them on her handkerchief. Filthy they were, with mud. She put on her stockings and old tennis shoes, and wondered what next. Tony was still rooking. One might go and catch the colt in the meadow and ride him....

Katie appeared over the hunched shoulder of the field.

“Imogen, do you want to come and milk? It’s time.... Oh, I say, you _are_ in a mess. You ass, what’ve you been up to?”

“Only damming the brook, and wading. Yes, I want to milk, rather.”

“Hurry up then.”

Katie was as beautiful as a June morning. As beautiful as Una. Pale as milk, with eyes like violets and dark, clustering curls. And clever. She could do nearly everything. Imogen, six months older, was as nought beside her. But Katie liked her, and was very kind to her. Katie had just left Roedean; she had been captain of the school hockey team, and was going now to play for Essex. A splendid girl. Imogen believed that Katie had none of the dark and cold forebodings, the hot excitements, the black nightmares, the sharp, sweet ecstasies, the mean and base feelings, that assailed herself, any more than Katie would be found making an ass of herself playing in a wood. Katie, like her mother, was balanced. This tendency to believe that others are balanced, and are not rent by the sad and glad storms which one’s own soul knows, is common to many. One supposes it to be because human beings put such a calm face on things, so the heart alone knows its own turbulence.

Imogen grinned at Katie, and went with her to the milking.

18

HIGHER THOUGHT

Papa had aged very much in the last two years since mamma had died. He had had wonderful experiences; he had constantly spoken with, even seen, mamma; it had made him very happy. But he was aware that the séances greatly strained and fatigued him. He slept badly; his nerves seemed continually on edge. Further, he could not by any means overcome the distaste he felt for the medium who made it her special business to open the door between him and mamma. A common little person, he could not help, even in his charity, thinking her. And Flossie, the spirit on the Other Side, who spoke for mamma (except on those rare occasions when mamma spoke for herself) was, to judge from her manner, voice and choice of language, even commoner. And silly. Papa scarcely liked to admit to himself _how_ silly Flossie seemed to him to be. Mamma must dislike Flossie a good deal, he sometimes thought, but then recollected that, where mamma had gone to dwell, dislike was no more felt, only compassion. He would have liked to ask mamma, on the rare occasions when she spoke for herself, what she thought of Flossie, and of Miss Smythe, the medium on this side. But he did not like to, for Flossie would certainly, and Miss Smythe possibly, through her trance, hear his question and mamma’s reply. How he longed for a little private talk, of the kind that mamma and he used to have of old! But he was not ungrateful. He was in touch with mamma; he knew her to be extant as a personality, and accessible to him, and that was surely enough. As to the fatigue, that was a small price to pay.

Then, one tragic day, in the autumn of 1906, came one of those great exposures which dog the steps of psychical men and women. Some of the sharp, inquisitive persons who make it their business to nose out frauds and write to _Truth_ about them, turned their attention to Miss Smythe and her séances. In a few weeks--these things are very easy, and do not take long--Miss Smythe was pilloried in the press as a complete and accomplished fraud. She had, it was made clear except to the most obstinate believers, never been in a trance, never called spirits, from the vasty deep, never opened any spiritual doors. The mechanism of the materialisation was once more discovered and exposed.... (“What a stale old story,” said Rome. “As if we didn’t know all about it long ago. These heavy-footed creatures, trampling over children’s fairylands. Why can’t they let things be?”) ... and even Flossie, that bright, silly, chatty spirit, was discredited. Flossie was a quack, and had known about the thimble behind the sofa and the other things in some cheap, sly way, or else just guessed.

Alas for papa! The gates of paradise clanged in his face; he might believe by faith that paradise was there, and mamma in it, but the door between him and it was shut. Great and bitter sorrow shook him, and shame, for that he had so made cheap his love and mamma’s for the benefit of common frauds. He sank into inert grief, from which he was roused, in March 1907, by the call of Higher Thought. The name, in the first instance, appealed to him. Thought should be higher; it was usually lower, and very certainly much too low.

“Higher than what, papa dear?” Rome enquired. “These comparatives, in the air, are so unfinished. Higher education, higher criticism, the larger hope, the younger generation.... Higher, I mean than what other thought?”

Than the thought customary on similar subjects, papa supposed.

“These geometrical metaphors,” Rome murmured. “Well, papa, I am sure it must be very interesting.”

It was very interesting. Papa was introduced to a little temple near High Street, Kensington, which, when you stepped on the entrance mat, broke into “God is Love” in electric light over the altar. Here he worshipped and thought highly, in company with a small but ardent band of other high thinkers, who were led in prayer by a Guru of immense power--the power of thought which was not merely higher but highest--over mind and matter. So great was the power of this Guru that he not only could cure diseased bodies and souls, but could correct physical malformations, merely by absent treatment. A lame young man was brought to him, one of whose legs was shorter than its fellow. Certainly, said the Guru, this defect would yield to absent treatment. Further, the treatment would in this case be doubly effective, as he happened to be about to make a journey to Thibet, to visit the Lama, the very centre of fervent prayer, absent treatment, and higher thought. The nearer the Guru got to Thibet, the more powerful would become, he said, the action of his treatment on the leg of the young man. And, sure enough, so it proved. The shorter leg began, as the Guru receded towards Asia, to grow. It grew, and it grew, and it grew. There came a joyful day when the two legs were of identical length. The power of absent treatment was triumphantly justified. But it proved to be a power even greater than the young man and his family had desired or deserved. For the short leg did not stop when it had caught up its companion; on the contrary, it seemed to be growing with greater velocity than before. And indeed, it was; for the Guru, now far beyond reach of communication by letter or telegram, was journeying ever deeper and deeper into the great heart of prayer, Holy Thibet, and as he penetrated it his prayer intensified and multiplied in power, like the impetus of a ball rolling down hill. The short leg surpassed its brother, shot on, and on, and on....

It was still shooting on when papa was told of the curious phenomenon.

“Strange,” said papa. “Strange, indeed.”

But it was not these portents, however strange, that papa valued in his new faith. It was the freedom, the prayerfulness, the rarefied spiritual atmosphere; in brief, the height. After Miss Smythe, after the darkened room and the rapping table and the lower thinking of poor Flossie, it was like a mountain top, where the soul was purged of commonness.

Mamma, papa sometimes thought, would have approved of Higher Thought; might even, had she been spared, have become a Higher Thinker herself. (It should be remembered, in this connection, that papa, since the exposure of poor Flossie, was no longer in touch with mamma.)

19

LIBERALS IN ACTION

It is a pity to crab all governments and everything they do. For occasionally it occurs that some government or other (its political colour is an even chance) passes some measure or other which is not so bad as the majority of measures. The Liberal government elected in 1906 composed tolerable bills more than once. It even succeeded, though more rarely, in getting them, in some slightly warped form, tolerated by the Upper House. The Trades Disputes Bill, for instance, got through. Either the Lords were caught napping, or they felt they had to let something through, just to show that things _could_ get through, as at hoop-la the owner of the booth has, here and there, among hundreds of objects too large to be ringed by the hoop, one of trifling value which can fairly be ringed and won, just to show that the thing can be done. Anyhow, the Trades Disputes Bill did get through, before the game began of chucking all bills mechanically back, or amending them out of all meaning so that the Commons disowned them and threw them away.

Mr. Birrell had no luck with his Education Bill. It was a good, rational bill, as education bills (a sad theme) go, and no party liked it much, and the Upper House saw that it would not do at all, and sent it back plastered all over with amendments that gave it a new and silly face, like a lady over-much made up. So the Commons would have none of it, and that was the end, for the moment, of attempts to improve the management of our elementary schools.

The Lords were now getting into their form, and threw out the Plural Voting Bill with no nonsense about amendments, and no trouble at all. After all, what were they there for, if not to throw out? What, indeed, asked the Lower House, many members of whom had for long wondered. As to any kind of Woman’s Suffrage Bill, the Commons, as firmly as the Lords, would have none of it. It was when this was made clear that the Women’s Social and Political Union, that new, vigorous and vulgar body, began to bestir itself, and to send bodies of women to waylay members on their way to the House; in fact, the militant suffragist nuisance began. There were processions, demonstrations, riots, arrests and imprisonments. Stanley threw herself into these things at first with dogged fervour; she did not like them, but held them advantageous to the Cause. Her niece, Vicky’s Nancy, a very wild young woman, who enjoyed fighting and making a disturbance on any pretext, threw herself also into the Cause, fought policemen with vigour, and was dragged off to prison with joy. Imogen wouldn’t participate in these public-spirited orgies; she was too shy. And she couldn’t see that it was any use, either. She had a hampering and rather pedantic sense of logic, that prevented her from flinging herself into movements with sentimental ardour; she preferred to know exactly how the methods adopted were supposed to work, and to see clearly cause and effect, and no one ever made it precisely clear to her how making rows in the streets was going to get a suffrage bill passed. It seemed, in fact, to be working the other way, and alienating some of the few hitherto sympathetic. Her Aunt Stanley told her, “It’s to show the public and the government how much we care. They’re crude weapons, but the only ones we have. Constitutional methods have failed, so far.”

“But, Aunt Stanley, how do you know these are weapons at all?” Imogen argued.

“We can but try them,” Stanley answered, herself a little doubtful on the point.

“Anyhow,” she added, “anyhow, no woman who cares about citizenship can be happy sitting still and doing nothing while we’re denied it. You do care about the suffrage, don’t you, Imogen?”

“Oh, rather, Aunt Stanley, of course I do. I think it’s awful cheek not giving it us. There’s no _sense_ in it, is there; no meaning. Anti-suffragists do talk a lot of rot.... Only don’t you think suffragists do too, sometimes? I mean, Aunt Stanley, people do so, when they talk, get off the _point_, don’t they. It would be a lot easier to be keen if people didn’t talk so much. They talk _round_, not along. Really, there’s hardly anything to say about anything; I mean, you could say it all, all that mattered, in a few sentences. But people go on talking about things for hours, saying the same things twice, and a lot of other things that don’t really apply, and everything in hundreds of words when quite a few would do. I noticed it in the House the other day when we were there. Two-thirds of what they all said was just flapping about. And they say, ‘I have said before, Mr. Speaker, and I say again....’ But _why_ do they say it again? It isn’t awfully good even the first time. I do wonder why people are like that, don’t you?”

“Soft heads and long tongues, my dear, that’s why. Can’t be helped. One’s got to bear it and go ahead.... I wish Molly was five years older; she’ll be so tremendously keen....”

Imogen said nothing to that. She knew Molly, her small elfish cousin of fourteen, pretty well. Molly, with her short white face and merry, narrow eyes, and quick wits and easy selfishness and charm, was, though Imogen couldn’t know that, her father over again, without his abilities. Imogen was afraid that Molly, when she left school and grew up, was not going to take that place among the world’s workers that Aunt Stanley hoped.

As to Billy, a cheerful, stocky Rugby boy of sixteen, he had no views on the suffrage. He didn’t care. Politics bored him.

Poor Aunt Stanley. Aunt Stanley was a great dear; treated one always as a friend, not as a niece; explained things, and discussed, and said what she meant. She was easy to talk to. Easier than Vicky, whom one loved, but couldn’t discuss things with; one couldn’t formulate and express one’s ideas and project them into that spate of charming, inconsequent talk, that swept on gaily over anything one said. Imogen tried to please Aunt Stanley by seeming really keen about suffrage, but it was difficult, because the things she actually was keen on were so many and absorbing that they didn’t leave much time over. Imogen felt that she was no good at these large, unselfish causes that Aunt Stanley had at heart; she hadn’t soul enough, or brain enough, or imagination enough, or something. And she did hate meetings. If one had to sit indoors in the afternoon, were there not the galleries and theatres, her point of view was. Perhaps, she thought, Nancy, who enjoyed it, could do the votes-for-women business for the family.

Meanwhile, Mr. W. H. Dickinson’s Suffrage Bill failed to come to anything, and it became obvious that the Liberal government, in this matter, was to be no use at all.

It was quite a question whether it was going to be much use in any other matter. Poor Law Reform it had postponed; likewise Old Age Pensions. Licensing Reform was dropped; so was Mr. McKenna’s new Education Bill, the Land Valuation Bill, and Irish Home Rule. It looked as if the Liberal programme was running away like wax in the heat and trouble of the day. How few party programmes, for that matter, ever do become accomplished achievements! They are frail plants, and cannot easily come to fruit in the rough air of office. What with one thing, what with another, they wilt away in flower and die.