“Boys crib at their lessons. Boys don’t wash their necks.”
“Nor do girls. You’re dirty now. Girls don’t play footer at school.”
“Hockey’s as good. Boys are greedy pigs; they spend their pennies on tuck.”
“Who bought eight bulls-eyes this afternoon and sucked six?”
“Oh, well.” Imogen collapsed into sudden good temper. “Don’t let’s rot. Why did the gooseberry fool?”
To change the subject further, she swung herself backwards and hung from the branch by her knees, her short mop of curls swinging upside down, the blood singing in her head. Billy, a nice but not very clever little boy, said, “Because the raspberry syrup,” and truce was signed. Who, as Imogen had asked, cared how babies came?
5
Ping-Pong
Everywhere people ping-ponged. One would have thought there was no war on. Instead of doing their bits, as we did in a more recent and a more serious war, they all ping-ponged, and, when not ping-ponging, asked, “Why did the razor-bill raise her bill? Why did the coal scuttle? What did Anthony Hope?” And answered, “Because the woodpecker would peck her. Because the table had cedar legs. To see the salad dressing,” and anything else of that kind they could think of. Some people, mostly elderly people, could only answer vaguely to everything, “Because the razor-bill razor-bill,” and change the subject, thinking how stupid riddles in these days were. Some people excelled at riddles, others at ping-pong, others again at pit, which meant shouting, “oats, oats, oats,” or something similar, until they were hoarse. No one would have thought there was a war on.
Indeed, there scarcely was a war on, now. Not a war to matter. Only rounding up, and blockhouses, and cordons, and guerrilla fighting. Irving Garden had had enteric, and was invalided home. He meant to return to South Africa directly peace should be signed, to investigate a good thing he had heard of in the Rand. His nephews and nieces, with whom he was always popular, worshipped at his shrine. He had wonderfully funny stories of the war to tell them. But he preferred to ask them such questions as, “What made Charing Cross?” and to supply them with such answers as “Teaching London Bridge. Am I right?” Such questions, such answers, they found so funny as to be almost painful. Imogen and Tony would giggle until tears came into their eyes. Certainly uncle Irving was amusing. And clever. He drove himself and other people about in a gray car that travelled like the wind and was cursed like the devil by pedestrians and horse drivers on the roads. His brother Maurice cursed him, but good-temperedly, for he liked Irving, and, further, he despised the unenterprising Public for fools. That was why no section of the community gave Maurice and his paper their entire confidence; he attacked what he and those who agreed with him held for evils, but would round, with a contemptuous gesture, on those whose grievances he voiced. He ridiculed the present inefficiency, and ridiculed also the ideals of those who cried for improvement. He threw himself into the struggle for educational reform, and sneered at all reforms proposed as inadequate, pedestrian or absurd. He condemned employers as greedy and Trades Unions as retrograde. He jeered at the inefficiency of the conduct of what remained of the war, at the stupid brutality of concentration camps, at the sentimentality of the pro-Boer party (as they were still called), at the militarism of the Tory militants, the imperialism of the Liberals, and the sentimental radical humanitarianism of Mr. Lloyd George and his party. He addressed stop-the-war meetings until they were broken up with violence by earnest representatives of the continue-the-war party, and suffered much physical damage in the ensuing conflicts; yet the stop-the-war party did not really trust him. They suspected him of desiring, though without hope, to stop not only the war, but all human activities, and, indeed, the very universe itself; and this is to go further than is generally approved. The continue-the-war party has risen and fallen with every war; but the continue-the-world party has a kind of solid permanency, and something of the universal in its ideals. Not to be of it is to be out of sympathy with the great majority of one’s fellows. At any time and in any country, but perhaps particularly in England in the early years of the twentieth century, when there was a good deal of enthusiasm for continuance and progress. The early Edwardians were not, as we are to-day, dispirited and discouraged with the course of the world, though they were vexed about the Boer war and the consequent economic depression of the country. They did not, for the most part, feel that life was a bad business and the future outlook too dark and menacing to be worth encouraging. On the contrary, they believed in Life with a large L. The young were bitten by the dry, reforming zeal of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, or the gay faith in life of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, or the bounding scientific hopefulness of Mr. H. G. Wells, or the sharp social and ethical criticism of Mr. George Bernard Shaw.
Stanley Croft, young for ever in mind, was bitten by all these and much more. Imperialism left slain behind, she embraced with ardour the fantastic ideal of the cleaning up of England. After the war then; indeed they would proceed furiously with the building of Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.
And meanwhile the war went on, and times were bad, and everywhere people ping-ponged. A lack of seriousness was complained of. It always is complained of in this country, which is not, indeed, a very serious one, but always contains some serious persons to complain of the others. “The ping-pong spirit,” the graver Press called the national lightness; and clergymen took up the phrase and preached about it.
The public, they said, were like street gamins, loafing about on the watch for any new distraction.
6
Gamin
Imogen and Tony slipped out into the street. It was the first Sunday of the summer holidays, and the first day of August. The sun beat hotly on the asphalt, making it soft, so that one could dent it with one’s heels. The children sauntered down Sloane Street, loitering at the closed shop windows, clinking their shillings in their pockets. They enjoyed the streets with the zest of street Arabs. They were a happy and untidy pair; the girl in a short butcher-blue cotton frock, grubby with a week’s wear, a hole in the knee of one black-stockinged leg, a soiled white linen cricket hat slouched over her short mop of brown curls, her small, pink face freckled and tanned; the boy, a year younger, grimy, dark-eyed and beautiful, like his uncle Irving in face, clad in a gray flannel knicker-bocker suit. Neither had dressed for the street in the way that they should have; they had slipped out, unseen, in their garden clothes and garden grime, to make the most of the last day before they went away for the holidays.
They knew what they meant to do. They were going to have their money’s worth, and far more than their money’s worth, of underground travelling. Round and round and round, and all for a penny fare. . . . This was a favourite occupation of theirs, a secret, morbid vice. They indulged in it at least twice every holidays. The whole family had been used to do it, but all but these two had now outgrown it. Phyllis, now at Girton, had outgrown it long ago. “The twopenny tube for me,” she said. “It’s cleaner.” “But it doesn’t go round,” said Imogen. “Who wants to go round, you little donkey? It takes you where you want to get to; that’s the object of a train.” It was obvious that Phyllis had grown up. She would not even track people in the streets now. It must happen, soon or late, to all of us. Even Hughie, fifteen and at Rugby, found this underground game rather weak.
But Imogen and Tony still sneaked out, a little shamefaced and secretive, to practise their vice.
Sloane Square. Two penny fares. Down the stairs, into the delicious, romantic, cool valley. The train thundered in, Inner Circle its style. A half empty compartment; there was small run on the underground this lovely August Sunday. Into it dashed the children; they had a corner seat each, next the open door. They bumped up and down on the seats, opposite each other. The train speeded off, rushing like a mighty wind. South Kensington station. More people coming in, getting out. Off again. Gloucester Road, High Street, Notting Hill Gate, Queen’s Road. . . . The penny fare was well over. Still they travelled, and jo
gged up and down on the straw seats, and chanted softly, monotonously, so that they could scarcely be heard above the roaring of the train.
“Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye,
ROUND THE WORLD FOR EVER AND AYE. . . .”
Then again,
“Sand-strewn caverns cool and deep. . . .”
At Paddington they saw the conductor eyeing them, and changed their compartment. This should be done from time to time.
And so on, past King’s Cross and Farringdon Street, towards the wild, romantic stations of the east: Liverpool Street, Aldgate, and so round the bend, sweeping west like the sun. Blackfriars, Temple, Charing Cross, Westminster, St. James’s Park, Victoria, SLOANE SQUARE. Oh, joy! Sing for the circle completed, the new circle begun.
“Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye.
ROUND THE WORLD FOR EVER AND AYE. . . .”
Imogen changed her chant, and dreamily crooned:
“The world is round, so travellers tell,
And straight though reach the track;
Trudge on, trudge on, ’twill all be well,
The way will guide one back.
But ere the circle homeward hies
Far, far must it remove:
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.”
Round the merry world again. Put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes. Round and round and round. What a pennyworth! You can’t buy much on an English Sunday, but if you can buy eternal travel, Sunday is justified.
But two inner circles and a bit are really enough. If you had three whole ones you might begin to feel bored, or even sick. Sloane Square again: the second circle completed. South Kensington. The two globe-trotters emerged from their circling, handed in their penny tickets, reached the upper air, hot and elated.
Now what? For a moment they loitered at the station exit, debating in expert minds the next move. Money was short; no luxurious joys could be considered.
Imogen suddenly gripped Tony by the arm.
“Hist, Watson. You see that man in front?”
Watson, well-trained, nodded.
“We’re going to track him. I have a very shrewd suspicion that he is connected with the Sloane Square murder mystery. Now mind, we must keep ten paces behind him wherever he goes; not less, or hell notice. Like the woman in Church Street did. He’s off; come on. . . . Do you observe anything peculiar about him, Watson?”
“He’s a jolly lean old bird. I expect he’s hungry.”
“My good Watson, look at his clothes. They’re a jolly sight better than ours. He’s a millionaire, as it happens. If you want to know a few facts about him, I’ll tell you. He moved his washstand this morning from the left side of his bed to the right; he forgot to wind up his watch last night; he went to church before breakfast; he had kidneys when he came in; and he’s now on his way to meet a confederate at lunch.”
“Piffle. You can’t prove any of it.”
“I certainly can, my good Watson. . . .”
“Golly, he’s calling a hansom. Shall we hang on behind?”
Watson’s beautiful brown eyes beamed with hope; Holmes’s small green gray ones held for a moment an answering gleam. But only for a moment. Holmes knew by now, having learnt from much sad experience, what adventures could be profitably undertaken and what couldn’t.
“No use. We’d be pulled off at once. . . .”
Morosely they watched their victim escape.
Then, “Look, Watson. The fat lady in purple. She must have been to church. . . . Oh, quite simple, Watson, I assure you; she has a prayer book. . . . Come on. It won’t matter how late we get back, because they’re having a lunch party and we’re feeding in the schoolroom. We’ll sleuth her to hell.”
In this manner Sunday morning passed very pleasantly and profitably for Vicky’s two youngest children.
7
Autumn, 1901
1901 drew to its close. An odd, restless, gay, unhappy year, sad with war and poverty, bitter with quarrels about inefficiency, concentration camps, Ahmednagar (the home of the Boers in India, and a name much thrown about by the pro-Boers in their “ignorant and perverse outcry”), education, religion, finance, politics, prisons, motor-cars, and stopping the war; gay with new drama (Mr. Bernard Shaw was being produced, and many musical comedies), new art (at the New English Art Club), new jokes, new books (Mr. Conrad had published Lord Jim, Mr. Henry James The Sacred Fount, Mr. Hardy Poems New and Old, Mr. Wells Love and Mr. Lewisham, Mr. Yeats The Shadowy Waters, Mr. Chesterton The Wild Knight, Mr. Kipling Kim, Mr. Belloc The Path to Rome, Lady Russell The Benefactress, Mr. Laurence Housman A Modern Antœus, Mr. Anthony Hope Tristram of Blent, Mrs. Humphry Ward Eleanor, Mr. Arnold Bennett The Grand Babylon Hotel, Mr. Charles Marriott The Column, Mr. George Moore Sister Teresa, Mr. Max Beerbohm And Yet Again), new clothes, and new games.
Popular we were not. That prevalent disease, Anglophobia, raged impartially in every country, except, possibly, Japan. Even as far as the remote Bermudas, continental slanders against us roared. We are a maligned race; there is no doubt of it. All races are, in their degree, maligned, but none so greatly as we—unless it should be the Children of Israel. It is sad to think it, but there must be something about us that is not attractive to foreigners, They have always grieved at our triumphs and rejoiced at our sorrows. By the end of 1901 our friendlessness was such (in November Lord Salisbury said at the Guildhall, “It is a matter for congratulation that we have found such a friendly feeling and such a correct attitude on the part of all the great powers,”) that we thought we had better enter into an alliance with the Japanese, who were still pleased with us for admiring them about their war with China.
In the autumn of this year, Stanley published her small book, Conditions of Women’s Work, and Mr. Garden, after years of labour, his mighty work, Cowparative Religions.
Mrs. Garden had influenza and pneumonia in December, and Mr. Garden, in an anguish of anxiety, called in three doctors and admitted that his faith had failed. God’s disapproving ignorance of mamma’s pneumonia made intolerable a burden of anxiety which would have been heavy even with divine sympathy; and if, by some awful chance, mamma were to pass on, papa’s grief, guilty and unrecognised, would have been too bitter to be borne. Christian Science had had but a brief day, but it was over. In a fit of reaction, papa became an Evangelical, and took to profound meditation, on the suffering, human and divine, which he had for so long ignored. He now found the love of God in suffering, not in its absence.
Always honourable, he recanted the instructions on the limitations of divine knowledge which he had given to his grandchildren.
“You perhaps remember, Jennie my child, what I said to you last year about God’s not knowing of the war. Well, I have come to the conclusion that I was mistaken. I believe now that God knows all about His children’s griefs and pains. He knows more about them than we do. Possibly—who knows—suffering is a necessary part of the scheme of redemption. . . .”
Imogen looked and felt intelligent. When any one spoke of theology to her, is was as if the blood of all her clerical ancestors mounted to the call. She had recently become an agnostic, owing to having perused Renan and John Stuart Mill. She was at the stage in life when she read, with impartial ardour, such writers as these: Mrs. Nesbit’s Wouldbegoods, Max Pemberton’s Iron Pirate, and other juvenile works (particularly school sto
ries), Rudyard Kipling, Marryat, the Brontës, and any poetry she could lay hands on, but especially that of W. B. Yeats, Robert Browning, Algernon Swinburne, William Morris, Lewis Carroll, and Walter Ramal.
She said to her grandfather, casually, but a little wistfully too, “I’m not sure, Grandpapa, that I believe in God at all. The arguments against him seem very strong, don’t they?”
Mr. Garden looked a little startled. Possibly he thought that Imogen was beginning too young.
“Ah, Jennie my child—‘If my doubt’s strong, my faith’s still stronger. . . .’ That’s what Browning said about it, you know.”
Imogen nodded.
“I know. I’ve read that. I s’pose his faith was. Mine isn’t. My doubt’s stronger, Grandpapa.”
“Well, my child. . . .” Mr. Garden, gathering together his resources, gave this strayed lamb (that was how, in his new terminology he thought of her) a little evangelical homily on the love of God. Unfortunately Imogen had, then and through life, an intemperate distaste for evangelical language; it made her feel shy and hot, and, though she loved her grandfather, she was further alienated from faith. She wrote a poem that evening about the dark, terrifying and Godless world, which she found very good. She would have liked to show it to others, that they, too, might find it good, but the tradition of her family and her school was that this wasn’t done. One wrote anything one liked, if one suffered from that itch, but to show it about was swank. “Making a donkey of yourself.” The Carringtons, shy, vain and reserved, did not care to do that.
“Some day,” thought Imogen, “I’ll write books. Then people can read them without my showing them. I’ll write a book full of poems.” The new poet. Even—might one dare to imagine it—the new great poet, Imogen Carrington. Or should one be anonymous? Anon. That was a good old poet’s name.
Told by an Idiot Page 18