"But what has that got to do with it?" we asked.
"Nothing--nothing--nothing whatever," she replied.
"Well, tell us the truth," we bade her.
"The truth? But isn"t it wonderful," she broke off--"Mr. Chitter has written a weekly article for the past thirty years upon love or hot b.u.t.tered toast and has sent all his sons to Eton----"
"The truth!" we demanded.
"Oh, the truth," she stammered, "the truth has nothing to do with literature," and sitting down she refused to say another word.
It all seemed to us very inconclusive.
"Ladies, we must try to sum up the results," Jane was beginning, when a hum, which had been heard for some time through the open window, drowned her voice.
"War! War! War! Declaration of War!" men were shouting in the street below.
We looked at each other in horror.
"What war?" we cried. "What war?" We remembered, too late, that we had never thought of sending anyone to the House of Commons. We had forgotten all about it. We turned to Poll, who had reached the history shelves in the London Library, and asked her to enlighten us.
"Why," we cried, "do men go to war?"
"Sometimes for one reason, sometimes for another," she replied calmly.
"In 1760, for example----" The shouts outside drowned her words. "Again in 1797--in 1804--It was the Austrians in 1866--1870 was the Franco-Prussian--In 1900 on the other hand----"
"But it"s now 1914!" we cut her short.
"Ah, I don"t know what they"re going to war for now," she admitted.
The war was over and peace was in process of being signed, when I once more found myself with Castalia in the room where our meetings used to be held. We began idly turning over the pages of our old minute books.
"Queer," I mused, "to see what we were thinking five years ago." "We are agreed," Castalia quoted, reading over my shoulder, "that it is the object of life to produce good people and good books." We made no comment upon _that_. "A good man is at any rate honest, pa.s.sionate and unworldly." "What a woman"s language!" I observed. "Oh, dear," cried Castalia, pushing the book away from her, "what fools we were! It was all Poll"s father"s fault," she went on. "I believe he did it on purpose--that ridiculous will, I mean, forcing Poll to read all the books in the London Library. If we hadn"t learnt to read," she said bitterly, "we might still have been bearing children in ignorance and that I believe was the happiest life after all. I know what you"re going to say about war," she checked me, "and the horror of bearing children to see them killed, but our mothers did it, and their mothers, and their mothers before them. And _they_ didn"t complain. They couldn"t read.
I"ve done my best," she sighed, "to prevent my little girl from learning to read, but what"s the use? I caught Ann only yesterday with a newspaper in her hand and she was beginning to ask me if it was "true."
Next she"ll ask me whether Mr. Lloyd George is a good man, then whether Mr. Arnold Bennett is a good novelist, and finally whether I believe in G.o.d. How can I bring my daughter up to believe in nothing?" she demanded.
"Surely you could teach her to believe that a man"s intellect is, and always will be, fundamentally superior to a woman"s?" I suggested. She brightened at this and began to turn over our old minutes again. "Yes,"
she said, "think of their discoveries, their mathematics, their science, their philosophy, their scholarship----" and then she began to laugh, "I shall never forget old Hobkin and the hairpin," she said, and went on reading and laughing and I thought she was quite happy, when suddenly she drew the book from her and burst out, "Oh, Ca.s.sandra, why do you torment me? Don"t you know that our belief in man"s intellect is the greatest fallacy of them all?" "What?" I exclaimed. "Ask any journalist, schoolmaster, politician or public house keeper in the land and they will all tell you that men are much cleverer than women." "As if I doubted it," she said scornfully. "How could they help it? Haven"t we bred them and fed and kept them in comfort since the beginning of time so that they may be clever even if they"re nothing else? It"s all our doing!" she cried. "We insisted upon having intellect and now we"ve got it. And it"s intellect," she continued, "that"s at the bottom of it.
What could be more charming than a boy before he has begun to cultivate his intellect? He is beautiful to look at; he gives himself no airs; he understands the meaning of art and literature instinctively; he goes about enjoying his life and making other people enjoy theirs. Then they teach him to cultivate his intellect. He becomes a barrister, a civil servant, a general, an author, a professor. Every day he goes to an office. Every year he produces a book. He maintains a whole family by the products of his brain--poor devil! Soon he cannot come into a room without making us all feel uncomfortable; he condescends to every woman he meets, and dares not tell the truth even to his own wife; instead of rejoicing our eyes we have to shut them if we are to take him in our arms. True, they console themselves with stars of all shapes, ribbons of all shades, and incomes of all sizes--but what is to console us? That we shall be able in ten years" time to spend a week-end at Lah.o.r.e? Or that the least insect in j.a.pan has a name twice the length of its body?
Oh, Ca.s.sandra, for Heaven"s sake let us devise a method by which men may bear children! It is our only chance. For unless we provide them with some innocent occupation we shall get neither good people nor good books; we shall perish beneath the fruits of their unbridled activity; and not a human being will survive to know that there once was Shakespeare!"
"It is too late," I replied. "We cannot provide even for the children that we have."
"And then you ask me to believe in intellect," she said.
While we spoke, men were crying hoa.r.s.ely and wearily in the street, and, listening, we heard that the Treaty of Peace had just been signed. The voices died away. The rain was falling and interfered no doubt with the proper explosion of the fireworks.
"My cook will have bought the Evening News," said Castalia, "and Ann will be spelling it out over her tea. I must go home."
"It"s no good--not a bit of good," I said. "Once she knows how to read there"s only one thing you can teach her to believe in--and that is herself."
"Well, that would be a change," sighed Castalia.
So we swept up the papers of our Society, and, though Ann was playing with her doll very happily, we solemnly made her a present of the lot and told her we had chosen her to be President of the Society of the future--upon which she burst into tears, poor little girl.
MONDAY OR TUESDAY
Lazy and indifferent, shaking s.p.a.ce easily from his wings, knowing his way, the heron pa.s.ses over the church beneath the sky. White and distant, absorbed in itself, endlessly the sky covers and uncovers, moves and remains. A lake? Blot the sh.o.r.es of it out! A mountain? Oh, perfect--the sun gold on its slopes. Down that falls. Ferns then, or white feathers, for ever and ever----
Desiring truth, awaiting it, laboriously distilling a few words, for ever desiring--(a cry starts to the left, another to the right. Wheels strike divergently. Omnibuses conglomerate in conflict)--for ever desiring--(the clock a.s.severates with twelve distinct strokes that it is midday; light sheds gold scales; children swarm)--for ever desiring truth. Red is the dome; coins hang on the trees; smoke trails from the chimneys; bark, shout, cry "Iron for sale"--and truth?
Radiating to a point men"s feet and women"s feet, black or gold-encrusted--(This foggy weather--Sugar? No, thank you--The commonwealth of the future)--the firelight darting and making the room red, save for the black figures and their bright eyes, while outside a van discharges, Miss Thingummy drinks tea at her desk, and plate-gla.s.s preserves fur coats----
Flaunted, leaf-light, drifting at corners, blown across the wheels, silver-splashed, home or not home, gathered, scattered, squandered in separate scales, swept up, down, torn, sunk, a.s.sembled--and truth?
Now to recollect by the fireside on the white square of marble. From ivory depths words rising shed their blackness, blossom and penetrate.
Fallen the book; in the flame, in the smoke, in the momentary sparks--or now voyaging, the marble square pendant, minarets beneath and the Indian seas, while s.p.a.ce rushes blue and stars glint--truth? or now, content with closeness?
Lazy and indifferent the heron returns; the sky veils her stars; then bares them.
AN UNWRITTEN NOVEL
Such an expression of unhappiness was enough by itself to make one"s eyes slide above the paper"s edge to the poor woman"s face--insignificant without that look, almost a symbol of human destiny with it. Life"s what you see in people"s eyes; life"s what they learn, and, having learnt it, never, though they seek to hide it, cease to be aware of--what? That life"s like that, it seems. Five faces opposite--five mature faces--and the knowledge in each face. Strange, though, how people want to conceal it! Marks of reticence are on all those faces: lips shut, eyes shaded, each one of the five doing something to hide or stultify his knowledge. One smokes; another reads; a third checks entries in a pocket book; a fourth stares at the map of the line framed opposite; and the fifth--the terrible thing about the fifth is that she does nothing at all. She looks at life. Ah, but my poor, unfortunate woman, do play the game--do, for all our sakes, conceal it!
As if she heard me, she looked up, shifted slightly in her seat and sighed. She seemed to apologise and at the same time to say to me, "If only you knew!" Then she looked at life again. "But I do know," I answered silently, glancing at the _Times_ for manners" sake. "I know the whole business. "Peace between Germany and the Allied Powers was yesterday officially ushered in at Paris--Signor Nitti, the Italian Prime Minister--a pa.s.senger train at Doncaster was in collision with a goods train...." We all know--the _Times_ knows--but we pretend we don"t." My eyes had once more crept over the paper"s rim. She shuddered, twitched her arm queerly to the middle of her back and shook her head.
Again I dipped into my great reservoir of life. "Take what you like," I continued, "births, deaths, marriages, Court Circular, the habits of birds, Leonardo da Vinci, the Sandhills murder, high wages and the cost of living--oh, take what you like," I repeated, "it"s all in the _Times_!" Again with infinite weariness she moved her head from side to side until, like a top exhausted with spinning, it settled on her neck.
The _Times_ was no protection against such sorrow as hers. But other human beings forbade intercourse. The best thing to do against life was to fold the paper so that it made a perfect square, crisp, thick, impervious even to life. This done, I glanced up quickly, armed with a shield of my own. She pierced through my shield; she gazed into my eyes as if searching any sediment of courage at the depths of them and damping it to clay. Her twitch alone denied all hope, discounted all illusion.
So we rattled through Surrey and across the border into Suss.e.x. But with my eyes upon life I did not see that the other travellers had left, one by one, till, save for the man who read, we were alone together. Here was Three Bridges station. We drew slowly down the platform and stopped. Was he going to leave us? I prayed both ways--I prayed last that he might stay. At that instant he roused himself, crumpled his paper contemptuously, like a thing done with, burst open the door, and left us alone.
The unhappy woman, leaning a little forward, palely and colourlessly addressed me--talked of stations and holidays, of brothers at Eastbourne, and the time of year, which was, I forget now, early or late. But at last looking from the window and seeing, I knew, only life, she breathed, "Staying away--that"s the drawback of it----" Ah, now we approached the catastrophe, "My sister-in-law"--the bitterness of her tone was like lemon on cold steel, and speaking, not to me, but to herself, she muttered, "nonsense, she would say--that"s what they all say," and while she spoke she fidgeted as though the skin on her back were as a plucked fowl"s in a poulterer"s shop-window.
"Oh, that cow!" she broke off nervously, as though the great wooden cow in the meadow had shocked her and saved her from some indiscretion. Then she shuddered, and then she made the awkward angular movement that I had seen before, as if, after the spasm, some spot between the shoulders burnt or itched. Then again she looked the most unhappy woman in the world, and I once more reproached her, though not with the same conviction, for if there were a reason, and if I knew the reason, the stigma was removed from life.
"Sisters-in-law," I said--
Her lips pursed as if to spit venom at the word; pursed they remained.
All she did was to take her glove and rub hard at a spot on the window-pane. She rubbed as if she would rub something out for ever--some stain, some indelible contamination. Indeed, the spot remained for all her rubbing, and back she sank with the shudder and the clutch of the arm I had come to expect. Something impelled me to take my glove and rub my window. There, too, was a little speck on the gla.s.s. For all my rubbing it remained. And then the spasm went through me; I crooked my arm and plucked at the middle of my back. My skin, too, felt like the damp chicken"s skin in the poulterer"s shop-window; one spot between the shoulders itched and irritated, felt clammy, felt raw. Could I reach it?