he brought great news. not only had his publishers thought well of the novel and offered him good terms, including a substantial advance, but they professed themselves able to place it serially in england for a goodly sum. they had also shown him the figures of the half-yearly returns on american sales of through blood and snow which transcended his dreams of opulence.
“i had forgotten america,” he said na?vely.
“you’re nothing, if not original,” she laughed. “that’s what i like about you.”
he insisted on the wild extravagance of a taxi to the garden city. all that money he declared had gone to his head. he felt the glorious intoxication of wealth. when they were about to turn off the safe highway into devious garden-city paths, he said:
“let us change our minds and go straight on to john o’ groats.”
“all right. let us. we’re on the right road.”
he swerved towards her. “would you? really?”
she opened her bag and took out her purse.
“i’ve got fifteen and sevenpence. how much have you?”
“about three pounds ten.”
she sighed. “this unromantic taxi man would charge us at least five pounds to take us there.”
“we can turn back and fill our pockets at the bank.”
“it’s sunday.”
“i never before realized the blight of the british sabbath.”
“so we’re condemned to fielder’s park.”
“but one of these days we’ll go, you and i together, to john o’ groats—as far as we can and then——”
“and then?”
“and then we’ll take a ship and sail and sail until we come to the fortunate isles.”
“you’ll let myra come too?” said olivia, deliciously anxious to keep to the playful side of an inevitable road.
“of course. we’ll find her a husband. the cabin-boy. pour mousse un chérubin.”
“and when we get to the fortunate isles, what should we do there?”
“we shall fill our souls with sunlight, so that we could use it when we came back to our work in this dark and threatening modern world.”
the girl’s heart leapt at the reply.
“i’ll go up to john o’ groats with you whenever you like,” she said.
but the taxi, at that moment drawing up before the detached toy villa, whose “everdene” painted on the green garden gate proclaimed the home of the blenkirons, inhibited triona’s reply.
they found within an unbeautiful assemblage of humans inextricably mingled with crumbling cake and sloppy cups of tea and cigarette smoke. agnes, shining with heat and hospitality, gave them effusive welcome and, extricating her brother from a distant welter, introduced him to the newcomers. he was a flabby-faced young man with a back-thatch of short rufous hair surmounting a bald forehead. by his ears grew little patches of side whiskers. he wore an old unbuttoned norfolk jacket and a red tie in a soft collar without an under pin. he greeted them with an enveloping clammy hand.
“so good of you to come, miss gale. so glad to meet you, mr. triona. we have heard so much about you. you will find us here all very earnest in our endeavour to find a solution—for never has human problem been so intricate that a solution has not been discovered.”
“what’s the problem?” asked olivia.
“why, my dear lady, there’s only one. the way out—or, if you have faith—the way in.” he caught a lean, thin-bearded man by the arm. “dawkins, let me introduce you to miss gale. mr. dawkins is our rapporteur.”
“you haven’t any tea,” said dawkins rebukingly, as though bidden to a marriage feast she had no wedding garment. “come with me.”
he frayed her a passage through the chattering swarm that over-filled the little bow-windowed sitting-room and provided her with what seemed to be the tepid symbols of the brotherhood.
“what did you think of roger’s article in this week’s signal?”
“who is roger, and what is the signal?” olivia asked simply.
dawkins stared at her for a second and then, deliberately turning, wormed his path away.
olivia’s gasp of surprise was followed by a gurgle of laughter which shook her lifted cup so that it spilled. the sight of a stained skirt drew from her a sharp exclamation of dismay. agnes blenkiron disengaging herself from the cluster round the tea-table came to the rescue. what was the matter? olivia explained.
“oh, my dear,” said agnes, “i ought to have told you. it’s my fault. dawkins is such a touchy old thing. roger, of course, is my brother—didn’t you know? and the signal is our weekly. dawkins is the editor.”
“i’m awfully sorry,” said olivia, “but ought i to read the signal?”
“why, of course,” replied agnes blenkiron intensely. “everybody ought to read it. it’s the only periodical that matters in london.”
olivia felt the remorse of those convicted of an unpardonable crime.
“i’ll get a copy to-morrow at the bookstall at victoria station.”
agnes smiled in her haggard way. “my dear, an organ like the signal doesn’t lie on the bookstalls, like comic cuts or the fortnightly review. it’s posted to private subscribers, or it’s given away at meetings.”
“who pays for the printing of it?” asked the practical olivia, who had learned from triona something of the wild leap in cost of printed matter.
“aubrey dawkins finds the money. he gets it in the city. he has given up his heart and soul to the signal.”
“i’ve made an enemy for life,” said olivia penitently.
miss blenkiron reassured her. “oh, no you haven’t. we haven’t time for enemy making here. our business is too important.”
olivia in a maze asked:
“what is your business?”
“why, my dear child, the social revolution. didn’t you know?”
“not a bit,” said olivia.
she learned many astonishing things that afternoon, as she was swayed about from introduction to introduction among the eagerly disputing groups. hitherto she had thought, with little comprehension, of the world-spread social unrest. strikes angered her because they interfered with necessary reconstruction and only set the working classes in a vicious circle chasing high wages and being chased in their turn by high prices. at other demands she shuddered, dimly dreading the advent of bolshevism. and there she left it. she had imagined that revolutionary doctrines were preached to factory hands either secretly by rat-faced agents, or by brass-throated, bull-necked demagogues. that they should be accepted as a common faith by a crowd of people much resembling a fairly well-to-do suburban church congregation stirred her surprise and even dismay.
“i don’t see how intelligent folk can hold such views,” she said to roger blenkiron, who had been defending the russian soviet system as a philosophic experiment in government.
he smiled indulgently. “doesn’t the fault lie rather in you, dear lady, than in the intelligent folk?”
“would that argument stand,” she replied, “if you had been maintaining that the earth was flat and stood still in space?”
“no. the roundness and motion of the earth are ascertained physical facts. but—i speak with the greatest deference—can you assert it to be a scientific fact that a community of human beings are a priori incapable of managing their own affairs on a basis of social equality?”
“of course i can,” olivia declared, to the gentle amusement of standers-by. “human nature won’t allow it. with inequalities of brain and character social equality is impossible.”
“dear lady”—she hated the apostrophe as he said it and the lift of the eyebrows which caused an upward ripple that was lost in the far reaches of his bald forehead. “dear lady,” said he, “in the royal enclosure at ascot you can find every grade of human intellect, from the inbred young aristocrat who is that much removed”—he flicked a finger nail—“from a congenital idiot to the acute-brained statesman; every grade of human character from the lowest of moral defectives to the highest that the present civilization can produce. and yet they are all on a social equality. and why? they started life on a common plane. the same phenomenon exists in a mass-meeting of working-men—in any assemblage of human beings of a particular class who have started life on a common plane. now, don’t you see, that if we abolished all these series of planes and established only one plane, social equality would be inevitable?”
“i don’t see how you’re going to do it.”
“ah! that’s another question. think of what the task is. to make a clean sweep of false principles to which mankind has subscribed for—what do i know—say—eight thousand years. it can’t be done in a day. not even in a generation. if you wish to render a pestilence-stricken area habitable, you must destroy and burn for miles around before you can rebuild. extend the area to a country—to the surface of the civilized globe. that’s the philosophic theory of what is vulgarly called bolshevism. let us lay waste the whole plague-stricken fabric of our civilization, so that the world may arise, a new ph?nix, under our children’s hands.”
“you have put the matter to miss gale with your usual cogency, my dear roger,” said dawkins, who had joined the group. “perhaps now she may take a less flippant view of our activities.”
he smiled, evidently meaning to include the neophyte in the sphere of his kind indulgence. but olivia flushed at the rudeness of his words.
triona who, hidden from olivia by the standing group, had been stuffed into a sedentary and penitential corner with two assertive women and an earnest young marxian gasfitter, and had, nevertheless, kept an alert ear on the neighbouring conversation, suddenly appeared once more to her rescue.
“pardon me, sir,” said he, “but to one who has gone through, as i have done, the bolshevist horrors which you advocate so complacently, it’s your view that hardly seems serious.”
“atrocities, my dear friend,” said the seer-like dawkins, “are proverbially exaggerated.”
“there’s a fellow like you mentioned in the bible,” retorted triona.
“i have always admired didymus for his scientific mind,” said dawkins.
triona pulled up his trouser leg and exposed his ankle. “that’s the mark of fetters. there was a chain and a twelve pound shot at the end of it.”
“doubtless you displeased the authorities,” said dawkins blandly. “oh, i’ve read your book, mr. triona. but before judging i should like to hear the other side.”
“i’m afraid, mr. blenkiron,” said triona, growing white about the nostrils, to his host who stood by in a detached sort of manner, with his hands on his hips, “i’ve unconsciously abused your hospitality.”
blenkiron protested cheerfully. “not a bit, my dear fellow. we pride ourselves on our broad mindedness. if you preached reactionary anglicanism here you would be listened to with respect and interest. on the other hand, we expect the same consideration to be shown to the apostles—if you will pardon the word—of our advanced thought. your experiences were, beyond doubt, very terrible. but we admit the necessity of a reign of terror. we shall have it in this country within the next ten years. possibly—probably—all of us here and all the little gods we cling to will be swept away like the late russian aristocracy and intelligentsia. but suppose we are all—dawkins, my sister, and myself—prepared to suffer martyrdom for the sake of humanity, what would you have to say against us? nay—you can be quite frank. words cannot hurt us.”
“i should say you ought to be tied up in bedlam,” said triona.
“do you agree with that, miss gale?” said roger blenkiron, turning on her suddenly.
she reflected for a moment. then she replied: “if you can prove beyond question that in fifty years’ time you will create a more beautiful world, there’s something in your theories. if you can’t, you all ought to be shot.”
he laughed and held out his hand. “that’s straight from the shoulder. that’s what we like to hear. shake hands on it.” he drew a little book from his pocket and scribbled a memorandum. “you’re on the free-list of the signal. i think agnes has your address. you’ll find in it overwhelming proof. perhaps, mr. triona, too, would like——”
but triona shook his head. “as a technical alien perhaps it would be inadvisable for me to be in receipt of revolutionary literature.”
“i quite understand,” smiled blenkiron, returning the book to his pocket.
dawkins melted away. other guests took leave of their host. triona and olivia, making a suffocating course towards the door, were checked by agnes blenkiron who was eager to introduce them to tom pyefinch who, during the war had suffered, at the hands of a capitalist government, the tortures of the hero too brave to fight.
“oh, no, no,” cried olivia horrified.
agnes did not hear. but pyefinch, a pallid young man with a scrubby black moustache, was too greatly occupied with his immediate circle to catch his hostess’s eye. from his profane lips olivia learned that patriotism was the most blatant of superstitions: that the attitude of the fly preening itself over its cesspool was that of the depraved and mindless being who could take pride in being an englishman. he was not peculiarly hard on england. all other countries were the mere sewerages of the nationalities that inhabited them. the high ideals supposed to crystallize a nation’s life were but factitious and illusory, propagated by poets and other decadents in the pay of capitalists: in reality, patriotism only meant the common cause of the peoples floundering each in its separate sewer. . . .
mere rats, he declared, changing his metaphor. that was why he and every other intelligent man in the country refused to join in the rat fight which was the late war.
olivia clutched triona’s arm. “for god’s sake, alexis, let us get out of this. it makes me sick.”
they drew deep breaths when they escaped into the fresh air. to olivia, the little overcrowded drawing-room, deafening with loud voices, sour with the smell of milky tea and virginian tobacco, reeking almost physically with the madness of anarchy, seemed a miniature of the bottomless pit. the irony of the man’s talk—the need to purify by flame a plague-stricken area! god once destroyed sodom and gomorrah. why did he not blast with fire from heaven this house of pestilence?
alexis triona laughed sympathetically at her outburst.
“i confess they’re rather trying,” he remarked. “whenever you hear english people say they belong to the intelligentsia, you may be sure they’re frightened at common sense as not being intellectual enough. blenkiron and dawkins are fools of the first water; but pyefinch is dangerous. i am afraid i lost my temper,” he added after a few steps.
“you were splendid,” said olivia.
more than ever did he seem the one clear-brained, purposeful man of her acquaintance in the confused london world. rapidly she passed them in review as she walked. of the others mauregard was the best; but he was spending his life on fribbles, his highest heaven being a smile on the lips of a depraved dancing-woman. then, sydney rooke, mavenna, and, even worse now than mavenna, the unspeakable bobby quinton. so much for the lydian set of professed materialists and pleasure-seekers. in accepting agnes blenkiron’s invitation she had pleasurable anticipation of entering a sphere of earnest thinkers and social workers who might guide her stumbling footsteps into the path of duty to herself and her kind. and to her dismay she had met dawkins and blenkiron and pyefinch, earnest, indeed, in their sophistry and mad in their theories of destruction. her brain was in a whirl with the doctrines to which she had listened. she felt terrified at she knew not what. even lydia’s cynical world was better than this. yet between these two extremes there must be a world of high endeavour, of science, art, philanthropy, thought; that in which, she vaguely imagined, blaise olifant must have his being; even that of the women at the club dinner. but her mind shook off women as alien to its subconscious argument. in this conjectural london world one man alone stood out typical—the man striding loosely by her side. a young careless angel, he had delivered her from mavenna. a man, he had exorcised her horror of bobby quinton. and now, once more, she saw him, in her girlish fancy, a heroic figure, sane, calm, and scornful, facing a horde of madmen.
they walked, occasionally losing their way and being put on it by chance encounters, through the maze of new and distressingly decorous avenues, some finished, others petering out, after a few houses, into placarded building lots or waste land; a wilderness not of the smug villa-dom of old-established suburbs, but of a queer bungalow-dom assertive, in its distinctive architecture, of unreal pursuit of aspirations in capital letters. most of the avenues abutted on a main street of shops with pseudo-artistic frontages giving the impression that the inhabitants of the city could only be induced to satisfy the vulgar needs of their bodies by the lure of the ?sthetic.
“don’t let us judge our late friends too harshly,” said triona waving an arm. “all this is the land of self-consciousness.”
at last they made their way through the solider, stolider fringes of the main road, and emerged on the great thoroughfare itself, wide and unbusied on this late summer sunday afternoon. prosaically they lingered, waiting for an infrequent omnibus.
“thank goodness, we’re out of the land of self-consciousness,” said olivia. “the great north road is too big a thing.”
their eyes met in a smile.
“i don’t forget your love of big things,” said he. “it’s inspiring. yes. it’s a big thing. and it doesn’t really begin in london. it starts from land’s end—and it goes on and on through the heart of england and through the heart of scotland carrying two nations’ history on its flanks, caring for nothing but its appointed task, until it sighs at john o’ groats and says: ‘my duty’s done.’ there’s nothing that stirs one’s imagination more than a great road or a great river. somehow i prefer the road.”
“you’re nearer to it because it was made by man.”
“how our minds work together!” he cried admiringly “i only have to say half a thing and you complete it. more than that—you give my meaningless ideas meaning. yes. god’s works are great. but we can’t measure them. we have no scale for god, but we have for man, and so man’s big works thrill us and compel us.”
“what big thing could we do?” asked olivia.
“do you mean humanity—or you and i together?”
“two human beings thinking alike, and free and honest.” instinctively she took his arm and her step danced in time with his. “oh, you don’t know how good it is to feel real. let us do something big in the world. what can we do?”
“you can help me to the very biggest thing in all the universe—for me,” he cried, pressing her arm tight against him.
her pulses throbbed. she knew that further argument on her part would be but exquisite playing with words. the hour which, in her maidenly uncertainty she had dreaded, had now come, and all fear had passed away. yes; now she was real; now she was certain that her love was real. real man, real woman. her heart leaped to him with almost the shock of physical pain. again in a flash she swept the lydian and the blenkiron firmament and exulted. yet in her happiness she said with very foolish and with very feminine guile:
“ah, my dear alexis, that’s what i’ve longed for. if only i could be of some little help to you!”
“help?” he laughed shortly and halted and swung her round. “have you ever tried to think what you are to me? would you like me to tell you?”
she disengaged herself and walked delicately on.
“it may pass the time till the bus comes,” she said.
he began to tell her. and three minutes afterwards the noisy, infrequent motor-bus passed them by, unheeded and even unperceived.
