Potterism Part 31

'The mites!' said Clare. 'Who _wouldn't_ like it?'

Gideon sighed a little, Clare tried him. She had an amorphous mind. But Jane threw up at him, as she enveloped Charles in the towel, 'I'll try and think it out some time, Arthur. I haven't time now.... There's a reason all right.... The powder, Clare.'

Gideon watched the absurd drying and powdering process with gravity and interest, as if trying to discover its charm.

'Even Katherine enjoys it,' he said, still pondering. It was true.

Katherine, who liked experimenting with chemicals, liked also was.h.i.+ng babies. Possibly Katherine knew why, in both cases.

After Charles was in bed, his mother, his aunt, and his prospective stepfather had dinner. Clare, who was uncomfortable with Gideon, not liking him as a brother-in-law or indeed as anything else (besides not being sure how much Jane had told him about 'that awful night'), chattered to Jane about things of which she thought Gideon knew nothing--dances, plays, friends, family and Potters Bar gossip. Gideon became very silent. He and Clare touched nowhere. Clare flaunted the family papers in his face and Jane's. Lord Pinkerton was starting a new one, a weekly, and it promised to sell better than any other weekly on the market, but far better.

'Dad says the orders have been simply stunning. It's going to be a big thing. Simple, you know, and yet clever--like all dad's papers. David says' (David was the naval officer to whom Clare was now betrothed) 'there's _no one_ with such a sense of what people want as dad has. Far more of it than Northcliffe, David says he has. Because, you know, Northcliffe sometimes annoys people--look at the line he took about us helping the Russians to fight each other. And making out in leaders, David says, that the Government is always wrong just because he doesn't like it. And drawing attention to the mistakes it makes, which no one would notice if they weren't rubbed in. David gets quite sick with him sometimes. He says the Pinkerton press never does that sort of thing, it's got too much tact, and lets well alone.'

'I'll, you mean, don't you, darling?' Jane interpolated.

Clare, who did, but did not know it, only said, 'David's got a tremendous admiration for it. He says it will _last_.'

'Oh, bother the paternal press,' Jane said. 'Give it a rest, old thing.

It may be new to David, but it's stale to us. It's Arthur's turn to talk about his father's bank or something.'

But Arthur didn't talk. He only made bread pills, and the girls got on to the newest dance.

3

Clare went away after dinner. She never stayed long when Gideon was there. David didn't like Gideon, rightly thinking him a Sheeney.

'Sheeneys are at the bottom of Bolshevism, you know,' he told Clare. 'At the top too, for that matter. Dreadful fellows; quite dreadful. Why the d.i.c.kens do you let Jane marry him?'

Clare shrugged her shoulders.

'Jane does what she likes. Dad and mother have begged and prayed her not to.... Besides, of course, even if he was all right, it's too _soon_....'

'Too soon? Ah, yes, of course. Poor Hobart, you mean. Quite. Much too soon.... A dreadful business, that. I don't blame her for trying to put it behind her, out of sight. But with a _Sheeney_. Well, _chacun a son gout.'_ For David was tolerant, a live and let live man.

When Clare was gone, Jane said, 'Wake up, old man. You can talk now....

You and Clare are stupid about each other, by the way. You'll have to get over it some time. You're ill-mannered and she's a silly fool; but ill-mannered people and silly fools can rub along together, all right, if they try.'

'I don't mind Clare,' said Gideon, rousing himself. 'I wasn't thinking about her, to say the truth. I was thinking about something else.... I'm chucking the _Fact_, Jane.'

'How d'you mean, chucking the _Fact_' Jane lit a cigarette.

'What I say. I've resigned my job on it. I'm sick of it.'

'Oh, sick.... Every one's sick of work, naturally. It's what work is for.... Well, what are you doing next? Have you been offered a better job?'

'I've not been offered a job of any sort. And I shouldn't take it if I were--not at present. I'm sick of journalism.'

Jane took it calmly, lying back among the sofa cus.h.i.+ons and smoking.

'I was afraid you were working up to this.... Of course, if you chuck the _Fact_ you take away its last chance. It'll do a nose-dive now.'

'It's doing it anyhow. I can't stop it. But I'm jolly well not going to nose-dive with it. I'm clearing out.'

'You're giving up the fight, then. Caving in. Putting your hands up to Potterism.'

She was taunting him, in her cool, unmoved, leisurely tones.

'I'm clearing out,' he repeated, emphasising the phrase, and his black eyes seemed to look into distances. 'Running away, if you like. This thing's too strong for me to fight. I can't do it. Clare's quite right.

It's tremendous. It will last. And the Pinkerton press only represents one tiny part of it. If the Pinkerton press were all, it would be fightable. But look at the _Fact_--a sworn enemy of everything the Pinkerton press stands for, politically, but fighting it with its own weapons--muddled thinking, sentimentality, prejudice, loose cant phrases.

I tell you there'll hardly be a halfpenny to choose between the Pinkerton press and the _Fact_, by the time Peac.o.c.k's done with it.... It's not Peac.o.c.k's fault--except that he's weak. It's not the Syndicate's fault--except that they don't want to go on losing money for ever. It's the pressure of public demand and atmosphere. Atmosphere even more than demand. Human minds are delicate machines. How can they go on working truly and precisely and scientifically, with all this poisonous gas floating round them? Oh, well, I suppose there are a few minds still which do; even some journalists and politicians keep their heads; but what's the use against the pressure? To go in for journalism or for public life is to put oneself deliberately into the thick of the mess without being able to clean it up.'

'After all,' said Jane, more moderately, 'it's all a joke. Everything is.

The world is.'

'A rotten bad joke.'

'You think things matter. You take anti-Potterism seriously, as some people take Potterism.'

'Things are serious. Things do matter,' said the Russian Jew.

Jane looked at him kindly. She was a year younger than he was, but felt five years older to-night.

'Well, what's the remedy then?'

He said, wearily, 'Oh, education, I suppose. Education. There's nothing else. _Learning_.' He said the word with affection, lingering on it, striking his hand on the sofa-back to emphasise it.

'Learning, learning, learning. There's nothing else.... We should drop all this talking and writing. All this confused, uneducated ma.s.s of self-expression. Self-expression, with no self worth expressing. That's just what we shouldn't do with our selves--express them. We should train them, educate them, teach them to think, see that they _know_ something--know it exactly, with no blurred edges, no fogs. Be sure of our facts, and keep theories out of the system like poison. And when we say anything we should say it concisely and baldly, without eloquence and frills. Lord, how I loathe eloquence!'

'But you can't get away from it, darling. All right, don't mind me, I like it.... Well now, what are you going to _do_ about it? Teach in a continuation school?'

'No,' he said, seriously. 'No. Though one might do worse. But I've got to get right away for a time--right out of it all. I've got to find things out before I do anything else.'

'Well, there are plenty of, things to find out here. No need to go away for that.'

He shook his head.

'Western Europe's so hopeless just now. So given over to muddle and lies.

Besides, I can't trust myself, I shall talk if I stay. I'm not a strong silent man. I should find myself writing articles, or standing for Parliament, or something.'

'And very nice too. I've always said you ought to stand for Labour.'

'And I've sometimes agreed with you. But now I know I oughtn't. That's not the way. I'm not going to join in that mess. I'm not good enough to make it worth while. I should either get swamped by it, or I should get so angry that I should murder some one. No, I'm going right out of it all for a bit. I want to find out a little, if I can, about how things are in other countries. Central Europe. Russia. I shall go to Russia.'

'Russia! You'll come back and write about it. People do.'

'I shall not. No, I think I can avoid that--it's too obvious a temptation to tumble into with one's eyes shut.'

'"He travelled in Russia and never wrote of it." It would be a good epitaph.... But Arthur darling, is it wise, is it necessary, is it safe?

Won't the Reds get you, or the Whites? Which would be worse, I wonder?'