The Message Part 10

Naturally I had punctuated these remarks of hers, here and there. She had a very bright, alert way in talking, and now she added, easily, a sentence or two to the effect that it would be a dull world if we all held precisely the same views. She did the thing well, and in a few minutes I found myself chatting away with her in the most friendly manner. She managed with the utmost deftness to remove all ground for my embarra.s.sment regarding my position. She talked for a while of South Africa, and the life she had lived there prior to her father's death; but she touched no topic which contained any controversial element. It seemed her aunt, a sister of her father's, had accompanied her to England, and she said:

"I promised my aunt, Mrs. Van Homrey, that I would induce you to spare us an evening soon. She loves meeting friends of John Crondall. We dine at eight, but would fix any other hour if it suited you better."

The end of it was I promised to dine with Miss Grey and her aunt in South Kensington on the following evening, and, after a quarter of an hour's very pleasant chat (twice interrupted by Rivers, who had people in his cupboard waiting to see me) my visitor rose to take her departure, with apologies for having trespa.s.sed upon a busy man's time.

I told her with some warmth that the loss of my time was of no importance, and, with a thought as to the nature of my petty routine, I repeated the a.s.surance. She smiled:

"Ah, that's just the masculine insincerity of your gallantry," she said, "unworn, I see, by working with women. John Crondall would have sent me packing."

"No doubt his time is of more value--better occupied."

I had a mental vision of Clement Blaine (who grew stouter and slacker day by day) sitting drinking with Herr Mitmann of Stettin, in a favourite bar, within fifty yards of the office.

"Still the insincerity of politeness," she laughed. "You forget I have read _The Ma.s.s_. I find you a terribly earnest partisan; very keenly occupied, I should say. Till to-morrow evening, then!"

And she was gone, and Rivers was leading in, like a bear on a cord, a tousled Polish Jew named Kraunski, who was teaching us how the Metropolitan Police Force should be run, and how tyrannically its wicked myrmidons oppressed worthy citizens of Houndsditch, like Mr.

Kraunski--quite a good _Ma.s.s_ feature.

So I stepped back again, feeling as though Constance Grey had carried away the pale London sunlight with her when she left my littered den.

XII

SAt.u.r.dAY NIGHT IN LONDON

"Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves."--DAVID GARRICK.

I remember that the evening of the day following my dinner engagement with Miss Grey and her aunt was consecrate, by previous arrangement, to Beatrice Blaine. I had received seven guineas a couple of days before for a rather silly and sensational descriptive article, the subject of which had been suggested by Beatrice. Indeed, she had made me write it, and liked the thing when it appeared in print. It described certain aspects of the quarter of London which stood for pleasure in her eyes; the quarter bounded by Charing Cross and Oxford Street, Leicester Square and Hyde Park Corner.

I think I would gladly have escaped the evening with Beatrice if I could have done so fairly. Seeing that I could not do this, and that my mood seemed chilly, I plunged with more than usual extravagance, and sought to work up all the gaiety I could. I had a vague feeling that I owed so much to Beatrice; that the occasion in some way marked a crisis in our relations. I did not mentally call it a last extravagance, but yet I fancy that must have been the notion at the back of my mind; from which one may a.s.sume, I think, that Constance Grey had already begun to exercise some influence over me.

With the seven guineas clinking in the pockets of my evening clothes--here, at all events, was a link with University days, for these seldom-worn garments bore the name of a Cambridge tailor--I drove to the corner of the road beside Battersea Park in which the Blaines lived, and there picked up Beatrice, in all her vivid finery, by appointment. She loved bright colours and daring devices in dress. That I should come in a cab to fetch her was an integral part of her pleasure, and, if funds could possibly be stretched to permit it, she liked to retain the services of the same cab until I brought her back to her own door.

We drove to a famous showy restaurant close to Piccadilly Circus, where Beatrice accomplished the kind of entrance which delighted her heart, with attendants fluttering about her, and a messenger posting back to the cab for a forgotten fan, and a deal of bustle and rustle of one sort and another. A quarter of an hour was devoted to the choice of a menu in a dining-room which resembled the more ornate type of music-hall, and was of about the same size. The flas.h.i.+ng garishness of it all delighted Beatrice, and the heat of its atmosphere suited both her mood and her extremely _decollete_ toilette.

I remember beginning to speak of my previous evening's engagement while Beatrice sipped the rather sticky champagne, which was the first item of the meal to reach us. But a certain sense of unfitness or disinclination stopped me after a few sentences, and I did not again refer to my new friends; though I had been thinking a good deal of Constance Grey and her plain-faced, plain-spoken aunt. I felt strangely out of key with my environment in that glaring place, and the strains of an overloud orchestra, when they came cras.h.i.+ng through the buzz of talk and laughter, and the clatter of gla.s.s and silver, were rather a relief to me as a subst.i.tute for conversation. I drank a great deal of champagne, and resented the fact that it seemed to have no stimulating effect upon me. But Beatrice was in a purring stage of contentment, her colour high, her pa.s.sionate eyes sparkling, and low laughter ever atremble behind her full, red lips.

After the dinner we drove to another place exactly like the restaurant, all gilding and crimson plush, and there watched a performance, which for dulness and ba.n.a.lity it would be difficult to equal anywhere. It was more silly than a peep-show at a country fair, but it was all set in a most gorgeous and costly frame. The man who did crude and ancient conjuring tricks was elaborately finely dressed, and attended by monstrous footmen in liveries of Oriental splendour. What he did was absurdly tame; the things he did it with, his accessories, were barbarously gorgeous.

This was not one of the great "Middle Cla.s.s Halls," as they were called during their first year of existence, but an old-established haunt of those who aimed at "seeing life"--a great resort of ambitious young bloods about town. Not very long before this time, a powerful trust had been formed to confer the stuffy and inane delights of the "Hall" upon that st.u.r.dily respectable suburban middle cla.s.s--the backbone of London society--which had hitherto, to a great extent, eschewed this particular form of dissipation. The trust ama.s.sed wealth by striking a shrewd blow at our national character. Its entertainments were to be all refinement--"fun without vulgarity"; the oily announcements were nauseating. But they answered their purpose only too well. The great and still religious bourgeois cla.s.s was securely hooked; and then the name of "Middle Cla.s.s Halls" was dropped, and the programme provided in these garish palaces became simply an inexpensive and rather amateurish imitation of those of the older halls, plus a kind of prudish, sentimental, and even quasi-religious lubricity, which made them altogether revolting, and infinitely deleterious.

But our choice upon this occasion had fallen upon the most famous of the old halls. Of the performance I remember a topical song which evoked enthusiastic applause. It was an incredibly stupid piece of doggerel about England's position in the world; and the s.h.i.+ny-faced exquisite who declaimed it strutted to and fro like a bantam c.o.c.k at each fresh roar of applause from the heated house. When he used the word "fight" he waved an imaginary sword and a.s.sumed a ridiculous posture, which he evidently connected with warlike exercises of some kind. The song praised the Government--"A Government er business men; men that's got sense"--and told how this wonderful Government had stopped the pouring out of poor folks' money upon flag-waving, to devote it to poor folks'

needs. It alluded to the t.i.tle that Administration had earned: "The Destroyers"; and acclaimed it a proud t.i.tle, because it meant the destruction of "gold-laced bunkcombe," and of "vampires that were preying on the British working man."

But the chorus was the thing, and the perspiring singer played conductor with all the airs and graces of a spangled showman in a booth, while the huge audience yelled itself hoa.r.s.e over this. I can only recall two lines of it, and these were to the effect that: "They"--meaning the other Powers of civilization--"will never go for England, because England's got the dibs."

It was rather a startling spectacle; that vast auditorium, in which one saw countless flushed faces, tier on tier, gleaming through a haze of tobacco smoke; their mouths agape as they roared out the vapid lines of this song. I remember thinking that the doggerel might have been the creation of my fat contributor from Stettin, Herr Mitmann, and that if the music-hall public had reached this stage, I must have been oversensitive in my somewhat hostile and critical att.i.tude toward the writings of that ponderous Teuton. I thought that for once _The Ma.s.s_ would almost lag behind its readers; though in the beginning I had regarded Herr Mitmann's proposals as going beyond even our limits.

We left the hall while its roof echoed the jingling tail-piece of another popular ditty, which tickled Beatrice's fancy hugely. In it the singer expressed, without exaggeration and without flattery, a good deal of the popular London att.i.tude toward the pursuit of pleasure and the love of pleasure resorts. I recall phrases like: "Give my regards to Leicester Square--Greet the girls in Regent Street--Tell them in Bond Street we'll soon meet"--and, "Give them my love in the Strand."

The atmosphere reeked now of spirits, smoke, and overheated humanity.

The voice of the great audience was hoa.r.s.e and rather b.e.s.t.i.a.l in suggestion. The unescorted women began to make their invitations dreadfully pressing. Doubtless my mood coloured the whole tawdry business, but I remember finding those last few minutes distinctly revolting, and experiencing a genuine relief when we stepped into the outer air.

But the lights were just as brilliant outside, the pavements as thronged as the carpeted promenade, its faces almost as thickly painted as those of the lady who wished her "regards" given to Leicester Square, or the gentleman who had a.s.sured us that n.o.body wanted to fight England, because England had the "dibs."

Beatrice was now in feverishly high spirits. She no longer purred contentment; rather it seemed to me she panted in avid excitement, while pouring out a running fire of comment upon the dress and appearance of pa.s.sers-by, as we drove to another palace of gilt and plush--a sort of magnified Pullman car, with decorations that made one's eyes ache. Here we partook of quite a complicated champagne supper. I dare say fifty pounds was spent in that room after the gorgeously uniformed attendants had begun their chant of "Time, gentlemen, please; time!" which signified that the closing hour had arrived.

Beatrice kept up her excitement--or perhaps the champagne did this for her--until our cab was half-way across Chelsea Bridge. Then she lay back in her corner, and, I suppose, began to feel the grayness of the as yet unseen dawn of a new day. But as I helped her out of the cab in Battersea, she said she had thoroughly enjoyed her "fluffy" evening, and thanked me very prettily. I returned in the cab as far as Westminster, and there dismissed the man with the last of my seven guineas, having decided to walk from there to my Bloomsbury lodging.

For a Socialist, my conduct was certainly peculiar. There were two of us. We had had two meals, one of which was as totally unnecessary as the other was overelaborate. And we had spent an hour or two in watching an incredibly stupid and vulgar performance. And over this I had spent a sum upon which an entire family could have been kept going for a couple of months. But there were scores of people in London that night--some of them pa.s.sed me in cabs and carriages, as I walked from the Abbey toward Fleet Street--who had been through a similar programme and spent twice as much over it as I had. It was an extraordinarily extravagant period; and it seemed that the less folk did in the discharge of their national obligations as citizens, the more they demanded, and the more they spent, in the name of pleasure.

The people who pa.s.sed me, as I made my way eastward, were mostly in evening dress, pale and raffish-looking. Many, particularly among the couples in hansoms, were intoxicated, and making a painful muddle of such melodies as those we had listened to at the music hall. Overeaten, overdrunken, overexcited, overextravagant, in all ways figures of incontinence, these noisy Londoners made their way homeward, pursued by the advancing gray light of a Sabbath dawn in midsummer.

And Beatrice loved everything foreign, because the foreigners had none of our stupid British Puritanism! And the British public was mightily pleased with its Government, "The Destroyers," because they were cutting down to vanis.h.i.+ng point expenditure upon such superfluous vanities as national defence, in order to devote the money to improving the conditions in which the public lived, and to the reducing of their heavy burdens as citizens of a great Empire. Money could not possibly be spared for such ornamentation as s.h.i.+ps and guns and bodies of trained men. We could not afford it!

As I pa.s.sed the corner of Agar Street a drunken cabdriver, driving two noisily intoxicated men in evening dress, brought his cab into collision with a gaunt, wolf-eyed man who had been scouring the gutter for sc.r.a.ps of food. He was one of an army prowling London's gutters at that moment: human wolves, questing for sc.r.a.ps of refuse meat. The s.p.a.ce between each prowler was no more than a few yards. This particular wretch was knocked down by the cab, but not hurt. Cabby and his fares roared out drunken laughter. The horse was never checked. But in the midst of their laughter one of the pa.s.sengers threw out a coin, upon which the human wolf pounced like a bird of prey. I saw the glint of the coin. It was a sovereign; very likely the twentieth those men had spent that night. For that sum, four hundred of the gaunt, gutter-prowling wolves might have been fed and sheltered.

Entering Holborn I ran against a man I knew, named Wardle, one of the sub-editors of a Sunday newspaper, then on his way home from Fleet Street. Wardle was tired and sleepy, but stopped to exchange a few words of journalistic gossip.

"Rather sickening about the wind-up of the East Anglian Pageant," he said, "isn't it? Did you hear of it?"

I explained that I had not been in Fleet Street that night, and had heard nothing.

"Why, there was to be no end of a tumas.h.i.+ for the Sat.u.r.day evening wind-up, you know, and we were featuring it. We sent a special man up yesterday to help the local fellow. Well, just as we'd got in about a couple of hundred words of his introductory stuff, word came through that the wires were interrupted, and not another blessed line did we get. I tell you there was some tall cursing done, and some flying around in the editorial 'fill-up' drawers. We were giving it first place--three columns. One blessing, we found the stoppage was general. No one else has got a line of East Anglian stuff to-night. Ours was the last word from the submerged city of Ipswich. But it really is rather an odd breakdown. No sign of rough weather; and, mind you there are a number of different lines of communication. But they're all blocked, telegraph and telephone. Our chief tried to get through via the Continent, just to give us something to go on. But it was no go. Odd, isn't it?"

"Very," I agreed, as we turned; and I added, rather inanely: "One hears a lot about East Anglian coast erosion."

Wardle yawned and grinned.

"Yes, to be sure. Perhaps East Anglia is cruising down Channel by now.

Or perhaps the Kaiser's landed an army corps and taken possession. That Mediterranean business on Tuesday was pretty p.r.o.nounced cheek, you know, and, by all accounts, the result of direct orders from Potsdam. Only the Kaiser's bluff, I suppose, but I'm told it's taken most of the Channel Fleet down into Spanish waters."

I smiled at the activity of Wardle's journalistic imagination, and thought of the music-hall crowd.

"Ah, well," I said, "'They'll never go for England, because England's got the dibs'!"

"What ho!" remarked Wardle, with another yawn. And this time he was really off.

And so I walked home alone to my lodgings, and climbed into bed, thinking vaguely of Constance Grey, and what she would have thought of my night's work; this, as the long, palely glinting arms of the Sabbath dawn thrust aside the mantle of summer night from Bloomsbury.

XIII

THE DEMONSTRATION IN HYDE PARK