Read Ebook: What Not: A Prophetic Comedy by Macaulay Rose

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Ebook has 640 lines and 54253 words, and 13 pages

The End House party was completed by Kitty Grammont, with her round, long-lashed eyes and her air of the ingenuous rake, and Vernon Prideaux, brisk and neat and clever. So there they all were; and very nice, too.

Kitty kissed her brother and Miss Ponsonby and dug the Cheeper in the ribs in the manner he preferred. She was very fond of them all, and found Miss Ponsonby immeasurably entertaining. Little had she thought, when of old she used joyfully to watch Miss Pansy Ponsonby twist and kick and curl herself about the stage and sing fascinating inanities in her lazy contralto, that they would ever be linked by no common bond. Of course she had known that her brother Anthony was showering flowers, chocolates, suppers, week-ends and air-trips at Miss Ponsonby's nimble feet but Anthony had been known to shower these things at the feet of others. Certainly Kitty had never expected that he would instal this delightful and expensive being in a real house, have a real infant, and really settle down, albeit socially ostracised in Buckinghamshire because imperfectly married .

"What's the afternoon news?" enquired Mr. Amherst, as they walked up to the village.

"Haven't seen a paper for half an hour," replied Prideaux, who kept his finger on the pulse of the nation and liked his news up to date. "I've got two five o'clock ones with me, though. The Leeds strike is rather worse, the Sheffield one rather better. The aero bus men are coming out on Monday. Dangerous unrest among Sussex shepherds and Cotswold cowmen." "Lord Backwoods has been speaking to his constituents against the Bill for disfranchising Conscientious Obstructionists of the Mental Progress Acts. A thoroughly seditious speech, of course. Poor old chap, his eldest-son has just got engaged to be married, so there'll be another family of Backwoods babies who ought never to exist. It will hit them heavily financially.... And the International Police have found another underground gun-factory near Munich, under a band-stand. And it's confirmed that old Tommy Jackson is to be Drink Controller."

"Dear old Tommy," murmured Miss Ponsonby absently, lifting the Cheeper out of his motor-pram with one strong white hand and balancing him on her ample shoulders. "He was vurry kind to me in the dear old days, when I spent week-ends at Surrey Towers. He used to give me tips on Correct Conduct. I didn't take them; Correct Conduct wasn't what the people there asked me for; but I was grateful to Tommy."

"Why, certainly," returned Pansy, with cheerful readiness. "Nicky Chester, the Brains Minister who's making himself such an all-round eternal nuisance, doesn't even realise I exist, and if he did he'd think I oughtn't."

"That's where you're wrong, Pansy," Kitty said. "He thinks everyone ought to exist who does anything as well as you do your things. You're Starred A, aren't you?"

"I've gone and lost the silly old bus ticket," said Pansy indifferently, "but that's what it said, I think." Starred A meant first-class ability at a branch of work which would not appear to be a valuable contribution to the general efficiency of the State. The Cheeper, child of a starred A mother and a B3 father , was subject neither to bonus nor tax.

"Anyhow," went on Pansy, grinning her wide, sweet, leisurely grin, "I think I see Nicky Chester sendin' me round flowers or goodies after a show! He's seen me, you know: he was in a box the first night of 'Hullo, Peace!' He laughed at the political hits, but my turns left him cold; I guess they weren't brainy enough." She tossed the Cheeper in the air and caught him, strongly and easily. "Make him supple young," she observed, "an' by the time he's six he'll be a star Child Gamboller, fit for revue. He takes after me. Already he can put both his big toes in his little mouth at once."

"Very unusual, surely," remarked Mr. Amherst, looking at the Cheeper through his pince-nez as if he were an insect under a microscope. Mr. Amherst was fellow of an Oxford college, and had the academic touch, and was not yet entirely used to Pansy, a type outside his previous studies, and at no time would he be really used to anyone under eighteen years of age, let alone six months. Possibly this was what his reviewers meant when they said that he lacked the touch of common humanity.

His attention was diverted from the Cheeper by the parish church, which he inspected with the same curiosity and distaste.

"Organised Religion, I presume," he commented. "If you've no objection, Anthony, I will attend morning service there to-morrow. It may provide me with some valuable subject matter for my article."

"We'll all go," said Kitty. "The End House shall set an example to the village. We'll take Cyril, too. He can get a dispensation. It's Brains Sunday, you know, and all patriotic clergymen will be preaching about it. Vernon and I are officially bound to be there."

"I don't suppose it will be amusing," said Anthony. "But we'll go if you all want to."

"He could hardly," said Mr. Amherst civilly, "do otherwise. Your position is not one which is at present recognised by Organised Religion."

"Oh, he recognised it all right," Pansy explained. "That was just the trouble; he didn't like it.... He's not a bad old sort. He came to call afterwards, and told me all about it. He was quite upset. So was I, wasn't I, old thing?"

"Not in the least," returned Anthony placidly.

"Pansy," said Anthony, "you're boring Amherst and Prideaux. They're not interested in babies, or baptisms, or Tottie O'Clare."

Pansy smiled at them all out of her serene violet eyes. She looked like some stately, supple Aphrodite; she might, but for the delicate soup?on of powder and over-red lips, have sat for a madonna.

"They're both," said Prideaux tactfully, "of enormous importance. And certainly, as you say, not in the least alike. Chester is neither like spring nor music, and certainly one wouldn't call him restful. And I should be a bit surprised to learn that heaven is where he either began or will end his career.... But, I ask you, look at that."

They were passing the little Town Hall, that stood in the village market place. Its face was plastered with an immense poster, which Prideaux and Kitty surveyed with proprietary pride, Amherst with cynical amusement, Anthony with bored resignation, and Pansy and the Cheeper with placid wonder at the world's folly.

"Ours is a wonderful government," Kitty commented. "And we are a wonderful ministry. Think of rural England all plastered with that.... I don't believe Chester laughs when he sees it, Vernon. I'm sure he looks at it proudly, like a solemn, earnest little boy."

"And quite right too," said Prideaux, screwing his glass into his eye the better to read. For this was a new Ministry of Brains poster; new this week. It read, in large type, "Improve your Brains! Go in for the Government Course of Mind Training! It will benefit you, it will benefit your country, it will benefit posterity. Old Age must come. But it need not be a Doddering Old Age. Lay up Good Mental Capacities to meet it, and make it a Fruitful and Happy Time. See what the Mind Training Course has done for others, and let it Do the Same for You."

Then, in smaller type, "Here are a few reports from those who have benefited by it.

Then in large type again,

"All this has happened to Others! Why should it not happen to You? Save yourself, save your country, save the world! How shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding? So asked the Preacher of the ancient world, and got no answer, because then there was none. But the answer is now forthcoming. Wisdom is to be found in the Government Mind Training Course--the M.T.C., as it is affectionately called by thousands of men and women who are deriving benefits from it. Enter for it to-day. For further information apply Mind Training Section, Ministry of Brains, S.W. 1."

Above the letterpress was a picture poster, representing two youths, and called "Before and After." "Before" had the vacuity of the village idiot, "After" the triumphant cunning of the maniac. The Mind Training Course had obviously completely overset a brain formerly harmless, if deficient.

"How long," enquired Amherst, in his best Oxford manner, "do you give yourselves? I address the enquiry, as a member of the public, to you, as servants of a government which can resort to such methods as that."

"He and the vicar don't," explained Anthony. "Professional attendance. There's the vicar, outside that cottage. See him put his hand up as we pass him."

He returned the salute with some pride, and Pansy nodded agreeably. Amherst examined the vicar, who was small and sturdy and had a nice kind face.

Amherst shook his head when they had left him behind.

"Not nearly clever enough for the part," he pronounced. "To organise religion a man should have the talents of the devil, or at least of the intelligent civil servant. Prideaux would do it quite well; or Chester; only Chester might be too erratic for the popular taste. No wonder Christianity is the ineffective thing it is in this country, if it's left in the hands of officials like that. That man couldn't organise anything; I bet even his school treats go wrong--too few buns or something. That's the hope for the world, that inefficiency of most religious officials; that's why the public will succeed before long in throwing off the whole business, even before they succeed in downing Parliament and the British autocracy, who are a shade more acute. From my point of view your vicar's stupidity is all to the good. If he preaches to-morrow as the Brains Ministry want him to--and he looks loyal and patriotic enough to try--he'll be preaching against his own interests. But that's what all you Brains people are doing, of course. You don't seem to see that if you ever were to succeed in making the human race reasonably intelligent, your number would be up; you wouldn't be stood for a moment longer. You're sitting on a branch and trying to saw it off. Lucky for you your saws aren't sharper."

"Chester would go on just the same if he did see," Kitty said. "He probably does. He's an idealist, but his eye for facts is very penetrating. And he'd think it worth while to perish in so good a cause."

"The fact is," added Prideaux, "that he never would perish, even if the branch did fall; he'd climb on to another pretty quickly and rise as the People's Saviour. Our Nicky won't go under."

They arrived at the End House, about which there is little to say except that it lay just beyond the straggling village, was roomy, comfortable, untidy, full of dogs all named after revue stars, and was an interesting mixture of the Grammont taste in art and decoration, which was the taste of clever people several of whom were artists, and of Pansy's taste, which is most shortly indicated by mentioning that if you saw the house before you saw Pansy you were surprised, and if you had seen Pansy first you were not. The drawing-room floor was littered with large and comfortable and brightly-hued cushions, obviously not mistakes but seats. This always a little flurried the vicar and his wife when they called; it was, as Mrs. Delmer observed, so very Eastern, and suggested other habits belonging to the same dubious quarter of the globe, some of which there was only too good reason to believe had been adopted. The chimney-piece was worse, being adorned by photographs of Pansy's friends--her loving Tottie, hers everlastingly, Guy, warmly Phyllis and Harry, and so forth. Some of these ladies and gentlemen, fortunately, had elected to be taken head and shoulders only and some showed the whole figure.

These photographs, and the excellent painting in the hall of Pansy herself in her eel dance, were among the minor reasons why Ivy Delmer was not allowed to enter the End House. There were three reasons why her parents did so; they might be stupid, but they were of an extraordinary goodness, and could not bear to leave sin alone, anyhow in their own parish, where it set such an unfortunate example, when they might, by sufficient battling, perhaps win it over to righteousness; also they had kind and soft hearts, and did not like the idea of Pansy alone all day with her infant son and the two most notoriously ill-behaved young servants in the village; and finally they were Christians, and believed that the teaching of their religion on the subject of sociability to sinners was plain. So, swallowing their embarrassed distaste, they visited the End House as one might visit a hospital, but kept their children from it, because it was a hospital whose patients might be infectious.

Into this house, standing hospitably open-doored in the May evening, its owner and his friends entered. It affected them in various ways. Anthony Grammont was proud of his house and garden, his Pansy and his Cheeper. He was young enough to be vain of being head of a household, even of an ambiguous household, and of course anyone would be proud of the dazzling and widely-known Pansy, whose name had always been one of the two in large type in advertisements of the shows in which she figured ; and he was tired enough, mentally and physically, by his life of the last few years, its discomforts, its homelessness, its bondage, its painful unnaturalness, to sink with relief into Pansy's exotic cushions and all they stood for.

Kitty found the house and household inordinately cheering and entertaining; the mere sight of Pansy's drawing-room could rouse her from any depression.

Vernon Prideaux shuddered a little at the row of photographs--he detested photographs on chimney-pieces--and the Eve design on the chair covers; he was not so good at the comic-opera touch as Kitty was, and had a masculine sense of propriety and good taste, and had always preferred revue stars on the stage to off it. He had also, however, a wide tolerance for the tastes of others, and was glad that Tony Grammont had found domestic happiness.

Amherst's thoughts were brief and neat, and might be summed up thus: "Forces of Darkness--number 8. The expensive, conscienceless, and unthinking female."

Pansy went upstairs to put the Cheeper to bed, and Kitty went with her to see her nephew in his bath, putting both his big toes into his mouth at once.

The only other event of importance which happened before dinner was the arrival of Cyril Grammont, a brother of Anthony's, a Cambridge friend of Prideaux's, a Roman Catholic, a writer of epigrammatic essays and light verse, and a budding publisher. He and Pansy usually quarrelled. He had spent the war partly in Macedonia, as a member of the Salonika Force, digging up fragments of sculpture from Amphipolis and the other ruined cities of those regions, tracking what he then held to be the pernicious influence of St. Paul with the help of a pocket atlas of his journeys and the obviously evil habits and dispositions of the towns which had received his attentions, and partly in Palestine, where he had taken an extreme dislike to both Jews and Turks, had become convinced that they must be so wrong about everything that mattered that Christians must be right, and was forthwith converted from atheism to Christianity. He considered that war-time is no time for Christians, they have to do so much either explaining or protesting or both, so he had waited till the war was over, and had then proceeded to investigate the various forms into which Christianity had developed , in order to make his choice. An impartial friend with whom he discussed the subject told him that he would find Roman Catholicism best suited to his precise, clear-cut, and Latin type of mind, provided that he succeeded in avoiding all contact with the more luscious forms of Roman devotions, which, he was warned, would disgust him as much as patchouli, or Carlo Dolci. "And anyhow," added his friend, probably erroneously, "it will outlast the other churches, for all its obscurantism, so if you want a going concern, join it."

So Cyril enquired into Roman Catholicism, found that, in its best cathedral forms, it satisfied his artistic sense, and, in its sharply-cut dogma, his feeling for precise form , and so, accepting as no stranger than most of the growths of a strangely sprouting world the wonderful tree which had grown from a seed so remarkably dissimilar, he took a firm seat upon its branches, heedless of the surprised disapproval of most of his friends, who did not hold that any organised religion could be called a going concern, except in the sense that it was going to pot.

So here was Cyril, at the End House for Sunday, neat, handsome, incisive, supercilious, very sure of himself, and not in the least like the End House, with its slatternly brilliance, its yapping dogs, its absurdities, its sprawling incoherence, its cushions, and its ambiguity.

In the evening Pansy danced her willow-tree dance for them. Her hair tumbled down, and she ceased to look like the Sistine Madonna and became more like a young Bacchanal. Some of her jokes were coarse and Amherst, who was refined, was jarred. Then she quarrelled with Cyril, because he remarked, with his cheerful and businesslike air of finality, that of course if the Cheeper were not baptised he would go to hell. Upon her violent remonstrance he merely observed that he was sorry, but facts were facts, and he couldn't get them altered to please her. He talked like this partly to annoy Pansy, because it amused him to see her cross, and partly for the pleasure of unobtrusively watching Amherst's expression when the word hell was mentioned.

So, to unite the party, Kitty proposed that they should play the new card game, League of Nations, of which the point was to amass cards and go out while presenting an appearance of doing nothing at all.

Thus harmoniously and hilariously the night wore on, till at last the End House, like the other Little Chantreys houses, only much later, went to bed.

Little Chantreys slept under the May moon, round the market square with the Ministry of Brains poster in the middle.

The doctor slept with the sound sleep of those who do not know the width of the gulf between what they are and what they should be.

The sick, his patients, slept or woke, tossing uneasily, with windows closed to the soft night air. Every now and then they would rouse and take their medicine, with impatience, desperation, simple faith, or dull obedience, and look in vain for a bettering of their state. Those who considered themselves well, never having known what welfare really was, slept too, in stuffy, air-tight rooms, disturbed by the wailing of babies which they had not taught not to cry aloud, by the hopping of fleas which they had failed to catch or to subdue, by the dancing of mice which would never enter traps so obvious as those which they scornfully perceived in their paths, by the crowding of children about them, too close to be forgotten or ignored, by the dragging weight of incompetent, unfinished yesterday and incompetent, unbegun to-morrow.

The vicarage slept. The vicar in his sleep had a puzzled frown, as if life was too much for him, as if he was struggling with forces above his comprehension and beyond his grasp, forces that should have revolutionised Little Chantreys, but, in his hands, wouldn't. The vicar's wife slept fitfully, waking to worry about the new cook, whose pastry was impossible. She wasn't clever enough to know that cooking shouldn't be done in this inefficient, wasteful way in the home, but co-operatively, in a village kitchen, and pastry should be turned out by a pastry machine. Mrs. Delmer had heard of this idea, but didn't like it, because it was new. She wasn't strong, and would die one day, worn out with domestic worries which could have been so easily obviated....

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