Told by an Idiot (22 page)

“He knows they are unhappy people following an evil illusion, my child,” her grandpapa told her. “You see, there is no war really—not on God’s plane. There couldn’t be.”

Imogen pondered it again, corrugating her forehead. She dearly liked to understand things.

“Will God know about the peace, when it comes?”

“He will know his children have stopped imagining the evil of war. And he will be very glad.”

“Doesn’t he know about the soldiers who are killed? What does he think they’ve died of?”

“He knows they are slain by their evil imaginings and those of their enemies. You see, God knows his children
believe
themselves to be at war, and that as
long as they go on believing it they will hurt each other and themselves.”

It seemed to Imogen that, in that case, God knew all that was really necessary about the war.

“Are you the only person, besides God, who doesn’t believe in the war, grandpapa?” she presently inquired.

“No, my child. There are others. . . . Perhaps one day, when you are older, you will understand more about it, and try to think all evil and all pain out of existence.”

“P’raps.” Imogen was dubious. She did not quite get the idea. “Of course, I’d
like
it, grandpapa, because then I shouldn’t get hurt any more.” She rubbed the back of her head, on to which she had fallen that afternoon while roller skating round the square. Her grandfather had told her God didn’t know she had fallen and hurt herself, and, in fact, that she was not really hurt at all. God didn’t know a great deal about roller skates, Imogen concluded, if he didn’t know that people who used them very frequently did fall. But perhaps he didn’t know there were any roller skates; perhaps roller skates were another evil illusion of ours, like the war. Not a bad illusion; one we had better keep, bruises and all. But perhaps, thought Imogen, who liked to think things out thoroughly, it was really that God didn’t know that the contact of the human head with another hard substance caused pain. After all, people who have never tried
don’t
know that. Babies don’t. . . .

Imogen began to be afraid she was blaspheming. She put the problem later to her mother, but Vicky was less interested than her youngest daughter in metaphysical problems, and merely said, “Oh, Jennie darling, you needn’t puzzle your head about what grandpapa tells you. Things that suit learned old gentlemen like him don’t always do for little girls like
you. Anyhow, don’t ever you get thinking that it won’t hurt you when you tumble on your head, because it always will.
You’ll
never get rid of that illusion, you may be sure. What
you’ve
got to learn is not to be so careless, and not to spend all your time climbing and racketing about. So long as you’ll do that, you’ll get tumbles, and they’ll hurt, and don’t you forget it.”

Imogen sighed a little. Her mother was so practical. You asked her for doctrine and she gave you advice. Being married, and particularly being a mother, often makes women like that. They know that doctrine is no use, and cherish the illusion that advice is.

“Papa is very happy in this new no-evil religion of his,” mamma said to Rome. “It suits him very well. Better than theosophy did, I think.”

Papa’s new religion might, from her placid, casual, considering tone, have been a new suit of clothes.

Papa’s daughter-in-law, Amy, screamed with mirth over it. Christian Science seemed to her an excellent joke.

“Oh, you’re not really hurt,” she would say if her daughter Iris came in from hockey with a black eye. “It’s all an illusion! What do you want embrocation for? I’ll tell your grandpapa of you. . . .”

“Christian Science,” Maurice said to her at last, gloomily contemptuous, “is not much more absurd than other religions. Suppose you were to take another for your hourly jokes to-day, just for the sake of a change. It makes no difference which; you don’t begin to understand any of them, and you can, no doubt, get a good laugh out of them all, if you try.”

Amy said, “There you go, as usual! I suppose you’ll be saying
you’re
a Christian Science crank next. Anyway, I don’t know what you want to speak to me in that way for, just because I like a little fun.”

“I don’t want to speak to you in any way,” replied Maurice.

Stanley, turning forty this year, was sturdier than of old, softer and broader of face, blunt-nosed, chubby, maternal, her deep blue eyes more ardent and intent. Now that her children, who were ten and eight, both went to day schools, she had taken up her old jobs, and was working for Women’s Trades’ Unions, going every day to an office, sitting on committees, speaking on platforms. Phases come and phases go, and particularly with Stanley, who inherited much from her papa. Stanley was in these days a stop-the-war, pacificist Little Englander, anti-militarist, anti-Chamberlain, anti-Concentration Camp. She would shortly be a Fabian, but had not quite got there yet. She was, of course, a suffragist, but suffragists in 1901 were still a very forlorn outpost; they were considered crankish and unpractical dreamers. She also spoke and wrote on Prison Reform, Democratic Education, Divorce Reform, Clean Milk, and Health Food. She was an admirer of Mr. Eustace Miles’s views on food, Mr. G. B. Shaw’s drama and social ethics, Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s romantic Christianity, and no one’s political opinions. She believed in the future of the world, which was to be splendidly managed by the children now growing up, who were to be splendidly educated for that purpose.

“But how improbable,” Rome mildly expostulated, “that they should manage it any better or any worse than every one else has. Your maternal pride carries you away, my dear. Parents can never be clearsighted; often have I observed it. Blessed, as the Bible says somewhere, are the barren and they that
have not brought forth, for they are the only people with any chance of looking at the world with clear and detached eyes. And even they haven’t much. . . . But why do you think the present young will do so unusually well with the future?”

“Of course,” Stanley replied, “they won’t do it of themselves. Only so far as they are educated up to it.”

“Well, I can’t see that educational methods are improving noticeably. Obviously, democratic education is not at present to be encouraged by our governing classes. Look at the Cockerton case. . . .”

“It will come,” said Stanley. “This new bill won’t go far, but it will do something. Meanwhile, those parents who have thought it out at all are doing rather better by their children than parents used to do. At least we can tell them the truth.”

“So far as you see it yourselves. Is that, in most cases, saying much?”

“No; very little. But—to take a trivial thing—we can, at least, for instance, tell them the truth about such things as the birth of life. That’s something. Billy and Molly already know as much as they need about that.”

“Well, they don’t actually need very much yet, do they? I’m sure it won’t hurt them to know anything of that sort, but I don’t see exactly how it’s going to help them to manage the world any better. Because, when the time for doing that comes, they’ll know about the birth of life in any case. Boys always seem to pick it up at school, whatever else they don’t learn. However, I admit that I think you bring up Billy and Molly very well.”

“It’s facing facts,” said Stanley, “that I want to teach them. The art of not being afraid of life. They’ve go to do their share in cleaning up the world, and before they can do that they’ve got to face it squarely. One
wants to do away with muffling things up, whatever they are. That’s why I tell them everything they ask, so far as I know it, and a lot they don’t. The knowledge doesn’t matter either way, but the atmosphere of daylight does. I want them to feel there are no facts that can’t be talked about.”

“But, my dear, what a social training! Because, you know, there
are
. Anyhow, in drawing-rooms, and places where they chat.”

“They’ll learn all that soon enough,” Stanley placidly said. “The world is as vulgar as it is mainly because of its prudery. I’m giving my children weapons against that.”

She had given them also a weapon against their cousins, the children of Vicky, who had not been told Facts. Anyhow, Imogen hadn’t. Her sisters were older, and boys, as Rome had said, do seem to pick things up at school. But Imogen at thirteen was still in the ignorance thought by Vicky suitable to her years. So, when she exasperated her cousin Billy by her superior proficiency in climbing, running, gymnastics, and all active games—a proficiency natural to her three years’ seniority, but growing tiresome during a whole afternoon spent in trials of skill—Billy could at least retort, “I know something you don’t. I know how babies come.”

“Don’t care how they come,” Imogen returned, astride on a higher bough of the aspen tree than her cousin could attain to. “They’re no use anyhow, the little fools. Who wants babies?”

Billy, having meditated on this unanswerable question, amended his vaunt. “Well, I know how puppies come, too. So there.”

Imogen was stumped. You can’t say that puppies are no use. She could think of no retort but the ancient one of sex insult.

“Boys are always bothering about stupid things like how babies come. As if it mattered.
I’d
rather know the displacement and horsepower and knots of all the battleships and first-class cruisers.”

“You don’t.”

“I do.”

“Bet you a bulls-eye you don’t.”

“Done. A pink one. Ask any one you like.”

“Well, what’s the
Terrible?
”

“14,200 tons; 25,000 horsepower; 22.4 knots. That’s an easy one.”

“The
Powerful.”

“Same, of course. No, she only makes 22.1 knots. Stupid to ask me twins.”

Billy considered. He did not like to own it, but he could not remember at the moment any other ships of His Majesty’s fleet.

“Well, what’s the biggest, anyhow?”

“The
Dominion
and the
King Edward VII
. 16,350 tons; 18,000 horsepower; 18.5 knots.”

“I don’t know that any of that’s true.”

“You can look in Brassey and find out, then.”

“I don’t care. Any one can mug up Brassey. Anyhow, girls can’t go into the navy.”

Imogen jogged up and down on the light swinging branch, whistling through her teeth, pretending not to hear.

“And anyhow,” added the taunter below, “
you’d
be no use on a ship, ‘cause you’d be sick.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You would”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You would.”

“You’re sick yourself if you smoke a woodbine.”

“So are you.
You’re
sick if you squash a fly. Girls are. They can’t dissect a rabbit. I can.”

The sex war was in full swing.

“Boys crib at their lessons. Boys don’t wash their necks.”

“Nor do girls. You’re dirty now. Girls don’t play footer at school.”

“Hockey’s as good. Boys are greedy pigs; they spend their pennies on tuck.”

“Who bought eight bulls-eyes this afternoon and sucked six?”

“Oh, well.” Imogen collapsed into sudden good temper. “Don’t let’s rot. Why did the gooseberry fool?”

To change the subject further, she swung herself backwards and hung from the branch by her knees, her short mop of curls swinging upside down, the blood singing in her head. Billy, a nice but not very clever little boy, said, “Because the raspberry syrup,” and truce was signed. Who, as Imogen had asked, cared how babies came?

Everywhere people ping-ponged. One would have thought there was no war on. Instead of doing their bits, as we did in a more recent and a more serious war, they all ping-ponged, and, when not ping-ponging, asked, “Why did the razor-bill raise her bill? Why did the coal scuttle? What did Anthony Hope?” And answered, “Because the woodpecker would peck her. Because the table had cedar legs. To see the salad dressing,” and anything else of that kind they could think of. Some people, mostly elderly people, could only answer vaguely to everything, “Because
the razor-bill razor-bill,” and change the subject, thinking how stupid riddles in these days were. Some people excelled at riddles, others at ping-pong, others again at pit, which meant shouting, “oats, oats, oats,” or something similar, until they were hoarse. No one would have thought there was a war on.

Indeed, there scarcely was a war on, now. Not a war to matter. Only rounding up, and blockhouses, and cordons, and guerrilla fighting. Irving Garden had had enteric, and was invalided home. He meant to return to South Africa directly peace should be signed, to investigate a good thing he had heard of in the Rand. His nephews and nieces, with whom he was always popular, worshipped at his shrine. He had wonderfully funny stories of the war to tell them. But he preferred to ask them such questions as, “What made Charing Cross?” and to supply them with such answers as “Teaching London Bridge. Am I right?” Such questions, such answers, they found so funny as to be almost painful. Imogen and Tony would giggle until tears came into their eyes. Certainly uncle Irving was amusing. And clever. He drove himself and other people about in a gray car that travelled like the wind and was cursed like the devil by pedestrians and horse drivers on the roads. His brother Maurice cursed him, but good-temperedly, for he liked Irving, and, further, he despised the unenterprising Public for fools. That was why no section of the community gave Maurice and his paper their entire confidence; he attacked what he and those who agreed with him held for evils, but would round, with a contemptuous gesture, on those whose grievances he voiced. He ridiculed the present inefficiency, and ridiculed also the ideals of those who cried for improvement. He threw himself into the struggle for educational reform, and sneered at all reforms proposed as inadequate,
pedestrian or absurd. He condemned employers as greedy and Trades Unions as retrograde. He jeered at the inefficiency of the conduct of what remained of the war, at the stupid brutality of concentration camps, at the sentimentality of the pro-Boer party (as they were still called), at the militarism of the Tory militants, the imperialism of the Liberals, and the sentimental radical humanitarianism of Mr. Lloyd George and his party. He addressed stop-the-war meetings until they were broken up with violence by earnest representatives of the continue-the-war party, and suffered much physical damage in the ensuing conflicts; yet the stop-the-war party did not really trust him. They suspected him of desiring, though without hope, to stop not only the war, but all human activities, and, indeed, the very universe itself; and this is to go further than is generally approved. The continue-the-war party has risen and fallen with every war; but the continue-the-world party has a kind of solid permanency, and something of the universal in its ideals. Not to be of it is to be out of sympathy with the great majority of one’s fellows. At any time and in any country, but perhaps particularly in England in the early years of the twentieth century, when there was a good deal of enthusiasm for continuance and progress. The early Edwardians were not, as we are to-day, dispirited and discouraged with the course of the world, though they were vexed about the Boer war and the consequent economic depression of the country. They did not, for the most part, feel that life was a bad business and the future outlook too dark and menacing to be worth encouraging. On the contrary, they believed in Life with a large L. The young were bitten by the dry, reforming zeal of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, or the gay faith in life of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, or the bounding scientific hopefulness of
Mr. H. G. Wells, or the sharp social and ethical criticism of Mr. George Bernard Shaw.