Told by an Idiot (23 page)

Stanley Croft, young for ever in mind, was bitten by all these and much more. Imperialism left slain behind, she embraced with ardour the fantastic ideal of the cleaning up of England. After the war then; indeed they would proceed furiously with the building of Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.

And meanwhile the war went on, and times were bad, and everywhere people ping-ponged. A lack of seriousness was complained of. It always is complained of in this country, which is not, indeed, a very serious one, but always contains some serious persons to complain of the others. “The ping-pong spirit,” the graver Press called the national lightness; and clergymen took up the phrase and preached about it.

The public, they said, were like street gamins, loafing about on the watch for any new distraction.

Imogen and Tony slipped out into the street. It was the first Sunday of the summer holidays, and the first day of August. The sun beat hotly on the asphalt, making it soft, so that one could dent it with one’s heels. The children sauntered down Sloane Street, loitering at the closed shop windows, clinking their shillings in their pockets. They enjoyed the streets with the zest of street Arabs. They were a happy and untidy pair; the girl in a short butcher-blue cotton frock, grubby with a week’s wear, a hole in the knee
of one black-stockinged leg, a soiled white linen cricket hat slouched over her short mop of brown curls, her small, pink face freckled and tanned; the boy, a year younger, grimy, dark-eyed and beautiful, like his uncle Irving in face, clad in a gray flannel knicker-bocker suit. Neither had dressed for the street in the way that they should have; they had slipped out, unseen, in their garden clothes and garden grime, to make the most of the last day before they went away for the holidays.

They knew what they meant to do. They were going to have their money’s worth, and far more than their money’s worth, of underground travelling. Round and round and round, and all for a penny fare. . . . This was a favourite occupation of theirs, a secret, morbid vice. They indulged in it at least twice every holidays. The whole family had been used to do it, but all but these two had now outgrown it. Phyllis, now at Girton, had outgrown it long ago. “The twopenny tube for me,” she said. “It’s cleaner.” “But it doesn’t go
round
,” said Imogen. “Who wants to go round, you little donkey? It takes you where you want to get to; that’s the object of a train.” It was obvious that Phyllis had grown up. She would not even track people in the streets now. It must happen, soon or late, to all of us. Even Hughie, fifteen and at Rugby, found this underground game rather weak.

But Imogen and Tony still sneaked out, a little shamefaced and secretive, to practise their vice.

Sloane Square. Two penny fares. Down the stairs, into the delicious, romantic, cool valley. The train thundered in, Inner Circle its style. A half empty compartment; there was small run on the underground this lovely August Sunday. Into it dashed the children; they had a corner seat each, next the open door. They
bumped up and down on the seats, opposite each other. The train speeded off, rushing like a mighty wind. South Kensington station. More people coming in, getting out. Off again. Gloucester Road, High Street, Notting Hill Gate, Queen’s Road. . . . The penny fare was well over. Still they travelled, and jogged up and down on the straw seats, and chanted softly, monotonously, so that they could scarcely be heard above the roaring of the train.

“Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye,
ROUND THE WORLD FOR EVER AND AYE. . . .”

Then again,

“Sand-strewn caverns cool and deep. . . .”

At Paddington they saw the conductor eyeing them, and changed their compartment. This should be done from time to time.

And so on, past King’s Cross and Farringdon Street, towards the wild, romantic stations of the east: Liverpool Street, Aldgate, and so round the bend, sweeping west like the sun. Blackfriars, Temple, Charing Cross, Westminster, St. James’s Park, Victoria, SLOANE SQUARE. Oh, joy! Sing for the circle completed, the new circle begun.

“Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye.
ROUND THE WORLD FOR EVER AND AYE. . . .”

Imogen changed her chant, and dreamily crooned:

“The world is round, so travellers tell,

And straight though reach the track;

Trudge on, trudge on, ’twill all be well,

The way will guide one back.

But ere the circle homeward hies

Far, far must it remove:

White in the moon the long road lies

That leads me from my love.”

Round the merry world again. Put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes. Round and round and round. What a pennyworth! You can’t buy much on an English Sunday, but if you can buy eternal travel, Sunday is justified.

But two inner circles and a bit are really enough. If you had three whole ones you might begin to feel bored, or even sick. Sloane Square again: the second circle completed. South Kensington. The two globe-trotters emerged from their circling, handed in their penny tickets, reached the upper air, hot and elated.

Now
what? For a moment they loitered at the station exit, debating in expert minds the next move. Money was short; no luxurious joys could be considered.

Imogen suddenly gripped Tony by the arm.

“Hist, Watson. You see that man in front?”

Watson, well-trained, nodded.

“We’re going to track him. I have a very shrewd suspicion that he is connected with the Sloane Square
murder mystery. Now mind, we must keep ten paces behind him wherever he goes; not less, or hell notice. Like the woman in Church Street did. He’s off; come on. . . . Do you observe anything peculiar about him, Watson?”

“He’s a jolly lean old bird. I expect he’s hungry.”

“My good Watson, look at his clothes. They’re a jolly sight better than ours. He’s a millionaire, as it happens. If you want to know a few facts about him, I’ll tell you. He moved his washstand this morning from the left side of his bed to the right; he forgot to wind up his watch last night; he went to church before breakfast; he had kidneys when he came in; and he’s now on his way to meet a confederate at lunch.”

“Piffle. You can’t prove any of it.”

“I certainly can, my good Watson. . . .”

“Golly, he’s calling a hansom. Shall we hang on behind?”

Watson’s beautiful brown eyes beamed with hope; Holmes’s small green gray ones held for a moment an answering gleam. But only for a moment. Holmes knew by now, having learnt from much sad experience, what adventures could be profitably undertaken and what couldn’t.

“No use. We’d be pulled off at once. . . .”

Morosely they watched their victim escape.

Then, “Look, Watson. The fat lady in purple. She must have been to church. . . . Oh, quite simple, Watson, I assure you; she has a prayer book. . . . Come on. It won’t matter how late we get back, because they’re having a lunch party and we’re feeding in the schoolroom. We’ll sleuth her to hell.”

In this manner Sunday morning passed very pleasantly and profitably for Vicky’s two youngest children.

1901 drew to its close. An odd, restless, gay, unhappy year, sad with war and poverty, bitter with quarrels about inefficiency, concentration camps, Ahmednagar (the home of the Boers in India, and a name much thrown about by the pro-Boers in their “ignorant and perverse outcry”), education, religion, finance, politics, prisons, motor-cars, and stopping the war; gay with new drama (Mr. Bernard Shaw was being produced, and many musical comedies), new art (at the New English Art Club), new jokes, new books (Mr. Conrad had published
Lord Jim
, Mr. Henry James
The Sacred Fount
, Mr. Hardy
Poems New and Old
, Mr. Wells
Love and Mr. Lewisham
, Mr. Yeats
The Shadowy Waters
, Mr. Chesterton
The Wild Knight
, Mr. Kipling
Kim
, Mr. Belloc
The Path to Rome
, Lady Russell
The Benefactress
, Mr. Laurence Housman
A Modern Antœus
, Mr. Anthony Hope
Tristram of Blent
, Mrs. Humphry Ward
Eleanor
, Mr. Arnold Bennett
The Grand Babylon Hotel
, Mr. Charles Marriott
The Column
, Mr. George Moore
Sister Teresa
, Mr. Max Beerbohm
And Yet Again
), new clothes, and new games.

Popular we were not. That prevalent disease, Anglophobia, raged impartially in every country, except, possibly, Japan. Even as far as the remote Bermudas, continental slanders against us roared. We are a maligned race; there is no doubt of it. All races are, in their degree, maligned, but none so greatly as we—unless it should be the Children of Israel. It is sad to think it, but there must be something about us that is not attractive to foreigners, They have always grieved
at our triumphs and rejoiced at our sorrows. By the end of 1901 our friendlessness was such (in November Lord Salisbury said at the Guildhall, “It is a matter for congratulation that we have found such a friendly feeling and such a correct attitude on the part of all the great powers,”) that we thought we had better enter into an alliance with the Japanese, who were still pleased with us for admiring them about their war with China.

In the autumn of this year, Stanley published her small book,
Conditions of Women’s Work
, and Mr. Garden, after years of labour, his mighty work,
Cowparative Religions
.

Mrs. Garden had influenza and pneumonia in December, and Mr. Garden, in an anguish of anxiety, called in three doctors and admitted that his faith had failed. God’s disapproving ignorance of mamma’s pneumonia made intolerable a burden of anxiety which would have been heavy even with divine sympathy; and if, by some awful chance, mamma were to pass on, papa’s grief, guilty and unrecognised, would have been too bitter to be borne. Christian Science had had but a brief day, but it was over. In a fit of reaction, papa became an Evangelical, and took to profound meditation, on the suffering, human and divine, which he had for so long ignored. He now found the love of God in suffering, not in its absence.

Always honourable, he recanted the instructions on the limitations of divine knowledge which he had given to his grandchildren.

“You perhaps remember, Jennie my child, what I said to you last year about God’s not knowing of the war. Well, I have come to the conclusion that I was mistaken. I believe now that God knows all about His children’s griefs and pains. He knows more about them than we do. Possibly—who knows—
suffering is a necessary part of the scheme of redemption. . . .”

Imogen looked and felt intelligent. When any one spoke of theology to her, is was as if the blood of all her clerical ancestors mounted to the call. She had recently become an agnostic, owing to having perused Renan and John Stuart Mill. She was at the stage in life when she read, with impartial ardour, such writers as these: Mrs. Nesbit’s
Wouldbegoods
, Max Pemberton’s
Iron Pirate
, and other juvenile works (particularly school stories), Rudyard Kipling, Marryat, the Brontës, and any poetry she could lay hands on, but especially that of W. B. Yeats, Robert Browning, Algernon Swinburne, William Morris, Lewis Carroll, and Walter Ramal.

She said to her grandfather, casually, but a little wistfully too, “I’m not sure, Grandpapa, that I believe in God at all. The arguments against him seem very strong, don’t they?”

Mr. Garden looked a little startled. Possibly he thought that Imogen was beginning too young.

“Ah, Jennie my child—‘If my doubt’s strong, my faith’s still stronger. . . .’ That’s what Browning said about it, you know.”

Imogen nodded.

“I know. I’ve read that. I s’pose his faith was. Mine isn’t. My
doubt’s
stronger, Grandpapa.”

“Well, my child. . . .” Mr. Garden, gathering together his resources, gave this strayed lamb (that was how, in his new terminology he thought of her) a little evangelical homily on the love of God. Unfortunately Imogen had, then and through life, an intemperate distaste for evangelical language; it made her feel shy and hot, and, though she loved her grandfather, she was further alienated from faith. She wrote a poem that evening about the dark, terrifying and
Godless world, which she found very good. She would have liked to show it to others, that they, too, might find it good, but the tradition of her family and her school was that this wasn’t done. One wrote anything one liked, if one suffered from that itch, but to show it about was swank. “Making a donkey of yourself.” The Carringtons, shy, vain and reserved, did not care to do that.

“Some day,” thought Imogen, “I’ll write
books
. Then people can read them without my showing them. I’ll write a book full of poems.” The new poet. Even—might one dare to imagine it—the new
great
poet, Imogen Carrington. Or should one be anonymous? Anon. That was a good old poet’s name.

“Few people knew,” said Imogen, within herself, “that this slender book of verse,
Questionings
, bound in green, with gold edges, which had made such a stir in lit’ry London, was by a wiry, brown-faced, blue-eyed young lieutenant-commander, composed while he navigated his first-class gunboat, the
Thrush
(805 tons, 1200 h.p., 13 knots, 6 four-inch guns, 2 quick-firers, 2 machine), among the Pacific Islands, taking soundings. The whole service knew Denis Carton as a brilliant young officer, but only two or three—or perhaps a dozen—knew he was a poet too and had written that green book with gold edges that lay on every drawing-room table, and was stacked by hundreds in every good bookshop.” (I cannot account for the confused workings of this poor child’s mind; I can only record the fact that she still, and for many years to come, thought of herself, with hope growing faint and ever fainter, as a brown-skinned, blue-eyed, young naval man.)