CHAPTER XIII
EPILOGUE—PROLOGUE
"Third Apparition—A Child Crowned …"
Macbeth.
I
Late on the evening of May 17th Christopher heard of the relief of Mafeking. It was too advanced an hour, he understood, for the town to display its triumph that evening. Let Christopher wait.
The following night Brun, whom he had not seen for many months, appeared. The clocks had struck nine and Christopher was finishing his dinner, when the little man, shining and dapper, pleased and impersonal, was shown in.
"Hullo!" cried Christopher; "thought you were abroad somewhere."
"I saw you at the Duchess's funeral. Of course I was there. What do you suppose? Meanwhile come out now and see your fine people make manifestations."
"Is there a noise?"
"A noise! Mon Dieu! But come and look!"
They went out together. Harley Street was silent and deserted and above it a night sky, scattered with stars, was serenely still. But, beyond the further roofs and chimneys, golden light hovered and a confused murmur, like the buzzing of bees, hummed upon space.
Through Oxford Street a great crowd of people was passing, but it was a crowd hurrying to find some other crowd. Oxford Street was plainly not the meeting-place. There was a good deal of shouting and singing; young men, five abreast, passed, girls with "ticklers" and whistles screamed and laughed and sang; merry bells were ringing, lights flared in the windows and now and again a rocket with a whiz and a shriek flashed into the sky and broke with a little angry splutter into coloured stars.
They crossed into Bond Street, down which other people were hurrying; sometimes a roaring echo of a multitude of discordant voices would be carried to them and then would be hidden again as though some huge door in front of them were swinging to and fro.
At the end of Bond Street, suddenly, as they might turn the corner of some sea road and, instantly, be confronted with the crash of a plunging surf, they met the crowd.
"Look out!" cried Brun, clutching hold of Christopher's arm. "We don't want to get drawn into this!"
Although they had apparently been walking quietly down Bond Street with no crowd about them, they now were pursued, upon all sides, by people. They raised themselves on to a doorstep, hanging there, bending their feet forward, and feeling that if the crowd in front of them were for a moment to give way down they would go!
Meanwhile, along Piccadilly, towards the clubs and Hyde Park Corner, a thick mass of human beings was pressing. This gathering seemed, of itself, to lack all human quality.
A face, a voice, a hand, a cry–these things might now and again, as fish flash in a stream, detach themselves; sometimes a light from a flaring window or an illumination would fling into pale, unreal relief a bundle of faces that represented, at that instant, a piece of human history, but sank instantly back again into chaos.
One might fancy that this was no crowd of human beings, but some new, unknown creature, dragging its coils from the sluggish bed of some hidden river, stamping to destruction as it went.
Then as though one were watching a show, with a click, the human element was back again. There two girls, their hats pushed aside, their hair half uncoiled, their cheeks flushed, their eyes partly bold and partly frightened, were screaming:
"Oo're yer 'itting? Don't again then. Good old England! Gawd save–"
It was not on the whole a crowd stirred only by national joy and pride. It may, in its units, when it first left its many homes, have announced its intention of giving "a jolly 'ooray" for our splendid country and our Beloved Queen, but, once in a position from which there was no returning, once in the hands of a force that was stronger than any felt before, it had forgotten the country and its defeats and successes. Only two courses open. Either admit fear, feel that the breath of you is slowly but quite surely in process of being crushed out of you, feel that your arms and legs are being torn from you, that your ribs are being smashed into powder and that your heart is being pressed as flat as a pancake, let then panic overwhelm you, fight and scream to get out and away from it, see yourself finally falling, trampled, kicked, your face squashed to pulp, your eyes torn out, your breath strangled in your body … so much for Fear. Or, on the other hand arouse Frenzy!
Be above and beyond your body, scream and shout, rattle rattles and blow whistles, trample upon everything that is near you, smack faces with your hand, pull off clothing and scatter hats and bonnets, scream aloud, no matter what it is that you are screaming, let your voice exclaim that at length, at length, you, a miserable clerk on nothing a week, in the City, are, for the first time in your existence, the Captain of your soul, the ruthless master of a wretched, law-making tyrannous world.... So much for Frenzy!
Either way, be it Frenzy or Fear, the Country has not much to say to it at all. With every moment it seems that from the Circus more bodies, more arms and legs are being pressed and crushed and packed; with every moment the clanging of the bells is louder, the fire in the sky higher and wilder, the singing, the screaming, the oaths and the curses are nearer, the defiance that loss of individuality gives.
"Let's get back," said Brun. He turned, but, at that moment, someone from behind him cried, "Oo are yer shoving there?" He was pushed, with Christopher, half falling, half clutching at arms and shoulders, forward into the street.
They righted themselves, Brun fastened upon Christopher's arm, shouting into his ear, "We'd better go along with the crowd for a bit. We'll get a chance of cutting up Half Moon Street. Can't do anything else."
They were pressed forward. Now, received into the bosom of the crowd, they were conscious both of the human element and of the stronger composite spirit that was mightier than anything human, a creation of the City against whose walls they were now so riotously shouting.
Next to Christopher was a young man in evening dress; his hat had disappeared, his collar was torn, sweat was pouring down his forehead and at the top of his voice he screamed again and again:
"Good old England! Good old England! Good old Bobs! Good old Bobs!" Squeezed up against Christopher's arm was a stout body that looked as though it had once belonged to some elderly gentleman who liked white waistcoats and brass buttons. From somewhere, in obvious connection with these buttons, came a weak, breathless voice: "You'll excuse me hanging on so, sir. It's familiar—not my way—but this crowd …"
A girl, with crimson face, leant against Christopher, put her arm round his neck, tickled his face with a feather; she screamed with laughter: "Oo-ray! Oo-ray—Oo-bloody-ray!"
"Look out, you swine!" somebody shouted.
"And 'e shouted out, did Bobs
Come along, you stinking nobs,
We will show you—"
Around them, above them, below them there tossed a whirlpool of noise, something outside and beyond the immediate sounds that they were making. Bells, voices, shouts that seemed to have no human origin, the very walls and stones of the City crying aloud.
Then, opposite the entrance to Half Moon Street another crowd seemed to meet them. There was pause. "Get out of it!" "Go the other way." "Damn yer eyes, step off it." "Go back, carn't yer?"
It was then that for the briefest moment and for the first time in his life Christopher was afraid. Someone was pressing into his back until surely it would break, some other was leaning, and driving his chest in, driving it so that the breath flooded his face, his eyes, his nose. Colours rose and fell; someone's evil breath burnt upon his cheeks. Light flashed before him in broad, steady flares.
"Brun, Brun," he cried.
"All right," a voice from many miles away answered him.
He was seized with the determination to survive. They thought that they could "down" him, but they should see that they were mistaken; his rage rising, he was no longer Dr. Christopher of Harley Street, but something savage, lawless beyond even his own control. He drove with his arms; curses met him and someone drove back into him and a ridiculous face with staring eyes that stupidly pleaded and a nose that was white and trembling and a mouth that dribbled at the corners came up against his.
"Keep back, can't you?" someone shouted.
"Brun, Brun," he called again, and then was conscious that bodies were giving way before him. His hand met a stomach covered with cloth and little hard buttons, and then coming against a woman's arm soft and warm, Christopher had instantly gained possession of his soul once more.
"Hope I didn't hurt you," he heard himself saying, then, some barrier of legs and bodies yielding, found that he was flung out, away, stumbling, in spite of himself, on to his knee.
He caught someone by the arm, and it was Brun.
"Good Lord!" said Christopher.
"It's all right," answered Brun. "We're in Half Moon Street. We're out of it."
II
Somewhere in the peaceful retirement behind the clubs they surveyed one another and then laughed. Brun—the dapper perfect Brun—had a bleeding cheek, a torn waistcoat, and a large and very unbecoming tear in his trousers. He was half angry and half amused—finally a survey of Christopher, with mud on his nose and his collar hanging from one button and revealing a fat red neck, restored his good temper.
"You'd better come back with me," said Christopher, "and be cleaned up."
They went back to Harley Street and half an hour later were sitting quietly in easy chairs, with the house as though it were made of cotton-wool, so silent and hidden was it, about them.
Both men were excited; Christopher had been changed by the events of the last few weeks, and Brun, if he had not been so personally involved, had seen enough to excite his most eager curiosity and speculation.
Brun's sharp little eyes, flashing across the tip of his cigar, sought Christopher's large comfortable face, fell from there over his large comfortable body, down at last to his large comfortable boots.
"Well … First time I've seen a Continental crowd in England."
"Continental?"
"Always your Englishman, however excited and of whatever rank, knows there are things a gentleman doesn't do. Those people to-night had not that knowledge. Very interesting," he added.
Christopher peacefully smoked, his body well spread out in the chair, his broad rather clumsy-looking fingers clutching devotedly at his pipe.
"So you were at the funeral the other day?"
"I was. I expect I mourned her more sincerely than any of you. I'd never seen her, but she meant a lot to me—as a symbol. And I like symbols better than human beings."
He pulled his body together with a little jerk and leaned forward: "Christopher, do you remember, a long while ago, going into a gallery in Bond Street and meeting Lady Adela Beaminster there and Lady Seddon? It was just after Ross's portrait was first shown."
"I remember," said Christopher, nodding his head. "You were there."
"I was. I was there with Arkwright the African explorer man. I only mention the day because Arkwright was interested in Lady Seddon, wanted to know all about her, and I talked a bit, I remember. My point to him was that there was a situation between that girl and her grandmother that would be worth anybody's watching. I followed it myself for a while and then I lost it. But you're a friend of the family—tell me, Christopher, what happened between those two."
"Nothing," Christopher said, laughing.
"Oh, nonsense," Brun answered. "They were all in it. Something went on. Then Seddon had that accident … Breton was in it."
But Christopher only smiled.
"Well, if you won't—n'importe—I have my own idea of it all. That girl was a fine girl, and the old woman was fine too—
"But how they must have hated one another!"
He chuckled; then sitting back in his chair, his little eyes on the ceiling, he said almost to himself—"Once, years ago, when I was very, very young and romantic—almost—just for a year or two I loved your Shelley. He was everything—I could quote him by the page.... He's gone from me now, or most of him has, but there was one line that seemed to me then the most romantic thing I had ever read and has remained with me always. It went—'And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood'—It's in the letter to Maria Gisborne, I think—I've quite forgotten what the context is now—it's all pretty trivial and unimportant, but those were the days when I made pictures—I saw it! Lord, Christopher, how it comes back! The wood, very thick, very large, very black, no sun—very still, and the great house behind it, huge and white, with long gardens and green lawns and peacocks, and the Grand Duke, with his powdered wig, and diamond-buckled shoes, his gorgeous suit, his jewelled sword, his snuff and his wine, his silly little dried-up yellow face.
"Then the rabble—dirty, smelling, ill-conditioned fellows—breaking through the silence, tearing up the Wood, knocking down the palace, hanging the Grand Duke from a tree, last of all, setting the whole thing into the most splendid blaze!… Oh! of course that wasn't Shelley's context—his was all about boiling a kettle or something—but that's the way I saw it—just like that." Nothing stirred Brun like the sound of his own voice and now he was getting very excited indeed and was waving his hands.
"Yes," said Christopher placidly. "Very dramatic. What does it all mean?"
"Well, this. It seems to me that that's just what's been happening over here. Your Duchess is dead and instead there is to-night's crowd. The Grand Duke is gone and all that was his—now for the fires!"
Christopher, filling his pipe, paused, and then, his voice grave and serious: "Romantics aside, Brun, for a minute. Do you remember your Tiger idea you delivered to me once? I've often thought of it since. You said then that the reason why the Duchess and her times—the Grand Duke and his wood—had got to go was because their policy had been to give the Tigers of the world no liberty—to pretend indeed that they weren't there, and that now the time had come when every man should declare his Tiger, should give it liberty and, whether he restrained it or no, acknowledge its existence.... Well, now—what I want to know is this. What to your thinking is going to come of it all? I'm old-fashioned. I like the old settled laws and customs and the rest of it, and yet I'm not afraid of this new Individualism; but what I expect and what you expect to come of it all are sure to be mightily different things."
"They are," said Brun, laughing. "You see, Christopher, as I've often said to you before, you're a sentimentalist—people matter to you; you're concerned in their individual good or bad luck. Now none of that is worth anything to me. I observe from the outside—always. What I want to see is less muddle, more brain, less waste of time, more progress. I believe the loosing of the Tiger is going to bring that about. That's why I welcome it—I don't care one little damn about your individual—let him be sacrificed every time for the general wisdom. Your Duchess, she was good for her age. Now she is against progress. She vanishes. That crowd of to-night has swept her away.... There'll be a chaos here for a time—people like the Ruddards will mix things up; a woman like Mrs. Strode will destroy as many good people as she can. But the time will come; out of that crowd that we got into to-night a world, ruled by brain, by common sense, by understanding, not by sentiment and confusion, will arise.... May I not be with the good God!"
"'Sentiment and confusion,'" said Christopher, smiling. "That's me, I suppose."
"Well, you are sentimental," said Brun. "You're stuffed with it."
"Do you yourself …" asked Christopher, "is there no one—no one in the world—who matters to you?"
"Nobody," said Brun. "No one in the world. I think I like you better than anybody; you're the honestest man I know and yet one of the most wrong-headed. Yes, I like you very much; but it would not be true to say that it would leave any great blank in my life if you were to die. Women! Yes, there have been women! But—thank the good God! for the moment only. The Heart—no—The Brain—yes–"
"Well, then," said Christopher, "that's all clear enough. It isn't very wonderful that we differ. People are to me everything. Love the only power in the world to make change, to work miracles; I don't mean only sensual love, or even sexual love, but simply the love of one human being for another, the love that leads to thinking more of your neighbour than yourself—self-denial.
"Self-denial; the only curb for your Tiger, Brun. I've been watching it in a piece of private history, all this last year and a half. There might have been the most horrible mess; self-denial saved it all the time. You'll say that all this is so vague and loose that it's worth nothing."
"Not at all," said Brun politely. "Go ahead."
"Well, then, the reason why I, old-fashioned and Philistine as I am, hail the passing of the Grand Duke with joy—and I cared for the old woman, mind you—is just this. I see some chance at last for the plain man—not the clever man, or the especially spiritual man or the wealthy man—but simply the ordinary man. When I say Brotherhood I don't mean anything to do with associations or meetings or rules—Simply that I believe in an age when a man's neighbour will matter to a man more than himself, when it won't be priggish or weak to help someone in worse plight than yourself, when it will simply be the obvious thing … when, above all, there'll be no jealousy, no getting in a man's way because he does better than you, no knocking a man down because he sees the world—this world and the next—differently. That's my Individualism, my Rising City, and if you had watched the lives of a few friends of mine during the last year or two as I've watched them you'd know that 'Love thy neighbour as thyself' is the fire that's going to burn all the Grand-Ducal woods in the world in time."
Brun laughed. "You'll be taken in horribly one of these days, Christopher."
"You speak as though I were a chicken," Christopher broke out indignantly. "Man alive, haven't I lived all these years? Haven't I seen the poorest and rottenest and feeblest side of human nature time and time again? But this I know: That it's losing the thing you prize most that pays, it's the pursuit, the self-denial, the forgetting of self that scores in the material, practical world as well as the spiritual, heavenly one. That's where the Millennium's coming from. Brains as well perhaps, but souls first."
"We'll see," said Brun. "A bit of both, I dare say. Anyhow, it's the next generation that's going to be interesting. All kinds of people free who've never been free before, all sorts of creeds and doctrines smashed that seemed like Eternity. The old woods flaming already. Après la Duchesse!… But as for your Love, your Brotherhood, Christopher, I've a shrewd suspicion that human nature will change very little. Unselfishness? Very fine to talk about—but who's going to practise it? Every man for his own hand, now as ever."
"We'll see," answered Christopher. "I'm not clever at putting things into words. If I were to go along to the man in the street and say, 'Look here, I've made a discovery—I've got something that's going to make everything straight in the world,' and he were to say, 'What's that?' and then I were to answer, 'Self-denial. Unselfishness—Love of your neighbour,' he would, of course, instantly remind me that Someone greater than myself had made the same remark a few thousand years ago. He'd be right.... There's nothing new in it. But it's coming new to the world just because the laws and conventions that covered it are breaking. The Tiger in Every Man and Self-denial to curb it … That's my prophecy, Brun."
Brun gave himself a whisky-and-soda. "No idea you were such a talker, Christopher.... But I'm right all the same."
He held up his glass.
"Here's to the Tiger in the next generation." He drank, then held it up again. "And here," he cried, "to the memory of the last Great lady in England!"