A Crooked Mile Part 20

When Britomart Belchamber came in simultaneously with the tea and the twins at a little before five, the studio was full. The asbestos log purred softly, and Mr. Brimby's three Oxford friends, glad perhaps of something to do, walked here and there, each of them with a plate of bread and b.u.t.ter in either hand, not realizing that at The Witan the beautiful Chinese rule of politeness was always observed--"When the stranger is in your melon-patch, be a little inattentive." Had d.i.c.kie Lemesurier and Laura Wyron eaten half the white and brown that was presented to them, they must have been seriously unwell. It was Cosimo, grey-collared and with a claret-coloured velvet waistcoat showing under his slackly-b.u.t.toned tweed jacket, who gave the young men the friendly hint, "Everybody helps themselves here, my dear fellows." Then the Norfolk jackets came together again, and presently their owners turned with one accord to examine the hock and the top-side that hung on the wall over the sofa.

Not so much a blending of voices as an incessant racket of emphatic and independent p.r.o.nouncements filled the studio. Walter Wyron had fastened upon the man who looked as if he ought to have carried a miner's lamp, and his forefinger was wagging like a gauge-needle as he explained that one of his Lectures had been misrepresented, and that he had _never_ taken up the position that a kind of Saturnalia should be definitely state-established. He admitted, nevertheless, that the question of such an establishment ought to be considered, like any other question, on its merits, and that after that the argument should be followed whithersoever it led.--d.i.c.kie Lemesurier, excessively animated, and with the whites showing dancingly all round her pupils, was talking Cesanne and Van Gogh to Laura, and declaring that something was "quite the"

something or other.--Mr. Brimby's hand was fondling Bonniebell's head while he deprecated the high degree of precision of the modern rifle to Mr. Wilkinson. "If only it wasn't so ruthlessly logical!" he was sighing. "If only it was subject to the slight organic accident, to those beautiful adaptations of give-and-take that make judgment harsh, and teach us that we ought never to condemn!"--Corin, drawn by the word "gun," was demanding to be told whether that was the gun that had been taken away from him.--And Britomart Belchamber, indifferent alike to the glances of the Oxford men and their trepidation in her presence, stood like a caryatid under a wall-bracket with an ivy-green replica of Bastianini's Dante upon it.

"No, no, not for a moment, my dear sir!" Walter shouted to the man who looked like (and was) a miner. "That is to ignore the context. I admit I used the less-known Pompeian friezes as a rough ill.u.s.tration of what I meant--but I did _not_ suggest that Waring & Gillow's should put them on the market! What I did say was that we moderns must work out our d.a.m.nation on the same lines that the ancients did. Read your Nietzsche, my good fellow, and see what _he_ says about the practical serviceability of Excess! I contend that a kind of general _oubliance_, say for three weeks in the year, to which everybody without exception would have to conform (so that we shouldn't have the superior person bringing things up against us afterwards)----"

"Ah doan't see how ye could mak' fowk----," the miner began, in an accent that for a moment seemed to blast a hole clean through the racket. But the hole closed up again.

"Ah, at present you don't," Walter cried. "The spade-work isn't done yet. We need more education. But every new and great idea----"

But here an outburst from Mr. Wilkinson to Mr. Brimby drowned Walter's voice. Mr. Wilkinson raised his clenched fist, but only for emphasis, and not in order to strike Mr. Brimby.

"Stuff and nonsense! There you go, Brimby, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g again! We've heard all that: 'A great deal to be said on both sides,'"--(Mr. Wilkinson all but mimicked Mr. Brimby). "There isn't--not if you're going to do anything! There's only one side. You've got to shoot or be shot. I'm a shooter. Give me five hundred real men and plenty of barricade stuff----"

"Oh, oh, oh, my dear friend!" Mr. Brimby protested. "Why, if your principles were universally applied----"

"Who said anything about applying 'em universally? Hang your universal applications! I'm talking about the Industrial Revolution. I'll tell you what's the matter with you, Brimby: you don't like the sight of blood.

I'm not blaming you. Some men are like that. But it's in every page of your writing. You've got a bloodless style. I don't mind admitting that I liked some of your earlier work, while there still seemed a chance of your making up your mind some day----"

But here Mr. Wilkinson in his turn was drowned, this time by an incredulous laugh from Cosimo, who had joined d.i.c.kie and Laura.

"Van Gogh says _that_?" his voice mounted high. "Really? You're sure he wasn't joking? Ha ha ha ha!... But it's rather pathetic really. One would think Amory'd never painted 'Barrage,' nor the 'White Slave,' nor that--," he pointed to the unfinished canvas of "The Triumph of Humane Government" on the wall. "By Jove, I must make an Appendix of that!...

Here--Walter!--Have you told him, d.i.c.kie?--Walter!----"

But Walter was now at deadly grips with the man who had forgotten his miner's lamp.

"I tell you I never used Saturnalia in that sense at all!----"

But the miner stood his ground.

"Happen ye didn't, but I'll ask ye one question: Have ye ever been to Blackpool of a August Bank Holiday?----"

"My good man, you talk as if I proposed to do something with the stroke of a pen, to-morrow, before the world's ready for it----"

"Have ye ever been to Blackpool of a Bank Holiday?"

"What on earth has Blackpool to do with it?----"

"Well, we'll say Owdham Wakes week at t' Isle o' Man--Douglas----"

"Pooh! You've got hold of the wrong idea altogether! Do you know what Saturnalia _means_?----"

"I know there's a man on Douglas Head, at twelve o'clock i' t' day, wi'

t' sun s.h.i.+ning, going round wi' a stick an' prodding 'em up an' telling 'em to break away----"

"I shouldn't have thought anybody could have been so _incredibly_ slow to grasp an idea--!" cried Walter, his hands aloft.

"Have--you--ever--been--to--Blackpool--when--t' Wakes--is on?"

Then Cosimo called again--

"Walter! I say! Come here!... d.i.c.kie's just told me something that makes the '_Life and Work_' _rather_ necessary, I think!----"

And Walter turned his back on the miner and joined his wife and d.i.c.kie and Cosimo.

Anybody who wasn't anybody might have supposed the noise to be a series of wrangles, but of course it wasn't so at all really. Issues far too weighty hung in the balance. It is all very well for people whose mental range is limited by _matinees_ and Brooklands and the newest car to talk in pleasant and unimpa.s.sioned voices, but what was going to happen to Art unless Cosimo hurled himself and the '_Life and Work_'

against this heretic Van Gogh, and what was to become of England if Walter allowed a pig-headed man who could say nothing but "Blackpool Pier, Blackpool Pier," to shout him down, and what would happen to Civilization if Mr. Wilkinson did not, figuratively speaking, take hold of the dilettante Brimby and shake him as a terrier shakes a rat? No: there would be time enough for empty politenesses when the battle was won.

In the meantime, a mere n.o.body might have thought they were merely excessively rude to one another.

Then began fresh combinations and permutations of the talk. Mr.

Wilkinson, whose square-cut pilot jacket somehow added to the truculence of his appearance, planted himself firmly for conversation before d.i.c.kie Lemesurier; the miner, whose head at a little distance appeared bald, but on a closer view was seen to be covered with football-cropped and plush-like bristles, nudged Cosimo's hip, to attract his attention: and Walter Wyron sprang forward with a welcoming "Hallo, Raffinger!" as the door opened and two young McGrath students were added to the crowd. For a minute no one voice preponderated in the racket; it was--

"Hallo, Raff! Thought you weren't coming!"

"I want a gun!" (This from Corin.)

"My dear Corin" (this from Bonniebell), "Miss Belchamber's told you over and over again guns are anti-social----"

"Anybody smoking? Well, I know they don't mind----"

"But, Miss Lemesurier, where a speaker reaches only a hundred or two, the written word----"

"Ah, but the personal, magnetic thrill----" (This was in d.i.c.kie's rather deep voice.)

Then Walter, to somebody else, not the miner--

"I should have thought _anybody_ would have known that when I said Saturnalia I meant----"

"Where's Amory?"

"Sweet, in those little tunics!----"

"A subsidy from the State, of course----"

Then the miner, but not to Walter--

"I' t' daylight, proddin' 'em up wi' a stick--to say nowt o' Port Skillian bathin'-place of a fine Sunda'----"

"That h.o.a.ry old lie, that Socialism means sharing----"

"Oh, at any artists' colourman's----"

"No; it will probably be published privately----"

"Van Gogh----"

"Oh, you're _entirely_ wrong!----"