Pretty Lady — Chapters 8 & 9

"Futile--these grand gestures about wages."

Chapter 8 BOOTS

In the very small hall G. J.

gazed at himself in the mirror that was nearly as large as the bathroom door, to which it was attached, and which it ingeniously masked.

Although Mrs. Braiding was present, holding his ebony stick, he carefully examined his face and appearance without the slightest self-consciousness.

Nor did Mrs. Braiding's demeanour indicate that in her opinion G. J.

was behaving in a manner eccentric or incorrect.

He was dressed in mourning.

Honestly he did not believe that he looked anywhere near fifty.

His face was worn by the friction of the world, especially under the eyes, but his eyes were youthful, and his hair and moustache and short, fine beard scarcely tinged with grey.

His features showed benevolence, with a certain firmness, and they had the refinement which comes of half a century's instinctive avoidance of excess.

Still, he was beginning to feel his age.

He moved more slowly;

he sat down, instead of standing up, at the dressing-table.

And he was beginning also to take a pride in mentioning these changes and in the fact that he would be fifty on his next birthday.

And when talking to men under thirty, or even under forty, he would say in a tone mingling condescension and envy: "But, of course, you're young."

He departed, remarking that he should not be in for lunch and might not be in for dinner, and he walked down the covered way to the Albany Courtyard, and was approved by the Albany porters as a resident handsomely conforming to the traditional high standard set by the Albany for its residents.

He crossed Piccadilly, and as he did so he saw a couple of jolly fine girls, handsome, stylish, independent of carriage, swinging freely along and intimately talking with that mien of experience and broad-mindedness which some girls manage to wear in the streets.

One of them in particular appealed to him.

He thought how different they were from Christine.

He had dreamt of just such girls as they were, and yet now Christine filled the whole of his mind.

"You can't foresee," he thought.

He dipped down into the extraordinary rectangle of St. James's, where he was utterly at home.

A strange architecture, parsimoniously plain on the outside, indeed carrying the Oriental scorn for merely external effect to a point only reachable by a race at once hypocritical and madly proud.

The shabby plainness of Wren's church well typified all the parochial parsimony.

The despairing architect had been so pinched by his employers in the matter of ornament that on the whole of the northern facade there was only one of his favourite cherub's heads!

What a parish!

It was a parish of flat brick walls and brass door-knobs and brass plates.

And the first commandment was to polish every brass door-knob and every brass plate every morning.

What happened in the way of disfigurement by polishing paste to the surrounding brick or wood had no importance.

The conventions of the parish had no eye save for brass door-knobs and brass plates, which were maintained daily in effulgence by a vast early-rising population.

Recruiting offices, casualty lists, the rumour of peril and of glory, could do nothing to diminish the high urgency of the polishing of those brass door-knobs and those brass plates.

The shops and offices seemed to show that the wants of customers were few and simple.

Grouse moors, fisheries, yachts, valuations, hosiery, neckties, motor-cars, insurance, assurance, antique china, antique pictures, boots, riding-whips, and, above all, Eastern cigarettes!

The master-passion was evidently Eastern cigarettes.

The few provision shops were marmoreal and majestic, catering as they did chiefly for the multifarious palatial male clubs which dominated the parish and protected and justified the innumerable "bachelor" suites that hung forth signs in every street.

The parish, in effect, was first an immense monastery, where the monks, determined to do themselves extremely well in dignified peace, had made a prodigious and not entirely unsuccessful effort to keep out the excitable sex.

And, second, it was an excusable conspiracy on the part of intensely respectable tradesmen and stewards to force the non-bargaining sex to pay the highest possible price for the privilege of doing the correct thing.

G.

J.

passed through the cardiac region of St. James's, the Square itself, where knights, baronets, barons, brewers, viscounts, marquesses, hereditary marshals and chief butlers, dukes, bishops, banks, librarians and Government departments gaze throughout the four seasons at the statue of a Dutchman; and then he found himself at his bootmaker's. Now, his bootmaker was one of the three first bootmakers in the West End, bearing a name famous from Peru to Hong Kong.

An untidy interior, full of old boots and the hides of various animals!

A dirty girl was writing in a dirty tome, and a young man was knotting together two pieces of string in order to tie up a parcel.

Such was the "note" of the "house".

The girl smiled, the young man bowed.

In an instant the manager appeared, and G. J.

was invested with the attributes of God.

He informed the manager with pain, and the manager heard with deep pain, that the left boot of the new pair he then wore was not quite comfortable in the toes.

The manager simply could not understand it, just as he simply could not have understood a failure in the working of the law of gravity.

And if God had not told him he would not have believed it.

He knelt and felt.

He would send for the boots.

He would make the boots comfortable or he would make a new pair.

Expense was nothing.

Trouble was nothing.

Incidentally he remarked with a sigh that the enormous demand for military boots was rendering it more and more difficult for him to give to old patrons that prompt and plenary attention which he would desire to give.

However, God in any case should not suffer.

He noticed that the boots were not quite well polished, and he ventured to charge God with hints for God's personal attendant.

Then he went swiftly across to a speaking-tube and snapped: "Polisher!"

A trap-door opened in the floor of the shop and a horrible, pallid, weak, cringing man came up out of the earth of St. James's, and knelt before God far more submissively than even the manager had knelt.

He had brushes and blacking, and he blacked and he brushed and breathed alternately, undoing continually with his breath or his filthy hand what he had done with his brush.

He never looked up, never spoke.

When he had made the boots like mirrors he gathered together his implements and vanished, silent and dutifully bent, through the trap-door back into the earth of St. James's. And because the trap-door had not shut properly the manager stamped on it and stamped down the pale man definitely into the darkness underneath.

And then G. J.

was wafted out of the shop with smiles and bows.

Chapter 9 THE CLUB

The vast "morning-room" of the Monumental Club (pre-eminent among clubs for its architecture) was on the whole tonically chilly.

But as one of the high windows stood open, and there were two fires fluttering beneath the lovely marble mantelpieces, between the fires and the window every gradation of temperature could be experienced by the curious.

On each wall book-shelves rose to the carved and gilded ceiling.

The furlongs of shelves were fitted with majestic volumes containing all the Statutes, all the Parliamentary Debates, and all the Reports of Royal Commissions ever printed to narcotise the conscience of a nation.

These calf-bound works were not, in fact, read; but the magnificent pretence of their usefulness was completed by carpeted mahogany ladders which leaned here and there against the shelfing, in accord with the theory that some studious member some day might yearn and aspire to some upper shelf.

On reading-stands and on huge mahogany tables were disposed the countless newspapers of Great Britain and Ireland, Europe and America, and also the files of such newspapers.

The apparatus of information was complete.

G.

J.

entered the splendid apartment like a discoverer.

It was empty.

Not a member; not a servant!

It waited, content to be inhabited, equally content with its own solitude.

This apartment had made an adjunct even of the war; the function of the war in this apartment was to render it more impressive, to increase, if possible, its importance, for nowhere else could the war be studied so minutely day by day.

A strange thing!

G.

J.'

s sense of duty to himself had been quickened by the defection of his valet.

He felt that he had been failing to comprehend in detail the cause and the evolution of the war, and that even his general ideas as to it were inexcusably vague; and he had determined to go every morning to the club, at whatever inconvenience, for the especial purpose of studying and getting the true hang of the supreme topic.

As he sat down he was aware of the solemnity of the great room, last fastness of the old strict decorum in the club.

You might not smoke in it until after 10 p. m.

Two other members came in immediately, one after the other.

The first, a little, very old and very natty man, began to read _The Times_ at a stand.

The second, old too, but of larger and firmer build, with a long, clean-shaven upper lip, such as is only developed at the Bar, on the Bench, and in provincial circles of Noncomformity, took an easy-chair and another copy of _The Times_.

A few moments elapsed, and then the little old man glanced round, and, assuming surprise that he had not noticed G. J.

earlier, nodded to him with a very bright and benevolent smile.

G.

J.

said: "Well, Sir Francis, what's your opinion of this Ypres business.

Seems pretty complicated, doesn't it?"

Sir Francis answered in a tone whose mild and bland benevolence matched his smile: "I dare say the complications escape me.

I see the affair quite simply.

We are holding on, but we cannot continue to hold on.

The Germans have more men, far more guns, and infinitely more ammunition.

They certainly have not less genius for war.

What can be the result?

I am told by respectable people that the Germans lost the war at the Marne.

I don't appreciate it.

I am told that the Germans don't realise the Marne.

I think they realise the Marne at least as well as we realise Tannenberg."

The slightly trembling, slightly mincing voice of Sir Francis denoted such detachment, such politeness, such kindliness, that the opinion it emitted seemed to impose itself on G. J.

with extraordinary authority.

There was a brief pause, and Sir Francis ejaculated: "What's your view, Bob?"

The other old man now consisted of a newspaper, two seamy hands and a pair of grey legs.

His grim voice came from behind the newspaper, which did not move: "We've no adequate means of judging."

"True," said Sir Francis.

"Now, another thing I'm told is that the War Office was perfectly ready for the war on the scale agreed upon for ourselves with France and Russia.

I don't appreciate that either.

No War Office can be said to be perfectly ready for any war until it has organised its relations with the public which it serves.

My belief is that the War Office had never thought for one moment about the military importance of public opinion and the Press.

At any rate, it has most carefully left nothing undone to alienate both the public and the Press.

My son-in-law has the misfortune to own seven newspapers, and the tales he tells about the antics of the Press Bureau--" Sir Francis smiled the rest of the sentence.

"Let me see, they offered the Press Bureau to you, didn't they, Bob?"

_The Times_ fell, disclosing Bob, whose long upper lip grew longer.

"They did," he said.

"I made a few inquiries, and found it was nothing but a shuttlecock of the departments.

I should have had no real power, but unlimited quantities of responsibility.

So I respectfully refused."

Sir Francis remarked: "Your hearing's much better, Bob."

"It is," answered Bob.

"The fact is, I got hold of a marvellous feller at Birmingham."

He laughed sardonically.

"I hope to go down to history as the first judge that ever voluntarily retired because of deafness.

And now, thanks to this feller at Birmingham, I can hear better than seventy-five per cent of the Bench.

The Lord Chancellor gave me a hint I might care to return, and so save a pension to the nation.

I told him I'd begin to think about that when he'd persuaded the Board of Works to ventilate my old Court."

He laughed again.

"And now I see the Press Bureau is enunciating the principle that it won't permit criticism that might in any way weaken the confidence of the people in the administration of affairs."

Bob opened his mouth wide and kept it open.

Sir Francis, with no diminution of the mild and bland benevolence of his detachment, said: "The voice is the Press Bureau's voice, but the hands are the hands of the War Office.

Can we reasonably hope to win, or not to lose, with such a mentality at the head?

I cannot admit that the War Office has changed in the slightest degree in a hundred years.

From time to time a brainy civilian walks in, like Cardwell or Haldane, and saves it from becoming patently ridiculous.

But it never really alters.

When I was War Secretary in a transient government it was precisely the same as it had been in the reign of the Duke of Cambridge, and to-day it is still precisely the same.

I am told that Haldane succeeded in teaching our generals the value of Staff work as distinguished from dashing cavalry charges.

I don't appreciate that.

The Staffs are still wide open to men with social influence and still closed to men without social influence.

My grandson is full of great modern notions about tactics.

He may have talent for all I know.

He got a Staff appointment--because he came to me and I spoke ten words to an old friend of mine with oak leaves in the club next door but one.

No questions asked.

I mean no serious questions.

It was done to oblige me--the very existence of the Empire being at stake, according to all accounts.

So that I venture to doubt whether we're going to hold Ypres, or anything else."

Bob, unimpressed by the speech, burst out: "You've got the perspective wrong.

Obviously the centre of gravity is no longer in the West--it's in the East.

In the West, roughly, equilibrium has been established.

Hence Poland is the decisive field, and the measure of the Russian success or failure is the measure of the Allied success or failure."

Sir Francis inquired with gentle joy: "Then we're all right?

The Russians have admittedly recovered from Tannenberg.

If there is any truth in a map they are doing excellently.

They're more brilliant than Potsdam, and they can put two men into the field to the Germans' one--two and a half in fact."

Bob fiercely rumbled: "I don't think we're all right.

This habit of thinking in men is dangerous.

What are men without munitions?

And without a clean administration?

Nothing but a rabble.

It is notorious that the Russians are running short of munitions and that the administration from top to bottom consists of outrageous rascals.

Moreover I see to-day a report that the Germans have won a big victory at Kutno.

I've been expecting that.

That's the beginning--mark me!"

"Yes," Sir Francis cheerfully agreed.

"Yes.

We're spending one million a day, and now income tax is doubled!

The country cannot stand it indefinitely, and since our only hope lies in our being able to stand it indefinitely, there is no hope--at any rate for unbiased minds.

Facts are facts, I fear."

Bob cried impatiently: "Unbiased be damned!

I don't want to be unbiased.

I won't be.

I had enough of being unbiased when I was on the Bench, and I don't care what any of you unbiased people say--I believe we shall win."

G.

J.

suddenly saw a boy in the old man, and suddenly he too became boyish, remembering what he had said to Christine about the war not having begun yet; and with fervour he concurred: "So do I." He rose, moved--relieved after a tension which he had not noticed until it was broken.

It was time for him to go.

The two old men were recalled to the fact of his presence.

Bob raised the newspaper again.

Sir Francis asked: "Are you going to the--er--affair in the City?"

"Yes," said G. J.

with careful unconcern.

"I had thought of going.

My granddaughter worried me till I consented to take her.

I got two tickets; but no sooner had I arrayed myself this morning than she rang me up to say that her baby was teething and she couldn't leave it.

In view of this important creature's indisposition I sent the tickets back to the Dean and changed my clothes.

Great-grandfathers have to be philosophers.

I say, Hoape, they tell me you play uncommonly good auction bridge."

"I play," said G. J.

modestly.

"But no better than I ought."

"You might care to make a fourth this afternoon, in the card-room."