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Storm Of London

<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2> “I say, Danford, it is far more dignified to go about as we do; there is no shamming any more,” said Sinclair, as he linked his arm in that of Lionel. The three men were coming down Bond Street. “No one stops me to make irrelevant remarks on my matrimonial affairs.” His spirits were buoyant, he felt himself master of the world, not merely the master over men; neither did he enjoy that spurious sense of independence which made him formerly, as a man of fashion, order his pleasures at such an hour, his carriage at another; but he felt that noble freedom which emancipated him from trifling bonds and conventional statutes. “When you taught John Bull that happiness can exist without church fees and Society’s sanction, and that sorrow is really ennobled by the absence of funeral plumes and crocodile tears, you taught him an everlasting lesson,” answered the little buffoon. “Don’t you think,” suddenly exclaimed Lionel, “that the streets are looking more rational than they used to?” They were crossing Piccadilly. “See how these long arcades protect the pedestrians in bad weather; and notice the spacious galleries opened out under the houses where the shops used to be.” “Yes, my lord, shop-land is no more. We owe that improvement to your valet.” “His plan turned out a real success,” said Lionel, “and the fellow is as active in his present work of reform as he was lazy in his past career.” “Idleness has disappeared with the injustice which separated classes; the meanest urchin knows that there is a premium applied to brains, and that premium is—universal happiness.” “Now that we all work,” said Lionel, “you would not find a man or a woman who would not willingly help in the construction of machinery to liberate mankind from slavery. Look at these galleries running under the arcades; in each arch there is a large board with electric bells which communicate with edifices outside London, where all the necessaries of life are fabricated. Each house has one of these boards, and thus meals for invalids, the sweeping and washing up of rooms, in fact, all the necessaries of life can be obtained by merely pressing one of these electric bells.” “Likewise—the dining-halls,” said Danford, “have been considerably improved and simplified; cooking by electricity has given back freedom to thousands of cooks and scullion-maids. Instead of personal attendance, there are trays placed on electric trollies running along in the middle of the dinner-tables, which stop at each guest, and which can be started again on their course by touching a small bell. What a transformation the City has undergone, to be sure. We all put our shoulders to the wheel; at stated hours we work for the welfare of all, and the labour seems light, for it is divided, and the aim is universal contentment. No task is beneath us; no employment is too trivial, were it even to fix a screw in the axle of a small wheel, providing that wheel leads us swiftly to the goal.” “The wrong labour,” broke in Lionel, “was that which toiled for the luxuries of a few to the detriment of the many; but the labour undertaken by all, for the greatest happiness of all, is as exhilarating as the early morning’s breeze.” “You would never know the people you elbow now from those with whom you used to associate,” said Danford. “Could you recall in the man just coming out of the ex-Atheneum Club the former frequenter of the past race-course?” “Ah! that’s the Duke of Norbury,” answered Sinclair. “The fellow looks altogether normal. Certainly he is not so common in his plain—skin.” “That is because his sporting grace has lost the label which directed him to Newmarket,” answered Dan. They had reached Trafalgar Square, and very soon faced Parliament Street. Suddenly the little buffoon halted and, bursting out laughing, exclaimed,— “By Jove! are you aware that this day is the 24th of June? the day on which the Coronation was to be held?” The three men paused; they looked round in wonderment. Birds were singing merrily as they hopped on the Landseer lions, the soft breeze wrinkled the surface of the water in which lads and lassies were ducking, and splashing each other in merry laughter. “Do you not hear, in your mind’s ear,” sententiously spoke Danford, “the distant rumble of drums and metallic strains of military bands? Does not your mind’s eye perceive in the distance the glittering of swords in the sunshine, and the variegated uniforms of Colonial and Indian armies? Slowly comes the procession up Parliament Street, furrowing its way through an ebbing and flowing wave of humanity. The great of the land are all there, labelled with their uniforms. There, look, comes a gilded coach. In that coach I can see two figures, systematically bowing on either side of the carriage. What is the meaning of these two figures got up like dolls for the occasion?” “My poor Dan, there is no meaning in them. They are the symbol of past inconsistency,” replied Sinclair. “How was it,” asked Lionel, “that with all that science was doing for the progress of the modern world, and with all that art was creating to make life beautiful, how was it we never came any nearer to happiness?” “My dear Lionel,” answered Sinclair, “because we wanted to reconcile our modern world with the old one. Steering our way back into the past against the current which carried us on to the future was hard work, very often a perilous expedition; we travestied barbarous passions with new garments, to make them more presentable to our modern world; and the thirst for conquest and wealth was disguised under the mask of political philanthropy. Vice had its fur-lined overcoat; ruthless money-diggers and empire-makers stalked through the town as modern Aladdins; sometimes even, they raised their own eyes to the exalted position of God’s A.D.C. Prostitution left street corners to mount the marble steps of palaces, where the hand of the clergy helped it to enter the precincts of social Paradise—” “Listen, my lord,” interrupted Danford. “Do you hear the tramping of horses’ hoofs? Conquering heroes, whose glory is written on the sands of life, are coming.” “Posterity with her broom and shovel will clear away the dust of their rubbish,” said Lionel. “It will collect in its dust-pan some strange manifestations: Cæsar, Napoleon, Marlborough—” “Leave out the more recent names,” broke in Sinclair; “they are too near to us.” “You are right,” said Lionel. “Still, posterity, in her impartial summing up, will be more lenient towards those whose crimes were the results of unpolished ignorance, than towards those whose lust was cleverly screened by Pharisaism. It will not be hard on Edward III. and Philippe le Bel for haggling over France like two butcher’s dogs over a bone; but I am afraid it will judge unmercifully our modern civilisations which masqueraded and played parts unsuited to them. Has the Hundred Years’ War given the supremacy to either France or England? What has the Inquisition and the Spanish ascendency over the Dutch Republic done for Spain’s prosperity?” “And what would the annexation of the South African Provinces have done for England’s glory, had not the storm put a sudden stop to his country’s hysterical fits?” inquired Danford. “Our old world has gone through a good deal of alteration,” remarked Sinclair. “Maps have always impressed me as the saddest annals of history. As a boy, I used to turn the pages of atlas books with the keenest interest; they spoke to me of human struggles, of longings and morbid regrets.” “Yes,” added Danford, “maps are the medical charts of the intermittent fevers from which countries suffer.” “Thank God for the blessings His water-spout has conferred on us!” burst out Lionel. “I shudder when I think that we might, on this very day, have witnessed this fantastic pageantry. The opium-eater, in his weirdest delirium, could not have pictured a more uncanny parade, than the one we should have beheld at the dawn of the twentieth century: London—a huge pawnbroker’s shop—turning out into the streets all its pandemonium! the properties of our modern world thrown together, higgledy-piggledy, with the paraphernalia of a Cinderella pantomime! The incongruous was then the order of the day, and our brains, before the storm, were the receptacles of untidy ideas.” “My lord, do you hear in the distance the bells of St Paul’s ringing their peals?” “Yes, they are ringing for the sacred union of clericalism with worldly wisdom.” “How could we reconcile the symbolic ceremony of a crowned monarch with the limitations of our constitution?” asked Danford. “How was it possible to adapt obsolete palliaments to the democratic innovation of the coat and skirt? For I think we may truly call this revolution in feminine dress the 1789 of Histology.” “You are right, my dear Dan, but I want to know what our epoch was aiming at?” asked Sinclair, sitting down on one of the steps. “Was it playing a practical joke on democracy, or was it acting a monarchical burlesque? What had our fashionable metropolis to do with the customs of a London which began at the Strand, and whose centre was the Tower? Doubtless, the auditory faculty of a Plantagenet would have suffered from the bustling London of Edward VII., and the clamouring noise of a railway station would have certainly upset the nerves of even that bloodthirsty Richard III.” “The fact is, my dear fellow,” said Lionel, who sat down near Sinclair, “we had, before the storm, arrived at the cross-roads, and had to choose which turning we should take. Were we to go straight ahead, regardless of past traditions, on a motor car; or should we have chosen a shady road and ambled back to Canterbury on a Chaucerian cob, escorting that gentle dame yclept “Madam Eglantine”? The twentieth century was the sphinx confronting us. Were we going to meet it with an old adage, or were we at last to be Œdipus and solve the question?” “As long as we dragged at our heels the worthless baggage of the past, we could not proceed on our road.” Danford stood in front of the two men. “We went to our political business in fairy coaches, and could not make out why we arrived too late for Parliamentary tit-bits. We were playing the fool on the brink of a precipice, and spent our time and energy in staging a sort of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in a graveyard. It was as tragic as it was flippant, and if posterity will laugh at our inconsistency, how much more must Mediævalism grin at our lack of adaptability. I should like to know what King Alfred or Queen Bess have to say about us?” “Poor Alfred,” sighed Lionel, “I feel for him, for he must be mortified at having given the first impulse to English language to produce—Marian Crivelli!” “Ha! ha! ha! As to dear old Bess,” remarked Sinclair; “with all her cunning, and the improbity of her politics, she was essentially modern—of her times modernity, naturally, for of course, Conservatism and Radicalism are relative. Had she seen the development of science; had she crossed the Channel in one hour, and the Atlantic in a week; and had she been able to send a wireless message to a distant continent, she would have jumped with delight!—she would have twigged in an instant that the curtain had dropped upon the old world, and she would have advised her successor to throw unscrupulously overboard, crown, sceptre, regal goods and chattels—in fact, all royal overweight—to save the crew!” “That reminds me,” suddenly said Lionel, “that I had a telephonic causerie this morning with Victor de Laumel, in Paris. He said that at the clubs everyone was discussing the latest. The Sovereigns of Europe are going to meet in congress at the Hague to confabulate on what they had better do in face of this strange event in England.” “When the Sovereigns themselves are aware of the inconsistency of their condition, and the futility of their prerogatives, then their eyes will be open as to what their future conduct has to be.” “That is just what Victor says. They are as excited about this congress, in Paris, as they were about Fashoda and Dreyfus, and, naturally, they blame us for it; all the smart clubs are dead nuts against England for playing into the hands of Jove.” “Oh! that does not astonish me in the least,” said Danford. “But about this congress, Lord Somerville, I think we have already taught the world a lesson, and that sooner than I ever expected. At this rate the storm of London will rank as the greatest event in the history of nations. If you look at history impartially, you will find that every reform carried in its breast the seed of another excess. A wrong was abolished, by what, at the time, appeared a right principle, until another standpoint was reached, which showed us the wrong side of the right principle.” “If this strange condition of ours,” broke in Sinclair, “does, after all, lead to the reform of the governing classes from within, then, indeed, it was worth losing one’s shirt!” And the three men laughed heartily. “Look round, my lord,” and Danford pointed to the National Gallery. “You have given the first impetus to true art.” “No, no, Danford,” interrupted Lionel. “It was the public who gave me the hint.” “Never mind, my lord, the thing is done, and you have awakened the consciousness of our English artists. Look down Parliament Street, where your mind’s eye saw, a minute ago, the pantomime of Government; you can see our ancient seat of Parliament transformed into the sanctuary of technical education. The old lobbies are swarming with efficient teachers. Public education, as it was to be found in our old haunts of Eton, Rugby, etc., etc., was the proper training for privileged classes; but the present education, which is not compulsory, is the training of the child and adult without social barriers; and the only religious dogma which he must live up to is this: that the welfare of all is the welfare of each.” “And yet,” sadly remarked Sinclair, “science is still but empiric, as it has not yet revealed to us the mystery of the human heart; that remains a sealed letter. Some writer has named that mysterious recess of individuality, ‘the hidden garden’; but how ignorant we still are of its vegetation. Do we know what causes, in that hidden garden of the soul, a lovely rose to grow where the soil was barren; or a toadstool to sprout where the seed of a robust plant had been sown?” “No, we know no more of each other’s inner souls than the early Britons knew of steam and electricity,” said Lionel. “As long as we have not reached complete consciousness we shall never triumph over the inconsistencies which place men on different platforms, and spur them on to fight unfair battles.” “Ah, my lord, you have a receptive mind, and I knew, from the beginning, that the day would come when you would open your eyes to the gulf which separates man from man. Yesterday morning the Committee of Music Hall Artists introduced at our meeting a queer sort of man, who struck me as visionary in his ideas, and matter-of-fact in the carrying out of his plans.” “Surely, Dan, he was an American,” remarked Sinclair, “for the gift of bottling the ocean, or of cramming into a nutshell all the contradictory philosophical theories, belongs to that race which unites the creative power of a Jupiter to the jugglery of a mountebank.” “What that man, be he god or charlatan, suggests is too grave to be spoken of lightly or to be taken up in a minute,” continued Danford, “and I implore your lordship not to jump too quickly at a conclusion. But, to come to facts, this man avers that he has discovered the means of reading human thoughts and secret motives just as clearly as one sees the hidden structure of a body by means of the X-rays. He says that we have, owing to our normal hygiene and purity of life, arrived at the time when this invention will be necessary to bring perfect happiness to human beings; and that our past weeks of paradisaical existence have changed John Bull and made him thirst for a complete knowledge of his fellow-creatures. This is a serious matter, gentlemen, and, for God’s sake, do not let us wreck the future bliss of the world through our incautiousness. You have done much for John Bull, my lord, but you have done it chiefly by being tactful with him, and by not ruffling his susceptibilities. After all, man is a strange being: he clings to the prejudices which makes his life a living purgatory; and you must first see John Bull develop a craving to investigate the ‘hidden garden’ before the final reform of man by man can be effected from within.” “Let us curb our enthusiasm for the sake of John Bull,” buoyantly exclaimed Lionel, “and let us turn back, Danford. It is getting late, and I have to be at the old War Office to meet ex-Field-Marshal Burlow, to discuss with him what is to be done with the old offices.” “My lord!” and Danford put his hand on Lionel’s shoulder, “an idea has just struck me! You can do a good turn to the American Seer, by giving over to him the War Office for his scientific experiments. What could be more fitted to the science which is devoted to the extension of sympathy, than the dwelling in which was planned the extermination of races?” “My dear man, the Seer shall have the old rookery, if I have a voice in the matter, although I fear the shadows of past victims and the remembrance of foregone civilised warfare will lurk at every corner, and interfere with his humanising studies.” “Quite the contrary,” said Sinclair. “The Seer, if he is what we think, is sure to be stimulated by the ghosts of barbaric civilisations, and his sense of humour will make him chuckle at the irony of fate, which selected him to metamorphose Janus’s eyrie into a temple of love and peace.” <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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