I used to think this a very big world, but yesterday something made me doubt it. The morning was fine again. The ship was leaving Odessa at noon. I sat with Wedder in the one place outside our cabin I can persuade him to go, a nook between two ventilators. He was reading a French Bible because all other books in the passengers’ lounge are Russian. Luckily he knows French so that book and he are now inseparable. He reads some parts again and again, then stares a long time at nothing, frowning and whispering “I see.” I was reading Punch or The London Charivari, an English magazine of art and comedy. The pictures showed many kinds of people. The ugliest and most comical are Scots, Irish, foreign, poor, servants, rich folk who have been poor until very recently, small men, old unmarried women and Socialists. The Socialists are ugliest, very dirty and hairy with weak chins, and seem to spend their time grumbling to other people at street corners.
“What are Socialists, Duncan?” I asked.
“Fools who think the world should be improved.”
“Why? Is something wrong with it?”
“The Socialists are wrong with it—and my infernal luck.”
“You told me once that luck is a solemn name for ignorance.”
“Do not torture me, Bell.”
He always says that when he wants me to shut my mouth. I watched the gulls circling in a blue sky full of big slow-moving clouds. I saw the huge harbour full of shipping with bright flags and funnels, masts and sails. I looked at the sunlit quay with its cranes, bales, busy brawny dockers and uniformed officers. I wondered how to improve all this, but it looked all right. Then I studied Punch again and wondered why the well-dressed English people in the pictures were handsomer and less comic than anyone else, unless they were newly rich. Noisy shouts and clattering hooves interrupted these thoughts. Three galloping horses brought a peculiar carriage lurching along the quay and were pulled to a halt at the end of our gangway. Out climbed one of the well-dressed, handsome people I had been puzzling over in Punch. As he came aboard past the Russian seamen and officers I nearly laughed aloud—his thin stiff figure, stiff face, glossy top-hat and neat frock-coat looked so comically English.
Bell Baxter likes meeting new people. Wedder will not eat outside our cabin so last night I tied a clean napkin round my poor man’s neck, settled him with his dinner tray and headed for the dining-saloon. I am now a well-known character on this ship, and passengers who speak English are always placed at my table. This time I had only two. Both had boarded at Odessa. One was a stout, brown-faced American doctor called Doctor Hooker; the other was the obvious Englishman—Mr. Astley! I got very excited. I said, “Do you work for a London firm called Lovel and Co?”
“I am on the board of directors.”
“Are you a cousin of Lord Pibroch?”
“I am.”
“How wonderful! I am a friend of a great friend of yours, a lovely little Russian gambler who drifts around the German betting-shops in a very poor way—he has even been to jail, but not for anything very nasty. The odd thing is, I do not know his name, but he thinks of you as his best friend because you have been so very good to him.”
After a long pause Mr. Astley said slowly, “I cannot say I am a friend of the person you describe.”
He took up his soup-spoon and so did puzzled Bell Baxter. We would have eaten in silence if Doctor Hooker had not cheered me up with stories of his missionary work in China. Just before the meal ended Mr. Astley, thoughtfully stirring his coffee, said, “However, I know the fellow you spoke about. My wife is Russian, the daughter of a Russian general. I once gave some assistance to a servant in her father’s household, a sort of male nurse who looked after the younger children. That was years ago.”
I said accusingly, “He is a very good wise kind soul! He helped me a lot, and gained nothing by it, and likes all Englishmen because of you!”
“Ah.”
I would not have hated him had he said “O!” or “Eh?” but he said “Ah” as if he knew more than everyone else in the world, knew so much that talking was useless. The outchatel called him shy. I think him stupid and cold. I was glad to hurry back to my warm warm Wedder who can be blown up into giving all the solid heat a woman wants. But do not worry, Candle. Your tie-pin still gleams in the lapel of Bell’s travelling-coat.
Dr. H. looks glad whenever he sees me, unlike Mr. Astley. He is a doctor of medicine as well as divinity so today I asked him to look in on Wedder who still acts like a sick man, though no longer pale and shivering. I stayed outside the cabin during the consultation, but near enough to hear the kindly, rumbling voice of Dr. H. punctuated by short answers (I suppose) from Wedder, who at last started shouting. When Dr. H. came out he said Wedder’s illness was not physical.
“We disagreed over the doctrine of the Atonement,” he told me, “and the inevitability of Hell—he thinks me too liberal. But religion is not his main problem. He is using it to distract him from a very painful recent memory he refuses to discuss. Do you know what it is?”
I told him that the poor man had made a fool of himself in a German betting-shop.
“If that is all,” said Dr. H., “let hint sulk himself better in his own good time. Treat him with affection, but do not spoil your own lovely bloom by refraining from cheerful social exercise. Do you play chequers? No? Allow me to teach you.”
He is a gorgeous man.
Dear God we are passing once again between the Isles of Greece where burning Byron loved and sang and I am very glad that the breasts of the girls here no longer suckle slaves and I have just had a glorious breakfast at which Dr. H. and Mr. A. argued tremendously and Mr. Astley started it! We were astonished. For the last two days he has eaten with us and said nothing but “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” “Good evening,” so we were used to chatting as though he did not exist. This morning my American friend was telling me how the smaller Chinese skull made it hard for the Chinese to learn English when: “Did you find it easy to learn Chinese, Dr. Hooker?” asked Mr. Astley.
“Sir,” said Dr. H., facing round to him, “I did not visit China to learn the language of Confucius and Lao-tsze. For fifteen years I have served a federation of American Bible societies which—with some assistance from our chambers of commerce and the United States government—employed me to teach the natives of Peking the language and faith of the Christian Bible. For this purpose I found the simplest jargon of the poorest coolies (you call it pidgin English) more useful than Mandarin complexities.”
Mr. Astley said softly, “The Spaniards who first colonized your continent think Latin the language of the Christian faith and Bible.”
“The brand of religion I preach and try to practise,” said Dr. H., “was preached by Moses and Jesus long before the Roman Emperors took it up and tricked it out in the superfluous pomps of earthly kingship.”
“Ah.”
“Mr. Astley sir!” said Dr. H. sternly, “by a simple question and an oblique comment you have drawn from me a confession of faith. Let me ask the same from you. Have you invited Jesus into your heart as your personal saviour? Or are you a Roman Catholic? Or do you support the English State Church whose pope is Queen Victoria?”
“When I am in England,” said Mr. Astley slowly, “I support the Church of England. It keeps England stable. For the same reason I support the Church of Scotland in Scotland, Hindooism in India, Mahometanism in Egypt. The British Empire would not be governing a quarter of the globe if we opposed the local religions. Had our government made Catholicism the official religion of Ireland it would now easily control that troublesome colony with the help of the popish priests, though of course the Ulstermen would need a corner to themselves.”
“Mr. Astley, you are worse than an atheist,” said Dr. H. gravely. “An atheist has at least a strong conviction of what he does not believe. You believe in nothing firm or fixed. You are a timeserver—a faithless man.”
“Not quite faithless,” murmured Mr. Astley. “I am a Malthusiast—I believe in the gospel according to Malthus.”
“I thought Malthus was a Church of England clergyman with bats in his belfry about expanding populations. Do you tell me he has founded a new religion?”
“No, a new faith. Religions involve congregations, preachers, prayers, hymns, special buildings or codes or rituals. My brand of Malthusiasm does not.”
“Your brand, Mr. Astley? Are there many?”
“Yes. All systems prove their vigour through subdivision: Christianity, for instance.”
“Touché!” said Dr. H., chuckling. “It is a pleasure to cross swords with you. And now sir, explain your sect of Malthusiasm. Convert me to it!”
“You are better as you are, Dr. Hooker. My faith offers no comfort to the poor, the sick, the cruelly used and those on the point of death. I have no wish to spread it.”
“A faith without hope and charity?” cried Dr. H. loudly.
“Then fling it from you, Mr. Astley, for it has obviously frozen the blood in your veins! Ditch it. Tie a weight to it and fling it overboard. Get a faith which warms the heart, binds you to your fellow men and points us all toward a golden future.”
“I dislike intoxicating fluids. I prefer the bitter truth.”
“Mr. Astley, I see you are one of those sad modern souls who think the material world a harsh machine which destroys the feeling hearts and seeing minds who enter it. Think ye, by the bowels of Christ, that ye may be wrong! Our gloriously varied universe could not have sprouted brains and hearts like ours if the Maker of All had not designed them for this planet, designed the planet for them, and all for Himself!”
“Your vision of the world as a place where God grows human vegetables for his own consumption may appeal to a market gardener, Dr. Hooker,” said Mr. Astley, “but not to me. I am a businessman. Have you a faith, Mrs. Wedderburn?”
“Is that something to do with God?” I asked, pleased that he had spoken to me.
“Indeed it is, Mrs. Wedderburn,” cried Doctor H., “for most people, if not for Mr. Astley. Even he is a child of God though he won’t admit it—but you are especially so. The faith, hope and charity shining from your clear eyes guarantee it. Pray tell us, Mrs. Wedderburn, how you perceive Our Father Which Art in Heaven.”
Since my quack with the outchatel in the German park I had not had a chance to talk about the great big ordinary queer things because Wedder finds them a torture. And now these two clever men wanted me to talk about EVERYTHING! Out the words tumbled.
“All I know about that god,” I said, “is what I was told by my own God—by my guardian, Godwin Baxter. He said god is a handy name for all and everything: your top-hat and dreams Mr. Astley, sky boots Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond bortsch me molten lava time ideas whooping-cough ecstasies of wedded bliss my white rabbit Flopsy AND the hutch she lives in—everything named in every dictionary and book there has ever been and ever could be adds up to god. But the wholly-est bit of god is movement, because it keeps stirring things to make new ones. Movement turns dead dogs into maggots and daisies, and flour butter sugar an egg and a tablespoonful of milk into Abernethy biscuits,18 and spermatozoa and ovaries into fishy little plants growing babyward if we take no care to stop them. And movement causes pain when solid bodies knock into living ones or living ones knock each other, so to stop us getting knocked dead before life wears us out we have generated developed evolved acquired invented matured gained and grown eyes and brains to let us see knocks coming and dodge them. And how beautifully the whole godly clamjamfrie works! I thought of improving the port of Odessa three days ago and could not see where to start. I know things were not always thus. I have read The Last Days of Pompeii and Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Wuthering Heights so know that history is full of nastiness, but history is all past so nowadays nobody is cruel to each other, just stupid sometimes when they get into betting-shops. Punch says only lazy people are out of work so the very poorest must enjoy being poor. They also have the consolation of being comic. I know of course that bad accidents sometimes happen, but life goes on. My parents were killed in a train crash but I cannot remember them so I hardly ever weep. Anyway, they must have been old, so nearly worn out. I have been told I lost a baby somewhere else, but I know my little daughter is being cared for. My guardian looks after sick dogs and cats without being paid so a lost little girl is bound to be safe. What bitter truth were you talking about, Mr. Astley?”
While I spoke a strange thing happened. Both men were staring at my face hard harder hardest, but Mr. Astley leaned closer and closer as he did so while Dr. H. leaned further and further back. Yet when I stopped speaking Mr. Astley did not reply, and Dr. H. said in a low voice, “My child, have you never read God’s holy Bible?”
“I am nobody’s child!” I told him sharply, but of course I had then to explain about the amnesia. When I had done it Dr. H. said, “But ch!—Mrs. Wedderburn, your husband seems to be a devout Christian. Has he given you no religious instruction?”
I told him I could hardly get a word out of poor Wedder since he went biblical. Dr. H. gazed silently at me until Mr. Astley said in a strange voice, “Dr. Hooker, do you intend to instruct Mrs. Wedderburn in the doctrines of original sin and eternal punishment for worldly transgressions?”
“No sir,” said Dr. Hooker shortly.
“Mrs. Wedderburn,” said Mr. Astley, “your guardian’s account of the universe is one to which neither of us object. The bitter truth I spoke of is a statistical matter—a detail of political economy. I was joking when I called it a faith — I said that to annoy Dr. Hooker. I am a phlegmatic fellow, so his American exuberance annoyed me. But we are both glad you find the world a good and happy place.”
“Shake,” said Dr. H. quietly, and held out his hand, and Mr. Astley shook it.
“I like seeing you two gentlemen friendly,” I told them, “but I feel you are in a conspiracy to hide something from me, and I am going to find out what it is. Shall we take a walk on deck?”
So I strolled on deck with them. A lovely morning. Now I am going to have lunch in our cabin with my Wedder, followed by an afternoon of cuddles. I wonder what Dr. H. and Mr. A. will talk about over dinner this evening?
“What brought you to Odessa, Astley?”
“Beetroot, Dr. Hooker. My firm refines and sells cane sugar but German beet sugar may cheapen that unless we compete with the German product. But British farmers refuse to grow sugar-beet—they get more for other root crops. To undercut the Germans we need sugar-beet from farmers who work for Asiatic, not European wages, hence my visit to Russia. We also need a port linked to international shipping lanes, hence my visit to Odessa.”
“So the British Lion is forging trade links with the Russian Bear?”
“Too early to say, Dr. Hooker. The Russians offer us land and labour to build a sugar refinery on very good terms, but the soil and climate may not be best for sugar-beet. What brought you to Odessa? Does your federation of Bible societies plan to convert the followers of the Russian Orthodox Church?”
“Nope. Fact is, I have retired from missionary work. I came to China fifteen years ago by the straight Pacific line. I am wending my way home to the Land of the Free by the pleasantest and most roundabout route I can find.”
“Siam, India, Afghanistan?”
“Not quite.”
“The Outer Mongolian and Turkestan or Siberian routes are not exactly pleasure trips either, Dr. Hooker. You must have needed an armed escort for much of the way. Did the United States government pay for that or the American chambers of commerce?”
“You are a deep and dangerous man, Astley!” said Dr. Hooker, chuckling a bit. “I would rather be up against ten wily oriental warlords than a single Englishman of your stamp. Yes, a few far-seeing American citizens asked me to report on some aspects of central Asia, the world’s largest sink of unclaimed heathendom. Can you blame us? Britain has carved up the rest of the planet. Less than two years ago you grabbed Egypt from the French—and from the Egyptians.”
“We needed their canal. We paid them for it.”
“You also shelled Alexandria, our next port of call.”
“They were arming it against us and we needed their canal.”
“And now British regiments are fighting the Dervishes in the Sudan.”
“We cannot tolerate religions which urge the natives to rule themselves. Home rule would disturb trade and our smooth running of the canal.”
Up piped Bell Baxter: “What are natives, Mr. Astley?”
I had been keeping quiet, hoping to learn things, but “undercut”, “report on aspects”, “unclaimed heathendom”, “carved up the planet”, “grabbed Egypt”, “home rule”, “disturb trade” made no sense to me. However, “natives” sounded like people.
“Natives,” said Mr. Astley carefully, “are people who live on the soil where they were born, and do not want to leave it. Not many English can be regarded as natives because we have a romantic preference for other people’s soils, though we are very loyal to our old schools and school friends, our regiments and businesses. Some even feel loyal to the Queen, who is a very selfish old lady.”
“Are there no British natives?”
“In Wales, Ireland and Scotland perhaps. In England we still have a class of farmers, farm servants, estate workers et cetera, but the landowners and city dwellers regard them as useful animals, like horses and dogs.”
“But why are British soldiers fighting Egyptian natives? It makes no sense to me.”
“I am glad it makes no sense to you, Mrs. Wedderburn. Politics, like filling and emptying cesspools, is filthy work and women should be protected from it. Let us talk of cleaner things, Dr. Hooker.”
“Halt there, Astley!” said Dr. Hooker sternly. “In the States we have a high regard for the intelligence and education of the fairer sex. In a few words I can tell Mrs. Wedderburn the whole political state of the planet earth, and do so without for one moment wounding her womanly instincts and your patriotic ones. May I proceed?”
“If Mrs. Wedderburn is interested, and will allow me to smoke a cigar with my coffee, I also am interested.” Of course I said “yes” to both of them. Mr. A. then offered his cigar case to Dr. H. who thanked him, selected one, sniffed it, said it was excellent, bit the end off, lit it, then forgot all about it, because his speech was so very interesting.
“Over breakfast this morning Mrs. Wedderburn spoke of how much better the world is than in the bad old days. She was right, and why? Because the Anglo-Saxon race to which she and I and Mr. Astley belong have begun to control the world, and we are the cleverest and kindliest and most adventurous and most truly Christian and hardest working and most free and democratic people who have ever existed. We should not feel proud of our superior virtues. God arranged it by giving us bigger brains than anyone else, so we find it easier to control our evil animal instincts. This means that compared with the Chinese, Hindoos, Negroes and Amerindians—yes, even compared with the Latins and Semites—we are like teachers in a playground of children who do not want to know that the school exists. Why is it our duty to teach them? I will tell you.
“When children or childish people are left to themselves the strongest overcome the rest and treat them unkindly. In China judicial torture is a roadside entertainment. Hindoo widows are burned alive beside their husbands’ corpses. Black people eat each other. Arabs and Jews do unmentionable things to the private parts of their infants. The talkative French go in for bloody revolutions, the carefree Italians join murderous secret societies, we all know about the Spanish Inquisition. Even the Germans, who are racially closest to us, have a taste for brutally violent orchestral music and sabre duels. God created the Anglo-Saxon race to stop all that, and we will.
“But we cannot improve people suddenly, everywhere. The bullying rulers of the inferior races hate to see us replace them, so to teach them sense we have first of all to thrash them. Our rifles and machine-guns and iron-clad warships and superior military discipline ensure that we always do thrash them, but the process takes time. From their headquarters in the tiny island of Britain the Anglo-Saxons have conquered over a quarter of the planet in a little more than two centuries. But west of the Atlantic another, vaster Anglo-Saxon nation is starting to feel its strength and stretch its limbs—the United States! Who can doubt that, before the end of the twentieth century, the United States will dominate the rest of the planet? Do you doubt it, Astley?”
“What you predict is possible,” said Mr. A. deliberately, “if the subject races learn nothing from us. But the Japanese seem clever little pupils, and Germany’s industrial strength has almost overtaken Britain’s.”
“You sort out the Prussians and leave the Nippons to us, for in our school the pupils can never become masters— their smaller skulls prevent it. I admit the German cranium is on a par with yours and mine, but it lacks flexibility. The point I want to make, Mrs. Wedderburn, is this. Another century of fighting will elapse before the world is finally civilized, but the fighting should not be regarded as warfare. When the British invade Egypt— when the States go into Mexico or Cuba—they are policing and civilizing the natives, not hurting them. Yes, the Anglo-Saxon police-force may take a century to rid the world of bullies, but we will do it. By the year 2000 the Chinese teacup-maker, Indian pearl-diver, Persian carpet-weaver, Jewish tailor, Italian opera-singer et cetera will at last pursue their occupations in peace and prosperity, for Anglo-Saxon law will have at last allowed the meek to inherit the earth.”
There was a long pause while Dr. H. looked eagerly from me to Mr. Astley and back, but chiefly at Mr. Astley, who at last said, “Ah.”
Dr. H. said sharply, “Sir, do you disagree with my prediction?”
“Not if it pleases Mrs. Wedderburn.”
Both of these clever men looked hard at me. I suddenly felt very warm and saw from my hands that I was blushing. I said awkwardly, “You said a thing that surprised me, Dr. Hooker. You said brainy people find it easier to control their evil animal instincts. I have seen and played with a lot of animals, and none of them were evil to me. A bitch with a broken leg growled and snapped while I fixed the splint, but only because I was hurting her. When she felt better she treated me like a pal. Are there many evil animals?”
“There are NO evil animals,” said Dr. Hooker warmly, “and you are right to correct me on that point. Let me explain it another way. Human beings contain two natures, a higher and a lower. The higher nature loves clean, beautiful things: the lower one loves dirty, ugly ones. You are a well-bred young lady so have no lower impulses. You have received an Anglo-Saxon education suited to your sex and class, which has protected you from the degrading spectacle of human filth and misery. You come from Britain, where a fine police-force keeps criminals, the unemployed and other incurably dirty creatures away from places where the nobler natures, the Anglo-Saxon natures live. I hear that in Britain the lower class is predominantly Irish.”
I said indignantly, “I am a woman of the world, Dr. Hooker. My guardian took me all round it while I was recovering from my accident. I saw all sort of people, and some wore cracked boots and patched coats and grubby underwear, just like the poor people we laugh at in Punch. But none were ever as horrid as you suggest.”
“You have been to China and Africa?”
“Parts of them. I have been to Cairo, in Egypt.”
“And you have seen the fellahin whining for Baksheesh?”
“Change the subject, Hooker!” said Mr. Astley sharply, but I would not allow that. I said, “When God took me to see the pyramids we left the hotel in the middle of a crowd. Some people were shouting words like aaa-ee, aaa-ee at the edge of the crowd, but I did not see them. What does Baksheesh mean, Dr. Hooker? I never asked at the time.”
“If you disembark with me in Alexandria tomorrow I will show you what it means in fifteen minutes or less. The sight will shock but educate you. When you have seen it you will understand three things: the innate depravity of the unredeemed human animal; why Christ died for our sins; why God has sent the Anglo-Saxon race to purify the globe with fire and sword.”
“You have broken your word, Hooker,” said Mr. Astley coldly. “You have not kept our bargain.”
“I am sorry for it yet glad of it, Astley!” cried Dr. H. (and I had not seen a man so excited since Candle proposed to me and Wedder won at roulette). “Mrs. Wedderburn’s speech shows she has recovered from the worst effects of her railway accident. Though she has not regained her earliest memories her speech displays a mind as clear and logical as yours and mine, but if we do not provide the information she craves it will remain the mind of a precocious infant. You English may prefer to keep your women in that state, but in the American West we want our women to be equal partners. Do you accept my invitation to see the seamy side of Alexandria, Mrs. Wedderburn? Perhaps you could persuade your husband to come.”
“I will accept whether my poor man comes or not,” I told him, feeling fearfully excited.
“You come too, Astley,” said Dr. H. “Let us give our fair companion a joint Anglo-American escort.”
Mr. A. blew out a thoughtful-looking stream of smoke, shrugged and said, “So be it.”
I left the table at once. I needed quietness to think of all the new strange things I had heard. Maybe my cracked knob is to blame but I feel less happy since Dr. H. explained there is nothing wrong with the world which the Anglo-Saxons are not curing with fire and sword. Before now I thought everyone I met was part of the same friendly family, even when a hurt one acted like our snappish bitch. Why did you not teach me politics, God?
At this point Baxter’s voice faltered into silence and I saw him struggling to overcome a very deep emotion.
“Read the next six pages for yourself,” he said suddenly, and passed them over. I give the pages here as they were given to me:
They are printed by a photogravure process which exactly reproduces the blurring caused by tear stains, but does not show the pressure of pen strokes which often ripped right through the paper.