“When the people are so ignorant that they can be fooled by a Mussolini, there is no hope for them by any route. Mussolini would have overridden a vote just as well as he overrode the co-ops.”
So there they had material for a hot argument. Comrade Tipton would have stayed all afternoon, forgetting his dingy white delivery wagon and its engine growing cold. But Laurel had a hundred letters to read and had to excuse herself. “Someday a little later,” she promised, “after our work is organized.”
The old gentleman with the white mustaches apologized. As he was going out he said, “I meant to tell you, your two gentlemen are going to be invited by the Kiwanis.”
When Nina heard about this she asked, “What is a Kiwani?”
IX
Saturday’s mail was bigger than Friday’s, and Monday’s promised to be bigger yet; the little office was in danger of being swamped. They were saved by a peculiarity of the religious life of this small town. The Methodists wouldn’t work on Sunday, and neither would the “Christians,” known as “Campbellites” to the rival sects. But one of the girls who had been hired was a Seventh Day Adventist; she was expecting the imminent Second Coming of the Lord and took literally the injunction to keep holy the seventh day. So she wouldn’t work on Saturday but would work on Sunday, and indeed was pleased to do so, because it rebuked the unbelievers, the erring souls. Members of her Church were usually out of work on Sunday because of the evil practices of a world which knew not the true Gospel. The Adventists were honest folk, and once they had been taught the job they were helpful to a radio enterprise which made its appeal on Thursdays and therefore would have busy Sundays. The Sunday workers coming wouldn’t meet the Saturday workers going, so there would be no chance for controversy.
The flood of mail continued through the week. They were getting New England now, and the Middle Atlantic states, and as far west as Chicago. The reason was that three other stations had used the program—for a price, of course. That was a way to get rid of money quickly, and it was what they were in business for. They got up a circular describing what they were doing and mailed it to every radio station in the country, with a letter inviting them to tune in on the program and see what they thought of it. This brought another lot of mail and a stack of rate cards.
They saw that they had a business on their hands, and it was more than Nina could handle. They must have a business manager, and the elegant Mr. Archibald made them a present of a young gentleman who was just out of Harvard and whose mother was in the New York Social Register. He was impeccable in speech and costume—and he wasn’t anything else that you would have expected from such an introduction. He wasn’t blasé but, on the contrary, full of eagerness; he had what he called “the social-justice bug,” and had been unhappy because his mother insisted that he was not to sit around reading books all day but must go to selling bonds, a most odious business. Here was a magical way by which he could earn his keep and at the same time think about the things that interested him.
Gerald de Groot was his name—he was from one of those old Dutch families. He went to live, of all places, with a former patent-medicine vendor turned laundryman. The Tiptons had a spare bedroom because their daughter had gone to teach school in New York. Gerald liked bean suppers, and he liked to sit up half the night arguing with genuine members of the working class. He and Comrade Tipton never got tired of talk; “bull sessions,” they called them, and one of the bulls had white whiskers and the other had smooth-shaven cheeks of a lovely rose-pink. Apparently the human spirit gets its stimulation from something new and different; Australia was as different from Harvard as Harvard was from Australia.
X
The syndicate business was booming too. Rick had engaged a competent middle-aged secretary to attend to his large correspondence, and another woman who would look after the files. He had Philip Edgerton as an assistant, and two youngsters just out of college as manuscript readers—recommended by a professor of literature in Alston’s college. There was a flood of mail coming in; it appeared that the woods were full of people who wanted to write, and especially on the subject of what was wrong with the world. Authors told their friends, and these in turn told other friends, and so ad infinitum. Rick wrote a letter to the Authors’ League of America, telling them about the enterprise, and after investigation they published the letter in their Bulletin. He wrote to his friends in England and to the P.E.N. clubs all over the world. He had a circular telling the story, which saved a lot of time. He sent it to professors of literature in hundreds of colleges, and also to college publications; here were the young writers, the writers of the future, and he wanted to get hold of them first. He would get an awful lot of trash, but the preliminary readers would weed that out.
They didn’t dare to hope for genius, they would be satisfied if they could find real talent, a spark of any sort of life embodied in words, melody or feeling in verse, laughter or satire, anything alive; anything in story form that showed knowledge of some part of an infinitely varied world; an insight into the character, or understanding of the social process, of the class struggle, of politics or industry, of war or peace; anything new, odd, strange, touched with that mysterious thing called personality. Mostly, of course, you were disappointed; you got the commonplace, the dull; you got writers imitating other writers; you got people trying to earn a living the easy way—pitiful people whose lives were narrow and who dreamed of escape by this literary route. There were some whose visions were grandiose and exciting, but who had no trace of skill to put them into words; they used shopworn symbols, stirring to them, but which left the experienced reader cold.
The printed word had been Rick’s delight all his life, so he loved this job. For the first time he was entirely on his own; no editor, no publisher, no stage producer or man of money to tell him what the public wanted. Rick could choose what he thought was good, and he had the power to get it before the public in one form or another. He pretty well lost himself in the work. He would get up late, have his coffee, glance through the morning paper, and then go at his mail. In midmorning the secretary would come for dictation, and bring a load of stuff to be signed. After lunch he would read the immediate things, and later in the afternoon he would walk to the office, his only form of exercise. He would see what was going on there, consult with Philip and the others, and sign important letters. At dinner there might be an author or two, and talk about the various enterprises and how they were going; in the evening, unless there was somebody very important, Rick would excuse himself, put on his pajamas and dressing gown, stretch himself out on the bed with his head propped on a pillow, and read, read, read.
When he found something good he would call his wife or Laurel or Lanny. He was extremely conscientious and worried over things that were good and yet not quite good enough. He was haunted by the possibility that he might overlook some spark of talent; that he might be repelled by crudity and miss the first signs of originality. A great chance might come only once or twice in a year’s work; if somebody else got the prize, the editor who had passed it up would put on sackcloth and ashes and go to the Wailing Wall.
XI
Philip was a treasure; he and Rick fitted like hand and glove. Philip loved books just as Rick loved them; he delighted in the hunt for good literature as other men delight in the hunt for gold, for buried treasure, for the secrets of the stars or of the atom. If he found something especially good he would call Rick on the telephone or come running over to the house to get Rick and the others to read it. He never wearied of talking shop—which meant to him the business of finding words that had life in them, and then getting them before the public and getting the public’s reaction.
But you can’t have everything in this world; and when you employ a man you have to take his family too—especially when you are living out in the country, a group set apart. Philip Edgerton had a wife—and oh, how the other ladies didn’t like Alma Edgerton! Alma hadn’t the slightest interest in what her husband was doing, and hadn’t the brains t
o be interested even if she had had the desire. What Alma wanted was to be the most beautiful, the most statuesque, and the most socially elegant person in her ken. She wished to move only in the highest circles, and had been pained at the prospect of living in a “dump” like Edgemere, N. J. They had found an apartment in which they could manage to exist; but who was there to know, and where were they to go? Manifestly, no place but The Willows; and at that place they talked nothing but the bureau, the paper, and the radio programs. Alma was like the Englishmen in Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman who were bored to death in heaven but insisted on staying there because they thought they owed it to their social position.
No one ever saw Alma that her blond hair hadn’t been adjusted to the last strand, her complexion tinted, and her lips smeared with all they could carry. She would sit and pose, turning her head sideways so that you could see her elegant profile; she would move with stately grace across the room. She didn’t say much, because she knew that her remarks wouldn’t make a good impression; but she would watch, and when anyone was looking she would put on her show.
Whom was she trying to fascinate? Was it Rick? Was it Lanny? Or was it some distinguished visitor? Gradually the suspicious ladies made up their minds that it wasn’t sexual at all; it didn’t matter whether it was a man or a woman, an old one or a young one; what Alma Edgerton wanted was to be gazed at. She wanted to imagine someone asking, “Who is that lovely creature?” Then she would be in heaven—and not bored.
How had Philip come to marry such a woman? Well, how could one ever know what any man would marry? Presumably he had been young and had thought her as wonderful as she thought herself. They had two boys, and Alma was sure they were wonderful because they were hers. She had taught them the same idea, and so they were two spoiled brats. Fortunately they had no social ambitions and did not want to come to The Willows.
What did Philip make of such a marriage, and what was his home-life? He was proud and never said a word about it. Presumably he shut himself up in his room and read. His friends were polite to his wife, and that was all he could ask. He seldom spent any money on himself; Alma spent it. He was getting three hundred and fifty a month, about the same as he had got in New York, and living was much cheaper here. He was getting more than his boss got; but then Nina was working too, so they had a double salary. Did that irk Alma, and would she have liked to have a job too? She had a Negro maid in to do the dirty work, while she rested in bed or attended to her beauty. She listened to the radio a lot, especially the soap operas. In the afternoons she put on her best and went shopping—and the towns people did not fail to look at her, especially the men. She got what satisfaction she could from this and possibly managed to forget how far below her they all were in social station.
“Poor Philip!” said Laurel and Nina, those superior intellectual ladies. They wanted to change the whole world, but they had no idea how to change one marriage!
25
Breathing of the Common Wind
I
They were getting ready the next broadcast and the next paper. It was a lesson they learned right away, that when you had a weekly printing job there was never any respite. The week sped by, and a new Thursday came treading on the heels of the old. You couldn’t enjoy the fan mail because you had to be thinking about keeping up to the standard, and applying the various criticisms and suggestions to the next issue. Even a small four-page paper was a task if you tried to have it good; you worried about whether it would be good enough, and which was the best among the assortment of articles. Was this too radical, was that too obvious? The printer became an enemy, calling you on the phone and saying he must have copy.
Rick took things as hard as if he hadn’t been a veteran journalist. Hitherto the editors had had the final say, but now the responsibility was his alone. Now it was his turn on the radio—and dammit, what was an Englishman allowed to say over an American radio? Hitherto he had always said what he jolly well pleased; but now there were a thousand traps in his path, and one misstep might stymie the whole enterprise. When you spoke to Americans you were speaking to foreigners, and don’t be fooled because they used a language resembling your own. You were speaking to Irish, and Germans, and fifty other nationalities and tribes, and to schoolchildren who had read about Valley Forge and Benedict Arnold, and how the redcoats had burned the village called Washington and no doubt had eaten the pigs that scavenged its muddy lanes.
Rick was to have more time than Laurel had had, for the reason that Billy Burns wouldn’t be giving so long a spiel. It had been decided that the best way would be for Billy to ask questions; Billy had a proper American accent, and if he asked a question, that would take some of the curse off an Englishman’s answers. The Big Four held a consultation and framed questions with the same care they would have given to framing the Charter of the United Nations.
The baronet’s subject was going to be the attitude of Britain toward world peace. He was going to say that the attitude would of necessity be determined by America, for Britain was a poor country now, and it was an old British saying that he who pays the piper calls the tune. (“Surely they won’t object to my saying that, will they?”) Then he was going to be asked about the attitude of British Labour to the problem; and immediately there arose the question of how they were to spell the name. Over the radio it didn’t matter, but it would go into the paper, and would the Americans grant the British Labour party the right to spell it in its own way, or would they think it was an affectation, or perhaps a misprint? And were you going to say British Labour and American Labor, and would you labour or labor to get your broadcast right?
II
Thursday came, as Thursdays have been doing since the days of the god Thor for whom they were named. Extra chairs were crowded into the studio for the friends who wanted to see as well as hear. Sir Eric arrived—a tallish, slender, dark-haired man, distinguished looking and dressed for the occasion; his wife had pinned a pink carnation in his buttonhole—and was that politically significant? He took his seat before the microphone and sat as still as death while the amiable Billy Burns once more told the public what the Peace Program was, and why a British baronet who had had to get along for almost thirty years with a crippled knee didn’t want war for his grandchildren.
Then began the questions. “Sir Eric, will you tell us what is the attitude of the British government toward the problem of world peace?” And then, “Sir Eric, will you tell about the attitude of the British Labour party toward the problem?” Sir Eric answered that he thought the attitude of all Labor parties throughout the world was much the same; all of them hated war and were seeking ways to prevent it. Wherever Labor ruled, there would be agreements for reduction of armaments and for settlements through the United Nations. But unfortunately, in the totalitarian countries, Labor had nothing to say about its own affairs; strikes were forbidden, freedom of discussion was unknown, and the question you had to consider was not what Labor wanted, but what thirteen men in the Kremlin wanted.
And then, “You think that those men in the Kremlin may want war?”
“I don’t know what they want and I have no way of finding out. Even if they would tell me I wouldn’t know whether to believe them, and I wouldn’t know whether they might change their minds tomorrow. That is the difference between a totalitarian and a free country; we in Britain and you in America have a public opinion, and nobody has to be in any doubt as to what we think and want. But totalitarian countries operate in the dark, and we can only guess about them. I am guessing that the Politburo wants things that it cannot get without war, and we have the task of convincing them that they cannot get it any other way. That makes a tragic situation for us Britons. We are right between what will be the firing lines if war starts, and it means that we shall have to spend on weapons what we had hoped to spend on making our people comfortable and well.”
“You think then that the question of war or peace depends entirely upon Russia?”
“I wouldn’t put
it that way. I think the Russian leaders are moved by fear as much as by hate. They are afraid of a revival of Fascism; and I think that to the extent that we nationalize our industries and bring real democracy to our country—democracy in industry as well as in politics—we may be able to convince the Russians that we are not out to unseat them. It is contrary to their dogmas to believe this, but facts are stubborn things and may convince even the Politburo.”
“Do you think this same method of nationalization should be tried by America?”
“I am not here to advise Americans. I am a visitor and I do not know your country very well. I can speak with authority concerning British Labour and what is in their minds, because I have been a part of that movement since my youth. I know that our people passionately want peace. I believe that is the case wherever the working people are free and can discuss public issues and educate their fellows. The economic factors determine that. A publicly owned economy is a public servant; it produces for the people’s own use and its principles are those of co-operation. An economy that is privately owned and is operated for profit is unable to pay its people enough to buy its total product; so it is forced to find foreign markets and is the victim of crises and slumps as soon as it fails to do so. That makes it a genuine danger to peace.”
III
This last sounded pretty much like telling Americans, and so Billy Burns made a joke of it, and Sir Eric shied away. He came back to British Labour, and explained the psychological problem that now confronted the British movement. The workers had hated and distrusted the bosses and had followed their program of “ca’ canny,” or taking things easy. But now the coal industry was being nationalized and others would follow quickly, and the workers would have to change their minds and realize that they were toiling for themselves and not for masters.
O Shepherd, Speak! Page 53
