“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul . . .”
Her religion ceased to be a mystic, twilight passion. A renascence of sturdy courage took her back into the common ways, where, her divorce now accomplished, she pursued her old aims. She took up life, and became alert to the world again, responsive, like a ship in full sail, to every wind that blew. And the wind that blew on her was a wind of reaction from her recent past, and it drove her out on the seas of ambitious
imperialism, so that love of country became in her, as in so many, a kind of swaggering tribal pride. The romance of Greater Britain took her by storm. Not the infant Imogen, stirred to tears by the swinging by of red-coated troops to a band, seethed with a more exalted jingoism. Glory, adventure, pride of race and the clash of arms—what stimulating dreams were these, and how primeval their claim upon the soul! While Stanley’s friends shrugged cynical shoulders over Dr. Jim’s exploit and the attitude towards it of the great British public, while her papa gravely misdoubted such militant aggression, while Maurice sneered and tilted at it in a weekly column, while Rome contemplated the spectacle with the detached, intelligent amusement of the blasée but interested theatre-goer, while Irving, cynically approving, said, “That’s good,” thinking of the Rand gold, and Mr. Cecil Rhodes observed that his friend the doctor had upset the apple cart—while all these made the comments natural to their tastes, temperaments and points of view, Stanley, like a martial little girl, flew high the flag of “Britain for ever! Up the Rand I” and her spirit marched as to a military band.
Vicky also, in her more careless and casual way, was a supporter of Empire. “Whatever Charles and Maurice and all those informed people may say, my dear, this Dr. Jim is a gallant creature, dashing off to the rescue of his fellow-countrymen and countrywomen like that. For, even if they weren’t in actual danger, they
were
inconvenienced, those poor, tiresome Uitlanders. And how dreadful to be governed by Boers! What people! Canting, Old Testament humbugs. One dislikes them so excessively, even from here, that one can imagine the feelings of those who live among them. Even Maurice isn’t so perverse as to maintain that Boers are tolerable. Oh, I’m all for
Dr. Jim. I insist on taking in that cheery pink new daily that pets him as if he were a Newfoundland dog that has saved a boat-load of drowning people. Such a bright, pleased tone it has. ‘The British Public know a good man when they see one,’ it says. Such a much more amiable and pleasant attitude towards us than Maurice’s ‘The public be damned. All it knows about anything that matters would go into a walnut shell and then rattle.’ Maurice gets so terribly contemptuous and conceited. I tremble to think what he will be like at sixty, should nature keep him alive, if he finds the world so silly when he is but thirty-eight. Perhaps, however, he will have mellowed.”
Ninety-Six ran out. living’s tyre company began to make money, and Maurice grew richer. He sent Amy to the Riviera for the winter, and Rome kept his house for him. He was sweeter-tempered than usual. Rome was, in his eyes, a flâneuse and a dilettante of life, but her clear, cynical mind was agreeable to him. Her intelligent mockery was, after Amy’s primitive jeering, as caviare after rotten eggs. God! If only Amy need never come back. But she would inevitably come back. And the children loved her. Children are like that; no discrimination. They loved Maurice too, but more mildly. And, very temperately, they liked their aunt Rome, whom they often suspected of making fun of them, and, even oftener, of being completely bored. In point of fact, Rome was apt to be bored by persons under sixteen or so. She allowed childhood to be a necessary stage in the growth of human beings,
but she found it a tiresome one, and saw no reason why children should consort with adults. Stanley, on the other hand, being by now partially restored to her general goodwill towards humanity, threw herself ardently into the society and interests of her own children and those of others. She taught them imperialism, and about the English flag, and told them adventure stories, and played with them the games suitable to their years. She told them about the Diamond Jubilee, the great event of ’97, and how our good, wise and aged queen would, by next June, have reigned for sixty years. Victoria was in fashion just then. She was well thought of, both morally and intellectually. “To the ripe sagacity of the politician,” said the loyal press, “she adds the wide knowledge acquired by sixty years of statesmanship. Many a strained international situation has been saved by her personal tact.” That was the way the late nineteenth century press spoke of Victoria, the English being a loyal people, with a strong sense of royalty. So the Diamond Jubilee would be a great day for the queen. Since the last Jubilee, in ’87, the Empire, or anyhow, the sense of Empire, had grown and developed. Imperialism was now a very heady wine, to those who liked that tipple. To others, such as Maurice Garden, it was more of an emetic.
Dr. Nansen came to London, early in ’97. Whatever else you thought of anything or any one, you had to admire Dr. Nansen. He addressed thousands of people in the Albert Hall. Vicky took her children to hear
him. Already they had read
Farthest North
. Imogen, at eight years old, had read it, absorbed, breathless, intent, tongue clenched between teeth. The man who had sailed through ice, and all but got to the Pole. He was better than soldiers. As good, almost, as sailors. What a man! And there he stood, a giant dwarfed to smallness on the platform of the vast hall, a Scandinavian god, blonde and grave and calm, waiting to begin his lecture, but unable to because the crowd roared and clapped and stamped their feet, and would not stop.
At that huge explosion of welcome, Imogen’s skin pringled and pricked all over, as if soldiers were swinging by to music, or a fire engine to the sound of bells, or as if the sun were setting in a glory of gold and green, or as if she were reading “The Revenge” or “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” or “I will arise and go now and go to Inisfree.” Imogen wept. She did not know that she wept, until the applause was at last over, and Nansen began to speak. Then her brother Hugh poked her in the back and said, “What’s up? Wipe your nose and don’t snivel,” and she was ashamed, and though she retorted, “Wipe your own. Snivel yourself,” it was no satisfaction, because Hughie was not snivelling. Boys didn’t, she had learnt, except when there was something to snivel about. They did not understand the female weakness which wept at fire engines, poetry and clapping, and was sick at squashed insects. Imogen wanted (even still half hoped) to be a boy, so she tried to hide her weaknesses.
Nansen began to speak.
“They’re all quiet now. A pin might drop,” said Imogen to herself, having lately learnt that phrase, but not getting it quite right.
But disappointment took her. Strain as she would, she could not hear what the god said. She could not
make it into words, except now and then. It boomed along, sonorous, fluent English, above her plane of listening. A sentence here and there she got, entrancing and teasing, then away the voice soared, booming in another dimension. . . . Imogen had never learnt to listen; now for the first time she knew remorse for sermon-times spent in day-dreams, lessons at school during which her mind had drifted away on seas of fancy like a rudderless boat, to be sharply recalled by “Imogen Carrington, what have I just said?” Seldom, indeed, did Imogen Carrington know. She would blush and stammer and get an inattention mark. No one in the second form had so many inattention marks as she. Perhaps if she had fewer she could have understood Nansen now.
“Hughie, can you hear?”
“Most of the time. Don’t interrupt.”
Yes, Hughie could hear. Hughie was two years older; Hughie was ten, and into his square, solid, intelligent head the sounds emitted by Nansen were penetrating as words. Hughie could listen, when he had a mind to. Hughie was more clever than Imogen. Phyllis and Nancy could hear too, of course; they were older. Not Tony; but then Tony, who was only seven, wouldn’t be trying. He didn’t really care.
“Mother,
I can’t hear.”
“Don’t talk, darling. I’ll tell you afterwards. . . .”
But what was the good of that?
Imogen’s straining attention flagged. If she couldn’t hear, she couldn’t. She sighed and gave up. She stared, fascinated, at the splendid figure on the platform, and imagined him on the Fram, sailing along through chunks of floating ice, and on each chunk a great white bear. Floes, they were, not chunks. . . . She and the boys meant, when they should be grown up, to fit out a Fram for themselves, and find the Pole. Hughie
had some idea of going for the South Pole. The sort of unusual, intelligent idea Hughie did get. But to Imogen the North was the Pole that called. Away they sailed, away and away . . . Tony was attacked, as he fished from a floe, by a huge mother bear, with three cubs. Imogen got there just in time; she slew the bear with her long knife, at imminent personal risk; it toppled backwards into the ice-cold water and died. The green sea reddened hijjously. But the three little cubs Imogen kept. She took them back to the Fram, and there was one for each of them, and they were called Mowgli, Marcus and Mercia, and Marcus was hers (the children had been taken to “The Sign of the Cross ”last summer. There was a play indeed!), and the cubs slept in their bunks with them, and ate from their plates at meals. . . .
Another storm of clapping. It was over.
“Did you like it, Jennie? How much did you follow?”
“I liked it very much. I followed it a lot . . . Mother, do you think, when I’m big, I shall ever
speak
to him? I mean, when Hughie and Tony and I have got our ship, and have been to the Pole?”
“Oh, yes, darling. I should think when that happens, certainly. Only Dr. Nansen may be dead by that time, I’m afraid.”
“Is he old, mother? Is he very old? Will he die before we grow up? Will he, mother?”
“Children, be careful crossing the road. . . . What’s the matter, Imogen?”
“Will he die, mother, before we’re grown up?”
“Who? Dr. Nansen? Oh, no, I hope not, why should he? Tony, don’t dawdle. We’ll go home by the park. Keep together, children, there’s such a crowd. . . . Imogen,
don’t
play with strange dogs—I keep telling you.”
“Mother, he’s such a weeny one . . . all white, with a black nose and a red tongue. . . . Mother, when
can
I have a puppy?”
Jubilee Day. Sweltering heat, after a gray beginning; baked streets. Irving, out of his wealth and generosity, had bought a block of seats in the Mall for the procession, and there the family sat. Papa, mamma, Vicky, and Charles and their daughter Imogen (their other children were away at school), Rome, Stanley, Irving and his wife, and Una and Ted up from the country with two stout and handsome children. The ladies wore beflowered, rakish, fly-away hats, and dresses with high collars and hunched sleeves and small waists. They look absurd now, in old pictures of the period, but they did not look absurd to one another at the time; they looked natural, and
comme-il-faut
, and smart. The boys wore their Eton suits, and the girls light frocks. Imogen had a blue smock, gathered across the yoke, so that when she ran her fingers across the smocking it made a little soft, crisp noise. She sat next her little cousins from the country. But she was shy of them and turned her face away, and would say nothing to them after she had asked, “How is Rover? How is Lassie? Are the puppies born yet?” Fits of shyness seized upon Imogen like toothache, even now that she had been ever so long at school, and she would hang her head and mutter monosyllabic answers, and wish she were Prince Prigio, with his cap of darkness, and when, in church, it came to the psalm about, “Deliver me from the hands of strange children,”
she would pray it ardently, feeling how right David (if that psalm were one of his) had been. She was not shy of her cousins when she stayed at the farm with them, for the farm was like paradise, full of calves, puppies, pigs, and joy, and Katie, Dick, Martin, and Dolly were its hierophants, and, though they weren’t much good at being pirates or Red Indians, it was, no doubt, because they were always employed to better purpose. But in the Mall, seated in a tidy row waiting for the procession, it was different. Imogen wished that two of her brothers and sisters could have been there, instead of Katie and Dick. She held a fold of her mother’s soft foulard dress tightly between her hot fingers. She whispered.
“Mother. Suppose some one felt sick and couldn’t get out?”
“
Jean
—you don’t feel sick, do you, child?” Vicky was alarmed, knowing the weakness of her daughter’s stomach.
“Oh, no,
I
don’t feel sick. But if some one did? What
would
they do, mother? Suppose the lady just above
you
felt sick, mother? Suppose she
was
sick? What would you do, mother?”
“Don’t be silly, Imogen. If you talk like that you’ll feel sick yourself. Talk to Katie. Don’t you see you’re interrupting grandmamma and me?”
But Imogen’s grandmamma smiled across at her small, pink, freckled face.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Jennie?”
“Yes, grandmamma. . . . Is the queen older than you, grandmamma?”
“Yes. The Queen is seventy-eight. I am sixty-three. When I was only three years old, the Queen was crowned.”
“Did you see her crowned?”
“No. I was too young.”
“Is it a very big crown? Will she have it on? . . .
Mother
”—Imogen had a terrible thought and whispered it—“suppose
the Queen
was sick, in her carriage, just opposite here? What
would
happen, mother? Would the procession wait or go on?”
“Now, Jennie, that will do. You’re being tiresome and silly. Talk to Katie and Dick. I’m talking to grandmamma: I told you before.”