Cross, and determined to repay himself for his expenditure of so much time, energy and health by enjoying the fifty or sixty years which, he piously hoped, remained to him, to the full. Which he was now doing. His professional life was passed on the Stock Exchange.
Mr. Leslie Amherst, the man like a faun, who was staying with him, was an old friend of the Grammont family. He wrote, and was on the staff of a weekly journal. He was engaged just now on a series of articles on the Forces of Darkness in Darkest Europe. So far he had produced 1. The Legislature, 2. Capitalism, 3. Industrialism, 4. Nationalism, 5. Militarism, 6. The Press, and this week he was writing 7. Organised Religion. (It will no doubt shock some readers to learn that these forces had not all, in spite of the earnest hopes entertained for so long for their overthrowal, yet been overthrown; but truth compels me to state that they had not.) Though Amherst talked like a cynic, and had his affectations, he was an earnest thinker, and sometimes tired his host, who was not, and who had been left by his years of difficult continental sojourn with a supreme distaste for any further probing into the problems of Darkest Europe. Amherst had the advantage, in this matter, of having been a Conscientious Objector to Military Service, so the war had not tired him, and he retained for home use the freshness and vigour of attack which had, in the case of many of his fellow-countrymen, been all used up abroad.
The End House party was completed by Kitty Grammont, with her round, long-lashed eyes and her air of the ingenuous rake, and Vernon Prideaux, brisk and neat and clever. So there they all were; and very nice, too.
Kitty kissed her brother and Miss Ponsonby and dug the Cheeper in the ribs in the manner he preferred. She was very fond of them all, and found Miss Ponsonby immeasurably entertaining. Little had she thought, when of old she used joyfully to watch Miss Pansy Ponsonby twist and kick and curl herself about the stage and sing fascinating inanities in her lazy contralto, that they would ever be linked by no common bond. Of course she had known that her brother Anthony was showering flowers, chocolates, suppers, week-ends and air-trips at Miss Ponsonby's nimble feet (the toes of which could bend right back at the joints) but Anthony had been known to shower these things at the feet of others. Certainly Kitty had never expected that he would instal this delightful and expensive being in a real house, have a real infant, and really settle down, albeit socially ostracised in Buckinghamshire because imperfectly married (that was the fault of Pansy's husband, Mr. Jimmie Jenks, who, though he didn't want her himself, selfishly refused to sever the connection irrevocably).
"What's the afternoon news?" enquired Mr. Amherst, as they walked up to the village.
"Haven't seen a paper for half an hour," replied Prideaux, who kept his finger on the pulse of the nation and liked his news up to date. "I've got two five o'clock ones with me, though. The Leeds strike is rather worse, the Sheffield one rather better. The aero bus men are coming out on Monday. Dangerous unrest among Sussex shepherds and Cotswold cowmen." (Agricultural labour was now controlled by the State.) "Lord Backwoods has been speaking to his constituents against the Bill for disfranchising Conscientious Obstructionists of the Mental Progress Acts. A thoroughly seditious speech, of course. Poor old chap, his eldest-son has just got engaged to be married, so there'll be another family of Backwoods babies who ought never to exist. It will hit them heavily financially.... And the International Police have found another underground gun-factory near Munich, under a band-stand. And it's confirmed that old Tommy Jackson is to be Drink Controller."
"Another good butler spoilt," observed Anthony Grammont. "He was a jolly good butler once. And he'll be a jolly bad Drink Controller."
"Dear old Tommy," murmured Miss Ponsonby absently, lifting the Cheeper out of his motor-pram with one strong white hand and balancing him on her ample shoulders. "He was vurry kind to me in the dear old days, when I spent week-ends at Surrey Towers. He used to give me tips on Correct Conduct. I didn't take them; Correct Conduct wasn't what the people there asked me for; but I was grateful to Tommy."
"If," said Anthony, "there is any member of a government department, existing, fallen, or yet to come, who has not in the dear old days been vurry kind to you, my dear Pansy, I should be rather glad to know his name."
"Why, certainly," returned Pansy, with cheerful readiness. "Nicky Chester, the Brains Minister who's making himself such an all-round eternal nuisance, doesn't even realise I exist, and if he did he'd think I oughtn't."
"That's where you're wrong, Pansy," Kitty said. "He thinks everyone ought to exist who does anything as well as you do your things. You're Starred A, aren't you?"
"I've gone and lost the silly old bus ticket," said Pansy indifferently, "but that's what it said, I think." Starred A meant (in the words of the official definition) first-class ability at a branch of work which would not appear to be a valuable contribution to the general efficiency of the State. The Cheeper, child of a starred A mother and a B3 father (Anthony's brains had been reduced by trench-life; he had been quite intelligent at Oxford), was subject neither to bonus nor tax.
"Anyhow," went on Pansy, grinning her wide, sweet, leisurely grin, "I think I see Nicky Chester sendin' me round flowers or goodies after a show! He's seen me, you know: he was in a box the first night of 'Hullo, Peace!' He laughed at the political hits, but my turns left him cold; I guess they weren't brainy enough." She tossed the Cheeper in the air and caught him, strongly and easily. "Make him supple young," she observed, "an' by the time he's six he'll be a star Child Gamboller, fit for revue. He takes after me. Already he can put both his big toes in his little mouth at once."
"Very unusual, surely," remarked Mr. Amherst, looking at the Cheeper through his pince-nez as if he were an insect under a microscope. Mr. Amherst was fellow of an Oxford college, and had the academic touch, and was not yet entirely used to Pansy, a type outside his previous studies, and at no time would he be really used to anyone under eighteen years of age, let alone six months. Possibly this was what his reviewers meant when they said that he lacked the touch of common humanity.
His attention was diverted from the Cheeper by the parish church, which he inspected with the same curiosity and distaste.
"Organised Religion, I presume," he commented. "If you've no objection, Anthony, I will attend morning service there to-morrow. It may provide me with some valuable subject matter for my article."
"We'll all go," said Kitty. "The End House shall set an example to the village. We'll take Cyril, too. He can get a dispensation. It's Brains Sunday, you know, and all patriotic clergymen will be preaching about it. Vernon and I are officially bound to be there."
"I don't suppose it will be amusing," said Anthony. "But we'll go if you all want to."
"Church," said Pansy, meditatively regarding the Early Perpendicular tower. "I went one Sunday morning." She paused reminiscently, and added, without chagrin, "The vicar turned me down."
"He could hardly," said Mr. Amherst civilly, "do otherwise. Your position is not one which is at present recognised by Organised Religion."
"Oh, he recognised it all right," Pansy explained. "That was just the trouble; he didn't like it.... He's not a bad old sort. He came to call afterwards, and told me all about it. He was quite upset. So was I, wasn't I, old thing?"
"Not in the least," returned Anthony placidly.
"I'd only wanted to do the proper thing," Pansy continued her unperturbed narrative, in her singularly beautiful voice. "I was always brought up to go to church now and then. I was confirmed all right. I like to do the proper thing. It only seems fair to the Cheeper to bring him up in the way he should go. I wouldn't care for him to grow up an agnogger, like all you people. But Mr. Delmer said my way of life was too ambiguous to square with comin' to church. Rather a sweet word, don't you think? Because it isn't ambiguous really, you know; not a bit, I'm
