H G Wells Omnibus, page 774
“I want to let you into this”—puff—“George,” said my uncle round the end of his cigar. “For many reasons.”
His voice grew lower and more cunning. He made explanations that to my inexperience did not completely explain. I retain an impression of a long credit and a share with a firm of wholesale chemists, of a credit and a prospective share with some pirate printers, of a third share for a leading magazine and newspaper proprietor.
“I played ’em off one against the other,” said my uncle. I took his point in an instant. He had gone to each of them in turn and said the others had come in.
“I put up four hundred pounds,” said my uncle, “myself and my all. And you know—”
He assumed a brisk confidence. “I hadn’t five hundred pence. At least—”
For a moment he really was just a little embarrassed. “I did,” he said, “produce capital. You see, there was that trust affair of yours—I ought I suppose—in strict legality—to have put that straight first. Zzzz… .
“It was a bold thing to do,” said my uncle, shifting the venue from the region of honour to the region of courage. And then with a characteristic outburst of piety, “Thank God it’s all come right!
“And now, I suppose, you ask where do you come in! Well, fact is I’ve always believed in you, George. You’ve got—it’s a sort of dismal grit. Bark your shins, rouse you, and you’ll go! You’d rush any position you had a mind to rush. I know a bit about character, George—trust me. You’ve got—” He clenched his hands and thrust them out suddenly, and at the same time said, with explosive violence, “Wooosh! Yes. You have! The way you put away that Latin at Wimblehurst; I’ve never forgotten it. Wo-oo-oo-osh! Your science and all that! Wo-oo-oo-osh! I know my limitations. There’s things I can do, and” (he spoke in a whisper, as though this was the first hint of his life’s secret) “there’s things I can’t. Well, I can create this business, but I can’t make it go. I’m too voluminous—I’m a boiler-over, not a simmering stick-at-it. You keep on hotting up and hotting up. Papins’ digester. That’s you, steady and long and piling up,—then, wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. Come in and stiffen these niggers. Teach them that wo-oo-oo-osh. There you are! That’s what I’m after. You! Nobody else believes you’re more than a body. Come right in with me and be a man. Eh, George? Think of the fun of it—a thing on the go—a Real Live Thing! Wooshing it up! Making it buzz and spin! Whoo-oo-oo.”—He made alluring expanding circles in the air with his hand. “Eh?”
His proposal, sinking to confidential undertones again, took more definite shape. I was to give all my time and energy to developing and organising. “You shan’t write a single advertisement, or give a single assurance,” he declared. “I can do all that.” And the telegram was no flourish; I was to have three hundred a year. Three hundred a year. (“That’s nothing,” said my uncle, “the thing to freeze on to, when the time comes, is your tenth of the vendor’s share.”)
Three hundred a year certain, anyhow! It was an enormous income to me. For a moment I was altogether staggered. Could there be that much money in the whole concern? I looked about me at the sumptuous furniture of Schäfers’ Hotel. No doubt there were many such incomes.
My head was spinning with unwonted Benedictine and Burgundy.
“Let me go back and look at the game again,” I said. “Let me see up-stairs and round about.”
I did.
“What do you think of it all?” my uncle asked at last.
“Well, for one thing,” I said, “why don’t you have those girls working in a decently ventilated room? Apart from any other consideration, they’d work twice as briskly. And they ought to cover the corks before labelling round the bottle—”
“Why?” said my uncle.
“Because—they sometimes make a mucker of the cork job, and then the label’s wasted.”
“Come and change it, George,” said my uncle, with sudden fervour. “Come here and make a machine of it. You can. Make it all slick, and then make it woosh. I know you can. Oh! I know you can.”
2
I seem to remember very quick changes of mind after that lunch. The muzzy exaltation of the unaccustomed stimulants gave way very rapidly to a mood of pellucid and impartial clairvoyance which is one of my habitual mental states. It is intermittent; it leaves me for weeks together, I know, but back it comes at last like justice on circuit, and calls up all my impressions, all my illusions, all my willful and passionate proceedings. We came down-stairs again into that inner room which pretended to be a scientific laboratory through its high glass lights, and indeed was a lurking-place. My uncle pressed a cigarette on me, and I took it and stood before the empty fireplace while he propped his umbrella in the corner, deposited the new silk hat that was a little too big for him on the table, blew copiously and produced a second cigar.
It came into my head that he had shrunken very much in size since the Wimblehurst days, that cannon ball he had swallowed was rather more evident and shameless than it had been, his skin less fresh and the nose between his glasses, which still didn’t quite fit, much redder. And just then he seemed much laxer in his muscles and not quite as alertly quick in his movements. But he evidently wasn’t aware of the degenerative nature of his changes as he sat there, looking suddenly quite little under my eyes.
“Well, George!” he said, quite happily unconscious of my silent criticism, “what do you think of it all?”
“Well,” I said; “in the first place—it’s a damned swindle!”
“Tut! Tut!” said my uncle. “it’s as straight as—It’s fair trading!”
“So much the worse for trading,” I said.
“It’s the sort of thing everybody does. After all, there’s no harm in the stuff—and it may do good. It might do a lot of good—giving people confidence, f’rinstance, against an epidemic. See? Why not? I don’t see where your swindle comes in.”
“H’m,” I said. “It’s a thing you either see or don’t see.”
“I’d like to know what sort of trading isn’t a swindle in its way. Everybody who does a large advertised trade is selling something common on the strength of saying it’s uncommon. Look at Chickson—they made him a baronet. Look at Lord Radmore, who did it on lying about the alkali in soap! Rippin’ ads those were of his too!”
“You don’t mean to say you think doing this stuff up in bottles and swearing it’s the quintessence of strength and making poor devils buy it at that, is straight?”
“Why not, George? How do we know it mayn’t be the quintessence to them so far as they’re concerned?”
“Oh!” I said, and shrugged my shoulders.
“There’s Faith. You put Faith in ’em… . I grant our labels are a bit emphatic. Christian Science, really. No good setting people against the medicine. Tell me a solitary trade nowadays that hasn’t to be—emphathic. It’s the modern way! Everybody understands it—everybody allows for it.”
“But the world would be no worse and rather better, if all this stuff of yours was run down a conduit into the Thames.”
“Don’t see that, George, at all. ’Mong other things, all our people would be out of work. Unemployed! I grant you Tono-Bungay may be—not quite so good a find for the world as Peruvian bark, but the point is, George—it makes trade! And the world lives on trade. Commerce! A romantic exchange of commodities and property. Romance. ’Magination. See? You must look at these things in a broad light. Look at the wood—and forget the trees! And hang it, George! we got to do these things! There’s no way unless you do. What do you mean to do—anyhow?”
“There’s ways of living,” I said, “without either fraud or lying.”
“You’re a bit stiff, George. There’s no fraud in this affair, I’ll bet my hat! But what do you propose to do? Go as chemist to some one who is running a business, and draw a salary without a share like I offer you. Much sense in that? It comes out of the swindle—as you call it—just the same.”
“Some businesses are straight and quiet, anyhow; supply a sound article that is really needed, don’t shout advertisements.”
“No, George. There you’re behind the times. The last of that sort was sold up ’bout five years ago.”
“Well, there’s scientific research.”
“And who pays for that? Who put up that big City and Guilds place at South Kensington? Enterprising business men! They fancy they’ll have a bit of science going on, they want a handy Expert ever and again, and there you are! And what do you get for research when you’ve done it? Just a bare living and no outlook. They just keep you to make discoveries, and if they fancy they’ll use ’em they do.”
“One can teach.”
“How much a year, George? How much a year? I suppose you must respect Carlyle! Well,—you take Carlyle’s test—solvency. (Lord! What a book that French Revolution of his is!) See what the world pays teachers and discoverers and what it pays business men! That shows the ones it really wants. There’s a justice in these big things, George, over and above the apparent injustice. I tell you it wants trade. It’s Trade that makes the world go round! Argosies! Venice! Empire!”
My uncle suddenly rose to his feet.
“You think it over, George. You think it over! And come up on Sunday to the new place—we got rooms in Gower Street now—and see your aunt. She’s often asked for you, George—often and often, and thrown it up at me about the bit of property—though I’ve always said and always will, that twenty-five shillings in the pound is what I’ll pay you and interest up to the nail. And think it over. It isn’t me I ask you to help. It’s yourself. It’s your aunt Susan. It’s the whole concern. It’s the commerce of your country. And we want you badly. I tell you straight, I know my limitations. You could take this place, you could make it go! I can see you at it—looking rather sour. Woosh is the word, George.”
And he smiled endearingly.
“I got to dictate a letter,” he said, ending the smile and vanished into the outer room.
* * * * *
6
At last I went to the address my uncle had given me in Gower Street, and found my aunt Susan waiting tea for him.
Directly I came into the room I appreciated the change in outlook that the achievement of Tono-Bungay had made almost as vividly as when I saw my uncle’s new hat. The furniture of the room struck upon my eye as almost stately. The chairs and sofa were covered with chintz which gave it a dim remote flavour of Bladesover; the mantel, the cornice, the gas pendant were larger and finer than the sort of thing I had grown accustomed to in London. And I was shown in by a real housemaid with real tails to her cap, and great quantities of reddish hair. There was my aunt too, looking bright and pretty, in a blue-patterned tea-wrap with bows that seemed to me the quintessence of fashion. She was sitting in a chair by the open window with quite a pile of yellow-labelled books on the occasional table beside her. Before the large, paper-decorated fireplace stood a three-tiered cake-stand displaying assorted cakes, and a tray with all the tea equipage except the teapot, was on the large central table. The carpet was thick, and a spice of adventure was given it by a number of dyed sheep-skin mats.
“Hel-lo!” said my aunt as I appeared. “It’s George!”
“Shall I serve the tea now, Mem?” said the real housemaid, surveying our greetings coldly.
“Not till Mr. Ponderevo comes, Meggie,” said my aunt, and grimaced with extraordinary swiftness and virulence as the housemaid turned her back.
“Meggie, she calls herself,” said my aunt as the door closed, and left me to infer a certain want of sympathy.
“You’re looking very jolly, aunt,” said I.
“What do you think of all this old Business he’s got?” asked my aunt.
“Seems a promising thing,” I said.
“I suppose there is a business somewhere?”
“Haven’t you seen it?”
“ ’Fraid I’d say something at it, George, if I did. So he won’t let me. It came on quite suddenly. Brooding he was and writing letters and sizzling something awful—like a chestnut going to pop. Then he come home one day saying Tono-Bungay till I thought he was clean off his onion, and singing—what was it?”
“ ’I’m afloat, I’m afloat,’ ” I guessed.
“The very thing. You’ve heard him. And saying our fortunes were made. Took me out to the Ho’born Restaurant, George—dinner, and we had champagne, stuff that blows up the back of your nose and makes you go So, and he said at last he’d got things worthy of me—and we moved here next day. It’s a swell house, George. Three pounds a week for the rooms. And he says the Business’ll stand it.”
She looked at me doubtfully.
“Either do that or smash,” I said profoundly.
We discussed the question for a moment mutely with our eyes. My aunt slapped the pile of books from Mudie’s.
“I’ve been having such a Go of reading, George. you never did!”
“What do you think of the business?” I asked.
“Well, they’ve let him have money,” she said, and thought and raised her eyebrows.
“It’s been a time,” she went on. “The flapping about! Me sitting doing nothing and him on the go like a rocket. He’s done wonders. But he wants you, George—he wants you. Sometimes he’s full of hope—talks of when we’re going to have a carriage and be in society—makes it seem so natural and topsy-turvy, I hardly know whether my old heels aren’t up here listening to him, and my old head on the floor… . Then he gets depressed. Says he wants restraint. Says he can make a splash but can’t keep on. Says if you don’t come in everything will smash—But you are coming in?”
She paused and looked at me.
“Well—”
“You don’t say you won’t come in!”
“But look here, aunt,” I said, “do you understand quite? . . . It’s a quack medicine. It’s trash.”
“There’s no law against selling quack medicine that I know of,” said my aunt. She thought for a minute and became unusually grave. “It’s our only chance, George,” she said. “If it doesn’t go…”
There came the slamming of a door, and a loud bellowing from the next apartment through the folding doors. “Here—er Shee Rulk lies Poo Tom Bo—oling.”
“Silly old Concertina! Hark at him, George!” she raised her voice. “Don’t sing that, you old Walrus you! Sing ‘I’m afloat!’ ”
One leaf of the folding doors opened and my uncle appeared.
“Hullo, George! Come along at last? Gossome tea-cake, Susan?
“Thought it over, George?” he said abruptly.
“Yes,” said I.
“Coming in?”
I paused for a last moment and nodded yes.
“Ah!” he cried. “Why couldn’t you say that a week ago?”
“I’ve had false ideas about the world,” I said… . “Oh! They don’t matter now! Yes, I’ll come, I’ll take my chance with you, I won’t hesitate again.”
And I didn’t. I stuck to that resolution for seven long years.
* * * * *
BOOK IV
CHAPTER THE THIRD
NIGHT AND THE OPEN SEA
1
I have tried throughout all this story to tell things as they happened to me. In the beginning—the sheets are still here on the table, grimy and dogs-eared and old-looking—I said I wanted to tell myself and the world in which I found myself, and I have done my best. But whether I have succeeded I cannot imagine. All this writing is grey now and dead and trite and unmeaning to me; some of it I know by heart. I am the last person to judge it.
As I turn over the big pile of manuscript before me, certain things become clearer to me, and particularly the immense inconsequence of my experiences. It is, I see now that I have it all before me, a story of activity and urgency and sterility. I have called it Tono-Bungay, but I had far better have called it Waste. I have told of childless Marion, of my childless aunt, of Beatrice wasted and wasteful and futile. What hope is there for people whose women become fruitless? I think of all the energy I have given to vain things. I think of my industrious scheming with my uncle, of Crest Hill’s vast cessation, of his resonant strenuous career. Ten thousand men have envied him and wished to live as he lived. It is all one spectacle of forces running to waste, of people who use and do not replace, the story of a country hectic with a wasting aimless fever of trade and money-making and pleasure-seeking. And now I build destroyers!
Other people may see this country in other terms; this is how I have seen it. In some early chapter in this heap I compared all our present colour and abundance to October foliage before the frosts nip down the leaves. That I still feel was a good image. Perhaps I see wrongly. It may be I see decay all about me because I am, in a sense, decay. To others it may be a scene of achievement and construction radiant with hope. I too have a sort of hope, but it is a remote hope, a hope that finds no promise in this Empire or in any of the great things of our time. How they will look in history I do not know, how time and chance will prove them I cannot guess; that is how they have mirrored themselves on one contemporary mind.
2
Concurrently with writing the last chapter of this book I have been much engaged by the affairs of a new destroyer we have completed. It has been an oddly complementary alternation of occupations. Three weeks or so ago this novel had to be put aside in order that I might give all my time day and night to the fitting and finishing of the engines. Last Thursday X2, for so we call her, was done, and I took her down the Thames and went out nearly to Texel for a trial of speed.
It is curious how at times one’s impressions will all fuse and run together into a sort of unity and become continuous with things that have hitherto been utterly alien and remote. That rush down the river became mysteriously connected with this book. As I passed down the Thames I seemed in a new and parallel manner to be passing all England in review. I saw it then as I had wanted my readers to see it. The thought came to me slowly as I picked my way through the Pool; it stood out clear as I went dreaming into the night out upon the wide North Sea… .
