But the large clear obiter dicta of Mrs. McManus, those hard opaque ideas like great chunks of white quartz, were no more than an incidental entertainment for Mrs. Rylands. The main thread of her mental existence now was her discussion with her little green leather book, and with Philip, the discussion of her universe and what had to be done about it. For five days Philip sent nothing to her but three cards, not postcards but correspondence cards in envelopes from his clubs, saying he was “writing a screed” and adding endearments. Then in close succession came two bales of written matter, hard upon the sudden and quite surprising announcement in the French and English-Parisian papers that the general strike in England had collapsed.
These “screeds” were very much in the manner of his former communication. Some lavender-tinted sheets from Honeywood House testified to a night spent at his Aunt Rowena’s at Barnes. But there were no more drawings; he was getting too deeply moved for that sort of relief. There was not the same streak of amused observation, and there was an accumulating gravity. He reasoned more. The opening portion was a storm of indignation against the British Gazette, the government control of broadcasting and the general suppression of opinion in the country. That was very much in his old line. He had taken the trouble to copy out a passage from the government proclamation of Friday and print and underline certain words. ”ALL RANKS of the armed forces of the crown are notified that ANY ACTION they may find it necessary to take in an honest endeavour to aid the civil power will receive both now AND AFTERWARDS the full support of the Government.” Something had happened, Mrs. Rylands noted! He had spelt “government” right! And an anticipatory glance over the pages in her hand showed that he was going on spelling it right. To these quoted words Philip had added in a handwriting that was distorted with rage, rather thicker and less distinct: “in other words, ‘Shoot and club if you get half a chance and the Home Office is with you. You will be helped now and let off afterwards.’ This is publicly asking for violence in the most peaceful social crisis the world has ever seen. I told you the government wanted to have a fight and this proves it. But this isn’t the worst. . . . ”
He went on to tell of how the Bishop of Oxford, the Masters of Balliol and University and a number of leading churchmen had called upon the government to reopen negotiations and how the Archbishop of Canterbury had attempted in vain to get a movement afoot in the country to arrest the struggle and revive negotiations. The Archbishop had preached on this on Sunday and had tried to mobilise the pulpits throughout the country. He had found himself treated as a rebel sympathiser and choked off. The British Gazette had suppressed the report of this church intervention and the government had prohibited its publication by the British Broadcasting Company. “They want this fight. They want to get to violence,” wrote Philip, with his pen driving hard into the paper, and proceeded to denounce “Winston’s garbled reports of Parliament. Anything against them is either put in a day late or left out altogether. People like Oxford and Grey are cut to rags. Cook said of the negotiations, days ago, ‘It is hopeless,’ and the dirty rag quoted this as though he said it of the strike. And we have a cant that these Harrovians are real public school boys and understand fair play!”
It was funny to find the faithful Etonian breaking off in this way to gird at Harrow and make it responsible for the most unteachable of its sons.
It seemed Philip had been in the House of Commons on Friday and heard a discussion between Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Thomas that more than confirmed his suspicions that the petty Daily Mail strike and the consequent break was a foreseen excuse, meanly and eagerly snatched at by the government. Then came a rumour, current at the time but with no foundation in fact, that the King (or according to another version the Prince of Wales) had wanted to say something reconciling and had been advised against such a step. “Jix as Mussolini,” commented Philip, quite convinced of the story. He stormed vividly but briefly at the broadcasting programmes and the talk in the clubs. Came a blank half-sheet, just like one of those silences in some great piece of music before the introduction of a new theme and then, on a new page and very distinctly: “I have had a damned row with Uncle Robert.”
This was the motive of the next part of Philip’s composition, written more evenly and more consecutively than anything he had done before, the Largo so to speak. He expanded and developed and varied his jangling sense of Uncle Robert, and gathered it altogether into a measured and sustained denunciation. He set out to convey with a quite unconscious vigour, his deep astonishment, his widening perplexity and his gathering resentment that anything of the nature of Lord Edensoke should exist in the world, let alone in such close and authoritative proximity to himself. At times his discourse might have borne the heading “The Young Man discusses the Older Sort of Human Male.”
“He’s damned,” he repeated. “I never realised before that anyone could go about this world without any stink or fuss, so completely and utterly dead and damned as he is.” He jumped into capitals to say his worthy uncle was a “Bad Man, nerve and muscle, blood and bone.” He declared that it was impossible to understand the general strike, the coal strike, the outlook in England, the outlook for all the world until Lord Edensoke had been anatomised and analysed. And forthwith he set about the business.
Philip made it quite clear that up to his early conversations with his uncle after his return to England, he had supposed Lord Edensoke to be animated by much the same motives as himself, namely by a strong if vague passion to see the world orderly and growing happier, by a real wish to have the Empire secure, beneficent and proud, by a desire to justify wealth by great services, and that he was prepared to give time and face losses that the course of human affairs should go according to his ideas of what was fine and right. These had always been Philip’s own assumptions, albeit rather dormant ones. But ——
“He doesn’t care a rap for the Empire as an Empire,” wrote the amazed nephew. “He sees it simply as a not too secure roof over a lot of the family investments.” Lord Edensoke’s sense of public duty did not exist. He despised his social class. His loyalty to the King amounted to a firm assurance that he diverted public attention from the real rulers of the country. People liked the monarchy; it saved public issues from the dangerous nakedness they had in America. “Otherwise if he thought there was a dividend to be got out of it, he would boil the king in oil.” He didn’t believe in social order, in any sort of responsibility that a policeman and a law court could not check. Frankly, in his heart, he saw himself to be a brigand, carrying an enviable load through a world wherein nothing better than brigandage was possible. Law was a convenient convention among the robbers and you respected it just so far as it would be discreditable or dangerous to break the rules.
Came an illuminating anecdote. At dinner Lord Edensoke had shown a certain weariness of Philip’s political and social crudities. By way of getting to more interesting things he had opened a fresh topic with “By the bye, Philip, have you any loose balances about? I think I could make a good use of them.”
He had proceeded to explain to Philip’s incredulity that the general strike was bound to collapse as soon as the scared and incapable labour leaders saw an excuse for letting it down that would save their faces with their followers, and that then the miners would be left locked out exactly as if there had been no general strike — but with “diminished public support.” “That fellow Cook” could be relied upon to keep them out and to irritate the public against them. His lordship did his best to disabuse Philip’s mind of the idea that there would be any settlement for some time. “You mean you won’t settle anyhow?” Philip had said. Lord Edensoke’s reply had been a faint smile and a gesture of the hand. So, as Rylands and Cokeson would have thousands of trucks unemployed, and easily handed over to other uses, the thing to do was to buy foreign coal now, and release and distribute it later when the community at large came to realise all that Lord Edensoke knew. Coal would come back to fancy prices — higher than ‘21. “There’s a speculative element, of course,” he had said. “The miners may collapse,” but as he saw it, there was, saving that possibility, anything from twenty-five to a hundred and fifty per cent. to be made in the course of the next few months upon anything Philip chose to bring in to this promising operation.
Philip ended his account of this conversation in wild indignation. “We are the coal-owners of Great Britain,” he fumed, “and this is how we do our duty by the country that trusts us, honours us, makes peers of us! We starve the miner and strangle industry — and we make ‘anything from twenty-five to a hundred and fifty per cent.’ out of a deal in foreign coal. Naturally we do nothing to bring about a settlement. Naturally we are for the Constitution and all that, which lets us do such things.” Philip’s narrative wasn’t very clear, but this was the point it would seem at which the “damned row with Uncle Robert” occurred.
Respect for the head of the family made its final protest and fled. It was Philip’s last dinner with his senior partner. He seemed to have talked, according to his uncle’s judgment, “sheer Bolshevism.” It was doubtful if they got to their cigars. Philip returned to the Reform Club and spent the rest of a long evening consuming the Club notepaper at a furious pace.
Details of the final breach did not appear because Philip swept on to a close, unloving investigation of his uncle’s soul.
“I seem to have been thinking of him most of the time since,” he said.
What did Lord Edensoke think he was up to, Philip enquired. Clearly he did not suppose he was living for anything outside himself. He had no religion, no superstition even. He had a use for religion, but that was a different matter. For him religion was a formality that kept people in order. It was good that inferior and discontented people should be obliged to sacrifice to the God of Things as they Are. It set up a code of outer decency and determined a system of restraints. Nor had he any patriotism. The British Empire in his eyes was a fine machine for utilising the racial instincts of the serviceable British peoples for the enforcement of contracts and the protection of invested capital throughout the world. If they did not, as a general rule, get very much out of it in spite of their serviceableness that was their affair. They could congratulate themselves that their money was on a gold standard even if they had none, and they had the glory of ruling India if even they were never allowed to go there. He liked the English climate and avoided it during most of the winter. It was a good climate for work and Courtney Wishart in its great park just over the hills from Edensoke was a stately and enviable home, one of those estates that made England a land fit for heroes to die for. He had no passion for science. The spirit that devotes whole lives to the exquisite unravelling of reality was incomprehensible to him. He preferred his reality ravelled. It was better for business operations. He betrayed no passion for any sort of beautiful things. He would never collect pictures nor make a garden unless he wanted to beat someone else at it or sell it at a profit. He loved no one in the world — Philip would tell her a little later of his uncle’s loves. In brief he lived simply for himself, for satisfactions directly related to himself as the centre of it all and for nothing else whatever.
One of his great satisfactions was winning a game. He was not, Philip thought, avaricious simply but he liked to get, because that was besting the other fellow. His business was his great game. He liked to feel his aptitude, his wariness, to foresee, and realise and let other people realise the shrewd precision of his anticipations. He played other games for recreation. He was reported to be a beastly bridge player, very good but spiteful and envious even of his partner. He played in the afternoons at the Lessington after lunch and Philip said rumour had it that several other members of that great club would go into hiding and get the club servants to report for them, not venturing near the card-room, until Edensoke was seate............