Joan and Peter by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE WORLD ON THE EVE OF WAR - philosophicalnovel literature
Joan and Peter by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this bookOswald sat in the March sunshine that filled and warmed his little summerhouse, and thought about Joan and Peter....
Neither Joan nor Peter seemed to have any definite purpose in life. Their impulses were not focused. They were drawn hither and thither. That was the essential failure of their adolescence. Their education had done many good things for them, but it had left their wills as spontaneous, indefinite and unsocial as the will of a criminal.
The romanticism of the late Victorians still prevailed in Oswald’s mind. The picturesqueness of Russia had a great effect upon him. From the passport office at Wirballen with 381its imposing green-uniformed guards and elaborate ceremonies onward into Moscow, he marked the contrast with the trim modernity of Germany.
Oswald, in spite of his own sceptical opinions, was a little under the spell of the “Holy Russia” legend. He stood with his foot on a chair and rested his jaw on his hand, with the living side of his face turned as usual towards his ward, and tried to express the confused ideas that were stirring in his mind. “This isn’t a city like the cities of western Europe, Peter,” he said. “This is something different.
“If they’d lived here always,” said Peter. “But we’re arguing in a circle. If they’d lived here always the things that have made the Russians Russians, would have made them Russians. I’ve gone too far. Of course there is a Russian character. They’re wanderers, body and brain. Men of an endless land. But——”“You mean as symbols of an idea?”to people. It must have meant tremendous things to some people. But men imitate. One sticks up a cross because it means all sorts of deep things to him.
He was thinking as he talked. Oswald did not want to interrupt him, and just smiled slightly and looked at Peter for more. It was because of Oswald’s discovery of the confused and distressed motives of Joan and Peter and under the suggestions of the more kinetic German philosophy that was slowly percolating into English thought, that his ideas were now changing their direction.
But far more interesting than the play to him was the audience. They were mostly young people, and some of them were very young people; students in uniform, bright-faced girls, clerks, young officers and soldiers, a sprinkling of intelligent-looking older people of the commercial and professional classes; each evening showed a similar gathering, a very full house, intensely critical and appreciative.
390It was curious to note how much more this big dim houseful of young Muscovites was like a British or an American audience than it was to a German gathering. Perhaps there were rather more dark types, perhaps more high cheekbones; it was hard to say.... Oswald, with his eye on the dim, preoccupied audience about him, recalled a talk that he and Peter had had with a young fellow-traveller in the train between Hanover and Berlin. It had been a very typical young German, glasses and all; and his clothes looked twice as hard as Peter’s, and he sat up stiffly while Peter slouched on the seat.
“Everywhere we go,” said the young German, “our superior science, our higher education, our better method prevails. Even in your India——”“But your militarism, your sabre rule here at home; this Zabern business; isn’t that a little incompatible with this idea of Germany as a great civilizing influence permeating the world?”
The Germans had come into world-politics late. That was very true. They were naïve yet. They could still feed their natural egotism on the story of a world mission. The same enthusiasms that had taken Russia to the Pacific—and to Grand Ducal land speculation in Manchuria—and the English to the coolie slavery of the Rand, was taking these Germans now—whither? Oswald did not ask what route to disillusionment Germany might choose. But he believed that she would come to disillusionment.
He loved the fine lines of the boy’s profile, he marked his delicate healthy complexion. Peter was like some wonderful new instrument in perfect condition. And all these other youngsters, too, had something of the same clean fire in them.... Suddenly Peter took a deep breath, sat back, and began to clap. The whole house broke out into a pelting storm of approval.He turned his bright face to Oswald. “They do it so well,” he said, smiling. “I had forgotten it was in Russian. I seemed to understand every word.”
There was something slimy and watchful about this fellow Huntley. Could there be more in that affair than one liked 397to think?... Or was there some one unknown in London or in Cambridge? Oswald belonged to that minority of Englishmen who think systematically, whose ideas join on. Most Englishmen, even those who belong to what we call the educated classes, still do not think systematically at all; you cannot understand England until you master that fact; their ideas are in slovenly detached little heaps, they think in ready-made 398phrases, they are honestly capable therefore of the most grotesque inconsistencies.
It seemed to him that the world that lay behind the mask of his soft, sweet Hertfordshire valley, this modern world into which Joan and Peter had just rushed off so passionately, was a world in which the old nets of rule and convention which had maintained a sufficiency of peace and order in Europe for many generations of civilization, were giving way under the heavy stresses of a new time.
Already people are beginning to forget the queer fevers that ran through the British community in 1913. For example there was the violent unrest of the women. That may exercise the historian in the future profoundly. Probably he will question the facts. Right up to the very outbreak of the war there was not a week passed without some new ridiculous outrage on the part of the militant suffragettes.
She would sit at her table with her pretty bare arms folded under her like the paws of a little cat, with her face, that still had the delicacy and freshness of a child’s, as intent as any intelligent child’s can be on the jumble of people before her, and her sombre eyes, calm and beautiful, looking at smart London trying at last to take its pleasures gaily.
Joan sat in the night club dreaming of a lover, and the men about her glanced furtively at her face, asking themselves, “Can it be I?” men with red ears, men with greasy hair, men with unpleasing necks and clumsy gestures; bald 407men, fat men, watery-eyed men, cheats, profiteers, usurers, snobs, toadies, successful old men of every sort and young men who had done nothing and for the most part never would. “Can it be I?” they surmised dimly, seeing her pensive eyes.
In this manner the mind of Joan was running on the 408evening when she saw Peter and Hetty come into the club which tried to live up to the name of “The Nest of the Burning Phœnix.” Some tango experts had just relinquished the floor and there was a space amidst the throng when Hetty made her entry. Hetty had made a great effort, she was in full London plumage, and her effect was tremendous.
She and Peter sat side by side, feeling very old and experienced and worldly and up-to-date. But indeed they were still only two children who ought to have been packed off to bed hours before.The disorder in the world of women, the dissolution of manners and restraints, was but the more intimate aspect of a universal drift towards lawlessness. The world of labour was seething also with the same spirit of almost aimless insurrection.
“But this means breaking up the national industries,” said Oswald. “Where is this sort of thing going to end?”break up old things before one can hope for new. I suppose the masters won’t let go while they think there’s a chance of holding on....” It wasn’t that he felt himself to be in possession of any conclusive solution, or that he obtruded his disbelief with any sense of superiority. In spite of his extreme youth he did not for a moment assume the attitude of a superior person. Life was evidently troubling him profoundly, and he was realizing that there was no apparent answer to many of his perplexities. But he was at least trying hard to get an answer.
Oswald was not sure of the extent of Peter’s audience. “The susceptibilities of a proud people, Peter,” he whispered, with his eye on the back of their host.susceptibilities. The worst insult you can offer a grown-up man is to humour him,” said Peter. “What’s the good of pretending to be sympathetic with all this Wearing of the Green. It’s like our White Rose League. Let ’em do it by all means if they want to, but don’t let’s pretend we think it romantic and beautiful and all the rest of it.
They shook Dublin off and spun cheerfully through the sunshine along the coast road to Howth. It was a sparkling bright afternoon, and the road was cheerful with the prim 419happiness of many couples of Irish lovers. But that afternoon peace was the mask worn by one particular day. If the near future could have cast a phantom they would have seen along this road a few weeks ahead of them the gun-runners of Howth marching to the first foolish bloodshed in Dublin streets....
Oswald’s old dream vision of the dark forest came back to his mind. “Is there no way out, Peter?” he said.“There have been some great ideas,” said Oswald....“There has been Christianity,” said Oswald. Wherever the old system could find allies it snatched at them and sought to incorporate them with itself. It had long since taken over the New Imperialism with its tariff schemes and its spirit of financial adventure. It had sneered aloof when the new democracy of the elementary schools sought to read and think; it had let any casual adventurer to supply that reading; but now the creator of Answers and Comic Cuts ruled the Times and sat in the House of Lords.
Recently he had had a curious interview with Lady Charlotte Sydenham, and her white excited face and blazing blue eyes insisted now upon playing the part of mask to the Ulster spirit in his thoughts. She had had to call him in because she had run short of ready money through over-subscription to various schemes for arming the northern patriots.
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