Occasional travelling politicians came to Jacksonburg, were entertained and conducted round the town, and returned with friendly reports. Big game hunters on safari from the neighboring dominions sometimes strayed into the hinterland and, if they returned at all, dined out for years to come on the experience. Until a few months before William Boot’s departure no one in Europe knew of the deep currents that were flowing in Ishmaelite politics; nor did many people know of them in Ishmaelia.
It began during Christmas week with a domestic row in the Jackson family. By Easter the city, so lately a model of internal amity, was threatened by civil war.
A Mr. Smiles Soum was reputed to lead the Fascists. He was only one-quarter Jackson (being grandson in the female line of President Samuel Jackson), and three-quarters pure Ishmaelite. He was thus by right of cousinship, admitted to the public payroll, but he ranked low in the family and had been given a no more lucrative post than that of Assistant Director of Public Morals.
Quarrels among the ruling family were not unusual, particularly in the aftermath of weddings, funerals, and other occasions of corporate festivity, and were normally settled by a readjustment of public offices. It was common knowledge in the bazaars and drink-shops that Mr. Smiles was not satisfied with his post at the Ministry of Public Morals, but it was a breach of precedent and, some thought, the portent of a new era in Ishmaelite politics, when he followed up his tiff by disappearing from Jacksonburg and issuing a manifesto, which, it was thought by those who knew him best, he could not conceivably have composed himself.
The White Shirt movement which he called into being had little in common with the best traditions of Ishmaelite politics. Briefly his thesis was this: the Jacksons were effete, tyrannical and alien; the Ishmaelites were a white race who, led by Smiles, must purge themselves of the Negro taint; the Jacksons had kept Ishmaelia out of the Great War and had thus deprived her of the fruits of victory; the Jacksons had committed Ishmaelia to the control of international Negro finance and secret subversive Negro Bolshevism, by joining the League of Nations; they were responsible for the various endemic and epidemic diseases that ravaged crops, live-stock and human beings; all Ishmaelites who were suffering the consequences of imprudence or ill-fortune in their financial or matrimonial affairs were the victims of international Jacksonism; Smiles was their Leader.
The Jacksons rose above it. Life in Ishmaelia went on as before and the Armenian merchant in Main Street who had laid in a big consignment of white cotton shirtings found himself with the stuff on his hands. In Moscow, Harlem, Bloomsbury and Liberia, however, keener passions were aroused. In a hundred progressive weeklies and Left Study Circles the matter was taken up and the cause of the Jack-sons restarted in ideological form.
Smiles represented international finance, the subjugation of the worker, sacerdotalism; Ishmaelia was black, the Jacksons were black, collective security and democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat were black. Most of this was unfamiliar stuff to the Jacksons but tangible advantages followed. A subscription list was opened in London and received support in chapels and universities; wide publicity was given to the receipt in Ishmaelia of three unused penny stamps addressed to the President by “A little worker’s daughter in Bedford Square.”
In the chief cities of Europe a crop of “Patriot Consulates” sprang up devoted to counter-propaganda.
Newspapermen flocked to Jacksonburg. It was the wet season when business was usually at a standstill; everything boomed this year. At the end of August the rains would stop. Then, everybody outside Ishmaelia agreed, there would be a war. But, with the happy disposition of their race, the Ishmaelites settled down to exploit and enjoy their temporary good fortune.
*
The Hotel Liberty, Jacksonburg, was folded in the peace of Saturday afternoon, soon to be broken by the arrival of the weekly train from the coast but, at the moment, at four o’clock, serene and all-embracing. The wireless station was shut and the fifteen journalists were at rest. Mrs. Earl Russell Jackson padded in stockinged feet across the bare boards of the lounge looking for a sizeable cigar-end, found one, screwed it into her pipe, and settled down in the office rocking-chair to read her bible. Outside—and, in one or two places, inside—the rain fell in torrents. It rang on the iron roof in a continuous, restful monotone; it swirled and gurgled in the channels it had cut in the terrace outside; it seeped under the front door in an opaque pool. Mrs. Earl Russell Jackson puffed at her pipe, licked her thumb and turned a page of the good book. It was very pleasant when all those noisy white men were shut away in their rooms; quite like old times; they brought in good money these journalists—heavens what she was charging them!—but they were a great deal of trouble; brought in a nasty kind of customer too—Hindus, Ishmaelites from up country, poor whites and near-whites from the town, police officers, the off-scourings of the commercial cafés and domino saloons, interpreters and informers and guides, not the kind of person Mrs. Earl Russell Jackson liked to see about her hotel. What with washing and drinking and telephoning and driving about in the mud in taxi-cabs and developing films and cross-questioning her old and respectable patrons, there never seemed a moment’s peace.
Even now they were not all idle; in their austere trade they had forfeited the arts of leisure.
Upstairs in his room Mr. Wenlock Jakes was spending the afternoon at work on his forthcoming book Under the Ermine. It was to be a survey of the undercurrents of English political and social life. I shall never forget [he typed] the evening of King Edward’s abdication. I was dining at the Savoy Grill as the guest of Silas Shock of the New York Guardian. His guests were well chosen, six of the most influential men and women in England; men and women such as only exist in England, who are seldom in the news but who control the strings of the national purse. On my left was Mrs. Tiffin, the wife of the famous publisher; on the other side was Prudence Blank, who has been described to me as @the Mary Selena Wilmark of
[email protected], opposite was John Titmuss whose desk at the News Chronicle holds more secrets of state than any ambassador’s… big business was represented by John Nought, agent of the Credential Assurance Co…. I at once raised the question of the hour. Not one of that brilliant company expressed any opinion. There, in a nutshell, you have England, her greatness—and her littleness.
Jakes was to be paid an advance of 20,000 dollars for this book.
In the next room were four furious Frenchmen. They were dressed as though for the cinema camera in breeches, open shirts, and brand new chocolate-colored riding boots cross-laced from bottom to top; each carried a bandolier of cartridges round his waist and a revolver-holster on his hip. Three were seated, the fourth strode before them, jingling his spurs as he turned and stamped on the bare boards. They were composing a memorandum of their wrongs.
We, the undersigned members of the French Press in Ishmaelia, they had written, protest categorically and in the most emphatic manner against the partiality shown against us by the Ishmaelite Press Bureau and at the discourteous lack of co-operation of our so-called colleagues…
In the next room, round a little table, sat Shumble, Whelper, Pigge and a gigantic, bemused Swede. Shumble and Whelper and Pigge were special correspondents; the Swede was resident correspondent to a syndicate of Scandinavian papers—and more; he was Swedish Vice-Consul, head surgeon at the Swedish Mission Hospital, and proprietor of the combined Tea, Bible and Chemist shop which was the center of European life in Jacksonburg; a pre-crisis resident of high standing. All the journalists tried to make friends with him; all succeeded; but they found him disappointing as a news source.
These four were playing cards.
“I will go four no hearts,” said Erik Olafsen.
“You can’t do that.”
“Why cannot I do that? I have no hearts.”
“But we explained just now…”
“Will you please be so kind and explain another time?”
They explained; the cards were thrown in and the patient Swede collected them
in his enormous hand. Shumble began to deal.
“Where’s Hitchcock today?” he asked.
“He’s onto something. I tried his door. It was locked.”
“His shutters have been up all day.”
“I looked through the keyhole,” said Shumble. “You bet he’s onto something.”
“D’you think he’s found the fascist headquarters?”
“Wouldn’t put it past him. Whenever that man disappears you can be sure that a big story is going to break.”
“If you please what is Hitchcock?” asked the Swede.
*
Mr. Pappenhacker of The Twopence was playing with a toy train—a relic of College at Winchester, with which he invariably travelled. In his youth he had delighted to address it in Latin Alcaics and to derive Greek names for each part of the mechanism. Now it acted as a sedative to his restless mind.
The Twopence did not encourage habits of expensive cabling. That day he had composed a long “turnover” on Ishmaelite conditions and posted it in the confidence that, long before it arrived at London, conditions would be unrecognizable.
Six other journalists of six nationalities were spending their day of leisure in this hotel. Time lay heavily on them. The mail train was due sometime that evening to relieve their tedium.
Fifty yards distant in the annex, secluded from the main block of the hotel by a waterlogged garden, lay Sir Jocelyn Hitchcock, fast asleep. The room was in half-darkness; door and windows were barred. On the table, beside his typewriter, stood a primus stove. There was a small heap of tins and bottles in the corner. On the walls hung the official, wildly deceptive map of Ishmaelia; a little flag in the center of Jacksonburg marked Hitchcock’s present position. He slept gently; his lips under the fine, white moustache curved in a barely perceptible smile of satisfaction. For reasons of his own he was in retirement.
And the granite sky wept.
*
In the rainy season it was impossible to say, within twelve hours or so, the time of the train’s arrival. Today it had made a good journey. It was still light when the telephone rang in Mrs. Jackson’s office to tell her that it had left the last station and would soon be there. Instantly the Hotel Liberty came to life. The hall-boy donned his peaked cap and set out with Mrs. Jackson to look for clients. Shumble, Whelper and Pigge left their game and put on their mackintoshes; the Frenchmen struggled into Spahi capes. The six other journalists emerged from their rooms and began shouting for taxis. Paleologue, Jakes’s jackal, reported for duty and was dispatched to observe arrivals. The greater, and more forbidding part of the population of Jacksonburg was assembled on the platform to greet William’s arrival.
He and Corker had had a journey of constant annoyance. For three days they had been crawling up from the fierce heat of the coast into the bleak and sodden highlands. There were four first-class compartments on their train; one was reserved for a Swiss ticket collector. In the remaining three, in painful proximity, sat twenty-four Europeans, ten of whom were the advance party of the Excelsior Movie-Sound News of America. The others were journalists. They had lunched, dined and slept at the rest houses on the line. During the first day, when they were crossing the fiery coastal plain, there had been no ice; on the second night, in the bush, no mosquito nets; on the third night, in the mountains, no blankets. Only the little Swiss official enjoyed tolerable comfort. At every halt fellow employees brought him refreshment—frosted beer, steaming coffee, baskets of fruit; at the restaurants there were special dishes for him and rocking chairs in which to digest them; there were bedrooms with fine brass bedsteads and warm hip-baths. When Corker and his friends discovered that he was only the ticket collector they felt very badly about this.
Sometime during the second day’s journey the luggage van came detached from the rest of the train. Its loss was discovered that evening when the passengers wanted their mosquito nets.
“Here’s where that little beaver can be useful,” said Corker.
He and William went to ask his help. He sat in his rocking chair smoking a thin, mild cheroot, his hands folded over his firm little dome of stomach. They stood and told him of their troubles. He thanked them and said it was quite all right.
“Such things often happen. I always travel with all my possessions in the compartment with me.”
“I shall write to the Director of the Line about it,” said Corker.
“Yes that is the best thing to do. It is always possible that the van will be traced.”
“I’ve got some very valuable curios in my luggage.”
“Unfortunate. I am afraid it is less likely to be recovered.”
“D’you know who we are?”
“Yes,” said the Swiss, with a little shudder. “Yes, I know.”
By the end of the journey Corker had come to hate this man. And his nettle-rash was on him again. He reached Jacksonburg in a bad humor.
Shumble, Whelper and Pigge knew Corker; they had loitered together of old on many a doorstep and forced an entry into many a stricken home. “Thought you’d be on this train,” said Shumble. “Your name’s posted for collect facilities in the radio station. What sort of trip?”
“Lousy. How are things here?”
“Lousy. Who’s with you?”
Corker told him, adding: “Who’s here already?”
Shumble told him.
“All the old bunch.”
“Yes, and there’s a highbrow yid from The Twopence—but we don’t count him.”
“No, no competition there.”
“The Twopence isn’t what you would call a newspaper is it?… Still there’s enough to make things busy and there’s more coming. They seem to have gone crazy about this story at home. Jakes is urgenting eight hundred words a day.”
“Jakes here? Well there must be something in it.”
“Who’s the important little chap with the beard?”—they looked towards the customs shed through which the Swiss was being obsequiously conducted.
“You’d think he was an ambassador,” said Corker bitterly.
The black porter of the Hotel Liberty interrupted them. Corker began to describe in detail his lost elephant. Shumble disappeared in the crowd.
“Too bad, too bad,” said the porter. “Very bad men on railway.”
“But it was registered through.”
“Maybe he’ll turn up.”
“Do things often get lost on your damned awful line?”
“Most always.”
All round them the journalists were complaining about their losses. “… Five miles of film,” said the leader of the Excelsior Movie-Sound News. “How am I going to get that through the expenses department?”
“Very bad men on railway. They like film plenty—him make good fire.”
William alone was reconciled to the disaster; his cleft sticks were behind him; it was as though, on a warm day, he had suddenly shed an enormous, fur-lined motoring-coat.
*
So far as their profession allowed them time for such soft feelings, Corker and Pigge were friends.
“… It was large and very artistic,” said Corker, describing his elephant, “just the kind of thing Madge likes.”
Pigge listened sympathetically. The bustle was over. William and Corker had secured a room together at the Liberty; their sparse hand-luggage was unpacked and Pigge had dropped in for a drink.
“What’s the situation?” asked William, when Corker had exhausted his information—though not his resentment—about the shawls and cigarette boxes.
“Lousy,” said Pigge.
“I’ve been told to go to the front.”
“That’s what we all want to do. But in the first place there isn’t any front and in the second place we couldn’t get to it if there was. You can’t move outside the town without a permit and you can’t get a permit.”
“Then what are you sending?” asked Corker.
“Color stuff,” said Pigge, with great disgust. “Preparations in the threatened capital
, soldiers of fortune, mystery men, foreign influences, volunteers… there isn’t any hard news. The fascist headquarters are up country somewhere in the mountains. No one knows where. They’re going to attack when the rain stops in about ten days. You can’t get a word out of the Government. They won’t admit there is a crisis.”
“What, not with Jakes and Hitchcock here?” said Corker in wonder. “What’s this President like anyway?”
“Lousy.”
“Where is Hitchcock, by the way?”
“That’s what we all want to know.”
*
“Where’s Hitchcock?” asked Jakes.
Paleologue shook his head sadly. He was finding Jakes a hard master. For over a week he had been on his pay-roll. It seemed a lifetime. But the pay was enormous and Paleologue was a good family man; he had two wives to support and countless queer-colored children on whom he lavished his love. Until the arrival of the newspaper men—that decisive epoch in Ishmaelite social history—he had been dragoman and interpreter at the British Legation, on wages which—though supplemented from time to time by the sale to his master’s colleagues of any waste-paper he could find lying around the Chancellery—barely sufficed for the necessaries of his household; occasionally he had been able to provide amusement for bachelor attachés; occasionally he sold objects of native art to the ladies of the compound. But it had been an exiguous living. Now he was getting fifty American dollars a week. It was a wage beyond the bounds of his wildest ambition… but Mr. Jakes was very exacting and very peremptory.
“Who was on the train?”
“No one except the newspaper gentlemen and M. Giraud.”
“Who’s he?”
“He is in the Railway. He went down to the coast with his wife last week, to see her off to Europe.”