There was no patronage in his tone. As usual, he seemed to be stating what appeared to him an obvious conclusion.
“The upshot is,” he went on, “that I’m going to dismiss you from your present post and put you in charge of a new Department dealing with Reconstruction. There will be one condition—or rather two conditions—attached to it; but they aren’t hard ones. Will you take it?”
Of course I was taken completely aback. I had never dreamed of such a thing; and I hardly knew what to say. I stammered some sort of an acceptance as soon as I could find my voice.
“Very good. You cut loose from your present affairs from this moment. Anglesey will take over. You can give him all the pointers he asks for today; and after that he must fend for himself. I’ll have no two minds on that line of work.
“Now as to the new thing. It will make you my successor, of course; and I want to start with a word of warning. Unlimited power is bad for any man. You have only to look at the example of the Caesars to see that: Caligula, Tiberius, Nero, you’ll find the whole sordid business in Suetonius. And I can tell you the same thing at first hand myself. I’ve got unlimited power here nowadays; and it isn’t doing me any good. I feel that I am going downhill under it daily. You’ll probably see it yourself before long, although I’ve fought to keep it in check. So much for the warning.
“Now as to the conditions. I admired your dream-cities, Jack. I wish you could build them all in stone. But even if you were to do that, they would still have to be peopled; and I doubt if you will find the men and women whom you want for them among the present population. Mind you, I believe you have good material there; but it has a basis in the brute which none of your dream-people had. You don’t realise that factor; you couldn’t understand its strength unless you saw it actually before you: and my first condition is meant to let you see the frailty with which you will have to contend and which you will have to eliminate before you can see that visionary race pacing the gardens in your Fata Morgana. It’s all in full blast within five hundred miles of here. London is thronged with people just the same as those down there in the factories; and I want you to see what it amounts to when you take off the leash. So the first condition is that you go down to London and see it with your own eyes. I could prepare you for it from the reports I have; but I think it will be better if you see it for yourself and don’t trust to any other person. I’ll make all the arrangements; and you can leave in a couple of days.”
I am no enthusiast for digging into the baser side of human nature, and the prospect which he held out was not an inviting one to me. But I could see that he laid stress upon it, so I merely nodded my consent.
“Now the second condition. I daresay that you alone could plan a very good scheme of reconstruction; but it would be a pure male scheme. You can’t put yourself in any woman’s place and see things with her eyes, try as you will. But this Fata Morgana of yours, when it rises, has to be inhabited by both men and women; and you have to make it as fit for the women as for the men. That’s where you would collapse.”
“I suppose you’re right. I don’t know much about a woman’s point of view. I never had even a sister to enlighten me.”
“Quite so. I judged as much from some things. Well, my second condition is that you take over Elsa as a colleague. It was hearing the two of you talk that gave me the idea of using you, Jack; so it is only fair that she should have a share in the thing also.”
“But would Miss Huntingtower leave you?”
“I’ll try to persuade her. Anyway, leave it to me. But remember, Jack, not a word to her about London or the South. She knows nothing of that yet. I’ve kept her work confined entirely to Area affairs. I want to spare her as long as I can; for she’ll take it hard when it comes. She’ll take it very hard, I’m afraid. Until you’re back from London I shall say nothing to her about your being away, lest she asks where you have gone.”
I was still dazzled by the promotion he had promised me; and I thanked him for it, again and again. When I left him, my mind was still full of it all. I don’t know that I felt the responsibility at first; it was rather the chance of bringing things nearer to that dream-city which we had built upon the clouds, that I felt most strongly. I had no doubt that I could lay the foundations securely; and upon them Elsa could build those fragile upper courses in which she delighted. It would be our own Fata Morgana, but reared by human hands.
So I dreamed. …
XII
Nuit Blanche
The aeroplane which carried me southward alighted on the Hendon flying-ground when dusk was falling. As we crossed Hertfordshire I had seen in front of me, to the southeast, a great pall of cloud which seemed to hang above the city; and as the daylight faded, this curtain became lit up with a red glow like the sky above a blast-furnace.
When we landed, I found that
