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diff --git a/14540.txt b/14540.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..50e9810 --- /dev/null +++ b/14540.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5574 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, When William Came, by Saki + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: When William Came + +Author: Saki + +Release Date: December 31, 2004 [eBook #14540] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHEN WILLIAM CAME*** + + + + +Transcribed from the 1914 John Lane edition by David Price, +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +WHEN WILLIAM CAME + + +CHAPTER I: THE SINGING-BIRD AND THE BAROMETER + + +Cicely Yeovil sat in a low swing chair, alternately looking at herself in +a mirror and at the other occupant of the room in the flesh. Both +prospects gave her undisguised satisfaction. Without being vain she was +duly appreciative of good looks, whether in herself or in another, and +the reflection that she saw in the mirror, and the young man whom she saw +seated at the piano, would have come with credit out of a more severely +critical inspection. Probably she looked longer and with greater +appreciation at the piano player than at her own image; her good looks +were an inherited possession, that had been with her more or less all her +life, while Ronnie Storre was a comparatively new acquisition, discovered +and achieved, so to speak, by her own enterprise, selected by her own +good taste. Fate had given her adorable eyelashes and an excellent +profile. Ronnie was an indulgence she had bestowed on herself. + +Cicely had long ago planned out for herself a complete philosophy of +life, and had resolutely set to work to carry her philosophy into +practice. "When love is over how little of love even the lover +understands," she quoted to herself from one of her favourite poets, and +transposed the saying into "While life is with us how little of life even +the materialist understands." Most people that she knew took endless +pains and precautions to preserve and prolong their lives and keep their +powers of enjoyment unimpaired; few, very few, seemed to make any +intelligent effort at understanding what they really wanted in the way of +enjoying their lives, or to ascertain what were the best means for +satisfying those wants. Fewer still bent their whole energies to the one +paramount aim of getting what they wanted in the fullest possible +measure. Her scheme of life was not a wholly selfish one; no one could +understand what she wanted as well as she did herself, therefore she felt +that she was the best person to pursue her own ends and cater for her own +wants. To have others thinking and acting for one merely meant that one +had to be perpetually grateful for a lot of well-meant and usually +unsatisfactory services. It was like the case of a rich man giving a +community a free library, when probably the community only wanted free +fishing or reduced tram-fares. Cicely studied her own whims and wishes, +experimented in the best method of carrying them into effect, compared +the accumulated results of her experiments, and gradually arrived at a +very clear idea of what she wanted in life, and how best to achieve it. +She was not by disposition a self-centred soul, therefore she did not +make the mistake of supposing that one can live successfully and +gracefully in a crowded world without taking due notice of the other +human elements around one. She was instinctively far more thoughtful for +others than many a person who is genuinely but unseeingly addicted to +unselfishness. + +Also she kept in her armoury the weapon which can be so mightily +effective if used sparingly by a really sincere individual--the knowledge +of when to be a humbug. Ambition entered to a certain extent into her +life, and governed it perhaps rather more than she knew. She desired to +escape from the doom of being a nonentity, but the escape would have to +be effected in her own way and in her own time; to be governed by +ambition was only a shade or two better than being governed by +convention. + +The drawing-room in which she and Ronnie were sitting was of such +proportions that one hardly knew whether it was intended to be one room +or several, and it had the merit of being moderately cool at two o'clock +on a particularly hot July afternoon. In the coolest of its many alcoves +servants had noiselessly set out an improvised luncheon table: a tempting +array of caviare, crab and mushroom salads, cold asparagus, slender hock +bottles and high-stemmed wine goblets peeped out from amid a setting of +Charlotte Klemm roses. + +Cicely rose from her seat and went over to the piano. + +"Come," she said, touching the young man lightly with a finger-tip on the +top of his very sleek, copper-hued head, "we're going to have +picnic-lunch to-day up here; it's so much cooler than any of the +downstairs rooms, and we shan't be bothered with the servants trotting in +and out all the time. Rather a good idea of mine, wasn't it?" + +Ronnie, after looking anxiously to see that the word "picnic" did not +portend tongue sandwiches and biscuits, gave the idea his blessing. + +"What is young Storre's profession?" some one had once asked concerning +him. + +"He has a great many friends who have independent incomes," had been the +answer. + +The meal was begun in an appreciative silence; a picnic in which three +kinds of red pepper were available for the caviare demanded a certain +amount of respectful attention. + +"My heart ought to be like a singing-bird to-day, I suppose," said Cicely +presently. + +"Because your good man is coming home?" asked Ronnie. + +Cicely nodded. + +"He's expected some time this afternoon, though I'm rather vague as to +which train he arrives by. Rather a stifling day for railway +travelling." + +"And is your heart doing the singing-bird business?" asked Ronnie. + +"That depends," said Cicely, "if I may choose the bird. A missel-thrush +would do, perhaps; it sings loudest in stormy weather, I believe." + +Ronnie disposed of two or three stems of asparagus before making any +comment on this remark. + +"Is there going to be stormy weather?" he asked. + +"The domestic barometer is set rather that way," said Cicely. "You see, +Murrey has been away for ever so long, and, of course, there will be lots +of things he won't be used to, and I'm afraid matters may be rather +strained and uncomfortable for a time." + +"Do you mean that he will object to me?" asked Ronnie. + +"Not in the least," said Cicely, "he's quite broad-minded on most +subjects, and he realises that this is an age in which sensible people +know thoroughly well what they want, and are determined to get what they +want. It pleases me to see a lot of you, and to spoil you and pay you +extravagant compliments about your good looks and your music, and to +imagine at times that I'm in danger of getting fond of you; I don't see +any harm in it, and I don't suppose Murrey will either--in fact, I +shouldn't be surprised if he takes rather a liking to you. No, it's the +general situation that will trouble and exasperate him; he's not had time +to get accustomed to the fait accompli like we have. It will break on +him with horrible suddenness." + +"He was somewhere in Russia when the war broke out, wasn't he?" said +Ronnie. + +"Somewhere in the wilds of Eastern Siberia, shooting and bird collecting, +miles away from a railway or telegraph line, and it was all over before +he knew anything about it; it didn't last very long, when you come to +think of it. He was due home somewhere about that time, and when the +weeks slipped by without my hearing from him, I quite thought he'd been +captured in the Baltic or somewhere on the way back. It turned out that +he was down with marsh fever in some out-of-the-way spot, and everything +was over and finished with before he got back to civilisation and +newspapers." + +"It must have been a bit of a shock," said Ronnie, busy with a +well-devised salad; "still, I don't see why there should be domestic +storms when he comes back. You are hardly responsible for the +catastrophe that has happened." + +"No," said Cicely, "but he'll come back naturally feeling sore and savage +with everything he sees around him, and he won't realise just at once +that we've been through all that ourselves, and have reached the stage of +sullen acquiescence in what can't be helped. He won't understand, for +instance, how we can be enthusiastic and excited over Gorla Mustelford's +debut, and things of that sort; he'll think we are a set of callous +revellers, fiddling while Rome is burning." + +"In this case," said Ronnie, "Rome isn't burning, it's burnt. All that +remains to be done is to rebuild it--when possible." + +"Exactly, and he'll say we're not doing much towards helping at that." + +"But," protested Ronnie, "the whole thing has only just happened; 'Rome +wasn't built in a day,' and we can't rebuild our Rome in a day." + +"I know," said Cicely, "but so many of our friends, and especially +Murrey's friends, have taken the thing in a tragical fashion, and cleared +off to the Colonies, or shut themselves up in their country houses, as +though there was a sort of moral leprosy infecting London." + +"I don't see what good that does," said Ronnie. + +"It doesn't do any good, but it's what a lot of them have done because +they felt like doing it, and Murrey will feel like doing it too. That is +where I foresee trouble and disagreement." + +Ronnie shrugged his shoulders. + +"I would take things tragically if I saw the good of it," he said; "as +matters stand it's too late in the day and too early to be anything but +philosophical about what one can't help. For the present we've just got +to make the best of things. Besides, you can't very well turn down Gorla +at the last moment." + +"I'm not going to turn down Gorla, or anybody," said Cicely with +decision. "I think it would be silly, and silliness doesn't appeal to +me. That is why I foresee storms on the domestic horizon. After all, +Gorla has her career to think of. Do you know," she added, with a change +of tone, "I rather wish you would fall in love with Gorla; it would make +me horribly jealous, and a little jealousy is such a good tonic for any +woman who knows how to dress well. Also, Ronnie, it would prove that you +are capable of falling in love with some one, of which I've grave doubts +up to the present." + +"Love is one of the few things in which the make-believe is superior to +the genuine," said Ronnie, "it lasts longer, and you get more fun out of +it, and it's easier to replace when you've done with it." + +"Still, it's rather like playing with coloured paper instead of playing +with fire," objected Cicely. + +A footman came round the corner with the trained silence that tactfully +contrives to make itself felt. + +"Mr. Luton to see you, Madam," he announced, "shall I say you are in?" + +"Mr. Luton? Oh, yes," said Cicely, "he'll probably have something to +tell us about Gorla's concert," she added, turning to Ronnie. + +Tony Luton was a young man who had sprung from the people, and had taken +care that there should be no recoil. He was scarcely twenty years of +age, but a tightly packed chronicle of vicissitudes lay behind his +sprightly insouciant appearance. Since his fifteenth year he had lived, +Heaven knew how, getting sometimes a minor engagement at some minor music- +hall, sometimes a temporary job as secretary-valet-companion to a roving +invalid, dining now and then on plovers' eggs and asparagus at one of the +smarter West End restaurants, at other times devouring a kipper or a +sausage in some stuffy Edgware Road eating-house; always seemingly amused +by life, and always amusing. It is possible that somewhere in such heart +as he possessed there lurked a rankling bitterness against the hard +things of life, or a scrap of gratitude towards the one or two friends +who had helped him disinterestedly, but his most intimate associates +could not have guessed at the existence of such feelings. Tony Luton was +just a merry-eyed dancing faun, whom Fate had surrounded with streets +instead of woods, and it would have been in the highest degree inartistic +to have sounded him for a heart or a heartache. + +The dancing of the faun took one day a livelier and more assured turn, +the joyousness became more real, and the worst of the vicissitudes seemed +suddenly over. A musical friend, gifted with mediocre but marketable +abilities, supplied Tony with a song, for which he obtained a trial +performance at an East End hall. Dressed as a jockey, for no particular +reason except that the costume suited him, he sang, "They quaff the gay +bubbly in Eccleston Square" to an appreciative audience, which included +the manager of a famous West End theatre of varieties. Tony and his song +won the managerial favour, and were immediately transplanted to the West +End house, where they scored a success of which the drooping music-hall +industry was at the moment badly in need. + +It was just after the great catastrophe, and men of the London world were +in no humour to think; they had witnessed the inconceivable befall them, +they had nothing but political ruin to stare at, and they were anxious to +look the other way. The words of Tony's song were more or less +meaningless, though he sang them remarkably well, but the tune, with its +air of slyness and furtive joyousness, appealed in some unaccountable +manner to people who were furtively unhappy, and who were trying to +appear stoically cheerful. + +"What must be, must be," and "It's a poor heart that never rejoices," +were the popular expressions of the London public at that moment, and the +men who had to cater for that public were thankful when they were able to +stumble across anything that fitted in with the prevailing mood. For the +first time in his life Tony Luton discovered that agents and managers +were a leisured class, and that office boys had manners. + +He entered Cicely's drawing-room with the air of one to whom assurance of +manner has become a sheathed weapon, a court accessory rather than a +trade implement. He was more quietly dressed than the usual run of music- +hall successes; he had looked critically at life from too many angles not +to know that though clothes cannot make a man they can certainly damn +him. + +"Thank you, I have lunched already," he said in answer to a question from +Cicely. "Thank you," he said again in a cheerful affirmative, as the +question of hock in a tall ice-cold goblet was propounded to him. + +"I've come to tell you the latest about the Gorla Mustelford evening," he +continued. "Old Laurent is putting his back into it, and it's really +going to be rather a big affair. She's going to out-Russian the +Russians. Of course, she hasn't their technique nor a tenth of their +training, but she's having tons of advertisement. The name Gorla is +almost an advertisement in itself, and then there's the fact that she's +the daughter of a peer." + +"She has temperament," said Cicely, with the decision of one who makes a +vague statement in a good cause. + +"So Laurent says," observed Tony. "He discovers temperament in every one +that he intends to boom. He told me that I had temperament to the finger- +tips, and I was too polite to contradict him. But I haven't told you the +really important thing about the Mustelford debut. It is a profound +secret, more or less, so you must promise not to breathe a word about it +till half-past four, when it will appear in all the six o'clock +newspapers." + +Tony paused for dramatic effect, while he drained his goblet, and then +made his announcement. + +"Majesty is going to be present. Informally and unofficially, but still +present in the flesh. A sort of casual dropping in, carefully heralded +by unconfirmed rumour a week ahead." + +"Heavens!" exclaimed Cicely, in genuine excitement, "what a bold stroke. +Lady Shalem has worked that, I bet. I suppose it will go down all +right." + +"Trust Laurent to see to that," said Tony, "he knows how to fill his +house with the right sort of people, and he's not the one to risk a +fiasco. He knows what he's about. I tell you, it's going to be a big +evening." + +"I say!" exclaimed Ronnie suddenly, "give a supper party here for Gorla +on the night, and ask the Shalem woman and all her crowd. It will be +awful fun." + +Cicely caught at the suggestion with some enthusiasm. She did not +particularly care for Lady Shalem, but she thought it would be just as +well to care for her as far as outward appearances went. + +Grace, Lady Shalem, was a woman who had blossomed into sudden importance +by constituting herself a sort of foster-mother to the fait accompli. At +a moment when London was denuded of most of its aforetime social leaders +she had seen her opportunity, and made the most of it. She had not +contented herself with bowing to the inevitable, she had stretched out +her hand to it, and forced herself to smile graciously at it, and her +polite attentions had been reciprocated. Lady Shalem, without being a +beauty or a wit, or a grand lady in the traditional sense of the word, +was in a fair way to becoming a power in the land; others, more capable +and with stronger claims to social recognition, would doubtless +overshadow her and displace her in due course, but for the moment she was +a person whose good graces counted for something, and Cicely was quite +alive to the advantage of being in those good graces. + +"It would be rather fun," she said, running over in her mind the +possibilities of the suggested supper-party. + +"It would be jolly useful," put in Ronnie eagerly; "you could get all +sorts of interesting people together, and it would be an excellent +advertisement for Gorla." + +Ronnie approved of supper-parties on principle, but he was also thinking +of the advantage which might accrue to the drawing-room concert which +Cicely had projected (with himself as the chief performer), if he could +be brought into contact with a wider circle of music patrons. + +"I know it would be useful," said Cicely, "it would be almost historical; +there's no knowing who might not come to it--and things are dreadfully +slack in the entertaining line just now." + +The ambitious note in her character was making itself felt at that +moment. + +"Let's go down to the library, and work out a list of people to invite," +said Ronnie. + +A servant entered the room and made a brief announcement. + +"Mr. Yeovil has arrived, madam." + +"Bother," said Ronnie sulkily. "Now you'll cool off about that supper +party, and turn down Gorla and the rest of us." + +It was certainly true that the supper already seemed a more difficult +proposition in Cicely's eyes than it had a moment or two ago. + + "'You'll not forget my only daughter, + E'en though Saphia has crossed the sea,'" + +quoted Tony, with mocking laughter in his voice and eyes. + +Cicely went down to greet her husband. She felt that she was probably +very glad that he was home once more; she was angry with herself for not +feeling greater certainty on the point. Even the well-beloved, however, +can select the wrong moment for return. If Cicely Yeovil's heart was +like a singing-bird, it was of a kind that has frequent lapses into +silence. + + + + +CHAPTER II: THE HOMECOMING + + +Murrey Yeovil got out of the boat-train at Victoria Station, and stood +waiting, in an attitude something between listlessness and impatience, +while a porter dragged his light travelling kit out of the railway +carriage and went in search of his heavier baggage with a hand-truck. +Yeovil was a grey-faced young man, with restless eyes, and a rather +wistful mouth, and an air of lassitude that was evidently only a +temporary characteristic. The hot dusty station, with its blended crowds +of dawdling and scurrying people, its little streams of suburban +passengers pouring out every now and then from this or that platform, +like ants swarming across a garden path, made a wearisome climax to what +had been a rather wearisome journey. Yeovil glanced quickly, almost +furtively, around him in all directions, with the air of a man who is +constrained by morbid curiosity to look for things that he would rather +not see. The announcements placed in German alternatively with English +over the booking office, left-luggage office, refreshment buffets, and so +forth, the crowned eagle and monogram displayed on the post boxes, caught +his eye in quick succession. + +He turned to help the porter to shepherd his belongings on to the truck, +and followed him to the outer yard of the station, where a string of taxi- +cabs was being slowly absorbed by an outpouring crowd of travellers. + +Portmanteaux, wraps, and a trunk or two, much be-labelled and +travel-worn, were stowed into a taxi, and Yeovil turned to give the +direction to the driver. + +"Twenty-eight, Berkshire Street." + +"Berkschirestrasse, acht-und-zwanzig," echoed the man, a bulky spectacled +individual of unmistakable Teuton type. + +"Twenty-eight, Berkshire Street," repeated Yeovil, and got into the cab, +leaving the driver to re-translate the direction into his own language. + +A succession of cabs leaving the station blocked the roadway for a moment +or two, and Yeovil had leisure to observe the fact that Viktoria Strasse +was lettered side by side with the familiar English name of the street. A +notice directing the public to the neighbouring swimming baths was also +written up in both languages. London had become a bi-lingual city, even +as Warsaw. + +The cab threaded its way swiftly along Buckingham Palace Road towards the +Mall. As they passed the long front of the Palace the traveller turned +his head resolutely away, that he might not see the alien uniforms at the +gates and the eagle standard flapping in the sunlight. The taxi driver, +who seemed to have combative instincts, slowed down as he was turning +into the Mall, and pointed to the white pile of memorial statuary in +front of the palace gates. + +"Grossmutter Denkmal, yes," he announced, and resumed his journey. + +Arrived at his destination, Yeovil stood on the steps of his house and +pressed the bell with an odd sense of forlornness, as though he were a +stranger drifting from nowhere into a land that had no cognisance of him; +a moment later he was standing in his own hall, the object of respectful +solicitude and attention. Sprucely garbed and groomed lackeys busied +themselves with his battered travel-soiled baggage; the door closed on +the guttural-voiced taxi driver, and the glaring July sunshine. The +wearisome journey was over. + +"Poor dear, how dreadfully pulled-down you look," said Cicely, when the +first greetings had been exchanged. + +"It's been a slow business, getting well," said Yeovil. "I'm only three- +quarter way there yet." + +He looked at his reflection in a mirror and laughed ruefully. + +"You should have seen what I looked like five or six weeks ago," he +added. + +"You ought to have let me come out and nurse you," said Cicely; "you know +I wanted to." + +"Oh, they nursed me well enough," said Yeovil, "and it would have been a +shame dragging you out there; a small Finnish health resort, out of the +season, is not a very amusing place, and it would have been worse for any +one who didn't talk Russian." + +"You must have been buried alive there," said Cicely, with commiseration +in her voice. + +"I wanted to be buried alive," said Yeovil. "The news from the outer +world was not of a kind that helped a despondent invalid towards +convalescence. They spoke to me as little as possible about what was +happening, and I was grateful for your letters because they also told me +very little. When one is abroad, among foreigners, one's country's +misfortunes cause one an acuter, more personal distress, than they would +at home even." + +"Well, you are at home now, anyway," said Cicely, "and you can jog along +the road to complete recovery at your own pace. A little quiet shooting +this autumn and a little hunting, just enough to keep you fit and not to +overtire you; you mustn't overtax your strength." + +"I'm getting my strength back all right," said Yeovil. "This journey +hasn't tired me half as much as one might have expected. It's the awful +drag of listlessness, mental and physical, that is the worst after-effect +of these marsh fevers; they drain the energy out of you in bucketfuls, +and it trickles back again in teaspoonfuls. And just now untiring energy +is what I shall need, even more than strength; I don't want to degenerate +into a slacker." + +"Look here, Murrey," said Cicely, "after we've had dinner together to- +night, I'm going to do a seemingly unwifely thing. I'm going to go out +and leave you alone with an old friend. Doctor Holham is coming in to +drink coffee and smoke with you. I arranged this because I knew it was +what you would like. Men can talk these things over best by themselves, +and Holham can tell you everything that happened--since you went away. It +will be a dreary story, I'm afraid, but you will want to hear it all. It +was a nightmare time, but now one sees it in a calmer perspective." + +"I feel in a nightmare still," said Yeovil. + +"We all felt like that," said Cicely, rather with the air of an elder +person who tells a child that it will understand things better when it +grows up; "time is always something of a narcotic you know. Things seem +absolutely unbearable, and then bit by bit we find out that we are +bearing them. And now, dear, I'll fill up your notification paper and +leave you to superintend your unpacking. Robert will give you any help +you want." + +"What is the notification paper?" asked Yeovil. + +"Oh, a stupid form to be filled up when any one arrives, to say where +they come from, and their business and nationality and religion, and all +that sort of thing. We're rather more bureaucratic than we used to be, +you know." + +Yeovil said nothing, but into the sallow greyness of his face there crept +a dark flush, that faded presently and left his colour more grey and +bloodless than before. + +The journey seemed suddenly to have recommenced; he was under his own +roof, his servants were waiting on him, his familiar possessions were in +evidence around him, but the sense of being at home had vanished. It was +as though he had arrived at some wayside hotel, and been asked to +register his name and status and destination. Other things of disgust +and irritation he had foreseen in the London he was coming to--the +alterations on stamps and coinage, the intrusive Teuton element, the +alien uniforms cropping up everywhere, the new orientation of social +life; such things he was prepared for, but this personal evidence of his +subject state came on him unawares, at a moment when he had, so to speak, +laid his armour aside. Cicely spoke lightly of the hateful formality +that had been forced on them; would he, too, come to regard things in the +same acquiescent spirit? + + + + +CHAPTER III: "THE METSKIE TSAR" + + +"I was in the early stages of my fever when I got the first inkling of +what was going on," said Yeovil to the doctor, as they sat over their +coffee in a recess of the big smoking-room; "just able to potter about a +bit in the daytime, fighting against depression and inertia, feverish as +evening came on, and delirious in the night. My game tracker and my +attendant were both Buriats, and spoke very little Russian, and that was +the only language we had in common to converse in. In matters concerning +food and sport we soon got to understand each other, but on other +subjects we were not easily able to exchange ideas. One day my tracker +had been to a distant trading-store to get some things of which we were +in need; the store was eighty miles from the nearest point of railroad, +eighty miles of terribly bad roads, but it was in its way a centre and +transmitter of news from the outside world. The tracker brought back +with him vague tidings of a conflict of some sort between the 'Metskie +Tsar' and the 'Angliskie Tsar,' and kept repeating the Russian word for +defeat. The 'Angliskie Tsar' I recognised, of course, as the King of +England, but my brain was too sick and dull to read any further meaning +into the man's reiterated gabble. I grew so ill just then that I had to +give up the struggle against fever, and make my way as best I could +towards the nearest point where nursing and doctoring could be had. It +was one evening, in a lonely rest-hut on the edge of a huge forest, as I +was waiting for my boy to bring the meal for which I was feverishly +impatient, and which I knew I should loathe as soon as it was brought, +that the explanation of the word 'Metskie' flashed on me. I had thought +of it as referring to some Oriental potentate, some rebellious rajah +perhaps, who was giving trouble, and whose followers had possibly +discomfited an isolated British force in some out-of-the-way corner of +our Empire. And all of a sudden I knew that 'Nemetskie Tsar,' German +Emperor, had been the name that the man had been trying to convey to me. +I shouted for the tracker, and put him through a breathless +cross-examination; he confirmed what my fears had told me. The 'Metskie +Tsar' was a big European ruler, he had been in conflict with the +'Angliskie Tsar,' and the latter had been defeated, swept away; the man +spoke the word that he used for ships, and made energetic pantomime to +express the sinking of a fleet. Holham, there was nothing for it but to +hope that this was a false, groundless rumour, that had somehow crept to +the confines of civilisation. In my saner balanced moments it was +possible to disbelieve it, but if you have ever suffered from delirium +you will know what raging torments of agony I went through in the nights, +how my brain fought and refought that rumoured disaster." + +The doctor gave a murmur of sympathetic understanding. + +"Then," continued Yeovil, "I reached the small Siberian town towards +which I had been struggling. There was a little colony of Russians +there, traders, officials, a doctor or two, and some army officers. I +put up at the primitive hotel-restaurant, which was the general gathering- +place of the community. I knew quickly that the news was true. Russians +are the most tactful of any European race that I have ever met; they did +not stare with insolent or pitying curiosity, but there was something +changed in their attitude which told me that the travelling Briton was no +longer in their eyes the interesting respect-commanding personality that +he had been in past days. I went to my own room, where the samovar was +bubbling its familiar tune and a smiling red-shirted Russian boy was +helping my Buriat servant to unpack my wardrobe, and I asked for any back +numbers of newspapers that could be supplied at a moment's notice. I was +given a bundle of well-thumbed sheets, odd pieces of the Novoe Vremya, +the Moskovskie Viedomosti, one or two complete numbers of local papers +published at Perm and Tobolsk. I do not read Russian well, though I +speak it fairly readily, but from the fragments of disconnected telegrams +that I pieced together I gathered enough information to acquaint me with +the extent of the tragedy that had been worked out in a few crowded hours +in a corner of North-Western Europe. I searched frantically for +telegrams of later dates that would put a better complexion on the +matter, that would retrieve something from the ruin; presently I came +across a page of the illustrated supplement that the Novoe Vremya +publishes once a week. There was a photograph of a long-fronted building +with a flag flying over it, labelled 'The new standard floating over +Buckingham Palace.' The picture was not much more than a smudge, but the +flag, possibly touched up, was unmistakable. It was the eagle of the +Nemetskie Tsar. I have a vivid recollection of that plainly-furnished +little room, with the inevitable gilt ikon in one corner, and the samovar +hissing and gurgling on the table, and the thrumming music of a balalaika +orchestra coming up from the restaurant below; the next coherent thing I +can remember was weeks and weeks later, discussing in an impersonal +detached manner whether I was strong enough to stand the fatigue of the +long railway journey to Finland. + +"Since then, Holham, I have been encouraged to keep my mind as much off +the war and public affairs as possible, and I have been glad to do so. I +knew the worst and there was no particular use in deepening my +despondency by dragging out the details. But now I am more or less a +live man again, and I want to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of what +happened. You know how much I know, and how little; those fragments of +Russian newspapers were about all the information that I had. I don't +even know clearly how the whole thing started." + +Yeovil settled himself back in his chair with the air of a man who has +done some necessary talking, and now assumes the role of listener. + +"It started," said the doctor, "with a wholly unimportant disagreement +about some frontier business in East Africa; there was a slight attack of +nerves in the stock markets, and then the whole thing seemed in a fair +way towards being settled. Then the negotiations over the affair began +to drag unduly, and there was a further flutter of nervousness in the +money world. And then one morning the papers reported a highly menacing +speech by one of the German Ministers, and the situation began to look +black indeed. 'He will be disavowed,' every one said over here, but in +less than twenty-four hours those who knew anything knew that the crisis +was on us--only their knowledge came too late. 'War between two such +civilised and enlightened nations is an impossibility,' one of our +leaders of public opinion had declared on the Saturday; by the following +Friday the war had indeed become an impossibility, because we could no +longer carry it on. It burst on us with calculated suddenness, and we +were just not enough, everywhere where the pressure came. Our ships were +good against their ships, our seamen were better than their seamen, but +our ships were not able to cope with their ships plus their superiority +in aircraft. Our trained men were good against their trained men, but +they could not be in several places at once, and the enemy could. Our +half-trained men and our untrained men could not master the science of +war at a moment's notice, and a moment's notice was all they got. The +enemy were a nation apprenticed in arms, we were not even the idle +apprentice: we had not deemed apprenticeship worth our while. There was +courage enough running loose in the land, but it was like unharnessed +electricity, it controlled no forces, it struck no blows. There was no +time for the heroism and the devotion which a drawn-out struggle, however +hopeless, can produce; the war was over almost as soon as it had begun. +After the reverses which happened with lightning rapidity in the first +three days of warfare, the newspapers made no effort to pretend that the +situation could be retrieved; editors and public alike recognised that +these were blows over the heart, and that it was a matter of moments +before we were counted out. One might liken the whole affair to a snap +checkmate early in a game of chess; one side had thought out the moves, +and brought the requisite pieces into play, the other side was hampered +and helpless, with its resources unavailable, its strategy discounted in +advance. That, in a nutshell, is the history of the war." + +Yeovil was silent for a moment or two, then he asked: + +"And the sequel, the peace?" + +"The collapse was so complete that I fancy even the enemy were hardly +prepared for the consequences of their victory. No one had quite +realised what one disastrous campaign would mean for an island nation +with a closely packed population. The conquerors were in a position to +dictate what terms they pleased, and it was not wonderful that their +ideas of aggrandisement expanded in the hour of intoxication. There was +no European combination ready to say them nay, and certainly no one Power +was going to be rash enough to step in to contest the terms of the treaty +that they imposed on the conquered. Annexation had probably never been a +dream before the war; after the war it suddenly became temptingly +practical. Warum nicht? became the theme of leader-writers in the German +press; they pointed out that Britain, defeated and humiliated, but with +enormous powers of recuperation, would be a dangerous and inevitable +enemy for the Germany of to-morrow, while Britain incorporated within the +Hohenzollern Empire would merely be a disaffected province, without a +navy to make its disaffection a serious menace, and with great tax-paying +capabilities, which would be available for relieving the burdens of the +other Imperial States. Wherefore, why not annex? The warum nicht? party +prevailed. Our King, as you know, retired with his Court to Delhi, as +Emperor in the East, with most of his overseas dominions still subject to +his sway. The British Isles came under the German Crown as a Reichsland, +a sort of Alsace-Lorraine washed by the North Sea instead of the Rhine. +We still retain our Parliament, but it is a clipped and pruned-down +shadow of its former self, with most of its functions in abeyance; when +the elections were held it was difficult to get decent candidates to come +forward or to get people to vote. It makes one smile bitterly to think +that a year or two ago we were seriously squabbling as to who should have +votes. And, of course, the old party divisions have more or less +crumbled away. The Liberals naturally are under the blackest of clouds, +for having steered the country to disaster, though to do them justice it +was no more their fault than the fault of any other party. In a +democracy such as ours was the Government of the day must more or less +reflect the ideas and temperament of the nation in all vital matters, and +the British nation in those days could not have been persuaded of the +urgent need for military apprenticeship or of the deadly nature of its +danger. It was willing now and then to be half-frightened and to have +half-measures, or, one might better say, quarter-measures taken to +reassure it, and the governments of the day were willing to take them, +but any political party or group of statesmen that had said 'the danger +is enormous and immediate, the sacrifices and burdens must be enormous +and immediate,' would have met with certain defeat at the polls. Still, +of course, the Liberals, as the party that had held office for nearly a +decade, incurred the odium of a people maddened by defeat and +humiliation; one Minister, who had had less responsibility for military +organisation than perhaps any of them, was attacked and nearly killed at +Newcastle, another was hiding for three days on Exmoor, and escaped in +disguise." + +"And the Conservatives?" + +"They are also under eclipse, but it is more or less voluntary in their +case. For generations they had taken their stand as supporters of Throne +and Constitution, and when they suddenly found the Constitution gone and +the Throne filled by an alien dynasty, their political orientation had +vanished. They are in much the same position as the Jacobites occupied +after the Hanoverian accession. Many of the leading Tory families have +emigrated to the British lands beyond the seas, others are shut up in +their country houses, retrenching their expenses, selling their acres, +and investing their money abroad. The Labour faction, again, are almost +in as bad odour as the Liberals, because of having hob-nobbed too +effusively and ostentatiously with the German democratic parties on the +eve of the war, exploiting an evangel of universal brotherhood which did +not blunt a single Teuton bayonet when the hour came. I suppose in time +party divisions will reassert themselves in some form or other; there +will be a Socialist Party, and the mercantile and manufacturing interests +will evolve a sort of bourgeoise party, and the different religious +bodies will try to get themselves represented--" + +Yeovil made a movement of impatience. + +"All these things that you forecast," he said, "must take time, +considerable time; is this nightmare, then, to go on for ever?" + +"It is not a nightmare, unfortunately," said the doctor, "it is a +reality." + +"But, surely--a nation such as ours, a virile, highly-civilised nation +with an age-long tradition of mastery behind it, cannot be held under for +ever by a few thousand bayonets and machine guns. We must surely rise up +one day and drive them out." + +"Dear man," said the doctor, "we might, of course, at some given moment +overpower the garrison that is maintained here, and seize the forts, and +perhaps we might be able to mine the harbours; what then? In a fortnight +or so we could be starved into unconditional submission. Remember, all +the advantages of isolated position that told in our favour while we had +the sea dominion, tell against us now that the sea dominion is in other +hands. The enemy would not need to mobilise a single army corps or to +bring a single battleship into action; a fleet of nimble cruisers and +destroyers circling round our coasts would be sufficient to shut out our +food supplies." + +"Are you trying to tell me that this is a final overthrow?" said Yeovil +in a shaking voice; "are we to remain a subject race like the Poles?" + +"Let us hope for a better fate," said the doctor. "Our opportunity may +come if the Master Power is ever involved in an unsuccessful naval war +with some other nation, or perhaps in some time of European crisis, when +everything hung in the balance, our latent hostility might have to be +squared by a concession of independence. That is what we have to hope +for and watch for. On the other hand, the conquerors have to count on +time and tact to weaken and finally obliterate the old feelings of +nationality; the middle-aged of to-day will grow old and acquiescent in +the changed state of things; the young generations will grow up never +having known anything different. It's a far cry to Delhi, as the old +Indian proverb says, and the strange half-European, half-Asiatic Court +out there will seem more and more a thing exotic and unreal. 'The King +across the water' was a rallying-cry once upon a time in our history, but +a king on the further side of the Indian Ocean is a shadowy competitor +for one who alternates between Potsdam and Windsor." + +"I want you to tell me everything," said Yeovil, after another pause; +"tell me, Holham, how far has this obliterating process of 'time and +tact' gone? It seems to be pretty fairly started already. I bought a +newspaper as soon as I landed, and I read it in the train coming up. I +read things that puzzled and disgusted me. There were announcements of +concerts and plays and first-nights and private views; there were even +small dances. There were advertisements of house-boats and week-end +cottages and string bands for garden parties. It struck me that it was +rather like merrymaking with a dead body lying in the house." + +"Yeovil," said the doctor, "you must bear in mind two things. First, the +necessity for the life of the country going on as if nothing had +happened. It is true that many thousands of our working men and women +have emigrated and thousands of our upper and middle class too; they were +the people who were not tied down by business, or who could afford to cut +those ties. But those represent comparatively a few out of the many. The +great businesses and the small businesses must go on, people must be fed +and clothed and housed and medically treated, and their thousand-and-one +wants and necessities supplied. Look at me, for instance; however much I +loathe coming under a foreign domination and paying taxes to an alien +government, I can't abandon my practice and my patients, and set up anew +in Toronto or Allahabad, and if I could, some other doctor would have to +take my place here. I or that other doctor must have our servants and +motors and food and furniture and newspapers, even our sport. The golf +links and the hunting field have been well-nigh deserted since the war, +but they are beginning to get back their votaries because out-door sport +has become a necessity, and a very rational necessity, with numbers of +men who have to work otherwise under unnatural and exacting conditions. +That is one factor of the situation. The other affects London more +especially, but through London it influences the rest of the country to a +certain extent. You will see around you here much that will strike you +as indications of heartless indifference to the calamity that has +befallen our nation. Well, you must remember that many things in modern +life, especially in the big cities, are not national but international. +In the world of music and art and the drama, for instance, the foreign +names are legion, they confront you at every turn, and some of our +British devotees of such arts are more acclimatised to the ways of Munich +or Moscow than they are familiar with the life, say, of Stirling or York. +For years they have lived and thought and spoken in an atmosphere and +jargon of denationalised culture--even those of them who have never left +our shores. They would take pains to be intimately familiar with the +domestic affairs and views of life of some Galician gipsy dramatist, and +gravely quote and discuss his opinions on debts and mistresses and +cookery, while they would shudder at 'D'ye ken John Peel?' as a piece of +uncouth barbarity. You cannot expect a world of that sort to be +permanently concerned or downcast because the Crown of Charlemagne takes +its place now on the top of the Royal box in the theatres, or at the head +of programmes at State concerts. And then there are the Jews." + +"There are many in the land, or at least in London," said Yeovil. + +"There are even more of them now than there used to be," said Holham. "I +am to a great extent a disliker of Jews myself, but I will be fair to +them, and admit that those of them who were in any genuine sense British +have remained British and have stuck by us loyally in our misfortune; all +honour to them. But of the others, the men who by temperament and +everything else were far more Teuton or Polish or Latin than they were +British, it was not to be expected that they would be heartbroken because +London had suddenly lost its place among the political capitals of the +world, and became a cosmopolitan city. They had appreciated the free and +easy liberty of the old days, under British rule, but there was a stiff +insularity in the ruling race that they chafed against. Now, putting +aside some petty Government restrictions that Teutonic bureaucracy has +brought in, there is really, in their eyes, more licence and social +adaptability in London than before. It has taken on some of the aspects +of a No-Man's-Land, and the Jew, if he likes, may almost consider himself +as of the dominant race; at any rate he is ubiquitous. Pleasure, of the +cafe and cabaret and boulevard kind, the sort of thing that gave Berlin +the aspect of the gayest capital in Europe within the last decade, that +is the insidious leaven that will help to denationalise London. Berlin +will probably climb back to some of its old austerity and simplicity, a +world-ruling city with a great sense of its position and its +responsibilities, while London will become more and more the centre of +what these people understand by life." + +Yeovil made a movement of impatience and disgust. + +"I know, I know," said the doctor, sympathetically; "life and enjoyment +mean to you the howl of a wolf in a forest, the call of a wild swan on +the frozen tundras, the smell of a wood fire in some little inn among the +mountains. There is more music to you in the quick thud, thud of hoofs +on desert mud as a free-stepping horse is led up to your tent door than +in all the dronings and flourishes that a highly-paid orchestra can reel +out to an expensively fed audience. But the tastes of modern London, as +we see them crystallised around us, lie in a very different direction. +People of the world that I am speaking of, our dominant world at the +present moment, herd together as closely packed to the square yard as +possible, doing nothing worth doing, and saying nothing worth saying, but +doing it and saying it over and over again, listening to the same +melodies, watching the same artistes, echoing the same catchwords, +ordering the same dishes in the same restaurants, suffering each other's +cigarette smoke and perfumes and conversation, feverishly, anxiously +making arrangements to meet each other again to-morrow, next week, and +the week after next, and repeat the same gregarious experience. If they +were not herded together in a corner of western London, watching each +other with restless intelligent eyes, they would be herded together at +Brighton or Dieppe, doing the same thing. Well, you will find that life +of that sort goes forward just as usual, only it is even more prominent +and noticeable now because there is less public life of other kinds." + +Yeovil said something which was possibly the Buriat word for the nether +world. Outside in the neighbouring square a band had been playing at +intervals during the evening. Now it struck up an air that Yeovil had +already heard whistled several times since his landing, an air with a +captivating suggestion of slyness and furtive joyousness running through +it. + +He rose and walked across to the window, opening it a little wider. He +listened till the last notes had died away. + +"What is that tune they have just played?" he asked. + +"You'll hear it often enough," said the doctor. "A Frenchman writing in +the Matin the other day called it the 'National Anthem of the fait +accompli.'" + + + + +CHAPTER IV: "ES IST VERBOTEN" + + +Yeovil wakened next morning to the pleasant sensation of being in a +household where elaborate machinery for the smooth achievement of one's +daily life was noiselessly and unceasingly at work. Fever and the long +weariness of convalescence in indifferently comfortable surroundings had +given luxury a new value in his eyes. Money had not always been +plentiful with him in his younger days; in his twenty-eighth year he had +inherited a fairly substantial fortune, and he had married a wealthy +woman a few months later. It was characteristic of the man and his breed +that the chief use to which he had put his newly-acquired wealth had been +in seizing the opportunity which it gave him for indulging in unlimited +travel in wild, out-of-the-way regions, where the comforts of life were +meagrely represented. Cicely occasionally accompanied him to the +threshold of his expeditions, such as Cairo or St. Petersburg or +Constantinople, but her own tastes in the matter of roving were more or +less condensed within an area that comprised Cannes, Homburg, the +Scottish Highlands, and the Norwegian Fiords. Things outlandish and +barbaric appealed to her chiefly when presented under artistic but highly +civilised stage management on the boards of Covent Garden, and if she +wanted to look at wolves or sand grouse, she preferred doing so in the +company of an intelligent Fellow of the Zoological Society on some fine +Sunday afternoon in Regent's Park. It was one of the bonds of union and +good-fellowship between her husband and herself that each understood and +sympathised with the other's tastes without in the least wanting to share +them; they went their own ways and were pleased and comrade-like when the +ways happened to run together for a span, without self-reproach or heart- +searching when the ways diverged. Moreover, they had separate and +adequate banking accounts, which constitute, if not the keys of the +matrimonial Heaven, at least the oil that lubricates them. + +Yeovil found Cicely and breakfast waiting for him in the cool breakfast- +room, and enjoyed, with the appreciation of a recent invalid, the comfort +and resources of a meal that had not to be ordered or thought about in +advance, but seemed as though it were there, fore-ordained from the +beginning of time in its smallest detail. Each desire of the +breakfasting mind seemed to have its realisation in some dish, lurking +unobtrusively in hidden corners until asked for. Did one want grilled +mushrooms, English fashion, they were there, black and moist and +sizzling, and extremely edible; did one desire mushrooms a la Russe, they +appeared, blanched and cool and toothsome under their white blanketing of +sauce. At one's bidding was a service of coffee, prepared with rather +more forethought and circumspection than would go to the preparation of a +revolution in a South American Republic. + +The exotic blooms that reigned in profusion over the other parts of the +house were scrupulously banished from the breakfast-room; bowls of wild +thyme and other flowering weeds of the meadow and hedgerow gave it an +atmosphere of country freshness that was in keeping with the morning +meal. + +"You look dreadfully tired still," said Cicely critically, "otherwise I +would recommend a ride in the Park, before it gets too hot. There is a +new cob in the stable that you will just love, but he is rather lively, +and you had better content yourself for the present with some more sedate +exercise than he is likely to give you. He is apt to try and jump out of +his skin when the flies tease him. The Park is rather jolly for a walk +just now." + +"I think that will be about my form after my long journey," said Yeovil, +"an hour's stroll before lunch under the trees. That ought not to +fatigue me unduly. In the afternoon I'll look up one or two people." + +"Don't count on finding too many of your old set," said Cicely rather +hurriedly. "I dare say some of them will find their way back some time, +but at present there's been rather an exodus." + +"The Bredes," said Yeovil, "are they here?" + +"No, the Bredes are in Scotland, at their place in Sutherlandshire; they +don't come south now, and the Ricardes are farming somewhere in East +Africa, the whole lot of them. Valham has got an appointment of some +sort in the Straits Settlement, and has taken his family with him. The +Collards are down at their mother's place in Norfolk; a German banker has +bought their house in Manchester Square." + +"And the Hebways?" asked Yeovil. + +"Dick Hebway is in India," said Cicely, "but his mother lives in Paris; +poor Hugo, you know, was killed in the war. My friends the Allinsons are +in Paris too. It's rather a clearance, isn't it? However, there are +some left, and I expect others will come back in time. Pitherby is here; +he's one of those who are trying to make the best of things under the new +regime." + +"He would be," said Yeovil, shortly. + +"It's a difficult question," said Cicely, "whether one should stay at +home and face the music or go away and live a transplanted life under the +British flag. Either attitude might be dictated by patriotism." + +"It is one thing to face the music, it is another thing to dance to it," +said Yeovil. + +Cicely poured out some more coffee for herself and changed the +conversation. + +"You'll be in to lunch, I suppose? The Clubs are not very attractive +just now, I believe, and the restaurants are mostly hot in the middle of +the day. Ronnie Storre is coming in; he's here pretty often these days. +A rather good-looking young animal with something mid-way between talent +and genius in the piano-playing line." + +"Not long-haired and Semetic or Tcheque or anything of that sort, I +suppose?" asked Yeovil. + +Cicely laughed at the vision of Ronnie conjured up by her husband's +words. + +"No, beautifully groomed and clipped and Anglo-Saxon. I expect you'll +like him. He plays bridge almost as well as he plays the piano. I +suppose you wonder at any one who can play bridge well wanting to play +the piano." + +"I'm not quite so intolerant as all that," said Yeovil; "anyhow I promise +to like Ronnie. Is any one else coming to lunch?" + +"Joan Mardle will probably drop in, in fact I'm afraid she's a certainty. +She invited herself in that way of hers that brooks of no refusal. On +the other hand, as a mitigating circumstance, there will be a point +d'asperge omelette such as few kitchens could turn out, so don't be +late." + +Yeovil set out for his morning walk with the curious sensation of one who +starts on a voyage of discovery in a land that is well known to him. He +turned into the Park at Hyde Park corner and made his way along the +familiar paths and alleys that bordered the Row. The familiarity +vanished when he left the region of fenced-in lawns and rhododendron +bushes and came to the open space that stretched away beyond the +bandstand. The bandstand was still there, and a military band, in sky- +blue Saxon uniform, was executing the first item in the forenoon +programme of music. Around it, instead of the serried rows of green +chairs that Yeovil remembered, was spread out an acre or so of small +round tables, most of which had their quota of customers, engaged in a +steady consumption of lager beer, coffee, lemonade and syrups. Further +in the background, but well within earshot of the band, a gaily painted +pagoda-restaurant sheltered a number of more commodious tables under its +awnings, and gave a hint of convenient indoor accommodation for wet or +windy weather. Movable screens of trellis-trained foliage and climbing +roses formed little hedges by means of which any particular table could +be shut off from its neighbours if semi-privacy were desired. One or two +decorative advertisements of popularised brands of champagne and Rhine +wines adorned the outside walls of the building, and under the central +gable of its upper story was a flamboyant portrait of a stern-faced man, +whose image and superscription might also be found on the newer coinage +of the land. A mass of bunting hung in folds round the flag-pole on the +gable, and blew out now and then on a favouring breeze, a long +three-coloured strip, black, white, and scarlet, and over the whole scene +the elm trees towered with an absurd sardonic air of nothing having +changed around their roots. + +Yeovil stood for a minute or two, taking in every detail of the +unfamiliar spectacle. + +"They have certainly accomplished something that we never attempted," he +muttered to himself. Then he turned on his heel and made his way back to +the shady walk that ran alongside the Row. At first sight little was +changed in the aspect of the well-known exercising ground. One or two +riding masters cantered up and down as of yore, with their attendant +broods of anxious-faced young girls and awkwardly bumping women pupils, +while horsey-looking men put marketable animals through their paces or +drew up to the rails for long conversations with horsey-looking friends +on foot. Sportingly attired young women, sitting astride of their +horses, careered by at intervals as though an extremely game fox were +leading hounds a merry chase a short way ahead of them; it all seemed +much as usual. + +Presently, from the middle distance a bright patch of colour set in a +whirl of dust drew rapidly nearer and resolved itself into a group of +cavalry officers extending their chargers in a smart gallop. They were +well mounted and sat their horses to perfection, and they made a brave +show as they raced past Yeovil with a clink and clatter and rhythmic +thud, thud, of hoofs, and became once more a patch of colour in a whirl +of dust. An answering glow of colour seemed to have burned itself into +the grey face of the young man, who had seen them pass without appearing +to look at them, a stinging rush of blood, accompanied by a choking catch +in the throat and a hot white blindness across the eyes. The weakness of +fever broke down at times the rampart of outward indifference that a man +of Yeovil's temperament builds coldly round his heartstrings. + +The Row and its riders had become suddenly detestable to the wanderer; he +would not run the risk of seeing that insolently joyous cavalcade come +galloping past again. Beyond a narrow stretch of tree-shaded grass lay +the placid sunlit water of the Serpentine, and Yeovil made a short cut +across the turf to reach its gravelled bank. + +"Can't you read either English or German?" asked a policeman who +confronted him as he stepped off the turf. + +Yeovil stared at the man and then turned to look at the small +neatly-printed notice to which the official was imperiously pointing; in +two languages it was made known that it was forbidden and verboten, +punishable and straffbar, to walk on the grass. + +"Three shilling fine," said the policeman, extending his hand for the +money. + +"Do I pay you?" asked Yeovil, feeling almost inclined to laugh; "I'm +rather a stranger to the new order of things." + +"You pay me," said the policeman, "and you receive a quittance for the +sum paid," and he proceeded to tear a counterfoil receipt for a three +shilling fine from a small pocket book. + +"May I ask," said Yeovil, as he handed over the sum demanded and received +his quittance, "what the red and white band on your sleeve stands for?" + +"Bi-lingual," said the constable, with an air of importance. "Preference +is given to members of the Force who qualify in both languages. Nearly +all the police engaged on Park duty are bi-lingual. About as many +foreigners as English use the parks nowadays; in fact, on a fine Sunday +afternoon, you'll find three foreigners to every two English. The park +habit is more Continental than British, I take it." + +"And are there many Germans in the police Force?" asked Yeovil. + +"Well, yes, a good few; there had to be," said the constable; "there were +such a lot of resignations when the change came, and they had to be +filled up somehow. Lots of men what used to be in the Force emigrated or +found work of some other kind, but everybody couldn't take that line; +wives and children had to be thought of. 'Tisn't every head of a family +that can chuck up a job on the chance of finding another. Starvation's +been the lot of a good many what went out. Those of us that stayed on +got better pay than we did before, but then of course the duties are much +more multitudinous." + +"They must be," said Yeovil, fingering his three shilling State document; +"by the way," he asked, "are all the grass plots in the Park out of +bounds for human feet?" + +"Everywhere where you see the notices," said the policeman, "and that's +about three-fourths of the whole grass space; there's been a lot of new +gravel walks opened up in all directions. People don't want to walk on +the grass when they've got clean paths to walk on." + +And with this parting reproof the bi-lingual constable strode heavily +away, his loss of consideration and self-esteem as a unit of a sometime +ruling race evidently compensated for to some extent by his enhanced +importance as an official. + +"The women and children," thought Yeovil, as he looked after the +retreating figure; "yes, that is one side of the problem. The children +that have to be fed and schooled, the women folk that have to be cared +for, an old mother, perhaps, in the home that cannot be broken up. The +old case of giving hostages." + +He followed the path alongside the Serpentine, passing under the archway +of the bridge and continuing his walk into Kensington Gardens. In +another moment he was within view of the Peter Pan statue and at once +observed that it had companions. On one side was a group representing a +scene from one of the Grimm fairy stories, on the other was Alice in +conversation with Gryphon and Mockturtle, the episode looking +distressingly stiff and meaningless in its sculptured form. Two other +spaces had been cleared in the neighbouring turf, evidently for the +reception of further statue groups, which Yeovil mentally assigned to +Struwelpeter and Little Lord Fauntleroy. + +"German middle-class taste," he commented, "but in this matter we +certainly gave them a lead. I suppose the idea is that childish fancy is +dead and that it is only decent to erect some sort of memorial to it." + +The day was growing hotter, and the Park had ceased to seem a desirable +place to loiter in. Yeovil turned his steps homeward, passing on his way +the bandstand with its surrounding acreage of tables. It was now nearly +one o'clock, and luncheon parties were beginning to assemble under the +awnings of the restaurant. Lighter refreshments, in the shape of +sausages and potato salads, were being carried out by scurrying waiters +to the drinkers of lager beer at the small tables. A park orchestra, in +brilliant trappings, had taken the place of the military band. As Yeovil +passed the musicians launched out into the tune which the doctor had +truly predicted he would hear to repletion before he had been many days +in London; the "National Anthem of the fait accompli." + + + + +CHAPTER V: L'ART D'ETRE COUSINE + + +Joan Mardle had reached forty in the leisurely untroubled fashion of a +woman who intends to be comely and attractive at fifty. She cultivated a +jovial, almost joyous manner, with a top-dressing of hearty good will and +good nature which disarmed strangers and recent acquaintances; on getting +to know her better they hastily re-armed themselves. Some one had once +aptly described her as a hedgehog with the protective mimicry of a +puffball. If there was an awkward remark to be made at an inconvenient +moment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when the +occasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it. +She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a +dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the +habit of travelling on his particular highway. A great-aunt on her +mother's side of the family had married so often that Joan imagined +herself justified in claiming cousin-ship with a large circle of +disconnected houses, and treating them all on a relationship footing, +which theoretical kinship enabled her to exact luncheons and other +accommodations under the plea of keeping the lamp of family life aglow. + +"I felt I simply had to come to-day," she chuckled at Yeovil; "I was just +dying to see the returned traveller. Of course, I know perfectly well +that neither of you want me, when you haven't seen each other for so long +and must have heaps and heaps to say to one another, but I thought I +would risk the odium of being the third person on an occasion when two +are company and three are a nuisance. Wasn't it brave of me?" + +She spoke in full knowledge of the fact that the luncheon party would not +in any case have been restricted to Yeovil and his wife, having seen +Ronnie arrive in the hall as she was being shown upstairs. + +"Ronnie Storre is coming, I believe," said Cicely, "so you're not +breaking into a tete-a-tete." + +"Ronnie, oh I don't count him," said Joan gaily; "he's just a boy who +looks nice and eats asparagus. I hear he's getting to play the piano +really well. Such a pity. He will grow fat; musicians always do, and it +will ruin him. I speak feelingly because I'm gravitating towards +plumpness myself. The Divine Architect turns us out fearfully and +wonderfully built, and the result is charming to the eye, and then He +adds another chin and two or three extra inches round the waist, and the +effect is ruined. Fortunately you can always find another Ronnie when +this one grows fat and uninteresting; the supply of boys who look nice +and eat asparagus is unlimited. Hullo, Mr. Storre, we were all talking +about you." + +"Nothing very damaging, I hope?" said Ronnie, who had just entered the +room. + +"No, we were merely deciding that, whatever you may do with your life, +your chin must remain single. When one's chin begins to lead a double +life one's own opportunities for depravity are insensibly narrowed. You +needn't tell me that you haven't any hankerings after depravity; people +with your coloured eyes and hair are always depraved." + +"Let me introduce you to my husband, Ronnie," said Cicely, "and then +let's go and begin lunch." + +"You two must almost feel as if you were honeymooning again," said Joan +as they sat down; "you must have quite forgotten each other's tastes and +peculiarities since you last met. Old Emily Fronding was talking about +you yesterday, when I mentioned that Murrey was expected home; 'curious +sort of marriage tie,' she said, in that stupid staring way of hers, +'when husband and wife spend most of their time in different continents. +I don't call it marriage at all.' 'Nonsense,' I said, 'it's the best way +of doing things. The Yeovils will be a united and devoted couple long +after heaps of their married contemporaries have trundled through the +Divorce Court.' I forgot at the moment that her youngest girl had +divorced her husband last year, and that her second girl is rumoured to +be contemplating a similar step. One can't remember everything." + +Joan Mardle was remarkable for being able to remember the smallest +details in the family lives of two or three hundred acquaintances. + +From personal matters she went with a bound to the political small talk +of the moment. + +"The Official Declaration as to the House of Lords is out at last," she +said; "I bought a paper just before coming here, but I left it in the +Tube. All existing titles are to lapse if three successive holders, +including the present ones, fail to take the oath of allegiance." + +"Have any taken it up to the present?" asked Yeovil. + +"Only about nineteen, so far, and none of them representing very leading +families; of course others will come in gradually, as the change of +Dynasty becomes more and more an accepted fact, and of course there will +be lots of new creations to fill up the gaps. I hear for certain that +Pitherby is to get a title of some sort, in recognition of his literary +labours. He has written a short history of the House of Hohenzollern, +for use in schools you know, and he's bringing out a popular Life of +Frederick the Great--at least he hopes it will be popular." + +"I didn't know that writing was much in his line," said Yeovil, "beyond +the occasional editing of a company prospectus." + +"I understand his historical researches have given every satisfaction in +exalted quarters," said Joan; "something may be lacking in the style, +perhaps, but the august approval can make good that defect with the style +of Baron. Pitherby has such a kind heart; 'kind hearts are more than +coronets,' we all know, but the two go quite well together. And the dear +man is not content with his services to literature, he's blossoming forth +as a liberal patron of the arts. He's taken quite a lot of tickets for +dear Gorla's debut; half the second row of the dress-circle." + +"Do you mean Gorla Mustelford?" asked Yeovil, catching at the name; "what +on earth is she having a debut about?" + +"What?" cried Joan, in loud-voiced amazement; "haven't you heard? Hasn't +Cicely told you? How funny that you shouldn't have heard. Why, it's +going to be one of the events of the season. Everybody's talking about +it. She's going to do suggestion dancing at the Caravansery Theatre." + +"Good Heavens, what is suggestion dancing?" asked Yeovil. + +"Oh, something quite new," explained Joan; "at any rate the name is quite +new and Gorla is new as far as the public are concerned, and that is +enough to establish the novelty of the thing. Among other things she +does a dance suggesting the life of a fern; I saw one of the rehearsals, +and to me it would have equally well suggested the life of John Wesley. +However, that is probably the fault of my imagination--I've either got +too much or too little. Anyhow it is an understood thing that she is to +take London by storm." + +"When I last saw Gorla Mustelford," observed Yeovil, "she was a rather +serious flapper who thought the world was in urgent need of regeneration +and was not certain whether she would regenerate it or take up miniature +painting. I forget which she attempted ultimately." + +"She is quite serious about her art," put in Cicely; "she's studied a +good deal abroad and worked hard at mastering the technique of her +profession. She's not a mere amateur with a hankering after the +footlights. I fancy she will do well." + +"But what do her people say about it?" asked Yeovil. + +"Oh, they're simply furious about it," answered Joan; "the idea of a +daughter of the house of Mustelford prancing and twisting about the stage +for Prussian officers and Hamburg Jews to gaze at is a dreadful cup of +humiliation for them. It's unfortunate, of course, that they should feel +so acutely about it, but still one can understand their point of view." + +"I don't see what other point of view they could possibly take," said +Yeovil sharply; "if Gorla thinks that the necessities of art, or her own +inclinations, demand that she should dance in public, why can't she do it +in Paris or even Vienna? Anywhere would be better, one would think, than +in London under present conditions." + +He had given Joan the indication that she was looking for as to his +attitude towards the fait accompli. Without asking a question she had +discovered that husband and wife were divided on the fundamental issue +that underlay all others at the present moment. Cicely was weaving +social schemes for the future, Yeovil had come home in a frame of mind +that threatened the destruction of those schemes, or at any rate a +serious hindrance to their execution. The situation presented itself to +Joan's mind with an alluring piquancy. + +"You are giving a grand supper-party for Gorla on the night of her debut, +aren't you?" she asked Cicely; "several people spoke to me about it, so I +suppose it must be true." + +Tony Luton and young Storre had taken care to spread the news of the +projected supper function, in order to ensure against a change of plans +on Cicely's part. + +"Gorla is a great friend of mine," said Cicely, trying to talk as if the +conversation had taken a perfectly indifferent turn; "also I think she +deserves a little encouragement after the hard work she has been through. +I thought it would be doing her a kindness to arrange a supper party for +her on her first night." + +There was a moment's silence. Yeovil said nothing, and Joan understood +the value of being occasionally tongue-tied. + +"The whole question is," continued Cicely, as the silence became +oppressive, "whether one is to mope and hold aloof from the national +life, or take our share in it; the life has got to go on whether we +participate in it or not. It seems to me to be more patriotic to come +down into the dust of the marketplace than to withdraw oneself behind +walls or beyond the seas." + +"Of course the industrial life of the country has to go on," said Yeovil; +"no one could criticise Gorla if she interested herself in organising +cottage industries or anything of that sort, in which she would be +helping her own people. That one could understand, but I don't think a +cosmopolitan concern like the music-hall business calls for personal +sacrifices from young women of good family at a moment like the present." + +"It is just at a moment like the present that the people want something +to interest them and take them out of themselves," said Cicely +argumentatively; "what has happened, has happened, and we can't undo it +or escape the consequences. What we can do, or attempt to do, is to make +things less dreary, and make people less unhappy." + +"In a word, more contented," said Yeovil; "if I were a German statesman, +that is the end I would labour for and encourage others to labour for, to +make the people forget that they were discontented. All this work of +regalvanising the social side of London life may be summed up in the +phrase 'travailler pour le roi de Prusse.'" + +"I don't think there is any use in discussing the matter further," said +Cicely. + +"I can see that grand supper-party not coming off," said Joan +provocatively. + +Ronnie looked anxiously at Cicely. + +"You can see it coming on, if you're gifted with prophetic vision of a +reliable kind," said Cicely; "of course as Murrey doesn't take kindly to +the idea of Gorla's enterprise I won't have the party here. I'll give it +at a restaurant, that's all. I can see Murrey's point of view, and +sympathise with it, but I'm not going to throw Gorla over." + +There was another pause of uncomfortably protracted duration. + +"I say, this is a top-hole omelette," said Ronnie. + +It was his only contribution to the conversation, but it was a valuable +one. + + + + +CHAPTER VI: HERR VON KWARL + + +Herr Von Kwarl sat at his favourite table in the Brandenburg Cafe, the +new building that made such an imposing show (and did such thriving +business) at the lower end of what most of its patrons called the +Regentstrasse. Though the establishment was new it had already achieved +its unwritten code of customs, and the sanctity of Herr von Kwarl's +specially reserved table had acquired the authority of a tradition. A +set of chessmen, a copy of the Kreuz Zeitung and the Times, and a slim- +necked bottle of Rhenish wine, ice-cool from the cellar, were always to +be found there early in the forenoon, and the honoured guest for whom +these preparations were made usually arrived on the scene shortly after +eleven o'clock. For an hour or so he would read and silently digest the +contents of his two newspapers, and then at the first sign of flagging +interest on his part, another of the cafe's regular customers would march +across the floor, exchange a word or two on the affairs of the day, and +be bidden with a wave of the hand into the opposite seat. A waiter would +instantly place the chessboard with its marshalled ranks of combatants in +the required position, and the contest would begin. + +Herr von Kwarl was a heavily built man of mature middle-age, of the blond +North-German type, with a facial aspect that suggested stupidity and +brutality. The stupidity of his mien masked an ability and shrewdness +that was distinctly above the average, and the suggestion of brutality +was belied by the fact that von Kwarl was as kind-hearted a man as one +could meet with in a day's journey. Early in life, almost before he was +in his teens, Fritz von Kwarl had made up his mind to accept the world as +it was, and to that philosophical resolution, steadfastly adhered to, he +attributed his excellent digestion and his unruffled happiness. Perhaps +he confused cause and effect; the excellent digestion may have been +responsible for at least some of the philosophical serenity. + +He was a bachelor of the type that is called confirmed, and which might +better be labelled consecrated; from his early youth onward to his +present age he had never had the faintest flickering intention of +marriage. Children and animals he adored, women and plants he accounted +somewhat of a nuisance. A world without women and roses and asparagus +would, he admitted, be robbed of much of its charm, but with all their +charm these things were tiresome and thorny and capricious, always +wanting to climb or creep in places where they were not wanted, and +resolutely drooping and fading away when they were desired to flourish. +Animals, on the other hand, accepted the world as it was and made the +best of it, and children, at least nice children, uncontaminated by grown- +up influences, lived in worlds of their own making. + +Von Kwarl held no acknowledged official position in the country of his +residence, but it was an open secret that those responsible for the real +direction of affairs sought his counsel on nearly every step that they +meditated, and that his counsel was very rarely disregarded. Some of the +shrewdest and most successful enactments of the ruling power were +believed to have originated in the brain-cells of the bovine-fronted +Stammgast of the Brandenburg Cafe. + +Around the wood-panelled walls of the Cafe were set at intervals well- +mounted heads of boar, elk, stag, roe-buck, and other game-beasts of a +northern forest, while in between were carved armorial escutcheons of the +principal cities of the lately expanded realm, Magdeburg, Manchester, +Hamburg, Bremen, Bristol, and so forth. Below these came shelves on +which stood a wonderful array of stone beer-mugs, each decorated with +some fantastic device or motto, and most of them pertaining individually +and sacredly to some regular and unfailing customer. In one particular +corner of the highest shelf, greatly at his ease and in nowise to be +disturbed, slept Wotan, the huge grey house-cat, dreaming doubtless of +certain nimble and audacious mice down in the cellar three floors below, +whose nimbleness and audacity were as precious to him as the forwardness +of the birds is to a skilled gun on a grouse moor. Once every day Wotan +came marching in stately fashion across the polished floor, halted mid- +way to resume an unfinished toilet operation, and then proceeded to pay +his leisurely respects to his friend von Kwarl. The latter was said to +be prouder of this daily demonstration of esteem than of his many coveted +orders of merit. Several of his friends and acquaintances shared with +him the distinction of having achieved the Black Eagle, but not one of +them had ever succeeded in obtaining the slightest recognition of their +existence from Wotan. + +The daily greeting had been exchanged and the proud grey beast had +marched away to the music of a slumberous purr. The Kreuz Zeitung and +the Times underwent a final scrutiny and were pushed aside, and von Kwarl +glanced aimlessly out at the July sunshine bathing the walls and windows +of the Piccadilly Hotel. Herr Rebinok, the plump little Pomeranian +banker, stepped across the floor, almost as noiselessly as Wotan had +done, though with considerably less grace, and some half-minute later was +engaged in sliding pawns and knights and bishops to and fro on the chess- +board in a series of lightning moves bewildering to look on. Neither he +nor his opponent played with the skill that they severally brought to +bear on banking and statecraft, nor did they conduct their game with the +politeness that they punctiliously observed in other affairs of life. A +running fire of contemptuous remarks and aggressive satire accompanied +each move, and the mere record of the conversation would have given an +uninitiated onlooker the puzzling impression that an easy and crushing +victory was assured to both the players. + +"Aha, he is puzzled. Poor man, he doesn't know what to do . . . Oho, he +thinks he will move there, does he? Much good that will do him. . . . +Never have I seen such a mess as he is in . . . he cannot do anything, he +is absolutely helpless, helpless." + +"Ah, you take my bishop, do you? Much I care for that. Nothing. See, I +give you check. Ah, now he is in a fright! He doesn't know where to go. +What a mess he is in . . . " + +So the game proceeded, with a brisk exchange of pieces and incivilities +and a fluctuation of fortunes, till the little banker lost his queen as +the result of an incautious move, and, after several woebegone +contortions of his shoulders and hands, declined further contest. A +sleek-headed piccolo rushed forward to remove the board, and the +erstwhile combatants resumed the courteous dignity that they discarded in +their chess-playing moments. + +"Have you seen the Germania to-day?" asked Herr Rebinok, as soon as the +boy had receded to a respectful distance. + +"No," said von Kwarl, "I never see the Germania. I count on you to tell +me if there is anything noteworthy in it." + +"It has an article to-day headed, 'Occupation or Assimilation,'" said the +banker. "It is of some importance, and well written. It is very +pessimistic." + +"Catholic papers are always pessimistic about the things of this world," +said von Kwarl, "just as they are unduly optimistic about the things of +the next world. What line does it take?" + +"It says that our conquest of Britain can only result in a temporary +occupation, with a 'notice to quit' always hanging over our heads; that +we can never hope to assimilate the people of these islands in our Empire +as a sort of maritime Saxony or Bavaria, all the teaching of history is +against it; Saxony and Bavaria are part of the Empire because of their +past history. England is being bound into the Empire in spite of her +past history; and so forth." + +"The writer of the article has not studied history very deeply," said von +Kwarl. "The impossible thing that he speaks of has been done before, and +done in these very islands, too. The Norman Conquest became an +assimilation in comparatively few generations." + +"Ah, in those days, yes," said the banker, "but the conditions were +altogether different. There was not the rapid transmission of news and +the means of keeping the public mind instructed in what was happening; in +fact, one can scarcely say that the public mind was there to instruct. +There was not the same strong bond of brotherhood between men of the same +nation that exists now. Northumberland was almost as foreign to Devon or +Kent as Normandy was. And the Church in those days was a great +international factor, and the Crusades bound men together fighting under +one leader for a common cause. Also there was not a great national past +to be forgotten as there is in this case." + +"There are many factors, certainly, that are against us," conceded the +statesman, "but you must also take into account those that will help us. +In most cases in recent history where the conquered have stood out +against all attempts at assimilation, there has been a religious +difference to add to the racial one--take Poland, for instance, and the +Catholic parts of Ireland. If the Bretons ever seriously begin to assert +their nationality as against the French, it will be because they have +remained more Catholic in practice and sentiment than their neighbours. +Here there is no such complication; we are in the bulk a Protestant +nation with a Catholic minority, and the same may be said of the British. +Then in modern days there is the alchemy of Sport and the Drama to bring +men of different races amicably together. One or two sportsmanlike +Germans in a London football team will do more to break down racial +antagonism than anything that Governments or Councils can effect. As for +the Stage, it has long been international in its tendencies. You can see +that every day." + +The banker nodded his head. + +"London is not our greatest difficulty," continued von Kwarl. "You must +remember the steady influx of Germans since the war; whole districts are +changing the complexion of their inhabitants, and in some streets you +might almost fancy yourself in a German town. We can scarcely hope to +make much impression on the country districts and the provincial towns at +present, but you must remember that thousands and thousands of the more +virile and restless-souled men have emigrated, and thousands more will +follow their example. We shall fill up their places with our own surplus +population, as the Teuton races colonised England in the old +pre-Christian days. That is better, is it not, to people the fat meadows +of the Thames valley and the healthy downs and uplands of Sussex and +Berkshire than to go hunting for elbow-room among the flies and fevers of +the tropics? We have somewhere to go to, now, better than the scrub and +the veldt and the thorn-jungles." + +"Of course, of course," assented Herr Rebinok, "but while this desirable +process of infiltration and assimilation goes on, how are you going to +provide against the hostility of the conquered nation? A people with a +great tradition behind them and the ruling instinct strongly developed, +won't sit with their eyes closed and their hands folded while you carry +on the process of Germanisation. What will keep them quiet?" + +"The hopelessness of the situation. For centuries Britain has ruled the +seas, and been able to dictate to half the world in consequence; then she +let slip the mastery of the seas, as something too costly and onerous to +keep up, something which aroused too much jealousy and uneasiness in +others, and now the seas rule her. Every wave that breaks on her shore +rattles the keys of her prison. I am no fire-eater, Herr Rebinok, but I +confess that when I am at Dover, say, or Southampton, and see those dark +blots on the sea and those grey specks in the sky, our battleships and +cruisers and aircraft, and realise what they mean to us my heart beats +just a little quicker. If every German was flung out of England +to-morrow, in three weeks' time we should be coming in again on our own +terms. With our sea scouts and air scouts spread in organised network +around, not a shipload of foodstuff could reach the country. They know +that; they can calculate how many days of independence and starvation +they could endure, and they will make no attempt to bring about such a +certain fiasco. Brave men fight for a forlorn hope, but the bravest do +not fight for an issue they know to be hopeless." + +"That is so," said Herr Rebinok, "as things are at present they can do +nothing from within, absolutely nothing. We have weighed all that +beforehand. But, as the Germania points out, there is another Britain +beyond the seas. Supposing the Court at Delhi were to engineer a +league--" + +"A league? A league with whom?" interrupted the statesman. "Russia we +can watch and hold. We are rather nearer to its western frontier than +Delhi is, and we could throttle its Baltic trade at five hours' notice. +France and Holland are not inclined to provoke our hostility; they would +have everything to lose by such a course." + +"There are other forces in the world that might be arrayed against us," +argued the banker; "the United States, Japan, Italy, they all have +navies." + +"Does the teaching of history show you that it is the strong Power, armed +and ready, that has to suffer from the hostility of the world?" asked von +Kwarl. "As far as sentiment goes, perhaps, but not in practice. The +danger has always been for the weak, dismembered nation. Think you a +moment, has the enfeebled scattered British Empire overseas no undefended +territories that are a temptation to her neighbours? Has Japan nothing +to glean where we have harvested? Are there no North American +possessions which might slip into other keeping? Has Russia herself no +traditional temptations beyond the Oxus? Mind you, we are not making the +mistake Napoleon made, when he forced all Europe to be for him or against +him. We threaten no world aggressions, we are satiated where he was +insatiable. We have cast down one overshadowing Power from the face of +the world, because it stood in our way, but we have made no attempt to +spread our branches over all the space that it covered. We have not +tried to set up a tributary Canadian republic or to partition South +Africa; we have dreamed no dream of making ourselves Lords of Hindostan. +On the contrary, we have given proof of our friendly intentions towards +our neighbours. We backed France up the other day in her squabble with +Spain over the Moroccan boundaries, and proclaimed our opinion that the +Republic had as indisputable a mission on the North Africa coast as we +have in the North Sea. That is not the action or the language of +aggression. No," continued von Kwarl, after a moment's silence, "the +world may fear us and dislike us, but, for the present at any rate, there +will be no leagues against us. No, there is one rock on which our +attempt at assimilation will founder or find firm anchorage." + +"And that is--?" + +"The youth of the country, the generation that is at the threshold now. +It is them that we must capture. We must teach them to learn, and coax +them to forget. In course of time Anglo-Saxon may blend with German, as +the Elbe Saxons and the Bavarians and Swabians have blended with the +Prussians into a loyal united people under the sceptre of the +Hohenzollerns. Then we should be doubly strong, Rome and Carthage rolled +into one, an Empire of the West greater than Charlemagne ever knew. Then +we could look Slav and Latin and Asiatic in the face and keep our place +as the central dominant force of the civilised world." + +The speaker paused for a moment and drank a deep draught of wine, as +though he were invoking the prosperity of that future world-power. Then +he resumed in a more level tone: + +"On the other hand, the younger generation of Britons may grow up in +hereditary hatred, repulsing all our overtures, forgetting nothing and +forgiving nothing, waiting and watching for the time when some weakness +assails us, when some crisis entangles us, when we cannot be everywhere +at once. Then our work will be imperilled, perhaps undone. There lies +the danger, there lies the hope, the younger generation." + +"There is another danger," said the banker, after he had pondered over +von Kwarl's remarks for a moment or two amid the incense-clouds of a fat +cigar; "a danger that I foresee in the immediate future; perhaps not so +much a danger as an element of exasperation which may ultimately defeat +your plans. The law as to military service will have to be promulgated +shortly, and that cannot fail to be bitterly unpopular. The people of +these islands will have to be brought into line with the rest of the +Empire in the matter of military training and military service, and how +will they like that? Will not the enforcing of such a measure enfuriate +them against us? Remember, they have made great sacrifices to avoid the +burden of military service." + +"Dear God," exclaimed Herr von Kwarl, "as you say, they have made +sacrifices on that altar!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII: THE LURE + + +Cicely had successfully insisted on having her own way concerning the +projected supper-party; Yeovil had said nothing further in opposition to +it, whatever his feelings on the subject might be. Having gained her +point, however, she was anxious to give her husband the impression of +having been consulted, and to put her victory as far as possible on the +footing of a compromise. It was also rather a relief to be able to +discuss the matter out of range of Joan's disconcerting tongue and +observant eyes. + +"I hope you are not really annoyed about this silly supper-party," she +said on the morning before the much-talked-of first night. "I had +pledged myself to give it, so I couldn't back out without seeming mean to +Gorla, and in any case it would have been impolitic to cry off." + +"Why impolitic?" asked Yeovil coldly. + +"It would give offence in quarters where I don't want to give offence," +said Cicely. + +"In quarters where the fait accompli is an object of solicitude," said +Yeovil. + +"Look here," said Cicely in her most disarming manner, "it's just as well +to be perfectly frank about the whole matter. If one wants to live in +the London of the present day one must make up one's mind to accept the +fait accompli with as good a grace as possible. I do want to live in +London, and I don't want to change my way of living and start under +different conditions in some other place. I can't face the prospect of +tearing up my life by the roots; I feel certain that I shouldn't bear +transplanting. I can't imagine myself recreating my circle of interests +in some foreign town or colonial centre or even in a country town in +England. India I couldn't stand. London is not merely a home to me, it +is a world, and it happens to be just the world that suits me and that I +am suited to. The German occupation, or whatever one likes to call it, +is a calamity, but it's not like a molten deluge from Vesuvius that need +send us all scuttling away from another Pompeii. Of course," she added, +"there are things that jar horribly on one, even when one has got more or +less accustomed to them, but one must just learn to be philosophical and +bear them." + +"Supposing they are not bearable?" said Yeovil; "during the few days that +I've been in the land I've seen things that I cannot imagine will ever be +bearable." + +"That is because they're new to you," said Cicely. + +"I don't wish that they should ever come to seem bearable," retorted +Yeovil. "I've been bred and reared as a unit of a ruling race; I don't +want to find myself settling down resignedly as a member of an enslaved +one." + +"There's no need to make things out worse than they are," protested +Cicely. "We've had a military disaster on a big scale, and there's been +a great political dislocation in consequence. But there's no reason why +everything shouldn't right itself in time, as it has done after other +similar disasters in the history of nations. We are not scattered to the +winds or wiped off the face of the earth, we are still an important +racial unit." + +"A racial unit in a foreign Empire," commented Yeovil. + +"We may arrive at the position of being the dominant factor in that +Empire," said Cicely, "impressing our national characteristics on it, and +perhaps dictating its dynastic future and the whole trend of its policy. +Such things have happened in history. Or we may become strong enough to +throw off the foreign connection at a moment when it can be done +effectually and advantageously. But meanwhile it is necessary to +preserve our industrial life and our social life, and for that reason we +must accommodate ourselves to present circumstances, however distasteful +they may be. Emigration to some colonial wilderness, or holding +ourselves rigidly aloof from the life of the capital, won't help matters. +Really, Murrey, if you will think things over a bit, you will see that +the course I am following is the one dictated by sane patriotism." + +"Whom the gods wish to render harmless they first afflict with sanity," +said Yeovil bitterly. "You may be content to wait for a hundred years or +so, for this national revival to creep and crawl us back into a semblance +of independence and world-importance. I'm afraid I haven't the patience +or the philosophy to sit down comfortably and wait for a change of +fortune that won't come in my time--if it comes at all." + +Cicely changed the drift of the conversation; she had only introduced the +argument for the purpose of defining her point of view and accustoming +Yeovil to it, as one leads a nervous horse up to an unfamiliar barrier +that he is required eventually to jump. + +"In any case," she said, "from the immediately practical standpoint +England is the best place for you till you have shaken off all traces of +that fever. Pass the time away somehow till the hunting begins, and then +go down to the East Wessex country; they are looking out for a new master +after this season, and if you were strong enough you might take it on for +a while. You could go to Norway for fishing in the summer and hunt the +East Wessex in the winter. I'll come down and do a bit of hunting too, +and we'll have house-parties, and get a little golf in between whiles. It +will be like old times." + +Yeovil looked at his wife and laughed. + +"Who was that old fellow who used to hunt his hounds regularly through +the fiercest times of the great Civil War? There is a picture of him, by +Caton Woodville, I think, leading his pack between King Charles's army +and the Parliament forces just as some battle was going to begin. I have +often thought that the King must have disliked him rather more than he +disliked the men who were in arms against him; they at least cared, one +way or the other. I fancy that old chap would have a great many +imitators nowadays, though, when it came to be a question of sport +against soldiering. I don't know whether anyone has said it, but one +might almost assert that the German victory was won on the golf-links of +Britain." + +"I don't see why you should saddle one particular form of sport with a +special responsibility," protested Cicely. + +"Of course not," said Yeovil, "except that it absorbed perhaps more of +the energy and attention of the leisured class than other sports did, and +in this country the leisured class was the only bulwark we had against +official indifference. The working classes had a big share of the +apathy, and, indirectly, a greater share of the responsibility, because +the voting power was in their hands. They had not the leisure, however, +to sit down and think clearly what the danger was; their own industrial +warfare was more real to them than anything that was threatening from the +nation that they only knew from samples of German clerks and German +waiters." + +"In any case," said Cicely, "as regards the hunting, there is no Civil +War or national war raging just now, and there is no immediate likelihood +of one. A good many hunting seasons will have to come and go before we +can think of a war of independence as even a distant possibility, and in +the meantime hunting and horse-breeding and country sports generally are +the things most likely to keep Englishmen together on the land. That is +why so many men who hate the German occupation are trying to keep field +sports alive, and in the right hands. However, I won't go on arguing. +You and I always think things out for ourselves and decide for ourselves, +which is much the best way in the long run." + +Cicely slipped away to her writing-room to make final arrangements over +the telephone for the all-important supper-party, leaving Yeovil to turn +over in his mind the suggestion that she had thrown out. It was an +obvious lure, a lure to draw him away from the fret and fury that +possessed him so inconveniently, but its obvious nature did not detract +from its effectiveness. Yeovil had pleasant recollections of the East +Wessex, a cheery little hunt that afforded good sport in an unpretentious +manner, a joyous thread of life running through a rather sleepy +countryside, like a merry brook careering through a placid valley. For a +man coming slowly and yet eagerly back to the activities of life from the +weariness of a long fever, the prospect of a leisurely season with the +East Wessex was singularly attractive, and side by side with its +attractiveness there was a tempting argument in favour of yielding to its +attractions. Among the small squires and yeoman farmers, doctors, +country tradesmen, auctioneers and so forth who would gather at the +covert-side and at the hunt breakfasts, there might be a local nucleus of +revolt against the enslavement of the land, a discouraged and leaderless +band waiting for some one to mould their resistance into effective shape +and keep their loyalty to the old dynasty and the old national cause +steadily burning. Yeovil could see himself taking up that position, +stimulating the spirit of hostility to the fait accompli, organising +stubborn opposition to every Germanising influence that was brought into +play, schooling the youth of the countryside to look steadily Delhiward. +That was the bait that Yeovil threw out to his conscience, while slowly +considering the other bait that was appealing so strongly to his senses. +The dry warm scent of the stable, the nip of the morning air, the +pleasant squelch-squelch of the saddle leather, the moist earthy +fragrance of the autumn woods and wet fallows, the cold white mists of +winter days, the whimper of hounds and the hot restless pushing of the +pack through ditch and hedgerow and undergrowth, the birds that flew up +and clucked and chattered as you passed, the hearty greeting and pleasant +gossip in farmhouse kitchens and market-day bar-parlours--all these +remembered delights of the chase marshalled themselves in the brain, and +made a cumulative appeal that came with special intensity to a man who +was a little tired of his wanderings, more than a little drawn away from +the jarring centres of life. The hot London sunshine baking the soot- +grimed walls and the ugly incessant hoot and grunt of the motor traffic +gave an added charm to the vision of hill and hollow and copse that +flickered in Yeovil's mind. Slowly, with a sensuous lingering over +detail, his imagination carried him down to a small, sleepy, yet withal +pleasantly bustling market town, and placed him unerringly in a wide +straw-littered yard, half-full of men and quarter-full of horses, with a +bob-tailed sheep-dog or two trying not to get in everybody's way, but +insisting on being in the thick of things. The horses gradually detached +themselves from the crowd of unimportant men and came one by one into +momentary prominence, to be discussed and appraised for their good points +and bad points, and finally to be bid for. And always there was one +horse that detached itself conspicuously from the rest, the ideal hunter, +or at any rate, Yeovil's ideal of the ideal hunter. Mentally it was put +through its paces before him, its pedigree and brief history recounted to +him; mentally he saw a stable lad put it over a jump or two, with credit +to all concerned, and inevitably he saw himself outbidding less +discerning rivals and securing the desired piece of horseflesh, to be the +chief glory and mainstay of his hunting stable, to carry him well and +truly and cleverly through many a joyous long-to-be-remembered run. That +scene had been one of the recurring half-waking dreams of his long days +of weakness in the far-away Finnish nursing-home, a dream sometimes of +tantalising mockery, sometimes of pleasure in the foretaste of a joy to +come. And now it need scarcely be a dream any longer, he had only to go +down at the right moment and take an actual part in his oft-rehearsed +vision. Everything would be there, exactly as his imagination had placed +it, even down to the bob-tailed sheep-dogs; the horse of his imagining +would be there waiting for him, or if not absolutely the ideal animal, +something very like it. He might even go beyond the limits of his dream +and pick up a couple of desirable animals--there would probably be fewer +purchasers for good class hunters in these days than of yore. And with +the coming of this reflection his dream faded suddenly and his mind came +back with a throb of pain to the things he had for the moment forgotten, +the weary, hateful things that were symbolised for him by the standard +that floated yellow and black over the frontage of Buckingham Palace. + +Yeovil wandered down to his snuggery, a mood of listless dejection +possessing him. He fidgetted aimlessly with one or two books and papers, +filled a pipe, and half filled a waste-paper basket with torn circulars +and accumulated writing-table litter. Then he lit the pipe and settled +down in his most comfortable armchair with an old note-book in his hand. +It was a sort of disjointed diary, running fitfully through the winter +months of some past years, and recording noteworthy days with the East +Wessex. + +And over the telephone Cicely talked and arranged and consulted with men +and women to whom the joys of a good gallop or the love of a stricken +fatherland were as letters in an unknown alphabet. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII: THE FIRST-NIGHT + + +Huge posters outside the Caravansery Theatre of Varieties announced the +first performance of the uniquely interesting Suggestion Dances, +interpreted by the Hon. Gorla Mustelford. An impressionist portrait of a +rather severe-looking young woman gave the public some idea of what the +danseuse might be like in appearance, and the further information was +added that her performance was the greatest dramatic event of the season. +Yet another piece of information was conveyed to the public a few minutes +after the doors had opened, in the shape of large notices bearing the +brief announcement, "house full." For the first-night function most of +the seats had been reserved for specially-invited guests or else bespoken +by those who considered it due to their own importance to be visible on +such an occasion. + +Even at the commencement of the ordinary programme of the evening (Gorla +was not due to appear till late in the list) the theatre was crowded with +a throng of chattering, expectant human beings; it seemed as though every +one had come early to see every one else arrive. As a matter of fact it +was the rumour-heralded arrival of one personage in particular that had +drawn people early to their seats and given a double edge to the +expectancy of the moment. + +At first sight and first hearing the bulk of the audience seemed to +comprise representatives of the chief European races in well-distributed +proportions, but if one gave it closer consideration it could be seen +that the distribution was geographically rather than ethnographically +diversified. Men and women there were from Paris, Munich, Rome, Moscow +and Vienna, from Sweden and Holland and divers other cities and +countries, but in the majority of cases the Jordan Valley had supplied +their forefathers with a common cradle-ground. The lack of a fire +burning on a national altar seemed to have drawn them by universal +impulse to the congenial flare of the footlights, whether as artists, +producers, impresarios, critics, agents, go-betweens, or merely as highly +intelligent and fearsomely well-informed spectators. They were prominent +in the chief seats, they were represented, more sparsely but still in +fair numbers, in the cheaper places, and everywhere they were voluble, +emphatic, sanguine or sceptical, prodigal of word and gesture, with eyes +that seemed to miss nothing and acknowledge nothing, and a general +restless dread of not being seen and noticed. Of the theatre-going +London public there was also a fair muster, more particularly centred in +the less expensive parts of the house, while in boxes, stalls and circles +a sprinkling of military uniforms gave an unfamiliar tone to the scene in +the eyes of those who had not previously witnessed a first-night +performance under the new conditions. + +Yeovil, while standing aloof from his wife's participation in this social +event, had made private arrangements for being a personal spectator of +the scene; as one of the ticket-buying public he had secured a seat in +the back row of a low-priced gallery, whence he might watch, observant +and unobserved, the much talked-of debut of Gorla Mustelford, and the +writing of a new chapter in the history of the fait accompli. Around him +he noticed an incessant undercurrent of jangling laughter, an unending +give-and-take of meaningless mirthless jest and catchword. He had +noticed the same thing in streets and public places since his arrival in +London, a noisy, empty interchange of chaff and laughter that he had been +at a loss to account for. The Londoner is not well adapted for the +irresponsible noisiness of jesting tongue that bubbles up naturally in a +Southern race, and the effort to be volatile was the more noticeable +because it so obviously was an effort. Turning over the pages of a book +that told the story of Bulgarian social life in the days of Turkish rule, +Yeovil had that morning come across a passage that seemed to throw some +light on the thing that had puzzled him: + +"Bondage has this one advantage: it makes a nation merry. Where +far-reaching ambition has no scope for its development the community +squanders its energy on the trivial and personal cares of its daily life, +and seeks relief and recreation in simple and easily obtained material +enjoyment." The writer was a man who had known bondage, so he spoke at +any rate with authority. Of the London of the moment it could not, +however, be said with any truth that it was merry, but merely that its +inhabitants made desperate endeavour not to appear crushed under their +catastrophe. Surrounded as he was now with a babble of tongues and +shrill mechanical repartee, Yeovil's mind went back to the book and its +account of a theatre audience in the Turkish days of Bulgaria, with its +light and laughing crowd of critics and spectators. Bulgaria! The +thought of that determined little nation came to him with a sharp sense +of irony. There was a people who had not thought it beneath the dignity +of their manhood to learn the trade and discipline of arms. They had +their reward; torn and exhausted and debt-encumbered from their +campaigns, they were masters in their own house, the Bulgarian flag flew +over the Bulgarian mountains. And Yeovil stole a glance at the crown of +Charlemagne set over the Royal box. + +In a capacious box immediately opposite the one set aside for royalty the +Lady Shalem sat in well-considered prominence, confident that every press +critic and reporter would note her presence, and that one or two of them +would describe, or misdescribe, her toilet. Already quite a considerable +section of the audience knew her by name, and the frequency with which +she graciously nodded towards various quarters of the house suggested the +presence of a great many personal acquaintances. She had attained to +that desirable feminine altitude of purse and position when people who go +about everywhere know you well by sight and have never met your dress +before. + +Lady Shalem was a woman of commanding presence, of that type which +suggests a consciousness that the command may not necessarily be obeyed; +she had observant eyes and a well-managed voice. Her successes in life +had been worked for, but they were also to some considerable extent the +result of accident. Her public history went back to the time when, in +the person of her husband, Mr. Conrad Dort, she had contested two +hopeless and very expensive Parliamentary elections on behalf of her +party; on each occasion the declaration of the poll had shown a heavy +though reduced majority on the wrong side, but she might have perpetrated +an apt misquotation of the French monarch's traditional message after the +defeat of Pavia, and assured the world "all is lost save honours." The +forthcoming Honours List had duly proclaimed the fact that Conrad Dort, +Esquire, had entered Parliament by another door as Baron Shalem, of +Wireskiln, in the county of Suffolk. Success had crowned the lady's +efforts as far as the achievement of the title went, but her social +ambitions seemed unlikely to make further headway. The new Baron and his +wife, their title and money notwithstanding, did not "go down" in their +particular segment of county society, and in London there were other +titles and incomes to compete with. People were willing to worship the +Golden Calf, but allowed themselves a choice of altars. No one could +justly say that the Shalems were either oppressively vulgar or +insufferably bumptious; probably the chief reason for their lack of +popularity was their intense and obvious desire to be popular. They kept +open house in such an insistently open manner that they created a social +draught. The people who accepted their invitations for the second or +third time were not the sort of people whose names gave importance to a +dinner party or a house gathering. Failure, in a thinly-disguised form, +attended the assiduous efforts of the Shalems to play a leading role in +the world that they had climbed into. The Baron began to observe to his +acquaintances that "gadding about" and entertaining on a big scale was +not much in his line; a quiet after-dinner pipe and talk with some +brother legislator was his ideal way of spending an evening. + +Then came the great catastrophe, involving the old order of society in +the national overthrow. Lady Shalem, after a decent interval of +patriotic mourning, began to look around her and take stock of her +chances and opportunities under the new regime. It was easier to achieve +distinction as a titled oasis in the social desert that London had become +than it had been to obtain recognition as a new growth in a rather +overcrowded field. The observant eyes and agile brain quickly noted this +circumstance, and her ladyship set to work to adapt herself to the +altered conditions that governed her world. Lord Shalem was one of the +few Peers who kissed the hand of the new Sovereign, his wife was one of +the few hostesses who attempted to throw a semblance of gaiety and lavish +elegance over the travesty of a London season following the year of +disaster. The world of tradesmen and purveyors and caterers, and the +thousands who were dependent on them for employment, privately blessed +the example set by Shalem House, whatever their feelings might be towards +the fait accompli, and the august newcomer who had added an old Saxon +kingdom and some of its accretions to the Teutonic realm of Charlemagne +was duly beholden to an acquired subject who was willing to forget the +bitterness of defeat and to help others to forget it also. Among other +acts of Imperial recognition an earldom was being held in readiness for +the Baron who had known how to accept accomplished facts with a good +grace. One of the wits of the Cockatrice Club had asserted that the new +earl would take as supporters for his coat of arms a lion and a unicorn +oublie. + +In the box with Lady Shalem was the Grafin von Tolb, a well-dressed woman +of some fifty-six years, comfortable and placid in appearance, yet alert +withal, rather suggesting a thoroughly wide-awake dormouse. Rich, +amiable and intelligent were the adjectives which would best have +described her character and her life-story. In her own rather difficult +social circle at Paderborn she had earned for herself the reputation of +being one of the most tactful and discerning hostesses in Germany, and it +was generally suspected that she had come over and taken up her residence +in London in response to a wish expressed in high quarters; the lavish +hospitality which she dispensed at her house in Berkeley Square was a +considerable reinforcement to the stricken social life of the metropolis. + +In a neighbouring box Cicely Yeovil presided over a large and lively +party, which of course included Ronnie Storre, who was for once in a way +in a chattering mood, and also included an American dowager, who had +never been known to be in anything else. A tone of literary distinction +was imparted to the group by the presence of Augusta Smith, better known +under her pen-name of Rhapsodic Pantril, author of a play that had had a +limited but well-advertised success in Sheffield and the United States of +America, author also of a book of reminiscences, entitled "Things I +Cannot Forget." She had beautiful eyes, a knowledge of how to dress, and +a pleasant disposition, cankered just a little by a perpetual dread of +the non-recognition of her genius. As the woman, Augusta Smith, she +probably would have been unreservedly happy; as the super-woman, +Rhapsodic Pantril, she lived within the border-line of discontent. Her +most ordinary remarks were framed with the view of arresting attention; +some one once said of her that she ordered a sack of potatoes with the +air of one who is making enquiry for a love-philtre. + +"Do you see what colour the curtain is?" she asked Cicely, throwing a +note of intense meaning into her question. + +Cicely turned quickly and looked at the drop-curtain. + +"Rather a nice blue," she said. + +"Alexandrine blue--my colour--the colour of hope," said Rhapsodie +impressively. + +"It goes well with the general colour-scheme," said Cicely, feeling that +she was hardly rising to the occasion. + +"Say, is it really true that His Majesty is coming?" asked the lively +American dowager. "I've put on my nooest frock and my best diamonds on +purpose, and I shall be mortified to death if he doesn't see them." + +"There!" pouted Ronnie, "I felt certain you'd put them on for me." + +"Why no, I should have put on rubies and orange opals for you. People +with our colour of hair always like barbaric display--" + +"They don't," said Ronnie, "they have chaste cold tastes. You are +absolutely mistaken." + +"Well, I think I ought to know!" protested the dowager; "I've lived +longer in the world than you have, anyway." + +"Yes," said Ronnie with devastating truthfulness, "but my hair has been +this colour longer than yours has." + +Peace was restored by the opportune arrival of a middle-aged man of blond +North-German type, with an expression of brutality on his rather stupid +face, who sat in the front of the box for a few minutes on a visit of +ceremony to Cicely. His appearance caused a slight buzz of recognition +among the audience, and if Yeovil had cared to make enquiry of his +neighbours he might have learned that this decorated and obviously +important personage was the redoubtable von Kwarl, artificer and shaper +of much of the statecraft for which other men got the public credit. + +The orchestra played a selection from the "Gondola Girl," which was the +leading musical-comedy of the moment. Most of the audience, those in the +more expensive seats at any rate, heard the same airs two or three times +daily, at restaurant lunches, teas, dinners and suppers, and occasionally +in the Park; they were justified therefore in treating the music as a +background to slightly louder conversation than they had hitherto +indulged in. The music came to an end, episode number two in the +evening's entertainment was signalled, the curtain of Alexandrine blue +rolled heavily upward, and a troupe of performing wolves was presented to +the public. Yeovil had encountered wolves in North Africa deserts and in +Siberian forest and wold, he had seen them at twilight stealing like dark +shadows across the snow, and heard their long whimpering howl in the +darkness amid the pines; he could well understand how a magic lore had +grown up round them through the ages among the peoples of four +continents, how their name had passed into a hundred strange sayings and +inspired a hundred traditions. And now he saw them ride round the stage +on tricycles, with grotesque ruffles round their necks and clown caps on +their heads, their eyes blinking miserably in the blaze of the +footlights. In response to the applause of the house a stout, +atrociously smiling man in evening dress came forward and bowed; he had +had nothing to do either with the capture or the training of the animals, +having bought them ready for use from a continental emporium where wild +beasts were prepared for the music-hall market, but he continued bowing +and smiling till the curtain fell. + +Two American musicians with comic tendencies (denoted by the elaborate +rags and tatters of their costumes) succeeded the wolves. Their musical +performance was not without merit, but their comic "business" seemed to +have been invented long ago by some man who had patented a monopoly of +all music-hall humour and forthwith retired from the trade. Some day, +Yeovil reflected, the rights of the monopoly might expire and new +"business" become available for the knockabout profession. + +The audience brightened considerably when item number five of the +programme was signalled. The orchestra struck up a rollicking measure +and Tony Luton made his entrance amid a rousing storm of applause. He +was dressed as an errand-boy of some West End shop, with a livery and box- +tricycle, as spruce and decorative as the most ambitious errand-boy could +see himself in his most ambitious dreams. His song was a lively and very +audacious chronicle of life behind the scenes of a big retail +establishment, and sparkled with allusions which might fitly have been +described as suggestive--at any rate they appeared to suggest meanings to +the audience quite as clearly as Gorla Mustelford's dances were likely to +do, even with the aid, in her case, of long explanations on the +programmes. When the final verse seemed about to reach an unpardonable +climax a stage policeman opportunely appeared and moved the lively +songster on for obstructing the imaginary traffic of an imaginary Bond +Street. The house received the new number with genial enthusiasm, and +mingled its applause with demands for an earlier favourite. The +orchestra struck up the familiar air, and in a few moments the smart +errand-boy, transformed now into a smart jockey, was singing "They quaff +the gay bubbly in Eccleston Square" to an audience that hummed and nodded +its unstinted approval. + +The next number but one was the Gorla Mustelford debut, and the house +settled itself down to yawn and fidget and chatter for ten or twelve +minutes while a troupe of talented Japanese jugglers performed some +artistic and quite uninteresting marvels with fans and butterflies and +lacquer boxes. The interval of waiting was not destined, however, to be +without its interest; in its way it provided the one really important and +dramatic moment of the evening. One or two uniforms and evening +toilettes had already made their appearance in the Imperial box; now +there was observable in that quarter a slight commotion, an unobtrusive +reshuffling and reseating, and then every eye in the suddenly quiet semi- +darkened house focussed itself on one figure. There was no public +demonstration from the newly-loyal, it had been particularly wished that +there should be none, but a ripple of whisper went through the vast +audience from end to end. Majesty had arrived. The Japanese +marvel-workers went through their display with even less attention than +before. Lady Shalem, sitting well in the front of her box, lowered her +observant eyes to her programme and her massive bangles. The evidence of +her triumph did not need staring at. + + + + +CHAPTER IX: AN EVENING "TO BE REMEMBERED" + + +To the uninitiated or unappreciative the dancing of Gorla Mustelford did +not seem widely different from much that had been exhibited aforetime by +exponents of the posturing school. She was not naturally graceful of +movement, she had not undergone years of arduous tutelage, she had not +the instinct for sheer joyous energy of action that is stored in some +natures; out of these unpromising negative qualities she had produced a +style of dancing that might best be labelled a conscientious departure +from accepted methods. The highly imaginative titles that she had +bestowed on her dances, the "Life of a fern," the "Soul-dream of a +topaz," and so forth, at least gave her audience and her critics +something to talk about. In themselves they meant absolutely nothing, +but they induced discussion, and that to Gorla meant a great deal. It +was a season of dearth and emptiness in the footlights and box-office +world, and her performance received a welcome that would scarcely have +befallen it in a more crowded and prosperous day. Her success, indeed, +had been waiting for her, ready-made, as far as the managerial profession +was concerned, and nothing had been left undone in the way of +advertisement to secure for it the appearance, at any rate, of popular +favour. And loud above the interested applause of those who had personal +or business motives for acclaiming a success swelled the exaggerated +enthusiasm of the fairly numerous art-satellites who are unstinted in +their praise of anything that they are certain they cannot understand. +Whatever might be the subsequent verdict of the theatre-filling public +the majority of the favoured first-night audience was determined to set +the seal of its approval on the suggestion dances, and a steady roll of +applause greeted the conclusion of each item. The dancer gravely bowed +her thanks; in marked contradistinction to the gentleman who had +"presented" the performing wolves she did not permit herself the luxury +of a smile. + +"It teaches us a great deal," said Rhapsodic Pantril vaguely, but +impressively, after the Fern dance had been given and applauded. + +"At any rate we know now that a fern takes life very seriously," broke in +Joan Mardle, who had somehow wriggled herself into Cicely's box. + +As Yeovil, from the back of his gallery, watched Gorla running and +ricochetting about the stage, looking rather like a wagtail in energetic +pursuit of invisible gnats and midges, he wondered how many of the middle- +aged women who were eagerly applauding her would have taken the least +notice of similar gymnastics on the part of their offspring in nursery or +garden, beyond perhaps asking them not to make so much noise. And a +bitterer tinge came to his thoughts as he saw the bouquets being handed +up, thoughts of the brave old dowager down at Torywood, the woman who had +worked and wrought so hard and so unsparingly in her day for the well- +being of the State--the State that had fallen helpless into alien hands +before her tired eyes. Her eldest son lived invalid-wise in the South of +France, her second son lay fathoms deep in the North Sea, with the hulk +of a broken battleship for a burial-vault; and now the grand-daughter was +standing here in the limelight, bowing her thanks for the patronage and +favour meted out to her by this cosmopolitan company, with its lavish +sprinkling of the uniforms of an alien army. + +Prominent among the flowers at her feet was one large golden-petalled +bouquet of gorgeous blooms, tied with a broad streamer of golden riband, +the tribute rendered by Caesar to the things that were Caesar's. The new +chapter of the fait accompli had been written that night and written +well. The audience poured slowly out with the triumphant music of +Jancovius's Kaiser Wilhelm march, played by the orchestra as a happy +inspiration, pealing in its ears. + +"It has been a great evening, a most successful evening," said Lady +Shalem to Herr von Kwarl, whom she was conveying in her electric brougham +to Cicely Yeovil's supper party; "an important evening," she added, +choosing her adjectives with deliberation. "It should give pleasure in +high quarters, should it not?" + +And she turned her observant eyes on the impassive face of her companion. + +"Gracious lady," he replied with deliberation and meaning, "it has given +pleasure. It is an evening to be remembered." + +The gracious lady suppressed a sigh of satisfaction. Memory in high +places was a thing fruitful and precious beyond computation. + +Cicely's party at the Porphyry Restaurant had grown to imposing +dimensions. Every one whom she had asked had come, and so had Joan +Mardle. Lady Shalem had suggested several names at the last moment, and +there was quite a strong infusion of the Teutonic military and official +world. It was just as well, Cicely reflected, that the supper was being +given at a restaurant and not in Berkshire Street. + +"Quite like ole times," purred the beaming proprietor in Cicely's ear, as +the staircase and cloak-rooms filled up with a jostling, laughing throng. + +The guests settled themselves at four tables, taking their places where +chance or fancy led them, late comers having to fit in wherever they +could find room. A babel of tongues in various languages reigned round +the tables, amid which the rattle of knives and forks and plates and the +popping of corks made a subdued hubbub. Gorla Mustelford, the motive for +all this sound and movement, this chatter of guests and scurrying of +waiters, sat motionless in the fatigued self-conscious silence of a great +artist who has delivered a great message. + +"Do sit at Lady Peach's table, like a dear boy," Cicely begged of Tony +Luton, who had come in late; "she and Gerald Drowly have got together, in +spite of all my efforts, and they are both so dull. Try and liven things +up a bit." + +A loud barking sound, as of fur-seals calling across Arctic ice, came +from another table, where Mrs. Mentieth-Mendlesohnn (one of the +Mendlesohnns of Invergordon, as she was wont to describe herself) was +proclaiming the glories and subtleties of Gorla's achievement. + +"It was a revelation," she shouted; "I sat there and saw a whole new +scheme of thought unfold itself before my eyes. One could not define it, +it was thought translated into action--the best art cannot be defined. +One just sat there and knew that one was seeing something one had never +seen before, and yet one felt that one had seen it, in one's brain, all +one's life. That was what was so wonderful--yes, please," she broke off +sharply as a fat quail in aspic was presented to her by a questioning +waiter. + +The voice of Mr. Mauleverer Morle came across the table, like another +seal barking at a greater distance. + +"Rostand," he observed with studied emphasis, "has been called le Prince +de l'adjectif Inopine; Miss Mustelford deserves to be described as the +Queen of Unexpected Movement." + +"Oh, I say, do you hear that?" exclaimed Mrs. Mentieth-Mendlesohnn to as +wide an audience as she could achieve; "Rostand has been called--tell +them what you said, Mr. Morle," she broke off, suddenly mistrusting her +ability to handle a French sentence at the top of her voice. + +Mr. Morle repeated his remark. + +"Pass it on to the next table," commanded Mrs. Mentieth-Mendlesohnn. +"It's too good to be lost." + +At the next table however, a grave impressive voice was dwelling at +length on a topic remote from the event of the evening. Lady Peach +considered that all social gatherings, of whatever nature, were intended +for the recital of minor domestic tragedies. She lost no time in +regaling the company around her with the detailed history of an +interrupted week-end in a Norfolk cottage. + +"The most charming and delightful old-world spot that you could imagine, +clean and quite comfortable, just a nice distance from the sea and within +an easy walk of the Broads. The very place for the children. We'd +brought everything for a four days' stay and meant to have a really +delightful time. And then on Sunday morning we found that some one had +left the springhead, where our only supply of drinking water came from, +uncovered, and a dead bird was floating in it; it had fallen in somehow +and got drowned. Of course we couldn't use the water that a dead body +had been floating in, and there was no other supply for miles round, so +we had to come away then and there. Now what do you say to that?" + +"'Ah, that a linnet should die in the Spring,'" quoted Tony Luton with +intense feeling. + +There was an immediate outburst of hilarity where Lady Peach had +confidently looked for expressions of concern and sympathy. + +"Isn't Tony just perfectly cute? Isn't he?" exclaimed a young American +woman, with an enthusiasm to which Lady Peach entirely failed to respond. +She had intended following up her story with the account of another +tragedy of a similar nature that had befallen her three years ago in +Argyllshire, and now the opportunity had gone. She turned morosely to +the consolations of a tongue salad. + +At the centre table the excellent von Tolb led a chorus of congratulation +and compliment, to which Gorla listened with an air of polite detachment, +much as the Sheikh Ul Islam might receive the homage of a Wesleyan +Conference. To a close observer it would have seemed probable that her +attitude of fatigued indifference to the flattering remarks that were +showered on her had been as carefully studied and rehearsed as any of her +postures on the stage. + +"It is something that one will appreciate more and more fully every time +one sees it . . . One cannot see it too often . . . I could have sat and +watched it for hours . . . Do you know, I am just looking forward to to- +morrow evening, when I can see it again. . . . I knew it was going to be +good, but I had no idea--" so chimed the chorus, between mouthfuls of +quail and bites of asparagus. + +"Weren't the performing wolves wonderful?" exclaimed Joan in her fresh +joyous voice, that rang round the room like laughter of the woodpecker. + +If there is one thing that disturbs the complacency of a great artist of +the Halls it is the consciousness of sharing his or her triumphs with +performing birds and animals, but of course Joan was not to be expected +to know that. She pursued her subject with the assurance of one who has +hit on a particularly acceptable topic. + +"It must have taken them years of training and concentration to master +those tricycles," she continued in high-pitched soliloquy. "The nice +thing about them is that they don't realise a bit how clever and +educational they are. It would be dreadful to have them putting on airs, +wouldn't it? And yet I suppose the knowledge of being able to jump +through a hoop better than any other wolf would justify a certain amount +of 'side.'" + +Fortunately at this moment a young Italian journalist at another table +rose from his seat and delivered a two-minute oration in praise of the +heroine of the evening. He spoke in rapid nervous French, with a North +Italian accent, but much of what he said could be understood by the +majority of those present, and the applause was unanimous. At any rate +he had been brief and it was permissible to suppose that he had been +witty. + +It was the opening for which Mr. Gerald Drowly had been watching and +waiting. The moment that the Italian enthusiast had dropped back into +his seat amid a rattle of hand-clapping and rapping of forks and knives +on the tables, Drowly sprang to his feet, pushed his chair well away, as +for a long separation, and begged to endorse what had been so very aptly +and gracefully, and, might he add, truly said by the previous speaker. +This was only the prelude to the real burden of his message; with the +dexterity that comes of practice he managed, in a couple of hurried +sentences, to divert the course of his remarks to his own personality and +career, and to inform his listeners that he was an actor of some note and +experience, and had had the honour of acting under--and here followed a +string of names of eminent actor managers of the day. He thought he +might be pardoned for mentioning the fact that his performance of +"Peterkin" in the "Broken Nutshell," had won the unstinted approval of +the dramatic critics of the Provincial press. Towards the end of what +was a long speech, and which seemed even longer to its hearers, he +reverted to the subject of Gorla's dancing and bestowed on it such +laudatory remarks as he had left over. Drawing his chair once again into +his immediate neighbourhood he sat down, aglow with the satisfied +consciousness of a good work worthily performed. + +"I once acted a small part in some theatricals got up for a charity," +announced Joan in a ringing, confidential voice; "the Clapham Courier +said that all the minor parts were very creditably sustained. Those were +its very words. I felt I must tell you that, and also say how much I +enjoyed Miss Mustelford's dancing." + +Tony Luton cheered wildly. + +"That's the cleverest speech so far," he proclaimed. He had been asked +to liven things up at his table and was doing his best to achieve that +result, but Mr. Gerald Drowly joined Lady Peach in the unfavourable +opinion she had formed of that irrepressible youth. + +Ronnie, on whom Cicely kept a solicitous eye, showed no sign of any +intention of falling in love with Gorla. He was more profitably engaged +in paying court to the Grafin von Tolb, whose hospitable mansion in +Belgrave Square invested her with a special interest in his eyes. As a +professional Prince Charming he had every inducement to encourage the +cult of Fairy Godmother. + +"Yes, yes, agreed, I will come and hear you play, that is a promise," +said the Grafin, "and you must come and dine with me one night and play +to me afterwards, that is a promise, also, yes? That is very nice of +you, to come and see a tiresome old woman. I am passionately fond of +music; if I were honest I would tell you also that I am very fond of good- +looking boys, but this is not the age of honesty, so I must leave you to +guess that. Come on Thursday in next week, you can? That is nice. I +have a reigning Prince dining with me that night. Poor man, he wants +cheering up; the art of being a reigning Prince is not a very pleasing +one nowadays. He has made it a boast all his life that he is Liberal and +his subjects Conservative; now that is all changed--no, not all; he is +still Liberal, but his subjects unfortunately are become Socialists. You +must play your best for him." + +"Are there many Socialists over there, in Germany I mean?" asked Ronnie, +who was rather out of his depth where politics were concerned. + +"Ueberall," said the Grafin with emphasis; "everywhere, I don't know what +it comes from; better education and worse digestions I suppose. I am +sure digestion has a good deal to do with it. In my husband's family for +example, his generation had excellent digestions, and there wasn't a case +of Socialism or suicide among them; the younger generation have no +digestions worth speaking of, and there have been two suicides and three +Socialists within the last six years. And now I must really be going. I +am not a Berliner and late hours don't suit my way of life." + +Ronnie bent low over the Grafin's hand and kissed it, partly because she +was the kind of woman who naturally invoked such homage, but chiefly +because he knew that the gesture showed off his smooth burnished head to +advantage. + +The observant eyes of Lady Shalem had noted the animated conversation +between the Grafin and Ronnie, and she had overheard fragments of the +invitation that had been accorded to the latter. + +"Take us the little foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines," she +quoted to herself; "not that that music-boy would do much in the +destructive line, but the principle is good." + + + + +CHAPTER X: SOME REFLECTIONS AND A "TE DEUM" + + +Cicely awoke, on the morning after the "memorable evening," with the +satisfactory feeling of victory achieved, tempered by a troubled sense of +having achieved it in the face of a reasonably grounded opposition. She +had burned her boats, and was glad of it, but the reek of their burning +drifted rather unpleasantly across the jubilant incense-swinging of her +Te Deum service. + +Last night had marked an immense step forward in her social career; +without running after the patronage of influential personages she had +seen it quietly and tactfully put at her service. People such as the +Grafin von Tolb were going to be a power in the London world for a very +long time to come. Herr von Kwarl, with all his useful qualities of +brain and temperament, might conceivably fall out of favour in some +unexpected turn of the political wheel, and the Shalems would probably +have their little day and then a long afternoon of diminishing social +importance; the placid dormouse-like Grafin would outlast them all. She +had the qualities which make either for contented mediocrity or else for +very durable success, according as circumstances may dictate. She was +one of those characters that can neither thrust themselves to the front, +nor have any wish to do so, but being there, no ordinary power can thrust +them away. + +With the Grafin as her friend Cicely found herself in altogether a +different position from that involved by the mere interested patronage of +Lady Shalem. A vista of social success was opened up to her, and she did +not mean it to be just the ordinary success of a popular and influential +hostess moving in an important circle. That people with naturally bad +manners should have to be polite and considerate in their dealings with +her, that people who usually held themselves aloof should have to be +gracious and amiable, that the self-assured should have to be just a +little humble and anxious where she was concerned, these things of course +she intended to happen; she was a woman. But, she told herself, she +intended a great deal more than that when she traced the pattern for her +scheme of social influence. In her heart she detested the German +occupation as a hateful necessity, but while her heart registered the +hatefulness the brain recognised the necessity. The great +fighting-machines that the Germans had built up and maintained, on land, +on sea, and in air, were three solid crushing facts that demonstrated the +hopelessness of any immediate thought of revolt. Twenty years hence, +when the present generation was older and greyer, the chances of armed +revolt would probably be equally hopeless, equally remote-seeming. But +in the meantime something could have been effected in another way. The +conquerors might partially Germanise London, but, on the other hand, if +the thing were skilfully managed, the British element within the Empire +might impress the mark of its influence on everything German. The +fighting men might remain Prussian or Bavarian, but the thinking men, and +eventually the ruling men, could gradually come under British influence, +or even be of British blood. An English Liberal-Conservative "Centre" +might stand as a bulwark against the Junkerdom and Socialism of +Continental Germany. So Cicely reasoned with herself, in a fashion +induced perhaps by an earlier apprenticeship to the reading of Nineteenth +Century articles, in which the possible political and racial developments +of various countries were examined and discussed and put away in the +pigeon-holes of probable happenings. She had sufficient knowledge of +political history to know that such a development might possibly come to +pass, she had not sufficient insight into actual conditions to know that +the possibility was as remote as that of armed resistance. And the role +which she saw herself playing was that of a deft and courtly political +intriguer, rallying the British element and making herself agreeable to +the German element, a political inspiration to the one and a social +distraction to the other. At the back of her mind there lurked an honest +confession that she was probably over-rating her powers of statecraft and +personality, that she was more likely to be carried along by the current +of events than to control or divert its direction; the political +day-dream remained, however, as day-dreams will, in spite of the clear +light of probability shining through them. At any rate she knew, as +usual, what she wanted to do, and as usual she had taken steps to carry +out her intentions. Last night remained in her mind a night of important +victory. There also remained the anxious proceeding of finding out if +the victory had entailed any serious losses. + +Cicely was not one of those ill-regulated people who treat the first meal +of the day as a convenient occasion for serving up any differences or +contentions that have been left over from the day before or overlooked in +the press of other matters. She enjoyed her breakfast and gave Yeovil +unhindered opportunity for enjoying his; a discussion as to the right +cooking of a dish that he had first tasted among the Orenburg Tartars was +the prevailing topic on this particular morning, and blended well with +trout and toast and coffee. In a cosy nook of the smoking-room, in +participation of the after-breakfast cigarettes, Cicely made her dash +into debatable ground. + +"You haven't asked me how my supper-party went off," she said. + +"There is a notice of it in two of the morning papers, with a list of +those present," said Yeovil; "the conquering race seems to have been very +well represented." + +"Several races were represented," said Cicely; "a function of that sort, +celebrating a dramatic first-night, was bound to be cosmopolitan. In +fact, blending of races and nationalities is the tendency of the age we +live in." + +"The blending of races seems to have been consummated already in one of +the individuals at your party," said Yeovil drily; "the name Mentieth- +Mendlesohnn struck me as a particularly happy obliteration of racial +landmarks." + +Cicely laughed. + +"A noisy and very wearisome sort of woman," she commented; "she reminds +one of garlic that's been planted by mistake in a conservatory. Still, +she's useful as an advertising agent to any one who rubs her the right +way. She'll be invaluable in proclaiming the merits of Gorla's +performance to all and sundry; that's why I invited her. She'll probably +lunch to-day at the Hotel Cecil, and every one sitting within a hundred +yards of her table will hear what an emotional education they can get by +going to see Gorla dance at the Caravansery." + +"She seems to be like the Salvation Army," said Yeovil; "her noise +reaches a class of people who wouldn't trouble to read press notices." + +"Exactly," said Cicely. "Gorla gets quite good notices on the whole, +doesn't she?" + +"The one that took my fancy most was the one in the Standard," said +Yeovil, picking up that paper from a table by his side and searching its +columns for the notice in question. "'The wolves which appeared earlier +in the evening's entertainment are, the programme assures us, trained +entirely by kindness. It would have been a further kindness, at any rate +to the audience, if some of the training, which the wolves doubtless do +not appreciate at its proper value, had been expended on Miss +Mustelford's efforts at stage dancing. We are assured, again on the +authority of the programme, that the much-talked-of Suggestion Dances are +the last word in Posture dancing. The last word belongs by immemorial +right to the sex which Miss Mustelford adorns, and it would be ungallant +to seek to deprive her of her privilege. As far as the educational +aspect of her performance is concerned we must admit that the life of the +fern remains to us a private life still. Miss Mustelford has abandoned +her own private life in an unavailing attempt to draw the fern into the +gaze of publicity. And so it was with her other suggestions. They +suggested many things, but nothing that was announced on the programme. +Chiefly they suggested one outstanding reflection, that stage-dancing is +not like those advertised breakfast foods that can be served up after +three minutes' preparation. Half a life-time, or rather half a youth- +time is a much more satisfactory allowance.'" + +"The Standard is prejudiced," said Cicely; "some of the other papers are +quite enthusiastic. The Dawn gives her a column and a quarter of notice, +nearly all of it complimentary. It says the report of her fame as a +dancer went before her, but that her performance last night caught it up +and outstripped it." + +"I should not like to suggest that the Dawn is prejudiced," said Yeovil, +"but Shalem is a managing director on it, and one of its biggest +shareholders. Gorla's dancing is an event of the social season, and +Shalem is one of those most interested in keeping up the appearance, at +any rate, of a London social season. Besides, her debut gave the +opportunity for an Imperial visit to the theatre--the first appearance at +a festive public function of the Conqueror among the conquered. +Apparently the experiment passed off well; Shalem has every reason to +feel pleased with himself and well-disposed towards Gorla. By the way," +added Yeovil, "talking of Gorla, I'm going down to Torywood one day next +week." + +"To Torywood?" exclaimed Cicely. The tone of her exclamation gave the +impression that the announcement was not very acceptable to her. + +"I promised the old lady that I would go and have a talk with her when I +came back from my Siberian trip; she travelled in eastern Russia, you +know, long before the Trans-Siberian railway was built, and she's +enormously interested in those parts. In any case I should like to see +her again." + +"She does not see many people nowadays," said Cicely; "I fancy she is +breaking up rather. She was very fond of the son who went down, you +know." + +"She has seen a great many of the things she cared for go down," said +Yeovil; "it is a sad old life that is left to her, when one thinks of all +that the past has been to her, of the part she used to play in the world, +the work she used to get through. It used to seem as though she could +never grow old, as if she would die standing up, with some unfinished +command on her lips. And now I suppose her tragedy is that she has grown +old, bitterly old, and cannot die." + +Cicely was silent for a moment, and seemed about to leave the room. Then +she turned back and said: + +"I don't think I would say anything about Gorla to her if I were you." + +"It would not have occurred to me to drag her name into our +conversation," said Yeovil coldly, "but in any case the accounts of her +dancing performance will have reached Torywood through the +newspapers--also the record of your racially-blended supper-party." + +Cicely said nothing. She knew that by last night's affair she had +definitely identified herself in public opinion with the Shalem clique, +and that many of her old friends would look on her with distrust and +suspicion on that account. It was unfortunate, but she reckoned it a +lesser evil than tearing herself away from her London life, its successes +and pleasures and possibilities. These social dislocations and severing +of friendships were to be looked for after any great and violent change +in State affairs. It was Yeovil's attitude that really troubled her; she +would not give way to his prejudices and accept his point of view, but +she knew that a victory that involved estrangement from him would only +bring a mockery of happiness. She still hoped that he would come round +to an acceptance of established facts and deaden his political malaise in +the absorbing distraction of field sports. The visit to Torywood was a +misfortune; it might just turn the balance in the undesired direction. +Only a few weeks of late summer and early autumn remained before the +hunting season, and its preparations would be at hand, and Yeovil might +be caught in the meshes of an old enthusiasm; in those few weeks, +however, he might be fired by another sort of enthusiasm, an enthusiasm +which would sooner or later mean voluntary or enforced exile for his +part, and the probable breaking up of her own social plans and ambitions. + +But Cicely knew something of the futility of improvising objections where +no real obstacle exists. The visit to Torywood was a graceful attention +on Yeovil's part to an old friend; there was no decent ground on which it +could be opposed. If the influence of that visit came athwart Yeovil's +life and hers with disastrous effect, that was "Kismet." + +And once again the reek from her burned and smouldering boats mingled +threateningly with the incense fumes of her Te Deum for victory. She +left the room, and Yeovil turned once more to an item of news in the +morning's papers that had already arrested his attention. The Imperial +Aufklarung on the subject of military service was to be made public in +the course of the day. + + + + +CHAPTER XI: THE TEA SHOP + + +Yeovil wandered down Piccadilly that afternoon in a spirit of +restlessness and expectancy. The long-awaited Aufklarung dealing with +the new law of military service had not yet appeared; at any moment he +might meet the hoarse-throated newsboys running along with their papers, +announcing the special edition which would give the terms of the edict to +the public. Every sound or movement that detached itself with isolated +significance from the general whirr and scurry of the streets seemed to +Yeovil to herald the oncoming clamour and rush that he was looking for. +But the long endless succession of motors and 'buses and vans went by, +hooting and grunting, and such newsboys as were to be seen hung about +listlessly, bearing no more attractive bait on their posters than the +announcement of an "earthquake shock in Hungary: feared loss of life." + +The Green Park end of Piccadilly was a changed, and in some respects a +livelier thoroughfare to that which Yeovil remembered with affectionate +regret. A great political club had migrated from its palatial home to a +shrunken habitation in a less prosperous quarter; its place was filled by +the flamboyant frontage of the Hotel Konstantinopel. Gorgeous Turkey +carpets were spread over the wide entrance steps, and boys in Circassian +and Anatolian costumes hung around the doors, or dashed forth in +un-Oriental haste to carry such messages as the telephone was unable to +transmit. Picturesque sellers of Turkish delight, attar-of-roses, and +brass-work coffee services, squatted under the portico, on terms of +obvious good understanding with the hotel management. A few doors +further down a service club that had long been a Piccadilly landmark was +a landmark still, as the home of the Army Aeronaut Club, and there was a +constant coming and going of gay-hued uniforms, Saxon, Prussian, +Bavarian, Hessian, and so forth, through its portals. The mastering of +the air and the creation of a scientific aerial war fleet, second to none +in the world, was an achievement of which the conquering race was +pardonably proud, and for which it had good reason to be duly thankful. +Over the gateways was blazoned the badge of the club, an elephant, whale, +and eagle, typifying the three armed forces of the State, by land and sea +and air; the eagle bore in its beak a scroll with the proud legend: "The +last am I, but not the least." + +To the eastward of this gaily-humming hive the long shuttered front of a +deserted ducal mansion struck a note of protest and mourning amid the +noise and whirl and colour of a seemingly uncaring city. On the other +side of the roadway, on the gravelled paths of the Green Park, small +ragged children from the back streets of Westminster looked wistfully at +the smooth trim stretches of grass on which it was now forbidden, in two +languages, to set foot. Only the pigeons, disregarding the changes of +political geography, walked about as usual, wondering perhaps, if they +ever wondered at anything, at the sudden change in the distribution of +park humans. + +Yeovil turned his steps out of the hot sunlight into the shade of the +Burlington Arcade, familiarly known to many of its newer frequenters as +the Passage. Here the change that new conditions and requirements had +wrought was more immediately noticeable than anywhere else in the West +End. Most of the shops on the western side had been cleared away, and in +their place had been installed an "open-air" cafe, converting the long +alley into a sort of promenade tea-garden, flanked on one side by a line +of haberdashers', perfumers', and jewellers' show windows. The patrons +of the cafe could sit at the little round tables, drinking their coffee +and syrups and aperitifs, and gazing, if they were so minded, at the +pyjamas and cravats and Brazilian diamonds spread out for inspection +before them. A string orchestra, hidden away somewhere in a gallery, was +alternating grand opera with the Gondola Girl and the latest gems of +Transatlantic melody. From around the tightly-packed tables arose a +babble of tongues, made up chiefly of German, a South American rendering +of Spanish, and a North American rendering of English, with here and +there the sharp shaken-out staccato of Japanese. A sleepy-looking boy, +in a nondescript uniform, was wandering to and fro among the customers, +offering for sale the Matin, New York Herald, Berliner Tageblatt, and a +host of crudely coloured illustrated papers, embodying the hard-worked +wit of a world-legion of comic artists. Yeovil hurried through the +Arcade; it was not here, in this atmosphere of staring alien eyes and +jangling tongues, that he wanted to read the news of the Imperial +Aufklarung. + +By a succession of by-ways he reached Hanover Square, and thence made his +way into Oxford Street. There was no commotion of activity to be noticed +yet among the newsboys; the posters still concerned themselves with the +earthquake in Hungary, varied with references to the health of the King +of Roumania, and a motor accident in South London. Yeovil wandered +aimlessly along the street for a few dozen yards, and then turned down +into the smoking-room of a cheap tea-shop, where he judged that the +flourishing foreign element would be less conspicuously represented. +Quiet-voiced, smooth-headed youths, from neighbouring shops and wholesale +houses, sat drinking tea and munching pastry, some of them reading, +others making a fitful rattle with dominoes on the marble-topped tables. +A clean, wholesome smell of tea and coffee made itself felt through the +clouds of cigarette smoke; cleanliness and listlessness seemed to be the +dominant notes of the place, a cleanliness that was commendable, and a +listlessness that seemed unnatural and undesirable where so much youth +was gathered together for refreshment and recreation. Yeovil seated +himself at a table already occupied by a young clergyman who was smoking +a cigarette over the remains of a plateful of buttered toast. He had a +keen, clever, hard-lined face, the face of a man who, in an earlier stage +of European history, might have been a warlike prior, awkward to tackle +at the council-board, greatly to be avoided where blows were being +exchanged. A pale, silent damsel drifted up to Yeovil and took his order +with an air of being mentally some hundreds of miles away, and utterly +indifferent to the requirements of those whom she served; if she had +brought calf's-foot jelly instead of the pot of China tea he had asked +for, Yeovil would hardly have been surprised. However, the tea duly +arrived on the table, and the pale damsel scribbled a figure on a slip of +paper, put it silently by the side of the teapot, and drifted silently +away. Yeovil had seen the same sort of thing done on the musical-comedy +stage, and done rather differently. + +"Can you tell me, sir, is the Imperial announcement out yet?" asked the +young clergyman, after a brief scrutiny of his neighbour. + +"No, I have been waiting about for the last half-hour on the look-out for +it," said Yeovil; "the special editions ought to be out by now." Then he +added: "I have only just lately come from abroad. I know scarcely +anything of London as it is now. You may imagine that a good deal of it +is very strange to me. Your profession must take you a good deal among +all classes of people. I have seen something of what one may call the +upper, or, at any rate, the richer classes, since I came back; do tell me +something about the poorer classes of the community. How do they take +the new order of things?" + +"Badly," said the young cleric, "badly, in more senses than one. They +are helpless and they are bitter--bitter in the useless kind of way that +produces no great resolutions. They look round for some one to blame for +what has happened; they blame the politicians, they blame the leisured +classes; in an indirect way I believe they blame the Church. Certainly, +the national disaster has not drawn them towards religion in any form. +One thing you may be sure of, they do not blame themselves. No true +Londoner ever admits that fault lies at his door. 'No, I never!' is an +exclamation that is on his lips from earliest childhood, whenever he is +charged with anything blameworthy or punishable. That is why school +discipline was ever a thing repugnant to the schoolboard child and its +parents; no schoolboard scholar ever deserved punishment. However +obvious the fault might seem to a disciplinarian, 'No, I never' +exonerated it as something that had not happened. Public schoolboys and +private schoolboys of the upper and middle class had their fling and took +their thrashings, when they were found out, as a piece of bad luck, but +'our Bert' and 'our Sid' were of those for whom there is no condemnation; +if they were punished it was for faults that 'no, they never' committed. +Naturally the grown-up generation of Berts and Sids, the voters and +householders, do not realise, still less admit, that it was they who +called the tune to which the politicians danced. They had to choose +between the vote-mongers and the so-called 'scare-mongers,' and their +verdict was for the vote-mongers all the time. And now they are bitter; +they are being punished, and punishment is not a thing that they have +been schooled to bear. The taxes that are falling on them are a grievous +source of discontent, and the military service that will be imposed on +them, for the first time in their lives, will be another. There is a +more lovable side to their character under misfortune, though," added the +young clergyman. "Deep down in their hearts there was a very real +affection for the old dynasty. Future historians will perhaps be able to +explain how and why the Royal Family of Great Britain captured the +imaginations of its subjects in so genuine and lasting a fashion. Among +the poorest and the most matter-of-fact, for whom the name of no public +man, politician or philanthropist, stands out with any especial +significance, the old Queen, and the dead King, the dethroned monarch and +the young prince live in a sort of domestic Pantheon, a recollection that +is a proud and wistful personal possession when so little remains to be +proud of or to possess. There is no favour that I am so often asked for +among my poorer parishioners as the gift of the picture of this or that +member of the old dynasty. 'I have got all of them, only except Princess +Mary,' an old woman said to me last week, and she nearly cried with +pleasure when I brought her an old Bystander portrait that filled the gap +in her collection. And on Queen Alexandra's day they bring out and wear +the faded wild-rose favours that they bought with their pennies in days +gone by." + +"The tragedy of the enactment that is about to enforce military service +on these people is that it comes when they've no longer a country to +fight for," said Yeovil. + +The young clergyman gave an exclamation of bitter impatience. + +"That is the cruel mockery of the whole thing. Every now and then in the +course of my work I have come across lads who were really drifting to the +bad through the good qualities in them. A clean combative strain in +their blood, and a natural turn for adventure, made the ordinary anaemic +routine of shop or warehouse or factory almost unbearable for them. What +splendid little soldiers they would have made, and how grandly the +discipline of a military training would have steadied them in after-life +when steadiness was wanted. The only adventure that their surroundings +offered them has been the adventure of practising mildly criminal +misdeeds without getting landed in reformatories and prisons; those of +them that have not been successful in keeping clear of detection are +walking round and round prison yards, experiencing the operation of a +discipline that breaks and does not build. They were merry-hearted boys +once, with nothing of the criminal or ne'er-do-weel in their natures, and +now--have you ever seen a prison yard, with that walk round and round and +round between grey walls under a blue sky?" + +Yeovil nodded. + +"It's good enough for criminals and imbeciles," said the parson, "but +think of it for those boys, who might have been marching along to the tap +of the drum, with a laugh on their lips instead of Hell in their hearts. +I have had Hell in my heart sometimes, when I have come in touch with +cases like those. I suppose you are thinking that I am a strange sort of +parson." + +"I was just defining you in my mind," said Yeovil, "as a man of God, with +an infinite tenderness for little devils." + +The clergyman flushed. + +"Rather a fine epitaph to have on one's tombstone," he said, "especially +if the tombstone were in some crowded city graveyard. I suppose I am a +man of God, but I don't think I could be called a man of peace." + +Looking at the strong young face, with its suggestion of a fighting prior +of bygone days more marked than ever, Yeovil mentally agreed that he +could not. + +"I have learned one thing in life," continued the young man, "and that is +that peace is not for this world. Peace is what God gives us when He +takes us into His rest. Beat your sword into a ploughshare if you like, +but beat your enemy into smithereens first." + +A long-drawn cry, repeated again and again, detached itself from the +throb and hoot and whir of the street traffic. + +"Speshul! Military service, spesh-ul!" + +The young clergyman sprang from his seat and went up the staircase in a +succession of bounds, causing the domino players and novelette readers to +look up for a moment in mild astonishment. In a few seconds he was back +again, with a copy of an afternoon paper. The Imperial Rescript was set +forth in heavy type, in parallel columns of English and German. As the +young man read a deep burning flush spread over his face, then ebbed away +into a chalky whiteness. He read the announcement to the end, then +handed the paper to Yeovil, and left without a word. + +Beneath the courtly politeness and benignant phraseology of the document +ran a trenchant searing irony. The British born subjects of the Germanic +Crown, inhabiting the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, had +habituated themselves as a people to the disuse of arms, and resolutely +excluded military service and national training from their political +system and daily life. Their judgment that they were unsuited as a race +to bear arms and conform to military discipline was not to be set aside. +Their new Overlord did not propose to do violence to their feelings and +customs by requiring from them the personal military sacrifices and +services which were rendered by his subjects German-born. The British +subjects of the Crown were to remain a people consecrated to peaceful +pursuits, to commerce and trade and husbandry. The defence of their +coasts and shipping and the maintenance of order and general safety would +be guaranteed by a garrison of German troops, with the co-operation of +the Imperial war fleet. German-born subjects residing temporarily or +permanently in the British Isles would come under the same laws +respecting compulsory military service as their fellow-subjects of German +blood in the other parts of the Empire, and special enactments would be +drawn up to ensure that their interests did not suffer from a periodical +withdrawal on training or other military calls. Necessarily a heavily +differentiated scale of war taxation would fall on British taxpayers, to +provide for the upkeep of the garrison and to equalise the services and +sacrifices rendered by the two branches of his Majesty's subjects. As +military service was not henceforth open to any subject of British birth +no further necessity for any training or exercise of a military nature +existed, therefore all rifle clubs, drill associations, cadet corps and +similar bodies were henceforth declared to be illegal. No weapons other +than guns for specified sporting purposes, duly declared and registered +and open to inspection when required, could be owned, purchased, or +carried. The science of arms was to be eliminated altogether from the +life of a people who had shown such marked repugnance to its study and +practice. + +The cold irony of the measure struck home with the greater force because +its nature was so utterly unexpected. Public anticipation had guessed at +various forms of military service, aggressively irksome or tactfully +lightened as the case might be, in any event certain to be bitterly +unpopular, and now there had come this contemptuous boon, which had +removed, at one stroke, the bogey of compulsory military service from the +troubled imaginings of the British people, and fastened on them the cruel +distinction of being in actual fact what an enemy had called them in +splenetic scorn long years ago--a nation of shopkeepers. Aye, something +even below that level, a race of shopkeepers who were no longer a nation. + +Yeovil crumpled the paper in his hand and went out into the sunlit +street. A sudden roll of drums and crash of brass music filled the air. +A company of Bavarian infantry went by, in all the pomp and circumstance +of martial array and the joyous swing of rapid rhythmic movement. The +street echoed and throbbed in the Englishman's ears with the exultant +pulse of youth and mastery set to loud Pagan music. A group of lads from +the tea-shop clustered on the pavement and watched the troops go by, +staring at a phase of life in which they had no share. The martial +trappings, the swaggering joy of life, the comradeship of camp and +barracks, the hard discipline of drill yard and fatigue duty, the long +sentry watches, the trench digging, forced marches, wounds, cold, hunger, +makeshift hospitals, and the blood-wet laurels--these were not for them. +Such things they might only guess at, or see on a cinema film, darkly; +they belonged to the civilian nation. + +The function of afternoon tea was still being languidly observed in the +big drawing-room when Yeovil returned to Berkshire Street. Cicely was +playing the part of hostess to a man of perhaps forty-one years of age, +who looked slightly older from his palpable attempts to look very much +younger. Percival Plarsey was a plump, pale-faced, short-legged +individual, with puffy cheeks, over-prominent nose, and thin colourless +hair. His mother, with nothing more than maternal prejudice to excuse +her, had discovered some twenty odd years ago that he was a well-favoured +young man, and had easily imbued her son with the same opinion. The +slipping away of years and the natural transition of the unathletic boy +into the podgy unhealthy-looking man did little to weaken the tradition; +Plarsey had never been able to relinquish the idea that a youthful charm +and comeliness still centred in his person, and laboured daily at his +toilet with the devotion that a hopelessly lost cause is so often able to +inspire. He babbled incessantly about himself and the accessory +futilities of his life in short, neat, complacent sentences, and in a +voice that Ronald Storre said reminded one of a fat bishop blessing a +butter-making competition. While he babbled he kept his eyes fastened on +his listeners to observe the impression which his important little +announcements and pronouncements were making. On the present occasion he +was pattering forth a detailed description of the upholstery and fittings +of his new music-room. + +"All the hangings, violette de Parme, all the furniture, rosewood. The +only ornament in the room is a replica of the Mozart statue in Vienna. +Nothing but Mozart is to be played in the room. Absolutely, nothing but +Mozart." + +"You will get rather tired of that, won't you?" said Cicely, feeling that +she was expected to comment on this tremendous announcement. + +"One gets tired of everything," said Plarsey, with a fat little sigh of +resignation. "I can't tell you how tired I am of Rubenstein, and one day +I suppose I shall be tired of Mozart, and violette de Parme and rosewood. +I never thought it possible that I could ever tire of jonquils, and now I +simply won't have one in the house. Oh, the scene the other day because +some one brought some jonquils into the house! I'm afraid I was +dreadfully rude, but I really couldn't help it." + +He could talk like this through a long summer day or a long winter +evening. + +Yeovil belonged to a race forbidden to bear arms. At the moment he would +gladly have contented himself with the weapons with which nature had +endowed him, if he might have kicked and pommelled the abhorrent specimen +of male humanity whom he saw before him. + +Instead he broke into the conversation with an inspired flash of +malicious untruthfulness. + +"It is wonderful," he observed carelessly, "how popular that Viennese +statue of Mozart has become. A friend who inspects County Council Art +Schools tells me you find a copy of it in every class-room you go into." + +It was a poor substitute for physical violence, but it was all that +civilisation allowed him in the way of relieving his feelings; it had, +moreover, the effect of making Plarsey profoundly miserable. + + + + +CHAPTER XII: THE TRAVELLING COMPANIONS + + +The train bearing Yeovil on his visit to Torywood slid and rattled +westward through the hazy dreamland of an English summer landscape. Seen +from the train windows the stark bare ugliness of the metalled line was +forgotten, and the eye rested only on the green solitude that unfolded +itself as the miles went slipping by. Tall grasses and meadow-weeds +stood in deep shocks, field after field, between the leafy boundaries of +hedge or coppice, thrusting themselves higher and higher till they +touched the low sweeping branches of the trees that here and there +overshadowed them. Broad streams, bordered with a heavy fringe of reed +and sedge, went winding away into a green distance where woodland and +meadowland seemed indefinitely prolonged; narrow streamlets, lost to view +in the growth that they fostered, disclosed their presence merely by the +water-weed that showed in a riband of rank verdure threading the mellower +green of the fields. On the stream banks moorhens walked with jerky +confident steps, in the easy boldness of those who had a couple of other +elements at their disposal in an emergency; more timorous partridges +raced away from the apparition of the train, looking all leg and neck, +like little forest elves fleeing from human encounter. And in the +distance, over the tree line, a heron or two flapped with slow measured +wing-beats and an air of being bent on an immeasurably longer journey +than the train that hurtled so frantically along the rails. Now and then +the meadowland changed itself suddenly into orchard, with close-growing +trees already showing the measure of their coming harvest, and then +strawyard and farm buildings would slide into view; heavy dairy cattle, +roan and skewbald and dappled, stood near the gates, drowsily resentful +of insect stings, and bunched-up companies of ducks halted in seeming +irresolution between the charms of the horse-pond and the alluring +neighbourhood of the farm kitchen. Away by the banks of some rushing +mill-stream, in a setting of copse and cornfield, a village might be +guessed at, just a hint of red roof, grey wreathed chimney and old church +tower as seen from the windows of the passing train, and over it all +brooded a happy, settled calm, like the dreaming murmur of a trout-stream +and the far-away cawing of rooks. + +It was a land where it seemed as if it must be always summer and +generally afternoon, a land where bees hummed among the wild thyme and in +the flower beds of cottage gardens, where the harvest-mice rustled amid +the corn and nettles, and the mill-race flowed cool and silent through +water-weeds and dark tunnelled sluices, and made soft droning music with +the wooden mill-wheel. And the music carried with it the wording of old +undying rhymes, and sang of the jolly, uncaring, uncared-for miller, of +the farmer who went riding upon his grey mare, of the mouse who lived +beneath the merry mill-pin, of the sweet music on yonder green hill and +the dancers all in yellow--the songs and fancies of a lingering olden +time, when men took life as children take a long summer day, and went to +bed at last with a simple trust in something they could not have +explained. + +Yeovil watched the passing landscape with the intent hungry eyes of a man +who revisits a scene that holds high place in his affections. His +imagination raced even quicker than the train, following winding roads +and twisting valleys into unseen distances, picturing farms and hamlets, +hills and hollows, clattering inn yards and sleepy woodlands. + +"A beautiful country," said his only fellow-traveller, who was also +gazing at the fleeting landscape; "surely a country worth fighting for." + +He spoke in fairly correct English, but he was unmistakably a foreigner; +one could have allotted him with some certainty to the Eastern half of +Europe. + +"A beautiful country, as you say," replied Yeovil; then he added the +question, "Are you German?" + +"No, Hungarian," said the other; "and you, you are English?" he asked. + +"I have been much in England, but I am from Russia," said Yeovil, +purposely misleading his companion on the subject of his nationality in +order to induce him to talk with greater freedom on a delicate topic. +While living among foreigners in a foreign land he had shrunk from +hearing his country's disaster discussed, or even alluded to; now he was +anxious to learn what unprejudiced foreigners thought of the catastrophe +and the causes which had led up to it. + +"It is a strange spectacle, a wonder, is it not so?" resumed the other, +"a great nation such as this was, one of the greatest nations in modern +times, or of any time, carrying its flag and its language into all parts +of the world, and now, after one short campaign, it is--" + +And he shrugged his shoulders many times and made clucking noises at the +roof of his voice, like a hen calling to a brood of roving chickens. + +"They grew soft," he resumed; "great world-commerce brings great luxury, +and luxury brings softness. They had everything to warn them, things +happening in their own time and before their eyes, and they would not be +warned. They had seen, in one generation, the rise of the military and +naval power of the Japanese, a brown-skinned race living in some island +rice fields in a tropical sea, a people one thought of in connection with +paper fans and flowers and pretty tea-gardens, who suddenly marched and +sailed into the world's gaze as a Great Power; they had seen, too, the +rise of the Bulgars, a poor herd of zaptieh-ridden peasants, with a few +students scattered in exile in Bukarest and Odessa, who shot up in one +generation to be an armed and aggressive nation with history in its +hands. The English saw these things happening around them, and with a +war-cloud growing blacker and bigger and always more threatening on their +own threshold they sat down to grow soft and peaceful. They grew soft +and accommodating in all things in religion--" + +"In religion?" said Yeovil. + +"In religion, yes," said his companion emphatically; "they had come to +look on the Christ as a sort of amiable elder Brother, whose letters from +abroad were worth reading. Then, when they had emptied all the divine +mystery and wonder out of their faith naturally they grew tired of it, +oh, but dreadfully tired of it. I know many English of the country +parts, and always they tell me they go to church once in each week to set +the good example to the servants. They were tired of their faith, but +they were not virile enough to become real Pagans; their dancing fauns +were good young men who tripped Morris dances and ate health foods and +believed in a sort of Socialism which made for the greatest dulness of +the greatest number. You will find plenty of them still if you go into +what remains of social London." + +Yeovil gave a grunt of acquiescence. + +"They grew soft in their political ideas," continued the unsparing +critic; "for the old insular belief that all foreigners were devils and +rogues they substituted another belief, equally grounded on insular lack +of knowledge, that most foreigners were amiable, good fellows, who only +needed to be talked to and patted on the back to become your friends and +benefactors. They began to believe that a foreign Minister would +relinquish long-cherished schemes of national policy and hostile +expansion if he came over on a holiday and was asked down to country +houses and shown the tennis court and the rock-garden and the younger +children. Listen. I once heard it solemnly stated at an after-dinner +debate in some literary club that a certain very prominent German +statesman had a daughter at school in England, and that future friendly +relations between the two countries were improved in prospect, if not +assured, by that circumstance. You think I am laughing; I am recording a +fact, and the men present were politicians and statesmen as well as +literary dilettanti. It was an insular lack of insight that worked the +mischief, or some of the mischief. We, in Hungary, we live too much +cheek by jowl with our racial neighbours to have many illusions about +them. Austrians, Roumanians, Serbs, Italians, Czechs, we know what they +think of us, and we know what to think of them, we know what we want in +the world, and we know what they want; that knowledge does not send us +flying at each other's throats, but it does keep us from growing soft. +Ah, the British lion was in a hurry to inaugurate the Millennium and to +lie down gracefully with the lamb. He made two mistakes, only two, but +they were very bad ones; the Millennium hadn't arrived, and it was not a +lamb that he was lying down with." + +"You do not like the English, I gather," said Yeovil, as the Hungarian +went off into a short burst of satirical laughter. + +"I have always liked them," he answered, "but now I am angry with them +for being soft. Here is my station," he added, as the train slowed down, +and he commenced to gather his belongings together. "I am angry with +them," he continued, as a final word on the subject, "because I hate the +Germans." + +He raised his hat punctiliously in a parting salute and stepped out on to +the platform. His place was taken by a large, loose-limbed man, with +florid face and big staring eyes, and an immense array of fishing-basket, +rod, fly-cases, and so forth. He was of the type that one could +instinctively locate as a loud-voiced, self-constituted authority on +whatever topic might happen to be discussed in the bars of small hotels. + +"Are you English?" he asked, after a preliminary stare at Yeovil. + +This time Yeovil did not trouble to disguise his nationality; he nodded +curtly to his questioner. + +"Glad of that," said the fisherman; "I don't like travelling with +Germans." + +"Unfortunately," said Yeovil, "we have to travel with them, as partners +in the same State concern, and not by any means the predominant partner +either." + +"Oh, that will soon right itself," said the other with loud +assertiveness, "that will right itself damn soon." + +"Nothing in politics rights itself," said Yeovil; "things have to be +righted, which is a different matter." + +"What d'y'mean?" said the fisherman, who did not like to have his +assertions taken up and shaken into shape. + +"We have given a clever and domineering people a chance to plant +themselves down as masters in our land; I don't imagine that they are +going to give us an easy chance to push them out. To do that we shall +have to be a little cleverer than they are, a little harder, a little +fiercer, and a good deal more self-sacrificing than we have been in my +lifetime or in yours." + +"We'll be that, right enough," said the fisherman; "we mean business this +time. The last war wasn't a war, it was a snap. We weren't prepared and +they were. That won't happen again, bless you. I know what I'm talking +about. I go up and down the country, and I hear what people are saying." + +Yeovil privately doubted if he ever heard anything but his own opinions. + +"It stands to reason," continued the fisherman, "that a highly civilised +race like ours, with the record that we've had for leading the whole +world, is not going to be held under for long by a lot of damned sausage- +eating Germans. Don't you believe it! I know what I'm talking about. +I've travelled about the world a bit." + +Yeovil shrewdly suspected that the world travels amounted to nothing more +than a trip to the United States and perhaps the Channel Islands, with, +possibly, a week or fortnight in Paris. + +"It isn't the past we've got to think of, it's the future," said Yeovil. +"Other maritime Powers had pasts to look back on; Spain and Holland, for +instance. The past didn't help them when they let their sea-sovereignty +slip from them. That is a matter of history and not very distant history +either." + +"Ah, that's where you make a mistake," said the other; "our +sea-sovereignty hasn't slipped from us, and won't do, neither. There's +the British Empire beyond the seas; Canada, Australia, New Zealand, East +Africa." + +He rolled the names round his tongue with obvious relish. + +"If it was a list of first-class battleships, and armoured cruisers and +destroyers and airships that you were reeling off, there would be some +comfort and hope in the situation," said Yeovil; "the loyalty of the +colonies is a splendid thing, but it is only pathetically splendid +because it can do so little to recover for us what we've lost. Against +the Zeppelin air fleet, and the Dreadnought sea squadrons and the new +Gelberhaus cruisers, the last word in maritime mobility, of what avail is +loyal devotion plus half-a-dozen warships, one keel to ten, scattered +over one or two ocean coasts?" + +"Ah, but they'll build," said the fisherman confidently; "they'll build. +They're only waiting to enlarge their dockyard accommodation and get the +right class of artificers and engineers and workmen together. The money +will be forthcoming somehow, and they'll start in and build." + +"And do you suppose," asked Yeovil in slow bitter contempt, "that the +victorious nation is going to sit and watch and wait till the defeated +foe has created a new war fleet, big enough to drive it from the seas? Do +you suppose it is going to watch keel added to keel, gun to gun, airship +to airship, till its preponderance has been wiped out or even threatened? +That sort of thing is done once in a generation, not twice. Who is going +to protect Australia or New Zealand while they enlarge their dockyards +and hangars and build their dreadnoughts and their airships?" + +"Here's my station and I'm not sorry," said the fisherman, gathering his +tackle together and rising to depart; "I've listened to you long enough. +You and me wouldn't agree, not if we was to talk all day. Fact is, I'm +an out-and-out patriot and you're only a half-hearted one. That's what +you are, half-hearted." + +And with that parting shot he left the carriage and lounged heavily down +the platform, a patriot who had never handled a rifle or mounted a horse +or pulled an oar, but who had never flinched from demolishing his +country's enemies with his tongue. + +"England has never had any lack of patriots of that type," thought Yeovil +sadly; "so many patriots and so little patriotism." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII: TORYWOOD + + +Yeovil got out of the train at a small, clean, wayside station, and +rapidly formed the conclusion that neatness, abundant leisure, and a +devotion to the cultivation of wallflowers and wyandottes were the +prevailing influences of the station-master's life. The train slid away +into the hazy distance of trees and meadows, and left the traveller +standing in a world that seemed to be made up in equal parts of rock +garden, chicken coops, and whiskey advertisements. The station-master, +who appeared also to act as emergency porter, took Yeovil's ticket with +the gesture of a kind-hearted person brushing away a troublesome wasp, +and returned to a study of the Poultry Chronicle, which was giving its +readers sage counsel concerning the ailments of belated July chickens. +Yeovil called to mind the station-master of a tiny railway town in +Siberia, who had held him in long and rather intelligent converse on the +poetical merits and demerits of Shelley, and he wondered what the result +would be if he were to engage the English official in a discussion on +Lermontoff--or for the matter of that, on Shelley. The temptation to +experiment was, however, removed by the arrival of a young groom, with +brown eyes and a friendly smile, who hurried into the station and took +Yeovil once more into a world where he was of fleeting importance. + +In the roadway outside was a four-wheeled dogcart with a pair of the +famous Torywood blue roans. It was an agreeable variation in modern +locomotion to be met at a station with high-class horseflesh instead of +the ubiquitous motor, and the landscape was not of such a nature that one +wished to be whirled through it in a cloud of dust. After a quick spin +of some ten or fifteen minutes through twisting hedge-girt country roads, +the roans turned in at a wide gateway, and went with dancing, rhythmic +step along the park drive. The screen of oak-crowned upland suddenly +fell away and a grey sharp-cornered building came into view in a setting +of low growing beeches and dark pines. Torywood was not a stately, +reposeful-looking house; it lay amid the sleepy landscape like a couched +watchdog with pricked ears and wakeful eyes. Built somewhere about the +last years of Dutch William's reign, it had been a centre, ever since, +for the political life of the countryside; a storm centre of discontent +or a rallying ground for the well affected, as the circumstances of the +day might entail. On the stone-flagged terrace in front of the house, +with its quaint leaden figures of Diana pursuing a hound-pressed stag, +successive squires and lords of Torywood had walked to and fro with their +friends, watching the thunderclouds on the political horizon or the +shifting shadows on the sundial of political favour, tapping the +political barometer for indications of change, working out a party +campaign or arranging for the support of some national movement. To and +fro they had gone in their respective generations, men with the passion +for statecraft and political combat strong in their veins, and many oft- +recurring names had echoed under those wakeful-looking casements, names +spoken in anger or exultation, or murmured in fear and anxiety: +Bolingbroke, Charles Edward, Walpole, the Farmer King, Bonaparte, Pitt, +Wellington, Peel, Gladstone--echo and Time might have graven those names +on the stone flags and grey walls. And now one tired old woman walked +there, with names on her lips that she never uttered. + +A friendly riot of fox terriers and spaniels greeted the carriage, +leaping and rolling and yelping in an exuberance of sociability, as +though horses and coachman and groom were comrades who had been absent +for long months instead of half an hour. An indiscriminately +affectionate puppy lay flat and whimpering at Yeovil's feet, sending up +little showers of gravel with its wildly thumping tail, while two of the +terriers raced each other madly across lawn and shrubbery, as though to +show the blue roans what speed really was. The laughing-eyed young groom +disentangled the puppy from between Yeovil's legs, and then he was +ushered into the grey silence of the entrance hall, leaving sunlight and +noise and the stir of life behind him. + +"Her ladyship will see you in her writing room," he was told, and he +followed a servant along the dark passages to the well-remembered room. + +There was something tragic in the sudden contrast between the vigour and +youth and pride of life that Yeovil had seen crystallised in those +dancing, high-stepping horses, scampering dogs, and alert, clean-limbed +young men-servants, and the age-frail woman who came forward to meet him. + +Eleanor, Dowager Lady Greymarten, had for more than half a century been +the ruling spirit at Torywood. The affairs of the county had not +sufficed for her untiring activities of mind and body; in the wider field +of national and Imperial service she had worked and schemed and fought +with an energy and a far-sightedness that came probably from the blend of +caution and bold restlessness in her Scottish blood. For many educated +minds the arena of politics and public life is a weariness of dust and +disgust, to others it is a fascinating study, to be watched from the +comfortable seat of a spectator. To her it was a home. In her town +house or down at Torywood, with her writing-pad on her knee and the +telephone at her elbow, or in personal counsel with some trusted +colleague or persuasive argument with a halting adherent or +half-convinced opponent, she had laboured on behalf of the poor and the +ill-equipped, had fought for her idea of the Right, and above all, for +the safety and sanity of her Fatherland. Spadework when necessary and +leadership when called for, came alike within the scope of her +activities, and not least of her achievements, though perhaps she hardly +realised it, was the force of her example, a lone, indomitable fighter +calling to the half-caring and the half-discouraged, to the laggard and +the slow-moving. + +And now she came across the room with "the tired step of a tired king," +and that look which the French so expressively called l'air defait. The +charm which Heaven bestows on old ladies, reserving its highest gift to +the end, had always seemed in her case to be lost sight of in the dignity +and interest of a great dame who was still in the full prime of her +fighting and ruling powers. Now, in Yeovil's eyes, she had suddenly come +to be very old, stricken with the forlorn languor of one who knows that +death will be weary to wait for. She had spared herself nothing in the +long labour, the ceaseless building, the watch and ward, and in one short +autumn week she had seen the overthrow of all that she had built, the +falling asunder of the world in which she had laboured. Her life's end +was like a harvest home when blight and storm have laid waste the fruit +of long toil and unsparing outlay. Victory had been her goal, the death +or victory of old heroic challenge, for she had always dreamed to die +fighting to the last; death or victory--and the gods had given her +neither, only the bitterness of a defeat that could not be measured in +words, and the weariness of a life that had outlived happiness or hope. +Such was Eleanor, Dowager Lady Greymarten, a shadow amid the young red- +blooded life at Torywood, but a shadow that was too real to die, a shadow +that was stronger than the substance that surrounded it. + +Yeovil talked long and hurriedly of his late travels, of the vast +Siberian forests and rivers, the desolate tundras, the lakes and marshes +where the wild swans rear their broods, the flower carpet of the summer +fields and the winter ice-mantle of Russia's northern sea. He talked as +a man talks who avoids the subject that is uppermost in his mind, and in +the mind of his hearer, as one who looks away from a wound or deformity +that is too cruel to be taken notice of. + +Tea was served in a long oak-panelled gallery, where generations of +Mustelfords had romped and played as children, and remained yet in +effigy, in a collection of more or less faithful portraits. After tea +Yeovil was taken by his hostess to the aviaries, which constituted the +sole claim which Torywood possessed to being considered a show place. The +third Earl of Greymarten had collected rare and interesting birds, +somewhere about the time when Gilbert White was penning the last of his +deathless letters, and his successors in the title had perpetuated the +hobby. Little lawns and ponds and shrubberies were partitioned off for +the various ground-loving species, and higher cages with interlacing +perches and rockwork shelves accommodated the birds whose natural +expression of movement was on the wing. Quails and francolins scurried +about under low-growing shrubs, peacock-pheasants strutted and sunned +themselves, pugnacious ruffs engaged in perfunctory battles, from force +of habit now that the rivalry of the mating season was over; choughs, +ravens, and loud-throated gulls occupied sections of a vast rockery, and +bright-hued Chinese pond-herons and delicately stepping egrets waded +among the waterlilies of a marble-terraced tank. One or two dusky shapes +seen dimly in the recesses of a large cage built round a hollow tree +would be lively owls when evening came on. + +In the course of his many wanderings Yeovil had himself contributed three +or four inhabitants to this little feathered town, and he went round the +enclosures, renewing old acquaintances and examining new additions. + +"The falcon cage is empty," said Lady Greymarten, pointing to a large +wired dome that towered high above the other enclosures, "I let the +lanner fly free one day. The other birds may be reconciled to their +comfortable quarters and abundant food and absence of dangers, but I +don't think all those things could make up to a falcon for the wild range +of cliff and desert. When one has lost one's own liberty one feels a +quicker sympathy for other caged things, I suppose." + +There was silence for a moment, and then the Dowager went on, in a +wistful, passionate voice: + +"I am an old woman now, Murrey, I must die in my cage. I haven't the +strength to fight. Age is a very real and very cruel thing, though we +may shut our eyes to it and pretend it is not there. I thought at one +time that I should never really know what it meant, what it brought to +one. I thought of it as a messenger that one could keep waiting out in +the yard till the very last moment. I know now what it means. . . . But +you, Murrey, you are young, you can fight. Are you going to be a +fighter, or the very humble servant of the fait accompli?" + +"I shall never be the servant of the fait accompli," said Yeovil. "I +loathe it. As to fighting, one must first find out what weapon to use, +and how to use it effectively. One must watch and wait." + +"One must not wait too long," said the old woman. "Time is on their +side, not ours. It is the young people we must fight for now, if they +are ever to fight for us. A new generation will spring up, a weaker +memory of old glories will survive, the eclat of the ruling race will +capture young imaginations. If I had your youth, Murrey, and your sex, I +would become a commercial traveller." + +"A commercial traveller!" exclaimed Yeovil. + +"Yes, one whose business took him up and down the country, into contact +with all classes, into homes and shops and inns and railway carriages. +And as I travelled I would work, work on the minds of every boy and girl +I came across, every young father and young mother too, every young +couple that were going to be man and wife. I would awaken or keep alive +in their memory the things that we have been, the grand, brave things +that some of our race have done, and I would stir up a longing, a +determination for the future that we must win back. I would be a counter- +agent to the agents of the fait accompli. In course of time the +Government would find out what I was doing, and I should be sent out of +the country, but I should have accomplished something, and others would +carry on the work. That is what I would do. Murrey, even if it is to be +a losing battle, fight it, fight it!" + +Yeovil knew that the old lady was fighting her last battle, rallying the +discouraged, and spurring on the backward. + +A footman came to announce that the carriage waited to take him back to +the station. His hostess walked with him through the hall, and came out +on to the stone-flagged terrace, the terrace from which a former Lady +Greymarten had watched the twinkling bonfires that told of Waterloo. + +Yeovil said good-bye to her as she stood there, a wan, shrunken shadow, +yet with a greater strength and reality in her flickering life than those +parrot men and women that fluttered and chattered through London drawing- +rooms and theatre foyers. + +As the carriage swung round a bend in the drive Yeovil looked back at +Torywood, a lone, grey building, couched like a watchdog with pricked +ears and wakeful eyes in the midst of the sleeping landscape. An old +pleading voice was still ringing in his ears: + + Imperious and yet forlorn, + Came through the silence of the trees, + The echoes of a golden horn, + Calling to distances. + +Somehow Yeovil knew that he would never hear that voice again, and he +knew, too, that he would hear it always, with its message, "Be a +fighter." And he knew now, with a shamefaced consciousness that sprang +suddenly into existence, that the summons would sound for him in vain. + +The weary brain-torturing months of fever had left their trail behind, a +lassitude of spirit and a sluggishness of blood, a quenching of the +desire to roam and court adventure and hardship. In the hours of waking +and depression between the raging intervals of delirium he had +speculated, with a sort of detached, listless indifference, on the +chances of his getting back to life and strength and energy. The +prospect of filling a corner of some lonely Siberian graveyard or Finnish +cemetery had seemed near realisation at times, and for a man who was +already half dead the other half didn't particularly matter. But when he +had allowed himself to dwell on the more hopeful side of the case it had +always been a complete recovery that awaited him; the same Yeovil as of +yore, a little thinner and more lined about the eyes perhaps, would go +through life in the same way, alert, resolute, enterprising, ready to +start off at short notice for some desert or upland where the eagles were +circling and the wild-fowl were calling. He had not reckoned that Death, +evaded and held off by the doctors' skill, might exact a compromise, and +that only part of the man would go free to the West. + +And now he began to realise how little of mental and physical energy he +could count on. His own country had never seemed in his eyes so comfort- +yielding and to-be-desired as it did now when it had passed into alien +keeping and become a prison land as much as a homeland. London with its +thin mockery of a Season, and its chattering horde of empty-hearted self- +seekers, held no attraction for him, but the spell of English country +life was weaving itself round him, now that the charm of the desert was +receding into a mist of memories. The waning of pleasant autumn days in +an English woodland, the whir of game birds in the clean harvested +fields, the grey moist mornings in the saddle, with the magical cry of +hounds coming up from some misty hollow, and then the delicious abandon +of physical weariness in bathroom and bedroom after a long run, and the +heavenly snatched hour of luxurious sleep, before stirring back to life +and hunger, the coming of the dinner hour and the jollity of a +well-chosen house-party. + +That was the call which was competing with that other trumpet-call, and +Yeovil knew on which side his choice would incline. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV: "A PERFECTLY GLORIOUS AFTERNOON" + + +It was one of the last days of July, cooled and freshened by a touch of +rain and dropping back again to a languorous warmth. London looked at +its summer best, rain-washed and sun-lit, with the maximum of coming and +going in its more fashionable streets. + +Cicely Yeovil sat in a screened alcove of the Anchorage Restaurant, a +feeding-ground which had lately sprung into favour. Opposite her sat +Ronnie, confronting the ruins of what had been a dish of prawns in aspic. +Cool and clean and fresh-coloured, he was good to look on in the eyes of +his companion, and yet, perhaps, there was a ruffle in her soul that +called for some answering disturbance on the part of that superbly +tranquil young man, and certainly called in vain. Cicely had set up for +herself a fetish of onyx with eyes of jade, and doubtless hungered at +times with an unreasonable but perfectly natural hunger for something of +flesh and blood. It was the religion of her life to know exactly what +she wanted and to see that she got it, but there was no possible +guarantee against her occasionally experiencing a desire for something +else. It is the golden rule of all religions that no one should really +live up to their precepts; when a man observes the principles of his +religion too exactly he is in immediate danger of founding a new sect. + +"To-day is going to be your day of triumph," said Cicely to the young +man, who was wondering at the moment whether he would care to embark on +an artichoke; "I believe I'm more nervous than you are," she added, "and +yet I rather hate the idea of you scoring a great success." + +"Why?" asked Ronnie, diverting his mind for a moment from the artichoke +question and its ramifications of sauce hollandaise or vinaigre. + +"I like you as you are," said Cicely, "just a nice-looking boy to flatter +and spoil and pretend to be fond of. You've got a charming young body +and you've no soul, and that's such a fascinating combination. If you +had a soul you would either dislike or worship me, and I'd much rather +have things as they are. And now you are going to go a step beyond that, +and other people will applaud you and say that you are wonderful, and +invite you to eat with them and motor with them and yacht with them. As +soon as that begins to happen, Ronnie, a lot of other things will come to +an end. Of course I've always known that you don't really care for me, +but as soon as the world knows it you are irrevocably damaged as a +plaything. That is the great secret that binds us together, the +knowledge that we have no real affection for one another. And this +afternoon every one will know that you are a great artist, and no great +artist was ever a great lover." + +"I shan't be difficult to replace, anyway," said Ronnie, with what he +imagined was a becoming modesty; "there are lots of boys standing round +ready to be fed and flattered and put on an imaginary pedestal, most of +them more or less good-looking and well turned out and amusing to talk +to." + +"Oh, I dare say I could find a successor for your vacated niche," said +Cicely lightly; "one thing I'm determined on though, he shan't be a +musician. It's so unsatisfactory to have to share a grand passion with a +grand piano. He shall be a delightful young barbarian who would think +Saint Saens was a Derby winner or a claret." + +"Don't be in too much of a hurry to replace me," said Ronnie, who did not +care to have his successor too seriously discussed. "I may not score the +success you expect this afternoon." + +"My dear boy, a minor crowned head from across the sea is coming to hear +you play, and that alone will count as a success with most of your +listeners. Also, I've secured a real Duchess for you, which is rather an +achievement in the London of to-day." + +"An English Duchess?" asked Ronnie, who had early in life learned to +apply the Merchandise Marks Act to ducal titles. + +"English, oh certainly, at least as far as the title goes; she was born +under the constellation of the Star-spangled Banner. I don't suppose the +Duke approves of her being here, lending her countenance to the fait +accompli, but when you've got republican blood in your veins a Kaiser is +quite as attractive a lodestar as a King, rather more so. And Canon +Mousepace is coming," continued Cicely, referring to a closely-written +list of guests; "the excellent von Tolb has been attending his church +lately, and the Canon is longing to meet her. She is just the sort of +person he adores. I fancy he sincerely realises how difficult it will be +for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and he tries to make up for +it by being as nice as possible to them in this world." + +Ronnie held out his hand for the list. + +"I think you know most of the others," said Cicely, passing it to him. + +"Leutnant von Gabelroth?" read out Ronnie; "who is he?" + +"In one of the hussar regiments quartered here; a friend of the Grafin's. +Ugly but amiable, and I'm told a good cross-country rider. I suppose +Murrey will be disgusted at meeting the 'outward and visible sign' under +his roof, but these encounters are inevitable as long as he is in +London." + +"I didn't know Murrey was coming," said Ronnie. + +"I believe he's going to look in on us," said Cicely; "it's just as well, +you know, otherwise we should have Joan asking in her loudest voice when +he was going to be back in England again. I haven't asked her, but she +overheard the Grafin arranging to come and hear you play, and I fancy +that will be quite enough." + +"How about some Turkish coffee?" said Ronnie, who had decided against the +artichoke. + +"Turkish coffee, certainly, and a cigarette, and a moment's peace before +the serious business of the afternoon claims us. Talking about peace, do +you know, Ronnie, it has just occurred to me that we have left out one of +the most important things in our affaire; we have never had a quarrel." + +"I hate quarrels," said Ronnie, "they are so domesticated." + +"That's the first time I've ever heard you talk about your home," said +Cicely. + +"I fancy it would apply to most homes," said Ronnie. + +"The last boy-friend I had used to quarrel furiously with me at least +once a week," said Cicely reflectively; "but then he had dark slumberous +eyes that lit up magnificently when he was angry, so it would have been a +sheer waste of God's good gifts not to have sent him into a passion now +and then." + +"With your excursions into the past and the future you are making me feel +dreadfully like an instalment of a serial novel," protested Ronnie; "we +have now got to 'synopsis of earlier chapters.'" + +"It shan't be teased," said Cicely; "we will live in the present and go +no further into the future than to make arrangements for Tuesday's dinner- +party. I've asked the Duchess; she would never have forgiven me if she'd +found out that I had a crowned head dining with me and hadn't asked her +to meet him." + +* * * * * + +A sudden hush descended on the company gathered in the great drawing-room +at Berkshire Street as Ronnie took his seat at the piano; the voice of +Canon Mousepace outlasted the others for a moment or so, and then +subsided into a regretful but gracious silence. For the next nine or ten +minutes Ronnie held possession of the crowded room, a tense slender +figure, with cold green eyes aflame in a sudden fire, and smooth +burnished head bent low over the keyboard that yielded a disciplined riot +of melody under his strong deft fingers. The world-weary Landgraf forgot +for the moment the regrettable trend of his subjects towards +Parliamentary Socialism, the excellent Grafin von Tolb forgot all that +the Canon had been saying to her for the last ten minutes, forgot the +depressing certainty that he would have a great deal more that he wanted +to say in the immediate future, over and above the thirty-five minutes or +so of discourse that she would contract to listen to next Sunday. And +Cicely listened with the wistful equivocal triumph of one whose goose has +turned out to be a swan and who realises with secret concern that she has +only planned the role of goosegirl for herself. + +The last chords died away, the fire faded out of the jade-coloured eyes, +and Ronnie became once more a well-groomed youth in a drawing-room full +of well-dressed people. But around him rose an explosive clamour of +applause and congratulation, the sincere tribute of appreciation and the +equally hearty expression of imitative homage. + +"It is a great gift, a great gift," chanted Canon Mousepace, "You must +put it to a great use. A talent is vouchsafed to us for a purpose; you +must fulfil the purpose. Talent such as yours is a responsibility; you +must meet that responsibility." + +The dictionary of the English language was an inexhaustible quarry, from +which the Canon had hewn and fashioned for himself a great reputation. + +"You must gom and blay to me at Schlachsenberg," said the kindly-faced +Landgraf, whom the world adored and thwarted in about equal proportions. +"At Christmas, yes, that will be a good time. We still keep the Christ- +Fest at Schlachsenberg, though the 'Sozi' keep telling our schoolchildren +that it is only a Christ myth. Never mind, I will have the +Vice-President of our Landtag to listen to you; he is 'Sozi' but we are +good friends outside the Parliament House; you shall blay to him, my +young friendt, and gonfince him that there is a Got in Heaven. You will +gom? Yes?" + +"It was beautiful," said the Grafin simply; "it made me cry. Go back to +the piano again, please, at once." + +Perhaps the near neighbourhood of the Canon inspired this command, but +the Grafin had been genuinely charmed. She adored good music and she was +unaffectedly fond of good-looking boys. + +Ronnie went back to the piano and tasted the matured pleasure of a +repeated success. Any measure of nervousness that he may have felt at +first had completely passed away. He was sure of his audience and he +played as though they did not exist. A renewed clamour of excited +approval attended the conclusion of his performance. + +"It is a triumph, a perfectly glorious triumph," exclaimed the Duchess of +Dreyshire, turning to Yeovil, who sat silent among his wife's guests; +"isn't it just glorious?" she demanded, with a heavy insistent intonation +of the word. + +"Is it?" said Yeovil. + +"Well, isn't it?" she cried, with a rising inflection, "isn't it just +perfectly glorious?" + +"I don't know," confessed Yeovil; "you see glory hasn't come very much my +way lately." Then, before he exactly realised what he was doing, he +raised his voice and quoted loudly for the benefit of half the room: + + "'Other Romans shall arise, + Heedless of a soldier's name, + Sounds, not deeds, shall win the prize, + Harmony the path to fame.'" + +There was a sort of shiver of surprised silence at Yeovil's end of the +room. + +"Hell!" + +The word rang out in a strong young voice. + +"Hell! And it's true, that's the worst of it. It's damned true!" + +Yeovil turned, with some dozen others, to see who was responsible for +this vigorously expressed statement. + +Tony Luton confronted him, an angry scowl on his face, a blaze in his +heavy-lidded eyes. The boy was without a conscience, almost without a +soul, as priests and parsons reckon souls, but there was a slumbering +devil-god within him, and Yeovil's taunting words had broken the slumber. +Life had been for Tony a hard school, in which right and wrong, high +endeavour and good resolve, were untaught subjects; but there was a +sterling something in him, just that something that helped poor street- +scavenged men to die brave-fronted deaths in the trenches of Salamanca, +that fired a handful of apprentice boys to shut the gates of Derry and +stare unflinchingly at grim leaguer and starvation. It was just that +nameless something that was lacking in the young musician, who stood at +the further end of the room, bathed in a flood of compliment and +congratulation, enjoying the honey-drops of his triumph. + +Luton pushed his way through the crowd and left the room, without +troubling to take leave of his hostess. + +"What a strange young man," exclaimed the Duchess; "now do take me into +the next room," she went on almost in the same breath, "I'm just dying +for some iced coffee." + +Yeovil escorted her through the throng of Ronnie-worshippers to the +desired haven of refreshment. + +"Marvellous!" Mrs. Menteith-Mendlesohnn was exclaiming in ringing trumpet +tones; "of course I always knew he could play, but this is not mere piano +playing, it is tone-mastery, it is sound magic. Mrs. Yeovil has +introduced us to a new star in the musical firmament. Do you know, I +feel this afternoon just like Cortez, in the poem, gazing at the newly +discovered sea." + +"'Silent upon a peak in Darien,'" quoted a penetrating voice that could +only belong to Joan Mardle; "I say, can any one picture Mrs. Menteith- +Mendlesohnn silent on any peak or under any circumstances?" + +If any one had that measure of imagination, no one acknowledged the fact. + +"A great gift and a great responsibility," Canon Mousepace was assuring +the Grafin; "the power of evoking sublime melody is akin to the power of +awakening thought; a musician can appeal to dormant consciousness as the +preacher can appeal to dormant conscience. It is a responsibility, an +instrument for good or evil. Our young friend here, we may be sure, will +use it as an instrument for good. He has, I feel certain, a sense of his +responsibility." + +"He is a nice boy," said the Grafin simply; "he has such pretty hair." + +In one of the window recesses Rhapsodie Pantril was talking vaguely but +beautifully to a small audience on the subject of chromatic chords; she +had the advantage of knowing what she was talking about, an advantage +that her listeners did not in the least share. "All through his playing +there ran a tone-note of malachite green," she declared recklessly, +feeling safe from immediate contradiction; "malachite green, my +colour--the colour of striving." + +Having satisfied the ruling passion that demanded gentle and dextrous +self-advertisement, she realised that the Augusta Smith in her craved +refreshment, and moved with one of her over-awed admirers towards the +haven where peaches and iced coffee might be considered a certainty. + +The refreshment alcove, which was really a good-sized room, a sort of +chapel-of-ease to the larger drawing-room, was already packed with a +crowd who felt that they could best discuss Ronnie's triumph between +mouthfuls of fruit salad and iced draughts of hock-cup. So brief is +human glory that two or three independent souls had even now drifted from +the theme of the moment on to other more personally interesting topics. + +"Iced mulberry salad, my dear, it's a specialite de la maison, so to +speak; they say the roving husband brought the recipe from Astrakhan, or +Seville, or some such outlandish place." + +"I wish my husband would roam about a bit and bring back strange +palatable dishes. No such luck, he's got asthma and has to keep on a +gravel soil with a south aspect and all sorts of other restrictions." + +"I don't think you're to be pitied in the least; a husband with asthma is +like a captive golf-ball, you can always put your hand on him when you +want him." + +"All the hangings, violette de Parme, all the furniture, rosewood. +Nothing is to be played in it except Mozart. Mozart only. Some of my +friends wanted me to have a replica of the Mozart statue at Vienna put up +in a corner of the room, with flowers always around it, but I really +couldn't. I couldn't. One is so tired of it, one sees it everywhere. I +couldn't do it. I'm like that, you know." + +"Yes, I've secured the hero of the hour, Ronnie Storre, oh yes, rather. +He's going to join our yachting trip, third week of August. We're going +as far afield as Fiume, in the Adriatic--or is it the AEgean? Won't it +be jolly. Oh no, we're not asking Mrs. Yeovil; it's quite a small yacht +you know--at least, it's a small party." + +The excellent von Tolb took her departure, bearing off with her the +Landgraf, who had already settled the date and duration of Ronnie's +Christmas visit. + +"It will be dull, you know," he warned the prospective guest; "our +Landtag will not be sitting, and what is a bear-garden without the bears? +However, we haf some wildt schwein in our woods, we can show you some +sport in that way." + +Ronnie instantly saw himself in a well-fitting shooting costume, with a +Tyrolese hat placed at a very careful angle on his head, but he confessed +that the other details of boar-hunting were rather beyond him. + +With the departure of the von Tolb party Canon Mousepace gravitated +decently but persistently towards a corner where the Duchess, still at +concert pitch, was alternatively praising Ronnie's performance and the +mulberry salad. Joan Mardle, who formed one of the group, was not openly +praising any one, but she was paying a silent tribute to the salad. + +"We were just talking about Ronnie Storre's music, Canon," said the +Duchess; "I consider it just perfectly glorious." + +"It's a great talent, isn't it, Canon," put in Joan briskly, "and of +course it's a responsibility as well, don't you think? Music can be such +an influence, just as eloquence can; don't you agree with me?" + +The quarry of the English language was of course a public property, but +it was disconcerting to have one's own particular barrow-load of sentence- +building material carried off before one's eyes. The Canon's impressive +homily on Ronnie's gift and its possibilities had to be hastily whittled +down to a weakly acquiescent, "Quite so, quite so." + +"Have you tasted this iced mulberry salad, Canon?" asked the Duchess; +"it's perfectly luscious. Just hurry along and get some before it's all +gone." + +And her Grace hurried along in an opposite direction, to thank Cicely for +past favours and to express lively gratitude for the Tuesday to come. + +The guests departed, with a rather irritating slowness, for which perhaps +the excellence of Cicely's buffet arrangements was partly responsible. +The great drawing-room seemed to grow larger and more oppressive as the +human wave receded, and the hostess fled at last with some relief to the +narrower limits of her writing-room and the sedative influences of a +cigarette. She was inclined to be sorry for herself; the triumph of the +afternoon had turned out much as she had predicted at lunch time. Her +idol of onyx had not been swept from its pedestal, but the pedestal +itself had an air of being packed up ready for transport to some other +temple. Ronnie would be flattered and spoiled by half a hundred people, +just because he could conjure sounds out of a keyboard, and Cicely felt +no great incentive to go on flattering and spoiling him herself. And +Ronnie would acquiesce in his dismissal with the good grace born of +indifference--the surest guarantor of perfect manners. Already he had +social engagements for the coming months in which she had no share; the +drifting apart would be mutual. He had been an intelligent and amusing +companion, and he had played the game as she had wished it to be played, +without the fatigue of keeping up pretences which neither of them could +have believed in. "Let us have a wonderfully good time together" had +been the single stipulation in their unwritten treaty of comradeship, and +they had had the good time. Their whole-hearted pursuit of material +happiness would go on as keenly as before, but they would hunt in +different company, that was all. Yes, that was all. . . . + +Cicely found the effect of her cigarette less sedative than she was +disposed to exact. It might be necessary to change the brand. Some ten +or eleven days later Yeovil read an announcement in the papers that, in +spite of handsome offers of increased salary, Mr. Tony Luton, the +original singer of the popular ditty "Eccleston Square," had terminated +his engagement with Messrs. Isaac Grosvenor and Leon Hebhardt of the +Caravansery Theatre, and signed on as a deck hand in the Canadian Marine. + +Perhaps after all there had been some shred of glory amid the trumpet +triumph of that July afternoon. + + + + +CHAPTER XV: THE INTELLIGENT ANTICIPATOR OF WANTS + + +Two of Yeovil's London clubs, the two that he had been accustomed to +frequent, had closed their doors after the catastrophe. One of them had +perished from off the face of the earth, its fittings had been sold and +its papers lay stored in some solicitor's office, a tit-bit of material +for the pen of some future historian. The other had transplanted itself +to Delhi, whither it had removed its early Georgian furniture and its +traditions, and sought to reproduce its St. James's Street atmosphere as +nearly as the conditions of a tropical Asiatic city would permit. There +remained the Cartwheel, a considerably newer institution, which had +sprung into existence somewhere about the time of Yeovil's last sojourn +in England; he had joined it on the solicitation of a friend who was +interested in the venture, and his bankers had paid his subscription +during his absence. As he had never been inside its doors there could be +no depressing comparisons to make between its present state and aforetime +glories, and Yeovil turned into its portals one afternoon with the +adventurous detachment of a man who breaks new ground and challenges new +experiences. + +He entered with a diffident sense of intrusion, conscious that his +standing as a member might not be recognised by the keepers of the doors; +in a moment, however, he realised that a rajah's escort of elephants +might almost have marched through the entrance hall and vestibule without +challenge. The general atmosphere of the scene suggested a blend of the +railway station at Cologne, the Hotel Bristol in any European capital, +and the second act in most musical comedies. A score of brilliant and +brilliantined pages decorated the foreground, while Hebraic-looking +gentlemen, wearing tartan waistcoats of the clans of their adoption, +flitted restlessly between the tape machines and telephone boxes. The +army of occupation had obviously established a firm footing in the +hospitable premises; a kaleidoscopic pattern of uniforms, sky-blue, +indigo, and bottle-green, relieved the civilian attire of the groups that +clustered in lounge and card rooms and corridors. Yeovil rapidly came to +the conclusion that the joys of membership were not for him. He had +turned to go, after a very cursory inspection of the premises and their +human occupants, when he was hailed by a young man, dressed with +strenuous neatness, whom he remembered having met in past days at the +houses of one or two common friends. + +Hubert Herlton's parents had brought him into the world, and some twenty- +one years later had put him into a motor business. Having taken these +pardonable liberties they had completely exhausted their ideas of what to +do with him, and Hubert seemed unlikely to develop any ideas of his own +on the subject. The motor business elected to conduct itself without his +connivance; journalism, the stage, tomato culture (without capital), and +other professions that could be entered on at short notice were submitted +to his consideration by nimble-minded relations and friends. He listened +to their suggestions with polite indifference, being rude only to a +cousin who demonstrated how he might achieve a settled income of from two +hundred to a thousand pounds a year by the propagation of mushrooms in a +London basement. While his walk in life was still an undetermined +promenade his parents died, leaving him with a carefully-invested income +of thirty-seven pounds a year. At that point of his career Yeovil's +knowledge of him stopped short; the journey to Siberia had taken him +beyond the range of Herlton's domestic vicissitudes. + +The young man greeted him in a decidedly friendly manner. + +"I didn't know you were a member here," he exclaimed. + +"It's the first time I've ever been in the club," said Yeovil, "and I +fancy it will be the last. There is rather too much of the fighting +machine in evidence here. One doesn't want a perpetual reminder of what +has happened staring one in the face." + +"We tried at first to keep the alien element out," said Herlton +apologetically, "but we couldn't have carried on the club if we'd stuck +to that line. You see we'd lost more than two-thirds of our old members +so we couldn't afford to be exclusive. As a matter of fact the whole +thing was decided over our heads; a new syndicate took over the concern, +and a new committee was installed, with a good many foreigners on it. I +know it's horrid having these uniforms flaunting all over the place, but +what is one to do?" + +Yeovil said nothing, with the air of a man who could have said a great +deal. + +"I suppose you wonder, why remain a member under those conditions?" +continued Herlton. "Well, as far as I am concerned, a place like this is +a necessity for me. In fact, it's my profession, my source of income." + +"Are you as good at bridge as all that?" asked Yeovil; "I'm a fairly +successful player myself, but I should be sorry to have to live on my +winnings, year in, year out." + +"I don't play cards," said Herlton, "at least not for serious stakes. My +winnings or losings wouldn't come to a tenner in an average year. No, I +live by commissions, by introducing likely buyers to would-be sellers." + +"Sellers of what?" asked Yeovil. + +"Anything, everything; horses, yachts, old masters, plate, shootings, +poultry-farms, week-end cottages, motor cars, almost anything you can +think of. Look," and he produced from his breast pocket a bulky note- +book illusorily inscribed "engagements." + +"Here," he explained, tapping the book, "I've got a double entry of every +likely client that I know, with a note of the things he may have to sell +and the things he may want to buy. When it is something that he has for +sale there are cross-references to likely purchasers of that particular +line of article. I don't limit myself to things that I actually know +people to be in want of, I go further than that and have theories, +carefully indexed theories, as to the things that people might want to +buy. At the right moment, if I can get the opportunity, I mention the +article that is in my mind's eye to the possible purchaser who has also +been in my mind's eye, and I frequently bring off a sale. I started a +chance acquaintance on a career of print-buying the other day merely by +telling him of a couple of good prints that I knew of, that were to be +had at a quite reasonable price; he is a man with more money than he +knows what to do with, and he has laid out quite a lot on old prints +since his first purchase. Most of his collection he has got through me, +and of course I net a commission on each transaction. So you see, old +man, how useful, not to say necessary, a club with a large membership is +to me. The more mixed and socially chaotic it is, the more serviceable +it is." + +"Of course," said Yeovil, "and I suppose, as a matter of fact, a good +many of your clients belong to the conquering race." + +"Well, you see, they are the people who have got the money," said +Herlton; "I don't mean to say that the invading Germans are usually +people of wealth, but while they live over here they escape the crushing +taxation that falls on the British-born subject. They serve their +country as soldiers, and we have to serve it in garrison money, ship +money and so forth, besides the ordinary taxes of the State. The German +shoulders the rifle, the Englishman has to shoulder everything else. That +is what will help more than anything towards the gradual Germanising of +our big towns; the comparatively lightly-taxed German workman over here +will have a much bigger spending power and purchasing power than his +heavily taxed English neighbour. The public-houses, bars, eating-houses, +places of amusement and so forth, will come to cater more and more for +money-yielding German patronage. The stream of British emigration will +swell rather than diminish, and the stream of Teuton immigration will be +equally persistent and progressive. Yes, the military-service ordinance +was a cunning stroke on the part of that old fox, von Kwarl. As a +civilian statesman he is far and away cleverer than Bismarck was; he +smothers with a feather-bed where Bismarck would have tried to smash with +a sledge-hammer." + +"Have you got me down on your list of noteworthy people?" asked Yeovil, +turning the drift of the conversation back to the personal topic. + +"Certainly I have," said Herlton, turning the pages of his pocket +directory to the letter Y. "As soon as I knew you were back in England I +made several entries concerning you. In the first place it was possible +that you might have a volume on Siberian travel and natural history notes +to publish, and I've cross-referenced you to a publisher I know who +rather wants books of that sort on his list." + +"I may tell you at once that I've no intentions in that direction," said +Yeovil, in some amusement. + +"Just as well," said Herlton cheerfully, scribbling a hieroglyphic in his +book; "that branch of business is rather outside my line--too little in +it, and the gratitude of author and publisher for being introduced to one +another is usually short-lived. A more serious entry was the item that +if you were wintering in England you would be looking out for a hunter or +two. You used to hunt with the East Wessex, I remember; I've got just +the very animal that will suit that country, ready waiting for you. A +beautiful clean jumper. I've put it over a fence or two myself, and you +and I ride much the same weight. A stiffish price is being asked for it, +but I've got the letters D.O. after your name." + +"In Heaven's name," said Yeovil, now openly grinning, "before I die of +curiosity tell me what D.O. stands for." + +"It means some one who doesn't object to pay a good price for anything +that really suits him. There are some people of course who won't +consider a thing unless they can get it for about a third of what they +imagine to be its market value. I've got another suggestion down against +you in my book; you may not be staying in the country at all, you may be +clearing out in disgust at existing conditions. In that case you would +be selling a lot of things that you wouldn't want to cart away with you. +That involves another set of entries and a whole lot of cross +references." + +"I'm afraid I've given you a lot of trouble," said Yeovil drily. + +"Not at all," said Herlton, "but it would simplify matters if we take it +for granted that you are going to stay here, for this winter anyhow, and +are looking out for hunters. Can you lunch with me here on Wednesday, +and come and look at the animal afterwards? It's only thirty-five +minutes by train. It will take us longer if we motor. There is a two- +fifty-three from Charing Cross that we could catch comfortably." + +"If you are going to persuade me to hunt in the East Wessex country this +season," said Yeovil, "you must find me a convenient hunting box +somewhere down there." + +"I have found it," said Herlton, whipping out a stylograph, and hastily +scribbling an "order to view" on a card; "central as possible for all the +meets, grand stabling accommodation, excellent water-supply, big +bathroom, game larder, cellarage, a bakehouse if you want to bake your +own bread--" + +"Any land with it?" + +"Not enough to be a nuisance. An acre or two of paddock and about the +same of garden. You are fond of wild things; a wood comes down to the +edge of the garden, a wood that harbours owls and buzzards and kestrels." + +"Have you got all those details in your book?" asked Yeovil; "'wood +adjoining property, O.B.K.'" + +"I keep those details in my head," said Herlton, "but they are quite +reliable." + +"I shall insist on something substantial off the rent if there are no +buzzards," said Yeovil; "now that you have mentioned them they seem an +indispensable accessory to any decent hunting-box. Look," he exclaimed, +catching sight of a plump middle-aged individual, crossing the vestibule +with an air of restrained importance, "there goes the delectable +Pitherby. Does he come on your books at all?" + +"I should say!" exclaimed Herlton fervently. "The delectable P. +nourishes expectations of a barony or viscounty at an early date. Most +of his life has been spent in streets and squares, with occasional +migrations to the esplanades of fashionable watering-places or the +gravelled walks of country house gardens. Now that noblesse is about to +impose its obligations on him, quite a new catalogue of wants has sprung +into his mind. There are things that a plain esquire may leave undone +without causing scandalised remark, but a fiercer light beats on a baron. +Trigger-pulling is one of the obligations. Up to the present Pitherby +has never hit a partridge in anger, but this year he has commissioned me +to rent him a deer forest. Some pedigree Herefords for his 'home farm' +was another commission, and a dozen and a half swans for a swannery. The +swannery, I may say, was my idea; I said once in his hearing that it gave +a baronial air to an estate; you see I knew a man who had got a lot of +surplus swan stock for sale. Now Pitherby wants a heronry as well. I've +put him in communication with a client of mine who suffers from +superfluous herons, but of course I can't guarantee that the birds' +nesting arrangements will fall in with his territorial requirement. I'm +getting him some carp, too, of quite respectable age, for a carp pond; I +thought it would look so well for his lady-wife to be discovered by +interviewers feeding the carp with her own fair hands, and I put the same +idea into Pitherby's mind." + +"I had no idea that so many things were necessary to endorse a patent of +nobility," said Yeovil. "If there should be any miscarriage in the +bestowal of the honour at least Pitherby will have absolved himself from +any charge of contributory negligence." + +"Shall we say Wednesday, here, one o'clock, lunch first, and go down and +look at the horse afterwards?" said Herlton, returning to the matter in +hand. + +Yeovil hesitated, then he nodded his head. + +"There is no harm in going to look at the animal," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI: SUNRISE + + +Mrs. Kerrick sat at a little teak-wood table in the verandah of a low- +pitched teak-built house that stood on the steep slope of a brown +hillside. Her youngest child, with the grave natural dignity of nine- +year old girlhood, maintained a correct but observant silence, looking +carefully yet unobtrusively after the wants of the one guest, and +checking from time to time the incursions of ubiquitous ants that were +obstinately disposed to treat the table-cloth as a foraging ground. The +wayfaring visitor, who was experiencing a British blend of Eastern +hospitality, was a French naturalist, travelling thus far afield in quest +of feathered specimens to enrich the aviaries of a bird-collecting Balkan +King. On the previous evening, while shrugging his shoulders and +unloosing his vocabulary over the meagre accommodation afforded by the +native rest-house, he had been enchanted by receiving an invitation to +transfer his quarters to the house on the hillside, where he found not +only a pleasant-voiced hostess and some drinkable wine, but three brown- +skinned English youngsters who were able to give him a mass of +intelligent first-hand information about the bird life of the region. And +now, at the early morning breakfast, ere yet the sun was showing over the +rim of the brown-baked hills, he was learning something of the life of +the little community he had chanced on. "I was in these parts many years +ago," explained the hostess, "when my husband was alive and had an +appointment out here. It is a healthy hill district and I had pleasant +memories of the place, so when it became necessary, well, desirable let +us say, to leave our English home and find a new one, it occurred to me +to bring my boys and my little girl here--my eldest girl is at school in +Paris. Labour is cheap here and I try my hand at farming in a small way. +Of course it is very different work to just superintending the dairy and +poultry-yard arrangements of an English country estate. There are so +many things, insect ravages, bird depredations, and so on, that one only +knows on a small scale in England, that happen here in wholesale fashion, +not to mention droughts and torrential rains and other tropical +visitations. And then the domestic animals are so disconcertingly +different from the ones one has been used to; humped cattle never seem to +behave in the way that straight-backed cattle would, and goats and geese +and chickens are not a bit the same here that they are in Europe--and of +course the farm servants are utterly unlike the same class in England. +One has to unlearn a good deal of what one thought one knew about stock- +keeping and agriculture, and take note of the native ways of doing +things; they are primitive and unenterprising of course, but they have an +accumulated store of experience behind them, and one has to tread warily +in initiating improvements." + +The Frenchman looked round at the brown sun-scorched hills, with the +dusty empty road showing here and there in the middle distance and other +brown sun-scorched hills rounding off the scene; he looked at the lizards +on the verandah walls, at the jars for keeping the water cool, at the +numberless little insect-bored holes in the furniture, at the heat-drawn +lines on his hostess's comely face. Notwithstanding his present +wanderings he had a Frenchman's strong homing instinct, and he marvelled +to hear this lady, who should have been a lively and popular figure in +the social circle of some English county town, talking serenely of the +ways of humped cattle and native servants. + +"And your children, how do they like the change?" he asked. + +"It is healthy up here among the hills," said the mother, also looking +round at the landscape and thinking doubtless of a very different scene; +"they have an outdoor life and plenty of liberty. They have their ponies +to ride, and there is a lake up above us that is a fine place for them to +bathe and boat in; the three boys are there now, having their morning +swim. The eldest is sixteen and he is allowed to have a gun, and there +is some good wild fowl shooting to be had in the reed beds at the further +end of the lake. I think that part of the joy of his shooting +expeditions lies in the fact that many of the duck and plover that he +comes across belong to the same species that frequent our English moors +and rivers." + +It was the first hint that she had given of a wistful sense of exile, the +yearning for other skies, the message that a dead bird's plumage could +bring across rolling seas and scorching plains. + +"And the education of your boys, how do you manage for that?" asked the +visitor. + +"There is a young tutor living out in these wilds," said Mrs. Kerrick; +"he was assistant master at a private school in Scotland, but it had to +be given up when--when things changed; so many of the boys left the +country. He came out to an uncle who has a small estate eight miles from +here, and three days in the week he rides over to teach my boys, and +three days he goes to another family living in the opposite direction. To- +day he is due to come here. It is a great boon to have such an +opportunity for getting the boys educated, and of course it helps him to +earn a living." + +"And the society of the place?" asked the Frenchman. + +His hostess laughed. + +"I must admit it has to be looked for with a strong pair of +field-glasses," she said; "it is almost as difficult to get a good bridge +four together as it would have been to get up a tennis tournament or a +subscription dance in our particular corner of England. One has to +ignore distances and forget fatigue if one wants to be gregarious even on +a limited scale. There are one or two officials who are our chief social +mainstays, but the difficulty is to muster the few available souls under +the same roof at the same moment. A road will be impassable in one +quarter, a pony will be lame in another, a stress of work will prevent +some one else from coming, and another may be down with a touch of fever. +When my little girl gave a birthday party here her only little girl guest +had come twelve miles to attend it. The Forest officer happened to drop +in on us that evening, so we felt quite festive." + +The Frenchman's eyes grew round in wonder. He had once thought that the +capital city of a Balkan kingdom was the uttermost limit of social +desolation, viewed from a Parisian standpoint, and there at any rate one +could get cafe chantant, tennis, picnic parties, an occasional theatre +performance by a foreign troupe, now and then a travelling circus, not to +speak of Court and diplomatic functions of a more or less sociable +character. Here, it seemed, one went a day's journey to reach an +evening's entertainment, and the chance arrival of a tired official took +on the nature of a festivity. He looked round again at the rolling +stretches of brown hills; before he had regarded them merely as the +background to this little shut-away world, now he saw that they were +foreground as well. They were everything, there was nothing else. And +again his glance travelled to the face of his hostess, with its bright, +pleasant eyes and smiling mouth. + +"And you live here with your children," he said, "here in this +wilderness? You leave England, you leave everything, for this?" + +His hostess rose and took him over to the far side of the verandah. The +beginnings of a garden were spread out before them, with young fruit +trees and flowering shrubs, and bushes of pale pink roses. Exuberant +tropical growths were interspersed with carefully tended vestiges of +plants that had evidently been brought from a more temperate climate, and +had not borne the transition well. Bushes and trees and shrubs spread +away for some distance, to where the ground rose in a small hillock and +then fell away abruptly into bare hillside. + +"In all this garden that you see," said the Englishwoman, "there is one +tree that is sacred." + +"A tree?" said the Frenchman. + +"A tree that we could not grow in England." + +The Frenchman followed the direction of her eyes and saw a tall, bare +pole at the summit of the hillock. At the same moment the sun came over +the hilltops in a deep, orange glow, and a new light stole like magic +over the brown landscape. And, as if they had timed their arrival to +that exact moment of sunburst, three brown-faced boys appeared under the +straight, bare pole. A cord shivered and flapped, and something ran +swiftly up into the air, and swung out in the breeze that blew across the +hills--a blue flag with red and white crosses. The three boys bared +their heads and the small girl on the verandah steps stood rigidly to +attention. Far away down the hill, a young man, cantering into view +round a corner of the dusty road, removed his hat in loyal salutation. + +"That is why we live out here," said the Englishwoman quietly. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII: THE EVENT OF THE SEASON + + +In the first swelter room of the new Osmanli Baths in Cork Street four or +five recumbent individuals, in a state of moist nudity and +self-respecting inertia, were smoking cigarettes or making occasional +pretence of reading damp newspapers. A glass wall with a glass door shut +them off from the yet more torrid regions of the further swelter +chambers; another glass partition disclosed the dimly-lit vault where +other patrons of the establishment had arrived at the stage of being +pounded and kneaded and sluiced by Oriental-looking attendants. The +splashing and trickling of taps, the flip-flap of wet slippers on a wet +floor, and the low murmur of conversation, filtered through glass doors, +made an appropriately drowsy accompaniment to the scene. + +A new-comer fluttered into the room, beamed at one of the occupants, and +settled himself with an air of elaborate languor in a long canvas chair. +Cornelian Valpy was a fair young man, with perpetual surprise impinged on +his countenance, and a chin that seemed to have retired from competition +with the rest of his features. The beam of recognition that he had given +to his friend or acquaintance subsided into a subdued but lingering +simper. + +"What is the matter?" drawled his neighbour lazily, dropping the end of a +cigarette into a small bowl of water, and helping himself from a silver +case on the table at his side. + +"Matter?" said Cornelian, opening wide a pair of eyes in which unhealthy +intelligence seemed to struggle in undetermined battle with utter +vacuity; "why should you suppose that anything is the matter?" + +"When you wear a look of idiotic complacency in a Turkish bath," said the +other, "it is the more noticeable from the fact that you are wearing +nothing else." + +"Were you at the Shalem House dance last night?" asked Cornelian, by way +of explaining his air of complacent retrospection. + +"No," said the other, "but I feel as if I had been; I've been reading +columns about it in the Dawn." + +"The last event of the season," said Cornelian, "and quite one of the +most amusing and lively functions that there have been." + +"So the Dawn said; but then, as Shalem practically owns and controls that +paper, its favourable opinion might be taken for granted." + +"The whole idea of the Revel was quite original," said Cornelian, who was +not going to have his personal narrative of the event forestalled by +anything that a newspaper reporter might have given to the public; "a +certain number of guests went as famous personages in the world's +history, and each one was accompanied by another guest typifying the +prevailing characteristic of that personage. One man went as Julius +Caesar, for instance, and had a girl typifying ambition as his shadow, +another went as Louis the Eleventh, and his companion personified +superstition. Your shadow had to be someone of the opposite sex, you +see, and every alternate dance throughout the evening you danced with +your shadow-partner. Quite a clever idea; young Graf von Schnatelstein +is supposed to have invented it." + +"New York will be deeply beholden to him," said the other; +"shadow-dances, with all manner of eccentric variations, will be the rage +there for the next eighteen months." + +"Some of the costumes were really sumptuous," continued Cornelian; "the +Duchess of Dreyshire was magnificent as Aholibah, you never saw so many +jewels on one person, only of course she didn't look dark enough for the +character; she had Billy Carnset for her shadow, representing Unspeakable +Depravity." + +"How on earth did he manage that?" + +"Oh, a blend of Beardsley and Bakst as far as get-up and costume, and of +course his own personality counted for a good deal. Quite one of the +successes of the evening was Leutnant von Gabelroth, as George +Washington, with Joan Mardle as his shadow, typifying Inconvenient +Candour. He put her down officially as Truthfulness, but every one had +heard the other version." + +"Good for the Gabelroth, though he does belong to the invading Horde; +it's not often that any one scores off Joan." + +"Another blaze of magnificence was the loud-voiced Bessimer woman, as the +Goddess Juno, with peacock tails and opals all over her; she had Ronnie +Storre to represent Green-eyed Jealousy. Talking of Ronnie Storre and of +jealousy, you will naturally wonder whom Mrs. Yeovil went with. I forget +what her costume was, but she'd got that dark-headed youth with her that +she's been trotting round everywhere the last few days." + +Cornelian's neighbour kicked him furtively on the shin, and frowned in +the direction of a dark-haired youth reclining in an adjacent chair. The +youth in question rose from his seat and stalked into the further swelter +room. + +"So clever of him to go into the furnace room," said the unabashed +Cornelian; "now if he turns scarlet all over we shall never know how much +is embarrassment and how much is due to the process of being boiled. La +Yeovil hasn't done badly by the exchange; he's better looking than +Ronnie." + +"I see that Pitherby went as Frederick the Great," said Cornelian's +neighbour, fingering a sheet of the Dawn. + +"Isn't that exactly what one would have expected Pitherby to do?" said +Cornelian. "He's so desperately anxious to announce to all whom it may +concern that he has written a life of that hero. He had an uninspiring- +looking woman with him, supposed to represent Military Genius." + +"The Spirit of Advertisement would have been more appropriate," said the +other. + +"The opening scene of the Revel was rather effective," continued +Cornelian; "all the Shadow people reclined in the dimly-lit centre of the +ballroom in an indistinguishable mass, and the human characters marched +round the illuminated sides of the room to solemn processional music. +Every now and then a shadow would detach itself from the mass, hail its +partner by name, and glide out to join him or her in the procession. +Then, when the last shadows had found their mates and every one was +partnered, the lights were turned up in a blaze, the orchestra crashed +out a whirl of nondescript dance music, and people just let themselves +go. It was Pandemonium. Afterwards every one strutted about for half an +hour or so, showing themselves off, and then the legitimate programme of +dances began. There were some rather amusing incidents throughout the +evening. One set of lancers was danced entirely by the Seven Deadly Sins +and their human exemplars; of course seven couples were not sufficient to +make up the set, so they had to bring in an eighth sin, I forget what it +was." + +"The sin of Patriotism would have been rather appropriate, considering +who were giving the dance," said the other. + +"Hush!" exclaimed Cornelian nervously. "You don't know who may overhear +you in a place like this. You'll get yourself into trouble." + +"Wasn't there some rather daring new dance of the 'bunny-hug' variety?" +asked the indiscreet one. + +"The 'Cubby-Cuddle,'" said Cornelian; "three or four adventurous couples +danced it towards the end of the evening." + +"The Dawn says that without being strikingly new it was strikingly +modern." + +"The best description I can give of it," said Cornelian, "is summed up in +the comment of the Grafin von Tolb when she saw it being danced: 'if they +really love each other I suppose it doesn't matter.' By the way," he +added with apparent indifference, "is there any detailed account of my +costume in the Dawn?" + +His companion laughed cynically. + +"As if you hadn't read everything that the Dawn and the other morning +papers have to say about the ball hours ago." + +"The naked truth should be avoided in a Turkish bath," said Cornelian; +"kindly assume that I've only had time to glance at the weather forecast +and the news from China." + +"Oh, very well," said the other; "your costume isn't described; you +simply come amid a host of others as 'Mr. Cornelian Valpy, resplendent as +the Emperor Nero; with him Miss Kate Lerra, typifying Insensate Vanity.' +Many hard things have been said of Nero, but his unkindest critics have +never accused him of resembling you in feature. Until some very clear +evidence is produced I shall refuse to believe it." + +Cornelian was proof against these shafts; leaning back gracefully in his +chair he launched forth into that detailed description of his last +night's attire which the Dawn had so unaccountably failed to supply. + +"I wore a tunic of white Nepaulese silk, with a collar of pearls, real +pearls. Round my waist I had a girdle of twisted serpents in beaten +gold, studded all over with amethysts. My sandals were of gold, laced +with scarlet thread, and I had seven bracelets of gold on each arm. Round +my head I had a wreath of golden laurel leaves set with scarlet berries, +and hanging over my left shoulder was a silk robe of mulberry purple, +broidered with the signs of the zodiac in gold and scarlet; I had it made +specially for the occasion. At my side I had an ivory-sheathed dagger, +with a green jade handle, hung in a green Cordova leather--" + +At this point of the recital his companion rose softly, flung his +cigarette end into the little water-bowl, and passed into the further +swelter room. Cornelian Valpy was left, still clothed in a look of +ineffable complacency, still engaged, in all probability, in reclothing +himself in the finery of the previous evening. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII: THE DEAD WHO DO NOT UNDERSTAND + + +The pale light of a November afternoon faded rapidly into the dusk of a +November evening. Far over the countryside housewives put up their +cottage shutters, lit their lamps, and made the customary remark that the +days were drawing in. In barn yards and poultry-runs the greediest +pullets made a final tour of inspection, picking up the stray remaining +morsels of the evening meal, and then, with much scrambling and +squawking, sought the places on the roosting-pole that they thought +should belong to them. Labourers working in yard and field began to turn +their thoughts homeward or tavernward as the case might be. And through +the cold squelching slush of a water-logged meadow a weary, bedraggled, +but unbeaten fox stiffly picked his way, climbed a high bramble-grown +bank, and flung himself into the sheltering labyrinth of a stretching +tangle of woods. The pack of fierce-mouthed things that had rattled him +from copse and gorse-cover, along fallow and plough, hedgerow and wooded +lane, for nigh on an hour, and had pressed hard on his life for the last +few minutes, receded suddenly into the background of his experiences. The +cold, wet meadow, the thick mask of woods, and the oncoming dusk had +stayed the chase--and the fox had outstayed it. In a short time he would +fall mechanically to licking off some of the mud that caked on his weary +pads; in a shorter time horsemen and hounds would have drawn off +kennelward and homeward. + +Yeovil rode through the deepening twilight, relying chiefly on his horse +to find its way in the network of hedge-bordered lanes that presumably +led to a high road or to some human habitation. He was desperately tired +after his day's hunting, a legacy of weakness that the fever had +bequeathed to him, but even though he could scarcely sit upright in his +saddle his mind dwelt complacently on the day's sport and looked forward +to the snug cheery comfort that awaited him at his hunting box. There +was a charm, too, even for a tired man, in the eerie stillness of the +lone twilight land through which he was passing, a grey shadow-hung land +which seemed to have been emptied of all things that belonged to the +daytime, and filled with a lurking, moving life of which one knew nothing +beyond the sense that it was there. There, and very near. If there had +been wood-gods and wicked-eyed fauns in the sunlit groves and hill sides +of old Hellas, surely there were watchful, living things of kindred mould +in this dusk-hidden wilderness of field and hedge and coppice. + +It was Yeovil's third or fourth day with the hounds, without taking into +account a couple of mornings' cub-hunting. Already he felt that he had +been doing nothing different from this all his life. His foreign +travels, his illness, his recent weeks in London, they were part of a +tapestried background that had very slight and distant connection with +his present existence. Of the future he tried to think with greater +energy and determination. For this winter, at any rate, he would hunt +and do a little shooting, entertain a few of his neighbours and make +friends with any congenial fellow-sportsmen who might be within reach. +Next year things would be different; he would have had time to look round +him, to regain something of his aforetime vigour of mind and body. Next +year, when the hunting season was over, he would set about finding out +whether there was any nobler game for him to take a hand in. He would +enter into correspondence with old friends who had gone out into the +tropics and the backwoods--he would do something. + +So he told himself, but he knew thoroughly well that he had found his +level. He had ceased to struggle against the fascination of his present +surroundings. The slow, quiet comfort and interest of country life +appealed with enervating force to the man whom death had half conquered. +The pleasures of the chase, well-provided for in every detail, and +dovetailed in with the assured luxury of a well-ordered, well-staffed +establishment, were exactly what he wanted and exactly what his life down +here afforded him. He was experiencing, too, that passionate recurring +devotion to an old loved scene that comes at times to men who have +travelled far and willingly up and down the world. He was very much at +home. The alien standard floating over Buckingham Palace, the Crown of +Charlemagne on public buildings and official documents, the grey ships of +war riding in Plymouth Bay and Southampton Water with a flag at their +stern that older generations of Britons had never looked on, these things +seemed far away and inconsequent amid the hedgerows and woods and fallows +of the East Wessex country. Horse and hound-craft, harvest, game broods, +the planting and felling of timber, the rearing and selling of stock, the +letting of grasslands, the care of fisheries, the up-keep of markets and +fairs, they were the things that immediately mattered. And Yeovil saw +himself, in moments of disgust and self-accusation, settling down into +this life of rustic littleness, concerned over the late nesting of a +partridge or the defective draining of a loose-box, hugely busy over +affairs that a gardener's boy might grapple with, ignoring the struggle- +cry that went up, low and bitter and wistful, from a dethroned +dispossessed race, in whose glories he had gloried, in whose struggle he +lent no hand. In what way, he asked himself in such moments, would his +life be better than the life of that parody of manhood who upholstered +his rooms with art hangings and rosewood furniture and babbled over the +effect? + +The lanes seemed interminable and without aim or object except to bisect +one another; gates and gaps disclosed nothing in the way of a landmark, +and the night began to draw down in increasing shades of darkness. +Presently, however, the tired horse quickened its pace, swung round a +sharp corner into a broader roadway, and stopped with an air of thankful +expectancy at the low doorway of a wayside inn. A cheerful glow of light +streamed from the windows and door, and a brighter glare came from the +other side of the road, where a large motorcar was being got ready for an +immediate start. Yeovil tumbled stiffly out of his saddle, and in answer +to the loud rattle of his hunting crop on the open door the innkeeper and +two or three hangers-on hurried out to attend to the wants of man and +beast. Flour and water for the horse and something hot for himself were +Yeovil's first concern, and then he began to clamour for geographical +information. He was rather dismayed to find that the cumulative opinions +of those whom he consulted, and of several others who joined unbidden in +the discussion, placed his destination at nothing nearer than nine miles. +Nine miles of dark and hilly country road for a tired man on a tired +horse assumed enormous, far-stretching proportions, and although he dimly +remembered that he had asked a guest to dinner for that evening he began +to wonder whether the wayside inn possessed anything endurable in the way +of a bedroom. The landlord interrupted his desperate speculations with a +really brilliant effort of suggestion. There was a gentleman in the bar, +he said, who was going in a motorcar in the direction for which Yeovil +was bound, and who would no doubt be willing to drop him at his +destination; the gentleman had also been out with the hounds. Yeovil's +horse could be stabled at the inn and fetched home by a groom the next +morning. A hurried embassy to the bar parlour resulted in the news that +the motorist would be delighted to be of assistance to a +fellow-sportsman. Yeovil gratefully accepted the chance that had so +obligingly come his way, and hastened to superintend the housing of his +horse in its night's quarters. When he had duly seen to the tired +animal's comfort and foddering he returned to the roadway, where a young +man in hunting garb and a livened chauffeur were standing by the side of +the waiting car. + +"I am so very pleased to be of some use to you, Mr. Yeovil," said the car- +owner, with a polite bow, and Yeovil recognised the young Leutnant von +Gabelroth, who had been present at the musical afternoon at Berkshire +Street. He had doubtless seen him at the meet that morning, but in his +hunting kit he had escaped his observation. + +"I, too, have been out with the hounds," the young man continued; "I have +left my horse at the Crow and Sceptre at Dolford. You are living at +Black Dene, are you not? I can take you right past your door, it is all +on my way." + +Yeovil hung back for a moment, overwhelmed with vexation and +embarrassment, but it was too late to cancel the arrangement he had +unwittingly entered into, and he was constrained to put himself under +obligation to the young officer with the best grace he could muster. +After all, he reflected, he had met him under his own roof as his wife's +guest. He paid his reckoning to mine host, tipped the stable lad who had +helped him with his horse, and took his place beside von Gabelroth in the +car. + +As they glided along the dark roadway and the young German reeled off a +string of comments on the incidents of the day's sport, Yeovil lay back +amid his comfortable wraps and weighed the measure of his humiliation. It +was Cicely's gospel that one should know what one wanted in life and take +good care that one got what one wanted. Could he apply that test of +achievement to his own life? Was this what he really wanted to be doing, +pursuing his uneventful way as a country squire, sharing even his sports +and pastimes with men of the nation that had conquered and enslaved his +Fatherland? + +The car slackened its pace somewhat as they went through a small hamlet, +past a schoolhouse, past a rural police-station with the new monogram +over its notice-board, past a church with a little tree-grown graveyard. +There, in a corner, among wild-rose bushes and tall yews, lay some of +Yeovil's own kinsfolk, who had lived in these parts and hunted and found +life pleasant in the days that were not so very long ago. Whenever he +went past that quiet little gathering-place of the dead Yeovil was wont +to raise his hat in mute affectionate salutation to those who were now +only memories in his family; to-night he somehow omitted the salute and +turned his head the other way. It was as though the dead of his race saw +and wondered. + +Three or four months ago the thing he was doing would have seemed an +impossibility, now it was actually happening; he was listening to the +gay, courteous, tactful chatter of his young companion, laughing now and +then at some joking remark, answering some question of interest, learning +something of hunting ways and traditions in von Gabelroth's own country. +And when the car turned in at the gate of the hunting lodge and drew up +at the steps the laws of hospitality demanded that Yeovil should ask his +benefactor of the road to come in for a few minutes and drink something a +little better than the wayside inn had been able to supply. The young +officer spent the best part of a half hour in Yeovil's snuggery, +examining and discussing the trophies of rifle and collecting gun that +covered the walls. He had a good knowledge of woodcraft, and the beasts +and birds of Siberian forests and North African deserts were to him new +pages in a familiar book. Yeovil found himself discoursing eagerly with +his chance guest on the European distribution and local variation of such +and such a species, recounting peculiarities in its habits and incidents +of its pursuit and capture. If the cold observant eyes of Lady Shalem +could have rested on the scene she would have hailed it as another root- +fibre thrown out by the fait accompli. + +Yeovil closed the hall door on his departing visitor, and closed his mind +on the crowd of angry and accusing thoughts that were waiting to intrude +themselves. His valet had already got his bath in readiness and in a few +minutes the tired huntsman was forgetting weariness and the consciousness +of outside things in the languorous abandonment that steam and hot water +induce. Brain and limbs seemed to lay themselves down in a contented +waking sleep, the world that was beyond the bathroom walls dropped away +into a far unreal distance; only somewhere through the steam clouds +pierced a hazy consciousness that a dinner, well chosen, was being well +cooked, and would presently be well served--and right well appreciated. +That was the lure to drag the bather away from the Nirvana land of warmth +and steam. The stimulating after-effect of the bath took its due effect, +and Yeovil felt that he was now much less tired and enormously hungry. A +cheery fire burned in his dressing-room and a lively black kitten helped +him to dress, and incidentally helped him to require a new tassel to the +cord of his dressing-gown. As he finished his toilet and the kitten +finished its sixth and most notable attack on the tassel a ring was heard +at the front door, and a moment later a loud, hearty, and unmistakably +hungry voice resounded in the hall. It belonged to the local doctor, who +had also taken part in the day's run and had been bidden to enliven the +evening meal with the entertainment of his inexhaustible store of +sporting and social reminiscences. He knew the countryside and the +countryfolk inside out, and he was a living unwritten chronicle of the +East Wessex hunt. His conversation seemed exactly the right +accompaniment to the meal; his stories brought glimpses of wet hedgerows, +stiff ploughlands, leafy spinneys and muddy brooks in among the rich old +Worcester and Georgian silver of the dinner service, the glow and crackle +of the wood fire, the pleasant succession of well-cooked dishes and +mellow wines. The world narrowed itself down again to a warm, drowsy- +scented dining-room, with a productive hinterland of kitchen and cellar +beyond it, and beyond that an important outer world of loose box and +harness-room and stable-yard; further again a dark hushed region where +pheasants roosted and owls flitted and foxes prowled. + +Yeovil sat and listened to story after story of the men and women and +horses of the neighbourhood; even the foxes seemed to have a personality, +some of them, and a personal history. It was a little like Hans +Andersen, he decided, and a little like the Reminiscences of an Irish +R.M., and perhaps just a little like some of the more probable adventures +of Baron Munchausen. The newer stories were evidently true to the +smallest detail, the earlier ones had altered somewhat in repetition, as +plants and animals vary under domestication. + +And all the time there was one topic that was never touched on. Of half +the families mentioned it was necessary to add the qualifying information +that they "used to live" at such and such a place; the countryside knew +them no longer. Their properties were for sale or had already passed +into the hands of strangers. But neither man cared to allude to the +grinning shadow that sat at the feast and sent an icy chill now and again +through the cheeriest jest and most jovial story. The brisk run with the +hounds that day had stirred and warmed their pulses; it was an evening +for comfortable forgetting. Later that night, in the stillness of his +bedroom, with the dwindling noises of a retiring household dropping off +one by one into ordered silence, a door shutting here, a fire being raked +out there, the thoughts that had been held away came crowding in. The +body was tired, but the brain was not, and Yeovil lay awake with his +thoughts for company. The world grew suddenly wide again, filled with +the significance of things that mattered, held by the actions of men that +mattered. Hunting-box and stable and gun-room dwindled to a mere pin- +point in the universe, there were other larger, more absorbing things on +which the mind dwelt. There was the grey cold sea outside Dover and +Portsmouth and Cork, where the great grey ships of war rocked and swung +with the tides, where the sailors sang, in doggerel English, that bitter- +sounding adaptation, "Germania rules t'e waves," where the flag of a +World-Power floated for the world to see. And in oven-like cities of +India there were men who looked out at the white sun-glare, the +heat-baked dust, the welter of crowded streets, who listened to the +unceasing chorus of harsh-throated crows, the strident creaking of cart- +wheels, the buzz and drone of insect swarms and the rattle call of the +tree lizards; men whose thoughts went hungrily to the cool grey skies and +wet turf and moist ploughlands of an English hunting country, men whose +memories listened yearningly to the music of a deep-throated hound and +the call of a game-bird in the stubble. Yeovil had secured for himself +the enjoyment of the things for which these men hungered; he had known +what he wanted in life, slowly and with hesitation, yet nevertheless +surely, he had arrived at the achievement of his unconfessed desires. +Here, installed under his own roof-tree, with as good horseflesh in his +stable as man could desire, with sport lying almost at his door, with his +wife ready to come down and help him to entertain his neighbours, Murrey +Yeovil had found the life that he wanted--and was accursed in his own +eyes. He argued with himself, and palliated and explained, but he knew +why he had turned his eyes away that evening from the little graveyard +under the trees; one cannot explain things to the dead. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX: THE LITTLE FOXES + + + "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines" + +On a warm and sunny May afternoon, some ten months since Yeovil's return +from his Siberian wanderings and sickness, Cicely sat at a small table in +the open-air restaurant in Hyde Park, finishing her after-luncheon coffee +and listening to the meritorious performance of the orchestra. Opposite +her sat Larry Meadowfield, absorbed for the moment in the slow enjoyment +of a cigarette, which also was not without its short-lived merits. Larry +was a well-dressed youngster, who was, in Cicely's opinion, distinctly +good to look on--an opinion which the boy himself obviously shared. He +had the healthy, well-cared-for appearance of a country-dweller who has +been turned into a town dandy without suffering in the process. His blue- +black hair, growing very low down on a broad forehead, was brushed back +in a smoothness that gave his head the appearance of a rain-polished +sloe; his eyebrows were two dark smudges and his large violet-grey eyes +expressed the restful good temper of an animal whose immediate +requirements have been satisfied. The lunch had been an excellent one, +and it was jolly to feed out of doors in the warm spring air--the only +drawback to the arrangement being the absence of mirrors. However, if he +could not look at himself a great many people could look at him. + +Cicely listened to the orchestra as it jerked and strutted through a +fantastic dance measure, and as she listened she looked appreciatively at +the boy on the other side of the table, whose soul for the moment seemed +to be in his cigarette. Her scheme of life, knowing just what you wanted +and taking good care that you got it, was justifying itself by results. +Ronnie, grown tiresome with success, had not been difficult to replace, +and no one in her world had had the satisfaction of being able to condole +with her on the undesirable experience of a long interregnum. To +feminine acquaintances with fewer advantages of purse and brains and +looks she might figure as "that Yeovil woman," but never had she given +them justification to allude to her as "poor Cicely Yeovil." And Murrey, +dear old soul, had cooled down, as she had hoped and wished, from his +white heat of disgust at the things that she had prepared herself to +accept philosophically. A new chapter of their married life and man-and- +woman friendship had opened; many a rare gallop they had had together +that winter, many a cheery dinner gathering and long bridge evening in +the cosy hunting-lodge. Though he still hated the new London and held +himself aloof from most of her Town set, yet he had not shown himself +rigidly intolerant of the sprinkling of Teuton sportsmen who hunted and +shot down in his part of the country. + +The orchestra finished its clicking and caracoling and was accorded a +short clatter of applause. + +"The Danse Macabre," said Cicely to her companion; "one of Saint-Saens' +best known pieces." + +"Is it?" said Larry indifferently; "I'll take your word for it. 'Fraid I +don't know much about music." + +"You dear boy, that's just what I like in you," said Cicely; "you're such +a delicious young barbarian." + +"Am I?" said Larry. "I dare say. I suppose you know." + +Larry's father had been a brilliantly clever man who had married a +brilliantly handsome woman; the Fates had not had the least intention +that Larry should take after both parents. + +"The fashion of having one's lunch in the open air has quite caught on +this season," said Cicely; "one sees everybody here on a fine day. There +is Lady Bailquist over there. She used to be Lady Shalem you know, +before her husband got the earldom--to be more correct, before she got it +for him. I suppose she is all agog to see the great review." + +It was in fact precisely the absorbing topic of the forthcoming Boy-Scout +march-past that was engaging the Countess of Bailquist's earnest +attention at the moment. + +"It is going to be an historical occasion," she was saying to Sir Leonard +Pitherby (whose services to literature had up to the present received +only a half-measure of recognition); "if it miscarries it will be a +serious set-back for the fait accompli. If it is a success it will be +the biggest step forward in the path of reconciliation between the two +races that has yet been taken. It will mean that the younger generation +is on our side--not all, of course, but some, that is all we can expect +at present, and that will be enough to work on." + +"Supposing the Scouts hang back and don't turn up in any numbers," said +Sir Leonard anxiously. + +"That of course is the danger," said Lady Bailquist quietly; "probably +two-thirds of the available strength will hold back, but a third or even +a sixth would be enough; it would redeem the parade from the calamity of +fiasco, and it would be a nucleus to work on for the future. That is +what we want, a good start, a preliminary rally. It is the first step +that counts, that is why to-day's event is of such importance." + +"Of course, of course, the first step on the road," assented Sir Leonard. + +"I can assure you," continued Lady Bailquist, "that nothing has been left +undone to rally the Scouts to the new order of things. Special +privileges have been showered on them, alone among all the cadet corps +they have been allowed to retain their organisation, a decoration of +merit has been instituted for them, a large hostelry and gymnasium has +been provided for them in Westminster, His Majesty's youngest son is to +be their Scoutmaster-in-Chief, a great athletic meeting is to be held for +them each year, with valuable prizes, three or four hundred of them are +to be taken every summer, free of charge, for a holiday in the Bavarian +Highlands and the Baltic Seaboard; besides this the parent of every scout +who obtains the medal for efficiency is to be exempted from part of the +new war taxation that the people are finding so burdensome." + +"One certainly cannot say that they have not had attractions held out to +them," said Sir Leonard. + +"It is a special effort," said Lady Bailquist; "it is worth making an +effort for. They are going to be the Janissaries of the Empire; the +younger generation knocking at the doors of progress, and thrusting back +the bars and bolts of old racial prejudices. I tell you, Sir Leonard, it +will be an historic moment when the first corps of those little khaki- +clad boys swings through the gates of the Park." + +"When do they come?" asked the baronet, catching something of his +companion's zeal. + +"The first detachment is due to arrive at three," said Lady Bailquist, +referring to a small time-table of the afternoon's proceedings; "three, +punctually, and the others will follow in rapid succession. The Emperor +and Suite will arrive at two-fifty and take up their positions at the +saluting base--over there, where the big flag-staff has been set up. The +boys will come in by Hyde Park Corner, the Marble Arch, and the Albert +Gate, according to their districts, and form in one big column over +there, where the little flags are pegged out. Then the young Prince will +inspect them and lead them past His Majesty." + +"Who will be with the Imperial party?" asked Sir Leonard. + +"Oh, it is to be an important affair; everything will be done to +emphasise the significance of the occasion," said Lady Bailquist, again +consulting her programme. "The King of Wurtemberg, and two of the +Bavarian royal Princes, an Abyssinian Envoy who is over here--he will +lend a touch of picturesque barbarism to the scene--the general +commanding the London district and a whole lot of other military bigwigs, +and the Austrian, Italian and Roumanian military attaches." + +She reeled off the imposing list of notables with an air of quiet +satisfaction. Sir Leonard made mental notes of personages to whom he +might send presentation copies of his new work "Frederick-William, the +Great Elector, a Popular Biography," as a souvenir of to-day's auspicious +event. + +"It is nearly a quarter to three now," he said; "let us get a good +position before the crowd gets thicker." + +"Come along to my car, it is just opposite to the saluting base," said +her ladyship; "I have a police pass that will let us through. We'll ask +Mrs. Yeovil and her young friend to join us." + +Larry excused himself from joining the party; he had a barbarian's +reluctance to assisting at an Imperial triumph. + +"I think I'll push off to the swimming-bath," he said to Cicely; "see you +again about tea-time." + +Cicely walked with Lady Bailquist and the literary baronet towards the +crowd of spectators, which was steadily growing in dimensions. A newsboy +ran in front of them displaying a poster with the intelligence "Essex +wickets fall rapidly"--a semblance of county cricket still survived under +the new order of things. Near the saluting base some thirty or forty +motorcars were drawn up in line, and Cicely and her companions exchanged +greetings with many of the occupants. + +"A lovely day for the review, isn't it?" cried the Grafin von Tolb, +breaking off her conversation with Herr Rebinok, the little Pomeranian +banker, who was sitting by her side. "Why haven't you brought young Mr. +Meadowfield? Such a nice boy. I wanted him to come and sit in my +carriage and talk to me." + +"He doesn't talk you know," said Cicely; "he's only brilliant to look +at." + +"Well, I could have looked at him," said the Grafin. + +"There'll be thousands of other boys to look at presently," said Cicely, +laughing at the old woman's frankness. + +"Do you think there will be thousands?" asked the Grafin, with an anxious +lowering of the voice; "really, thousands? Hundreds, perhaps; there is +some uncertainty. Every one is not sanguine." + +"Hundreds, anyway," said Cicely. + +The Grafin turned to the little banker and spoke to him rapidly and +earnestly in German. + +"It is most important that we should consolidate our position in this +country; we must coax the younger generation over by degrees, we must +disarm their hostility. We cannot afford to be always on the watch in +this quarter; it is a source of weakness, and we cannot afford to be +weak. This Slav upheaval in south-eastern Europe is becoming a serious +menace. Have you seen to-day's telegrams from Agram? They are bad +reading. There is no computing the extent of this movement." + +"It is directed against us," said the banker. + +"Agreed," said the Grafin; "it is in the nature of things that it must be +against us. Let us have no illusions. Within the next ten years, sooner +perhaps, we shall be faced with a crisis which will be only a beginning. +We shall need all our strength; that is why we cannot afford to be weak +over here. To-day is an important day; I confess I am anxious." + +"Hark! The kettledrums!" exclaimed the commanding voice of Lady +Bailquist. "His Majesty is coming. Quick, bundle into the car." + +The crowd behind the police-kept lines surged expectantly into closer +formation; spectators hurried up from side-walks and stood craning their +necks above the shoulders of earlier arrivals. + +Through the archway at Hyde Park Corner came a resplendent cavalcade, +with a swirl of colour and rhythmic movement and a crash of exultant +music; life-guards with gleaming helmets, a detachment of Wurtemberg +lancers with a flutter of black and yellow pennons, a rich medley of +staff uniforms, a prancing array of princely horsemen, the Imperial +Standard, and the King of Prussia, Great Britain, and Ireland, Emperor of +the West. It was the most imposing display that Londoners had seen since +the catastrophe. + +Slowly, grandly, with thunder of music and beat of hoofs, the procession +passed through the crowd, across the sward towards the saluting base, +slowly the eagle standard, charged with the leopards, lion and harp of +the conquered kingdoms, rose mast-high on the flag-staff and fluttered in +the breeze, slowly and with military precision the troops and suite took +up their position round the central figure of the great pageant. Trumpets +and kettledrums suddenly ceased their music, and in a moment there rose +in their stead an eager buzz of comment from the nearest spectators. + +"How well the young Prince looks in his scout uniform." . . . "The King +of Wurtemberg is a much younger man than I thought he was." . . . "Is +that a Prussian or Bavarian uniform, there on the right, the man on a +black horse?" . . . "Neither, it's Austrian, the Austrian military +attache" . . . "That is von Stoppel talking to His Majesty; he organised +the Boy Scouts in Germany, you know." . . . "His Majesty is looking very +pleased." "He has reason to look pleased; this is a great event in the +history of the two countries. It marks a new epoch." . . . "Oh, do you +see the Abyssinian Envoy? What a picturesque figure he makes. How well +he sits his horse." . . . "That is the Grand Duke of Baden's nephew, +talking to the King of Wurtemberg now." + +On the buzz and chatter of the spectators fell suddenly three sound +strokes, distant, measured, sinister; the clang of a clock striking +three. + +"Three o'clock and not a boy scout within sight or hearing!" exclaimed +the loud ringing voice of Joan Mardle; "one can usually hear their drums +and trumpets a couple of miles away." + +"There is the traffic to get through," said Sir Leonard Pitherby in an +equally high-pitched voice; "and of course," he added vaguely, "it takes +some time to get the various units together. One must give them a few +minutes' grace." + +Lady Bailquist said nothing, but her restless watchful eyes were turned +first to Hyde Park Corner and then in the direction of the Marble Arch, +back again to Hyde Park Corner. Only the dark lines of the waiting crowd +met her view, with the yellow newspaper placards flitting in and out, +announcing to an indifferent public the fate of Essex wickets. As far as +her searching eyes could travel the green stretch of tree and sward +remained unbroken, save by casual loiterers. No small brown columns +appeared, no drum beat came throbbing up from the distance. The little +flags pegged out to mark the positions of the awaited scout-corps +fluttered in meaningless isolation on the empty parade ground. + +His Majesty was talking unconcernedly with one of his officers, the +foreign attaches looked steadily between their chargers' ears, as though +nothing in particular was hanging in the balance, the Abyssinian Envoy +displayed an untroubled serenity which was probably genuine. Elsewhere +among the Suite was a perceptible fidget, the more obvious because it was +elaborately cloaked. Among the privileged onlookers drawn up near the +saluting point the fidgeting was more unrestrained. + +"Six minutes past three, and not a sign of them!" exclaimed Joan Mardle, +with the explosive articulation of one who cannot any longer hold back a +truth. + +"Hark!" said some one; "I hear trumpets!" + +There was an instant concentration of listening, a straining of eyes. + +It was only the toot of a passing motorcar. Even Sir Leonard Pitherby, +with the eye of faith, could not locate as much as a cloud of dust on the +Park horizon. + +And now another sound was heard, a sound difficult to define, without +beginning, without dimension; the growing murmur of a crowd waking to a +slowly dawning sensation. + +"I wish the band would strike up an air," said the Grafin von Tolb +fretfully; "it is stupid waiting here in silence." + +Joan fingered her watch, but she made no further remark; she realised +that no amount of malicious comment could be so dramatically effective +now as the slow slipping away of the intolerable seconds. + +The murmur from the crowd grew in volume. Some satirical wit started +whistling an imitation of an advancing fife and drum band; others took it +up and the air resounded with the shrill music of a phantom army on the +march. The mock throbbing of drum and squealing of fife rose and fell +above the packed masses of spectators, but no answering echo came from +beyond the distant trees. Like mushrooms in the night a muster of +uniformed police and plain clothes detectives sprang into evidence on all +sides; whatever happened there must be no disloyal demonstration. The +whistlers and mockers were pointedly invited to keep silence, and one or +two addresses were taken. Under the trees, well at the back of the +crowd, a young man stood watching the long stretch of road along which +the Scouts should come. Something had drawn him there, against his will, +to witness the Imperial Triumph, to watch the writing of yet another +chapter in the history of his country's submission to an accepted fact. +And now a dull flush crept into his grey face; a look that was partly new- +born hope and resurrected pride, partly remorse and shame, burned in his +eyes. Shame, the choking, searing shame of self-reproach that cannot be +reasoned away, was dominant in his heart. He had laid down his +arms--there were others who had never hoisted the flag of surrender. He +had given up the fight and joined the ranks of the hopelessly +subservient; in thousands of English homes throughout the land there were +young hearts that had not forgotten, had not compounded, would not yield. + +The younger generation had barred the door. + +And in the pleasant May sunshine the Eagle standard floated and flapped, +the black and yellow pennons shifted restlessly, Emperor and Princes, +Generals and guards, sat stiffly in their saddles, and waited. + +And waited. . . . + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHEN WILLIAM CAME*** + + +******* This file should be named 14540.txt or 14540.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/5/4/14540 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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