 CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST NIGHT Huge posters, outside the Caravansary Theatre of Varieties, announced the first performance of the uniquely interesting suggestion dances interpreted by the Honourable Gauler Musselford. An impressionist portrait of a rather severe-looking young woman gave the public some idea of what the dancers 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 Gauler 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 everyone had come early to see everyone else arrive. As a matter of fact it was the rumour heralded a rival 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 the common cradle-ground. The lack of a fire burning on a national altar seemed to have drawn them by universal impulse to the congenial flair 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 skeptical, 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-grove of a low-priced gallery, whence he might watch, observant and unobserved, the much talked-of debut of Gaul and Musselford, and the writing of a new chapter in the history of the feta company. Around him he noticed an incessant undercurrent of jangling laughter, an unending give-and-take of meaningless mirthless jest and catch-word. 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, Yovill 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 Londoner 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, Yovill's mind went back to the book, at 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 Yovill stole the 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 to 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 Daught, 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 Daught Esquire had entered Parliament by another door as Baron Shalem of Weirskillne in the county of Suffolk. Success had crowned the ladies' 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 bumpious, probably the chief reason for their lack of popularity, whereas their intense and obvious desire to be popular. They kept open house in such an insistently open manner that they created a social draft. 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 the 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 feta complie. 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 oublier. In the box with Lady Shalem was the Grafin von Dolb, a well-dressed woman of some fifty-six years, comfortable and placid in appearance, yet alert with all, rather suggesting a thoroughly wide-awake door-mouse. Rich, amiable and intelligent were the adjectives which would have best 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 Barkley Square was a considerable reinforcement to the stricken social life of the metropolis. In the neighbouring box Cicely Oville presided over a large and lively party which of course included Ronnie Storr, 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 Rhapsody Pantrill, author of a play that 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 perpetual dread of the non-recognition of her genius. As the woman, Augusta Smith, she probably would have been unreservedly happy. As the superwoman, Rhapsody Pantrill, she lived within the borderline of discontent. Her most ordinary remarks were framed with the view of arresting attention. Someone once said of her that she ordered a sack of potatoes with the air of one who is making inquiry for a love-filter. Do you see what colour the curtain is? She asked Sicily, throwing a note of intense meaning into her question. Sicily turned quickly and looked at the drop curtain. Rather nice blue, she said. Alexandrine blue, my colour, the colour of hope, said Rhapsody impressively. He goes well with the general colour scheme, said Sicily, 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 put on my newest frock and my best diamonds on purpose, and I shall be mortified to death if he doesn't see them. There, pouted Roddy, 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 Rodney. They have chased cold tastes. You're 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 Rodney, 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 blonde and 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 Sicily. His appearance caused a slight buzz of recognition among the audience, and if Joville had cared to make inquiry of his neighbours, he might have learned that this decorated and obviously important personage was the redoubtable von Kaval, 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 air as 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 a 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 troop of performing wolves was presented to the public. Joville had encountered wolves in North Africa deserts and in Siberian forest and world. 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 law had grown up round them through the ages, among 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 musical 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, all humour, and forthwith retired from the trade. Some day, Yovill reflected, the rights of the monopoly might expire, and new business become available for the knock-about 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 a 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 in a big retail establishment, and sparkled with illusions which might fitly have been described as suggestive. At any rate, they appeared to suggest meanings to the audience, quite as clearly as Gauler Musselford'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 opportunally 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 orchestras struck up the familiar air, and in a few moments the smart errand boy, transformed thou 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 Gauler Musselford debut, and the house settled itself down to yawn and fidget and chatter for ten or twelve minutes while the troupe of talented Japanese jugthers 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 even toilets had already made their appearance in the imperial box. Now, though it was observable in that quarter a slight commotion, an unobtrusive reshuffling and receding, and then every eye in the suddenly quiet semi-darkened house focused 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 program and her massive bangles. The evidence of her triumph did not need staring at. Chapter 9 An Evening To Be Remembered To the uninitiated or unappreciative, the dancing of Gaul and Musselford did not seem widely different from much that had been exhibited a foretime 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 Gaul, 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 reclaiming her success, swelled the exaggerated enthusiasm of the fairly numerous art-satellites who were 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 favour's first night-audience was determined to set the seal of its approval on the suggestion-dances, and a steady role 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 Rhapsody Pantrill 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 Marle, who had somehow wriggled herself into Cicely's box. As Joville, from the back of his gallery, watched Gauler running and ricocheting about the stage, looking rather like a wag-tail 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 bitter atinge came to his thoughts, as he saw the bouquets being handed up, thoughts of the brave old Dowager down at Torreywood, 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 granddaughter 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 ribboned, the tribute rendered by Caesar to the things that were Caesar's. The new chapter of the fater comply had been written that night and written well. The audience poured slowly out with the triumphant music of Jankovius' Kaiser Wilhelm march, played by the orchestra as a happy inspiration, peeling in its ears. "'It has been a great evening, a most successful evening,' said Lady Shalem to Hervon Qual, whom she was conveying in her electric broom to Sicily-Yoville's supper-party. "'An important evening,' she added, choosing her adjectives with deliberation. "'It shall 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. Sicily's party at the porphyry restaurant had grown to imposing dimensions. Everyone whom she 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, Sicily reflected, that the supper was being given at a restaurant and not in Berkshire Street. "'Quite luck all times,' perded the beaming proprietor in Sicily's ear, as the staircase and cloakrooms filled up with a jostling, laughing, throng. The guests settled themselves at four tables, taking their places where chance or fancy led them, latecomers 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. Gaul and Musselford, 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,' Sicily begged of Tony Luton, who had come in late, she and Gerald Drowley have got together in spite of all my efforts, and they're 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. Menteeth Mendelsen, one of the Mendelsen's of Invergordon, as she was wont to describe herself, was proclaiming the glories and subtleties of Gaul as 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 aspect was presented to her by a questioning waiter. The voice of Mr. More Leveramall came across the table, like another seal barking at a greater distance. Roland, he observed, with studied emphasis, has been called la France d'Ajectifino Bene. Miss Musilford deserves to be described as the Queen of Unexpected Movement. "'Oh, I said you heard that,' exclaimed Mrs. Menteeth Mendelsen, to as wide an audience as she could achieve. Ruston has been called. Tell them what you said, Mr. More.' She broke off, suddenly mistrusting her ability to handle a French sentence at the top of her voice. Mr. More repeated his remark. "'Pass it on to the next table,' commanded Mrs. Menteeth Mendelsen. 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 at 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 weekend in her Norfolk cottage. The most charming and delightful old world spot, as you can imagine, clean and quite comfortable, just a nice distance from the sea, and with an easy walk of the broads, the very place for the children, we'd brought everything for a four-day stay and meant to have a really delightful time. And then on Sunday morning we found that someone had left the spring-head 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 around. So we had to come away then and there, now. What do you say to that? Ah, that a lineage 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 similar nature which had befallen her three years ago in Argyleshire, and now the opportunity had gone. She turned beroastly to the consolations of a tongue salad. At the centre-table the excellent Vontolle led a chorus of congratulation and compliment, to which Gaulle listened with an air of polite detachment, much as the Sheik al-Islam might receive the homage of a Wesleyan conference. To a close observer it would have seen 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, you know. I am looking forward to tomorrow 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 the laughter of a 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 just have had 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 aeration 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 Drowley had been watching and waiting. The moment that the Italian enthusiast had dropped back into his seat, amid a rattle of hand-clapping and wrapping of forks and knives on the tables, Drowley sprang to his feet, pushed his chair well away, as for a long separation, and begged to endorse what had been so 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 Peter Kinn 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 Gaul as dancing, and bestowed on it such loud datory remarks as he had left over. Drawing his chair once again into his immediate neighbourhood, he sat down, a glow 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, and felt I must tell you that, and also say how much I enjoyed Miss Musselford's dancing. Tony Luton cheered wildly, that's a clever 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 Drowley joined Lady Peach in the unfavourable opinion she had formed of that irrepressible youth. Ronnie, on whom Sicily kept a solicitor's eye, showed no sign of any intention of falling in love with Gaula. He was more profitably engaged in paying court to the Gryffin Von Dolb, 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, indeed, I will come and hear you play, as I did I promise, said the Gryffin, that 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 task, old woman. I am passionate at the 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, so out of being a reigning Prince, it 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 all that is 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 Ronny, who was rather out of his depth, where politics were concerned. Ube Al, said the graph in with emphasis, if quiver, I do not know what he 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 was not a case of socialism or suicide among them. The younger generation have no digestions for 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 in Berlin and let ours don't suit my bare of life. Ronny bent low over the graph in'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 graph in and Ronny, and she has 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. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of When William Came by Sarky This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org. Reading by Andy Minter When William Came by Sarky Chapter 10 Some Reflections and a Tay Dayan Sicily 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 Tay Dayan service. The 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 Grefin Von Tollb were going to be a power in the London world for a very long time to come. Ebon Kvaal, 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, door-mouse-like Grefin 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 could 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 Grefin 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 would open 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 recognized 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 affected in another way. The conquerors might partially Germanize London, but on the other hand, if the thing was skillfully 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 or conservative centre might stand as a ballwork against the Junkerdum socialism of continental Germany. So Cicely reasoned with herself, in a fashion induced perhaps by an earlier apprenticeship to the reading of 19th century articles, in which the possible political and racial developments of various countries were examined and discussed, and put away in the pigeonholes 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 intrigue 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 overrating 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 daydream remained, however, as daydreams 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. Sicily 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 Orenberg 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, Sicily 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 Sicily. 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 Dryly. The name Menteeth Mendelson struck me as a particularly happy obliteration of racial landmarks. Sicily 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 is useful as an advertising agent to anyone who rubs her the right way. She'll be invaluable in proclaiming the merits of Gaul's performance to all and sundry. That's why I invited her. She'll probably lunch today at the Hotel Cecil, and everyone sitting within a hundred yards of her table will hear what an emotional education they can get by going to see Gaul a dance at the caravansary. 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 Sicily. Gaul gets quite good notices on the whole, doesn't she? The one that took my fancy was the one in the standard, said Yeovil, picking up the 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 Musselford'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 Musselford adorns, and it would be un-gallant 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 Musselford has abandoned her own private life in an unveiling 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 lifetime, or rather half a youth time, is a much more satisfactory allowance. The standard is prejudiced, said Sicily. Some of the other papers are quite enthusiastic. The dawn gives her a column and a quarter of notice, nearly all of it complementary. It says the report of her famous 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 Joville, but Shalem is a managing director on it, and one of its biggest shareholders. Gaul as 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 Gaul. Find a way, added Joville, talking of Gaul, and going down to Toriwood one day next week. To Toriwood, exclaimed Sicily, the turn 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 Sicily. I fancy she's 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 Joville. It is a sad old life that's 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, is used to seem as though she could never grow old, as if she would die standing up with some unfinished command on her lips. Now, I suppose, her tragedy is that she has grown old, bitterly old, and cannot die. Sicily 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 Gaula to her, if I were you. It would not have occurred to me to drag her name into our conversation, said Joville coldly, but in any case the accounts of her dancing performance for her reached Torreywood through the newspapers, also the record of your racially blended supper-party. Sicily said nothing. She knew that by last night's affair she had definitely identified her 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 severings of friendship were to be looked for after any great and violent change in state affairs. It was Joville'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 then his political malaise in the absorbing distraction of field sports. The visit to Torreywood was a misfortune. It might just turn the balance in the undesired direction. Only a few weeks of late summer and early morning remained before the hunting season, and its preparations would be at hand, and Joville 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 Torreywood was a graceful attention on Joville's part to an old friend. There was no decent ground on which it could be opposed. If the influence of that visit came a thwart Joville'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 Joville turned once more to an item of news in the morning's papers that had already arrested his attention. The Empyreo of Clarung on the subject of military service was to be made public in the course of the day. Chapter 11 The Tea Shop Joville wandered down Piccadilly that afternoon in a spirit of restlessness and expectancy. The long-awaited Auf Clarung, dealing with the new law of military service, had not yet appeared. At any moment he might meet the horse-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 word and security of the streets seemed to Joville 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, fear and loss of life. The Green Park end of Piccadilly was a changed and in some respects a lively a thoroughfare than that which Joville 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 Constantinople. Gorgeous turkey carpets were spread over the wide entrance steps, and boys in Circassian and Anatolian costumes hung about the doors, or dashed forth in unoriental haste to carry such messages as the telephone was unable to transmit. Picture-esque sellers of Turkish delight, atta of roses and brasswork 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, hewed 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 and on 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 gravel 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. Yovill 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 café, converting the long alley into a sort of promenade tea garden, flanked on one side by a line of haberdasher's perfumers and jeweller's show windows. The patrons of the café 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 crevats 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, the 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 Matta, New York Herald, Béon in a tag-a-blat, and a host of crudely coloured illustrated papers, embodying the hard-worked wit of a world legion of comic artists. Yovill 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 byways he reached Hanover Square, and thence made his way into Oxford Street. There was no commotion of activity to be noticed yet among the news boys. The posters still concerned themselves with the earthquake in Hungary, varied with references to the health of the King of Romania and a motor accident in South London. Yovill 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 dominos on the marble-topped tables. A clean, wholesome smell of tea and coffee made itself felt through 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 a refreshment and recreation. Yovill 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 Yovill 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 Carvesfoot jelly instead of the pot of china tea he had asked for, Yovill 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. Yovill had seen the same sort of thing done on the musical comedy stage, and done rather differently. The Kenu tell me, sir, is the imperial announcement out yet? Asked the young clergyman after a brief scrutiny of his neighbour. There, I've been waiting about for the last half hour on the lookout for it, said Yovill. The special edition's ought to be out now. Then he added, I have only just lately come back 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've seen something of what one can call the upper, or pretend you're eight, 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? A bedly, said the young cleric, a bedly 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 someone to blame for what has happened. They blame the politicians. They blame the leisure classes. In an indirect way I believe they blame the church. Certainly their 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 the 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 school-board child and its parents. No school-board 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 school boys and private school boys 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 birth and our seed were of those for whom there is no condemnation. If they were punished it was for faults that now they never committed. Naturally the grown-up generation of births and seeds, the voters and householders, do not realize, 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. Now they're bitter. They're 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 unclurgemen. 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 affection. Among the poorest and most matter of fact, for whom the name of no public man, politician or philanthropist, stands out with any special 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 Anne-Exante'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 Yorwell. 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 rarely drifting to the bed through the good qualities in them. A clean combative strain in their blood and a natural turn for adventure made the ordinary anemic 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 afterlife when steadiness was wanted. The only adventure that their surroundings offered them had been the adventure of practicing mildly criminal misdeeds without getting landed in reformatries 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-well in their natures. And now, have you ever seen the prison yard with that walk round and round and round between gray walls under a blue sky? Yovil 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. They have had hell in my heart sometimes when I have come in touch with cases like those. I suppose you're thinking that I'm a strange sort of parson. I was just defining you in my mind, said Yovil, as a man of God, with an infinite tendency for little devils. The clergyman flushed. Rather a fine episode 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 into the strong young face with its suggestion of a fighting prior of bygone days, more marked than ever, Yovil mentally agreed that he could not. I have learnt one thing in life, continued the young man, and that his peace is not for this world. Peace is what God gives us when he takes us into his rest. Beat your sword into a plowsher 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 word of the street traffic. Special military service, special! The young clergyman sprang up 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 prescript 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, and then handed the paper to Yovil, and left without a word. Beneath the caught-lipper lightness 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 withdrawing 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. Jovel 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 marshal trappings, the swaggering joy of life, the comradeship of camp and barracks, the hard discipline of drill-yard and fatigue duty, the long-century watchings, the trench digging, forced marches, wound, 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 Joval returned to Berkshire Street. Sicily 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 Plasi 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 an unathletic boy into the podgy, unhealthy-looking man, did little to weaken the tradition. Plasi 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 Storr 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 valet 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 Sicily, feeling that she was expected to comment on this tremendous announcement. One gets tired of everything, said Plasi, 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 valet de parme and rosewood. I never thought it possible that I could ever tire of John Quills, and now I simply won't have one in the house. Oh, the scene the other day, because someone brought some John Quills into the house. I'm afraid I was dreadfully rude, but I rarely couldn't help it. He could talk like this through a long summer day or long winter evening. Jovel 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 pommeled 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 tell me you'll find a copy of it in every classroom 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 plaza profoundly miserable. N of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of When William Came by Sarky Chapter 12 The Traveling Companions The train bearing Jovel on his visit to Toriwood slared and rattled westward through the hazy dreamland of an English summer landscape. Seen from the train windows, the stark bearer glinnus of the metal 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 ribbon of rank verger, threading the mellow green of the fields. On the stream banks, more hens 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 treeline 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 straw-yard and farm-buildings would slide into view. Heavy dairy-cattle, rowan and skew-bold and dappled, stood near the gates, drowsily resentful of insect stings, and bunched up companies of ducks halted, in seeming a resolution between the charms of the horse-bond and the alluring neighbourhood of the farm-kitchen. Away by the banks of some rushing mill-stream, in a setting of cops and cornfield, a village might be guessed at, just a hint of red roof, grey wreath, 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 faraway coining of rooks. It was a land where it seemed as if it must be always summon, and generally afternoon, a land where bees hummed among the wild-time, 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-tunneled 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. Joville 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 in-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 Joville. Then he added the question, Are you German? No, a Hungarian, said the other. And you, you are English, he asked. I have been much in England, but I am from Russia, said Joville, 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. I 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 clocking noises at the roof of his voice, like a hen calling to a brood of roving chickens. As it goes 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 or ice fields and a tropical sea, the people once 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 two so eyes of the bull-guards, a poor herd of Zapideakh-ridden peasants, with a few students scattered in exile in Bucharest and Odessa, who shot up in one generation to be an armed and aggressive nation with history in its hands. They English saw these things happening around them, and with a war-cloud growing blacker and bigger and always more threatening on the old threshold, they sat down to grow soft and peaceful. They grew soft and accommodating in all things, in religion. In religion, said Jovel. In religion, yes, said his companion emphatically, they had come to look on to Christ as a sort of amiable elder brother, whose letters from aboard were verse-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 a good example to the servants. They were tired of their faith, but they were not virile enough to become real pagans. Their dancing forms were good young men who treat morris dances and late health foods, and believed in a sort of socialism, which made for the greatest dullness of the greatest number. You will find plenty of them still if you go into what remains of social London. Jovel gave a grunt of acquiescence. They grew soft in their political ideas, continued the unsparing critic. For the old insular beliefs of all the foreigners for devils and rogues, they substituted another belief, equally grounded in 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 drain increased long cherished schemes of national policy and hostile expansion if he came over on a holiday, and was asked out of country houses, and so on the Stennis Court, and the Oak Garden, and the younger children. Listen, I once heard it solemnly stated at an after-dinner debate in some liscary 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 dilettantes. It was an insular lack of insights that worked the mischief, or some of the mischief. We in Hungary feel if too much cheek by job with our racial neighbours to have many illusions about them. Austrians, Romanian, 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 roads, but it does keep us from going soft. 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 Joville, 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 onto the platform. His place was taken by a large, loose-limbed man, with the florid face and big, staring eyes, and an immense array of fishing-basket rod, flycases, 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 Joville. This time Joville 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 Joville, we have to travel with them, as partners in the same state concern, and not by any means a predominant partner, either. Oh, that will soon write itself, said the other, with loud assertiveness. That will write itself damn soon. Nothing in politics writes itself, said Joville. Things have to be righted, which is a different matter. What do you mean? said the fisherman, who did not like to have his assertions taken up and shaken into shape. We have given the 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 yours. We'll be that right enough, said the fisherman. We mean business this time. The last war wasn't a war. There 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. Joville privately doubted if he ever heard anything but his own opinions. It tends 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. Joville 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 a fortnight in Paris. It isn't the past we've got to think of. It's the future, said Joville. Other maritime powers had pasts to look 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. Ah, sea sovereignty hasn't slipped from us and won't do neither. There's a 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 Joville, 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 have lost. Against the zeppelin air fleet and the dreadnought sea squadrons, and the new Galba House 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 Joville 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 that he's 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 were to talk all day. Fact is, I'm 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. Thordioville, sadly. So many Patriots, and so little Patriotism. CHAPTER XIII TORRYWOOD 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 wall-flowers and wyandots were the prevailing influences of the stationmaster'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 whisky advertisements. The stationmaster, 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 stationmaster of a tiny railway town in Siberia, who had held him in long and rather intelligent converse on the poetical merits and demerits of Shelly, and he wondered what the result would be if he were to engage the English official in a discussion on Mermontov, or, for the matter of that, on Shelly. 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 dog cart with a pair of the famous Toriwood Blue Roans. It was an agreeable variation in modern locomotion to be met at a station with high-class horse-flesh, 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 beaches and dark pines. Toriwood was not a stately, reposeful-looking house. It lay amid the sleepy landscape like a couched watchdog with prick-tears and wakeful eyes. Built somewhere about the last years of Dutch Williams' 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 hailed and figures of Diana pursuing a hound-pressed stag, successive squires and lords of Toriwood had walked to and fro with their friends, watching the thunder-clouds 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 state-craft and political combat strong in their veins, and many oft-recurring names had echoed under those wakeful-looking casements, names spoken in anger or exaltation or murmured in fear and anxiety. Bollingbrook, 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 coachmen 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 Joville's feet, sending up little shards 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 rones what speed really was. The laughing-eyed young groom disentangled the puppy from between Joville'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 vigor and youth and pride of life that Joville had seen crystallized 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 Greymartin, had for more than half a century been the ruling spirit at Torreywood. 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 townhouse, or down at Torreywood 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 labored 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-cairing 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 call l'air de fait. 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 langer 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 an old heroic challenge, for she had always dreamt 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 Elinor, Dowager, Lady Greymartin, a shadow amid the young red-blooded life at Toriwood, 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-paneled gallery, where generations of muscle-feds 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 Toriwood possessed to be in considered a show-place. The third earl of Greymartin had collected rare and interesting birds, somewhere about the time when Gilbert White was penning the last of his deathless letters, and his successes 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 rock-wood shelves accommodated the birds whose natural expression of movement was on the wing. Quails and franklins 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. Chuffs, ravens, and loud-throated gulls occupied sections of a vast rockery, and bright, huge Chinese ponderans and delicately stepping egrets waded among the waterlilies of a marble terrace 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 the 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. Before concage is empty, said Lady Grey Martin, pointing to a large wired dome that towered high above the other enclosures, I let the Lana 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, Mary. I must die in my cage. I haven't the strength to fight. Age is a very real and cruel thing, though we may shudderize 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, Mary, you are young. You can fight. Are you going to be a fighter or the very humble servant of the fader comply? I shall never be the servant of the fader comply, said Yeovil. I loathe it. As to fighting, one must first find out what weapons 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, Mary, 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 Beta Comply. 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, Mary, 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 onto the stone-flagged terrace. The terrace, from which a former Lady Grey Martin had watched the twinkling bonfires that told of Waterloo. Yeovil said good-bye to her as she stood there, a one 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 Tory Wood, a lone grey building in the midst of the sleeping landscape. An old pleading voice was still ringing in his ears. Imperious and yet full on 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 shame-faced 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 did not 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 wildfowl were calling. He had not reckoned that death evaded and held off by the doctor's 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 Joville knew on which side his choice would incline.