I never suspected Malcolmson of the cheap kind of military ardour which shows itself in the girding on of swords after the hour of danger is past. He is the kind of man who likes taking risks, and I have not the slightest doubt that if he had really known beforehand that the Government was “plotting” to invade Ulster he would have been found entrenched, with a loaded rifle beside him, on the north bank of the Boyne. What I did think, when he left London suddenly to place himself at the head of his men, was that he had been a little carried away by the excitement of the times; that he was moved, as many people are, when startling events happen, to do something, without any very distinct idea of what is to be done. But even that suspicion wronged Malcolmson. Either he or some one else had devised an effective counterplot; effective considered as a second act in a comic opera. Perhaps I ought not to say comic opera. There is a certain reasonableness in the schemes of every comic opera. Our affairs in the early part of 1914 were moving through an atmosphere like that of “Alice in Wonderland.” The Government was a sort of Duchess, affecting to regard Ulster as the baby which was beaten when it sneezed because it could if it chose thoroughly enjoy the pepper of Home Rule. The Opposition, on the other hand, with its eye also on Ulster, kept saying in tones of awestruck warning, “Beware the Jabberwock, my son.” Malcolmson seemed to be a kind of White Knight, lovable, simple-minded, chivalrous, but a little out of place in the world.
However, Malcolmson and his friends, considered as characters in “Alice in Wonderland,” were effective, far more effective than the poor White Knight ever was. They bought a lot of guns somewhere, perhaps in Hamburg. They hired a ship and loaded her with the guns. They sailed her into Larne Harbour and said to the Government, “Now, come on if you dare.”
The Government, having previously issued a solemn proclamation forbidding the importation of arms into Ireland, took up the attitude of Mr. Winkle and said it was just going to begin. It rolled up its sleeves and clenched its fists and said for the second time and with considerable emphasis that it was just going to begin, Malcolmson danced about, coat off, battle light in eye, and kept shouting: “Come on!” The Government, taking off its collar and tie, said: “Just you wait till I get at you.”
Gorman took a sane, though I think incorrect, view of the situation.
“The English people,” he said, “are hopeless fools. It’s almost impossible to deal with them. They are actually beginning to believe that Ulster is in earnest.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s only fair. They’ve been believing that you’re in earnest for quite a long time now. Ulster ought to have its turn.”
Gorman, though a politician, is essentially a just man. He admitted the truth of what I had said. He went further. He admitted that Malcolmson’s coup was exceedingly well conceived.
“It’s just the sort of thing,” he said, “which appeals to Englishmen. Reason is wasted on them.”
“Don’t be too hard on the English,” I said. “It’s the same everywhere in the world. Government through the people, of the people, by, with, from, to and for the people, is always unreasonable.”
“It’s the theatrical which pays,” said Gorman. “I didn’t think those fellows in Belfast had brains enough to grasp that fact, but apparently they have. I must say that this gun-running performance of theirs is good. It has the quality which Americans describe as ‘punch.’ It has stirred the popular imagination. It has got right across the footlights. It has fetched the audience.”
“Awkward situation for you,” I said.
“We’ll have to do something,” said Gorman.
“Arrest the ringleaders? Imprison Malcolmson?”
“Lord, no. We may be fools, but we’re not such fools as that.”
“Still,” I said, “he’s broken the law. After all, a party like yours in close alliance with the Government of the country must do something to maintain the majesty of the law.”
“Law be damned,” said Gorman. “What the devil does law matter to us or the Government either? What we’ve got to consider is popular opinion.”
“And that,” I said, “seems to be setting against you. According to the theory of democracy as I understand it, you’re bound to go the way popular opinion is blowing you. You can’t, without gross inconsistency, start beating to windward against it.”
“Winds sometimes change,” said Gorman.
“They do. This one has. It was all in your favour a fortnight ago. Now, what with your ‘plot’ and this really striking little episode in Larne——”
“The art of government,” said Gorman, “consists in manipulating the wind, making it blow the way it’s wanted to. What we’ve got to do is to go one better than the Ulster men.”
“Ah,” I said, “they imported rifles. You might land a shipload of large cannons. Is that the idea?”
“They needn’t necessarily be real cannons. I don’t think our funds would run to real cannons. Besides, what good would they be when we had them? But you’ve got the main idea all right. Our game is to pull off something which will startle the blessed British public, impress it with the fact that we’re just as desperate as the other fellows.”
“What about the police?” I said. “The police have always had a down on your side. It’s a tradition in the force.”
“The police aren’t fools,” said Gorman. “They know jolly well that any policemen who attempted to interfere with our coup, whatever it may be, would simply be dismissed. After all, we’re not doing any harm. We’re not going to shoot any one. We’re simply going to influence public opinion. Every one has a right to do that. By the way, did I mention that my play is being revived? Talking of public opinion reminded me of it. It had quite a success when it was first put on.”
Gorman is charming. He never sticks to one subject long enough to be really tiresome.
“I’m delighted to hear it,” I said. “I hope it will do even better this time.”
“It ought to,” said Gorman. “We’ve got a capital press agent, and, of course, my name is far better known than it was. It isn’t every day the public gets a play written by a Member of Parliament.”
“Where is it to be produced?” “The Parthenon. Good big house.”
The Parthenon is one of the largest of the London Music Halls. Gorman’s play was, I suppose, to take its place in the usual way between an exhibition of pretty frocks with orchestral accompaniment and an imitation of the Russian dancers.
“I shall be there,” I said, “on the first night. You can count on my applause.”
It occurred to me after Gorman left me that the revival of his play offered me an excellent opportunity of entertaining the Aschers. Ascher had been exceedingly kind to me in giving me letters of introduction to all the leading bankers in South America. Mrs. Ascher had been steadily friendly to me. I owed them something and had some difficulty about the best way of paying the debt. I did not care to ask them to dinner in my rooms in Clarges Street. My landlord keeps a fairly good cook, and I could, I daresay, have bought some wine which Ascher would have drunk. But I could not have managed any kind of entertainment afterwards. I did not like to give them dinner at a restaurant without taking them on to the theatre; and the Aschers are rather superior to most plays. I had no way of knowing which they would regard as real drama. The revival of Gorman’s play solved my difficulty. I knew that Mrs. Ascher regarded him as an artist and that Ascher had the highest respect for his brilliant and paradoxical Irish mind. After luncheon I took a taxi and drove out to Hampstead. I owed a call at the house in any case and, if Mrs. Ascher happened to be at home, I could arrange the whole matter with her in the way that would suit her best.
Mrs. Ascher was at home. She was in the studio, a large bare room at the back of the house. Gorman was with her.
I saw at once that Mrs. Ascher was in a highly emotional condition. I suspected that Gorman had been talking to her about the latest wrong that had been done to Ireland, his Ireland, by the other part of Ireland which neither he nor Mrs. Ascher considered as Ireland at all. On the table in the middle of the room there was a little group on which Mrs. Ascher had been at work earlier in the day. A female figure stood with its right foot on the neck of a very disagreeable beast, something like a pig, but prick-eared and hairy. It had one horn in the middle of its forehead. The female figure was rather well conceived. It was appealing, with a sort of triumphant confidence, to some power above, heaven perhaps. The prick-eared pig looked sulky.
“Emblematic,” said Gorman, “symbolical.”
“The Irish party,” I said, “trampling on Belfast.”
“The spirit of poetry in Ireland,” said Mrs. Ascher, “defying materialism.”
“That,” I said, “is a far nicer way of putting it.”
I took another look at the spirit of poetry. Mrs. Ascher was evidently beginning to understand Ireland. Instead of being nude, or nearly nude, as spirits generally are, this one was draped from head to foot. In Ireland we are very particular about decency, and we like everything to have on lots of clothes.
“But now,” said Mrs. Ascher, tragically, “the brief dream is over. Materialism is triumphant, is armed, is mighty.”
I looked at Gorman for some sort of explanation.
“I’ve just been telling Mrs. Ascher,” he said, “about the gun-running at Larne.”
“The mailed fist,” said Mrs. Ascher, “will beat into the dust the tender shoots of poesy and all high imaginings; will crush the soul of Ireland, and why? Oh, why?”
“Perhaps it won’t,” I said. “My own idea is that Malcolmson doesn’t mean to use those guns aggressively. He’ll keep quite quiet unless the soul of poetry in Ireland goes for him in some way.”
“We can make no such compromise,” said Mrs. Ascher. “Art must be all or nothing, must be utterly triumphant or else perish with uncontaminated soul.”
“The exclusion of Ulster from the scope of the Bill,” said Gorman, “is the latest proposition; but we won’t agree to it.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s your affair, not mine. I mean to stay in London and keep safe; but I warn you that if the spirit of poesy attempts to triumph utterly over Malcolmson he’ll shoot at it. I know him and you don’t. You think he’s a long-eared pig, but that ought to make you all the more careful. Pigs are noted for their obstinacy.”
“What we’ve got to do,” said Gorman, “is devise some way of countering this new move. Something picturesque, something that newspapers will splash with big headlines.”
I do not think that Mrs. Ascher heard this. She was looking at the upper part of the window with a sort of rapt, Joan of Arc expression of face. I felt that she was meditating lofty things, probably trying to hit on some appropriate form of self-sacrifice.
“I shall go among the people,” she said, “your people, my people, for I am spiritually one of them. I shall go from cottage to cottage, from village to village, walking barefooted along the mountain roads, dressed in a peasant woman’s petticoat. They will take me for one of themselves and I shall sing war songs to them, the great inspiring chants of the heroes of old. I shall awake them to a sense of their high destiny. I shall set the young men’s feet marching, thousands and thousands of them. I shall fill the women’s hearts with pride.”
Then, for the first and only time since I have known him, Gorman’s patience gave way. I do not blame him. The thought of Mrs. Ascher as an Irish peasant, singing street ballads outside public houses, would have upset the temper of Job.
“That’s all very well,” he said, “but the other people have the guns.”
“We must have guns, too,” said Mrs. Ascher, “and shining swords and long spears tipped with light. Buy guns.”
With a really impressive gesture she dragged the rings from the fingers, first of one hand, then of the other, and flung them on the ground at Gorman’s feet. Even when working in her studio Mrs. Ascher wears a great many rings.
“Buy. Buy,” she said.
She unclasped the necklace which she wore and flung it down beside the rings. It was a pearl necklace, but not by any means the handsomest pearl necklace she owned.
“More,” she said, “you must have more.”
She pranced out of the room, stepping high, like an actress taking a part in one of Shakespeare’s plays or a well-bred carriage horse.
“Gorman,” I said, “you’re not going to take her wedding ring, are you? I don’t think you ought to. Ascher’s really fond of her and I’m sure he wouldn’t like it.”
“I wish to goodness,” said Gorman, “that she wouldn’t behave in this wild way. If she wants to subscribe to the party funds why doesn’t she write a cheque instead of shying jewellery at me? I should certainly be arrested on suspicion if I went to try and pawn those things. Nobody would believe that she gave them to me.”
He picked up the rings as he spoke and laid them in a row on the table.
“If we don’t get her stopped,” he said, “she’ll have everybody laughing at us.”
“Laughing at you, Gorman, not at me. I’ve nothing to do with the poetic soul of Ireland. It’s your property.”
“The English have no real sense of humour,” said Gorman.
“They’ve got quite enough to see this joke,” I said. “An owl would giggle if it saw Mrs. Ascher going barefoot about Ireland and you following her round carrying a long spear tipped with light in your hand.”
“We must stop her,” said Gorman. “Oh, damn! Here she is again.”
Mrs. Ascher came in carrying a large morocco leather covered box, her jewel case, I suppose. She was a little calmer than when she left us but still very determined.
“Take this,” she said. “Take all there is in it. I give it gladly—to Ireland.”
Gorman looked at the jewel case and then pulled himself together with an effort.
“Mrs. Ascher,” he said, “your gift is princely, but——”
“I give it freely,” said Mrs. Ascher.
“And I shall receive it,” said Gorman, “receive it as the gift of a queen, given with queenly generosity. I shall receive it when the hour comes, but the time is not yet.”
Gorman rising to an occasion is a sight which fills me with admiration. That promise of a time to come was masterly. I should never have thought of it; but of course it came more easily to Gorman than it would to me. He is a politician and accustomed to draw cheques on rather distant futures.
“Our people,” said Gorman, “are as yet unprepared, not ready to face the crisis of their destiny. Keep these.” Gorman laid his hand on the jewel box as if giving it a sort of benediction, consecrating its contents to the service of Ireland. “Keep these as a sacred trust until the hour is upon us.”
I very nearly applauded. Mrs. Ascher seemed a little disappointed.
“Why not now?” she said. “Why should we delay any longer?”
“We must trust our leaders,” said Gorman. “They will tell us when the time for action comes.”
That would have been good enough for any ordinary constituency. It did not satisfy Mrs. Ascher. I saw her looking a little doubtfully at Gorman. She is a curious woman. She uses the very finest kind of language herself; but she always gets suspicious when any one else talks about sacred trusts and things of that kind. The fact is, I suppose, that she means what she says, lives, as well as talks, finely. Gorman and I do not—quite.
I felt that Gorman needed and deserved a little help. He had done well enough so far, but he scarcely understood how near to the edge of Mrs. Ascher’s credulity he had gone.
“What Mr. Gorman means,” I said, “is that you must have men, organised, you know, and drilled, before you can give them guns. Just at present there are very few volunteers in Mr. Gorman’s part of Ireland. He’s going to enroll a lot more. When he has them he’ll ask you for a subscription for the gun fund.”
I did not think that Mrs. Ascher was really satisfied. In the light of subsequent events I found out that she certainly was not. But she said no more at the moment and made no further effort to press her jewel case on Gorman. I did not feel that the moment was a good one for giving her the invitation I had planned. It is impossible, without something like indecency, to invite a woman to dinner in a restaurant while she is meditating a barefooted pilgrimage through the wild places of Holy Ireland.
Gorman and I left the house together. I hired a taxi to take us home so that we could talk comfortably.
“Extraordinary woman,” I said.
“Very, very. But don’t let’s talk about her. That was rather a good idea of yours. May be something in it.
“I didn’t know I had an idea,” I said. “Are you sure you’re not mixing me up with Mrs. Ascher? She has lots.”
“Not at all,” said Gorman. “It was you who suggested organising the National Volunteers.”
There was at that time in Ireland a small number of extreme patriots who rather admired Malcolmson because they thought he was going to fight against England, and despised Gorman because they knew he was not. These men had enrolled themselves in a semi-military organisation and called themselves the National Volunteers. Gorman and his friends did their best to suppress them and kept all mention of their existence out of the English papers as far as possible. It surprised me to hear him speak in a casual way of organising these declared enemies of his.
“You can’t do that,” I said. “Those fellows hate you like poison, worse than Malcolmson does. They’re—well, I should call them rebels. They certainly won’t do what you tell them.”
“Oh, yes, they will, if treated properly. My idea is to flood the organisation with reliable men, fellows we can trust. When we’ve got a majority of our own people enrolled we’ll tell them to elect their own leaders, democratic idea. Army choosing its own officers. Sure to catch on.”
“Sure to, and then?”
“Oh, then they’ll elect us. See? Every member of Parliament will be a colonel. We needn’t drill or anything; but there’s nothing to prevent our saying that we have 200,000 trained men. The Ulster fellows have gone no trumps on their 100,000——”
“I should be inclined to say gone No Home Rule.”
Gorman grinned.
“Gone no something,” he said, “and we double them. I expect that will set English opinion swinging round again.”
“It ought to,” I said, “but why bother about all these preliminaries? Why put everybody in Ireland to the trouble of enrolling themselves in a new organisation and electing officers and all that? It’s just as easy to say you have 200,000 trained men before being made a colonel as afterwards.”
“You don’t understand politics,” said Gorman. “In politics there must be a foundation of some sort for every fact. It needn’t be much of a foundation, but there must be some.”
“Hard on the Irish people,” I said, “being put to all that trouble and bother just to make a foundation.”
“Not at all,” said Gorman. “They’ll like it. But I hope to goodness that fanatic woman won’t insist on our buying guns. It would be the devil and all if the fellows I’m thinking about got guns in their hands. You simply couldn’t tell what they’d do. You’ll have to try and keep Mrs. Ascher quiet.”
“I’m going to ask her to dine with me and go to see your play,” I said. “That may distract her mind from guns for a while.”
“You use your influence with her,” said Gorman. “I’ve the greatest belief in influence.”
He has.
That evening I wrote my invitation to the Aschers. They immediately accepted it, expressing the greatest pleasure at the prospect of seeing Gorman’s play again.
I arranged to have dinner at the Berkeley and ordered it with some care, avoiding as far as I could the more sumptuous kinds of restaurant food, and drawing on my recollection of the things Ascher used to eat when Gorman ordered his dinner for him on the Cunard steamer. With the help of the head waiter I chose a couple of wines and hoped that Ascher would drink them. As it turned out he preferred Perrier water. But that was not my fault. No restaurant in London could have supplied the delicate Italian white wines which Ascher drinks in his own house.
We dawdled over dinner and I lengthened the business out as well as I could by smoking three cigarettes afterwards, very slowly. I did not want to reach the Parthenon in time for the musical display of new frocks. I could not suppose that Ascher was interested in seeing a number of young women parading along a platform through the middle of the theatre even though they wore the latest creations of Paris fancy in silks and lingerie. I knew that Mrs. Ascher would feel it her duty to make some sort of protest against the music of the orchestra.
Gorman had told me the hour at which his play might be expected to begin and my object was to hit off the time exactly. Unfortunately I miscalculated and got to the theatre too soon. The last of the young women was waving a well-formed leg at the audience as we entered the box I had engaged. I realised that we should have to sit through a whole tune from the orchestra before the curtain went up again for Gorman’s play. I expected trouble and was pleasantly surprised when none came. Mrs. Ascher had a cold. I daresay that made her slightly deaf and mitigated the torture of the music.
She sat forward in the box and looked round at the audience with some show of interest. The audience looked at her with very great interest. Her clothes that night were more startling than any I have ever seen her wear. A young man in the stalls stared at her for some time, and then, just when I thought he had fully taken her in, bowed to her. She turned to Ascher.
“Who is that?” she said. “The man in the fifth row, three seats from the end, yes, there. He has a lady with him.”
I saw the man distinctly, a well-set-up young fellow with a carefully waxed, fair moustache. The way his hair was brushed and something about the cut of his clothes made me sure that he was not an Englishman. The lady with him was, quite obviously, not a lady in the old-fashioned sense of the word. She seemed to me the kind of woman who would have no scruples about forming a temporary friendship with a man provided he would give her dinner, wine, and some sort of entertainment.
Ascher fumbled for his pince-nez, which he carries attached to a black silk ribbon. He fixed them on his nose and took a good look at the young man.
“Ah,” he said, “my nephew, Albrecht von Richter. You remember him. He dined with us two or three times when we were in Berlin in 1912. I did not know he was in London.”
I somehow got the impression that Ascher was not particularly pleased to see his nephew Albrecht. Ascher was not looking very well. I had not seen him for some time, and I noticed even at dinner that his face was pale and drawn. In the theatre he seemed worse and I thought that the sudden appearance of his nephew had annoyed him. The young man whispered something to his companion and left his seat. The orchestra was still thrashing its way through its tune and there seemed no immediate prospect of the curtain going up.
A few minutes later there was a tap at the door of our box and Von Richter came in. Mrs. Ascher held out her hand to him. He bent over it and kissed it with very pretty courtesy. He shook hands with Ascher who introduced him to me.
“Captain von Richter—Sir James Digby.”
Von Richter bowed profoundly. I nodded.
“Have you been long in London?” said Ascher. “You did not let me know that you were here.”
“I arrived here this afternoon,” said Von Richter, “only this afternoon, at five o’clock.”
He spoke English remarkably well, with no more than a trace of foreign accent.
“I’ve been in Ireland,” he said, “for six weeks.”
“Indeed!” said Ascher. “In Ireland?”
He was looking at his nephew without any expression of surprise, apparently without any suggestion of inquiry; but I could not help noticing that his fingers were fidgeting with the ribbon of his pince-nez. Ascher, as a rule, does not fidget. He has his nerves well under control.
Mrs. Ascher was frankly excited when she heard that Von Richter had been in Ireland.
“Tell me,” she said, “all about Ireland. About the people, what they are saying and thinking.”
“We are all,” I said, “tremendously interested in Irish politics at present.”
“Alas!” said Von Richter, “and I can tell you nothing. My business was dull. I saw very little. I was in Dublin and Belfast, not in the picturesque and beautiful parts of that charming country. I was buying horses. Oh, there is no secret about it. I was buying horses for my Government.”
It is certainly possible to buy horses in Dublin and Belfast; but I was slightly surprised to hear that Von Richter had not been further afield. Any one who understood horse-buying in Ireland would have gone west to County Galway or south to County Cork.
The band showed signs of getting to the end of its tune. Von Richter laid his hand on the door of the box.
“Shall I see you to-morrow?” said Ascher.
“Unfortunately,” said Von Richter, “I leave London early to-morrow morning. Back to Berlin and the drill yard.” He kissed Mrs. Ascher’s hand again. “We poor soldiers have to work hard.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “you can join us at the Carlton after the play. Mr. and Mrs. Ascher have promised to have supper there with me. If you are not engaged———?”
I glanced at the lady in the stalls. I was not going to ask her to supper.
“I shall be delighted,” said Von Richter. “I have no engagement of any importance.”
The lady in the stalls was evidently the sort of lady who could be dismissed without trouble.
“Good,” I said, “we leave directly this play is over; but you may want to see the rest of the performance. The dancing is good I am told. Join us at the Carlton as soon as you’re tired of this entertainment.”
Von Richter slipped away. The curtain went up almost immediately.
Gorman came in to receive our congratulations as soon as his play was over. I asked him to join our supper party but he had an engagement of his own, a supper at the Savoy. I do not blame him. The lady who acted the principle part in his play had been very charming. She deserved any supper that Gorman could give her.
We reached the Carlton very early, long before the rush of supper parties began. Von Richter joined us as we sat down at the table. He was an intelligent, agreeable young man with plenty of tact. He listened and was apparently interested while Mrs. Ascher poured out her hopes and fears for Ireland’s future. When she came, as she did in the end, to her own plan of buying guns for the Nationalist Volunteers Von Richter became almost enthusiastic.
“You Americans,” he said. “You are always on the side of the oppressed. Alone among the nations of the earth you have a pat for the head of the bottom dog.”
Von Richter’s English is not only correct, it is highly idiomatic. Mrs. Ascher bridled with pleasure. It pleased her to think that she was patting the bottom dog’s head. I did not remind her that in the group which she had just modelled the Spirit of Irish Poetry, for whose benefit she intended to buy guns, had got its foot firmly planted on the pig. That animal—and I still believed it to represent Belfast—was the one which a tender-hearted American ought to have patted.
“Perhaps I may be able to assist you,” said Von Richter, “I know something of rifles. That is my trade, you know. If I can be of any help—there is a firm in Hamburg——”
He was glancing at Ascher as he spoke. He wondered, I suppose, how far Ascher was committed to the scheme of arming Gorman’s constituents. But Ascher did not appear to be listening to him. He had allowed me to pour out some champagne for him and sat fingering the stem of his glass without drinking.
No one was eating or drinking much. I proposed that we should leave the supper room and have our coffee in the hall outside. I felt slightly uncomfortable at the turn the conversation was taking. Mrs. Ascher was very much in earnest about Ireland. Von Richter, I suppose, really knew where to buy guns. I entirely agreed with Gorman that the distribution of firearms in Ireland was a most undesirable thing.
“I always think,” I said, “that one of the things to do in London is to watch the people going in and out of the supper room here. There is nothing quite like it anywhere in the world. It is the best example there is of the pride of life, ‘superbia vitae.’ I forget the Greek words at the moment; but a bishop whom I happen to know once told me that they mean the exultation of living. You know the sort of thing—gems and glitter, colour, scent, beauty, stateliness, strength. ‘The pride of heraldry, the pomp of power.’”
I made way for Mrs. Ascher and followed her as she moved among the tables towards the staircase at the end of the room. Von Richter hooked his arm in Ascher’s and spoke a few sentences to him rapidly in German. He spoke without making any attempt to lower his voice. He evidently did not think it likely that any one within earshot, except Ascher, would understand German. We reached the hall and secured comfortable seats, from which we could watch the long procession of men and women which was already beginning to stream towards the supper room. I ordered coffee, brandy and tobacco, cigars for Von Richter and myself, a box of cigarettes for Mrs. Ascher. Ascher refused to smoke and did not touch his brandy.
Our little party divided itself into halves. I do not know how it happened but Von Richter managed to get himself placed beside Mrs. Ascher in such a way that his back was partly turned to me. General conversation became impossible. Von Richter and Mrs. Ascher talked to each other eagerly and somehow seemed to get further away from Ascher and me. They were still discussing the landing of guns in Ireland, in Connaught, I think. After a while I could no longer hear what they said. Ascher began to talk to me.
A party, two young women and one older one with three men behind them, passed us and ascended the staircase to the supper room.
“There is something very fine,” said Ascher, “about the insolence of well-bred Englishwomen. You see how they walk and how they look, straight in front of them. It is not an easy thing to walk well across a long brightly lighted space with many eyes watching.” I am not sure that I like Ascher’s word “insolence.” I recognise the quality which he intended to describe, which is, I think, the peculiar possession of English women of a certain class; but I should not call it insolence.
Another party fluttered past us, a man and a woman.
“There,” said Ascher, “is a French woman. She is Madame de Berthier, the wife of one of the Ministers in the last Government, a very prominent woman in Paris. I know her pretty well, but even if I did not know her I should recognise her as French. You see that she is conscious all the time that she is a woman and therefore that men’s eyes are on her. She does not escape from that consciousness. If a German lady were to pass us we should see that she also is sex conscious; but she would be aware that she isonlya woman, the inferior of the men with her. The Englishwoman does not admit, does not feel, that she has any superiors and she can walk as if she did not care whether people looked at her and admired her or not. Even the American woman cannot or does not do that. She wants to please and is always trying to please. The Englishwoman is not indifferent to admiration and she tries to please if she thinks it worth while. But she has learnt to bear herself as if she does not care; as if the world and all that is in it were hers of right.”
Two men—one of them almost forty years of age, the other much younger—walked slowly up the hall looking to right and left of them. They failed to find the friends whom they sought. The elder spoke a few words and they sat down opposite to us, probably to wait until the rest of their party should arrive. “The men of your English upper classes,” said Ascher, “are physically very splendid, the sons of the women we have been looking at are sure to be that. They possess a curious code of honour, very limited, very irrational, but certainly very fine as far as it goes. And I think they are probably true to it.”
“I should have said,” I replied, “that the idea of honour had almost disappeared, what used to be called the honour of a gentleman.”
“You do not really think that,” said Ascher. “Or perhaps you may. In a certain sense honour has disappeared among your upper classes. It is no longer displayed. To the outsider it is scarcely noticeable. It is covered up by affectation of cynicism, of greed, of selfishness. To pose as cynical and selfish is for the moment fashionable. But the sense of honour—of that singular arbitrary English honour—is behind the pose, is the reality. Look at those two men opposite us. They are probably—but perhaps I offend you in talking this way. You yourself belong to the same class as those men.”
“You do not offend me in the least,” I said. “I’m not an Englishman for one thing. Gorman won’t let me call myself Irish, but I stick to it that I’m not English. Please go on with what you were saying.”
“Those men,” said Ascher slowly, “are probably self indulgent. Their morality—sex morality—is most likely very low. We may suppose that they have many prejudices and very few ideas. They—I do not know those two personally. I take them simply as types of their class. They are wholly indifferent to, even a little contemptuous of art and literature. But if it happened that a duty claimed them, a duty which they recognised, they would not fail to obey the call. I can believe for instance that they would fight, would suffer the incredible hardships of a soldier’s life, would endure pain and would die, without any heroics or fuss or shouting. Men of my class and my training could not do those things without great effort. Those men would do them simply, naturally.”
“Ascher,” I said, “I have a confession to make to you. I understand German. I happen to know the language, learned it as a boy.” Ascher looked at me curiously for a moment. I do not think that he was much surprised at what I said or that my confession made him uneasy.
“Ah! You are thinking of what my nephew said to me as we left the supper room. You heard?”
“Yes,” I said, “I felt like an eavesdropper, but I couldn’t help myself. He spoke quite loudly.”
“And you understood?”
As a matter of fact I had not understood at the moment. Von Richter said very little, and what little he said concerned Ascher’s business and had nothing to do with me. He told Ascher to move very cautiously, to risk as little as possible, to keep the money of his firm within reach for a few months. That, as well as I can remember, was all he said; but he repeated it. “Your money should be realisable at a moment’s notice.”
“You understood?” said Ascher, patiently persistent.
“I don’t understand yet,” I said, “but what you have just said about Englishmen being capable of fighting has put thoughts into my mind. Did Captain von Richter mean——?”
“He meant to warn me,” said Ascher, “that what I have always looked forward to with horror and dread is imminent—a great war. You remember a talk we had long ago in New York; the night we were at the circus and saw the trapeze swingers. Well, if my nephew is right, the whole delicate balance of that performance is going to be upset. There will be a crash, inevitably.”
“And you?”
Ascher smiled faintly.
“For me as well as for the others,” he said. “The fact that my affairs are greater than those of most men will only make my fall the worse.”
“But you have been warned in time.”
“I scarcely needed the warning. I was aware of the danger. My nephew only told me what I knew. His warning, coming from him, an officer who stands high in the German military service—it confirms my fears, no more.”
“But you can save yourself and your business,” I said. “Knowing what is before you, you can—you need not lend money, accept obligations. You can gradually draw out of the stream of credit in which your fortune is involved, get into a backwater for a while. You have time enough. I am expressing myself all wrong; but you know what I mean.”
“I know. And you think I ought to do that?”
“There is no ‘ought’ about it,” I said. “It is the natural thing to do.”
“You were a soldier once. I think you told me so.”
I nodded.
“Suppose,” said Ascher, “that this warning had come to you then, while you were still a soldier. Suppose that you had known what your brother officers did not know, or the men under you, that war was coming, you would have resigned your commission. Is it so?”
“No,” I said, “I shouldn’t.”
“It would have been, from my point of view—for I am a coward—it would have been the natural thing to do.”
“It wouldn’t have been natural to me,” I said. “I couldn’t have done it. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t. I’m not professing to be particularly brave or chivalrous or anything of that sort. But to resign under those circumstances——! Well, one doesn’t do it.”
“Nor do I know why,” said Ascher, “but I cannot do it either. It is, you see, the same thing. I must, of course, go on; just as you would have felt yourself obliged to go on. The warning makes no difference.”
The idea that a banker feels about his business as a soldier does about his profession was new to me. But I understood more or less what Ascher meant. If he had that kind of sense of obligation there was clearly no more to be said about the point.
“And England?” I said. “Is she to be in it?”
“Who knows? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I hope not. The disaster will be far less terrible if England is able to remain at peace.”
“Tell me this,” I said, “or if I am impertinent, say so, and I shall not ask again. What was Captain von Richter doing in Ireland?”
“I do not know. I can only guess.”
“Not buying horses?”
“I do not suppose he went there to buy horses though he may have bought some. He went to see, to learn, to understand. That is what I guess. I do not know.”
“He has probably made up his mind,” I said, “that in the course of the next couple of months England will find herself with her hands full, so full with Irish affairs that it will be impossible for her to act elsewhere. A civil war in Ireland——”
“My nephew,” said Ascher, “is not very clever. He may think that. He is, I believe, an excellent soldier. But if he were a banker I should not employ him to find out things for me. I should not rely on the reports he brought me. He lacks intelligence. Very likely he believes what you have said.”
“But you don’t?”
“No. I do not. I do not believe that Irish affairs will be in such a state that they will determine England’s action. You see I have the privilege of knowing Gorman.”
“You don’t know Malcolmson,” I said, “and he’s a most important factor in the problem. He’s like your nephew, an excellent soldier, but lacking in intelligence. You don’t realise what Malcolmson is capable of.”
“I do not know Colonel Malcolmson personally,” said Ascher. “I am right, am I not, in styling himColonelMalcolmson?”
“Yes. He retired some years ago as Colonel of my old regiment”
“Does a man retire from his loyalty,” said Ascher, “when he retires from his regiment? Will your friend give up his honour because he has given up his command? Will he aid the enemies of England?”
“Of course,” I said, “if you put it to Malcolmson in that way—— He’s a positive fanatic on the subject of loyalty. But he doesn’t know, he doesn’t understand. He hasn’t had the warning that your nephew has just given you.”
“You are an Irishman,” said Ascher, “and you ought to know your countrymen better than I do. But it will surprise me very much if England finds herself hampered by Ireland when the crisis comes.”
It was Von Richter who broke up our party. He pleaded the necessity for early rising next morning as his excuse for going away before the hour at which the law obliges people to stop eating supper in restaurants. I wondered whether he and Mrs. Ascher had made a satisfactory plan for running guns into Galway. According to Ascher it did not make much difference whether the Irish peasants had rifles in their hands or not. It was soothing, though humbling, to feel that, guns or no guns, Volunteers or no Volunteers, Ireland would not matter in the least.