Meanwhile Henry stood about in the lobby, where a greater excitement and buzz of talk than usual went on. Where was Dr. Svensen? The other members of theNorwegian delegation could throw no light on the question. He had dined last night at the Beau Rivage, with the British delegation; he had left that hotel soon after eleven, on foot; he had meant, presumably, to walk back to the Metropole, which stood behind the Jardin Anglais, on the Mont Blanc side. The hall porter at the Metropole asserted that he had never returned there. The Norwegian delegation, not seeing him in the morning, had presumed that he had gone out early; but now the hotel staff declared that he had not spent the night in the hotel.
“He probably thought he would go for a long walk; the night was fine,” Jefferson, who knew his habits, suggested. “Or for a row up the lake. The sort of thing Svensenwoulddo.”
“In that case he's drowned,” said Grattan, who was of a forthright manner of speech. “He's a business-like fellow, Svensen. He'd have turned up in time for the show if he could, even after a night out.”
The next thing was to inquire of the boat-keepers, and messengers were despatched to do this.
“I am afraid it looks rather serious,” remarked a soft, grave, important voice behind Henry's back. “I am pretty intimate with Svensen; I was lunching with him only yesterday, as it happens. He didn't say a word then of any plan for a night expedition, I am afraid it looks sadly like an accident of some sort.”
“Perspicacious fellow,” muttered Jefferson, who did not like Charles Wilbraham.
Henry edged away: neither did he like Charles Wilbraham. He did not even turn his face towards him.
He jostled into his friend the English clergyman, who said, “Ah, Mr. Beechtree. I want to introduce you to Dr. Franchi.” He led Henry by the arm to the corner where the alert-looking ex-cardinal stood, talking with the Spaniard whom Henry had noticed in the lift at the Secretariat buildings.
“Mr. Beechtree, Your Eminence,” said the Reverend Cyril Waring, who chose by the use of this title to show at once his respect for the ex-cardinal, his contempt for the bigotry which had unfrocked him, and hisdisgust at the scandalous tongues which whispered that the reason for his unfrocking had been less heresy than the possession of a wife, or even wives. If Canon Waring had heard these spitefulon-dits, he paid no attention to them; he was a high-minded enthusiast, and knew a gentleman and a scholar when he saw one.
“The correspondent of theBritish Bolshevist,” he added, “and a co-religionist of Your Eminence's.”
The ex-cardinal gave Henry his delicate hand, and a shrewd and agreeable smile.
“I am glad to meet you, Mr. Beechtree. You must come and see me one day, if you will, at my lake villa. It is a pleasant expedition, and a beautiful spot.”
He spoke excellent English with a slight accent. A thousand pities, thought Henry, that such a delightful person should be a heretic—such a heretic as to have been unfrocked. Why, indeed, should any one be a heretic? Atheism was natural enough, but heresy seemed strange. For, surely, if one could believe anything, one could believeeverything. For his part, he believed everything....
Nevertheless, he accepted the invitation with pleasure. It would be a trip, and Henry loved trips, particularly up lakes.
Dr. Franchi, observing the young journalist with approbation, liking his sensitive and polite face, saw it grow suddenly sullen, even spiteful, at the sound of a voice raised in conversation not far from him.
“Perhaps you will do me the honour of lunching with me, M. Kratzky. I have a little party coming, including Suliman Bey....”
M. Kratzky was, in his way, the most deeply and profusely blood-stained of Russians. One of the restored Monarchist government, he it was who had organised and converted the Tche-ka to Monarchist use, till they became in his hands an instrument of perfect and deadly efficiency, sparing neither age, infancy, nor ill-health. M. Kratzky had devised a system of espionage so thorough, of penalties so drastic, that few indeed were safe from torture, confinement,or death, and most experienced all three. One would scarcely say that the White tyranny was worse than the Red had been, or worse than the White before that (one would indeed scarcely say that any Russian government was appreciably worse than any other); but it was to the full as bad, and Kratzky (the Butcher of Odessa, as his nickname was), was its chief tyrant. And here was Charles Wilbraham taking the butcher's blood-stained hand and asking him to lunch. What Mr. Wickham Steed used to feel of those who asked the Bolsheviks to lunch at Genoa in April, 1922, Henry now felt of Charles Wilbraham, only more so. And Suliman Bey too ... a ghastly Turk; for Turk (whatever you might think of Russians)wereghastly; the very thought of them, for all their agreeable manners, turned Henry, who was squeamish about physical cruelty, sick. God, what a lunch party!
“You know our friend Mr. Wilbraham, I expect,” said Dr. Franchi.
“Scarcely,” said Henry. “He wouldn't know me.”
“A very efficient young man. He has that air.”
“He has. But not really very clever, you know. It's largely put on.... I'm told. He likes toseemto know everything ... so I've heard.”
“A common peccadillo.” The ex-cardinal waved it aside with a large and tolerant gesture. “But we do not, most of us, succeed in it.”
“Oh, Wilbraham doesn't succeed. Indeed no. Most people see at once that he is just a solemn ass. That face, you know ... like a mushroom....”
“Ah, that is a Bernard Shaw phrase. A bad play, that, but excellent dialogue.... But he is good-looking, Mr. Wilbraham.”
Henry moodily supposed that he was. “In a sort of smug, cold way,” he admitted.
“E cosa fa tra questo bel giovanotto e quel Charles Wilbraham?” wondered the ex-cardinal, within himself.
Henry left the Salle de la Reformation and went out into the town to look for further light on the mystery. How proud he would be if he should collect more information about it than the other journalists! Than Jefferson, for instance, who was always ahead in these things, interviewing statesmen, getting statements made to him.... No one made statements to Henry; he never liked to ask for them. But he was, he flattered himself, as good as any one else at nosing out news stories, mysteries, and so forth.
Musing deeply, he walked to the ice-cream café, close to the Assembly Hall. There he ordered an ice of mixed framboise, pistachio, and coffee, and some iced raspberry syrup, and sat outside under the awning, slowly enjoying the ice, sucking the syrup through straws, and thinking. He always thought best while eating well too; with him, as with many others, high living and high thinking went together, orwould have, only lack of the necessary financial and cerebral means precluded much practice of either.
While yet in the middle of the raspberry syrup he suddenly lifted his mouth from the straws, ejaculated softly, and laughed.
“It is a possibility,” he muttered. “A possibility, worth following up.... Odder things have happened ... are happening, all the time.... In fact, this is not at all an odd thing....” Decisively he rapped on the table for his bill, paid for his meal, and rose to go, not forgetting first to finish his raspberry syrup.
He walked briskly along the side of the lake to the Molard jetty, where he found amouettein act to start for the other side. How he loved thesemouetterides, the quick rush through blue water, half Geneva on either side, and the narrow shave under the Pont du Mont Blanc. He was always afraid that one day they would not quite manage it, but would hit the bridge; it was a fear of which he could not get rid. He always held his breath as they rushed under the bridge, and let it out in relief as they emergedsafely beyond it. How cheap it was: a lake trip for fifteen centimes! Henry was sorry when they reached the other side. He walked thoughtfully up from the landing stage to the Secretariat, where he ascended to the room of Mr. Wilbraham. Mr. Wilbraham was not, of course, there; he was over at the Assembly Hall. But his secretary was there; a cheerful young lady typing letters with extraordinary efficiency and rapidity.
“Oh,” said Henry, “I'm sorry. I thought Mr. Wilbraham might possibly be here.”
“No,” said the young lady agreeably. “He is over at the Assembly. Will you leave a message?”
Henry laid his hat and cane on a table, and strode about the room. A large pleasant room it was, with a good carpet; the kind of room that Charles Wilbraham would have, and always did have.
“No. No, I'll look in again. Or I'll see him over there this afternoon.” He looked at his watch. “Lunch time. How quickly the morning has gone. It always does; don't you find that? And more sothan usual when it's an exciting morning like this.”
“It is exciting, isn't it. Have they found him yet? I do admire him, don't you?”
“Completely. No, they haven't found him. Mr. Wilbraham says it looks sadly like an accident of some sort.”
She acknowledged his imitation of Mr. Wilbraham's voice with a smile.
“That would be tragic. Svensen, of all the delegates! One wouldn't mind most of them disappearing a bit. Some of them would be good riddances.”
“Well,” said Henry, changing the subject, “ifwe're both going out to lunch, can't we lunch together? I'm Beechtree, of theBritish Bolshevist.”
Miss DorisWembleylooked at Beechtree, rather liked him, and said, “Right. But I must finish one letter first.”
She proceeded with her efficient, rapid, and noisy labours. She did not need to look at the keyboard, she was like that type of knitter who knits the while she gazes into space; she had learnt “Now is the time for all good men to come to the help of the party.”
Henry, strolling round the room, observing details, had time to speculate absently on the wonderful race of typists. He had in the past known many of them well, and felt towards them a regard untouched by glamour. How, he had often thought, they took life for granted, unquestioning, unwondering, accepting, busy eternally with labours they understood so little, performed so well, rattling out their fusillade of notes that formed words they knew not of, sentences that, uncomprehended, yet did not puzzle them or give them pause, on topics which they knew only as occasioning cascades of words. To them one word was the same, very nearly the same, as another of similar length; words had features, but no souls; did they fail to decipher the features of one of them, another of the same dimensions would do. And what commas they wielded, what colons, what semis, what stops! But efficient they were, all the same, for they were usually approximately right, and always incredibly quick. Henry knew that those stenographers who had been taken out to Geneva were, in the main, of a more sophisticated order, ofa higher intellectual equipment. But Charles Wilbraham's secretary was of the ingenuous type. Probably the more sophisticated would not stay with him. A pretty girl she was, with a round brown face, kind dark eyes, and a wide, sweet, and dimpling mouth. Henry, like every one else, liked a girl to be pretty, but, quite unlike most young men, he preferred her to be witty. The beauty of the dull bored him very soon; Henry had his eccentricities. He did not think that Miss Wembley was going to be amusing, but still, he intended to cultivate her acquaintance.
Henry looked at his watch. It was twelve forty-five. “Can't the rest wait?” he said.
“I'm just on done. It's a re-type I'm doing. I spelt parliament with a small p, and Mr. Wilbraham said he couldn't send it, not even if I rubbed it out with the eraser. He said it would show, and it was to the F.O., who are very particular.”
“My God,” Henry ejaculated, in a low yet violent tone, and gave a bitter laugh. His eyes gleamed fiercely. “I can imagine,” he said, with restraint, “thatMr. Wilbraham might be particular. Helooksparticular.”
“Well, he is, rather. But he's quite right, I suppose. Messy letters look too awful. Some men will sign simply anything. I don't like that.... There, now I've done.”
“Come along then,” said Henry rapidly.
The Assembly met again at four o'clock, and proceeded under the Deputy President with the order of the day. But it was a half-hearted business. No one was really interested in anything except the fate of Dr. Svensen, who, it had transpired from inquiry among the boat-keepers, had not taken a boat on the lake last night.
“Foul play,” said the journalist Grattan, hopefully. “Obviously foul play.”
“Ask the Bolshevist refugees,” theTimescorrespondent said with a shrug. For he had no opinion of these people, and believedthem to be engaged in a continuous plot against the peace of the world, in combination with the Germans. TheMorning Postwas inclined to agree, but held that O'Shane, the delegate from the Irish Free State, was in it too. Whenever any unpleasant incident occurred, at home or abroad (such as murders, robberies, bank failures, higher income tax, Balkan wars, strikes, troubles in Ireland, or cocaine orgies), theTimessaid, “Ask the Bolshevists and the Germans,” and theMorning Postsaid, “Ask the Bolshevists and the Germans by all means, but more particularly ask Sinn Fein,” just as theDaily Heraldsaid, “Ask the capitalists and Scotland Yard,” and some eminentlittérateurs, “Ask the Jews.” We must all have our whipping-boys, our criminal suspects; without them sin and disaster would be too tragically diffused for our comfort. Henry Beechtree's suspect was Charles Wilbraham. He knew that he suspected Charles Wilbraham too readily; Wilbraham could not conceivably have committed all the sins of which Henry was fain to believe him guilty. Henry knew this, and kept a guardon his own over-readiness, lest it should betray him into rash accusation. Information; evidence; that was what he had to collect.
The question was, as an intelligent member of the Secretariat pointed out, who stood to benefit by the disappearance of Svensen from the scenes? Find the motive for a deed, and very shortly you will find the doer. Had Svensen a private enemy? No one knew. Many persons disapproved of the line he was apt to take in public affairs: he wanted to waste money on feeding hungry Russians (“No one is sorrier than my tender-hearted nation for starving persons,” the other delegates would say, “but we have no money to send them, and are not Russians always hungry?”) and was in an indecent hurry about disarmament, which should be a slow and patient process. (“No one is more anxious than my humane nation for peace,” said the delegates, “but there is a dignified caution to be observed.”) Yes; many persons disagreed with Svensen as to the management of the affairs of the world; but surely no one would make awaywith him on that account. Far more likely did it seem that he had inadvertently stumbled into the lake, after dining well. What an end to so great and good a man!
Lord Burnley, the senior British delegate, that distinguished, notable, and engaging figure in the League, had, as has been said earlier, a strange addiction to walking. This afternoon, having parted from his friends outside the Assembly Hall, he started, as was a favourite pastime of his, to walk through the older and more picturesque streets of the city, for which he had a great taste.
As he strolled in his leisurely manner up the Rue de la Cité, stopping now and then to look at its antique and curious shops, he came to a book shop, whose outside shelf was stocked with miscellaneous literature. Lord Burnley, who could seldom pass an old bookshop without pausing, stopped to glance at the row of paper-backs, and wascaught by a familiar large bound book among them. Familiar indeed, for was it not one of his own works? He put on his glasses and looked closer. Yes: the volume was inscribedScepticism as a Basis for Faith, by George Burnley. And printed on a paper label below the title, was the inscription, “Special Edition, recently annotated by the Author.”
Strange! Lord Burnley was puzzled. For neither recently nor at any other time was he conscious of having issued a special annotated edition of this work.
For a minute or two he pondered, standing on the pavement. Then, deciding to inquire further into this thing, he stooped his head and shoulders and passed under the low lintel into the little dark shop.
Henry, having left the Assembly, sent off his message to his newspaper (it was entirely about the disappearance of Dr. Svensen), glanced into his pigeon-hole on his way out,and found there, among various superfluous documents, a note addressed to him by the ex-cardinal Franchi, suggesting that, if he should not find himself better employed, he should give the writer his company at dinner at eight o'clock that evening, at his villa at Monet, two miles up the lake. He would find a small electric launch waiting for him at seven-thirty at the Eaux-Vives jetty, in which would be Dr. Franchi's niece, who had been attending the Assembly that afternoon.
“Excellent,” thought Henry. “I will go.” For he was greatly attracted by Dr. Franchi, and liked also to dine out, and to have a trip up to Monet in a motor launch.
He went back to his indigent rooms in the Allée Petit Chat, and washed and dressed. (Fortunately, he had at no time a heavy beard, so did not have to shave in the evenings.) Well-dressed he was not, even in his evening clothes, which were a cast-off of his brother's, and not, as evening clothes should be, faultless; but still they passed, and Henry always looked rather nice.
“Not a bad face,” he reflected, surveyingit in the dusty speckled glass. “A trifle weak perhaps. Iama trifle weak; that is so. But, on the whole, the face of a gentleman and a decent fellow. And not devoid of intelligence.... Interesting, to see one's own face. Especially in this odd glass. Now I must be off. Hat, stick, overcoat, scarf—that iseverything.”
He walked down to the Eaux-Vives jetty, where a smart electric launch did indeed await him, and in it a young lady of handsome appearance, who regarded him with friendly interest and said, in pronounced American with an Italian accent, “I'm real pleased to meet you, Mr. Beechtree. Step right in. We'll start at once.”
Henry stepped right in, and sat down by this prepossessing girl.
“I must introduce myself,” she said. “My name is Gina Longfellow, and I'm Dr. Franchi's niece.”
“What excellent English you talk,” said Henry politely.
“American,” she corrected him. “My father was a native of Joliet, Ill. Are you acquainted with the Middle West?”
“I've travelled there,” said Henry, and repressed a shudder, for he had found the Middle West deplorable. He preferred South America.
“I am related to the poet,” said Miss Longfellow. “That great poet who wroteHiawatha,Evangeline, andThe Psalm of Life. Possibly you came across him out in the States?”
“No,” said Henry. “I fancy he was even then dead. You are a descendant of his?”
“A descendant—yes. I remember now; he died, poor nonno.... The lake pleases you, Mr. Beechtree?”
“Indeed, yes. It is very beautiful.”
Miss Longfellow's fine dark eyes had a momentary flicker of resentment. Most young men looked at her, but Mr. Beechtree at the lake, with his melancholy brooding eyes. Henry liked handsome young women well enough, but he admired scenery more. The smooth shimmer of the twilight waters, still holding the flash of sunset, the twinkling city of lights they were swiftly leaving behind them at the lake's head, the smallerconstellations of the lakeside villages on either hand—these made on Henry, whose æsthetic nerve was sensitive, an unsteadying impression.
Miss Longfellow recalled his attention.
“Do you think the League will last?” she inquired sharply. “Do you like Geneva? Do you think the League will be moved somewhere else? Isn't it a real pity the French are so obstructionist? Will the Americans come in?”
Henry adjusted his monocle and looked at her in some surprise.
“Well,” she said impatiently, “I guess you're used to those questions by now.”
“But you've left out the latest,” Henry said. “What do you think can have happened to Svensen?”
“Ah, there you have us all guessing,” she amiably returned. “Poor Svensen. Who'd have thought it of him?”
“Thought what?”
“Why, this. He always seemed such a white man. My, isn't it queer what people will do?”
Henry, who had been brought up on Dr. Svensen's narrations of his Arctic explorations, and greatly revered him, said, “But I don't believe he's done anything.”
“Not done a get-away, you mean? Well now, why should he, after all? Perhaps he fell right into this deep lake after dining, and couldn't get out, poveretto. Yet he was a real fine swimmer they say.”
“Most improbable,” said Henry, who had dismissed that hypothesis already. He leant forward and spoke discreetly. “I fancy, Miss Longfellow, there are those in Geneva who could throw some light on this affair if they chose.”
“You don't say! Dio mio! Now isn't that quite a notion!” Miss Longfellow was interested. “Why, Mr. Beechtree, you don't suspect foul play, do you?”
Henry nodded.
“I suppose I rather easily suspect foul play,” he candidly admitted. “It's more interesting, and I'm a journalist. But in this case there are reasons——”
“Now isn't this too terribly exciting! Reasons! Just you tell me all you know,Mr. Beechtree, if it's not indiscreet. Non son' giornalista, io!”
“I don'tknowanything. Except that there are people who might be glad to get Svensen out of the way.”
“But who are they? I thought every one respected him ever so!”
“Respect is akin to fear,” said Henry.
On that dictum, the launch took a swift turn to the right, and dashed towards a jetty which bore on a board above it the words, “Château Léman. Defense.”
“A private jetty,” said Henry.
“Yes. The village jetty is beyond. This is my uncle's. That path only leads up to the Château.”
They disembarked, and climbed up a steep path which led through a wrought iron gate into a walled garden that ran down to the lake's edge. Henry, who was romantic, said, “How very delightful. How old is the Château?”
“Chi sa? Real old, I can tell you. Ask Uncle Silvio. He's great on history. He's for ever writing historical books. History and heresy—Dio mio! That is whythey turned him out of the Church, you know.”
“So I heard.... Are you a Catholic, Miss Longfellow?”
She gave a little shrug.
“I was brought up Catholic. Women believe what they are taught, as a rule, don't they?”
“I hadn't observed it,” Henry said, “particularly. Are women so unlike men then?”
“That's quite a question, isn't it. What do you think?”
“I can't think in large sections and masses of people,” Henry replied. “Women are so different one from another. So are men. That's all I can see, when people talk of the sexes.”
“Macchè!You don't say!” said Miss Longfellow, looking at him inquiringly. “Most people always think in large masses of people. They find it easier, more convenient, more picturesque.”
“It is indeed so,” Henry admitted. “But less accurate. Accuracy—do you agree with me?—is of an importance very greatly underestimated by the majority of persons.”
“I guess,” said Miss Longfellow, not interested, “you're quite a clever young man.”
Henry replied truthfully, “Indeed, no,” and at this point they turned a bend in the path and the château was before them in the evening light; an arcaded, balconied, white-washed building, vine-covered and red-roofed, with queer outside staircases and green-shuttered windows, many of which were lit. Certainly old, though restored. A little way from it was a small belfried chapel.
“Charming,” said Henry, removing his eyeglass the better to look. “Amazingly charming.”
A big door stood open and through this they passed into a hall lit by large hanging lamps and full of dogs, or so it seemed to Henry, for on all sides they rose to stare at him, to sniff at his ankles, for the most part with the air of distaste commonly adopted towards Henry by these friends of man.
“You're not a dog lover?” Miss Longfellow suggested, and Henry again repliedthat he could not like or dislike his fellows in large sections; some dogs he liked, others not, as with men, women, and children.
“But I guess they don't like you very much,” she returned, shrewdly observing their manners to him. “Now isn't that cute, how they take to some people and not to others. They all love Uncle Silvio on sight. Stray dogs follow him in the road and won't leave him. Half these are strays.... They know he likes them, that's what it is. Dogs always know, they say, don't they.”
“Know what?” asked Henry, suspicious that she meant that dogs know a good character from a bad, which was what “they” (“they” meaning the great collection of noodles who constitute the public) do actually say. The things “they” say! They even say that children too (the most foolish of God's creatures) have this intuitive knowledge; they say that to drink hot tea makes you cooler, that it is more tiring going down-hill than up, that honesty is the best policy, that love makes the world go round, that “literally” bears the samemeaning as “metaphorically” (“she was literally a mother to him,” they will say), that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, that those who say least feel most, that one must live. There is truly no limit to what “they,” in their folly, will say. So Henry, wincing among the suspicious dogs, moodily, and not for the first time, reflected.
Miss Longfellow did not answer his inquiry, but stood in the hall and cried, “Zio!” in a voice like a May cuckoo's.
A door opened, and in a moment Dr. Franchi, small and frail and charming, came forward with a sweet smile and hand outstretched, through a throng of fawning, grinning dogs.
“A pleasure indeed, Mr. Beechtree.”
“He is like Leo XIII.,” was Henry's thought. “Strange, that he should be a heretic!”
They sat at dinner on a terrace, under hanging lamps, looking out at the lakethrough vine-festooned arches. The moon rose, like the segment of an orange, sending a softly glowing path to them across black water. Here and there the prow lanterns of boats rosily gleamed. The rest was violet shadow.
How Henry, after his recent experiences of cheap cafés, again enjoyed eating a meal fit for a gentleman. Radiant silver, napery like snow (for, in the old fashion still in use on the continent, Dr. Franchi had a fair linen cloth spread over his dinner-table; there is no doubt but that this extravagant habit gives an old-world charm to a meal), food and wines of the most agreeable, conversation to the liking of all three talkers (which is, after all, the most that can be said of any conversation), one of the loveliest views in Europe, and gentle night air—Henry was indeed fortunate. How kind, he reflected, was this ex-cardinal, who, having met him but once, asked him to such a pleasant entertainment. Why was it? He must try to be worthy of it, to seem cultivated and agreeable and intelligent. But Henry knew that he was noneof these things; continually he had to be playing a part, trying to hide his folly under a pretence of being like other people, sensible and informed and amusing, whereas really he was more like an animal, interested in the foolish and fleeting impressions of themoment. Hewas not fit for a gentleman's dinner-table.
The conversation was of all manner of things. They spoke, of course, of the League.
“It has a great future,” said Dr. Franchi, “by saying which I by no means wish to underrate its present.”
“Rather capitalist in tendency, perhaps?” the correspondent of theBritish Bolshevistsuggested. “A little too much in the hands of the major states?” But he did not really care.
“You misjudge it,” Dr. Franchi said. “It is a very fair association of equal states. A true democracy: little brothers and great, hand in hand. Oh, it will do great things; is, indeed, doing great things now. One cannot afford to be cynical about such an attempt. Anything which encourages thenations to take an interest in one another's concerns——”
“There has surely,” said Henry, still rather apathetically voicing his paper, “always been too much of that already. Hence wars. Nations should keep themselves to themselves. International impertinence ... it's a great evil. Live and let live.”
“You don't then agree that we should attempt a world-cosmogony? That the nations should be as brothers, and concern themselves with one another's famines, one another's revolutions, one another's frontiers? But why this curious insistence on the nation as a unit? Why select nationality, rather than the ego, the family, the township, the province, the continent, the hemisphere, the planet, the solar system, or even the universe? Isn't it just a little arbitrary, this stress we lay on nationalism, patriotism, love of one particular country, of the territories united fortuitously under one particular government? What is a government, that we should regard it as a connecting link? What is a race, that queer, far-flung thing whose boundaries march with those of nonation? And when we say we love a country, do we mean its soil, the people under its government, or the scattered peoples everywhere sharing some of the same blood and talking approximately the same tongue? What, in fact, is thispatriotism, this love of country, that we all feel, and that we nearly all exalt as if it were a virtue? We don't praise egoism, or pride of family, or love of a particular town or province, in the same way. What magic is there in the ring that embraces a country, that we admire it as precious metal and call the other rings foolish or base? You will admit that it is a queer convention.”
“All conventions are queer, I think,” Henry said indifferently. “But there they are. One accepts them. It is less trouble.”
“It makes more trouble in the end, my young friend.... I will tell you one thing from my heart. If the League of Nations should fail, should go to pieces, it will be from excess of this patriotism. Every country out for its own hand. That has always been the trouble with the world, since we were hordes of savages grouped intribes one against the other—as, indeed, we still are.”
“Well, zio mio,” said Miss Longfellow breezily, “if you don't look out for number one, no one else will, you may be dead sure. Andthenwhere are you? In the soup, sure thing. Nel zuppo!” She gave a gay, chiming, cuckooish laugh. A cheerful girl, thought Henry.
“Viva the League of Nations!” she cried, and drank brightly of her marsala.
Dr. Franchi, with an indulgent smile for youthful exuberance, drank too.
“The hope for the world,” he said. “You don't drink this toast, Mr.Beechtree?”
“My paper,” said Henry, “believes that such hope for the world as there may be lies elsewhere.”
“Ah, your paper. And you yourself?”
“I? I see no hope for the world. No hope, that is to say, that it will ever be an appreciably better world than it is at present. Before that occurs, I imagine that it will have broken its string, as it were, and dashed off into space, and so an end.”
“And my hopes for it are two—an extension of country-love into world-love, and a purified version of the Christian faith.”
“Purified....” Henry recollected that Dr. Franchi was a modernist and a heretic. “A queer word,” he mused. “I am not sure that I know what it means.”
“Ah. You are orthodox Catholic, no doubt. You admit no possible impurities in the faith.”
“I have never thought about it. I do not even know what an impurity is. One thing does not seem to me much more pure than another, and not much more odd. For my part, I accept the teaching of the Church wholesale. It seems simpler.”
“Until you come to think about it,” said the ex-cardinal. “Then it ceases to be simple, and becomes difficult and elaborate to a high degree. Too difficult for a simple soul like myself. For my part, I have been expelled from the bosom of my mother the Church, and am now, having completed immense replies to the decree Lamentabili Sane and to the encyclical Pascendi Gregis, writing a History of the Doctrine ofTransubstantiation. Does the topic interest you?”
“I am no theologian,” said Henry. “And I have been told that if one inquires too closely into these mysteries, faith wilts. I should not like that. So I do not inquire. It is better so. I should not wish to be an atheist. I have known an atheist whom I have very greatly disliked.”
The thought of this person shadowed his brow faintly with a scowl, not unobserved by his host and hostess. “But,” he added, “he became a worse thing; he is now an atheist turned Catholic....”
“There I am with you,” the ex-cardinal agreed. “About the Catholic convert there is often a quite peculiar lack of distinction.... But we will not talk about these.”
They were now eating fruit. Melon, apricots, pears, walnuts, figs, and fat purple grapes. The night ever deepened into agreater loveliness. In the steep, sweet garden below the terrace nightingales sang.
“On such a night as this,” said Dr. Franchi, cracking a walnut, “it is difficult to be an atheist.”
“Why so?” asked Henry dreamily, biting a ripe black fig, and wishing that the ex-cardinal had not thought it necessary to give so lovely and familiar an opening phrase so tedious an end.
“Don't tell me,” he added quickly, repenting his thoughtless question. “What nightingales! What figs! And what apricocks!” (for so he always called this fruit). He hated to talk about atheists, and about how God had fashioned so beautiful a world. It might be so, but the world, on such a night, was enough in itself.
Dr. Franchi's keen, gentle eyes, the eyes of a shrewd weigher of men, observed him and his distastes.
“An æsthete,” he judged. “God has given him intuition rather than reason. And not very much even of that. He might easily be misled, this youth.”
Aloud he said, “All I meant was that
“‘Holy joy about the earth is shed,And Holiness upon the deep,’
as one of your Edwardian poets has sung. That was a gifted generation: may it rest in peace. For I think it mostly perished in that calamitous war we had.... But your Georgians—they too are a gifted generation, is it not so?”
“You mean by Georgians those persons who are now flourishing under the sovereignty of King George the Fifth of England? Such as myself? I do not really know. How could it be that gifts go in generations? A generation, surely, is merely chronological. Gifts are sporadic. No, I find no generation, as such, gifted. Except, of course, with the gifts common to all humanity.... People speak of the Victorians, and endow them with special qualities, evil or good. They were all black recently; now they are being white-washed—or rather enamelled. I think they had no qualities, as a generation (or rather as several generations, which, of course, they were); men and women then were, in the main, thesame as men and women to-day, I see nothing but individuals. The rest is all the fantasy of the foolish, who love to generalise, till they cannot see the trees for the wood. Generalisations make me dizzy. I see nothing but the separate trees. Thereisnothing else....”
Dreamily Henry wandered on, happy and fluent with wine and figs. A ripe black fig, gaping to show its scarlet maw—what could be more lovely, and more luscious to the palate?
As to Miss Longfellow, she was eating her dessert so rapidly and with such relish that she had no time for conversation. All she contributed to it was, between bites, a cheerful nod now and then at Henry to show that she agreed with him.
“Yours,” said Dr. Franchi, “is not, perhaps, the most natural view of life. It is more natural to see people in large groups, with definite characteristic markings, according to period, age, nationality, sex, or what not. Also, such a view has its truth, though, like all truths, it may be over-stressed.... But here comes our coffee. After we havedrunk it, Gina will leave us perhaps and you and I will smoke our cigars and have a little talk on political questions, and matters outside a woman's interests. Our Italian women do not take the same interest in affairs which your English women do.”
“No,” Miss Longfellow readily agreed. “We don't like the New Woman over here. Perhaps Mr. Beechtree admires her though.”
“The New Woman?” Henry doubtfully queried. “Is there a new woman? I don't know the phrase, except from old VictorianPunchPictures.... Thank you, yes; a little cherry brandy.”
“Ah, is the woman question, then, over in your country—died out? Fought to a finish, perhaps, with honours to the victorious sex?”
“The woman question, sir? What woman question? I know no more of woman questions than of man questions, I am afraid. There is an infinity of questions you may ask about all human beings. People ask them all the time. Personally, I don't; it is less trouble not to. There peopleare; you can take them or leave them, for what they're worth. Why ask questions about them? There is never a satisfactory answer.”
“A rather difficult youth to talk to,” the ex-cardinal reflected. “He fails to follow up, or, apparently, even to understand, any of the usual conversational gambits. Is he very ignorant, or merely perverse?”
As to Miss Longfellow, she gave Henry up as being not quite all there, and anyhow a bloodless kind of creature, who took very little notice of her. So she went indoors and played the piano.
“I am failing,” thought Henry. “She does not like me. I am not being intelligent. They will talk of things above my head, things I cannot understand.”
Apathy held him, drinking cherry brandy under the moon, and he could not care. Woman question? Man question? What was all this prating?
“And now,” said Dr. Franchi, as he enjoyed a cigar and Henry a cigarette and both their liqueurs, “let us talk of this mysterious business of poor Svensen.”
“Yes, do let's,” said Henry, for this was much more in his line.
“I may misjudge you, Mr. Beechtree, but I have made a guess that you entertain certain suspicions in this matter. Is that the case? Ah, I see I am right. No, tell me nothing you do not wish. In fact, tell me nothing at all. It would be, at this point, indiscreet. Instead, let us go through all the possible alternatives.” He paused, and puffed at his cigar for a while in thoughtful silence.
“First of all,” he presently resumed, “poor Svensen may have met with an accident. He may have fallen into the lake and have been drowned. But this we will set aside as improbable. Geneva is seldom quite deserted at night, and he would have attracted attention. Besideswhich, I have heard that he is an excellent swimmer. No; an improbable contingency. What remains? Foul play. Some person or persons have attacked him in a deserted spot and either murdered or kidnapped him. But who? And for what purpose? Robbery? Personal enmity? Revenge? Or an impersonal motive, such as a desire, for some reason, to damage and retard the doings of the Assembly? It might be any of these.... Let us for a moment take the hypothesis that it is the last. To whom, then, might such a desire be attributed? Unfortunately, my dear Mr. Beechtree, to many different persons.”
“But more to some than to others,” Henry brightly pointed out.
“Certainly more to some than to others. More to the Poles than to the Lithuanians, for instance, for is it not to the Polish interest to hold up the proceedings of the Assembly while the present violation of the Lithuanian frontier by Polish hordes continues? Well they know that any inquiry into that matter set on foot by the League would end in their discomfiture. Every day that they canretard the appointment of a committee of inquiry is to the good, from their point of view.
“Again, take Russia. The question of the persecution of the Bolsheviks is to be brought up in the Assembly early. Naturally the Russian delegation are not anxious for the exposure of their governmental methods which would accompany this. And then there are the Bolshevik refugees themselves—a murderous gang, who would readily dispose of any one, from mere habit. Nor can Argentine be supposed to be anxious for the inquiry into her dispute with Paraguay which the Paraguay delegation intend to bring forward. The Argentine delegation may well have orders to delay this inquiry as long as possible, in order that the dispute may arrange itself domestically, in Argentine interests, without the intervention of the League. There is, too, the Graeco-Turkish war, which both the Greeks and the Turks desire to carry on in peace. There are also several questions of humanitarian legislation, which by no means all the members of the League desire to see proceeded with—thetraffic in women, for instance, and that in certain drugs. And what about the Irish delegates? Are they not both, for their different reasons, full of anger and discontent against Great Britain and against Europe in general, and may they not well intend, in the determined manner of their race, to hold up the association of nations at the pistol's mouth, so to speak, until it considers their grievances and adjudicates in their favour? And then we must not exclude from suspicion the natives of this city and canton. Calvinists are, in my experience, capable of any malicious crime. A dour, jealous, unpleasant people. They might (and often have they done so) perpetrate any wickedness in the name of the curious God they worship.”
“Indeed, yes,” said Henry. “How confusing it all is, to be sure! But you haven't mentioned the biggest stumbling-block of all, sir—disarmament.”
“Ah, yes; disarmament. As you say, the most tremendous issue of all. And it is, as every one knows, going to be, during this session of the League, decisively dealtwith by the Council. Many a nation, militant from terror, from avarice, from arrogance, or from habit, many a political faction, and many a big business, has a vital interest in hindering disarmament discussions. You think then, that——”
“I will tell you,” said Henry, leaning forward eagerly and lowering his rather high voice, “what I think. I think that there are those not far from us who have a great deal of money in armaments, and who get nervy whenever the subject comes up. There are things that I know.... I came out here knowing them, and meaning to speak when the time came. Not because it was my duty, which is why (I understand) most people expose others, but because I had a very great desire to. There is some one towards whom I feel a dislike—a very great dislike; I may say hate. He deserves it. He is a most disagreeable person, and has done me, personally, a great injury”—(Henry was feeling the expansive influence of the cherry brandy)—“and naturally I wish to do him one in my turn. I have wished it for several years; to be exact, since the year 1919.I have waited and watched. I have always known him to be detestable, but until recently I thought that he was also detestably and invariably in the right—or, anyhow, that he could not be proved in the wrong. Lately I learnt something that altered this opinion. I discovered a thing about him which would, if it were known (having regard to the position he occupies), utterly shame and discredit him. I am now, I have a feeling, on the track of discovering yet another and a worse thing—that he has done away with the elected President of the Assembly, in order to wreck the proceedings so that the armament question should not come up.”
“The armament question?”
Henry gazed at the ex-cardinal with the wide, ferocious stare of the slightly intoxicated.
“What would you say if I told you that a certain highly placed official on the League of Nations Secretariat has enormous sums of money invested in an armaments business? That he derives nearly all his income from it? That he is the son-in-law of the headof the business, and has in it vast sums which increase at every rumour of war and which would dwindle away if any extensive disarmament scheme should ever really be seriously contemplated by the nations? That his father-in-law, this munitions prince, is even now in Geneva, privately visiting his daughter and son-in-law and holding a watching brief on the Assembly proceedings? I ask you, what would the League staff say of one of their members of which this should be revealed? Would he be regarded as a fit incumbent of the office he holds? Wouldn't he be dismissed, kicked out as incompetent—as unscrupulous, I mean,” Henry amended quickly. His voice had risen in a shrill and trembling crescendo of dislike.
Dr. Franchi, leaning placidly back in his chair, his delicate fingers stroking a large Persian cat on his knee, shrewdly watched him.
“I had better say,” he observed, in his temperate and calming manner, “that I believe I know to whom you allude. I have guessed, since I saw you this morningwhen a certain individual was speaking near you, that you took no favourable view of him. And now I perceive that you are justified. You will be doubly justified if we can prove, what I am trying to agree with you is not improbable, that he has indeed made away with this unfortunate Svensen. I am tempted to share your view of this unpleasing person. Among other things he is a Catholic convert; as to these we have already exchanged our views.... Do you know what I think? This; that Svensen's will not be the only disappearance at Geneva. For what would be the use of getting rid of one man only, however prominent? The Assembly, after the first shock, would proceed with its doings. But what if man after man were to disappear? What if the whole fabric of Assembly, Council, and Committees should be disintegrated, till no one could have thoughts for anything but the mysterious disappearances and how to solve the riddle, and how, still more, to preserve each one himself from a like fate? Could any work be continued in such circumstances, in such an atmosphere?No. The Assembly would become merely a collection of bewildered and nervous individuals turning themselves into amateur detectives, and, incidentally, the laughing-stock of the world. The League might never recover such prestige as it has, after such a disastrous session. Mark my words; there will be further attempts on the persons of prominent delegates. Whether they will be successful attempts or not is a question. Who is responsible for them is another question. You say (and I am half with you) our friend of the Secretariat, who had better be nameless until we can bring him to book. Others will say other things. Many will be suspected. Notably, no doubt, the Spanish Americans, who lend themselves readily to such suspicions; they have that air, and human life is believed not to be unduly sacred to them. Besides, they never got on with Svensen, who is reported to have alluded to them not infrequentlyas ‘those damned Red Indians.’ TheScandinavian temperament and theirs are so different. I do not even feel sure myself that they are not implicated. The initiation of the affairby our Secretariat friend would not, in fact, preclude their participation in it. I had nearly said, show me a Spanish-American, still worse a Portuguese, and I will show you a scoundrel. Nearly, but not quite, for it is a mistake to say such things of one's brothers in the League. Besides, I like them. They are pleasing, amusing fellows, and do not rasp one's nerves like the Germans and many others. One can forgive them much; indeed, one has to. Many people, again, would be glad to put responsibility on the Germans. An unfortunate race, for nothing is so unfortunate as to be unloved. We must discover the truth, Mr. Beechtree. You have a line of inquiry to follow?”
“I am making friends with the fellow's secretary,” said Henry. “She likes me, I may say. And she talks quite a lot. She would not consciously betray her chief's confidence, though she does not like him; but all the same I get many clues from her.... Oh, my God——!”
The ejaculation, which was made under his breath, was shocked involuntarily outof him by the sight of Dr. Franchi's Persian cat extracting with its paw from a bowl that stood on the terrace balustrade a large gold-fish and devouring it.
After the first glance Henry looked away, leaning back in his chair, momentarily overcome with a feeling of nausea, which made his face glisten white and damp, and caused the sweat to break hotly on his brow, while the lake swayed and darkened before his eyes. It was a feeling to which he was unfortunately subject when he saw the smaller of God's creatures suffering these mischances at the hands of their larger brethren. His nerves were not strong, and he had an excessive dislike of witnessing unpleasant sights.
“You don't feel well?” Dr. Franchi solicitously inquired.
“The gold-fish,” his guest murmured. “Eaten alive ... what an end!”
Dr. Franchi's delicate, dark Latin brows rose.
“The gold-fish? Ah, my wicked Pellico.... I cannot keep him from the bowl, the rascal. I regret that he so upset you. Butthe sensibility of gold-fish is not great, surely? As the peasants say, non son chretiani loro!”
“Forgive me. To see a live fish devoured ... it took me unawares.... I shall be all right soon....”
As from a great distance Henry, still fighting the sensation of nausea, was half aware of the ex-cardinal's piercing eyes fixed on him with extraordinary intensity.
“I am all right now,” said Henry. “A momentary faintness—quite absurd.... I expect gold-fish do not really feel either emotion or pain. They say that fish do not feel hooks. Or worms, either.... They say all sorts of comforting things about this distressing world, don't they. One should try to believe them all....”
“You are,” said Dr. Franchi quietly, “if I may say so, a decidedly unusual young man.”
“Indeed, no,” said Henry. “But I have encroached on you long enough. I must go.”