"It will hardly increase your present inconsiderable popularity," I suggested.
He finished his drink and walked with me to the door.
"There's no harm in telling Sonia he's a cad," he insisted.
"If she cares for him, it won't shake her: if she doesn't, it'll make her very angry. I wish to God I hadn't told you, Raney. Promise me at least that you won't choose my house to do it in!"
"Oh, the whole thing may be a mare's nest," he answeredeasily. "I shan't act till I've something to act on. Have you been invited to Crowley Court this autumn?"
"I've been told to fix my own time," I replied.
"They've got a party on in November. I was thinking of going then if I'm not bear-leading Summertown round the world. Why shouldn't we go together? Brother Crabtree may be there with any luck."
"Brother Crabtree is sure to be there," I answered, as I lighted him to his room and turned back to my own.
Five days later my guests were scattered to the four winds. Bertrand stayed behind until it was time to move on to the Hunter-Oakleighs in Dublin, and O'Rane was waiting to accompany me to House of Steynes. A great quiet descended on Lake House, and I recalled Valentine Arden's maxim that the charm of a house party lies in the moment of its dispersal.
"You're not being quite so strenuous as usual, David," observed my uncle one morning after breakfast.
"I can't hurry the calendar, sir," Raney answered. "I must wait for November."
"All Souls?" I asked.
He nodded. "And then the Bar. And then the House."
The 1906 Parliament was distinguished by a little group of men who had cleared the board of honours at Oxford, blazed into fame at the Bar and entered the House as fashionable silks and rising politicians while still in the thirties. Their reputation preceded them from the time they were freshmen, and their career became the model for succeeding generations. I imagine that Simon, Hemmerde, and F. E. Smith were to the Oxford of their day what O'Rane was to the Oxford of mine—marked men with no conceivable limit to the heights they might attain.
"You think it's possible to reform the world from the House of Commons?" I asked.
O'Rane looked through the open window over the placid lake to the smoke-blue mountains beyond.
"You can only reform the world by reforming the men who compose it," he answered. "And you can't do that by Acts of Parliament. You've not found that out yet, George. I have."
"Then why are we to be honoured?" Bertrand inquired.
Raney turned round and faced into the room.
"There are some things the House alone can do, sir. Within the next ten years you're going to have labour troubles as near revolution as makes no odds. I've spied out the land, and there's an ugly temper abroad. And probably you'll have a European War. We're too rich, sir."
"There will be labour troubles every ten years," Bertrand answered with a yawn. "The young men who've never starved their way through a strike have to learn what their fathers learned."
"We're too rich internationally," O'Rane persisted. "We've got all the fair places of the earth, and the sansculottes of Europe will fight us for them, just as the sansculottes of England will fight for a bigger share of profits."
My uncle shook his head.
"The world's getting too democratic, David," he said. "Democracy doesn't fight democracy; no one has anything to gain. And we leave the fair places of the world open to the world. Anyone can come too."
He picked up his hat and walked through the window into the morning sunshine. O'Rane looked for a moment at the broad-shouldered back and massive head, then turned to me with a gesture of despair.
"When I get into the House, George," he said, "it'll be to fight your uncle. Years ago—the night after I left Melton—I told you in the garden at Crowley Court that we had given away our weakness before all Europe. There are not ten men in this country who understand Continental opinion. I called for ten years' reorganization of the Empire. Now it seems that every step we take to defend ourselves against attackmakes Germany think we're preparing to attack her. Sooner or later there'll be acasus belli."
"Half a dozen years ago we were faced with an inevitable war with France," I reminded him. "Now we're the best of friends."
"There's been no Pan-French school since Sedan," he retorted. "I should be sorry to see England going down before the storm. With all its blemishes I think the civilization of this country is the finest in all the world." He stood opposite the window with the autumn sun shining on to his thin face, and as I looked there were tears in his great black eyes. "Any country," he went on tremulously, "that takes a steward from a Three-Funnel Liner and ... and ... and ..."
His voice died away. I knocked out my pipe and began filling it again.
"Come out into the garden, Raney," I said, taking his arm.
He laughed and obeyed.
"Burgess, too, used to say I wasn't accountable for my actions," he remarked.
"A little of your madness would make better men of a number of us," I said.
He stopped short to drink in all the misty damp beauty of the autumn morning, momentarily forgetful of me and of our conversation. Another moment and the mood was past.
"Oh! it's made, not born," he said. "If you'd seen Jews massacred before you were seven.... Poor dear Lady Dainton can't think what my father was about over my upbringing! She's quite right. I learned all the wrong things, met all the wrong people—and this is the result!"
At the end of the week we crossed to Scotland together, spent ten days with the Lorings and separated in Edinburgh. Towards the middle of October we met again in London, and, as I was now qualified to take my M.A., I seized the excuse for a visit to Oxford and motored O'Rane up in time for the first All Souls paper. There was an interval between the written work and the candidates' dinner, so we arranged to slip down for eight-and-forty hours to Crowley Court. "You will find some old friends here," Lady Dainton wrote. "LordLoring, Mr. Arden and Lord Summertown are coming to-morrow, and Tony Crabtree is already with us...."
"I told you so," I remarked to O'Rane as we left Princes Gardens and climbed into the car.
"I shouldn't be at all surprised if we had to dislodge the fellow," he answered, as a man might speak of installing a new drainage system.
There was a curious similarity of purpose in our descent on Oxford. Each had a rather wearisome formality to go through, and the result in either case was equally certain. Candidates for the degree of M.A. paid fees to their college and the university chest, caught a hurried Latin formula, changed their gowns, tipped their scouts, bowed to the Vice-Chancellor and got rid of a red and black silk hood at the earliest possible opportunity. Candidates for All Souls Fellowships presented their credentials to the Warden, disposed of a stated number of papers in the Hall and paraded their table manners at dinner and in Common Room the following Sunday. The formality ended with an announcement in "The Times," and anyone who had not sufficiently cleared his friends' houses of undesirable guests was now at liberty to return and complete the eviction.
I took my M.A. as other and better men have taken it before and since.
Also like other men before and since, O'Rane was—not elected. It was the first time I had known him fail to carry out an undertaking he had set himself, and my faith in him would have received a shock unless I had heard the full story. All he said as we got into the car at the "Randolph" was:
"I probably shan't go through with this show."
"Why the devil not?" I demanded.
At first he made no answer, but, as we slid away from the lights of Oxford and headed through Abingdon and the wet white mist of a November afternoon southward to the Berkshire Downs, he offered fragments of explanation. There were two fellowships and sixteen candidates, of whom three stood head and shoulders above their rivals: O'Rane with first in Mods. and Greats, the Ireland and Gaisford prizesand a Chancellor's medal; Oldham of Balliol with a second in Mods., a first in Greats and a first in Law; and Brent of the House who had taken Pass Mods., a first in History and the Stanhope Essay prize. There wasprima faciea lion with no martyr.
"I walked down the High with old Brent," O'Rane told me. "He was rather down on his luck—man who's lived on scholarships since he could walk, not a bob in the world, and no guts to make a career for himself. With a fellowship he can go to the Bar; otherwise he'll moulder in the Civil Service."
"But, my dear Raney," I exclaimed, "the decision doesn't rest with you."
"No, but—I can do something for him," he said with a smile. "You know my philosophy."
"Yes, but what about yourself?" I asked.
"In the words of Burgess, 'The Lord will provide.' I've made twenty-three pounds in ten days as a waiter in this country; in a Long Island Delicatessen store——"
"Are you going back there?"
"If need be. I've settled nothing—not even about this fellowship. I'm waiting for an omen, George. A lot depends on the next few hours; I must think things out. What are you pulling up for?"
"My near-side head light's gone out," I answered, as I scrambled past him into the road.
On my return O'Rane was standing with one foot braced against the steering-wheel and the other planted on the back of the driving-seat; he was gazing intently down the road we had just traversed. There was nothing coming up behind; he stood for a moment more in silence and then slipped back into his seat.
"It's too misty," he said, with the suggestion of a sigh in his voice.
"What were you looking at?" I asked.
"I was trying to see Oxford. The lights of Oxford. D'you remember 'Jude the Obscure'? It was here—any height round here—that he stood gazing at Oxford and wondering if he'd ever get there. God! Don't I know that man's heart! Eversince I was a tiny child.... And I remember my father, just when he was dying,—it was almost the last word on his lips—telling me where to go and what I was to do...."
He paused abruptly and turned over old thoughts.
"Go on, Raney," I said.
"Hallo! Were you listening? I was only rambling."
"Go on rambling then—about your father."
He turned up the collar of his coat and sank lower into his seat.
"It was just the end; they carried him up from the Peiræus, and he rallied for one last flicker. 'I'm going now, Boy,' he whispered—smiling, though two-thirds of him were shot away. 'I've not made much of a thing of life; see if you can do better. We've not a bad record as a family. Go back to England—Oxford.' He started coughing, and when it was over I thought he was dead. Suddenly he sat up and spoke very quickly. 'I'm really going now, Davie. Good-bye, Boy. Try to forgive me!'" Raney's voice had grown very husky. "Forgive him! The man was a god! Besides, I didn't understand till people started calling me Lord O'Rane, and then I went to a priest to find out. It was like rubbing in father's death.... And the priest explained—a bit, and said I should understand when I was older. And that was all—all I care to tell you, anyway, old man. I didn't enjoy my first trip round the world. Perhaps if Summertown's invitation still holds good...."
He broke off and began to whistle reflectively between his teeth.
"Whatareyou going to do, Raney?"
"Why bother? I've got five years to turn round in before Sonia's ready for me——"
"When you do marry her, I shall give you a very handsome present—I don't like betting on these things."
"I shall marry her, George," he answered, with assurance. "I've got five years to make money in—here or abroad—a thousand a year——"
"In five years?"
"Less. Three. Two. If I don't make it in two, working twelve hours a day, I'll make it in three, working eighteen."
"I rather doubt——"
It was the one word that lashed him like a whip. His hand descended on my driving arm and gripped it till the car rocked from side to side.
"If—I—ever—doubted—anything——!" he whispered.
"Let go my arm!" I cried.
"Sorry!" He laughed and went back to his normal tone. "Dear old George! If I'd ever doubted, d'you think I could have stood going round with a guitar in Chinatown—handing basins on a liner.... Doubt!"
An hour later we turned in through the drive gates of Crowley Court.
As I slowed down opposite the door, it occurred to me to ask whether O'Rane had made his peace with Tom Dainton.
"No. And never shall," he grunted. "Fortunately he's not here, though. If he were——"
The sentence was cut short as the doors were flung open, and Crabtree, gorgeous in white waistcoat and pink carnation, advanced into the white glare of the headlights.
"Stout fellows!" he cried heartily. "Haven't seen you for ages, Raney——"
"How do you do, Crabtree?" O'Rane responded, in a tone that would have chilled a blast furnace.
"Come along in! Never mind about the car, George; one of the men'll take it round. How are the lads of Oxenford, what? How's the House? How's everything?"
The questions were so clearly rhetorical that I attempted no answer. Sir Roger came in sight, crossing the hall, and I hurried in to shake hands with him, reflecting that full two-thirds of my antagonism to Crabtree arose from his inveterate use of my Christian name.
"The ladies have gone up to dress, George," said Dainton. "We shall find everyone else in the billiard-room. If you'd care for a drink——"
He hurried on ahead, hardly giving me time to shed mycoat and cap, for all the world like a trusted old family servant making me at home in his master's absence. The impression was not altogether a capricious fancy: I remember a ball at Crowley Court where the stately wife of a newly honoured manufacturing chemist whispered loudly to her host, "Sir Zachary and Lady Smithe.Smithe, my man, notSmith, mind."
In the billiard-room we found Loring and Summertown perfunctorily practising fancy cannons, while Valentine Arden ostentatiously slumbered at full length on a divan. Tea was long past, dinner some way ahead; and, as Arden complained, he hadn't tasted a cocktail since leaving London.
"You may not know it, Raney," yawned Loring as Sir Roger closed the door behind us and hurried away to order whisky and soda, "but you've saved my life. Another ten minutes of Crabtree! It only shows the folly of staying in other people's houses. With the best intentions in the world they spring disquieting surprises on you. Really, after a certain episode not a thousand miles from—shall we say?—House of Steynes last autumn, I thought I should be safe in coming here. The rising generation beats me, and as for poor Valentine——"
Arden roused at sound of his own name.
"They offered one curried lobster for breakfast," he proclaimed, tremulous with indignation; "there were only two kinds of chutney, and no Bombay duck. One cannot eat curry without Bombay duck."
He relapsed into exhausted slumber, and Summertown seized upon O'Rane.
"Look here, young fellow, my lad," he said, "I'm properly in the soup. You remember the bilge my lady mother's been talking about my seeing more of the world...."
Arden stirred in his sleep and opened one eye.
"The desire of a mother that her son shall see rather more of the world," he observed, "not infrequently coincides with an ambition to see rather less of her son."
Summertown quelled the interruption at the end of a half-butt and continued to state his case.
"Well, when you seemed doubtful about coming, Crabtree butted in. He'd heard all ex's were to be paid. I shall bedans le consommé, as the French say, if you cry off."
O'Rane, who appeared to be tired and subdued, promised to think over the proposal.
"When do your rotten results come out?" persisted Summertown. "Time's getting on, you know. I want to be back in town by next season."
"I'll let you know to-night," said O'Rane, crossing the room and making a seat for himself at the end of Arden's divan.
I guessed then—what I afterwards found out for certain—that he was beginning to repent of his recent quixotism. The big, warm, comfortable house threw into striking relief the shanties and bleak skies that were likely to be his home and shelter for some years to come.
"Well, don't be a dirty dog," said Summertown, in conclusion. "If I get stuck with Crabtree.... Steady!"
He picked up his cue and began knocking the balls about as the door opened, and Crabtree entered. A moment or two passed before we could try a fresh cast in conversation, and it is more than probable that the newcomer guessed we had been discussing him.
"Aren't you lads going to dress?" he inquired, as he straightened his tie before a mirror and glanced at his watch.
"Presently, presently," answered Loring, who was in fact already on his feet and only delayed with the perversity of a man who dislikes being ordered about. "You coming up, Valentine? There's only just time, if you're going to have a bath."
"One is going to be very late," said Arden sleepily. "It may cut dinner a bit short. One is bored with dinner. One hates having to talk when one is eating; and, if one doesn't talk, other people will. One is bored with other people."
"Have a drink?" said Summertown encouragingly, as he helped himself again. "With enough alcohol you can bear almost anything. I can't stand playing five-pence a hundred auction, but I did last night—thanks to the tranquillizinginfluence of '47 port. True, I cut the match-box by an oversight, but that might have happened to anyone. And Lady Dainton told me I ought to wear glasses. Here you are, Valentine. Three times a day before meals or any other hour. Even our host brightened visibly last night. Another half glass, and there'd have been horrible revelations—second establishment in Brixton, undiscovered bank fraud—I think to-night I shall move round by him and keep the wine circulating."
"You talk too much, Summertown," said O'Rane, on whom the tone of the conversation was grating.
"So will old Dainton!" rejoined Summertown gleefully. "No, you're quite right, Raney. Dam' bad form to tighten a man up at his own table, specially if he's got a weak head. You hear that, Crabtree? Drink fair all round and no doping."
"I'd drink two to one against Dainton," Crabtree answered valiantly.
"All through?" asked Summertown, not without a certain admiration. "Bet you a pony you don't."
"Done! Jim shall hold the stakes, George umpire. I remember once when I was staying with my cousin Beaumorris——"
Loring was standing with his back to the fire, yawning and occasionally reminding Arden that it was time to dress. At the mention of his name he strolled into the light and crossed to the door, only pausing to remark:
"It's just as well to remember whose house you're in, Crabtree. Time to dress, Summertown." And, as he entered the hall, "Don't drink whisky on an empty stomach, young man."
Summertown, whose leading characteristics throughout his short life were a cheerful immaturity and chronic instability of temperament, became immediately contrite. His rare moments of seriousness were marked by a pathetic desire to stand well in Loring's eyes.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry!" he exclaimed. "It won't happen again, Loring. I swear it won't."
Loring laughed and caught his arm.
O'Rane and I were the last to leave the billiard-room,and, as we came to the foot of the staircase, Sonia appeared in sight on the landing above. For the moment we were invisible to her, and she pattered lightly down the stairs, waving one hand to Crabtree, who was standing astride the rug in front of the fire.
"Hope I haven't kept you waiting, Tony?" she called out.
Crabtree responded with some decorous conventionality, and in another second we came into the light and were face to face with Sonia.
"Hallo, children, where were you hiding?" she asked as we shook hands. "Have they elected you to your old fellowship, David?"
"I haven't finished yet," he answered. "I say, Sonia...."
He paused and looked almost anxiously at her. The firelight glowing across the hall struck sparks of gold out of her brown hair, and her arms and shoulders gleamed white through the transparent, blue gauze of her dress.
"Say on, MacDavid," she bade him.
"Summertown wants me to go abroad with him. I don't know whether to accept or not."
"He asked me, too." Crabtree called out. "I wish you'd make up your great mind, Raney."
O'Rane kept his eyes fixed on the face in front of him.
"Which is it to be, Sonia?" he asked.
"My dear,Idon't care," she answered. "Of course, it'll be more amusing for Lord Summertown if Tony goes. There's a compliment for you," she called out, blowing a kiss across the hall. Crabtree bowed with mock gravity. "You're getting dreadfully ponderous in your old age, David. On the other hand, I don't believe I can spare Tony. How long are you going to be away?"
"Six months if Crabtree goes. Three to five years if I do. It won't be with Summertown the whole time; I shall have business to attend to. I didn't know whether you——"
Sonia clasped her hands with a dramatic gesture of surprise.
"Mydear! youarehumble all of a sudden! I'm honoured! HaveIany wishes ...? Dear me!"
"Then I may take it you haven't?"
"It's for Lord Summertown to say," she answered impatiently. "Idon't mind."
O'Rane nodded and began to walk up the stairs, while Sonia crossed the hall at a ragtime shuffle, humming a plantation song. As we reached the first landing, he remarked:
"I told you I was looking for an omen."
Before dressing he scribbled a note to Oxford, and, when we met in the drawing-room before dinner, I heard him tell Summertown that he would be ready to start by the end of the week.
In my uncle's phrase, women are the strangest of all the sexes, and I do not pretend to explain Sonia's frame of mind at this time. Perhaps O'Rane was right in thinking she must be allowed of her own accord to grow weary of the world that Crabtree and Summertown represented; perhaps she was piqued by his refusal to run errands for her; perhaps I am right in thinking she was at this time incapable of any deep emotion. It is all guesswork.
Crabtree took charge of the dinner that night in a hearty, efficient manner, though O'Rane and I suffered from the disability common to all late arrivals in a house-party: a mint of catchwords and private jokes had been coined before we came. It was impossible to understand without an explanation, and the explanation so often analysed the poor little jest out of life. Moreover, I was sleepy after my long drive, and the elderly girl whom I took in—I always suspected Sonia's guests of being selected as foils—persisted in discussing the higher education of women. As Valentine Arden observed half-way through when my indefatigable neighbour trained her batteries on him: "If a woman is good-looking, education is superfluous; if she is not it is inadequate." I was mortified to think how much I might have been spared if I had been able to frame that formula earlier in the evening.
When the ladies left us, I roused slightly with the effort of getting up and opening the door. Crabtree moved into the chair between Dainton and myself, and, leaning in front of us, whispered to Summertown:
"I've given him a stroke a hole all the way."
For a moment I did not follow the allusion, but, when Summertown shook his head and murmured "No takers,"—still more, when Crabtree hurriedly finished his second glass of port and reached for the decanter—I appreciated that he was seriously measuring hardness of head with his host, as he had backed himself to do before dinner in the billiard-room.
"Don't be an ass, Crabtree," I whispered, as he filled Dainton's glass for the third time.
A humorous wink was my reward, and in elaborate dumb-show he informed me that, while his host had drunk no more than three glasses of champagne and two of port he himself had achieved exactly double that figure.
"Just getting into my stride," he murmured, and, if I find few opportunities of praising Crabtree, let me do justice to his powers of consuming alcohol. Certain dining clubs of Oxford used to experiment on him, now trying to make an impression by sheer weight of metal, now cunningly seeking to sap his defences with injudicious mixtures. For all the success they achieved, the bottles might have been carried into the street and emptied down the nearest drain. The big round face never flushed, the sleek, black head never swam. Then, as now, the lustiest of his opponents dropped out of the race just as he was settling down.
At first no one else observed what was afoot. Loring and O'Rane were talking together at the other end of the room, and Summertown and Arden had drawn back their chairs till they were screened by my back. I alone noticed that Dainton had grown very silent, and, as Crabtree kept up a voluble monologue, every one else was free to listen or talk as he chose. The first warning came with a tinkle of broken glass and a deep stain on the cloth.
"Clumsy of me!" exclaimed Dainton. "I hope I didn't splash you? Extraordinarily clumsy of me. No; no more, thanks. I can't think how I came to be so clumsy." Crabtree waved away the protest and began filling a fresh glass. "I don't deserve it after being so clumsy, you know."
A moment later coffee was brought in, and I saw Dainton taking several matches to a cigar that he had not cut. Faithful to the terms of his wager, Crabtree achieved a successful right and left with the liqueurs and brought down one kummel as the tray was handed me and another as it reached him. Also, he very considerately helped his host to a glass.
"Drop it, Crabtree," I said, as the footman passed out of hearing. "This is getting beyond a joke."
He winked even more humorously than before and pointed to the two glasses beside his plate. I saw Loring turn and whisper in O'Rane's ear, their eyes were fixed for a moment on Dainton's face, and then O'Rane called out:
"Have you got any matches down there, Crabtree? Shy 'em over, will you?"
A heavy silver match-box was tossed in a parabola through the air. Raney lit his cigar and cried:
"Coming over!"
This time no parabola was described. The path of the projectile was a straight line from O'Rane's upraised hand to the stem of Dainton's glass.
"A1 direction and perfect elevation," Arden remarked. The glass fell where it was struck, spreading a film of white liquid over the dessert-plate, and O'Rane sprang to his feet with profuse—and I have no doubt sincere—regret for spoiling an eighteenth-century Venetian set.
"Am I plagiarizing anyone if I call you a cad, Crabtree?" he inquired twenty minutes later, as they crossed the hall to the drawing-room.
"Damn your soul ...!" began Crabtree, genuinely offended; but the door was reached before the theme could be developed.
There was a tell-tale spot of colour round O'Rane's cheek-bones, however, and Sonia with quick perception manœuvred Crabtree into a chair by her mother's side. She herself remained standing till the rest of us were seated and then beckoned to O'Rane to share a sofa with her by the other fire at the far end of the room.
"Look here, David," she began severely.
O'Rane was engrossed in his own reflections and began thinking aloud.
"He's not a white man, you know," he said musingly. "I beg your pardon, Sonia?"
She lay back disdainfully with her hands clasped behind her head.
"David, I've got an idea that you and Tony never meet without quarrelling.Otherpeople get on with him.Iget on with him. Well, if you think it's good form to go to other people's houses and pick quarrels with guests who are good enough for them——"
O'Rane shook his head.
"He's not. That's the whole trouble."
"I'm fairly particular in the people I care to have as friends, David," she answered, in a tone which even her companion recognized as dangerous.
"The Lord preserve you in that belief," he exclaimed ironically. "If you want my candid opinion——"
"I don't."
"Perhaps you're afraid to hear it?" he jeered.
Sonia shrugged her shoulders with an air of boredom.
"You may say what you like," she told him, "but perhaps you'll regret it afterwards."
"I'll risk that. Well, to use a word you English always fight shy of, the fellow's not a gentleman."
Sonia clenched her hands and bit her lip to keep control of herself.
"You dare to say that of a friend of mine?"
"That's the pity of it, Sonia," O'Rane returned easily. "You're too good to be contaminated with that kind of stuff. He hasn't the instincts of a gentleman."
From an early age most people had hastened to conciliate and agree with Sonia when she was angry. I know nothing more characteristic of O'Rane than his repetition of the insult. She collected herself and struck coolly at his most vulnerable part.
"Perhaps, from what I know of you, you're not in a position to be a very good judge," she suggested.
Eight years before when O'Rane was cast up on the shore at Melton, it is no exaggeration to say that such a remark would have brought the speaker within easy distance of being killed. Now he only went pale and sat very still until he could speak dispassionately.
"I shall be on the high seas in a week's time," he told her, "and we shan't meet again for some years. I've given you my parting advice——"
Sonia was worsted, but she would not admit defeat without a last struggle.
"And when you come back you will find us married," she answered in a level voice.
"I'll come back for your wedding!" he laughed.
"I forget how long you said...."
"My child, you won't be married to Crabtree in three years."
"David, to-night before dinner——"
O'Rane waved his hand in deprecation.
"I don't disbelieve you! Will you give me your blessing before I start? I'm supposed to be superstitious, and as I'm beginning again from the bottom of the ladder—God! it's nearly ten years since my last effort—Part friends, Sonia."
"I don't care if I never see you again!" she answered passionately. "You simply think of new ways of trying to humiliate me——"
"Lord be praised there's still some one fond enough of you to try," he murmured half to himself.
Late that night O'Rane sat on the foot of my bed detailing his last interview. I told him things that nobody but he would need to be told—that he had only himself to thank for his dismissal, that a spoiled and petted semi-professional beauty was not a good medium for his unduly direct methods and that he could congratulate himself on driving Sonia three-fourths against her will into Crabtree's arms—in the very terms of the warning I had given him at Lake House.
"You see, I don't want to marry a professional beauty," he objected.
"Then take Sonia at her word and don't meet her again," I said.
"But that's only one side of her, the artificial side, the London hothouse side. Before all this, when she was a child of twelve and I lived in a misery of spirit that would drive some men to suicide.... In those days Sonia—Bah! she's ashamed of it now, but she showed me the whole of her brave, tender, generous soul—I said, and I say still, that there's hope of salvation for the damned if he comes before the Judgement Seat and boasts that once, even for a moment——"
His voice rose and grew rich with the familiar Irish rhetoric till I begged him to remember the slumbering household.
"There are so many Sonia Daintons," he mused, "but that's the one I always see. It's the one I shall see for the next three years." He uncurled his legs and slid down from the bed. "I sail next week, George. Dine with me on Thursday to say good-bye."
"No, you dine with me."
"I asked you first—my last favour on English soil: I'll dine the night I get back."
"That's a little vague," I complained. "You may be gone ten years."
He rose gracefully to the bait.
"Make it as definite as you like. This is nineteen six. Say nineteen ten. I shall be back in—May. First of May, let's call it. Shall we say the Club?"
"By all means. Will eight o'clock suit you? And what shall I order?"
"Oh, you know I eat anything. Are black ties allowed at the Eclectic? No, wait a bit, it'll be the beginning of the Season, and the House'll be sitting; you'll either be in morning dress or full regimentals. You please yourself, and I'll come in a short jacket. Good night."
"Good night, Raney, you old ass."
"I shall be there," he insisted, as he switched off the light.
Six days later the papers announced to all whom it might concern that Lord Summertown and Mr. D. O'Rane had left Tilbury for Bombay by the P. & O. "Multan."
"The nobles ... have nearly ceased either to guide or misguide; ... the Noble has changed his fighting sword into a court rapier; and now loyally attends his King as ministering satellite; divides the spoil, not now by violence and murder, but by soliciting and finesse.... For the rest, their privileges every way are now much curtailed.... Close-viewed, their industry and function is that of dressing gracefully and eating sumptuously.... Nevertheless, one has still partly a feeling with the lady Maréchale: 'Depend upon it, Sir, God thinks twice before damning a man of that quality.' These people, of old, surely had virtues, uses; or they could not have been there."—Thomas Carlyle, "The French Revolution."
"The nobles ... have nearly ceased either to guide or misguide; ... the Noble has changed his fighting sword into a court rapier; and now loyally attends his King as ministering satellite; divides the spoil, not now by violence and murder, but by soliciting and finesse.... For the rest, their privileges every way are now much curtailed.... Close-viewed, their industry and function is that of dressing gracefully and eating sumptuously.... Nevertheless, one has still partly a feeling with the lady Maréchale: 'Depend upon it, Sir, God thinks twice before damning a man of that quality.' These people, of old, surely had virtues, uses; or they could not have been there."—Thomas Carlyle, "The French Revolution."
Somewhere in my library at Lake House there is a little volume of essays entitled "History Re-written." It is a collection ofjeux d'espritexhumed from a dozen reviews by an author whose imagination loved to annihilate a single historical fact and reconstruct the changed consequences. There is one picture of the Greeks flying in disorder before the triumphant Darius on the plain of Marathon, and the subjection of Europe to an Eastern despotism; another of Julius Cæsar successfully defending himself against his would-be assassins; a third of Mahomet dying of starvation during the Hegira. I recall a study of Luther overwhelming the Vatican in argument, Columbus shipwrecked in mid-Atlantic, theRegiment of Flanders firing on the Paris mob, Napoleon leading the Grand Armée to luxurious winter quarters in Moscow.
Sometimes I wonder whether history would have had to be much re-written if the King of England and the German Emperor had been personally more cordial from 1901 to 1910; whether, too, destiny could have been cheated if Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had lived another five years. "C.-B." laboured for peace, and his honesty was not called in question; there was always the certainty that democracy the world over would one day grow strong enough to forbid war; there was always the chance that this decisive strength would come before a military party could issue its mobilization orders.
I know I speak in a minority of one: a thousand pens have shown that war was pre-ordained: yet—I wonder if the writers guess how nearly it was avoided. When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman resigned, there was no one of equal authority to carry on his work. For a space the unconvinced preached disarmament to the unbelieving, then impatiently girded themselves for war. The Japanese Alliance, the French Entente, the Russianrapprochementwere good platform points for a German scaremonger. If we had continued working for peace and keeping free of continental engagements, I wonder whether our teaching would have had time to bear fruit. My uncle Bertrand thought so and, though my political beliefs are too unstable to matter, he converted me from a showy Liberal Imperialism to an old-fashioned peaceful insularity. The change came gradually. My allegiance to the party weakened when Bill after Bill was contemptuously rejected in the House of Lords, and our leaders fulminated and declined battle. Thereafter a certain uneasiness was occasioned by the vagaries of the Foreign Office. Ostensibly our French Entente was formed to facilitate the settlement of outstanding questions in North Africa; and, though we were told from the Treasury Bench that militarily we were still uncommitted, Lobby gossip had a dozen disquieting theories of new secret engagements. Bertrand used to get his knuckles rapped for indiscreet questions to the Foreign Secretary, but rebuffsfrom mandarins only increased his suspicion that the whole truth was being withheld from the House of Commons.
Growing distrust of a brilliant and exasperatingly Celestial Ministry determined the course of my later years in Parliament. O'Rane left England at the end of 1906, my constituents rejected me in the first election of 1910; in the intervening time I joined an advanced Radical group in advocating better international understandings and immediate war on the House of Lords. They were the three busiest years of my life, and, when my uncle set his peace organization to work, a day of sixteen hours was divided equally between Fleet Street, the House, and the Central Disarmament Committee in Princes Gardens.
Of the outside world I saw even less than in my first session when I was a loyal party man; and, if there had been no Liberal Bills for Loring to wreck, I should have lost touch with all my former friends. As it was, he would ask me with exaggerated fear how much time I gave him to make peace with his Maker. I would expound the only possible solution of the House of Lords problem—(there were always six at any given time, all mutually destructive)—and under the shadow of the guillotine we would adjourn for dinner and inquire whether anything had been heard of Raney. It is almost superfluous to say that no letter was ever received from him, but Summertown cabled laconically at two-month intervals, and distorted messages reached us from Sally Farwell or Lady Marlyn. It was agreed that whichever first received news of the wanderers should immediately communicate with the other, and the formula—"Lord Loring's compliments, and will you dine with him to-night?"—nine times out of ten meant that the long-suffering Lady Marlyn had recently been handed a flimsy sheet with some such words as "All well Raney married to Dowager Queen of Siam leaving to-day for Java."
When I think of Loring at this time I always recall Burgess's parting advice on our last day at Melton. Few men who prophesied so freely could boast of making so few mistakes; he had predicted that there was no third course beyond a definite career such as the Diplomatic Service and adilettante politico-social existence of drift such as Loring now pursued. It does not lie in my mouth to pass judgement, but I was sorry to see a man with ten times my ability dabbling in life as negligently as he did. His whole energy was devoted to recapturing the last enchantments of the Middle Ages: ecclesiastically, politically and socially he stood for a vanished order and, when his own generation declined to jump backward across the centuries, he shrugged his shoulders in good-humoured contempt and walked his road alone—obstinate, aloof and correct to the last button of his boot. In the Lords he led the wildest of the Backwoodsmen groups, in Society he fluttered with a swarm where all were called by the Christian name and each took pride in the large number of people he did not know.
Failure is so little honoured that there is something pathetic in the sight of a man refusing to be modernized. At the same time, though my instincts are Bohemian, I am glad to think that at least one section of society refused to be bought up by the invaders who now assailed London with a handful of bank cheques. These years were the era of Adolf Erckmann and his retainers; their war-paint and war-cries, their ruthlessness and ferocity of attack led Loring to dub them "les Apaches," and for seven or eight years before the outbreak of war there was truceless fighting between the old order and the new. Before it was over, Loring was beaten. He kept his own house free of the invaders and occasionally raided their camp and rescued a prisoner. Summertown, for example, had been captured for a time and came near to swelling the number of Peerage and Stage romances. It is to Loring's sole credit that the indiscretion was scotched. But a few local successes could not be magnified into a general victory, and by 1914 London lay at the feet of Erckmann, Pennington, Mrs. Welman and a few other chiefs with their followers drawn from every quarter of England.
Erckmann's first purchase was Lord Pennington—who indeed was on sale for anyone who would give him five meals a day, excitement, noise, youth and not too intellectual conversation. Next came Mrs. Welman, whose spirit yet lived amidthe dusts and draughts and dressing-rooms of that Avenue Theatre she had forsaken to marry her wealthy paralytic husband. Thereafter it was simply a question of capillary attraction. The titles glamoured the stage, the stage fascinated the titles, and Erckmann, if he did not attract, at least paid for all. It was a motley gathering with a sadly draggled reputation here and there: you would find one or two Americans, several Jews, a few Germans and an astonishing number of young-men-about-town getting rich without undue toil on the wizard Erckmann's advice. "You wand a good dime, hein?" he would say invitingly. "You gome with me, my vriend." And they came.
According to their lights, too, they had the best time in the world. Ever trooping together from limelight to limelight, you would find a row of them in the stalls for any first night: the Royal Box was always theirs for a costume ball, and visitors to a regatta would punt half a mile to see the splendour of their house-boat. Should you enter a restaurant, their presence would be betrayed by the free-and-easy relations existing between themselves and the waiters—whom they called by nicknames: and, were you a recluse, the "Tickler" would portray the whole horde on Erckmann's lawn at Marlow, or you could sit by your fireside, the "Catch" open on your knees, envying them their presence in "Lord Pennington's house-party in Buckinghamshire."
I give them all credit for their powers of organization. A charity ball in their prehensile hands went with an undoubted swing, and no one who spent a week-end in their company could reasonably complain of dullness. I remember that the papers for some months were full of "Ragging in Country House" cases; there was the mock burglary at Pennington's place, Erckmann's launch tried to shoot Marlow Weir at three o'clock in the morning, and the unexplained fire in Mrs. Welman's Surrey cottage burned one of her maids to death. Some thought that they went perhaps a little too far in this last escapade, and for a time the Smart Set dropped out of the public gaze. Then the Dean of St. Pancras, struggling into the mantle of Savonarola, devoted a course of Advent sermonsto anathematizing them on the curious ground that they were responsible for a falling birth-rate, and the discussion—with this decanal benediction on it—became brisk and general.
There were houses in London where I met them, and tables where I supped with voluble, fluffy little footlight favourites whose accent and choice of language were notably more literary at the beginning of the meal than at the end. Dozens of carmined lips used to ask whether I had seen their "show"; other dozens described their next engagements and the number of pounds a week they had just refused. I floundered by the hour in contemporary theatrical history and daringly discussed actor managers by their Christian names.
Loring had no taste for such adventures. To be an Apache was to be refused admission to his house. He complained of their vitality and confessed weakness in repartee when accosted as a "sport" or informed that he "must have a drink."
"We get at cross-purposes," he sighed, stretching himself to his full, handsome, six foot three and smoothing his moustache. "The fault's mine, but there it is. I've arrived fainting at the end of a long journey because I've not got the buffet manner with barmaids."
As a fellow-member of the "Eclectic," I was on nodding terms with Erckmann, but to the end he and Loring never met. Perhaps a dozen other hosts and hostesses ranged themselves on the side of old-fashioned prudery, including for a time Lady Dainton, who assured me that she did not know what Society was coming to. I was dining with her one evening towards the end of 1907 to meet the girl Tom had just engaged himself to marry.
"I mean I would never dream of letting Sonia know such people, don't you know?" she told me.
"I share your view," I said, finding time to recall that in the Daintons' first London Season Sonia had habitually attended the meetings of the Four-in-hand Club on Erckmann's box seat.
"You wait till I'm married, mother!" said Sonia, who had overheard the conversation.
"When's the great event coming off?" I asked.
"Oh, not at present," said Lady Dainton rather hurriedly. "I don't want two weddings in the family at the same time. Besides, Tony's only been at the Bar a short time. We must wait till his position's a little more established, don't you know?"
I agreed, as I always agree with Lady Dainton. Yet as I walked home that night I murmured to myself some hackneyed lines from Robert Burns. If there was one thing more certain to my mind than another, it was that the ever-shrewd Anthony Crabtree relied on the Daintons and the "desperate thing" of marriage to establish his position.
I saw and heard no more of the family until the autumn. One morning in October Loring rang me up with the news that Summertown was in London, dining that night at Hale's. I was invited to meet him and found that eleven months' travel had altogether failed to mature him. A spasmodic, sandy moustache hinted at increasing age, but in other respects he was the same freckled, snub-nosed embodiment of irresponsibility as ever. The same taste for local colour characterized him as when on his return from America he lisped of candy, cocktails, dollar-bills and the art of clubbing as practised by the New York police: he was now the completest Anglo-Indian I have ever met, and his conversation sparkled with sahibs and white men, the Rains and the Hot Weather, the Hills in general and half-sacred Simla in particular. Mr. Warren Hastings, looking sourly down from the wall of Hale's coffee-room, must have seen us as seated at endless Tiffin—paid by means of Chits—where Saises, Khitmutgars and Ayahs entered and salaamed, and twenty-one gun salutes boomed faintly in the distance—as men have politely sat for years round any returned traveller or student of Kipling's Indian stories.
"What have you done with Raney?" Loring asked as the Odyssey drew to its close.
"I left him in Paris," was the answer. "We were going on to Spain, but the guv'nor don't think he's a suitable companion for a simple, unspoiled lad like me. My own adored mother's choice, too, mark you."
"What happened?" I asked.
"Phew! What didn't?" Summertown leant back with his thumbs thrust importantly into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, "I suppose you fellows don't appreciate it's been touch and go for a European War? Nothing but the well-known family tact of the Marlyns——"
"Get to the point," Loring ordered him.
Summertown bowed his head to the reproof.
"We came back overland from Vladivostock to Moscow," he said, "and about that point Raney recollected that his foot was on his native heath and all that sort of thing. We sprang lightly out of the train, seized our grips and Baedeckers, and sauntered round Russia and Poland, eventually bringing up at a spot called Hungary—where, by the way, there's a drink called Tokay ... All right, but you do spoil a good story, you know. From Hungary it is, as they say, a mere step to Austria. So we stepped. Raney's a most astonishing fellow, you know," he explained, in a short digression. "He's lived in all these places and talks the lingo like a beastly native. However, to resume my absorbing narrative, the moon shone out one night and discovered us eating scrambled eggs at a cabaret called the 'Chat Noir,' which being interpreted is 'Black Cat'——"
"Thank you," I said.
"The fruits of travel," he answered, with a bow. "To us enters, as they say in the stage directions, a flat-nosed brute who craves the favour of a match. Raney gave him some chat in Hungarian—which for some dam' silly reason I could never understand is called Magyar—and in a moment they were thick as thieves. I didn't know what all the eloquence was about, but they kept dragging in a chap called Kossuth——"
"I think I've heard the name somewhere," said Loring.
Summertown looked at him with admiration.
"Ithought it was one of the filthy waters they give you when you're doing a cure. Kossuth, yes. If you're one of the heads you pronounce it Koshoot and spell it Metternich. Well, these lads spat Magyar at each other and clinked glasses till the band broke down and everybody was staring at ourtable. Then an Austrian officer in a dream of a grey cloak strolled up and made some offensive remark. Of course, in mere vulgar abuse, dear old Raney's a pretty tidy performer, and they did 'emselves proud. I heard the name O'Rane sandwiched in between the gutturals, and then the Austrian got home with some pretty phrase. Raney went white as the proverbial sheet, picked up his glove from the table and gave that officer the most God Almighty welt across the face that I've ever seen. There—was—the—devilof a scene. I thought you exchanged cards about this point and then nipped over the frontier, leaving the other chap and the seconds and doctors and grave-diggers to keep the appointment for you. Not a bit of it here! Every cursed Austrian in that place jumped up, yelling his damnedest; every dog of an Hungarian did the same. One of the orchestra was a Bohemian, and he broke his 'cello over an Hungarian's head, and there was an Italian behind the bar who walked into the Austrians with a cocktail shaker. I picked up a chair and shouted, 'Vive Kossuth!' never dreaming the poor chap had been dead for years, and then tables and sofas hurtled through the air till the police came in and killed anybody who hadn't been killed already—I'm free to admit I faded away as soon as I'd smashed the last lamp. I thought Raney'd come, too, but he saw it out and was duly marched away with his flat-nosed friend through a perfect forest of drawn swords. It was about one o'clock in the morning, and I didn't think it was healthy to stay up any longer."
He paused to refresh his parched throat.
"Next day I went round to the Embassy," he continued, "and there I had the surprise of my life. While I was improving my mind in the East, that eminently respectable Councillor of Embassy, my father, had been shifted from Paris and sent to Vienna as Chargé d'Affaires. He was very glad to see me, of course, and all that sort of thing, but I couldn't help feeling I should have preferred to carry my little troubles to another man. I toned my story down a good bit, and after some agitated notes and interviews Raney was brought up for judgement with an armed escort. Most of him was ina sling, and the rest just hung down in strips from the bones. As soon as they started talking I found we'd fairly done it in the night before. Our flat-nosed Hungarian friend was mixed up with a Secret Society and pretty consistently shadowed by the police. He and Raney had fraternized and exchanged cards, and, apparently old O'Rane wasn't much of a popular favorite in Austria. He and Vive Kossuth had caused the Government all kinds of vexation which weren't forgotten though both of them were dead, and when the flat-nosed man drank to their pious memory and Raney held forth on Hungarian Independence, you can imagine the Austrian contingent was no end restive.
"The poor old Guv'nor had his work cut out to smooth things down. For about an hour he buttered 'em all up and apologized to everybody, swearing that Raney was tight—which was an absolute lie. There was a fine recommendation to mercy and an allusion to a father's feeling—lump in the throat, all that sort of thing—and then the Guv'nor closed down. I hoped it was all over, but the Austrian lads were out for blood—we had to pay for all the damage, and our friend the officer was trundled along in a wheeled chair to receive our apologies, and then the Minister of the Interior, or the Prefect of Police, or some bug like that, popped into another room with the Guv'nor and dictated terms for the future.Igot off with a caution, but poor old Raney took it in the neck. They stripped him and measured him and took his finger-prints and photographed him about a dozen times. And in the afternoon an escort of soldiers frog's-marched us to the Bavarian frontier and took a tender farewell, with a plain statement in writing that, if ever Raney put one toe of either foot on an inch of his Imperial Majesty Franz Josef's territory from now till the end of time, he'd first of all be shot and then disembowelled and then confined in a fortress for the rest of his days. The Guv'nor don't fancy me for the Diplomatic; he says I want discipline, so the Army's going to try its hand on me." He shrugged his shoulders tolerantly. "I don't mind, it's all in the day's work, but I'd have you observe the kind of man my sainted mother sends me abroadwith on the grounds that I should only get up to mischief if I went alone."
Of O'Rane's future movements Summertown could tell us nothing beyond the fact that he was shortly starting for Mexico, and that letters to his bank would, in due course, be forwarded.
"I shall write to him to-night," said Loring, as we walked up St. James's Street. Summertown had heard that roulette was being played illicitly somewhere in Chelsea and was anxious to check the accuracy of the report.
"At this hour?" I asked, glancing at my watch. It was past one o'clock.
"I can do it in three lines," he answered. "It's about his friend Crabtree. Have you heard?"
"I can believe anything of him," I said, as I resigned myself to listen.
"Then youhaven'theard. Well, the engagement's off. I met your cousin Violet at lunch to-day, and she had it from Lady Dainton. No reason given."
"Either of us can supply it," I said.
Loring made no comment.
"Sonia can do better than that," he said, after we had walked for some time in silence.
"So, possibly, can Crabtree," I suggested. "In her present state——"
"My dear George, she's still a child," he answered, with some warmth.
"There are children and children." I had neither forgiven nor forgotten her behaviour to O'Rane for a year or two.
"I don't think the man who marries Sonia is at all to be pitied," Loring said rather aggressively.
The words may have meant that such a man was to be envied—or equally that he took the risk with his eyes open. But we were at the corner of Half Moon Street, and Loring had waved good-night and was walking towards Curzon Street before I was ready to ask him.
I look back on my life between 1907 and 1910 as three years' hard labour. The sentence began to run about a week after Summertown's return from the Continent, and it was only when he had been coaxed and pushed into a commission in the Third Grenadier Guards and I was dining with the King's Guard in St. James's Palace, six months later, that I heard news of O'Rane's strangely devious progress to the New World.
Devious, and yet perhaps not strange. He went by way of British East Africa, though what he did and how long he remained there, no man has discovered. The documentary evidence ended with a two-line postcard from Mombasa, and anyone could interpret it as he pleased. Summertown's explanations grew more and more picturesque as dinner went on. O'Rane, he assured me, was a Great White Rajah holding sway from the Lakes to the Sudan and from the Desert to the now empty throne of Zanzibar; later, he had "gone black" and was living patriarchally in a kraal with scores of natives wives and one immaculate silk hat between himself and unashamed nudity; later still, he had proclaimed himself Mahdi, and was leading frenzied hordes of Dervishes to the recapture of Khartoum. Raney himself told me afterwards that he was at one time bar-tender in the Nairobi Club and the rest of the while turning his hand, not altogether without success, to anything in heaven above or the waters beneath that had money in it. When he left Africa I have no idea, but the next time I heard of him he had unquestionably reached Mexico.
In the meantime I was wearily serving my sentence in London. I have mentioned the guerilla warfare carried on by Bertrand against the Foreign Office from the time of the Franco-Britishentente. Secret treaties or understandings were new and amazingly distasteful to the Radical wing, the Lobby rumours only increased the general uneasiness, and something of a crisis was reached when the undefined alliancewas joined by Russia. We fire-eaters had lavished invective on the Czar's Government at the time of "Red Sunday," and afainéantDuma hardly availed to drive Father Gapon and the litter of dead in the Petersburg streets from our memory. If, of course, one country after another was to be drawn into theentente, well and good; there could be no need for so much bated breath and mystery. If, on the other hand, we were dividing Europe into two groups,—at best for a competition in armaments, at worse for a trial of strength,—then the men and women whose lives were handed out as stakes had the right to know the gamble their rulers were meditating.
In this connexion I make free recantation of one heresy: I no longer desire open diplomacy. Had it obtained for the last generation, war might have been postponed; but, if war was as consistently intended by Germany as I am assured on all hands, it would only have been postponed till a less formidable alliance opposed her. To the other half of my creed I remain loyal, though my loyalty be tinged with despair. Now, as then, I look forward to an era of universal arbitration, apro ratareduction of armaments leading in time to the abolition of national armies and navies and the establishment of a United States of the world with federal control of the world's constabulary. The ideal will not materialize to-day or to-morrow, but—as O'Rane was fond of saying—slavery and torture died hard, the rule of law between individuals did not come in a night.
Bertrand's motives in launching his propaganda I am not competent to judge. Perhaps his attitude of eternal scepticism was beginning to pall; perhaps he was as alarmed as he pretended to be—and there is little doubt that for half a dozen years before the war there was a latent diplomatic crisis whenever the harvest had been gathered in and the armies of the Continent were mobilized for autumn manœuvres; certainly a personal animus towards the Foreign Office, a resentment for the Government's lofty practice of driving the Commons in blinkers provided a stimulus to his activity. And for all the routine and drudgery, there was excitement and a great novelty in the campaign;l'appétit vient en mangeant,and to some extent we succumbed to the enthusiasm we tried to inspire in others.
Princes Gardens saw the birth of this, as of half a hundred similar movements. We christened our association the "Disarmament League," floated a weekly paper with the evangelic title of "Peace," organized an army of itinerant lecturers, appointed corresponding members in every quarter of the globe, affiliated ourselves to any foreign body that would have us, and arranged broad-minded visits of inspection to the lands of sympathizers and suspects.
The work was enormous. Nothing was too great or too small for our attention, and Bertrand had all a great commander's capacity for delegating work to others. As editor of "Peace" he would sketch out a few general ideas, leave me to turn up references and fill in details, and on Thursday, as we were going to Press, stroll round to the draughty, gas-lit office in Bouverie Street with luminous and urgent suggestions for altering the tone of the leading articles or including lengthy contributions from his own pen in an already overset paper.
I imagine there is no man born of woman who does not believe himself qualified to found and run an important daily, weekly or monthly paper. We were no exception, and my uncle's self-confidence was fortified by hazy and idealistic memories of the Fleet Street he had served half a century before. We had the saving prudence to employ one or two trained journalists and a Scotch sub-editor of infinite patience to guide—but never thwart—our amateur inspiration. In time we settled down to conventional newspaper tradition, moderated our transports and eliminated from the columns of "Peace" the traces of our first fine careless rapture. In time our patient M'Clellan was promoted to the position of business manager, and in his capable hands the advertisement revenue leapt and bounded until, by the end of 1908, our weekly loss on the production of the paper sank to the negligible figure of sixty pounds. In time, too, Bertrand and I found the spade-work distasteful, and from the beginning of 1909 the professional journalists did more and the inspired amateursconsiderably less. We no longer said that nothing was too great or too small for our attention....
Of the effects of our noisy dive into journalism I must leave others to speak; the time actually spent in "Peace" office, "the great movement of men" in the purlieus of Fleet Street, I have never had occasion to regret. The project was kept as secret as the sailing orders of the "Hispaniola" in "Treasure Island"; and the out-of-work gutter-scribes knew as much of our intentions as Flint's scattered pirates on the quayside of Bristol. Mayhew waylaid me in the Club, stammering with excited suggestions.
"I'm just off to Budapest as special correspondent for the 'Wicked World,'" he told me. "If you'll make it worth my while to stay—I don't mind telling you there's not much you can teach me about running a paper...."
And he sketched the lines of the ideal new weekly, abolishing our title, suppressing our propaganda and limning forth a hybrid which was to pay its way by white mail and the ventilation of grievances. We were never to threaten the disclosure of ugly indiscretions but to ask our own price for baseless panegyric. "How much will you give us to say this about you?" was to be our formula, and, when an under-housemaid was discharged for theft or a clergyman refused to celebrate marriage with a deceased wife's sister, the aggrieved party was urged to "write to the Watchman about it."
Finding no common ground between us, Mayhew hurried away to Budapest with an omniscient headshake of misgiving. His place on my doorstep was promptly taken by one after another of Sir John Woburn's contract-expired young men. In those days the Press Combine was descending on journalism with the sideways glide of the octopus. Newspapers throughout England came one by one within reach of the waving tentacles: stolid, old-fashioned thunderers were silenced and flung into the street, while the young men of promise had their salaries trebled for three years until their brains were picked and themselves could be tossed aside like a sucked orange. They came to me boasting of the Sensations they had effected—the "Lamplighter" treasure-hunt, the"Cottage and Castle" campaign in favour of sterilized milk, the "Echo" carnation-growing competition. One and all would have made asépatanta sensation of universal disarmament—or, for the matter of that, bimetallism, Esperanto, female suffrage or food reform—but a narrow Oxford fastidiousness, "a toy of soul, a titillating thing," set me shivering at sight of their newsbills and head-lines. For better or worse we had to get on without them.
Sir John Woburn himself I never met—and am the first to regret the loss. A man who rose from nothing to a baronetcy and the controlling interest in the august "London and Westminster Chronicle" is probably worth meeting; a man who cornered public opinion with his Press Combine was no ordinary man; and to drug the sense of a nation, to render an impassive people neurotic, to debauch the mind of a generation was no ordinary task. But, if I never met Woburn, I came once or twice in contact with Gerald Harness, his principal galvanizer and the one man who survived his chief's successive 'witch-hunts for incompetents,' as they were called, in the ranks of the Press Combine.
The career of Harness was without parallel in English life; under Woburn's direction he edited the "Morning Bulletin" and the "Evening Dispatch"; in the office of the second he unravelled—Penelope fashion—the web he had woven overnight in the office of the first. His was an amazingly effective dual personality: in the "Bulletin" he was a Jingo, a Tariff Reformer, a Brewers' Champion, a House of Lords man and an Ulster stalwart; in the "Dispatch" a Little Englander, Free-Trader, Licensing Bill supporter, House of Commons man and Home Ruler. The war, which washed away most things, spent its violence in vain on his impervious figure; he still fought for conscription by night and the voluntary system by day.