MALTENBY HALLTRADESMEN’S ENTRANCE
and it needed only the most cursory examination to establish the fact that the car whose track he had been following had turned in here. He held up his hand and stopped a luggage trolley which had just turned the bend in the avenue. The man pulled up and touched his hat.
“Where are you off to, Fellowes?” Julian enquired.
“I am going to Holt station, sir,” the man replied, “after some luggage.”
“Are there any guests at the Hall who motored here, do you know?” Julian asked.
“Only the young lady, sir,” the man replied, “Miss Abbeway. She came in a little coupe Panhard.”
Julian frowned thoughtfully.
“Has she been out in it this morning?” he asked.
The man shook his head.
“She broke down in it yesterday afternoon, sir,” he answered, “about halfway up to the Hall here.”
“Broke down?” Julian repeated. “Anything serious? Couldn’t you put it right for her?”
“She wouldn’t let me touch it, sir,” the man explained. “She said she had two cracked sparking plugs, and she wanted to replace them herself. She has had some lessons, and I think she wanted a bit of practice.”
“I see. Then the car is in the avenue now?”
“About half a mile up, on the left-hand side, sir, just by the big elm. Miss Abbeway said she was coming down this afternoon to put new plugs in.”
“Then it’s been there all the time since yesterday afternoon?” Julian persisted.
“The young lady wished it left there, sir. I could have put a couple of plugs in, in five minutes, and brought her up to the house, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”
“I see, Fellowes.”
“Any luck with the geese last night, sir?” the man asked. “I heard there was a pack of them on Stiffkey Marshes.”
“I got one. They came badly for us,” Julian replied.
He made his way up the avenue. At exactly the spot indicated by the chauffeur a little coupe car was standing, drawn on to the turf. He glanced at the name of the maker and looked once more at the tracks upon the drive. Finally, he decided that his investigations were leading him in a most undesirable direction.
He turned back, walked across the marshes, where he found nothing to disturb him, and lunched with Furley, whose leg was now so much better that he was able to put it to the ground.
“What about this visitor of yours?” Julian asked, as they sat smoking afterwards. “I must be back at the Hall in time to dine to-night, you know. My people made rather a point of it.”
Furley nodded.
“You’ll be all right,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, he isn’t coming.”
“Not coming?” Julian repeated. “Jove, I should have thought you’d have had intelligence officers by the dozen down here!”
“For some reason or other,” Furley confided, “the affair has been handed over to the military authorities. I have had a man down to see me this morning, and he has taken full particulars. I don’t know that they’ll even worry you at all—until later on, at any rate.”
“Jove, that seems queer!”
“Last night’s happening was queer, for that matter,” Furley continued. “Their only chance, I suppose, of getting to the bottom of it is to lie doggo as far as possible. It isn’t like a police affair, you see. They don’t want witnesses and a court of justice. One man’s word and a rifle barrel does the trick.”
Julian sighed.
“I suppose,” he observed, “that if I do my duty as a loyal subject, I shall drop the curtain on last night. Seems a pity to have had an adventure like that and not be able to open one’s mouth about it.”
Furley grunted.
“You don’t want to join the noble army of gas bags,” he said. “Much better make up your mind that it was a dream.”
“There are times,” Julian confided, “when I am not quite sure that it wasn’t.”
Julian entered the drawing-room at Maltenby Hall a few minutes before dinner time that evening. His mother, who was alone and, for a wonder, resting, held out her hand for him to kiss and welcomed him with a charming smile. Notwithstanding her grey hair, she was still a remarkably young-looking woman, with a great reputation as a hostess.
“My dear Julian,” she exclaimed, “you look like a ghost! Don’t tell me that you had to sit up all night to shoot those wretched duck?”
Julian drew a chair to his mother’s side and seated himself with a little air of relief.
“Never have I been more conscious of the inroads of age,” he confided. “I can remember when, ten or fifteen years ago, I used to steal out of the house in the darkness and bicycle down to the marsh with a twenty-bore gun, on the chance of an odd shot.”
“And I suppose,” his mother went on, “after spending half the night wading about in the salt water, you spent the other half talking to that terrible Mr. Furley.”
“Quite right. We got cold and wet through in the evening; we sat up talking till the small hours; we got cold and wet again this morning—and here I am.”
“A converted sportsman,” his mother observed. “I wish you could convert your friend, Mr. Furley. There’s a perfectly terrible article of his in the National this month. I can’t understand a word of it, but it reads like sheer anarchy.”
“So long as the world exists,” Julian remarked, “there must be Socialists, and Furley is at least honest.”
“My dear Julian,” his mother protested, “how can a Socialist be honest! Their attitude with regard to the war, too, is simply disgraceful. I am sure that in any other country that man Fenn, for instance, would be shot.”
“What about your house party?” Julian enquired, with bland irrelevance.
“All arrived. I suppose they’ll be down directly. Mr. Hannaway Wells is here.”
“Good old Wells!” Julian murmured. “How does he look since he became a Cabinet Minister?”
“Portentous,” Lady Maltenby replied; with a smile. “He doesn’t look as though he would ever unbend. Then the Shervintons are here, and the Princess Torski—your friend Miss Abbeway’s aunt.”
“The Princess Torski?” Julian repeated. “Who on earth is she?”
“She was English,” his mother explained, “a cousin of the Abbeways. She married in Russia and is on her way now to France to meet her husband, who is in command of a Russian battalion there. She seems quite a pleasant person, but not in the least like her niece.”
“Miss Abbeway is still here, of course?”
“Naturally. I asked her for a week, and I think she means to stay. We talked for an hour after tea this afternoon, and I found her most interesting. She has been living in England for years, it seems, down in Chelsea, studying sculpture.”
“She is a remarkably clever young woman,” Julian said thoughtfully, “but a little incomprehensible. If the Princess Torski is her aunt, who were her parents?”
“Her father,” the Countess replied, “was Colonel Richard Abbeway, who seems to have been military attache at St. Petersburg, years ago. He married a sister of the Princess Torski’s husband, and from her this young woman inherited a title which she won’t use and a large fortune. Colonel Abbeway was killed accidentally in the Russo-Japanese War, and her mother died a few years ago.”
“No German blood, or anything of that sort, then?”
“My dear boy, what an idea!” his mother exclaimed reprovingly. “On the contrary, the Torskis are one of the most aristocratic families in Russia, and you know what the Abbeways are. The girl is excellently bred, and I think her charming in every way. Whatever made you suggest that she might have German blood in her?”
“No idea! Anyhow, I am glad she hasn’t. Who else?”
“The Bishop,” his mother continued, “looking very tired, poor dear! Doctor George Lennard, from Oxford, two young soldiers from Norwich, whom Charlie asked us to be civil to—and the great man himself.”
“Tell me about the great man? I don’t think I’ve seen him to speak to since he became Prime Minister.”
“He declares that this is his first holiday this year. He is looking rather tired, but he has had an hour’s shooting since he arrived, and seemed to enjoy it. Here’s your father.”
The Earl of Maltenby, who entered a moment later, was depressingly typical. He was as tall as his youngest son, with whom he shook hands absently and whom he resembled in no other way. He had the conventionally aristocratic features, thin lips and steely blue eyes. He was apparently a little annoyed.
“Anything wrong, dear?” Lady Maltenby asked.
Her husband took up his position on the hearthrug.
“I am annoyed with Stenson,” he declared.
The Countess shook her head.
“It’s too bad of you, Henry,” she expostulated. “You’ve been trying to talk politics with him. You know that the poor man was only longing for forty-eight hours during which he could forget that he was Prime Minister of England.”
“Precisely, my dear,” Lord Maltenby agreed. “I can assure you that I have not transgressed in any way. A remark escaped me referring to the impossibility of providing beaters, nowadays, and to the fact that out of my seven keepers, five are fighting. I consider Mr. Stenson’s comment was most improper, coming from one to whom the destinies of this country are confided.”
“What did he say?” the Countess asked meekly.
“Something about wondering whether any man would be allowed to have seven keepers after the war,” her husband replied, with an angry light in his eyes. “If a man like Stenson is going to encourage these socialistic ideas. I beg your pardon—the Bishop, my dear.”
The remaining guests drifted in within the next few moments,—the Bishop, Julian’s godfather, a curious blend of the fashionable and the devout, the anchorite and the man of the people; Lord and Lady Shervinton, elderly connections of the nondescript variety; Mr. Hannaway Wells, reserved yet, urbane, a wonderful type of the supreme success of mediocrity; a couple of young soldiers, light-hearted and out for a good time, of whom Julian took charge; an Oxford don, who had once been Lord Maltenby’s tutor; and last of all the homely, very pleasant-looking, middle-aged lady, Princess Torski, followed by her niece. There were a few introductions still to be effected.
Whilst Lady Maltenby was engaged in this task, which she performed at all times with the unfailing tact of a great hostess, Julian broke off in his conversation with the two soldiers and looked steadfastly across the room at Catherine Abbeway, as though anxious to revise or complete his earlier impressions of her. She was of medium height, not unreasonably slim, with a deliberate but noticeably graceful carriage. Her complexion was inclined to be pale. She had large, soft brown eyes, and hair of an unusual shade of chestnut brown, arranged with remarkably effective simplicity. She wore a long string of green beads around her neck, a black tulle gown without any relief of colour, but a little daring in its cut. Her voice and laugh, as she stood talking to the Bishop, were delightful, and neither her gestures nor her accent betrayed the slightest trace of foreign blood. She was, without a doubt, extraordinarily attractive, gracious almost to freedom in her manner, and yet with that peculiar quality of aloofness only recognisable in the elect,—a very appreciable charm. Julian found his undoubted admiration only increased by his closer scrutiny. Nevertheless, as he watched her, there was a slightly puzzled frown upon his forehead, a sense of something like bewilderment mingled with those other feelings. His mother, who had turned to speak to the object of his attentions, beckoned him, and he crossed the room at once to their side.
“Julian is going to take you in to dinner, Miss Abbeway,” the Countess announced, “and I hope you will be kind to him, for he’s been out all night and a good part of the morning, too, shooting ducks and talking nonsense with a terrible Socialist.”
Lady Maltenby passed on. Julian, leaning on his stick, looked down with a new interest into the face which had seldom been out of his thoughts since their first meeting, a few weeks ago.
“Tell me, Mr. Orden,” she asked, “which did you find the more exhausting—tramping the marshes for sport, or discussing sociology with your friend?”
“As a matter of fact,” he replied, “we didn’t tramp the marshes. We stood still and got uncommonly wet. And I shot a goose, which made me very happy.”
“Then it must have been the conversation,” she declared. “Is your friend a prophet or only one of the multitude?”
“A prophet, most decidedly. He is a Mr. Miles Furley, of whom you must have heard.”
She started a little.
“Miles Furley!” she repeated. “I had no idea that he lived in this part of the world.”
“He has a small country house somewhere in Norfolk,” Julian told her, “and he takes a cottage down here at odd times for the wild-fowl shooting.”
“Will you take me to see him to-morrow?” she asked.
“With pleasure, so long as you promise not to talk socialism with him.”
“I will promise that readily, out of consideration to my escort. I wonder how it is,” she went on, looking up at him a little thoughtfully, “that you dislike serious subjects so much.”
“A frivolous turn of mind, I suppose,” he replied. “I certainly prefer to talk art with you.”
“But nowadays,” she protested, “it is altogether the fashion down at Chelsea to discard art and talk politics.”
“It’s a fashion I shouldn’t follow,” he advised. “I should stick to art, if I were you.”
“Well, that depends upon how you define politics, of course. I don’t mean Party politics. I mean the science of living, as a whole, not as a unit.”
The Princess ambled up to them.
“I don’t know what your political views are, Mr. Orden,” she said, “but you must look out for shocks if you discuss social questions with my niece. In the old days they would never have allowed her to live in Russia. Even now, I consider some of her doctrines the most pernicious I ever heard.”
“Isn’t that terrible from an affectionate aunt!”
Catherine laughed, as the Princess passed on. “Tell me some more about your adventures last night?”
She looked up into his face, and Julian was suddenly conscious from whence had come that faint sense of mysterious trouble which had been with him during the last few minutes. The slight quiver of her lips brought it all back to him. Her mouth, beyond a doubt, with its half tender, half mocking curve, was the mouth which he had seen in that tangled dream of his, when he had lain fighting for consciousness upon the marshes.
Julian, absorbed for the first few minutes of dinner by the crystallisation of this new idea which had now taken a definite place in his brain, found his conversational powers somewhat at a discount. Catherine very soon, however, asserted her claim upon his attention.
“Please do your duty and tell me about things,” she begged. “Remember that I am Cinderella from Bohemia, and I scarcely know a soul here.”
“Well, there aren’t many to find out about, are there?” he replied. “Of course you know Stenson?”
“I have been gazing at him with dilated eyes,” she confided. “Is that not the proper thing to do? He seems to me very ordinary and very hungry.”
“Well, then, there is the Bishop.”
“I knew him at once from his photographs. He must spend the whole of the time when he isn’t in church visiting the photographer. However, I like him. He is talking to my aunt quite amiably. Nothing does aunt so much good as to sit next a bishop.”
“The Shervintons you know all about, don’t you?” he went on. “The soldiers are just young men from the Norwich barracks, Doctor Lennard was my father’s tutor at Oxford, and Mr. Hannaway Wells is our latest Cabinet Minister.”
“He still has the novice’s smirk,” she remarked. “A moment ago I heard him tell his neighbour that he preferred not to discuss the war. He probably thinks that there is a spy under the table.”
“Well, there we are—such as we are,” Julian concluded. “There is no one left except me.”
“Then tell me all about yourself,” she suggested. “Really, when I come to think of it, considering the length of our conversations, you have been remarkably reticent. You are the youngest of the family, are you not? How many brothers are there?”
“There were four,” he told her. “Henry was killed at Ypres last year. Guy is out there still. Richard is a Brigadier.”
“And you?”
“I am a barrister by profession, but I went out with the first Inns of Court lot for a little amateur soldiering and lost part of my foot at Mons. Since then I have been indulging in the unremunerative and highly monotonous occupation of censoring.”
“Monotonous indeed, I should imagine,” she agreed. “You spend your time reading other people’s letters, do you not, just to be sure that there are no communications from the enemy?”
“Precisely,” he assented. “We discover ciphers and all sorts of things.”
“What brainy people you must be!”
“We are, most of us.”
“Do you do anything else?”
“Well, I’ve given up censoring for the present,” he confided. “I am going back to my profession.”
“As a barrister?”
“Just so. I might add that I do a little hack journalism.”
“How modest!” she murmured. “I suppose you write the leading articles for the Times!”
“For a very young lady,” Julian observed impressively, “you have marvellous insight. How did you guess my secret?”
“I am better at guessing secrets than you are,” she retorted a little insolently.
He was silent for some moments. The faint curve of her lips had again given him almost a shock.
“Have you a brother?” he asked abruptly.
“No. Why?”
“Because I met some one quite lately—within the last few hours, as a matter of fact—with a mouth exactly like yours.”
“But what a horrible thing!” she exclaimed, drawing out a little mirror from the bag by her side and gazing into it. “How unpleasant to have any one else going about with a mouth exactly like one’s own! No, I never had a brother, Mr. Orden, or a sister, and, as you may have heard, I am an enfant mechante. I live in London, I model very well, and I talk very bad sociology. As I think I told you, I know your anarchist friend, Miles Furley.”
“I shouldn’t call Furley an anarchist,” protested Julian.
“Well, he is a Socialist. I admit that we are rather lax in our definitions. You see, there is just one subject, of late years, which has brought together the Socialists and the Labour men, the Syndicalists and the Communists, the Nationalists and the Internationalists. All those who work for freedom are learning breadth. If they ever find a leader, I think that this dear, smug country of yours may have to face the greatest surprise of its existence.”
Julian looked at her curiously.
“You have ideas, Miss Abbeway.”
“So unusual in a woman!” she mocked. “Do you notice how every one is trying to avoid the subject of the war? I give them another half-course, don’t you? I am sure they cannot keep it up.”
“They won’t go the distance,” Julian whispered. “Listen.”
“The question to be considered,” Lord Shervinton pronounced, “is not so much when the war will be over as what there is to stop it? That is a point which I think we can discuss without inviting official indiscretions.”
“If other means fail,” declared the Bishop, “Christianity will stop it. The conscience of the world is already being stirred.”
“Our enemies,” the Earl pronounced confidently from his place at the head of the table, “are already a broken race. They are on the point of exhaustion. Austria is, if possible, in a worse plight. That is what will end the war—the exhaustion of our opponents.”
“The deciding factor,” Mr. Hannaway Wells put in, with a very non-committal air, “will probably be America. She will bring her full strength into the struggle just at the crucial moment. She will probably do what we farther north have as yet failed to do: she will pierce the line and place the German armies in Flanders in peril.”
The Cabinet Minister’s views were popular. There was a little murmur of approval, something which sounded almost like a purr of content. It was just one more expression of that strangely discreditable yet almost universal failing,—the over-reliance upon others. The quiet remark of the man who suddenly saw fit to join in the discussion struck a chilling and a disturbing note.
“There is one thing which could end the war at any moment,” Mr. Stenson said, leaning a little forward, “and that is the will of the people.”
There was perplexity as well as discomfiture in the minds of his hearers.
“The people?” Lord Shervinton repeated. “But surely the people speak through the mouths of their rulers?”
“They have been content to, up to the present,” the Prime Minister agreed, “but Europe may still see strange and dramatic events before many years are out.”
“Do go on, please,” the Countess begged.
Mr. Stenson shook his head.
“Even as a private individual I have said more than I intended,” he replied. “I have only one thing to say about the war in public, and that is that we are winning, that we must win, that our national existence depends upon winning, and that we shall go on until we do win. The obstacles between us and victory, which may remain in our minds, are not to be spoken of.”
There was a brief and somewhat uncomfortable pause. It was understood that the subject was to be abandoned. Julian addressed a question to the Bishop across the table. Lord Maltenby consulted Doctor Lennard as to the date of the first Punic War. Mr. Stenson admired the flowers. Catherine, who had been sitting with her eyes riveted upon the Prime Minister, turned to her neighbour.
“Tell me about your amateur journalism, Mr. Orden?” she begged. “I have an idea that it ought to be interesting.”
“Deadly dull, I can assure you.”
“You write about politics? Or perhaps you are an art critic? I ought to be on my best behaviour, in case.”
“I know little about art,” he assured her. “My chief interest in life—outside my profession, of course—lies in sociology.”
His little confession had been impulsive. She raised her eyebrows.
“You are in earnest, I believe!” she exclaimed. “Have I really found an Englishman who is in earnest?”
“I plead guilty. It is incorrect philosophy but a distinct stimulus to life.”
“What a pity,” she sighed, “that you are so handicapped by birth! Sociology cannot mean anything very serious for you. Your perspective is naturally distorted.”
“What about yourself?” he asked pertinently.
“The vanity of us women!” she murmured. “I have grown to look upon myself as being an exception. I forget that there might be others. You might even be one of our prophets—a Paul Fiske in disguise.”
His eyes narrowed a little as he looked at her closely. From across the table, the Bishop broke off an interesting discussion on the subject of his addresses to the working classes, and the Earl set down his wineglass with an impatient gesture.
“Does no one really know,” Mr. Stenson asked, “who Paul Fiske is?”
“No one, sir,” Mr. Hannaway Wells replied. “I thought it wise, a short time ago, to set on foot the most searching enquiries, but they were absolutely fruitless.”
The Bishop coughed.
“I must plead guilty,” he confessed, “to having visited the offices of The Monthly Review with the same object. I left a note for him there, in charge of the editor, inviting him to a conference at my house. I received no reply. His anonymity seems to be impregnable.”
“Whoever he may be,” the Earl declared, “he ought to be muzzled. He is a traitor to his country.”
“I cannot agree with you, Lord Maltenby,” the Bishop said firmly. “The very danger of the man’s doctrines lies in their clarity of thought, their extraordinary proximity to the fundamental truths of life.”
“The man is, at any rate,” Doctor Lennard interposed, “the most brilliant anonymous writer since the days of Swift and the letters of Junius.”
Mr. Stenson for a moment hesitated. He seemed uncertain whether or no to join in the conversation. Finally, impulse swayed him.
“Let us all be thankful,” he said, “that Paul Fiske is content with the written word. If the democracy of England found themselves to-day with such a leader, it is he who would be ruling the country, and not I.”
“The man is a pacifist!” the Earl protested.
“So we all are,” the Bishop declared warmly. “We are all pacifists in the sense that we are lovers of peace. There is not one of us who does not deplore the horrors of to-day. There is not one of us who is not passionately seeking for the master mind which can lead us out of it.”
“There is only one way out,” the Earl insisted, “and that is to beat the enemy.”
“It is the only obvious way,” Julian intervened, joining in the conversation for the first time, “but meanwhile, with every tick of the clock a fellow creature dies.”
“It is a question,” Mr. Hannaway Wells reflected, “whether the present generation is not inclined to be mawkish with regard to human life. History has shown us the marvellous benefits which have accrued to the greatest nations through the lessening of population by means of warfare.”
“History has also shown us,” Doctor Lennard observed, “that the last resource of force is force. No brain has ever yet devised a logical scheme for international arbitration.”
“Human nature, I am afraid, has changed extraordinarily little since the days of the Philistines,” the Bishop confessed.
Julian turned to his companion.
“Well, they’ve all settled it amongst themselves, haven’t they?” he murmured. “Here you may sit and listen to what may be called the modern voice.”
“Yet there is one thing wanting,” she whispered. “What do you suppose, if he were here at this moment, Paul Fiske would say? Do you think that he would be content to listen to these brazen voices and accept their verdict?”
“Without irreverence,” Julian answered, “or comparison, would Jesus Christ?”
“With the same proviso,” she retorted, “I might reply that Jesus Christ, from all we know of him, might reign wonderfully in the Kingdom of Heaven, but he certainly wouldn’t be able to keep together a Cabinet in Downing Street! Still, I am beginning to believe in your sincerity. Do you think that Paul Fiske is sincere?”
“I believe,” Julian replied, “that he sees the truth and struggles to express it.”
The women were leaving the table. She leaned towards him.
“Please do not be long,” she whispered. “You must admit that I have been an admirable dinner companion. I have talked to you all the time on your own subject. You must come and talk to me presently about art.”
Julian, with his hand on the back of his chair, watched the women pass out of the soft halo of the electric lights into the gloomier shadows of the high, vaulted room, Catherine a little slimmer than most of the others, and with a strange grace of slow movement which must have come to her from some Russian ancestor. Her last words lingered in his mind. He was to talk to her about art! A fleeting vision of the youth in the yellow oilskins mocked him. He remembered his morning’s tramp and the broken-down motor-car under the trees. The significance of these things was beginning to take shape in his mind. He resumed his seat, a little dazed.
Maltenby was one of those old-fashioned houses where the port is served as a lay sacrament and the call of the drawing-room is responded to tardily. After the departure of the women, Doctor Lennard drew his chair up to Julian’s.
“An interesting face, your dinner companion’s,” he remarked. “They tell me that she is a very brilliant young lady.”
“She certainly has gifts,” acknowledged Julian.
“I watched her whilst she was talking to you,” the Oxford don continued. “She is one of those rare young women whose undoubted beauty is put into the background by their general attractiveness. Lady Maltenby was telling me fragments of her history. It appears that she is thinking of giving up her artistic career for some sort of sociological work.”
“It is curious,” Julian reflected, “how the cause of the people has always appealed to gifted Russians. England, for instance, produces no real democrats of genius. Russia seems to claim a monopoly of them.”
“There is nothing so stimulating as a sense of injustice for bringing the best out of a man or woman,” Doctor Lennard pointed out. “Russia, of course, for many years has been shamefully misgoverned.”
The conversation, owing to the intervention of other of the guests, became general and platitudinal. Soon after, Mr. Stenson rose and excused himself. His secretary; who had been at the telephone, desired a short conference. There was a brief silence after his departure.
“Stenson,” the Oxonian observed, “is beginning to show signs of strain.”
“Why not?” Lord Shervinton pointed out. “He came into office full of the most wonderful enthusiasm. His speeches rang through the world like a clarion note. He converted waverers. He lit fires which still burn. But he is a man of movement. This present stagnation is terribly irksome to him. I heard him speak last week, and I was disappointed. He seems to have lost his inspiration. What he needs is a stimulus of some sort, even of disaster.”
“I wonder,” the Bishop reflected, “if he is really afraid of the people?”
“I consider his remark concerning them most ill-advised,” Lord Maltenby declared pompously.
“I know the people,” the Bishop continued, “and I love them. I think, too, that they trust me. Yet I am not sure that I cannot see a glimmering of what is at the back of Stenson’s mind. There are a good many millions in the country who honestly believe that war is primarily an affair of the politicians; who believe, too, that victory means a great deal more to what they term ‘the upper classes’ than it does to them. Yet, in every sense of the word, they are bearing an equal portion of the fight, because, when it comes down to human life, the life of the farm labourer’s son is of the same intrinsic value as the life of the peer’s.”
Lord Maltenby moved a little in his chair. There was a slight frown upon his aristocratic forehead. He disagreed entirely with the speaker, with whom he feared, however, to cross swords. Mr. Hannaway Wells, who had been waiting for his opportunity, took charge of the conversation. He spoke in a reserved manner, his fingers playing with the stem of his wineglass.
“I must confess,” he said, “that I feel the deepest interest in what the Bishop has just said. I could not talk to you about the military situation, even if I knew more than you do, which is not the case, but I think it is clear that we have reached something like a temporary impasse. There certainly seems to be no cause for alarm upon any front, yet, not only in London, but in Paris and even Rome, there is a curious uneasiness afoot, for which no one can account which no one can bring home to any definite cause. In the same connection, we have confidential information that a new spirit of hopefulness is abroad in Germany. It has been reported to us that sober, clear-thinking men—and there are a few of them, even in Germany—have predicted peace before a month is out.”
“The assumption is,” Doctor Lennard interpolated, “that Germany has something up her sleeve.”
“That is not only the assumption,” the Cabinet Minister replied, “but it is also, I believe, the truth.”
“One could apprehend and fear a great possible danger,” Lord Shervinton observed, “if the Labour Party in Germany were as strong as ours, or if our own Labour Party were entirely united. The present conditions, however, seem to me to give no cause for alarm.”
“That is where I think you are wrong,” Hannaway Wells declared. “If the Labour Party in Germany were as strong as ours, they would be strong enough to overthrow the Hohenzollern clique, to stamp out the militarism against which we are at war, to lay the foundations of a great German republic with whom we could make the sort of peace for which every Englishman hopes. The danger, the real danger which we have to face, would lie in an amalgamation of the Labour Party, the Socialists and the Syndicalists in this country, and in their insisting upon treating with the weak Labour Party in Germany.”
“I agree with the Bishop,” Julian pronounced. “The unclassified democracy of our country may believe itself hardly treated, but individually it is intensely patriotic. I do not believe that its leaders would force the hand of the country towards peace, unless they received full assurance that their confreres in Germany were able to assume a dominant place in the government of that country—a place at least equal to the influence of the democracy here.”
Doctor Lennard glanced at the speaker a little curiously. He had known Julian since he was a boy but had never regarded him as anything but a dilettante.
“You may not know it,” he said, “but you are practically expounding the views of that extraordinary writer of whom we were speaking—Paul Fiske.”
“I have been told,” the Bishop remarked, cracking a walnut, “that Paul Fiske is the pseudonym of a Cabinet Minister.”
“And I,” Hannaway Wells retorted, “have been informed most credibly that he is a Church of England clergyman.”
“The last rumour I heard,” Lord Shervinton put in, “was that he is a grocer in a small way of business at Wigan.”
“Dear me!” Doctor Lennard remarked. “The gossips have covered enough ground! A man at a Bohemian club of which I am a member—the Savage Club, in fact—assured me that he was an opium drugged journalist, kept alive by the charity of a few friends; a human wreck, who was once the editor of an important London paper.”
“You have some slight connection with journalism, have you not, Julian?” the Earl asked his son condescendingly. “Have you heard no reports?”
“Many,” Julian replied, “but none which I have been disposed to credit. I should imagine, myself, that Paul Fiske is a man who believes, having created a public, that his written words find an added value from the fact that he obviously desires neither reward nor recognition; just in the same way as the really earnest democrats of twenty years ago scoffed at the idea of a seat in Parliament, or of breaking bread in any way with the enemy.”
“It was a fine spirit, that,” the Bishop declared. “I am not sure that we are not all of us a little over-inclined towards compromises. The sapping away of conscience is so easy.”
The dining-room door was thrown open, and the butler announced a visitor.
“Colonel Henderson, your lordship.”
They all turned around in their places. The colonel, a fine, military-looking figure of a man, shook hands with Lord Maltenby.
“My most profound apologies, sir,” he said, as he accepted a chair. “The Countess was kind enough to say that if I were not able to get away in time for dinner, I might come up afterwards.”
“You are sure that you have dined?”
“I had something at Mess, thank you.”
“A glass of port, then?”
The Colonel helped himself from the decanter which was passed towards him and exchanged greetings with several of the guests to whom his host introduced him.
“No raids or invasions, I hope, Colonel?” the latter asked.
“Nothing quite so serious as that, I am glad to say. We have had a little excitement of another sort, though. One of my men caught a spy this morning.”
Every one was interested. Even after three years of war, there was still something fascinating about the word.
“Dear me!” Lord Maltenby exclaimed. “I should scarcely have considered our out-of-the-way part of the world sufficiently important to attract attentions of that sort.”
“It was a matter of communication,” the Colonel confided. “There was an enemy submarine off here last night, and we have reason to believe that a message was landed. We caught one fellow just at dawn.”
“What did you do with him?” the Bishop asked.
“We shot him an hour ago,” was the cool reply.
“Are there any others at large?” Julian enquired, leaning forward.
“One other,” the Colonel acknowledged, sipping his wine appreciatively. “My military police here, however, are very intelligent, and I should think it very doubtful whether he can escape.”
“Was the man who was shot a foreigner?” the Earl asked. “I trust that he was not one of my tenants?”
“He was a stranger,” was the prompt assurance.
“And his companion?” Julian ventured.
“His companion is believed to have been quite a youth. There is a suggestion that he escaped in a motor-car, but he is probably hiding in the neighbourhood.”
Lord Maltenby frowned. There seemed to him something incongruous in the fact that a deed of this sort should have been committed in his domain without his knowledge. He rose to his feet.
“The Countess is probably relying upon some of us for bridge,” he said. “I hope, Colonel, that you will take a hand.”
The men rose and filed slowly out of the room. The Colonel, however, detained his host, and Julian also lingered.
“I hope, Lord Maltenby,” the former said, “that you will excuse my men, but they tell me that they find it necessary to search your garage for a car which has been seen in the neighbourhood.”
“Search my garage?” Lord Maltenby repeated, frowning.
“There is no doubt,” the Colonel explained, “that a car was made use of last night by the man who is still at large, and it is very possible that it was stolen. You will understand, I am sure, that any enquiries which my men may feel it their duty to make are actuated entirely by military necessity.”
“Quite so,” the Earl acceded, still a little puzzled. “You will find my head chauffeur a most responsible man. He will, I am sure, give them every possible information. So far as I am aware, however, there is no strange car in the garage. Do you know of any, Julian?”
“Only Miss Abbeway’s,” his son replied. “Her little Panhard was out in the avenue all night, waiting for her to put some plugs in. Every one else seems to have come by train.”
The Colonel raised his eyebrows very slightly and moved slowly towards the door.
“The matter is in the hands of my police,” he said, “but if you could excuse me for half a moment, Lord Maltenby, I should like to speak to your head chauffeur.”
“By all means,” the Earl replied. “I will take you round to the garage myself.”