'And if the men cannot do this?'
'The women will have to take charge.'
'And when does the ultimatum expire?'
She shrugged her shoulders.
'When will the next great earthquake be?'
The noise of the party in thecabinet particulierhad been growing apace with the reinforcement of champagne-bottles. The strident laughter of the women dominated the lower level of men's voices, and there was a constant clinking of glasses, punctuated by the occasional drawing of a cork, which always whipped the gaiety to a feverish pitch. Monsieur Beauchamp rubbed his hands rather anxiously. He would have preferred a little more intrigue and not quite so much noise. But, then, was it not a testimony to his wine?—and certainly there would be an excellent bill.
One of the men in the party called on some one for a song. There was a hammering on the table, a promise of a kiss in a girl's voice that trailed off into a tipsy giggle, the sound of shuffling chairs and accompanying hilarity as the singer was apparently hoisted on to the table. There came a crash of breaking glass as his foot collided with some dinner-things.
Monsieur Beauchamp winced, but consoled himself with the reflection that he could charge what he wished for the damage. The voices were hushed at the order of the singer, who was trying to enunciate the title of his song.
'I shall shing,' he said, with considerable difficulty, '"Moon, Moon, Boo—(hic)—Booful Moon," composhed by myself at the early age of sheven months. It ish very pash—pashesh—it ish very shad, so, if ye have tearsh, pre—(hic)—pare to shed 'em now.'
There was loud applause, which the singer interrupted by commencing to sing in a bass voice that broke into falsetto with such frequency that it was difficult to tell which voice was the natural one. He started off the verse very stoutly, but was growing rather maudlin, when, reaching the chorus, he seemed to take on a new lease of vitality and bellowed quite lustily:
'Moon, Moon, boo-oo-oo-ooful Moon,Shining reshplendantly, radiant an' tenderly;Moon, Moon, boo-oo—(hic)—booful Moon—Tell her I shy for her, tell her I die for her,Booful, BOO-OO-ooful Moon.
'Now then, fellow Athenians, chorush, chorush!' With an indescribable medley of discordant howling the party broke into a series of 'Moon, Moon, boo-oo-ooful Moon,' which came to an abrupt ending as the singer fell back, apparently unconscious, in the arms of his friends. There was a murmuring of voices, and a waiter was sent for some water to revive the young man.
Considerably disgusted at the ending to the incident, Selwyn, who had turned to look towards thecabinet particulier, once more sought his companion's eyes.
Her face was white; there was not a vestige of colour in the cheeks.
'Miss Durwent,' he gasped, 'you are not well.'
'I am quite well,' she answered quickly, but her voice was weak and quivering. 'I—I thought I recognised the singer's voice. That was all.'
The curtain of thecabinet particulierwas drawn aside, and two youths in evening-dress emerged, supporting between them the dishevelled singer, who was miserably drunk, and whose hat almost completely obscured his right eye. They were followed by three girls with untidy hair, whose flushed, rouged faces had been made grotesque by clumsy dabs of powder.
The singer's hat fell off, and Monsieur Beauchamp, who was hovering about with the bill, had just stooped to recover it, when Selwyn heard, a suppressed cry of pain from Elise Durwent. Thrusting her chair away from her, she made for the emerging party, and halted them at the top of the stairway.
'Dick!' she said breathlessly. 'Dick!'
The drunken youth raised his heavy eyelids and looked with bewildered eyes at his sister. One of the girls tried to laugh, but there was something in the insane lightness of his eyes and the agony of hers that stifled the ribaldry in its birth. His face was as pale as hers, a pallor that was accentuated by dark hair, matted impotently over his forehead. But there was a careless, debonair charm about the fellow that made him stand out apart from the other revellers.
'Hello, sis!' he muttered, trying to pull himself together. 'My li'l sister Elise—friends of mine here—forget their names, but jolly good fellosh—and ladies too; nice li'l ladies'——
'Bravo, Durwent!' cried one of his friends, emitting a dismal howl of encouragement.
'Dick! Boy-blue!' The breathy intensity of her voice seemed to rouse some latent manhood in her brother. He stiffened his shoulders and threw off his two supporting friends—a manoeuvre which enabled Monsieur Beauchamp to present his trifling bill to the more sober of the two. 'Why aren't you at Cambridge?'
'Advice of conshul,' he muttered. 'Refushe to answer.' He shook his head solemnly from side to side.
With a swift gesture she turned to the American. 'This is my brother,' she said, 'and I know where his rooms are in town. If you will bring my cloak, I'll get him to my car and take him home.'
Selwyn nodded his understanding. He hardly knew what words he could speak that might not hurt her.
'Listen, Dick dear,' she said, stepping very close to him and taking his hand in hers. 'Please don't say anything. Just come with me, and I'll take you to your rooms.'
Through the befuddled wits of the young fellow came the sound of the voice that had dominated his childhood. He smelt the freshness of the long grass in the Roselawn meadows; with his disordered imagination he heard again the clattering of horses' hoofs on the country-road, and he saw his sister with her copper-tinted hair flung to the breeze. With a look of mixed wonder and pain in the yellowish blue of his eyes, he allowed her to take his arm, and together they went slowly downstairs and through the throng of diners craning their necks to see, while the party he had left emitted snorts and howls of contempt.
Selwyn reached the door in time to help the drunken youth into the car, and then placed the cloak about Elise's shoulders. She put out her hand.
'Good-night,' she said.
'But you will permit me to come?' he said. 'I could be of assistance.'
'No—no,' she said tensely, 'please—I want to be alone with him. Have no fear, Mr. Selwyn. Poor old Dick would do anything for me.'
He held her hand in his. 'Miss Durwent,' he said, 'I cannot express what I mean. But if this makes any difference at all, it is only that I admire you infinitely more for'——
'No—please—please say nothing more,' she cried with a sound of pain in her voice.
'But may I come and see you again?'
She withdrew her hand and pressed it against her brow.
'Yes. I—I don't know. Good-night. Please don't say any more.' The words ended in a choking, tearless sob. She stepped into the car, and with no further sign to him threw in the clutch and started away.
Huddled in the corner, his pale face glistening in the lamplight of the street, the Honourable Richard Durwent lay in a drunken sleep.
It was several months later—May 1914, to be precise—when Austin Selwyn made the determination, common to most men, to remain in for an evening and catch up in his correspondence.
After the manner of his species, he produced a small army of letters from various pockets, and spreading them in a heap on his desk, proceeded to answer the more urgent, and postpone the less important to a further occasion when conscience would again overcome indolence. For an hour he wrote trivial politenesses to hostesses who had extended hospitality or were going to do so; there was a reply to a literary agent, one to a moving-picture concern, an answer to a critic, and a note of thanks to an admirer.
Having disposed of these sundry matters, he sat back in his chair and read a long letter that had been enclosed in an envelope bearing the postage-stamp of the United States of America. At its finish he settled himself comfortably, lit a cigar, and, squaring his shoulders, wrote a reply to the Reverend Edgerton Forbes, Rector of St. Giles' Episcopal Church, Fifth Avenue, New York:
'LONDON,May 12, 1914.
'MY DEAR EDGE,—I've been supplying your friend the Devil with all sorts of cobblestones recently, but, my dear old boy, if I had written you every time I intended to, you would have had no time to prepare those knock-out sermons of yours.
'In your letter you hint at possible heart entanglements for me. Has it not been said that to a writer all women are "copy"? Even when he falls in love, your author is so busy studying the symptoms that he usually fails to inform the lady until she has eloped with some other clown.
'In fairness, however, I must admit that you were partly correct in your surmise. I almost fell in love last November with a girl who invariably angered me when I was with her, but clung to my mind next day like an unfinished plot. I saw her quite frequently up to February, when I went to the Continent, but have not called on her since my return.
'I met her first at her mother's town house, where there were several people who admitted their greatness with an aplomb one was forced to admire. This girl sort of sat there and said nothing, but her silence had a good deal more in it than some of the talk. We had our first chat that night by the fire, next morning went riding in Rotten Row, and had dinner together the same night. Fast travelling, you say? On paper, yes; but actually I don't know the girl any better now than the night I met her. She's a strange creature—self-willed, fiery, sweet, and sometimes as clever as your Ancient Adversary. But friendship with her makes me think of the days when I was a kid. My great hobby was building sky-scrapers with blocks, and very laboriously I would erect the structure up to the point when "feeding-time" or "washing-time" or "being shown to the minister" used always to intervene. When I returned, the blocks had always fallen down. Well, friendship with Elise (pretty name, isn't it?) is not unlike my experience with the blocks. You can leave her, firmly convinced that at last you are on a basis of real understanding; and two or three days later, when you meet her again, you find all the blocks lying around in disorder. Instead of a friend, one is an esteemed acquaintance. The only way to win her, I suppose, would be to call at dawn and stay until midnight. It would be a bit trying, but I get awfully "fed up" (as they say over here) with being constantly recalled to the barrier.
'Of course, you old humbug, I can see you pursing your lips and saying, "Does Austin really love her? If he did, he would be unable to see her faults." It's an exploded theory that love is blind. Good heavens! if a man in love can see in a girl beauty which doesn't exist, is there any reason to suppose he will be unable to see the faults thatdo?
'But, candidly, I don't think I am in love with this young lady. I might be if I were given half a chance; but, then, emotional icebergs were always my specialty. I meet a dozen girls who treat me with a tender cordiality that is touching; then there comes into my course one who expresses a sort of friendly indifference, and there I stay scorching my wings or freezing my toes—whichever figure of speech you prefer.
'She makes me think of a painting sometimes, one that changes in appearance with the varying lights and shadows of the sky. But, Edge, given the exact light that her beauty needs, she is a masterpiece. In some strange way her personality has given me a new pleasure in Corot and Diaz. It is difficult to explain, but it is so. I feel my powers of description are inadequate really to picture Elise to you. She is truly feminine, and yet when she is with other women her unique gift of personality makes themmerelyfeminine. "Lordy, Lordy," as a nigger of mine used to say, "dis am becomin' abtuse."
'As a matter of fact, the girl is a result of conflicting elements of heredity. I haven't met her father, but I gather that he is a good old Tory of blameless respectability, and has a deep-seated disbelief in evolution. On the other hand, the girl's mother is rather a buxom and florid descendant of a vigorous North of England family, the former members of which, with the exception of her father, were highly esteemed smugglers. The lady's grandfather, Elise tells me, was known as "Gentleman Joe," and was as adventurous a cut-throat as a small boy's imagination could desire.
'Well, Mr. Parson, you can imagine what happened when these conflicting elements of heredity were brought together. In the language of science, there was one negative result and two positive. The first mentioned is a son Malcolm, whom I have not met. He has a commission in the cavalry, is a devil at billiards, can't read a map, and rides like a Centaur.
'Of the positive results it seems to me I may have already mentioned one—Elise. The other is Richard, the tragedy of the family. Poor Dick was practically kicked out of Eton for drunkenness when he was about sixteen. For the past year or so he has been at Cambridge, but he got in with a bad set there, and after several warnings has been "sent down"—or, in ordinary language, expelled. It appears that the old combination of "booze" and women got the better of him, though there's something oddly fine about the fellow too. He was hitting an awful pace at Cambridge, and when he tried to pass off a fourth-rate chorus-girl as the Duchess of Turveydrop, the axe descended. As the masquerading duchess was rather noisy and very "elevated," you can see that there must have been complications.
'Of course, his governor was furious, and, settling a very small allowance on the poor beggar, turned him out of the family home, and forbade him to ever darken, &c., &c. (see, split infinitive and all, any "best seller" of a few years back).
'Does this seem at all incongruous to you? These so-called aristocrats bring a son into existence, and, providing he's a decent-living, rule-abiding chap, he is sheltered from the world and kept for the enriching of their own hot-house of respectability. But—if one of them upsets the ash-can and otherwise messes up the family escutcheon, the father says, "You have disgraced our traditions. Get thee hence into the cold, outside world. After this you belong to it."
'Damned generous of paterfamilias, isn't it? Only, as one of the cold, outside world, I can't help wondering why, if Milord is going to keep his good apples for himself, we should have to accept the rotten ones.
'Concerning Cambridge—I spent a weekend there recently with Doug Watson of Boston, who is taking Engineering. Cambridge is quite a little community, as separate from the rest of England as the Channel Islands. On the Saturday evening I was there Watson took a punt, and with considerable dexterity piloted me along the Cam, with its green velvet banks and overhanging trees. The river is an exquisite thing, and there was a sensuous drowsiness in the beauty of the hour before dark.
'The lawns from the backs of the colleges slope down to the river, and as we passed along we noticed group after group of students drinking coffee made in percolators in their possession. There was something almost pastoral in the sight of those young Britishers in such complete repose. Perhaps I should have enjoyed it all without question if it had not been that, a week before, I had visited a poor little Nonconformist preacher who labours on an empty stomach to a little congregation in a chain-making district. Edge, the sights I saw there were not good for any man to see and remain quiet. Women work at the fires when pregnant, and fuddle themselves with beer at night; the men are a shiftless lot, who spend their lives hand-in-hand with poverty and think only of beer, "baccy," and loafing. You know I'm no prohibitionist, but I hate to see beer the goal of men's ambitions. In one school there was a class with forty "backward" children. That's the kinder word, Edge, but the real one is "imbecile." Think of it—forty human destinies that must be lived out to a finish! They tell me that conditions are improving there. I hope so, in Heaven's name.
'It was that visit I had in mind when punting along the Cam. A man is a fool to pit his little mind against so vast and wonderful an edifice as a great university like Cambridge, but one thought which occurred more than once to me was whether or not a man can be considered educated if he be ignorant of human misery existing beyond the college gates. In the Scottish universities the Professor of Latin is called Professor of Humanity. I wonder, Edge, if the time is not ripe for a chair of Humanity in a wider sense in all universities.
'On Sunday we went to one of the churches, and, with eleven others, managed to present a formidable congregation of thirteen. The preacher's prayer, which he read, was a superb piece of work. He started off with the King and the Royal Family, passed on to titled and landed gentry, after them the higher orders of the clergy, leaders of the navy, the army, and all those in more or less authority, then the lower orders of the clergy, and after several categories I have forgotten, he reached the commoners, and (in an appropriate tone of voice) hoped we should live in peace, one with another.
'Think of it, Edge, in this enlightened age! I wanted to go up to him after the service and ask him why he had left out the minor poets, but Doug stopped me—which is perhaps just as well. He might have added a prayer for Americans after the commoners.
'Sometimes I think that the English Church is losing its grip. I don't mean that snobbery of the kind I have described is common, but in the development of Church character it seems to me that the truth of Christ's birth into a humble walk of life is drifting steadily farther from the clerical consciousness. The timid snobbery which permeates so much of English life, and reaches its wretched climax in the terms "working class" and "lower classes," finds condonement in the ranks of the clergy. Even in its humorous aspect, when Mrs. Retired Naval Officer starts to swank it over Mrs. Retired Army Officer (senior service, deah boy, y'know), and so on down the line, the local rector too often takes an active part in seeing that the various grades are punctiliously preserved. Of course, there are glorious exceptions to all this, and they are the men who count.
'I suppose at home we are just as bad, and that even so democratic a preacher as yourself doesn't take supper on Sunday night with the poorest parishioner. Perhaps living in a strange country makes a man see many things he would not notice in his own.
'To finish with Cambridge—we joined a party of two large punts on Sunday afternoon, and with about twelve college chaps and local (approved) girls we went for a picnic up the river. The girls were fairly pretty and terrifically energetic, insisting upon doing an equal share in the punting, and managing to look graceful while they manoeuvred the punts, which were really fair-sized barges. And when we reached the picnic-place, they made all the preparations, and waited on us as if we were royal invalids. Bless their hearts! Edge, to restore a man's natural vanity, commend me to life in England. Coming home we played the gramophone, and, with appropriate flirtation, floated nearly the whole way to the holding of hands and the hearing of music.
'And, theologian as you are, if you deny the charm of that combination,I renounce you utterly.
'Just one more Cambridge thought. (This letter has as many false endings as one of your sermons.) There were quite a number of native students from India in attendance, and I noticed that these men, many of them striking-looking fellows, were left pretty much to themselves. The English answer when spoken to, and offer that well-bred tolerance exerted by them so easily, but the Indian student must feel that he is not admitted on a footing of equality. I'm not certain that the dark races can be admitted as equals; but what effect on India will it have if these fellows are educated, then sent back with resentment fermenting their knowledge into sedition? It may be another case where the Englishman is instinctively right in his racial psychology; or, again, it may be a further example of his dislike to look facts squarely in the face.
'Of course, we have our own racial problem, and have hardly made such a success of it that we can afford to offer advice.
'Well, Edge, this letter has run on to too great a length to permit of any European treatment. That will have to wait. Of course, I have paid several visits to Paris, and understand as never before the saying: "Every man loves two countries—his own and France."
'Edge, why is it that people who travel always have the worst characteristics of their nationality? On the Continent one sees Englishmen wearing clothes that I swear are never to be seen in England, and their women so often appear angular and semi-masculine, whereas at home—but, then, you know what an admirer I am of English women. And our own people are worse. Tell me: at home, when a gentleman talks to you, does he keep his cigar in his mouth and merely resonate through his nose? Or is that a mannerism acquired through travelling?
'But enough, old boy. This has covered too vast an acreage of thought already. Oh yes—about my writing. I have been doing very little recently, but can feel the tide rising to that point where it will of necessity overflow the confines of my lethargy. I have had the honour of meeting several of the foremost writers here, and there is no question about it, they are doing excellent work. But I wish that I could feel a little more idealism in their work. The whole country here is parched for the lack of Heaven's moisture of idealism. People must have an objective in their lives, and the Arts should combine with the Church in creating it.
'Of course, there is an amazing amount of drivel written over here, most of which, I think, would never get past the office-boy of an American publication. The English short story and the English music-hall are things to be avoided.
'Before I end, have you seen Gerard Van Derwater recently? I heard that he joined the diplomatic service at Washington after leaving college. I often think of him with his strange pallor, but suggestion of brooding strength. Did it ever strike you that every one respected him, and yet he really never had a close friend? It always seemed to me that he carried about with him a sense of impending tragedy. Find out what he is doing, and let me know.
'Well, old boy, in another few months I shall pack up and return to America, and once more woo the elusive editor. I am looking forward to our sitting by your fireside and, through the cloud of tobacco-smoke, weaving again our old romances. I am really proud of you, Edgerton, and know that you must be a tremendous power for good.
'A letter any time addressed c/o The Royal Automobile Club, Pall Mall, will find me.—As ever, your old chum,
* * * * * *
The writer addressed an envelope, inserted the letter, sealed and stamped it, then yawned lazily. Gathering his outgoing correspondence and the old letters, he took his hat and sauntered into the street, conscious of having done his duty—also that he had unearthed some thoughts the existence of which he had not suspected beneath the surface shrubbery of everyday existence.
As is the habit of the year, June followed May, and in its turn gave way to the yellow hours of July. Lady Durwent, wearying of London and its triumphs, returned to Roselawn to share the solitary, rural reign of her husband.
As she drove in a sumptuous car through the village and into the wide confines of the estate she purred with contentment. Men doffed their caps, women curtsied, and the country-side mingled its smile with theirs. It was not unlike the return of a conqueror from a campaign abroad, and after the incognito forced by London on all but the most journalised duchesses, it was distinctly pleasant to be acknowledged by every one she passed.
In this most amiable of moods she dined with her husband, and was so vivacious that, looking at her over his glass of port, he thought how little she had changed since, years before, she had first affected his subnormal pulse. Together they wandered over the lawns, and he showed the improvements wrought since her last visit. She gave the head-gardener the benefit of her unrestricted smile, and shed among all the retainers a bountiful largesse of good-humour.
Still noting the beauties of Roselawn, they discussed their children. She learned that Malcolm was on leave from the —th Hussars, and was golfing in, and yachting off, Scotland with scions of the Scottish nobility. The mention of Dick brought a pang to her heart, and a cloud that marred the serenity of her husband's brow. Lord Durwent regretted the necessity of his actions, but the boy had proved himself a 'waster' and a 'rotter.' He had been given every chance, and had persistently disgraced the family name. If he would go to Canada or Australia, he could have money for the passage; otherwise——
After that imperialistic pronouncement, Lord Durwent turned to more congenial topics, and spoke of additions to the stables and improvements to the church. His wife answered mechanically, and it was many minutes before the heart-hunger for the blue-eyed Dick was lulled. She said nothing, for the development of her sons' lives had long since passed from her to a system, but in the seclusion of their country home the domestic tragedy made a deeper inroad on her feelings than it had done in London.
It was perhaps not unnatural that they barely spoke of Elise at all. She was visiting a county family in the north, and would be home in a couple of days. As there was no immediate suitor on the horizon, what more was there to be said of the daughter of the house?
Next morning Lady Durwent was still amiable, but rather dull. The following day she was frankly bored. On Sunday, during the sermon, she planned a house-party; and so, in due course, invitations were issued, and accepted or regretfully declined. She possessed sufficient sense of the fitness of things to refrain from transplanting any of herunusualvarieties from their native soil, but asked only those persons whose family connections ensured a proper tone to the affair.
Perhaps it was just a kindly thought on her part to ask Austin Selwyn. It may have been the desire of having an author to lend an exotic touch to the gathering. Or, being a woman, she may have wanted an American to see her at the head of the table in two widely different settings.
Perhaps it was all three motives.
In preparation for the arrival of guests, 'a certain liveliness' pervaded the tranquil atmosphere of Roselawn. The tennis-court was rolled and marked; fishing-tackle was inspected and repaired; in view of the possibility of dancing, the piano was tuned; bridge deficiencies were made good at the local stationer's; and gardeners and gamekeepers hurried about their tasks, while flapping game-birds signalled to trembling trout that the enemy was mobilising for the yearly campaign.
Roselawn differed little from the hundreds of English country-houses, the seclusion and invulnerability of which have played so great a part in forming the English character. A lodge at the entrance to the estate supplied a medieval sense of challenge to the outside world, and the beautifully kept hedges at the side of the mile-long carriage-drive gave that feeling of retirement and emancipation from the world so much desired by tranquil minds.
It was the setting to produce a poet, or a race of Tories. Once within the embracing solitude of Roselawn, the discordant jangling of common people worrying about their long hours of work or the right to give their offspring a decent chance in the world became a distant murmur, no more unpleasant or menacing than the whang of a wasp outside the window.
Not that the inhabitants of Roselawn were any more callous or selfish than others of their class, for the record of the Durwent family was by no means devoid of kindly and knightly deeds. Tenantry lying ill were always the recipients of studied thoughtfulness from the lord and lady of the place, and servants who had served both long and faithfully could look forward to a decent pension until death sent them to the great equality of the next world.
If one could trace the history of the Durwent family from the beginning, it would be seen that among the victims of a hereditary system there must be numbered many of the aristocracy themselves. Caricaturists and satirists, who smear the many with the weaknesses of the few, would have us believe that the son of a lord is no better than the son of a fool; yet, if the vaults of some of the old families were to unfold their century-hugged secrets, it would be seen that, as Gray's country churchyard might hold some mute inglorious Milton, so might these vaults hold the ashes of many a splendid brain ruined by the genial absurdity of 'class' wherein it had been placed. A boy with a title suspended over his head like the sword of Damocles may enter life's arena armed with great aspirations and the power to bring a depth of human understanding to earth's problems, but what chance has he against the ring of antagonists who confront him? Flunkeyism, 'swank,' the timid worship of the peerage, the leprosy of social hypocrisy, all sap his strength, as barnacles clinging to the keel of a ship lessen her speed with each recurring voyage.
It is not that the hereditary system injures directly; its crime lies in what it engenders—the pestilence of snobbery, which poisons nearly all who come into contact with it, titled and untitled, frocked and unfrocked, washed and unwashed. The very servants create a comic-opera set of rules for their below-stairs life, and the man who has butlered for a lord, even if the latter be the greatest fool of his day, looks with scorn upon the valet of some lesser fellow who, perchance, is forced to make a living by his brains.
The house at Roselawn was large, and, with its ivy-covered exterior, presented a spectacle of considerable beauty. The front was in the form of a 'hollow square,' creating an imposing courtyard, and giving the windows of the library and the drawing-room ample opportunity for sunshine. From these windows there was a charming vista of well-kept lawns, margined with gardens possessed of a hundred tones of exquisite colour. At the back of the house the windows looked out on receding meadows that melted into the solidarity of woods.
The drawing-room (Lady Durwent tried to designate it 'the music-room,' but the older name persisted) had all the conglomeration of contents which is at once the charm and the drawback of English country homes. Furniture of various periods indulged in mute and elegant warfare. Scattered in graceful disorder about the room were relics procured by an ancestor who had been to Japan; there was a Spanish bowl gathered by Lord Dudley Durwent; there was an Italian tapestry, an Indian tomahawk, a Chinese sword that had beheaded real Chinamen, all procured by Lord Dingwall Durwent in the eighteenth century. There was a massive Louis Seize table and a frail Louis Quinze chair; a slice of Chippendale here, and a bit of Sheraton there; portraits of ancestors who fought at Quebec, Waterloo, Sebastopol, and a very military-looking gentleman on a terrific horse, who had done all his fighting in Pall Mall clubs. There were 'oils' purchased by Durwents who liked to patronise the arts, and 'waters' by Durwents who didn't like oils.
And year after year, generation after generation, the ancient drawing-room received its additional impedimenta without so much as a creak of protest.
In the impressive seclusion of Roselawn, therefore, the house-party began to gather. They were an admirably assorted group of people who never objected to being bored, providing it was accomplished in an atmosphere of good breeding. The soothing balm of the Roselawn meadows offered its potency of healing to fatigued minds or weary bodies, but, like the fragrance of the unseen flower, it was wasted on the desert air. Lady Durwent's guests had not been using either their brains or their bodies to a point where honest fatigue would seek healing in the perfume of clover. If a hundred gamins from Whitechapel's crowded misery had been brought from London and let loose in summer's sweet-scented prodigality, the incense of fields and flowers might have brought sparkle to young eyes dull with the wretchedness of poverty, and colour to pale, unnourished cheeks. But Lord and Lady Durwent, denying themselves the luxury of such a treat, asked people who lived in the country to come and enjoy the country.
The pleasure of their guests was about as keen as would be that of a party of bricklayers invited by a fellow-labourer to spend a Saturday with him laying bricks.
To the insatiable curiosity of Austin Selwyn the party presented an infinite chance for study, as well as an unlooked-for opportunity to meet Elise Durwent under circumstances which should either cement their friendship or else demonstrate its utter impracticability.
He listened to the chat of men who did the same things all the year round with the same people, and he wondered a little at their persistency in conversing at all. They rarely disagreed on anything, partly because they were all of the same political faith, and it seemed an understood thing that, so far as it was humanly possible, no one would introduce any subject which would entail controversy. When Selwyn, who was almost too thorough a believer in the productive powers of fiction, used to drop conversational depth-bombs, they treated him with easy tolerance as one who was entitled to his racial peculiarities. Sometimes they would even put to sea clinging to the raft of one of his ideas, but one by one would grow numb and drop off into the waters of mental indifference. They had a nice sense of satire, and it was a delight for the American to indulge in an easy, inconsequential banter which was full of humour without being labelled funny; but it used to fill him with sorrow to see many of his best controversial subjects punctured by a lazily conceived play of words. He felt that, coming from the New World, he was in a position to give knowledge for knowledge, but his fellow-guests were impervious to his geographical qualifications, and persisted in their pleasant task of rolling vocabulary along the straight grooved channels of their well-bred thoughts.
The women were less of a type, but their little lives were so lacking in horizon that they seemed to live in a perpetual atmosphere of personalities. As pretty much the same topics of conversation did them for a whole season, they were not unlike a travelling theatrical company producing the one show wherever they went. One woman occasioned some mirth to Selwyn by her familiarity with the obscure royalties of Europe, whom she thrust forward on every possible occasion. On dowager-duchesses and retired empresses she was without parallel, and she went through life expressing perpetual regret that she had not known you were going to Ruritania, because she would have insisted upon your calling on her friend the Empress Lizajania.
It was perhaps an unfortunate circumstance that had brought together a group of women none of whom was artistically accomplished, although they were by no means lacking in social charm. Music for them was not a refreshing stream which ran by the road of everyday life, but something which was to be heard at the Opera, and which enjoyed a close alliance with sables and diamond tiaras. Pictures were of the Academy, and, like all the best people, they invariably said, 'Have you seen this year's show at Burlington House? My dear, it's frightful.' Nor did they neglect literature in their curriculum. Though literature lacks a yearly exhibition, such as is possessed by music and painting, they made it a subject for gossip, and denounced H. G. Wells as a 'bounder.' 'I never read him, Mr. Selwyn,' said the obscure-royalist person. 'My cousin the Duchess of Atwater met him, and says—well, really, she says he's quite impossible.'
With a mixture of wonder and amusement Selwyn watched the spectacle of these people of more than average education and intelligence contenting themselves with a perpetual routine of small-talk and genteel insularity, and he wondered how it was that a race so gifted with the blessed quality of humour could evolve a state of society offering such a butt to the shafts of ridicule.
He liked Lord Durwent, whose unfailing gentleness and courtesy would have stamped him as a gentleman in any walk of life. Although his mind was comparatively unimpressionable to new ideas, it was saturated with the qualities of integrity and fairness, and in his attitude towards every one of his guests there was an old-world dignity, born of the respect in which he held both himself and them. The study of this man moving contentedly about his daily tasks, never making any one's day harder by reason of his passing that way, was the first jolt Selwyn had received in his gathering arraignment against English social life. By way of contrast he pictured certain successful gentlemen of his acquaintance in America, and the vision was not flattering to his national self-esteem.
He also enjoyed the refreshing vitality of Lady Durwent, who never quite lost her optimism no matter how tight was the grip of good form; and he admired without stint the devotion of every one, regardless of sex, to sport. Throughout the day there were constant expeditions that necessitated long, invigorating hours in the open air; and it seemed to the American that they were never so free from affectation, that the comradeship between the men and the women was never so marked, as when they were indulging their wise instinct for out-of-door sports.
He had been at Roselawn a couple of days before he had a chance to do more than observe Elise Durwent as one of the party. She had been his partner at tennis and bridge, and a dozen times he had exchanged light talk with her, but there was always about her the defensive shield of impersonal cordiality. When he spoke to her it was almost in a drawl, but no matter to what a lackadaisical level he reduced his voice, her replies were always punctuated by a retort that had in it the sense of sting, as Alfio inCavalleria Rusticanaaccompanies his song with the crack of a driving-whip.
He watched her with the men of the party, and wondered at their good-natured endurance of her sharpness, as reckless as it was disturbing; and he saw that her inclusion among the women made them less at ease and disinclined to chatter. No matter what group she joined, she was never of it; and even when it was obvious that she was doing everything in her power to reduce her personality to the pitch of the others, her individuality branded her as something apart.
Studying her, partly subconsciously and partly with the keen observation prompted by the attraction she held for him, Selwyn began to feel the loneliness of the girl. Not once did he see the melting of eyes which comes when one person finds close affinity in the understanding of a friend. When she spoke at the table her suddenness always left a silence in its wake. At bridge her moves were so spasmodic that, when opposite dummy, she seemed to play the two cards with a simultaneous movement. The same mannerisms were in her outdoor games, a second service at tennis often following a faulty first so rapidly that her opponent would sometimes be almost unaware that more than one ball had been played.
Selwyn's original feeling of exasperation mellowed to one of genuine pity in contemplation of her solitary life—a life directed by a restless energy that only grew in intensity with the deepening realisation of her purposelessness. Yet she was so confident in her bearing, and so capable of foiling with repartee any approach of his, that he contented himself with a studied politeness that was no more personal than the grief of an undertaker at a funeral.
One evening, after dressing for dinner, Selwyn found that he had half-an-hour to fill in, and as the smell of grass was scenting the air, he sauntered from the house and strolled across the lawn to a path which led to the trout-stream.
His mind was drowsy with a thousand half-formed ideas that lazily lay in the pan of his brain waiting the reveille of thought. A skylark twitted earth's creatures from its aerial height. A cow, munching in endless meditation on its unfretful existence, emitted a philosophic moo.
Selwyn smiled, and let his mind wander listlessly through the fields of his impressions. He thought of Britain, and wondered what there is in the magic of that little island that fastens on one's heart-strings even while the brain is pounding insistent criticism. For the first time the insidious beauty of Roselawn's tranquillity was cloying the energy of his mind—a mind that never gave him rest, but was always questioning and seeking the truth in every phase of human endeavour. The peacefulness of the twilight hour was lulling his mental faculties, and the perfumes of summer's zenith were stirring his senses like music of the Nile.
As though he were picturing inhabitants of another world, he conjured to his vision the feverish traffic of New York, deluged with human beings belched from their million occupations into the glare of lunch-hour. It gave him a strange sensation of being among the gods to be able to look at the lowering sun and know that at the same moment it held New York in the pitiless heat of midday. . . . And he wondered dreamily why people lived such a mockery of existence as in its towering streets. The pastoral atmosphere was so perfect, so completely soothing in its cool fragrance of evening, that he thought if he could only remain there, away from the conflict of the world, he could write of such things as only poets dream and painters see.
He had readied the stream, and was about to retrace his steps, when he heard the rustle of a dress, and coming round a bend in the path he saw Elise Durwent. She was in an evening gown that looked oddly exotic in those surroundings, and, still in a haze of reverie, he stood in perplexed silence until she stopped opposite him.
'Have I interrupted the muse?' she said.
'On the contrary, you have awakened it. I was just thinking how vivid you looked with that setting of overhanging bushes and the background of fields. I—I think it must have been your gown that gave such a quaintly incongruous effect.'
'And, of course, there is nothing incongruous in a dinner-jacket near a trout-stream? If I were an artist I should paint you, and call the picture "Despondency."'
'Well,' he smiled, 'that would be an improvement on most Academy titles. An ordinary artist would simply name it "Young Gentleman by Trout-Stream." Haven't you often gone through a gallery picturing all sorts of dramatic meanings in paintings, only to have your illusions shattered by the catalogue?'
She nodded. 'You have expressed no surprise at my coming,' she said abruptly. 'Are women in the habit of tracking you in this way?'
'I'm sorry,' he answered, lazily thrusting his hands into his pockets. 'As a matter of fact you are never very far from my thoughts. Perhaps that is why I felt no surprise.'
'How are you enjoying your visit?'
'Tremendously.'
'How do you like the guests?'
'Is this a catechism, Miss Durwent?'
She shrugged her shoulders and pulled a leaf from a bush. 'I was wondering,' she said, 'whether they bored you as much as me.'
'Why,' he said with a slight laugh, 'to be frank, people never bore me. The moment they become tedious they are of interest to me as a study in tediousness.'
'Just the same,' she said quickly, 'as when a woman interests you she becomes an object of analysis. I wish I could detach myself like that.'
'And yet,' he said gently, wondering at the intensity of her eyes, 'I should have thought you possessed the gift of detachment to a greater degree than I. You always seem separate and distinct from your associates.'
She said nothing in reply, and as if by tacit agreement they started back along the path. He did not break the silence, feeling that words might be provocative of a retort that would dispel the growing feeling of mutual confidence.
'No,' she said, after a long pause, 'I do not possess the power of detachment. It's just that I don't mix well. Have you read Robert Service's poem about the men that don't fit in?'
'Yes.'
'Well, it's far worse for the women who don't. A man can go out and try to find some place for himself. We have simply to stay and endure things.'
Half in compassion he watched her from the corner of his eye, but again refrained from saying anything. He felt intuitively that she was trying to break down the barrier of impersonality, but he knew that she must do it in her own way of timid starts and quick withdrawals.
Although her movements were more restricted by her gown than when she wore ordinary walking-garments, her vitality and limitless energy lent a lilt to her step, and even touched the shoulders with a suggestion of restless virility. When she walked there was an imperious tilt to her head; but no matter how carefully planned her toilette, or how cleverly her coiffure might have been arranged by her maid, there was nearly always some stray bit of colour or carelessly chosen flower that combined with her nature in a suggestion of outlawry: the same instinct of rebellion that had dominated her brother Dick during their childhood. Inside the house she would sometimes look, in her quickly changing moods, as if she were some creature of Nature imprisoned within the walls.
Selwyn wondered if heredity, in one of its strange jests, had recalled the spirit of the smuggler ancestor and recast it into the soul of the girl.
They were nearing the house, when, emerging upon a clearing, they came to a rustic bench looking across a short field lined with shrubbery.
'Let us sit down a minute,' she said. 'We can hear the dinner-gong from here.'
He took his seat beside her, and dreamily watched the yellow rays of the sun casting their receding tints along the bushes opposite them. It was strangely quiet, and the hum of insects seemed like a soft orchestral accompaniment to the crickets' song.
'It is not very sporting of me, Mr. Selwyn,' she said softly, but with her old staccato mannerism, 'to force my mood on you like this. I did it once before—that dreadful night at the Café Rouge—and I know that you must think it is just selfishness on my part that makes me so unhappy. But—you know I never had a real friend—except little Dick—and I felt to-night as if I had lost all my courage about life. That's why I followed you. I knew you would be patient and kind.'
'My dear girl,' said Selwyn gently, speaking almost listlessly for fear the smouldering power of retort should be fanned into being, 'for months I have been hoping that some day we should be able to talk like this, as friends. Perhaps it was my fault, but there always seemed a sort of third-person-singular attitude in our talk, as if we were speaking at each other, which served to block our friendship from becoming anything of value to each other. Naturally I have seen that you are not happy, though there have been moments when you were the very personification of light-hearted ness, and I have known for a long time that the motif of your whole nature is resentment. Believe me, Miss Durwent, if I could be a friend—and I mean that to the last ditch—I should be deeply grateful for the privilege.'
'Thanks,' she said simply, and placing her hand in his, let it remain there.
The hot blood of his impressionable nature mounted to his cheeks, and his heart was aflame with a sudden intoxication of desire. But chivalry told him how much it had cost this girl, whose whole being rebelled at the thought of being physically conquered, to show such a mark of confidence. And reason warned him that any triumph he might obtain would be only for the moment. He watched the flight of a hawk in the sky—and his lips were parched and hot.
'For a long time,' she said, 'I have had a growing sensation of suffocation in life. It's stifling me. When I look ahead and see nothing but this kind of life—visiting, visiting, entertaining, entertaining, listening to that endless talk in London—well, I think I understand why some women go to the devil. At least there's something genuine about sin.'
A rabbit leaped from a bush opposite as though it bad seen something terrifying, and scampered madly across the field to some burrowed refuge by a great oak. Selwyn felt the hand in his tighten convulsively.
'Look!' she cried. 'Austin—look!'
Her face blanched with sudden alarm. He sprang to his feet.
'What is it?' he cried.
'The bush—there—where the rabbit darted out.'
He looked at the spot indicated by her trembling hand, but the dwindling sunlight had just passed it, and he could see nothing but a clump of shrubbery.
'It was a man,' she said, her voice shaking querulously. 'I saw his face. He was crouching there and watching us.'
Selwyn frowned. 'Some poacher fellow,' he said, 'that's all. At any rate, I'll make sure.'
He started for the bush, when, with a tearful laugh, she stopped him, her hands clinging to his arm.
'No—no,' she said swiftly, 'it's nothing. It was just my nerves.There is no one there. The rabbit startled me.'
He hesitated momentarily, then, turning to her, gripped her arms with his hands. A great feeling of pity for the high-strung girl welled up in him, and he wished that it were possible to impart some of his own strength to her. 'Elise,' he began hoarsely, his whole being in a cloud of passion through which his brain slashed its lightning shafts of warning—'Elise'——
The hall gong, growing in a clamant intensity, rang out on the quiet air. With the lightness of a fawn she released herself from his grip, and gathering her skirts in her hand, moved towards the path. 'Come along,' she cried; 'we shall be late for dinner.'
He followed her slowly, his hands in his pockets and his mind besieged with countless thoughts. As he crossed the lawn he looked up.
From a window in the tower of Roselawn there was shining an angry, blood-red reflection of the sun's dying moments.
It was a few minutes after midnight when the party at Roselawn retired to their rooms. There had been an impromptu dance, following some spirited bridge, and there was more than the usual chaffing and laughter as the guests dispersed to the various wings of the house.
Tired with the many events of the day, the American quickly undressed, and soothed by the comfort of cool sheets, lay in that relaxation of mind and body which prefaces the panacea of sleep. With half-closed eyes and drowsy semi-consciousness he heard the sounds of life growing less and less in the roomy passages of Roselawn, as his mind lingered over the burning memory of Elise's proximity a few hours before. He felt again the perfume of her hair and the radiant freshness of her womanhood, with its inexplicable sense of spring-time. And memory, with its power of exquisite torture, recalled to his mind the questioning eyes and the trembling, beckoning lips.
The soft chime of a clock downstairs sounded the passing of another hour. Its murmuring echo died to a silence unbroken by any sound save that of the summer breeze playing about the eaves and towers of the house.
Minutes passed. His thoughts blurred into the gathering shadows of sleep.
Of a sudden he was awake, his eyes staring into the dark, his whole body nervously, acutely, on the alert. He had heard a cry—of a nightjar—but so strange and eerie that it made him hold his breath.
The call was repeated. An owl answered with a creepy cry of alarm. Selwyn muttered impatiently at the trick played upon him by his nerves, and turning over, was about to settle again to slumber, when he heard a door softly opening. Light footsteps passed in the hall, stopping at each creaking board as though suspicious that some one might hear; then their sound was lost in the thick carpet of the stairway.
For a minute there was complete silence. He heard from below the cautious opening of the side-door leading to the lawn.
Wondering what mischief was on foot, he rose from his bed, and peering through the window, tried to penetrate the gloom. A sullen sky kept the stars imprisoned behind deep banks of clouds, and only the trees, by reason of their solid blackness, were discernible in the darkness of the night. Slipping on a dressing-gown, he stealthily left his room, and creeping downstairs, found the open door. Emerging on the lawn, he looked quickly about.
Beneath a near-by tree he saw a woman in white, and the figure of a man pleading for something. Suddenly Selwyn saw the woman take some article from around her neck and hand it to the man. The fellow took it, and seemed to be turning away, when, with a suppressed sob, she caught him in her arms, murmuring incoherent endearments through her tears.
The black scudding clouds left the sky-clear for a moment overhead—andSelwyn felt a contraction of pain in his heart.
The woman was Elise, and the man—her brother Dick.
Breakfast at Roselawn was a studiously inconsequential meal. Places were set as usual by the servants, but the viands and the paraphernalia necessary for their preparation were placed on a separate table in the alcove by the great window overlooking the lawn. Having performed this duty, the servants did nothing more; but one could not help feeling that they were just outside the door, like a group of prompters, ready to render instantaneous assistance should the amateurs falter.
Lord Durwent made a kindly and efficient supervisor of the commissariat table, and—there was no question of it—could boil an egg with any one in the county. And the guests plying between the source of supply and the breakfast-table proper created a vagabondish camping-out air of geniality that did much to dispel the natural stiffness of the morning intercourse. As the meal had no formal opening, every one arrived at any time during the breakfast period, and though constant apologies were offered for the frequent interruptions to Lord Durwent's own meal, it could be seen that his enjoyment of buffet proprietorship was almost a professional one.
Lady Durwent's part in the function was to supervise the coffee, and ask each guest how he or she had slept, expressing regret that the night had not been cooler, warmer, calmer, or fresher, according to the polite customs of social dialogue at breakfast.
At nine-fifteen the papers used to arrive from the village, always causing a flutter of excitement. The sense of solitude at Roselawn made the outside world something so remote and apart that there was genuine curiosity to discover what the deuce it had been doing with itself during the house-party's retreat.
Lord Durwent read theMorning Postas a sort of 'prairie oyster' or 'bromo-seltzer.' It settled him. There was something about that journal's editorial page and its dignified treatment of events that made Roselawn seem the embodiment of British principle. Being a man who prided himself on a catholicity of view-point, he also subscribed to theDaily Mail—that frivolous young thing that has as many editions as adébutantehas frocks, and by its super-delicate apparatus at Carmelite House can detect a popular clamour before it is louder than a kitten's miaow.
As a concession to the ladies of the household, he took, in addition, theDaily Sketchand theDaily Mirror, those two energetic illustrated papers, which, benefiting from the remarkable geographical fact that every place of consequence in England is exactly two hours from London, are able to offer photos of riders in Rotten How, bathers at Brighton, rowers at Oxford, and foreign monarchs walking at Windsor, the very morning after all these remarkable persons have astonished the world by riding, bathing, rowing, or walking.
But to Lord Durwent these papers and theDaily Mailwere but interludes. TheMorning Postwas the real business of life, and after reading through its solid columns of type, he enjoyed the sensation of somehow having done something for his country.
It was just before the arrival of the morning papers that Selwyn descended to the dining-room. Helping himself to porridge, he answered Lady Durwent's polite conventional questions.
'Andhowdid you sleep?' asked his hostess, putting into the inquiry that artistic personal touch which made it seem as if this were the first time she had asked the question, and he the first guest to whom it had been propounded.
'Lady Durwent,' he answered, smiling, 'I haven't the faintest idea.'
'Then,' said his hostess, triumphantly explaining the obvious, 'you must have slept well.'
Selwyn thought that when he answered Lady Durwent's query a quick look of relief had passed across the face of Elise. It was for her peace of mind he had lied, as into the hours of dawn he had lain awake, trying to unravel the meaning of the nocturnal scene. He knew that her prodigal brother had been forbidden the ancestral home, but it was hardly necessary that he should lie in hiding like a negro slave dreading the hounds upon his track. And yet, as he recalled the sudden glimpse of Dick's face, Selwyn remembered that there had been a hunted look in the dark-shadowed, luminous eyes. Vaguely he felt that this new development would hinder the understanding reached by Elise and himself during the evening. If only he could go to her and offer his help or solace; or if she would come to him frankly and let him share the unhappy secret, whatever it was, it might prove a bond of comradeship instead of another element to deepen her consciousness of aloofness.
Still churning these various thoughts, he smiled his greetings to her, and affecting an easy unconcern, took his part in the fashionable agricultural conversation which marks the morning intercourse of country-living gentle-folk. If it had not been that the pigs mentioned were Lord Fitz-Guff's, and the cabbages Lady Dingworthy's—and the accents of the speakers beyond question—Selwyn could have imagined that he was sitting around Hank Myer's stove in Doanville, N.Y., listening to the gossip of the local Doanvillians on earth's produce.
'Ah,' said Lord Durwent, sighting a messenger from over the egg-timer, 'here are the papers.'
Directly afterwards the butler entered with the four morning journals, solemnly presented them to his master (with a little more dignity than a Foreign Minister displays in handing the ambassador of an enemy country his passports), then made his exit with his eyes sedately raised, to avoid noting more than was necessary of the 'behind-stage' aspect of his domain.
'Hello!' said Lord Durwent, perusing theMorning Post; 'what's this?Austria has delivered an ultimatum to Servia.'
'What!' cried one of the ladies; 'over that unpronounceable assassination?'
'Dear me!' said the woman who kept record of retired royalties, 'that will upset my dear friend Empress——'
But her voice was lost in the clamour, as every one, deserting breakfast, crowded about Lord Durwent, and half in jest demanded to know what the ramshackle empire had to say for itself.
In a voice that grew tremulous with anger, the host read the details, point by point, and as the seriousness of the thing broke upon the hearers, even the very lightest tongues were for the moment stilled.
With a frown the nobleman looked up as he reached the end of the ultimatum, in which one nation, for its pride, demanded that another should hand over its honour, debased and shackled.
'It is infamous,' said Lord Durwent.
'I tell you what,' said a bland youth named Maynard, who was always in high spirits at breakfast, bored at lunch, 'frightfully bucked' by a cup of tea at four, and invariably sentimental after dinner; 'it would do these nasty little Balkans a lot of good to hold 'em all under water for about three minutes—what?'
'But this is more than a Balkan quarrel,' said Lord Durwent.
'Balkan quarrels always are,' said the youth amiably.
In a chorus of quick questions and answers, in which surmise and conjecture played ducks and drakes with fact, the party divided into two camps, the majority taking the stand that it was a local affair and would lead to nothing; the minority, led by a retired army captain called Fensome, reading a dark augury for the future. In the midst of all the chaffing Selwyn noticed, however, that the placidity of decorum had been dropped, and both men and women were leaning forward in the unaccustomed stimulus of their brains rallying to meet a new and powerful situation.
The men did not lose that note of easy banter which seemed the rule when women were present, but in the faces of the little group who contended that danger was ahead he could detect the stiffening of the jaw and the steadying of the eye which come to those who see events riding towards them with the threat of a prairie fire driven by a wind.
'But, good heavens!' said Selwyn, in answer to some one's prophecy that war would result, 'surely the big nations can stop it. Germany and you and America—we three won't let Austria cut Servia's throat in full daylight.'
The retired army captain turned a monocle on him. 'You have been inGermany, Mr. Selwyn?'
'Yes, just recently.'
'Did you ever hear them toastingDer Tag? My friend, it has arrived.—Durwent, old boy, if you will excuse me, I think I shall go to town at noon. If my old bones aren't lying, the thing which a few of us fossils have been preaching to deaf ears has come to pass, and there may be a job for a belivered old devil like me yet.'
'But,' cried Lady Durwent, whose easily roused theatrical instinct gave her the delightful sensation of presiding at a meeting of the Cabinet, 'what have we to do with Austria and Servia?'
'Hear, hear,' said the bland youth. 'Let 'em hop aboard each other if they like. I think it would be deucedly splendid for us to have another war; we're all fed up—aren't we?—with just enjoying ourselves. But I don't see how we can intrude into those blighters' little show.'
'Exactly,' said Selwyn; 'it's an isolated incident in European affairs.In what possible way can it lead to a rupture between Britain andGermany, as Captain Fensome here predicts?'
The officer referred to shrugged his shoulders. 'It's fairly simple,' he said. 'If, as I think, Germany is behind all this, Servia will appeal to Russia; and remember that the Great Bear is mother to all the Slavs. There will, of course, be jockeying for position, bluff, bravado, and all the rest of it; but France is bound to act with Russia, and with all that explosive hanging around it will be strange if some spark doesn't fall among it.'
'But what has that to do with England?'
'Nothing and everything. The greatest hope of maintaining peace lies with Great Britain. If we had the army we should have, I don't think there would be a war; but, thanks to our ostrich temperament, we are reduced to a handful of men and our action is robbed of everything but merely moral strength.'
'But that is a tremendous factor,' said Selwyn.
'Yes,' admitted the other dryly; 'but I prefer guns.'
'Then you don't think Britain powerful enough to steady the situation if it comes?'
'N-no. Not unless'—— The monocle dropped from the speaker's eye, and with annoying coolness he paused to replace it. 'Do you think America will swallow her doctrine and throw in her lot with us?'
Selwyn bit his lip to keep himself from too impetuous an answer. For the first time he felt an envy for the cool imperturbability of the Island Race.
'If you ask me,' he said, 'whether America will plunge into war at the bidding of a group of diplomats who shuffle the nations like a pack of cards, then I say no. If you older nations over here allow this thing to come to a crisis with a rattling of swords and "Hock der Kaiser!" and "Britannia Rules the Waves," count us out. But should the occasion arise when palpable injustice is being done, and the soul of Britain calls to the soul of America that Right must be maintained, then the Republic that was born—if you will permit me to say so—born out of its resentment against injustice will act instantly.'
'Supposing,' said the other, 'that Germany invades Belgium?'
'But—I understand that Germany has guaranteed Belgium's neutrality.'
The ex-officer showed no signs of having heard him, but shook his head impatiently as one does when annoyed by a fly. 'Supposing,' he repeated, 'that Germany invades Belgium.'
'In that case,' said Selwyn sternly, 'America will be the first to protest.'
'To protest?'
'And fight,' said the American, swallowing a desire to hurl a plate at the monocle.
'You will pardon me,' said Lord Durwent, 'but I do not think we can expect America to become mixed up in this thing. She has her own problems of the New World, and it is too much to hope that she is going to come over here and become embroiled in a European conflict.'
'But, dad,' said Elise Durwent, speaking for the first time, 'if, as Mr. Selwyn says, it is clear that a wrong is being committed, America will insist upon acting.'
'Oh, I don't know,' broke in the youth who was always lively at breakfast, but who was beginning to be bored; 'it's one thing to get waxy about your own corns, and quite another when they're on some other blighter's foot—what? I mean, you chaps over there got awfully hot under the collar when dear old Georgius Rex—Heaven rest his soul!—tried to jump down your throat with both spurs on and gallop your little tum-tums out. But the question is, does it hurt in the same place if old Frankie-Joseph of Austria pinks Thingmabob of Servia underneath the fifth rib—what, what?'
'Is Britain great enough for such a situation?' asked Selwyn, repressing a smile. 'Would she accept Belgium's crisis as her own?'
'Oh, that's another thing,' said the young man a little uncomfortably. 'We've signed the bally thing, and of course we'll play the game, and'——
'As Maynard says,' interrupted the former army man, 'it's a bigger thing for America than for us. Mind you, I don't say we need America to help us to make war, but we do need her help if war is to be averted; and any move of such a nature on her part demands what you author fellows would call "a high degree of altruism." How's that, Durwent, for a chap who never reads anything but thePink Un?'
'Oh, well,' said Lady Durwent complacently, 'it's probably all a storm in a teacup, anyway. Some Austrian diplomat has been jilted for a Servian, I suppose. Isn't that the way wars always happen?' and she sighed heavily, recalling to her mind the classic features of H. Stackton Dunckley.