XI
Afterthe meeting, eight people sat down to dinner at the manor house. These were Mr. Speke, Mr. Perry-Hennington and his daughter, the host, the redoubtable hostess, and three rather crushed and colorless Miss Whympers, who were evidently in great awe of their mother.
Lady Jane Whymper was a large, humorless woman, a local terror, whom most people found it very hard to like. For one thing her connections were so high, and her family so good, that she never had to please or conciliate anyone, and there was nothing in her nature to lead her to do so. She gave so little thought to the feelings of others, that she always made a point of saying just what came into her head, without regard to time or place or company; moreover it was always said in a voice of an exasperatingly penetrative quality. In her little corner of the world there was no one to stand against her, therefore she could hector, trample and dogmatize to her heart’s content. And being a person with many social stringsto pull, in London also she was able to order the world pretty much to her own liking.
Still even she, if as a general rule she was insufferable, kept a reserve of tact for special occasions. By no means a fool, she could sometimes rise to graciousness; and the knowledge that violence was thereby done to the order of her nature seemed to invest her hours of charm with greater significance. And this evening at dinner, she happened to be in her most winning mood. For one thing George Speke was a favorite of hers; she had also a regard for the vicar of Penfold; thus the augurs had doubly blessed the meal. It was true that Lady Jane reserved her unbendings for the other sex, certainly never for her own, unless she had some very portentous ax to grind; but on the present occasion the three Miss Whympers and their rather mournful and ineffectual sire found the evening much more agreeable than usual.
Speke was a favorite of Lady Jane’s for several reasons. To begin with, like herself he was highly connected. It may seem an anachronism that in the year 1915 a woman of the world should attach the slightest importance to such a fortuitous matter, but even at that time a type of mind still survived in the island to which degrees of birth were of vast consequence. Lady Jane owned a mind of that sort. DearGeorge was “next in” for a dukedom, and Lady Jane was a duke’s daughter.
Ducal aspect apart, Speke was an able and likable fellow. He had once been described by one who knew the world as a member of a first-rate second-rate family. The Spekes had always been “in it” ever since they had been a family; they ran to prime ministers, field marshals, ambassadors, archbishops, all down the scroll of history. George’s particular blend of Speke was an immensely distinguished clan; yet somehow when Clio, the muse, cast her searchlight upon their achievements they loomed far less in the eyes of posterity than in those of their own generation. Ten years before, Mr. Speke’s own little world of friends, relations and sconce bearers, had seen in him a future prime minister. But 1914 had modified their views. All the same a place had been found for him in the Coalition. As Lady Jane said, “We cannot hope to win the war without him.”
Speke had no such estimate of his own abilities, or at least, if he had, he knew how to conceal it. He talked modestly and well at the dinner table; his conversation was full of inside knowledge, and it had a grace of manner which Edith and the three Miss Whympers admired. He had met the vicar of Penfold before, and rather liked and respected him asmost people did; also he claimed him as a distant kinsman, as the Perrys of Molesworth appeared in the Speke family tree.
“By the way, Mr. Perry-Hennington,” he said, “I was trespassing in your parish this afternoon. I went to see Gervase Brandon.”
“Poor fellow,” said the vicar. “But don’t you think he is bearing up remarkably?”
“Quite wonderfully. But he’s a pathetic figure. Six months ago when I saw him last, he was at the apex of mental and bodily power. And now he lies helpless, never expecting to walk again.”
“And yet not a word of complaint,” said the vicar. “This morning when I went to see him I was greatly struck by his splendid courage and cheerfulness.”
“Truly a hero—and so pathetic as he lies in that room—a wonderful room it is—among his books.”
“Can nothing be done for him?” said Lady Jane.
“The doctors are beginning to despair,” said the vicar. “Everything that medical science can do has been done already, and there’s no sign of an improvement.”
“The higher nerve centers, I suppose?”
“So I understand. The mere concussion of this modern artillery is appalling.”
“It is amazing to me that the human frame eversucceeds in adapting itself to war under modern conditions,” said Speke.
“And the awful thing is,” the host interposed in his melancholy tones, “that there appears to be no limit to what can be done in the way of self-immolation. The chemist and the inventor have only to go on long enough applying their arts to war to evolve conditions which will destroy the whole human race. We live in a time of horrors, but let us ask ourselves what the world will be twenty years hence?”
“Don’t, I implore you, Edward,” reproved his wife. “Spare us the thought.”
“No, it won’t bear speaking about,” said Speke. “We are already past the point where science destroys organic life faster than nature can replace.”
“Not a doubt of it,” said the vicar. “And if we cannot find a means of bridging permanently the chasm that has opened in the life of civilization, the globe will cease to be habitable for the human race.”
“Really! really!” said the hostess.
“Only too true,” said the host. “There’s hardly a limit to what modern devilry can do. Take aviation to begin with. We are merely on the threshold of the subject.”
“I agree,” said George Speke. “The other day, Bellman, the air minister, told me it is quite withinthe bounds of possibility to drop a poison from the clouds that will exterminate whole cities.”
“Which merely goes to prove what I have always contended,” said the hostess. “Sooner or later all nations will be forced into an agreement for the abolition of war.”
“My dear Lady Jane,” said the vicar, shaking a mournful head, “such a contingency is against all experience. It is not to be thought of unless a fundamental change takes place in the heart of man.”
“A change must take place,” said Lady Jane, “if the human race is to go on. Besides, doesn’t the Bible tell us that there will be a second coming of Christ, and that all wars will cease?”
“It does,” said the vicar; “but that is the millennium, you know. And I am bound to say there’s no sign of it at present. I am convinced that only one thing now can save the human race and that is a second advent. Only that can bridge the chasm which has opened in the life of the nations.”
“In the meantime,” said George Speke, “the watchers scan the heavens in vain. The miserable, childish futility of our present phase of evolution! So many little groups of brown grubs slaving night and day to make human life a worse hell than nature has made of it already. People talk of the exhilaration of war.Good God! they can’t have seen it. They can’t have seen colonies of organized hatreds, profaning all art and all science, poisoning the very air God gave us to breathe. It makes one loathe one’s species. We are little, hideous, two-legged ants, flying around in foul contraptions of our own invention. And to what end? Simply to destroy.”
“In order to recreate,” said the vicar robustly.
“I don’t believe it. The pendulum of progress—blessed word!—has swung too far. Unless we can contrive a means of holding back the clock, the doom of the world is upon us.”
“It all comes of denying God, of banishing him from the planet,” said the host.
“But is he banished from the planet? Take a man like Gervase Brandon. Life gave him everything. No man had a greater love of peace, yet when the call came he threw to the wind all his most cherished convictions, went to the war in the knightly spirit of a crusader, and for the rest of his days on earth is condemned to a state of existence from which death is a merciful release.”
“By sacrifice ye shall enter,” said the vicar.
“I am not competent to speak upon that. But one’s private conception of God is not banished from thiscorner of the planet as long as England teems with Gervase Brandons.”
“There I am fully with you,” said the vicar. “To me Gervase Brandon will always be a symbol of what man can rise to in the way of deliberate heroism, just as the beaches of Gallipoli will be enshrined forever in the history of the race to which he belongs. I have only to think of Gervase Brandon to affirm that God is more potent in the world than he ever was—and that is the awful paradox.”
“I don’t presume to question that,” said the host. “But the problem now for the world is, how shall his power be made supreme? That is what a ruined civilization has now to ask itself. All civilized people agree that war itself must cease, yet before it can do so there will have to be a conversion of the heart of man.”
“You are right,” said Speke, in his dry, cool voice. “And to my mind, as the world is constituted, the problem admits of no solution.”
“In other words,” said the host, “there must always be wars and rumors of wars until God has created Himself.”
“Or rather let us say,” the vicar rejoined, “until God has affirmed Himself. Hence the need for the second advent.”
“I wonder if we shall realize it when it occurs,” said Speke, his hand straying to his champagne glass. “In all its fundamentals the world is as it was two thousand years ago in Palestine. If Christ walked the earth again, it is certain that he would be treated now as he was then.”
“That, one cannot believe,” interposed Lady Jane with ready vehemence. “Even you admit, George, the amount of practical Christianity there is in the world. I, for one, will not believe all this sacrifice has been in vain.”
“I agree with you, Lady Jane,” said the vicar. “When He comes to resume His ministry, as come He will, at all events He will find that His Church has been true. But at present, I confess, one looks in vain for a sign of His advent.”
Speke shook his head. “With all submission,” he said, “if Christ appeared today he would be treated as a harmless crank, or he would be put in an asylum. Think of his reception by the yellow press—the ruler of nations, the maker of governments, the welder of empires. He would find it the same pleasant world he left two thousand years ago. Man, in sum, the vocal working majority, whether in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, or Petrograd, could not possiblymeet the Master face to face or even hope to recognize him when he passed by.”
“That is true, no doubt,” said the vicar, “of the mass of the people. Men of truly spiritual mold are in a hopeless minority. But they are still among us. Depend upon it, when the hour comes they will recognize the Master’s voice, depend upon it, they will know His face.”
“I wonder?” said George Speke.
“I am absolutely convinced of that, George.” And Lady Jane, one with the law and the prophets, gave the signal to the ladies and rose superbly from the dinner table.