Clad for a long railway journey on a hot day; a grey figure of fluent
lines, of composedly decisive movements; a little felt hat
close-fitting to the spirited head, leaving full and frank the soft
rounded face, with its quietly observant eyes, its lips of contained
humour--Irene Derwent stepped from a cab at Euston Station and went
forward into the booking-office. From the box-seat of the same vehicle
descended a brisk, cheerful little man, looking rather like a courier
than an ordinary servant, who paid the cabman, saw to the luggage, and,
at a respectful distance, followed Miss Derwent along the platform; it
was Thibaut Rossignol.
Grey-clad also, with air no less calm and sufficient, a gentleman
carrying newspapers in Britannic abundance moved towards the train
which was about to start. Surveying for a moment, with distant
curiosity, the travellers about him, his eye fell upon that maiden of
the sunny countenance just as she was entering a carriage; he stopped,
insensibly drew himself together, subdued a smile, and advanced for
recognition.
"I am going to Liverpool, Miss Derwent. May I have the pleasure----?"
"If you will promise not to talk politics, Mr. Jacks."
"I can't promise that. I want to talk politics."
"From here to Crewe?"
"As far as Rugby, let us say. After that--morphology, or some other of
your light topics."
It seemed possible that they might have the compartment to themselves,
for it was mid-August, and the tumult of northward migration had
ceased. Arnold Jacks, had he known a moment sooner, would have settled
it with the guard. He looked forbiddingly at a man who approached; who,
in his turn, stared haughtily and turned away.
Irene beckoned to Thibaut, and from the window gave him a trivial
message for her father, speaking in French; Thibaut, happy to serve
her, put a world of chivalrous respect into his "Bien, Mademoiselle!"
Arnold Jacks averted his face and smiled. Was she girlish enough, then,
to find pleasure in speaking French before him? A charming trait!
The train started, and Mr. Jacks began to talk. It was not the first
time that they had merrily skirmished on political and other grounds;
they amused each other, and, as it seemed, in a perfectly harmless way;
the English way of mirth between man and maid, candid, inallusive,
without self-consciousness. Arnold made the most of his thirty years,
spoke with a tone something paternal. He was wholly sure of himself,
knew so well his own mind, his scheme of existence, that Irene's beauty
and her charm were nothing more to him than an aesthetic perception.
That she should feel an interest in him, a little awe of him, was to be
hoped and enjoyed: he had not the least thought of engaging deeper
emotion--would, indeed, have held himself reprobate had such purpose
entered his head. Nor is it natural to an Englishman of this type to
imagine that girls may fall in love with him. Love has such a
restricted place in their lives, is so consistently kept out of sight
in their familiar converse. They do not entirely believe in it; it ill
accords with their practical philosophy. Marriage--that is another
thing. The approaches to wedlock are a subject of honourable
convention, not to be confused with the trivialities of romance.
"I'm going down to Liverpool," he said, presently, "to meet Trafford
Romaine."
It gratified him to see the gleam in Miss Derwent's eyes the
announcement had its hoped-for effect. Trafford Romaine, the Atlas of
our Colonial world; the much-debated, the universally interesting
champion of Greater British interests! She knew, of course, that Arnold
Jacks was his friend; no one could talk with Mr. Jacks for half an hour
without learning that; but the off-hand mention of their being about to
meet this very day had an impressiveness for Irene.
"I saw that he was coming to England."
"From the States--yes. He has been over there on a holiday--merely a
holiday. Of course, the papers have tried to find a meaning in it. That
kind of thing amuses him vastly. He says in his last letter to me----"
Carelessly, the letter was drawn from an inner pocket. Only a page and
a half; Arnold read it out. A bluff and rather slangy epistolary style.
"May I see his hand?" asked Irene, trying to make fun of her wish.
He gave her the letter, and watched her amusedly as she gazed at the
first page. On receiving it back again, he took his penknife, carefully
cut out the great man's signature, and offered it for Irene's
acceptance.
"Thank you. But you know, of course, that I regard it as a mere
curiosity."
"Oh, yes! Why not? So do I the theory of Evolution."
By a leading question or two, Miss Derwent set her companion talking at
large of Trafford Romaine, his views and policies. The greatest man in
the Empire! he declared. The only man, in fact, who held the true
Imperial conception, and had genius to inspire multitudes with his own
zeal. Arnold's fervour of admiration betrayed him into no excessive
vivacity, no exuberance in phrase or unusual gesture such as could
conflict with "good form"; he talked like the typical public schoolboy,
with a veneering of wisdom current in circles of higher officialdom.
Enthusiasm was never the term for his state of mind; instinctively he
shrank from that, as a thing Gallic, "foreign." But the spirit of
practical determination could go no further. He followed Trafford
Romaine as at school he had given allegiance to his cricket captain;
impossible to detect a hint that he felt the life of peoples in any way
more serious than the sports of his boyhood, yet equally impossible to
perceive how he could have been more profoundly in earnest. This made
the attractiveness of the man; he compelled confidence; it was felt
that he never exaggerated in the suggestion of force concealed beneath
his careless, mirthful manner. Irene, in spite of her humorous
observation, hung upon his speech. Involuntarily, she glanced at his
delicate complexion, at the whiteness and softness of his ungloved
hand, and felt in a subtle way this combination of the physically fine
with the morally hard, trenchant, tenacious. Close your eyes, and
Arnold Jacks was a high-bred bulldog endowed with speech; not otherwise
would a game animal of that species, advanced to a world-polity, utter
his convictions.
"You take for granted," she remarked, "that our race is the finest
fruit of civilisation."
"Certainly. Don't you?"
"It's having a pretty good conceit of ourselves. Is every foreigner who
contests it a poor deluded creature? Take the best type of Frenchman,
for instance. Is he necessarily fatuous in his criticism of us?"
"Why, of course he is. He doesn't understand us. He doesn't understand
the world. He has his place, to be sure, but that isn't in
international politics. We are the political people; we are the
ultimate rulers. Our language----"
"There's a quotation from Virgil----"
"I know. We are very like the Romans. But there are no new races to
overthrow us."
He began to sketch the future extension of Britannic lordship and
influence. Kingdoms were overthrown with a joke, continents were
annexed in a boyish phrase; Armageddon transacted itself in sheer
lightness of heart. Laughing, he waded through the blood of nations,
and in the end seated himself with crossed legs upon the throne of the
universe.
"Do you know what it makes me wish?" said Irene, looking wicked.
"That you may live to see it?"
"No. That someone would give us a good licking, for the benefit of our
souls."
Having spoken it, she was ashamed, and her lip quivered a little. But
the train had slackened speed; they entered a station.
"Rugby!" she exclaimed, with relief. "Have you any views about
treatment of the phylloxera?"
"Odd that you should mention that. Why?"
"Only because my father has been thinking about it: we have a friend
from Avignon staying with us--all but ruined in his vineyards."
Jacks had again taken out his letter-case. He selected a folded sheet
of paper, and showed what looked like a dry blade of grass. The wheat,
he said, on certain farms in his Company's territory had begun to
suffer from a strange disease; here was an example of the
parasite-eaten growth; no one yet had recognised the disease or
discovered a check for it.
"Let my father have it," said Irene. "He is interested in all that kind
of thing."
"Really? Seriously?"
"Quite seriously. He would much like to see it."
"Then I will either call on him, or write to him, when I get back."
Miss Derwent had not yet spoken of her destination. She mentioned, now,
that she was going to spend a week or two with relations at a country
place in Cheshire. She must change trains at Crewe. This gave a lighter
turn to the conversation. Arnold Jacks launched into frank gaiety, and
Irene met him with spirit. Not a little remarkable was the absence of
the note of sex from their merry gossip in the narrow seclusion of a
little railway compartment. Irene was as safe with this
world-conquering young man as with her own brother; would have been so,
probably, on a desert island. They were not man and woman, but English
gentleman and lady, and, from one point of view, very brilliant
specimens of their kind.
At Crewe both alighted, Arnold to stretch his legs for a moment.
"By the bye," he said, as Miss Derwent, having seen to her luggage, was
bidding him farewell, "I'm sorry to hear that young Otway has been very
ill."
"Ill?--I had no knowledge of it. In Russia?"
"Yes. My father was speaking of it yesterday. He had heard it from his
friend, old Mr. Otway. A fever of some kind. He's all right again, I
believe."
"We have heard nothing of it. There's your whistle. Good-bye!"
Jacks leapt into his train, waved a hand from the window, and was
whirled away.
For the rest of her journey, Irene seemed occupied with an alternation
of grave and amusing thoughts. At moments she looked seriously
troubled. This passed, and the arrival found her bright as ever; the
pink of modern maidenhood, fancy free.
The relatives she was visiting were two elderly ladies, cousins of her
mother; representatives of a family native to this locality for
hundreds of years. One of the two had been married, but husband and
child were long since dead; the other, devoted to sisterly affection,
had shared in the brief happiness of the wife and remained the solace
of the widow's latter years. They were in circumstances of simple
security, living as honoured gentlewomen, without display as without
embarrassment; fulfilling cheerfully the natural duties of their
position, but seeking no influence beyond the homely limits; their life
a humanising example, a centre of charity and peace. The house they
dwelt in came to them from their yeoman ancestors of long ago; it was
held on a lease of one thousand years from near the end of the
sixteenth century, "at a quit-rent of one shilling," and certain pieces
of furniture still in use were contemporary with the beginning of the
tenure. No corner of England more safely rural; beyond sound of railway
whistle, bosomed in great old elms, amid wide meadows and generous
tillage; sloping westward to the river Dee, and from its soft green
hills descrying the mountains of Wales.
Here in the old churchyard lay Irene's mother. She died in London, but
Dr. Derwent wished her to rest by the home of her childhood, where
Irene, too, as a little maid, had spent many a summer holiday. Over the
grave stood a simple slab of marble, white as the soul of her it
commemorated, graven thereon a name, parentage, dates of birth and
death--no more. Irene's father cared not to tell the world how that
bereavement left him.
Round about were many kindred tombs, the most noticeable that of Mrs.
Derwent's grandfather, a ripe old scholar, who rested from his mellow
meditations just before the century began.
"GULIELMI W----
Pii, docti, integri,
Reliquiae seu potius exuviae."
It was the first Latin Irene learnt, and its quaint phrasing to this
day influenced her thoughts of mortality. Standing by her mother's
grave, she often repeated to herself "_seu potius exuviae_," and
wondered whether her father's faith in science excluded the hope of
that old-world reasoning. She would not have dared to ask him, for all
the frank tenderness of their companionship. On that subject Dr.
Derwent had no word to say, no hint to let fall. She knew only that, in
speaking of her they had lost, his voice would still falter; she knew
that he always came into this churchyard alone, and was silent,
troubled, for hours after the visit. Instinctively, too, she understood
that, though her father might almost be called a young man, and had
abounding vitality, no second wife would ever obscure to him that
sacred memory. It was one of the many grounds she had for admiring as
much as she loved him. His loyalty stirred her heart, coloured her view
of life.
The ladies had some little apprehension that their young relative,
fresh from contact with a many-sided world, might feel a dulness in
their life and their interests; but nothing of the sort entered Irene's
mind. She was intelligent enough to appreciate the superiority of these
quiet sisters to all but the very best of the acquaintances she had
made in London or abroad, and modest enough to see in their entire
refinement a correction of the excessive _sans-gene_ to which society
tempted her. They were behind the times only in the sense of escaping,
by seclusion, those modern tendencies which vulgarise. An excellent
library of their own supplied them with the essentials of culture, and
one or two periodicals kept them acquainted with all that was worth
knowing in the activity of the day. They belonged to the very small
class of persons who still read, who have mind and leisure to find
companionship in books. Their knowledge of languages passed the common;
in earlier years they had travelled, and their reminiscences fostered
the liberality which was the natural tone of their minds. To converse
familiarly with them was to discover their grasp of historical
principles, their insight into philosophic systems, their large
apprehension of world-problems. At the same time, they nurtured
jealously their intellectual preferences, differing on such points from
each other as they did from the common world. One of them would betray
an intimate knowledge of some French or Italian poet scarce known by
name to ordinary educated people; something in him had appealed to her
mind at a certain time, and her memory held him in gratitude. The other
would be found to have informed herself exhaustively concerning the
history of some neglected people, dear to her for some subtle reason of
affinity or association. But in their table-talk appeared no pedantry;
things merely human were as interesting to them as to the babbler of
any drawing-room, and their inexhaustible kindliness sweetened every
word they spoke.
Nothing more salutary for Irene Derwent than this sojourn with persons
whom she in every way respected--with whom there was not the least
temptation to exhibit her mere dexterities. In London, during this past
season, she had sometimes talked as a young, clever and admired girl is
prone to do; always to the mockery of her sager self when looking back
on such easy triumphs. How very easy it was to shine in London
drawing-rooms, no one knew better. Here, in the country stillness, in
this beautiful old house sacred to sincerity of heart and mind, to aim
at "smartness" would indeed have been to condemn oneself. Instead of
phrasing, she was content, as became her years, to listen; she enjoyed
the feeling of natural youthfulness, of spontaneity without misgiving.
The things of life and intellect appeared in their true proportions;
she saw the virtue of repose.
When she had been here a day or two, the conversation chanced to take a
turn which led to her showing the autograph of Trafford Romaine; she
said merely that a friend had given it to her.
"An interesting man, I should think," remarked the elder of the two
sisters, without emphasis.
"An Englishman of a new type, wouldn't you say?" fell from the other.
"So far as I understand him. Or perhaps of an old type under new
conditions."
Irene, paying close attention, was not sure that she understood all
that these words implied.
"He is immensely admired by some of our friends," she said with
restraint. "They compare him to the fighting heroes of our history."
"Indeed?" rejoined the elder lady. "But the question is: Are those the
qualities that we want nowadays? I admire Sir Walter Raleigh, but I
should be sorry to see him, just as he was, playing an active part in
our time."
"They say," ventured Irene, with a smile, "that but for such men, we
may really become a mere nation of shopkeepers."
"Do they? But may we not fear that their ideal is simply a shopkeeper
ready to shoot anyone who rivals him in trade? The finer qualities I
admit; but one distrusts the objects they serve."
"We are told," said Irene, "that England _must_ expand."
"Probably. But the mere necessity of the case must not become our law.
It won't do for a great people to say, 'Make room for us, and we
promise to set you a fine example of civilisation; refuse to make room,
and we'll blow your brains out!' One doubts the quality of the
civilisation promised."
Irene laughed, delighted with the vigour underlying the old lady's calm
and gentle habit of speech. Yet she was not convinced, though she
wished to be. A good many times she had heard in thought the suavely
virile utterances of Arnold Jacks; his voice had something that pleased
her, and his way of looking at things touched her imagination. She
wished these ladies knew Arnold Jacks, that she might ask their opinion
of him.
And yet, she felt she would rather not have asked it.