AFTER the 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 strings to 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. Dear George 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
as most 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 ever succeeds 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 within the 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 this corner 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 possibly meet 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.