Robin had been at Cambridge about a fortnight, and on a certain Sunday
afternoon was sitting with Jim in the window-seat of the latter’s room
over-looking the court. The bell for afternoon chapel had begun, but
since they had both been there in the morning, they proposed to abstain
from any further religious exercises. The menace of tempest that for the
last week had been so swiftly piling up over Europe had barely as yet
flecked the scholastic calm of Cambridge with the faintest ruffling of
its tranquil surface. Mr. Waters, indeed, was perhaps the only member of
St. Stephen’s who had been at all acutely affected, since he had thought
it wiser not to go to Baireuth, and had been unable to dispose of his
tickets.
Robin was blowing tobacco smoke on to a small green insect that clung to
a stalk of mignonette in the window-box.
“It is for its good,” he said. “It will make it feel sick, and so when
it grows up it will instinctively dislike the smell of tobacco and so
not spend its money, like me, on cigarettes. Talking of which, I’ve run
short. Hope you’ve got some?”
“I’m smoking my last. What’s to be done?”
“Go into the town and buy some. Damn, it’s Sunday! Oh, there’s Jelf!
Got any cigarettes, Judas?”
Jelf had lately been very strong on what he called effete Christian
superstitions. Nobody cared in the least what Jelf believed, but it was
obvious that his name was Judas. He strolled on to the grass below the
window.
“Yes, plenty, thank you,” he said, “if you were speaking to me. But my
name is Jelf.”
“I know. Do be a good chap, and bring us a handful. Jim and I have run
out. You can hang yourself afterwards. I’ll even give you some tea
first, and you can talk to a pretty lady who’s coming to tea, too.”
“Who’s that?” asked Jim.
“Friend of my mother’s, Lady Gurtner. She’s motoring in from her house
somewhere near for chapel. About the cigarettes now. You aren’t Judas,
Jelf. I can’t imagine what I was thinking about. But for God’s sake
fetch some cigarettes, and then you needn’t hang yourself.”
“You’re quite sure?” asked Jelf.
“Absolutely certain. Thanks, awfully.”
Jim put down off the window-seat one of Robin’s legs which was
incommoding him.
“Germany declared war on Russia yesterday,” he said. “Wonder what’s
going to happen next?”
“I don’t know. I suppose there’ll be a battle. It’s rather exciting, and
I’m glad we’re on an island. This queer bug doesn’t seem to mind tobacco
smoke. Hullo, Badders! Why going to chapel again?”
“Why not?” said Badsley from the path outside. “I say, I believe there’s
going to be a gory war.”
“Well, we’re not in it, so what does it matter? Jim and I are dining
with you to-night, aren’t we?”
“I think you told me so.”
“I was sure I hadn’t forgotten to. Thanks, we’ll come. Hurrah! there’s
Ju--Jelf with cigarettes.”
Jelf entered, brandishing his cigarettes like a wave-offering.
“Christianity hasn’t made much of a show in nineteen hundred years,” he
remarked. “Total effect up to date is that we’re going to have the
biggest war that ever happened. Moslems are forbidden to fight against
Moslems, you know, but Christians may kill as many of each other as they
please.”
“Have a cigarette? One of yours,” said Jim, changing the subject.
“War!” said Jelf. “Of all the insane and senseless things in the world
war is the worst. Two fellows quarrel, or two nations quarrel, and by
way of finding out which of them is right they hit each other till one
goes down. Then the other stamps on him, and everyone goes to a
thanksgiving service in church because God has been on his side. Don’t
know what the fellow who is stamped on does. Probably he goes to Hell.
It must be jolly puzzling to have two nations or more all on their knees
fervently praying for absolutely opposite things, especially if you have
promised to grant prayers addressed to you. He ought to have thought of
that before He promised.”
“O Lor’!” said Robin.
“It’s no use saying ‘O Lor’.’ You fellows hate anything that makes you
think, because you can’t think. I’ve told you that before.”
“I know; that’s what makes it tedious,” said Robin.
“Well, I find you tedious, too,” said Jelf. “I hate the English. They’re
a mixture of sentiment and sport. They can’t think. But do be serious a
minute and try to think. Germany and Russia are at war now. Everything
good has come from Germany, beer and Bach and Beethoven and Christmas
trees, except what has come out of Russia, which is Tolstoi and
Turgeniev and Nijinski and Pavlova. And now they’re fighting because of
a rotten little dung-heap called Serbia. France might as well go to war
on behalf of Monte Carlo. What’s the good of the little nations, anyway?
They ought to belong to somebody else.”
Robin had taken up an illustrated magazine, and was playing noughts and
crosses on the back of it with Jim. But the lack of attention on the
part of his audience never discomposed Jelf.
“And now as like as not France and we will have to join in,” he went on,
“and there you’ll have all the civilized nations of Europe killing each
other on account of a little rotten country that neither of you could
find on a map. Germany has already threatened to march through Belgium
to get at France, and Belgium--another rotten little country--has
appealed to England.”
“Oh, when did that happen?” asked Jim. “Two to you, Birds.”
“To-day. It was on the tape down at the ‘Union.’ Not that anybody cared,
except Mackenzie, who sees a future for his aeroplane engine.”
“Why?”
“Because aeroplanes, as he says, are going to win the war for somebody.
You can scout all behind the enemy’s lines. We’ve got about three
aeroplanes at present.... I say, isn’t there anything you fellows are
interested in except cricket?”
“Yes, cigarettes,” said Robin. “And we like hearing you talk, as long as
we needn’t listen. But aren’t you and Mackenzie getting on rather
quick?”
“Not as quick as things are getting on. I had an argument with
Mackenzie----”
“You don’t say so!” said Jim.
“I did. I think war is the devil. If England went to war, nothing would
induce me to stop protesting against it.”
“Oh, are you a--a Pacific?” hazarded Robin.
“Ocean. Try Pacifist. Of course I am; so would you be if you thought.
How does killing people prove your point? If you said I had a green
nose, I shouldn’t kill you in order to prove it wasn’t green. And if you
killed me, it wouldn’t prove that it was. My nose would remain precisely
the same colour whether you killed me or not.”
“It might become crimson first,” said Robin.
“I suppose that’s funny. War is utterly illogical and uncivilized. Only
schoolboys fight when they disagree.”
“If you’ll stop talking, I’ll bet you half-a-crown that we shan’t go to
war. Besides, we’ve got an invincible fleet, and I suppose Germany’s got
an invincible army. Will the army swim out and board the fleet, or will
our sailors put off in small boats and fight the Germans on land? It’s
all rot. Your move, Jim.”
“I take that half-crown. I can’t bear the thought of Germany being
smashed up. I spent three months there last year, and I loved them.”
“As much as you hate the English?”
“Just about. I hope to goodness we shall be sensible and keep out of it.
Germans have got brains: if you talk to a German he understands what you
say, which is such an advantage.”
“Whereas if you talk to an Englishman, he plays noughts and crosses,”
said Robin. “Lord, they’re coming out of chapel. I must go and find Lady
Gurtner.”
It was not very hard to find Lady Gurtner, for she was quite the most
conspicuous object in the crowd that poured out of chapel. She was also
in the highest spirits, for in the motor that waited for her at the
gate, guarded by a footman, lay the sables that her soul had so ardently
desired, which her husband had just purchased for her. This implied some
big financial coup, the nature of which she knew. For his foresight on
that night when he had sat up till dawn “writing and thinking for her,”
had, in conjunction with more work next day, produced results that were
excessively pleasant.
Before there had been anything like alarm on the Stock Exchange of
Europe he had sold at peace prices enormous blocks of shares in English,
German and French funds, with a view to repurchasing them at panic
prices when the shadow of war spread. Simultaneously he had purchased
interests in such holdings as coal and shipping companies, and in
armament and ammunition works, such as Krupps and Vickers, which,
instead of being adversely affected by the prospect of war, would be
bound to appreciate. This sagacity also was turning out very well, and
though he had intended to come with Aline into Cambridge that afternoon,
from his country house a dozen miles off, he had judged it more prudent
to get back to London that night, so as to be on the spot for the very
agitated opening which the Stock Exchange would no doubt experience on
Monday morning, and be ready for the psychological moment at which to
put in his sickle and reap the golden harvest which awaited him on some
of those transactions. But in his absence Aline felt that the sables
made the only adequate substitute for him.
She had come to a decision on that question of national sympathy, which
he had put so crudely before her at that tragic interview which
succeeded her triumphant party. It was quite possible to be good
friends with everybody, so she had determined. No doubt her German blood
called to her, but her position, now strongly held in England, called to
her also. The English, should that terrible event of England’s entering
the war be realized (as her husband now deemed to be inevitable) should
see how completely she had embraced the cause of her adopted country.
She would be clever about it, too: she would frankly say how her heart
was torn, but she would no less show that it had been torn into two very
unequal portions, by far the largest of which was English. She developed
those tactfulnesses at once, as she walked back to Robin’s rooms,
talking rather loud.
“I never saw such a beautiful place,” she said, “and what singing! My
dear, fancy living in this divine court! Are your rooms really here? Do
you live here? What an atmosphere to be soaked in! No wonder you English
boys are the most delightful creatures under the sun. You utterly lucky
person, Robin. You go to school at Eton, and then you come here, and
when you are away on your holidays you live at Grote. Thank goodness, my
sons are going to do just the same. What wouldn’t I give to be a boy at
Eton with this to follow! And are we really going to walk under this
arch to your rooms? I am sick with envy of you. I shall die of
discontent when I get back to my horrid house.”
They passed through the arch and into Robin’s room, which looked out
away from the big court on to a small space of grass with a mulberry
tree in the middle. Robin introduced Jelf, who in this interval had been
useful with regard to making the kettle boil over a spirit-lamp, and
Lady Gurtner became equally effusive to him.
“And so you’re another of the spoiled children of the world,” she said.
“And that’s a mulberry tree out there, isn’t it? How old-world and
lovely! I can see the fruit on it. But that’s the sort of thing you
can’t get, unless you’ve five hundred years behind you. Do you read your
Greek under the mulberry tree? I’m sure you do. There’s nothing like
Cambridge in the whole of Germany. Poor Germany! Have you ever been to
Germany, Mr. Jelf?”
There was no possibility of replying to Lady Gurtner’s remarks, when she
was determined on making an impression, for having asked a question, she
turned to other matters that lay littered about in her hopping,
bird-like mind. She paused only for a second’s space to think how
greatly Hermann would admire and extol her for her inimitable tact in
being so convincingly English.
“All the German students do nothing but drink beer,” she said, “except
when they are fighting duels. What delicious tea! And a bun--yes,
please, a bun--I am sure it was baked in the kitchen that Henry the
Sixth built. How good! Buttered, too, on its lovely inside. I never saw
such Sybarites. And here you all live, and don’t bother with anything
else that happens outside. That is so sensible. You are just English
boys; I wish the recipe could be known. How jolly and comfortable we
should all be!”
Her mouth was full for the moment of the delicious bun, and she could
not prevent Robin asking a question:
“But do you mean we are not all going to be jolly and comfortable?” he
said.
“Ah, yes, you mean about this dreadful news to-day,” she said, rapidly
disposing of the delicious bun by a hurried swallow and a sip of tea. “I
know my husband thinks it all very serious: it is as if that great
brutal Germany was insisting on a quarrel. I have not been there for
years, though I was going last week, when all the trouble began. I shall
never go there again if she goes to war with that lovely France, Russia
too!”
“Won’t she find herself in a pretty nasty place between them?” asked
Robin.
For a moment her tact deserted her: the call of the blood silenced all
other voices.
“Ah, you don’t know the might of Germany if you think that,” she said.
“She is invincible: not all the armies of Europe could stand against
her. Her fleet, too----”
She stopped suddenly, feeling that Hermann would not admire these last
remarks quite as sincerely as her previous felicities. But she could not
stand anybody else, even one of those adorable English boys, running
down the Fatherland.
“After all, there is an English fleet,” said Robin.
Once again she had to put a firm hand on herself, in order to prevent
her tongue running away with her on the magnificence of the German Navy.
But it escaped through another bolt-hole, making a not very happy
diversion.
“But England is not going to fight Germany,” she said. “You have your
hands full with these miserable Irish affairs, and besides, what quarrel
have you with Germany? It is all about Serbia, so my husband tells me,
which surely does not matter to England.”
Now, somehow, even to the immature perception of the two undergraduates,
these words, though nearly identical with Jelf’s, sounded quite
different, took on a sinister meaning when spoken by Lady Gurtner. Jelf
had said that small nations had no place, but the moment Lady Gurtner
said that Serbia did not matter to England, she began to matter. No one
took Jelf seriously: his tirades were but the expression of a mind that
delighted in argument, that was eager to see the reverse of conventional
views. It was merely “Jelfish” that he should proclaim his love for
Germans and his dislike of the English, but that didn’t really represent
Jelf. In fact he liked shocking you, and failed, whereas Lady Gurtner
liked pleasing, and in this instance failed also. Suddenly and
inexplicably, a hostile and uncomfortable atmosphere diffused itself.
Robin got up with a laugh.
“Just before you came in, Lady Gurtner,” he said, “Mr. Jelf was telling
me I didn’t know where Serbia was on the map. It’s quite true: one knows
the sort of place, just as one knows the sort of place where Shropshire
is. I’m sure you don’t know where Shropshire is. Do have some more tea.
Or a cigarette. Smoke as many cigarettes as you like: they’re not mine.
And then you must walk down to the Backs. Have you seen my mother
lately?”
There were plenty of amiable topics spread out here for selection, and
Lady Gurtner, eager to re-establish herself, grabbed at a handful of
them.
“Yes, I saw your beloved mother only three days ago,” she said, “and she
promised to pay me a visit some time during August. You must come, too,
Robin, if you can tear yourself away from this place. Do give me a
cigarette, though I suppose I mayn’t smoke it out of doors. And then I
insist on just going down to the Backs, if they aren’t very far off. And
aren’t we all ignorant about geography? I shall get a map as soon as I
go home, and look out Shropshire and Serbia.”
Robin saw Lady Gurtner off, admired the sables, and returned to his
room, where Jelf was still smoking his own cigarettes. They looked at
each other in silence a moment, and then Jelf said:
“I talked the most awful rot this afternoon. But you know that, don’t
you?”
“Oh, Lord, yes,” said Robin. “Let’s go and see if there’s any more
news.”
* * * * *
There was nothing more of which the tape at the Union had cognizance,
and after dinner Robin and Jim, with their host, started a mild game of
poker. But whether it was that three do not constitute an adequate
assembly for this particular form of hazard to become entertaining, the
game very soon languished, and the three sat unusually silent. Badsley
lay in the window seat with his pipe croaking in the dusk as he drew on
it, Jim got up and wandered aimlessly about the room, and Robin, with
tilted chair, still sat at the table where they had played, building
card-houses that never aspired beyond the second story. Occasionally one
or other dropped a remark that passed almost unheeded. Jim was watching
Robin put on the roof of the first story.
“What’ll war mean?” he said. “A European war, not just a scrimmage in
the Balkans.”
“Don’t know. Damn, you shook the table.”
Robin began his edifice again, and this time spoke himself.
“We must come in, mustn’t we?” he said. “Haven’t we got some sort of
arrangement with France and Russia? We’ve got to keep that.”
Nobody answered, and Badsley knocked out the half-smoked ashes of his
pipe into the window-box.
“Pretty mean trick of Germany, threatening to invade Belgium, when she’s
sworn she wouldn’t,” he said. “Whisky, anybody?”
He went across to his cupboard and poured some out for himself, as he
received no answer. The syphon-handle was stiff, then gave way suddenly,
and a fountain of whisky and soda aspired like a geyser.
“Have some whisky and soda,” said Robin.
“Got some, thanks: chiefly up my sleeve. Hell!” Robin abandoned the
attempt to build, and began flicking counters across the table.
“What was your mother’s friend like?” asked Jim.
“Oh, a sort of bird of paradise in furs. I never liked her much, and
to-day I didn’t like her at all.”
“Why?”
“She swanked about the German Army.”
Badsley had succeeded better with his second attempt to obtain
refreshment.
“Jolly fine woman, I thought,” he said. “I saw her with my little eye in
chapel. After that I didn’t attend any more. Why didn’t you ask me to
tea, Birds?”
“Because I was going to dine with you, and I thought tea as well would
be too much pleasure. I say, I feel rather rotten to-night. Sort of
feeling that one doesn’t know what’s going to happen.”
“You didn’t seem to care two straws this afternoon,” said Jim.
“I know I didn’t. But it’s just beginning to be real. Whisky? Yes, why
not whisky? I say, shan’t we want an army if we go to war? Where’s that
to come from?”
Robin drank his glass at a draught.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” he said. “It’s no use trying to play poker if
you’re thinking about something else. Good-night, Badders; thanks
awfully for dinner.”
Jim, as a matter of course, came out with him and took his arm.
“Stroll down to the bridge first?” he asked.
“Yes; may as well,” said Robin.
The moon with the clippings of three nights off the right side of its
circle had risen and cleared the tree tops, and rode high in a sky
dappled with mackerel-skin patches of cloud, through which its rays
shone with a diffused opalescence. Now and then it streamed down a
channel of clear and starry sky, and the lights and shadows became
sharp-cut, but for the most part those shoals of thin cloud, on which it
cast the faint colours of a pearl’s rainbow, gave to the night an
illumination as of some grey, diminished day.
To-night there was no dew on the grass; over the river, bats, hunting
the nocturnal insects flitted with slate-pencil squeaks, scarcely
audible. A little wind blew downstream from out of the arch of the
bridge, ruffling patches of the water’s surface, and lightning, very
remote, winked on the horizon westwards, but so far away that no sound
of its answering thunder could be heard. In a set of rooms of the
buildings near the river someone was picking out a music-hall tune with
painstaking study and long pauses on a metallic piano, and a boat with
one solitary oarsman in it went by with the sound of dripping oar-blades
and rattle of rowlocks. But for all the normal tranquillity, there was
some hint of menace abroad: the puffs of wind might enlarge into a gale,
the remote storm might move up with fierce, flashing blinks of lightning
and sonorous gongs, and instead of the small squeaking bats, some
prodigy of preying teeth and claws might launch itself on to the night.
They leaned against the stone parapet of the bridge for a minute in
silence. Some indefinable ominousness was certainly abroad. It had come
up as swiftly as a storm that spreads, as by the stroke of a black wing,
over a clear sky.
“I feel as if someone was counting the hours,” said Robin. “There are a
few more left before some clock strikes, and--and a great door opens.
What is it, Jim?”
“I don’t know. But I know what I’m afraid of.”
“What’s that?” asked Robin.
“That when the clock strikes, all the life we’ve yet known will be over.
Cambridge will be over----”
Robin shivered.
“Like going out of a warm-lit house into the night,” said he, “when
you’ve had a jolly evening. Is that it? But why do we both feel like
that? Even if there is a war--is it the thought of that which upsets
us?”
“Yes: it’s not knowing in the slightest what it’s all going to be like.
What’s certain is that things can’t be the same.”
There was a moment’s silence, and again a distant flash, not quite so
remote, leaped in the west.
“Lightning,” said Jim, looking up.
Robin pulled himself together, and looked down.
“Bats,” he said. “Come to bed. Or shall we go back to Badders?”
“No, bed I think. To-morrow’s Monday: I wonder what’ll happen on
Monday.”
* * * * *
There was a small gathering in Mr. Waters’ rooms that night, and as the
two boys passed his lit windows on the ground floor of the Fellows’
Buildings they could see the tall, spare form of Mr. Jackson, evidently
in the rostrum, for his head was judicially tilted, as when he lectured.
He had come down from his house after dinner, under the stress of the
prevalent unrest, to see if there was any fresh news. For himself, he
felt a sturdy optimism that, war or no war, Cambridge would go on much
as usual.
“Upon my word, I don’t see what there is to be disturbed about,” he
said, “and if I had been you, Waters, I think I should have gone to
Baireuth, just the same.”
“I will be happy to present you with my tickets, and you can start
to-morrow,” said Waters, with a shade of acidity. He felt that this
personal inconvenience, owing to the abandonment of his plans, was
likely to remain the bitterest fruit of the European crisis.
“Well, I may be wrong about it,” said Jackson, “but I don’t think that
all this agitation is likely to lead to much. I expect to give my
lectures pretty much as usual in the October term. Someone was saying
to-day that war was practically certain, and that there would be a huge
call for young men to join the army. In my opinion, both propositions
are highly unlikely. As for undergraduates interrupting their residence
here, in order to join up, such a supposition is totally out of the
question.”
Alison had already finished his glass of Alison’s Own, which, as usual,
encouraged him to independence of thought. He was employed on a game of
Patience, since Whist was not considered a Sabbatical diversion in these
decorous circles. But there was nothing inharmonious between Patience
and Sunday.
“I should not be too sure of that,” he said. “A European war might prove
subversive of even such well-established phenomena as lectures on
Thucydides.”
“And I am disposed to add as a scholium to your text the simple word
‘fiddlesticks,’” said Jackson with some severity.
“You are at liberty to add any scholia you choose,” said Alison, putting
a black king on a red queen.
There was a certain acrimonious flavour about this, and Waters
intervened.
“Scholia or no scholia,” he said, “I don’t suppose anyone imagines that
the war will not be over by Christmas.”
“With a rider to the effect that the war will not have begun by
Christmas,” said Jackson. “If anyone cares to know my opinion as to the
date of the outbreak of war between England and Germany, I
unhesitatingly name the Greek Calends.”
“So now we know,” said Alison rebelliously. There was a hitch in his
Patience, and that, combined with the hitch in European harmony,
rendered him a little irritable.
* * * * *
The home to which Lady Gurtner had returned, enveloped in sables and
good humour and joy of life after her tea and her tact with Robin, had
come into her husband’s hands some six years before over a foreclosed
mortgage. It was red-brick, Jacobean in structure, with the mellow seal
of three hundred years imprinted on its walls and gardens. It seemed to
have grown out of the ample and secure soil in serene dignity and
fitness, and it was as hard to imagine that once it rose in layers of
new brick and mortar, as it would be to unthink the great elm avenue
that led up to its plain, comely front, and see again the little
saplings from which those leafy towers had expanded. The same air of
robust and undecayed antiquity pervaded its gardens: the lawns were clad
in the luxuriant velvet that age, instead of thinning, had but thickened
to a closer pile; the decades but strengthened the yew hedges to a
compacter resilience, and the deep, spacious flower-borders, that lay
like some medieval illumination round the black lines of text, glowed
with the mellow traditions of the soil.
Even where Lady Gurtner had planted, the habit of the sweet old garden
mollified the harshness of new designs, and the sunk rose-garden, with
its paths of old paving-stone, might almost have been part of the
original scheme. A lead balustrade (a “literary coping,” as it was aptly
described by Mrs. Pounce) ran along the top of the house: _Nisi Dominus
custodiat domum_ seemed to be the guarantee of its secular stability.
Above all, the exterior of the house and its ancient gardens were
completely and unmistakably English. Statelier châteaux than it might
have grown in France, a more decorative formality might have sprung from
Italian soil, a more bepinnacled _schloss_ have crowned a German hill,
but none of those would have been more instinct with their legitimate
pedigree than this serene and English domain.
* * * * *
Inside, the house had not fared so well: when Sir Hermann exercised his
right to possession, it tottered for repairs, and repairs had been given
it as by the hand of some ruthless surgeon intent on expensive
operations. The mouldering panels of the hall had been stripped away,
and cedar-wood, as smart as Solomon’s temple, had taken their place.
Just as silver was “nothing accounted of” in his days, so here, rich and
rare were the golden emblazonings that ran round cornice and panel and
pilaster. The chimney-piece was of rose-coloured marble, the floor was
of marble also, and looked like a petrified Aubusson carpet with the
Gurtner arms (leaving room for an eventual coronet above them) planted,
florid and dominant, in the centre. Two Italian bridal _cassoni_ served
no longer to contain the embroideries and dresses of the bride, but to
support on their carved lids the hats and coats of visitors. Rafters
painted in the Venetian manner--for this was the Italian hall--supported
the ceiling, and set into the centre was an immense oval of ground
glass, framed in gilt, from behind which, at fall of day, a few million
power electric lights shed a diffused radiance. Besides the fireplace
there were, for purposes of heating, three stacks of water-pipes
resembling sofas set into embrasures in the wall: to Sir Hermann it was
a never-failing source of amusement to get an unwary visitor to sit down
on one of them, and observe his subsequent swift uprising as the unusual
warmth amazed him....
Altogether, the Italian hall looked like a vestibule in a Turkish bath
for millionaires, and for all the splendour of its appurtenances it
suited the old house about as well as if a set of dazzling false teeth,
taken haphazard from the case of an advertising dentist in the street,
had been forced and hammered into its protesting mouth, after the
extraction of the stumps of its panelling and oak-flooring.
The Genoese brocade curtains which separated the outer hall from the
inner hall, out of which opened the dining-room and drawing-rooms, and
from which aspired the new German staircase of iron scroll-work and
marble steps, were of far too magnificent a solidity to belly in
draughts, and the cedar-wood doors that drew out from their
resting-places in the walls were seldom used. One end of this inner hall
was taken up by an immense organ case brought from Nuremberg, the pipes
of which came right up to the ceiling; indeed, some of them had been cut
to admit their insertion. The rash visitor, with knowledge of organs,
might have lamented the loss of tone which this would imply, but he
would speedily be relieved of his melancholy, for Sir Hermann would take
him round the end of the organ, where once a blower supplied it with the
inspiration for its many-throated singing, and show him that the case
alone and the front pipes remained, and that the whole interior of the
organ was but an electric lift, which would save him the necessity of
mounting those slippery German stairs. But as if to perpetuate the
memory of the old “house of sounds,” as if indeed to materialize its
ghost, Aline had hit on a very quaint and pretty notion, and the
mechanism of the lift was so arranged that all the time during which it
was in motion, a colossal musical box, embedded in the perforated roof,
played old German chorales.
Sir Hermann never entered the lift without thinking how _dichterlich_
was this contrivance, and sometimes he was moved to hum an approximate
solo to the tinkling accompaniment of the ceiling of the lift. The walls
of this inner hall were decorated with the heads of stags and bisons and
antelopes, the spoils of some unknown hunter. They had been left in the
house by the former owners, and, in Sir Hermann’s opinion, gave a
sporting touch to the inner hall, a characteristically English note. A
trophy of blunderbusses and other antique fire-arms endorsed this
pleasant impression.
Three velvety drawing-rooms lay _en suite_ down the length of the house.
Here the German taste had been permitted to assert its legitimate claim,
and the general effect was that of saloon carriages, station
waiting-rooms decorated for the arrival of royal visitors, and
wedding-cakes. The dining-room reverted to the ancestral atmosphere
again, for Sir Hermann had collected together half a dozen Romneys and
Reynoldses; and side by side at one end of the room hung portraits of
himself and his wife by Laszlo. The rest of the house consisted mainly
of bedrooms with bathrooms attached.
Aline Gurtner found to her great pleasure when she arrived at Ashmore
that her husband had not yet started for town, but had waited to dine
with her, and drive up afterwards. He and the three children met her
half-way up the avenue, and she got out, and put her lovely new muff, in
the manner of a bearskin, on to Hermann’s head.
“Look, _Kinder_,” she said. “Daddy has become a great Guardsman.”
“O-oh! Daddy’s a soldier,” said Freddy excitedly. “Let’s all march and
kill the French. _Ein, zwei, drei...._”
The Guardsman cast one glance at the chauffeur and footmen, who waited
with perfectly blank, impassive faces. Aline rushed in where Freddy
dared to tread....
“No, darling, Daddy’s an English Guardsman,” she interpolated. “Yes, you
can drive on, Giles. I will walk. Now, darlings, tell me all you have
been doing since Mummie went away.”
“First we had tea,” began Bertie, “and then Freddy was sick----”
“No, I wasn’t,” screamed Freddy. “I was sick first, and had tea
afterwards. Have you had tea, Mummie?”
“Yes, my darling, but I wasn’t sick. What were you sick about?”
“About cherries,” said Freddy promptly. “And then I was quite well again
and had tea. May we play horses? May you or Daddy be my horses?”
She took Hermann’s arm, who began prancing in the most equine manner.
“Yes: here we go. But you mustn’t drive us too fast, _liebster_,
because Mummie has just been shod with high-heeled shoes, and she can’t
run as fast as usual.”
The two other boys insisted on being postillions, and thus loaded, the
steeds soon had enough of their transmigration, and became human again.
“And you enjoyed your afternoon, heart’s dearest?” asked Hermann.
“Very much. I went to chapel, and then had tea with Robin. Those English
boys are such dears; they were so jolly and friendly. And I was very
careful.”
“_Das ist gut._”
He continued to speak in the language in which he thought, when, as so
often, he thought definitely, as he had been taught to do as a child. He
could remember his mother saying to him, “Never be vague when you think,
_mein Hermann_: vague thought makes weak action. Articulate your
thought, as if you were speaking aloud. That makes for thoroughness....”
“But I have no longer any doubt whatever that the situation is beyond
cure, Aline,” he said. “That is why I must certainly be in the City
to-morrow morning. I must make the best of a bad job.”
“But you are going to make a good job out of it, are you not?” she
asked.
“As far as a little money goes, yes,” said he. “If I do not bring you
home half a million pounds, you may smash my silly face for me.”
Freddy followed this.
“Daddy’s going to bring home half a million pounds,” he shrieked.
“Daddy, how much may I have?”
Aline picked him up.
“You may have half a million kisses from Mummie, dearest,” she said.
“Me, too,” cried Bertie.
“Me, too,” cried Jackie.
She bent down and smothered herself in the midst of those soft, warm
faces.
“Darlings, Mummie’s own darlings,” she said. “You are a million times
better than Daddy’s pounds which he is going to bring home. Look, what
is that under the trees there? Why, it’s a pig! It must have got out of
its pig-house. Run across to the farm and tell Whalley that there is a
pig got loose.”
“But it won’t bite us?” asked Bertie.
“Not if you salute it. Call out, ‘_Guten Tag: Morgen ist Mittwoch._’”
“But it’s only Sunday,” said Freddy.
“Never mind. That’s what you must always say to a pig when you meet it,
and then it will be pleased.... Now, run along, and then we’ll all go
home, and you shall have your supper, and when you’re in bed Mummie will
come to see you, and wish you good-night.”
The children ran gaily off across the grass, shouting out their
salutations to the pig, delicious little figures, two in their Sunday
sailor suits, the third barelegged to above the knee, and soon they were
half swallowed up in a tall belt of bracken. Aline’s eyes followed them
till they disappeared, her whole face tender and shining with
mother-love, and then she turned to Hermann again. The light died from
her eyes: they became hard and unhappy again.
“Hermann, what is to happen to us all?” she said. “Already, even before
we are at war, the war has begun in me. You told me I should have to
decide where my sympathies lay, and I have decided. At least, there was
no decision about it. I only knew that I knew.”
“And what do you know?” he asked.
“I will tell you. It happened this afternoon. I was having tea with
Robin, feeling tremendously English, and then some boy who was having
tea with us said something about Germany being crushed between Russia
and France. And I had spoken before I knew I had spoken, and found that
I had said that not all the armies of Europe could stand against
Germany. It--it flared out, like flame when you strike a dull brown head
of a match against a dull brown strip on the side of its box. I couldn’t
bear anyone to talk of Germany like that.”
“But, dearest, you must keep a guard on yourself,” said he. “You are too
impulsive. Remember, you have great English sympathies as well. Your
home is here, your friends are here, you have boys who will go to Eton.”
She began to get voluble and excited, as she always did when anyone
hinted that she was not completely wise and admirable and marvellous.
“I know, and it’s just that which makes it so difficult for me,” she
said, “and you don’t consider for a moment what terrible anguish I shall
suffer. Apart from me and the children, there is no one in the world
that you care for as I care for hundreds of my friends. You don’t love
people as I do, Hermann; but I am too affectionate. Of course it is my
fault, I ought to be colder and less tender-hearted, but I am made like
that. And I love Germany, too, in a way that you have no conception of.
You are taken up with your money-getting, and you don’t care where it
comes from, so long as you know where it goes to. Sometimes I think we
made a mistake: we ought to have gone away when Kuhlmann went. It was my
affection for my home and my friends, which you now throw in my teeth,
that kept me from dreaming of going.”
“I throw nothing in your teeth,” said he. “But I do tell you to keep a
guard on yourself.”
“And that is very unkind of you,” said she, scaling up the heights of
egoism. “You ought to sympathize with me, instead of scolding me. It
makes me miserable to think of what may be coming. I do not know what I
have done that such unhappiness should be sent me. Just when everything
was going so well, and the children were strong and healthy, and I was
making so many friends.”
“Ah, enough, enough,” said he impatiently, “it is just that sort of talk
of the struggle in your tender heart which you must utterly avoid. And
there must be no more matches struck, Aline: there is too much
inflammable material about. There! Do not cry, I beg you. You know very
well I am not unkind.”
They had come into the Italian hall, and her eyes fell on the sables
which reposed on one of the _cassoni_. The effort of realizing that he
was not unkind was much mitigated by the sight....
There followed the hour which, apart from great social triumphs, she
loved almost best in all the day. The three boys had already had their
baths, and clad in their brilliant wool-and-silk pyjamas were careering
about the night-nursery in a wild romp before going to bed. But the
moment she appeared they all ran to her, and Freddy sat on her right
knee, and Bertie on her left, and Jackie squeezed himself somehow in
between. They had, so it was shrilly announced, already said their
prayers to Nanna, so that tiresome business being over, there was
nothing but sheer enjoyment for as long as Mummie would stop. She often
thought what a divine picture could be made of her sitting
half-submerged in this beloved wave of children, but she could not think
of any living artist capable of doing justice to the exquisite theme....
“Well, darlings, what are we going to do to-night?” she said. “Shall I
tell you a story?”
“No!” said Freddy firmly.
“Stories are stupid,” said Bertie. “Let’s sing. We’ll sing ‘_Stille
Nacht_.’”
So all together, Aline Gurtner in her pretty contralto voice, and the
three piping childish trebles sang, “_Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht_,”
while Nanna turned down their beds, and made the night-nursery tidy.
“That was lovely,” said Bertie with complete conviction, at the end.
“Now we’ll have ‘The Watch by the Rhine.’”
“No, darlings, not to-night,” said she. “I must go and dress, because
Daddy and I are dining early, as he’s going to drive up to London
afterwards.”
“To get his half a million pounds?” asked Jackie.
“Some of it, perhaps. Now, then, I shall say, ‘One, two, three,’ and see
who’s in bed first.”
They counted with her, Bertie preferring to do it in German, and a wild
scamper across the nursery followed.
But the concert apparently was not over yet, for as she went downstairs,
she heard, obscuring the chorale that was rising from the lift, which
was on its journey up, a trio rendering of “The Watch by the Rhine,”
with curious intervals, but of unmistakable identity.... She felt that
she must instantly begin to teach them “God Save the King.”
* * * * *
Two days later the English ultimatum was delivered in Berlin, and the
war of the world, the thought of which made Aline Gurtner so depressed,
had begun. The same evening Mr. Waters had occasion to write a note to
Mr. Jackson, and did not forget to date it at the top, “The Greek
Calends.”