A few days after, Dick Danford was at his master’s house; he walked
nimbly through the hall and reached the Roman bath Lionel had now
constructed for his use. He had started the fashion of receiving his
friends at the late hour of the afternoon, five o’clock, in what the
Romans called the Frigidarium. Those who wished to bathe could do so in
the marble swimming-bath cut out in the centre of the hall, others who
only came to converse sat in the recess carved into the surrounding
wall, or stood against the pilasters which divided the recesses. There,
for an hour or two, they discussed past doings, foreshadowed events; wit
was acclaimed, philosophy commended. As Dan entered he viewed a gay
scene: Lionel just stepping out of the bath, meeting his valet, Temple,
ready to friction his body with the strigil—a sort of flesh
brush—others, like George Murray the novelist, and Ronald Sinclair the
art critic, sitting in recesses; whilst many of the Upper Ten and the
artistic world splashed and dived in the piscina.
“Here comes Dan!” proclaimed Lionel. “What news since I last saw you? I
have missed you much these two days; but I daresay your business was
pressing.”
“Hail, Danford! the surest, safest, most comforting of all guides! While
we sip our tea tell us the town news.” This was Tom Hornsby, reclining
in one of the recesses. The splashing ceased, they one after another
grouped themselves—some in the niches, the rest lying down, whilst
Danford, standing against a pilaster, surveyed with intense satisfaction
this picture of _recherché_ cleanliness, and inhaled the fragrance of
exquisite perfumes.
“Plenty of news, gentlemen. First of all, the Bishop of Sunbury—”
“Oh! my old prelate of the Islington Tournament? Excuse me, Dan, for
interrupting you.”
“Yes, my lord, the very same—has decided to preach a sermon at St Paul’s
on the new Society he is organising.”
“What is that, Dick?”
“It is a profound secret, my lord,” answered Dick as he bowed
courteously.
“Well, mind you tell me when it comes off,” said Lionel.
“Still no news of the war, Danford?” broke in Lord Mowbray, the amateur
mimic.
“How can there be when we receive no letters. Perhaps the War Office has
important wires from the seat of war, although it has not communicated
them to the public. But it is strange how little the war has affected
Society; the heavy blows that have fallen on nearly everyone in your
circles have arrived very much softened by distance; and it seems really
as if the whole tragedy were being acted in some other planet. Besides
which, has not college and home life taught well-bred people to bear
with fortitude all mishaps and sorrow? Civilisation is a thick ice which
covers the current rushing beneath it; you must wait for a crack on the
surface, to be able to notice which way runs the stream.”
“I suppose you would consider the London storm a crack on the surface,
would you?” ironically inquired Sinclair, lighting a cigarette.
“By all means, Mr Sinclair, and those who have watched carefully through
the crevice must have seen that, for a long time, we have been going the
contrary way of the tide.”
“I do not know how it is to end—no regiments have been ordered out since
our catastrophe.” This was Lord Mowbray again, who was not fond of
ethics and preferred coming back to facts.
“The passing of regiments through the town would turn out a failure in
our present condition,” retorted Danford. “No windows would be thrown
open, no hearty cheers would rejoice the hearts of departing warriors;
that excitement is over for ever—it was even on the wane before we stood
as we are now. I often wonder why Society did not raise a regiment of
Duchesses and Peeresses? That would have fetched the masses, and perhaps
might have provoked a general surrendering of the enemy to an Amazon
battalion; for certainly the novelty of the enterprise, and the
incontestable beauty of the Peeresses’ physique, would do a great deal
towards enlivening the old rotten game of warfare. But they missed the
opportunity of putting new wine into old bottles, and now it is too
late. After all, patriotism is only a question of coloured bunting: tear
down the flags, and nationality will die a natural death.”
“What a _sans patrie_ you are, Mr Danford,” contemptuously said Lord
Mowbray, whose conception of Fatherland reduced itself to a season in
London, a summer in Switzerland, and a winter on the Riviera.
“Danford is an unconscious prophet,” remarked Lionel, “for it is clear
to whoever observes minutely the evolution of nationalities that we are
all unwittingly working at the creation of a vast humanity. The more man
will know of man—and it is impossible he should do otherwise, when you
consider the map of the world and view the huge cobweb of railways which
unite countries to one another—the more, I repeat, man will know of man,
the fainter will become frontiers which have for so long separated human
beings and turned them into enemies. The first time that men of
different nationalities met and shook hands in a universal Exhibition,
that day a muffled knell was heard in the far distance announcing the
slow agony of nationalities. But it is again a question of the thick ice
over the current. Progress in every branch is the name for which we
labour and suffer; but conquest is the real aim of all our strenuous
efforts. We have too long minimised the power of the current, and one
day, whether we like it or not, we shall have to go where it leads us.”
“You are quite didactic, my dear Lionel,” said Lord Mowbray, who since
the storm looked on his host with suspicion, and on all social guides in
general, and Danford in particular, with contempt. He had absolutely
declined to avail himself of the services of Music Hall artists, relying
on his own powers of observation to guide him through life. He had even
gone so far as to seek an engagement as a guide himself; but Society,
however it may pat on the back every amateur or exponent of mediocrity,
has the wisdom, in emergencies, to draw the line and to appeal to the
professionals who, they well know, do not fail in technique. Lord
Mowbray was therefore unemployed and generally uninformed. Left to his
own conceit and ignorance, he constantly made the most terrible mistakes
in drawing-rooms, and ignored the public guides stationed at different
corners of crowded thoroughfares, who had taken the place of
old-fashioned constables; to these guides Mowbray would never apply,
passing them with haughty disdain. Each day he committed every
conceivable _faux pas_; bowing to his friends’ butlers, passing by
ignominiously his smart friends; in fact; he was the laughing-stock of
Society, although he was blatantly happy and thoroughly unconscious of
his folly.
“What I really came for this afternoon, my lord,” suddenly broke in
Danford, “was to tell you of a very serious reform in our new mode of
life—or, at least, death. There are to be no more funerals!”
“What do you mean?”
“You are joking!”
“No more burials?”
“Are we to be thrown away like dogs and cats?”
“How are you going to hand us over to the other side?”
All these indignant questions fell like a volley on Danford the
imperturbable, who looked at his pupil.
“We again need your support, my lord. This is the point: without plumes,
palls, muffled drums, mutes, how are we to know a Peer’s obsequies from
a pauper’s? The chairman of our Committee put it to me in these words
yesterday: ‘My dear Dan, try and make Society leaders see that complete
privacy in that last and not least important function is of most vital
import, if they wish to keep up a certain prestige.’ I promised to
mention this to you, and I must add that I am struck myself with the
unfitness of a lord of the realm having no better funeral than a
vagabond; it seems to me irrelevant.”
“There is the rub of this new state of ours; it has awakened in us the
sense of the incongruous,” remarked George Murray. “We used not to be so
discriminate, and what struck me most, formerly, was the total lack of
humour in people who passed for witty.”
“I cannot tell you,” warmly proceeded Danford, “how shocked I have been
at fashionable funerals. There was a time when women did not consider it
delicate to attend such functions; it was left to the sterner sex to
accompany a beloved parent, whose female relations remained at home to
mourn over their loss. But women are not any more to be put aside so
easily; they have invaded the smoke-room, banged open the doors of City
offices; it is not likely they would remain long away from graveyard
excitement. The last I was at, a few weeks before the storm, was a
sight, and the pitch of levity to which it rose fairly sickened me. Had
I not pinched myself, and rubbed my eyes, I could have believed myself
at an At Home. The hostess, a widow, was going from one guest to
another, shaking hands with the one, thanking the other for coming; the
bereaved daughters skipped over tombs and newly-digged graves to have a
word with this one and that one. I instinctively looked round, thinking
I might see an improvised buffet in the shade of a mausoleum; I quite
expected to see plates of sandwiches handed round, and to hear the
jingling of spoons and cups and saucers. Upon my soul, I have no doubt
that had not the storm put a stop to Society’s doings, we should have
been treated this season to a churchyard tea and a funeral cake. The
idea seized hold of me then, and a fit of laughter choked me, when I
thought what a good termination to this gruesome farce it would be, were
the lamented defunct, on whom they had dropped a shovelful of cut
flowers, just to stand up and apostrophise them thus: ‘I say, do not
quite forget it is all owing to me that you are having all this fun!’
For I assure you they were entirely oblivious of the poor departed in
the excitement of small-talk. Of course all this is at an end
practically, and funerals have been quite neglected latterly, for this
very good reason that the mourners did not know each other; we are
therefore saved from the sad spectacle of levity and callousness which
were the distinct traits of our past Society.”
“Then what is to be done, Dan?” inquired Lionel.
“Well, there is nothing to be done except to be cremated
unostentatiously. ‘Let the dead bury their dead’; but Society decided
otherwise, for it was the living that despatched the dead, which was a
most unequal job.”
“I wonder what will be the ultimate result of all these reforms?” lazily
said George Murray. “If you reform burials, you must also some day
reform marriage; you will find a great deal of incongruity and of levity
in that ceremony also; then will follow the reform of the relations
between the sexes, between employers and employees, and goodness only
knows what next. You will have your work cut out for you, my poor
Danford; and dear Lionel’s mission will not be a sinecure if he has to
patronise every scheme your Committee brings forward.”
“You have my entire assent to every reform you may suggest to me, Dan,”
concluded Lionel, smiling at his guide, who remarked that he had never
yet seen that smile on his pupil’s lips nor ever remarked that look in
his eyes; he was sure something new had happened to illumine the face of
the Mayfair cynic.
“I am afraid you will come in for a good share in this evolution,
Murray,” and Lionel turned his face towards the novelist. “Fiction as
you conceive it is a thing of the past. Clothes and environment have
clung like a Nessus robe round your feminine heroines and masculine
personages, and given them a rag-shop philosophy. Tear the bandages that
swathed your fictional humanity, and send into the open air your
_dramatis personæ_, to compete, fight and win in the race of life. You
have believed yourself long enough the apostle of subtle psychology and
of morbid physiology; for once be the humble disciple of Dame Nature,
for she is now turning her bull’s-eye lantern right into your face and
making you squint.”
“My lord is right,” crowed the mischievous buffoon. “I feel sure your
publisher will not bring out your next book; sorry for you, old fellow,
but you see there is no money in it any more. I saw Christopher a few
days ago, and he led me to understand that the kind of fiction you
excelled in will not appeal any longer to the general public. One of the
two; either the feminine reader is one who harbours a sickly regret for
her past toggery, or she is a modern woman won over to the cause of true
modesty. In the first case she will throw your book away, for it will
make her feel discontented with her present state; and in the latter
instance she will shut your pages while blushes will cover her lovely
cheeks at the mere thought of anything so indecent as—clothes. But, of
course, I forget that the books published now will necessarily be very
limited, as parchment is the only available material on which written
thought can be printed.”
“And an excellent thing it is. We have written too much—written
ourselves dry; and now has come a breathing-time in which we shall be
able to incubate.” This was Tom Hornsby, who indeed had written himself
to desiccation in the _Weekly Mirror_. “We have game laws, and we know
precious well how to enforce them. Why should we compel our sapless
brains to generate when we know so well their incapacity even to
conceive? Brains are no more inexhaustible than is the cow’s milk;
still, we do not give to the children of our minds the proper breeding
period, and we hail the events of our abortions as if it were the advent
of some divine prophecy.”
“That is about what old Christopher led me to understand,” said Danford.
“But, however well these abortions may have paid formerly, he knows now
that they will not satisfy an Edenic public any longer. Publishers are
first-rate at feeling the public’s pulse.”
“I wonder they were not chosen as social guides instead of Music Hall
artists,” retorted Mowbray, who never failed to have a hit at his
rivals.
“We thought of them, Lord Mowbray, but, after careful consideration, we
judged that publishers having been trained to convert human brains into
ingots of gold, they would hardly be suitable for our social work, which
consists more especially, at present, in developing the extrinsic
knowledge of individuals.”
“It is a pity that nothing has been done towards organising a body of
Parliamentary guides.” Lord Mowbray was again at his pet grievance; he
had never forgiven the Speaker for refusing to accept his services in
the House, and he was convinced that the country’s ruin and
Parliamentary decadence would be the results of their refusal.
“Oh! that has been the worst nut to crack; but we had to give it up,”
and Danford sat down in one of the marble niches ensconced in the wall.
“The House of Commons has its susceptibilities, its vanities, and, above
all, its traditions; and it would not hear any of our suggestions. Just
imagine for one minute, Ministers of State, Party leaders, being
escorted by guides! The idea appeared preposterous to the Honourable
Members, who thought they knew their own business better than any one
else.”
“Certainly, at first, it seems natural to know one’s own party,”
murmured Lionel as in a dream; “but in the long run it becomes more
difficult than one imagines.”
“It must evidently be the case,” said Tom Hornsby in a bitter voice,
“for you see what a hash they made with the Housing question. The House
carried unanimously the Bill which, for a long time, had been obstructed
at its second reading.”
“Very remarkable indeed,” sententiously said Danford. “I was there that
day, and enjoyed the fun gloriously. I watched the House eagerly. The
social and political labels were off, so they all listened unprejudiced
to the orator’s convincing arguments. His reasons were not so much
convincing from his own powers of persuasion, but because the listeners
were off their guard and therefore accessible to rational impressions;
and here we are the richer for one good law, and one that we never could
have hoped for had Society continued to know one another by their
exterior labels.”
“This will inevitably lead to the dissolution of the Upper House,” said
Lionel.
“It remains with you to give the hint of abdication, my lord.” The
little buffoon stood up and faced his pupil, while Temple, the empty cup
in his hand, stood between the two, alternately looking at the one and
the other. The group of men surrounding them were silent; and the sun,
having slowly disappeared behind the trees of Hyde Park, had left the
Frigidarium in a mysterious twilight most appropriate to the ominous
words of Danford. “They will all follow your lordship. The reform must
come from within. The dark days are over when you said to the rushing
wave of the people: ‘Thou shalt go no further.’ They leapt over the
rocks then, and, to prove their power, cut your heads off; which on the
whole was a poor argument of persuasion, even if it was one of force. No
lasting reform can be obtained but from within; and the Upper House has
it in its power to avert the catastrophe of its downfall by taking
voluntarily a leading part in all the reforms of our Society.”
“You mean by taking a backseat,” sniggered Lord Mowbray. The spell was
broken, and the twilight scene of prophecy was transformed into one of
malicious discord. “I cannot see what you want with the co-operation of
publishers, Mr Danford; you are Diogenes and Lycurgus both rolled into
one, and methinks you need no one to assist you in fixing our
destinies.”
“I only give gentle hints concerning your future relations towards each
other, Lord Mowbray; publishers will step in later, to inform you as to
your intrinsic value.” Danford bowed to Lord Mowbray and, turning to
Lionel, said, “Where do you intend going this evening, my lord?”
“After a light collation I am taking Hornsby to the Empire to see
Holophernes; it was one of the great attractions before the storm.”
“Yes, and likely to be the last of that kind; but I shall leave your
lordship to judge for yourself.”
“Ta-ta, Danford—shall see you to-morrow early about the Dining-Halls
scheme.”