Julian, absorbed for the first few minutes of dinner by the
crystallisation of this new idea which had now taken a definite place
in his brain, found his conversational powers somewhat at a discount.
Catherine very soon, however, asserted her claim upon his attention.
“Please do your duty and tell me about things,” she begged. “Remember
that I am Cinderella from Bohemia, and I scarcely know a soul here.”
“Well, there aren’t many to find out about, are there?” he replied. “Of
course you know Stenson?”
“I have been gazing at him with dilated eyes,” she confided. “Is that
not the proper thing to do? He seems to me very ordinary and very
hungry.”
“Well, then, there is the Bishop.”
“I knew him at once from his photographs. He must spend the whole of the
time when he isn’t in church visiting the photographer. However, I like
him. He is talking to my aunt quite amiably. Nothing does aunt so much
good as to sit next a bishop.”
“The Shervintons you know all about, don’t you?” he went on. “The
soldiers are just young men from the Norwich barracks, Doctor Lennard
was my father’s tutor at Oxford, and Mr. Hannaway Wells is our latest
Cabinet Minister.”
“He still has the novice’s smirk,” she remarked. “A moment ago I heard
him tell his neighbour that he preferred not to discuss the war. He
probably thinks that there is a spy under the table.”
“Well, there we are--such as we are,” Julian concluded. “There is no one
left except me.”
“Then tell me all about yourself,” she suggested. “Really, when I come
to think of it, considering the length of our conversations, you have
been remarkably reticent. You are the youngest of the family, are you
not? How many brothers are there?”
“There were four,” he told her. “Henry was killed at Ypres last year.
Guy is out there still. Richard is a Brigadier.”
“And you?”
“I am a barrister by profession, but I went out with the first Inns of
Court lot for a little amateur soldiering and lost part of my foot at
Mons. Since then I have been indulging in the unremunerative and highly
monotonous occupation of censoring.”
“Monotonous indeed, I should imagine,” she agreed. “You spend your time
reading other people’s letters, do you not, just to be sure that there
are no communications from the enemy?”
“Precisely,” he assented. “We discover ciphers and all sorts of things.”
“What brainy people you must be!”
“We are, most of us.”
“Do you do anything else?”
“Well, I’ve given up censoring for the present,” he confided. “I am
going back to my profession.”
“As a barrister?”
“Just so. I might add that I do a little hack journalism.”
“How modest!” she murmured. “I suppose you write the leading articles
for the Times!”
“For a very young lady,” Julian observed impressively, “you have
marvellous insight. How did you guess my secret?”
“I am better at guessing secrets than you are,” she retorted a little
insolently.
He was silent for some moments. The faint curve of her lips had again
given him almost a shock.
“Have you a brother?” he asked abruptly.
“No. Why?”
“Because I met some one quite lately--within the last few hours, as a
matter of fact--with a mouth exactly like yours.”
“But what a horrible thing!” she exclaimed, drawing out a little mirror
from the bag by her side and gazing into it. “How unpleasant to have any
one else going about with a mouth exactly like one’s own! No, I never
had a brother, Mr. Orden, or a sister, and, as you may have heard, I am
an enfant mechante. I live in London, I model very well, and I talk
very bad sociology. As I think I told you, I know your anarchist friend,
Miles Furley.”
“I shouldn’t call Furley an anarchist,” protested Julian.
“Well, he is a Socialist. I admit that we are rather lax in our
definitions. You see, there is just one subject, of late years, which
has brought together the Socialists and the Labour men, the Syndicalists
and the Communists, the Nationalists and the Internationalists. All
those who work for freedom are learning breadth. If they ever find a
leader, I think that this dear, smug country of yours may have to face
the greatest surprise of its existence.”
Julian looked at her curiously.
“You have ideas, Miss Abbeway.”
“So unusual in a woman!” she mocked. “Do you notice how every one is
trying to avoid the subject of the war? I give them another half-course,
don’t you? I am sure they cannot keep it up.”
“They won’t go the distance,” Julian whispered. “Listen.”
“The question to be considered,” Lord Shervinton pronounced, “is not so
much when the war will be over as what there is to stop it? That is
a point which I think we can discuss without inviting official
indiscretions.”
“If other means fail,” declared the Bishop, “Christianity will stop it.
The conscience of the world is already being stirred.”
“Our enemies,” the Earl pronounced confidently from his place at the
head of the table, “are already a broken race. They are on the point
of exhaustion. Austria is, if possible, in a worse plight. That is what
will end the war--the exhaustion of our opponents.”
“The deciding factor,” Mr. Hannaway Wells put in, with a very
non-committal air, “will probably be America. She will bring her full
strength into the struggle just at the crucial moment. She will probably
do what we farther north have as yet failed to do: she will pierce the
line and place the German armies in Flanders in peril.”
The Cabinet Minister’s views were popular. There was a little murmur of
approval, something which sounded almost like a purr of content. It
was just one more expression of that strangely discreditable yet almost
universal failing,--the over-reliance upon others. The quiet remark of
the man who suddenly saw fit to join in the discussion struck a chilling
and a disturbing note.
“There is one thing which could end the war at any moment,” Mr. Stenson
said, leaning a little forward, “and that is the will of the people.”
There was perplexity as well as discomfiture in the minds of his
hearers.
“The people?” Lord Shervinton repeated. “But surely the people speak
through the mouths of their rulers?”
“They have been content to, up to the present,” the Prime Minister
agreed, “but Europe may still see strange and dramatic events before
many years are out.”
“Do go on, please,” the Countess begged.
Mr. Stenson shook his head.
“Even as a private individual I have said more than I intended,” he
replied. “I have only one thing to say about the war in public, and that
is that we are winning, that we must win, that our national existence
depends upon winning, and that we shall go on until we do win. The
obstacles between us and victory, which may remain in our minds, are not
to be spoken of.”
There was a brief and somewhat uncomfortable pause. It was understood
that the subject was to be abandoned. Julian addressed a question to the
Bishop across the table. Lord Maltenby consulted Doctor Lennard as
to the date of the first Punic War. Mr. Stenson admired the flowers.
Catherine, who had been sitting with her eyes riveted upon the Prime
Minister, turned to her neighbour.
“Tell me about your amateur journalism, Mr. Orden?” she begged. “I have
an idea that it ought to be interesting.”
“Deadly dull, I can assure you.”
“You write about politics? Or perhaps you are an art critic? I ought to
be on my best behaviour, in case.”
“I know little about art,” he assured her. “My chief interest in
life--outside my profession, of course--lies in sociology.”
His little confession had been impulsive. She raised her eyebrows.
“You are in earnest, I believe!” she exclaimed. “Have I really found an
Englishman who is in earnest?”
“I plead guilty. It is incorrect philosophy but a distinct stimulus to
life.”
“What a pity,” she sighed, “that you are so handicapped by birth!
Sociology cannot mean anything very serious for you. Your perspective is
naturally distorted.”
“What about yourself?” he asked pertinently.
“The vanity of us women!” she murmured. “I have grown to look upon
myself as being an exception. I forget that there might be others. You
might even be one of our prophets--a Paul Fiske in disguise.”
His eyes narrowed a little as he looked at her closely. From across the
table, the Bishop broke off an interesting discussion on the subject
of his addresses to the working classes, and the Earl set down his
wineglass with an impatient gesture.
“Does no one really know,” Mr. Stenson asked, “who Paul Fiske is?”
“No one, sir,” Mr. Hannaway Wells replied. “I thought it wise, a short
time ago, to set on foot the most searching enquiries, but they were
absolutely fruitless.”
The Bishop coughed.
“I must plead guilty,” he confessed, “to having visited the offices of
The Monthly Review with the same object. I left a note for him there,
in charge of the editor, inviting him to a conference at my house. I
received no reply. His anonymity seems to be impregnable.”
“Whoever he may be,” the Earl declared, “he ought to be muzzled. He is a
traitor to his country.”
“I cannot agree with you, Lord Maltenby,” the Bishop said firmly. “The
very danger of the man’s doctrines lies in their clarity of thought,
their extraordinary proximity to the fundamental truths of life.”
“The man is, at any rate,” Doctor Lennard interposed, “the most
brilliant anonymous writer since the days of Swift and the letters of
Junius.”
Mr. Stenson for a moment hesitated. He seemed uncertain whether or no to
join in the conversation. Finally, impulse swayed him.
“Let us all be thankful,” he said, “that Paul Fiske is content with the
written word. If the democracy of England found themselves to-day with
such a leader, it is he who would be ruling the country, and not I.”
“The man is a pacifist!” the Earl protested.
“So we all are,” the Bishop declared warmly. “We are all pacifists in
the sense that we are lovers of peace. There is not one of us who does
not deplore the horrors of to-day. There is not one of us who is not
passionately seeking for the master mind which can lead us out of it.”
“There is only one way out,” the Earl insisted, “and that is to beat the
enemy.”
“It is the only obvious way,” Julian intervened, joining in the
conversation for the first time, “but meanwhile, with every tick of the
clock a fellow creature dies.”
“It is a question,” Mr. Hannaway Wells reflected, “whether the present
generation is not inclined to be mawkish with regard to human life.
History has shown us the marvellous benefits which have accrued to
the greatest nations through the lessening of population by means of
warfare.”
“History has also shown us,” Doctor Lennard observed, “that the last
resource of force is force. No brain has ever yet devised a logical
scheme for international arbitration.”
“Human nature, I am afraid, has changed extraordinarily little since the
days of the Philistines,” the Bishop confessed.
Julian turned to his companion.
“Well, they’ve all settled it amongst themselves, haven’t they?” he
murmured. “Here you may sit and listen to what may be called the modern
voice.”
“Yet there is one thing wanting,” she whispered. “What do you suppose,
if he were here at this moment, Paul Fiske would say? Do you think that
he would be content to listen to these brazen voices and accept their
verdict?”
“Without irreverence,” Julian answered, “or comparison, would Jesus
Christ?”
“With the same proviso,” she retorted, “I might reply that Jesus Christ,
from all we know of him, might reign wonderfully in the Kingdom of
Heaven, but he certainly wouldn’t be able to keep together a Cabinet in
Downing Street! Still, I am beginning to believe in your sincerity. Do
you think that Paul Fiske is sincere?”
“I believe,” Julian replied, “that he sees the truth and struggles to
express it.”
The women were leaving the table. She leaned towards him.
“Please do not be long,” she whispered. “You must admit that I have been
an admirable dinner companion. I have talked to you all the time on your
own subject. You must come and talk to me presently about art.”
Julian, with his hand on the back of his chair, watched the women pass
out of the soft halo of the electric lights into the gloomier shadows
of the high, vaulted room, Catherine a little slimmer than most of the
others, and with a strange grace of slow movement which must have come
to her from some Russian ancestor. Her last words lingered in his mind.
He was to talk to her about art! A fleeting vision of the youth in the
yellow oilskins mocked him. He remembered his morning’s tramp and the
broken-down motor-car under the trees. The significance of these things
was beginning to take shape in his mind. He resumed his seat, a little
dazed.