Cicely had successfully insisted on having her own way concerning the
projected supper-party; Yeovil had said nothing further in opposition to
it, whatever his feelings on the subject might be. Having gained her
point, however, she was anxious to give her husband the impression of
having been consulted, and to put her victory as far as possible on the
footing of a compromise. It was also rather a relief to be able to
discuss the matter out of range of Joan's disconcerting tongue and
observant eyes.
"I hope you are not really annoyed about this silly supper-party," she
said on the morning before the much-talked-of first night. "I had
pledged myself to give it, so I couldn't back out without seeming mean to
Gorla, and in any case it would have been impolitic to cry off."
"Why impolitic?" asked Yeovil coldly.
"It would give offence in quarters where I don't want to give offence,"
said Cicely.
"In quarters where the fait accompli is an object of solicitude," said
Yeovil.
"Look here," said Cicely in her most disarming manner, "it's just as well
to be perfectly frank about the whole matter. If one wants to live in
the London of the present day one must make up one's mind to accept the
fait accompli with as good a grace as possible. I do want to live in
London, and I don't want to change my way of living and start under
different conditions in some other place. I can't face the prospect of
tearing up my life by the roots; I feel certain that I shouldn't bear
transplanting. I can't imagine myself recreating my circle of interests
in some foreign town or colonial centre or even in a country town in
England. India I couldn't stand. London is not merely a home to me, it
is a world, and it happens to be just the world that suits me and that I
am suited to. The German occupation, or whatever one likes to call it,
is a calamity, but it's not like a molten deluge from Vesuvius that need
send us all scuttling away from another Pompeii. Of course," she added,
"there are things that jar horribly on one, even when one has got more or
less accustomed to them, but one must just learn to be philosophical and
bear them."
"Supposing they are not bearable?" said Yeovil; "during the few days that
I've been in the land I've seen things that I cannot imagine will ever be
bearable."
"That is because they're new to you," said Cicely.
"I don't wish that they should ever come to seem bearable," retorted
Yeovil. "I've been bred and reared as a unit of a ruling race; I don't
want to find myself settling down resignedly as a member of an enslaved
one."
"There's no need to make things out worse than they are," protested
Cicely. "We've had a military disaster on a big scale, and there's been
a great political dislocation in consequence. But there's no reason why
everything shouldn't right itself in time, as it has done after other
similar disasters in the history of nations. We are not scattered to the
winds or wiped off the face of the earth, we are still an important
racial unit."
"A racial unit in a foreign Empire," commented Yeovil.
"We may arrive at the position of being the dominant factor in that
Empire," said Cicely, "impressing our national characteristics on it, and
perhaps dictating its dynastic future and the whole trend of its policy.
Such things have happened in history. Or we may become strong enough to
throw off the foreign connection at a moment when it can be done
effectually and advantageously. But meanwhile it is necessary to
preserve our industrial life and our social life, and for that reason we
must accommodate ourselves to present circumstances, however distasteful
they may be. Emigration to some colonial wilderness, or holding
ourselves rigidly aloof from the life of the capital, won't help matters.
Really, Murrey, if you will think things over a bit, you will see that
the course I am following is the one dictated by sane patriotism."
"Whom the gods wish to render harmless they first afflict with sanity,"
said Yeovil bitterly. "You may be content to wait for a hundred years or
so, for this national revival to creep and crawl us back into a semblance
of independence and world-importance. I'm afraid I haven't the patience
or the philosophy to sit down comfortably and wait for a change of
fortune that won't come in my time--if it comes at all."
Cicely changed the drift of the conversation; she had only introduced the
argument for the purpose of defining her point of view and accustoming
Yeovil to it, as one leads a nervous horse up to an unfamiliar barrier
that he is required eventually to jump.
"In any case," she said, "from the immediately practical standpoint
England is the best place for you till you have shaken off all traces of
that fever. Pass the time away somehow till the hunting begins, and then
go down to the East Wessex country; they are looking out for a new master
after this season, and if you were strong enough you might take it on for
a while. You could go to Norway for fishing in the summer and hunt the
East Wessex in the winter. I'll come down and do a bit of hunting too,
and we'll have house-parties, and get a little golf in between whiles. It
will be like old times."
Yeovil looked at his wife and laughed.
"Who was that old fellow who used to hunt his hounds regularly through
the fiercest times of the great Civil War? There is a picture of him, by
Caton Woodville, I think, leading his pack between King Charles's army
and the Parliament forces just as some battle was going to begin. I have
often thought that the King must have disliked him rather more than he
disliked the men who were in arms against him; they at least cared, one
way or the other. I fancy that old chap would have a great many
imitators nowadays, though, when it came to be a question of sport
against soldiering. I don't know whether anyone has said it, but one
might almost assert that the German victory was won on the golf-links of
Britain."
"I don't see why you should saddle one particular form of sport with a
special responsibility," protested Cicely.
"Of course not," said Yeovil, "except that it absorbed perhaps more of
the energy and attention of the leisured class than other sports did, and
in this country the leisured class was the only bulwark we had against
official indifference. The working classes had a big share of the
apathy, and, indirectly, a greater share of the responsibility, because
the voting power was in their hands. They had not the leisure, however,
to sit down and think clearly what the danger was; their own industrial
warfare was more real to them than anything that was threatening from the
nation that they only knew from samples of German clerks and German
waiters."
"In any case," said Cicely, "as regards the hunting, there is no Civil
War or national war raging just now, and there is no immediate likelihood
of one. A good many hunting seasons will have to come and go before we
can think of a war of independence as even a distant possibility, and in
the meantime hunting and horse-breeding and country sports generally are
the things most likely to keep Englishmen together on the land. That is
why so many men who hate the German occupation are trying to keep field
sports alive, and in the right hands. However, I won't go on arguing.
You and I always think things out for ourselves and decide for ourselves,
which is much the best way in the long run."
Cicely slipped away to her writing-room to make final arrangements over
the telephone for the all-important supper-party, leaving Yeovil to turn
over in his mind the suggestion that she had thrown out. It was an
obvious lure, a lure to draw him away from the fret and fury that
possessed him so inconveniently, but its obvious nature did not detract
from its effectiveness. Yeovil had pleasant recollections of the East
Wessex, a cheery little hunt that afforded good sport in an unpretentious
manner, a joyous thread of life running through a rather sleepy
countryside, like a merry brook careering through a placid valley. For a
man coming slowly and yet eagerly back to the activities of life from the
weariness of a long fever, the prospect of a leisurely season with the
East Wessex was singularly attractive, and side by side with its
attractiveness there was a tempting argument in favour of yielding to its
attractions. Among the small squires and yeoman farmers, doctors,
country tradesmen, auctioneers and so forth who would gather at the
covert-side and at the hunt breakfasts, there might be a local nucleus of
revolt against the enslavement of the land, a discouraged and leaderless
band waiting for some one to mould their resistance into effective shape
and keep their loyalty to the old dynasty and the old national cause
steadily burning. Yeovil could see himself taking up that position,
stimulating the spirit of hostility to the fait accompli, organising
stubborn opposition to every Germanising influence that was brought into
play, schooling the youth of the countryside to look steadily Delhiward.
That was the bait that Yeovil threw out to his conscience, while slowly
considering the other bait that was appealing so strongly to his senses.
The dry warm scent of the stable, the nip of the morning air, the
pleasant squelch-squelch of the saddle leather, the moist earthy
fragrance of the autumn woods and wet fallows, the cold white mists of
winter days, the whimper of hounds and the hot restless pushing of the
pack through ditch and hedgerow and undergrowth, the birds that flew up
and clucked and chattered as you passed, the hearty greeting and pleasant
gossip in farmhouse kitchens and market-day bar-parlours--all these
remembered delights of the chase marshalled themselves in the brain, and
made a cumulative appeal that came with special intensity to a man who
was a little tired of his wanderings, more than a little drawn away from
the jarring centres of life. The hot London sunshine baking the soot-
grimed walls and the ugly incessant hoot and grunt of the motor traffic
gave an added charm to the vision of hill and hollow and copse that
flickered in Yeovil's mind. Slowly, with a sensuous lingering over
detail, his imagination carried him down to a small, sleepy, yet withal
pleasantly bustling market town, and placed him unerringly in a wide
straw-littered yard, half-full of men and quarter-full of horses, with a
bob-tailed sheep-dog or two trying not to get in everybody's way, but
insisting on being in the thick of things. The horses gradually detached
themselves from the crowd of unimportant men and came one by one into
momentary prominence, to be discussed and appraised for their good points
and bad points, and finally to be bid for. And always there was one
horse that detached itself conspicuously from the rest, the ideal hunter,
or at any rate, Yeovil's ideal of the ideal hunter. Mentally it was put
through its paces before him, its pedigree and brief history recounted to
him; mentally he saw a stable lad put it over a jump or two, with credit
to all concerned, and inevitably he saw himself outbidding less
discerning rivals and securing the desired piece of horseflesh, to be the
chief glory and mainstay of his hunting stable, to carry him well and
truly and cleverly through many a joyous long-to-be-remembered run. That
scene had been one of the recurring half-waking dreams of his long days
of weakness in the far-away Finnish nursing-home, a dream sometimes of
tantalising mockery, sometimes of pleasure in the foretaste of a joy to
come. And now it need scarcely be a dream any longer, he had only to go
down at the right moment and take an actual part in his oft-rehearsed
vision. Everything would be there, exactly as his imagination had placed
it, even down to the bob-tailed sheep-dogs; the horse of his imagining
would be there waiting for him, or if not absolutely the ideal animal,
something very like it. He might even go beyond the limits of his dream
and pick up a couple of desirable animals--there would probably be fewer
purchasers for good class hunters in these days than of yore. And with
the coming of this reflection his dream faded suddenly and his mind came
back with a throb of pain to the things he had for the moment forgotten,
the weary, hateful things that were symbolised for him by the standard
that floated yellow and black over the frontage of Buckingham Palace.
Yeovil wandered down to his snuggery, a mood of listless dejection
possessing him. He fidgetted aimlessly with one or two books and papers,
filled a pipe, and half filled a waste-paper basket with torn circulars
and accumulated writing-table litter. Then he lit the pipe and settled
down in his most comfortable armchair with an old note-book in his hand.
It was a sort of disjointed diary, running fitfully through the winter
months of some past years, and recording noteworthy days with the East
Wessex.
And over the telephone Cicely talked and arranged and consulted with men
and women to whom the joys of a good gallop or the love of a stricken
fatherland were as letters in an unknown alphabet.