himself,” comes down with a crash from ten thousand pounds a-year to
about five hundred, it seems to him at first as though Life (with a
capital L) were finished. Later on, the adaptability of the human animal
begins to assert itself; a new standard of values replaces the old one;
and the _man_—as apart from his chattels—emerges. Bruised, broken or
strengthened according to his nature.
Peter’s cousin, Francis Gordon, had come down with just such a crash:
but in Francis’ case the human animal had more than altered conditions
to which it needed adapt itself. For Francis Gordon at the very moment
when Life (with a capital L) had looked its blackest, met a girl, _the_
girl, the ideal to whom his soul had been, was, and would always be,
faithful.
He looked up now—from the papers on the table where he sat working—at
her photograph, the only one in the room.
Beatrice Cochrane! A very ordinary, very human, very idealistic American
girl. The sort of girl a man may meet in her hundreds from Los Angeles
to Atlantic City; from New Orleans to Flushing, Long Island; from
Dubuque, Iowa to Dallas, Texas. A girl still in her ’teens;
slender-handed; with pale-gold hair and pale-gray thoughtful eyes.
A very ordinary American girl, of the old Anglo-Saxon stock—but
tempered and refined by struggle: child of very ordinary American
parents, educated rather to beauty of thought than to “beauty roses.”
But, in the mind of Francis Gordon, she stood for all the flowers; for
poetry and romance, for self-sacrifice and achievement, for every decent
impulse which had helped him through the black hours of crisis.
He had not married her, not even asked her to marry him. He had not—in
that brief fortnight of a shipboard friendship—deemed himself worthy.
It had seemed to him as though God—a visible speaking God—forbade
their union; commanding His creature, Francis Gordon, abandon that
dream; take up, in its stead, the burden of vocation, the Work of
writing for which He had endowed him with a tiny spark of His own
genius.
And so Francis—who imagined himself to have seen, for a moment, behind
that Veil of God which does not lift until the time appointed—returned
to London; sold his house in Curzon Street, his cars and his pictures,
his gold plate and his Aubusson carpets; and retired, taking with him
only Prout, his old manservant, to this high apartment at the top of the
eighteenth-century Georgian building in Mecklenburgh Square.
All “literary” London knew _a_ Francis Gordon, a versifier whose
technique they admired, whose pose they applauded. But _the_ Francis,
they did not know. Nor, had they known him, would they have, at that
time, admired.
For _the_ Francis—the man who, for all his fine aspirations, was still
utterly incapable of formulating clean thought into simple words—had
conceived another dream. And this was the shape of it.
He had learned from Beatrice, and from her parents, something—though
very little—of the real America. He had taught her something—though
very little—of the real England. He realized, as few Englishmen of his
time, how the two nations had drifted apart; misunderstood one another.
And it seemed to him, in his presumption, that a few words, a trumpery
poem, could set this misunderstanding right.
Of course—(he was too much in love with the phantom of Beatrice for any
except a prejudiced judgment)—he blamed his own countrymen exclusively.
Equally of course, the great poem of his projecting, became—the moment
pen touched paper—an artificial web of phrases through which the man’s
real belief in a Spiritual Federation of the English-speaking Peoples
oozed to nothingness. Still, it says something for the influence of a
girl who only wrote in calm friendship, confident of his ultimate
success as a writer, but by no manner of means—consciously at any
rate—in love with him, that Francis Gordon should have held to this
belief, unflinchingly, through all those weary months when other
Englishmen—better informed on material points though utterly ignorant
of the spiritual reluctance to realize that a world-crime was being
committed (which reluctance alone kept America so long out of the
War)—were saying to themselves, “Can’t they see things? Won’t they see
things? Must we fight this greatest of all battles without them?”
* * * * *
“Mr. and Mrs. Jameson, Sir,” announced the elderly manservant.
§ 3
Nothing in the outward appearance of the Francis Gordon who rose at the
entrance of his cousin’s wife, suggested the conventional (or
unconventional) poet. Short dark hair parted at the side, clipped
moustache, well-cared-for hands, creaseless gold-pinned soft collar,
well-tailored blue suit—all proclaimed the ordinary idle young man of
the period. And as such, to tell the truth, his cousin Peter—to whom,
except for a certain lack of dourness about the expression, he bore an
amazing resemblance—regarded him.
His surroundings, too, helped this illusion of the idle commonplace. The
room was large, white-walled and green-carpeted; crowded mahogany
book-shelves completely lined one wall; a spacious
writing-table—scrupulously tidy—set square in the centre of two big
windows—the other. Chippendale chairs, a tea-table already laid, and a
revolving bookcase filled with foreign dictionaries, Roget’s Thesaurus,
and other reference-works, completed the furniture. Two mahogany
doors—one, through which Patricia and Peter had just entered, leading
to the narrow hall—the other to the bedroom and bathroom—glowed darkly
against the rough white of the wall-paper.
“This doesn’t look much like poverty,” commented Peter. (Francis had
only just taken the flat. This was their first visit to him.)
“I don’t think you’d make much of a welfare inspector, old man,” replied
Francis. “Fourth floor. No lift. No telephone. Geyser-bath.
Shilling-in-the-slot electric-light meter. A complacent landlord. And
the relics of the Curzon Street furniture. Guess again about my
poverty.”
“_And_ a manservant,” commented Patricia, taking off hat and gloves,
sitting down—as by right—at the tea-table.
“Oh, Prout! Prout would _pay_ to stay on, I believe. Francis Gordon and
his faithful valet; or the loyalty of an old retainer. . . .”
But Patricia knew that the supercilious remark hid real affection for
that “old bounder Prout.” She had seen a good deal of Francis since his
return to England; revised many of her early unfavourable opinions about
him. The good-will was mutual: though Francis, who still thought “Pat.”
rather a commonplace young woman, would have been more than surprised to
know how near she had come to divining the change in his mentality—and
the real reason for that change.
“Who’s this?” commented Peter, his inspection of the new quarters having
brought him to Beatrice’s photograph.
“Friend of mine,” said Francis curtly. “Don’t touch those papers.”
“I won’t touch your precious papers.”
At which little passage of arms, Patricia’s last doubts settled into a
comfortable certainty.
Prout, bringing tea, restored harmony. They sat long over it, smoking
and talking—mostly, as is the habit of near relations, about
themselves.
“By Jove,” said Peter—interrupting himself in the middle of a long
monologue about advertising—“I almost forgot. We’ve taken a house at
Wargrave for a month. Lodden Lodge. It’s rather a decent place. Tennis
lawn; river-frontage; bath, h. and c.; usual domestic offices; et cetera
et cetera. You are expected to stay with us.”
“_Hukkum hai?_ (Is it an order?),” asked Francis.
“Oh, we all know you spent three months in India,” chaffed Peter.
“Question is: are you coming?”
“Of course I’m coming,” said Francis, “and so is Prout—if Patricia
doesn’t object.”
§ 4
“Some car!” thought Peter as he stepped into the front seat; slammed the
door home; said “You take her for a bit, Murray,” to the uniformed
chauffeur; and acknowledged “Pretty” Bramson’s rather overdone salute
with a wave of his hand. They purred out from the factory-gates into
Brixton Road; swung first right, then left; headed for Hounslow.
Certainly, “some car”—a long, low stream-lined cabriolet, royal-blue in
colour, the Crossley cross on her radiator. Peter had discovered her
through the advertisement columns of the _Morning Post_; clinched the
deal a week before. But his thought did not centre long on the new
purchase.
It was the Thursday before August Bank Holiday 1914. To get away so
early, had meant cramming the week’s work into three and a half days.
Still, he could afford to take a rest _now_. For a few minutes, he
allowed himself the rare luxury of a dream. Nirvana had arrived! July
sales proved it. Nothing could stop their automatic increase. Already,
the capital he had sunk was in sight again. Then—what a business he
would make it! All over the world, too. . . . India, China, New Zealand,
South Africa. He must have his own factory in the States, in Canada;
defeat their confounded protective tariffs. . . .
“Will you take her now, sir?” asked Murray, as they wriggled out through
Hounslow High Street.
“Not for another mile or so.”
Peter’s mind came back to details; wandered off them again. Nothing
could stop that automatic increase. Nothing. The political situation?
Blow the political situation! Nobody with any sense cared for political
situations. Except retail tobacconists, to whom they furnished a good
excuse for curtailing orders.
“I’ll take her now, Murray.”
The chauffeur slowed down sufficiently to allow a change of places.
Peter took the wheel; opened the throttle; slammed her into “top”; and
whisked off down the Bath Road.
For the first time in six years, our Mr. Jameson felt a little above
himself!
§ 5
Lodden Lodge, Wargrave, is a square, comfortable, late Victorian house,
ivy-covered, backing on a quiet side-road and fronting the Thames
mainstream with sloping close-clipped lawns.
Peter arrived towards tea-time; found his wife and Francis
(over-immaculate in creased white trousers and buckskin shoes), just
sitting down to the silver-laid sun-dappled table under the
willow-trees.
“Where’s your brother, Jack?” asked Peter.
“He’s not coming after all,” said Patricia. “I had a wire this morning.
Manœuvres, I expect.”
“Don’t you believe it, Pat,” put in Francis. “He’s off to fight the good
fight in Ulster. What a lark! Fancy Teddy Carson, mounted on a ‘sable
destrier,’ charging the guns.”
“Idiot!” commented Peter; and added, “Confound the fellow. That spoils
our four for tennis.”
“We shall be all right for tennis.” Patricia filled the cups; passed
them. “Violet and her husband have invited themselves for the week-end.”
“Oh Lord,” began Peter; but—catching his wife’s eye—desisted. After
all, Rawlings didn’t play such a bad game of tennis; and Violet’s
bridge, though not pleasant, was perfect. Tea over, Peter changed into
flannels; came down to find Evelyn and Primula, barelegged,
muslin-frocked and sun-bonneted, waiting for him.
“We want to go on the river,” they chorused, “we want to go on the
river.”
“It’s too late for the river,” said Patricia.
“It isn’t too late. It isn’t too late. Is it Daddy? . . .”
“They do like him, don’t they?” Francis said to their mother. Peter,
over-ruling her objections, had picked up the two laughing bundles;
packed them into the cushioned punt; and was now poling slowly out into
main stream.
“Why shouldn’t they?” laughed Patricia. But, all the same, she felt a
little twinge of jealousy. The children meant so much to her, so little
to Peter. Yet, at a lift of the finger, they would desert her for
him. . . . Perhaps it was because that finger so seldom lifted. . . . If
only one of them had been a boy!
She watched her husband’s strong figure, black now against the glow of
the water, bending to the pole as he met the current. The punt glided
under the railway bridge, out of sight.
“Of course they ought to have been boys.” Francis Gordon’s voice
interrupted her reverie. He seemed—as often when they were quite
alone,—to have dropped the mask of superciliousness. She looked at him;
wondered how much he realized. A disturbing person, this new cousin of
hers. Almost uncanny at times, this way in which his mind seemed to
penetrate her thoughts. . . . And again that night, at table in the long
low dining-room, she speculated about this man.
He sat, facing the sunset, immaculate as ever but unusually silent.
Every now and then, it seemed to her as though his eyes saw—beyond the
rose glow of the horizon—into vision-land. “He’s thinking about that
girl,” she reasoned, “the girl whose photograph we saw at the flat.” And
then, remembering the eyes of a man she had once seen at a revivalist
meeting, she began to doubt her theory of a love-affair.
Sunset darkled to twilight, twilight to blackness, as they finished
dinner.
Patricia, pleading tiredness, went upstairs early; heard, as she
undressed in the cool fragrance of the river-night, the sound of
canvas-chairs, dragging first across the gravel, then over grass; saw
the points of two cigars burning redly under the willow-trees.
“Beckmann, _Coronas_,” announced Peter. “Good, aren’t they?”
“Very,” admitted Francis.
For nearly ten minutes, neither spoke. It was a night for confidences.
Silent save for the river-chuckle; star-dusted; _peaceful_. But the two
Englishmen smoked on; reticent, each busy with his own dreaming: the one
seeing a great business, world-wide, endless in opportunity: the other,
vignetted in silver radiance against the sable background of his
thought, the features of a girl—of a girl five thousand miles removed
from England—a girl for whose sake and without hope of reward he had
vowed himself to the dissatisfying god of Work.
“Why don’t you get married again?” asked Peter suddenly.
“Only because I can’t afford it,” lied Francis Gordon.
§ 6
Violet Rawlings, sprightly as ever, even more fluffily dressed than
usual; and her husband Hubert, determined that ninety-six hours of
personal suggestion should at last secure him some part of the Nirvana
advertising account, arrived in time for lunch next day. The foxy-faced
publicity agent lost no time in opening his campaign.
“We went to the Palace last night,” he began, almost before they had sat
down to their meal. “On our way home I noticed that your new sign in
Piccadilly wasn’t burning properly.”
“Really,” said Peter stiffly.
“Lobster mayonnaise, or some of these cold eggs?” asked Patricia, hoping
to turn their conversation.
But her brother-in-law took no notice. “I’m somewhat of an expert on
signs,” he continued. “And, frankly, I don’t think they have much
selling value on a high-grade article like yours. _I_ pin my faith to
full pages in the six-penny weeklies. And of course, _Punch_. Although
_Punch_ is a humorous paper. . . .”
“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Francis.
“I said—although _Punch_ is a humorous paper.”
Francis, feeling satire useless with a creature of this type, gave up
the struggle. Hubert accepted an egg, as less liable than lobster to
impede talk; and continued his harangue.
Peter, who knew that Rawlings, despite his personal unpleasantness,
possessed knowledge, listened interestedly—asking a question every now
and then. The others started a conversation on their own.
Said Violet, monopolizing it, “Oh but we _never_ leave London while the
‘House’ is sitting. I think politics so interesting, Mr. Gordon. Don’t
you? Though I suppose as an author—_so_ clever, that last poem of
yours—you take more interest in the affairs of the heart.”
She ruffled herself; rattled on.
“But of course, politics are _the thing_ nowadays. I’m afraid”—her
voice dropped to the confidential whisper of the person who has no news
to impart—“we’re going to have _trouble_. Not with Servia, of course:
but in Ireland. _People_ are saying. . . .”
“Amazing,” thought Francis, “how a nice woman like Pat. can have such a
sister.”
Smith, bringing the joint, interrupted the Rawlings duo in their
monologues.
“I always wonder,” went on Hubert a few minutes later, “why you didn’t
take your brother into partnership. He seemed an awfully nice fellow,
the only time I met him.”
“Arthur?” queried Peter. “Why, Arthur wouldn’t take a partnership in
Rothschilds! He ran away from school when he was fifteen; and he’s been
running from somewhere or other ever since. The last time I heard from
him, he was in the Dutch Indies—planting. Wrote to ask my opinion about
tobacco prospects in Java. Beastly stuff, Javanese tobacco; though they
use a lot of it for making so-called Borneo cigars.”
Luncheon over, Peter and Patricia challenged the two men at tennis:
Violet, languid in a long chair, alternately watched the match; and
picked her way expertly through _The Tatler_. To see her own photograph
in that periodical, not once but regularly, was a small part of Violet’s
many unrealized ambitions: which included a knighthood and a seat in the
House of Commons for her husband, a Rolls-Royce limousine (painted black
and white for preference) for herself, and all the usual appurtenances
of the politico-parisitical set which both of them alternatively aped
and envied. Neither she nor her husband belonged to the class who
“didn’t want anything in particular”!
Peter, playing brilliantly at the net, and Patricia, backing him up
accurately from the base-line, defeated their opponents in three
straight setts. Followed tea, a languid paddle towards Shiplake, the
dressing-gong, stiff shirts and low frocks, auction bridge. . . .
July the Thirty-first, Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen! And yet, not one
of those fairly well-informed five dreamed the False Peace actually at
an end. Already, the Beasts in Gray,—murder, rape and plunder in their
swinish eyes,—were abroad. Already the Crime, so long premeditated, had
been committed. Even as these four sat at their game, less than fifty
miles away from them, up in London, the womanizers and the wine-bibbers
of Westminster were scuttling hither and thither, incredulous, anxious
to compromise, fearful. The scum which had floated to the surface! They
trembled now, those false guardians. For they and they alone in all
England feared the Beast. But more than the Beast, they feared their own
People;—knowing them not, neither their strength, nor their courage,
nor their infinite forgiveness.
But already (one man’s work!), silent, forethoughted, utterly equipped,
the People of the Sea were wheeling to their battle-stations. Already,
Anglo-Saxondom had flung its first bulwark across the world.
It was the commencement of the Great Cleansing!
PART FOUR
CRISIS
§ 1
To comprehend the deliberate sacrifice which Peter Jameson made for the
cause of humanity, it is essential that you should realize both the man
and the offering he brought. It was not, primarily, the sacrifice of
money, but the giving-up of a great ambition. For money, regarded purely
as the purchase price of material comfort, he cared very little. As a
spender, he had small sympathy with the exotic luxury of his time. His
amusements were essentially simple—a gun, a trout-rod, a horse, a good
glass of wine. All these, he might have possessed without working.
But Peter had been picked up, while still a boy, into the fascinating
game of business; and in that game he had found both work (which was
vital to his temperament) and enjoyment. His personal
qualities—resoluteness, concentration on the immediate job, a certain
creative instinct, clear thinking, moral courage and a controlled
imagination—fitted him eminently for the sport of commerce.
Nirvana Limited, which would have been to the average individual merely
a machine for the making of an income, represented to Peter Jameson—at
the outbreak of war—the ultimate aim in life. He loved that business,
not only for the sake of what it might eventually bring him, but for
itself. He loved it, like a good gardener loves his garden, as much for
the labour as for the result. He had seen it grow, in six years, from
starved plant to a goodly tree—fruit almost ripe for the plucking. He
felled that tree deliberately, in cold blood, under no compulsion save
that of his own soul. And he waved no flags to console him for the
felling!
For the man was, despite the admixture of Miraflores strain, an
Anglo-Saxon: responded—though he knew it not—to the blind spirit of
that race which came out of Italy through France, welded itself to dour
Saxon and berserk Viking, and so spread, fighting always but always
fighting as an ultimate issue for Independence, to Virginia and Quebec,
to the Falkland Islands and the Hebrides, to South Africa and
Australasia; till it became—scarcely conscious of its own oneness—the
final arbiter in the great world-struggle of Decency against the filthy
doctrines of the Beasts in Gray.
And behind the man, equally resolute, equally blind to the spirit which
moved her, stood Patricia, the Anglo-Saxon woman—thoroughbred,
unflinching.
§ 2
England’s declaration of war did not make Peter Jameson “burn to avenge
gallant little Belgium,” or eager, in the phraseology of the period, “to
do his bit.” His commercial position was too damned awkward for the
indulgence of any such sentiments.
He left Wargrave at ten o’clock on the morning of August the fifth; and
reached the outskirts of London in forty-five minutes. Then he gave the
wheel to Murray, and began to think. Throughout, his hand had been
perfectly steady at the throttle, his foot firm on the accelerator.
Their speed had averaged forty miles an hour.
Behind him, in the tonneau, sat Francis Gordon, acting as always on
inspiration rather than reason, decision already reached. Francis Gordon
talked to himself, under his breath: first in Dutch and then in German.
He was testing, not his knowledge of those languages, but his accent.
“_Ich kann es tun. Ich bin einer der einzigen die es tun konnen_,” he
muttered. Then he began to recite, very slowly and almost inaudibly, the
first speech from Schiller’s Republican Tragedy:
Leonora. “Nichts mehr. Nichts mehr. Kein Wort mehr.
Es ist am Tag.”[1]
Peter was not talking to himself; had reached no decision. His brain
went over the salient facts of the situation; weighing them up.
Discarding details. Selecting essentials. The Jameson-Beckmann problem
must wait. How would Nirvana be affected? Home-trade, for the moment at
any rate, would collapse. The export-business might hold up. Might.
Probably wouldn’t. Remained the fact that if the worst came to the worst
he stood to loose seventeen thousand pounds. . . . After all, people
must smoke. Wars didn’t last for ever. Could he see the thing through?
Financially? . . .
“London & Joint Stock Bank, Pall Mall,” he said to the chauffeur.
They swirled through Piccadilly; nipped round past the Ritz; slowed down
St. James’ Street; and pulled up.
“Afraid I can’t lend you the car, old man,” said Peter. “I shall want it
all day. Are you coming down again to-night?”
“No,” answered Francis. “Prout’s bringing up my things on the afternoon
train.” He stepped out of the tonneau; brushed himself carefully; and
walked off down Pall Mall. Peter, telling Murray to wait, climbed the
flat steps to the glass doors of the Bank. They were closed: but his
knock brought a commissionaire, who recognized him; opened them.
“No business today, sir,” said the commissionaire.
“Manager in?” asked Peter.
“Yes, sir.”
“Ask him if he’ll see me.”
The Bank, always quiet, seemed—that morning—like a tomb. Clerks bent
over their ledgers; lights burned: but no customers waited at the
iron-grilled counters, no sovereigns clinked in the brass shovels.
“Step this way, sir,” said the commissionaire.
Peter followed him across the stone floor, through the glass doorway
into the manager’s parlour—soft-carpeted, lavishly furnished with dark
mahogany and saddle-bag chairs.
Mr. Davis, the branch-manager, was a gray-bearded man with the clothes
of a prince and the manners of a diplomat. As a West End Branch, “Pall
Mall” did not seek mercantile business. They had taken the Nirvana
account, officially, “to oblige their old client Mr. Jameson, whose
private account they had handled for so many years.” This courtesy had
not gone as far as a reduction in their usual rates of interest!
“Good morning, Mr. Jameson. I half expected you.” Mr. Davis rose; shook
hands. “Won’t you take a seat?”