observing their manners to him. "Now isn't that cute, how they take to
some people and not to others. They all love Uncle Silvio on sight.
Stray dogs follow him in the road and won't leave him. Half these are
strays.... They know he likes them, that's what it is. Dogs always
know, they say, don't they."
"Know what?" asked Henry, suspicious that she meant that dogs know a
good character from a bad, which was what "they" ("they" meaning the
great collection of noodles who constitute the public) do actually
say. The things "they" say! They even say that children too (the most
foolish of God's creatures) have this intuitive knowledge; they say
that to drink hot tea makes you cooler, that it is more tiring going
down-hill than up, that honesty is the best policy, that love makes
the world go round, that "literally" bears the same meaning as
"metaphorically" ("she was literally a mother to him," they will say),
that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, that those who say least
feel most, that one must live. There is truly no limit to what "they,"
in their folly, will say. So Henry, wincing among the suspicious dogs,
moodily, and not for the first time, reflected.
Miss Longfellow did not answer his inquiry, but stood in the hall and
cried, "Zio!" in a voice like a May cuckoo's.
A door opened, and in a moment Dr. Franchi, small and frail and
charming, came forward with a sweet smile and hand outstretched,
through a throng of fawning, grinning dogs.
"A pleasure indeed, Mr. Beechtree."
"He is like Leo XIII.," was Henry's thought. "Strange, that he should
be a heretic!"
15
They sat at dinner on a terrace, under hanging lamps, looking out at
the lake through vine-festooned arches. The moon rose, like the
segment of an orange, sending a softly glowing path to them across
black water. Here and there the prow lanterns of boats rosily gleamed.
The rest was violet shadow.
How Henry, after his recent experiences of cheap cafés, again enjoyed
eating a meal fit for a gentleman. Radiant silver, napery like snow
(for, in the old fashion still in use on the continent, Dr. Franchi
had a fair linen cloth spread over his dinner-table; there is no doubt
but that this extravagant habit gives an old-world charm to a meal),
food and wines of the most agreeable, conversation to the liking of
all three talkers (which is, after all, the most that can be said of
any conversation), one of the loveliest views in Europe, and gentle
night air--Henry was indeed fortunate. How kind, he reflected, was
this ex-cardinal, who, having met him but once, asked him to such a
pleasant entertainment. Why was it? He must try to be worthy of it, to
seem cultivated and agreeable and intelligent. But Henry knew that he
was none of these things; continually he had to be playing a part,
trying to hide his folly under a pretence of being like other people,
sensible and informed and amusing, whereas really he was more like an
animal, interested in the foolish and fleeting impressions of the
moment. He was not fit for a gentleman's dinner-table.
The conversation was of all manner of things. They spoke, of course,
of the League.
"It has a great future," said Dr. Franchi, "by saying which I by no
means wish to underrate its present."
"Rather capitalist in tendency, perhaps?" the correspondent of the
_British Bolshevist_ suggested. "A little too much in the hands of the
major states?" But he did not really care.
"You misjudge it," Dr. Franchi said. "It is a very fair association
of equal states. A true democracy: little brothers and great, hand
in hand. Oh, it will do great things; is, indeed, doing great things
now. One cannot afford to be cynical about such an attempt. Anything
which encourages the nations to take an interest in one another's
concerns----"
"There has surely," said Henry, still rather apathetically voicing his
paper, "always been too much of that already. Hence wars. Nations
should keep themselves to themselves. International impertinence ...
it's a great evil. Live and let live."
"You don't then agree that we should attempt a world-cosmogony? That
the nations should be as brothers, and concern themselves with one
another's famines, one another's revolutions, one another's frontiers?
But why this curious insistence on the nation as a unit? Why select
nationality, rather than the ego, the family, the township, the
province, the continent, the hemisphere, the planet, the solar system,
or even the universe? Isn't it just a little arbitrary, this stress we
lay on nationalism, patriotism, love of one particular country, of the
territories united fortuitously under one particular government? What
is a government, that we should regard it as a connecting link? What
is a race, that queer, far-flung thing whose boundaries march with
those of no nation? And when we say we love a country, do we mean its
soil, the people under its government, or the scattered peoples
everywhere sharing some of the same blood and talking approximately
the same tongue? What, in fact, is this _patriotism_, this love of
country, that we all feel, and that we nearly all exalt as if it were
a virtue? We don't praise egoism, or pride of family, or love of a
particular town or province, in the same way. What magic is there in
the ring that embraces a country, that we admire it as precious metal
and call the other rings foolish or base? You will admit that it is a
queer convention."
"All conventions are queer, I think," Henry said indifferently. "But
there they are. One accepts them. It is less trouble."
"It makes more trouble in the end, my young friend.... I will tell you
one thing from my heart. If the League of Nations should fail, should
go to pieces, it will be from excess of this patriotism. Every country
out for its own hand. That has always been the trouble with the world,
since we were hordes of savages grouped in tribes one against the
other--as, indeed, we still are."
"Well, zio mio," said Miss Longfellow breezily, "if you don't look out
for number one, no one else will, you may be dead sure. And _then_
where are you? In the soup, sure thing. Nel zuppo!" She gave a gay,
chiming, cuckooish laugh. A cheerful girl, thought Henry.
"Viva the League of Nations!" she cried, and drank brightly of her
marsala.
Dr. Franchi, with an indulgent smile for youthful exuberance, drank
too.
"The hope for the world," he said. "You don't drink this toast, Mr.
Beechtree?"
"My paper," said Henry, "believes that such hope for the world as
there may be lies elsewhere."
"Ah, your paper. And you yourself?"
"I? I see no hope for the world. No hope, that is to say, that it will
ever be an appreciably better world than it is at present. Before that
occurs, I imagine that it will have broken its string, as it were, and
dashed off into space, and so an end."
"And my hopes for it are two--an extension of country-love into
world-love, and a purified version of the Christian faith."
"Purified...." Henry recollected that Dr. Franchi was a modernist and
a heretic. "A queer word," he mused. "I am not sure that I know what
it means."
"Ah. You are orthodox Catholic, no doubt. You admit no possible
impurities in the faith."
"I have never thought about it. I do not even know what an impurity
is. One thing does not seem to me much more pure than another, and not
much more odd. For my part, I accept the teaching of the Church
wholesale. It seems simpler."
"Until you come to think about it," said the ex-cardinal. "Then it
ceases to be simple, and becomes difficult and elaborate to a high
degree. Too difficult for a simple soul like myself. For my part, I
have been expelled from the bosom of my mother the Church, and am now,
having completed immense replies to the decree Lamentabili Sane and to
the encyclical Pascendi Gregis, writing a History of the Doctrine of
Transubstantiation. Does the topic interest you?"
"I am no theologian," said Henry. "And I have been told that if one
inquires too closely into these mysteries, faith wilts. I should not
like that. So I do not inquire. It is better so. I should not wish to
be an atheist. I have known an atheist whom I have very greatly
disliked."
The thought of this person shadowed his brow faintly with a scowl, not
unobserved by his host and hostess. "But," he added, "he became a
worse thing; he is now an atheist turned Catholic...."
"There I am with you," the ex-cardinal agreed. "About the Catholic
convert there is often a quite peculiar lack of distinction.... But we
will not talk about these."
16
They were now eating fruit. Melon, apricots, pears, walnuts, figs, and
fat purple grapes. The night ever deepened into a greater loveliness.
In the steep, sweet garden below the terrace nightingales sang.
"On such a night as this," said Dr. Franchi, cracking a walnut, "it is
difficult to be an atheist."
"Why so?" asked Henry dreamily, biting a ripe black fig, and wishing
that the ex-cardinal had not thought it necessary to give so lovely
and familiar an opening phrase so tedious an end.
"Don't tell me," he added quickly, repenting his thoughtless question.
"What nightingales! What figs! And what apricocks!" (for so he always
called this fruit). He hated to talk about atheists, and about how God
had fashioned so beautiful a world. It might be so, but the world, on
such a night, was enough in itself.
Dr. Franchi's keen, gentle eyes, the eyes of a shrewd weigher of men,
observed him and his distastes.
"An æsthete," he judged. "God has given him intuition rather than
reason. And not very much even of that. He might easily be misled,
this youth."
Aloud he said, "All I meant was that
"'Holy joy about the earth is shed,
And Holiness upon the deep,'
as one of your Edwardian poets has sung. That was a gifted generation:
may it rest in peace. For I think it mostly perished in that
calamitous war we had.... But your Georgians--they too are a gifted
generation, is it not so?"
"You mean by Georgians those persons who are now flourishing under
the sovereignty of King George the Fifth of England? Such as myself?
I do not really know. How could it be that gifts go in generations?
A generation, surely, is merely chronological. Gifts are sporadic.
No, I find no generation, as such, gifted. Except, of course, with
the gifts common to all humanity.... People speak of the Victorians,
and endow them with special qualities, evil or good. They were
all black recently; now they are being white-washed--or rather
enamelled. I think they had no qualities, as a generation (or rather
as several generations, which, of course, they were); men and women
then were, in the main, the same as men and women to-day, I see
nothing but individuals. The rest is all the fantasy of the foolish,
who love to generalise, till they cannot see the trees for the wood.
Generalisations make me dizzy. I see nothing but the separate trees.
There _is_ nothing else...."
Dreamily Henry wandered on, happy and fluent with wine and figs. A
ripe black fig, gaping to show its scarlet maw--what could be more
lovely, and more luscious to the palate?
As to Miss Longfellow, she was eating her dessert so rapidly and with
such relish that she had no time for conversation. All she contributed
to it was, between bites, a cheerful nod now and then at Henry to show
that she agreed with him.
"Yours," said Dr. Franchi, "is not, perhaps, the most natural view of
life. It is more natural to see people in large groups, with definite
characteristic markings, according to period, age, nationality, sex,
or what not. Also, such a view has its truth, though, like all truths,
it may be over-stressed.... But here comes our coffee. After we have
drunk it, Gina will leave us perhaps and you and I will smoke our
cigars and have a little talk on political questions, and matters
outside a woman's interests. Our Italian women do not take the same
interest in affairs which your English women do."
"No," Miss Longfellow readily agreed. "We don't like the New Woman
over here. Perhaps Mr. Beechtree admires her though."
"The New Woman?" Henry doubtfully queried. "Is there a new woman? I
don't know the phrase, except from old Victorian _Punch_ Pictures....
Thank you, yes; a little cherry brandy."
"Ah, is the woman question, then, over in your country--died out?
Fought to a finish, perhaps, with honours to the victorious sex?"
"The woman question, sir? What woman question? I know no more of woman
questions than of man questions, I am afraid. There is an infinity of
questions you may ask about all human beings. People ask them all the
time. Personally, I don't; it is less trouble not to. There people
are; you can take them or leave them, for what they're worth. Why ask
questions about them? There is never a satisfactory answer."
"A rather difficult youth to talk to," the ex-cardinal reflected. "He
fails to follow up, or, apparently, even to understand, any of the
usual conversational gambits. Is he very ignorant, or merely
perverse?"
As to Miss Longfellow, she gave Henry up as being not quite all there,
and anyhow a bloodless kind of creature, who took very little notice
of her. So she went indoors and played the piano.
"I am failing," thought Henry. "She does not like me. I am not being
intelligent. They will talk of things above my head, things I cannot
understand."
Apathy held him, drinking cherry brandy under the moon, and he could
not care. Woman question? Man question? What was all this prating?
17
"And now," said Dr. Franchi, as he enjoyed a cigar and Henry a
cigarette and both their liqueurs, "let us talk of this mysterious
business of poor Svensen."
"Yes, do let's," said Henry, for this was much more in his line.
"I may misjudge you, Mr. Beechtree, but I have made a guess that you
entertain certain suspicions in this matter. Is that the case? Ah, I
see I am right. No, tell me nothing you do not wish. In fact, tell me
nothing at all. It would be, at this point, indiscreet. Instead, let
us go through all the possible alternatives." He paused, and puffed at
his cigar for a while in thoughtful silence.
"First of all," he presently resumed, "poor Svensen may have met with
an accident. He may have fallen into the lake and have been drowned.
But this we will set aside as improbable. Geneva is seldom quite
deserted at night, and he would have attracted attention. Besides
which, I have heard that he is an excellent swimmer. No; an improbable
contingency. What remains? Foul play. Some person or persons have
attacked him in a deserted spot and either murdered or kidnapped him.
But who? And for what purpose? Robbery? Personal enmity? Revenge? Or
an impersonal motive, such as a desire, for some reason, to damage and
retard the doings of the Assembly? It might be any of these.... Let us
for a moment take the hypothesis that it is the last. To whom, then,
might such a desire be attributed? Unfortunately, my dear Mr.
Beechtree, to many different persons."
"But more to some than to others," Henry brightly pointed out.
"Certainly more to some than to others. More to the Poles than to the
Lithuanians, for instance, for is it not to the Polish interest to
hold up the proceedings of the Assembly while the present violation of
the Lithuanian frontier by Polish hordes continues? Well they know
that any inquiry into that matter set on foot by the League would end
in their discomfiture. Every day that they can retard the appointment
of a committee of inquiry is to the good, from their point of view.
"Again, take Russia. The question of the persecution of the Bolsheviks
is to be brought up in the Assembly early. Naturally the Russian
delegation are not anxious for the exposure of their governmental
methods which would accompany this. And then there are the Bolshevik
refugees themselves--a murderous gang, who would readily dispose of any
one, from mere habit. Nor can Argentine be supposed to be anxious for
the inquiry into her dispute with Paraguay which the Paraguay delegation
intend to bring forward. The Argentine delegation may well have orders
to delay this inquiry as long as possible, in order that the dispute may
arrange itself domestically, in Argentine interests, without the
intervention of the League. There is, too, the Graeco-Turkish war, which
both the Greeks and the Turks desire to carry on in peace. There are
also several questions of humanitarian legislation, which by no means
all the members of the League desire to see proceeded with--the traffic
in women, for instance, and that in certain drugs. And what about the
Irish delegates? Are they not both, for their different reasons, full
of anger and discontent against Great Britain and against Europe in
general, and may they not well intend, in the determined manner of their
race, to hold up the association of nations at the pistol's mouth, so to
speak, until it considers their grievances and adjudicates in their
favour? And then we must not exclude from suspicion the natives of
this city and canton. Calvinists are, in my experience, capable of
any malicious crime. A dour, jealous, unpleasant people. They might
(and often have they done so) perpetrate any wickedness in the name of
the curious God they worship."
"Indeed, yes," said Henry. "How confusing it all is, to be sure! But
you haven't mentioned the biggest stumbling-block of all,
sir--disarmament."
"Ah, yes; disarmament. As you say, the most tremendous issue of all.
And it is, as every one knows, going to be, during this session of the
League, decisively dealt with by the Council. Many a nation, militant
from terror, from avarice, from arrogance, or from habit, many a
political faction, and many a big business, has a vital interest in
hindering disarmament discussions. You think then, that----"
"I will tell you," said Henry, leaning forward eagerly and lowering
his rather high voice, "what I think. I think that there are those not
far from us who have a great deal of money in armaments, and who get
nervy whenever the subject comes up. There are things that I know....
I came out here knowing them, and meaning to speak when the time came.
Not because it was my duty, which is why (I understand) most people
expose others, but because I had a very great desire to. There is some
one towards whom I feel a dislike--a very great dislike; I may say
hate. He deserves it. He is a most disagreeable person, and has done
me, personally, a great injury"--(Henry was feeling the expansive
influence of the cherry brandy)--"and naturally I wish to do him one
in my turn. I have wished it for several years; to be exact, since the
year 1919. I have waited and watched. I have always known him to be
detestable, but until recently I thought that he was also detestably
and invariably in the right--or, anyhow, that he could not be proved
in the wrong. Lately I learnt something that altered this opinion. I
discovered a thing about him which would, if it were known (having
regard to the position he occupies), utterly shame and discredit him.
I am now, I have a feeling, on the track of discovering yet another
and a worse thing--that he has done away with the elected President of
the Assembly, in order to wreck the proceedings so that the armament
question should not come up."
"The armament question?"
Henry gazed at the ex-cardinal with the wide, ferocious stare of the
slightly intoxicated.
"What would you say if I told you that a certain highly placed
official on the League of Nations Secretariat has enormous sums of
money invested in an armaments business? That he derives nearly all
his income from it? That he is the son-in-law of the head of the
business, and has in it vast sums which increase at every rumour of
war and which would dwindle away if any extensive disarmament scheme
should ever really be seriously contemplated by the nations? That his
father-in-law, this munitions prince, is even now in Geneva, privately
visiting his daughter and son-in-law and holding a watching brief on
the Assembly proceedings? I ask you, what would the League staff say
of one of their members of which this should be revealed? Would he be
regarded as a fit incumbent of the office he holds? Wouldn't he be
dismissed, kicked out as incompetent--as unscrupulous, I mean," Henry
amended quickly. His voice had risen in a shrill and trembling
crescendo of dislike.
Dr. Franchi, leaning placidly back in his chair, his delicate fingers
stroking a large Persian cat on his knee, shrewdly watched him.
"I had better say," he observed, in his temperate and calming manner,
"that I believe I know to whom you allude. I have guessed, since I saw
you this morning when a certain individual was speaking near you, that
you took no favourable view of him. And now I perceive that you are
justified. You will be doubly justified if we can prove, what I am
trying to agree with you is not improbable, that he has indeed made away
with this unfortunate Svensen. I am tempted to share your view of this
unpleasing person. Among other things he is a Catholic convert; as to
these we have already exchanged our views.... Do you know what I think?
This; that Svensen's will not be the only disappearance at Geneva. For
what would be the use of getting rid of one man only, however prominent?
The Assembly, after the first shock, would proceed with its doings. But
what if man after man were to disappear? What if the whole fabric of
Assembly, Council, and Committees should be disintegrated, till no one
could have thoughts for anything but the mysterious disappearances and
how to solve the riddle, and how, still more, to preserve each one
himself from a like fate? Could any work be continued in such
circumstances, in such an atmosphere? No. The Assembly would
become merely a collection of bewildered and nervous individuals
turning themselves into amateur detectives, and, incidentally, the
laughing-stock of the world. The League might never recover such
prestige as it has, after such a disastrous session. Mark my words;
there will be further attempts on the persons of prominent delegates.
Whether they will be successful attempts or not is a question. Who is
responsible for them is another question. You say (and I am half with
you) our friend of the Secretariat, who had better be nameless until we
can bring him to book. Others will say other things. Many will be
suspected. Notably, no doubt, the Spanish Americans, who lend themselves
readily to such suspicions; they have that air, and human life is
believed not to be unduly sacred to them. Besides, they never got on
with Svensen, who is reported to have alluded to them not infrequently
as 'those damned Red Indians.' The Scandinavian temperament and theirs
are so different. I do not even feel sure myself that they are not
implicated. The initiation of the affair by our Secretariat friend
would not, in fact, preclude their participation in it. I had nearly
said, show me a Spanish-American, still worse a Portuguese, and I will
show you a scoundrel. Nearly, but not quite, for it is a mistake to say
such things of one's brothers in the League. Besides, I like them. They
are pleasing, amusing fellows, and do not rasp one's nerves like the
Germans and many others. One can forgive them much; indeed, one has to.
Many people, again, would be glad to put responsibility on the Germans.
An unfortunate race, for nothing is so unfortunate as to be unloved. We
must discover the truth, Mr. Beechtree. You have a line of inquiry to
follow?"
"I am making friends with the fellow's secretary," said Henry. "She
likes me, I may say. And she talks quite a lot. She would not
consciously betray her chief's confidence, though she does not like
him; but all the same I get many clues from her.... Oh, my God----!"
The ejaculation, which was made under his breath, was shocked
involuntarily out of him by the sight of Dr. Franchi's Persian cat
extracting with its paw from a bowl that stood on the terrace
balustrade a large gold-fish and devouring it.