§ 1
I met Rachel again in Germany through the devices of my cousin the
Fürstin Letzlingen. I had finished seeing what I wanted to see in
Westphalia and I was preparing to go to the United States. There I
thought I should be able to complete and round off that large view of
the human process I had been developing in my mind. But my departure was
delayed by an attack of influenza that I picked up at a Socialist
Congress in Munich, and the dear Durchlaucht, hearing of this and having
her own views of my destiny, descended upon me while I was still in bed
there, made me get up and carried me off in her car, to take care of me
herself at her villa at Boppard, telling me nothing of any fellow-guests
I might encounter.
She had a villa upon the Rhine under a hill of vineyards, where she
devoted herself--she was a widow--to matchmaking and belated regrets for
the childlessness that necessitated a perpetual borrowing of material
for her pursuit. She had a motor-car, a steam-launch, several rowing
boats and canoes, a tennis-lawn, a rambling garden, a devious house and
a rapid mind, and in fact everything that was necessary for throwing
young people together. She made her surprise seem easy and natural, and
with returning health I found myself already back upon my old footing of
friendly intimacy with Rachel.
I found her a new and yet a familiar Rachel. She had grown up, she was
no longer a schoolgirl, crystalline clear with gleams of emotion and
understanding, and what she had lost in transparency she had gained in
depth. And she had become well-informed, she had been reading very
widely and well, I could see, and not simply reading but talking and
listening and thinking. She showed a vivid interest in the current of
home politics,--at that time the last government of Mr. Balfour was
ebbing to its end and my old Transvaal friends, the Chinese coolies,
were to avenge themselves on their importers. The Tariff Reformers my
father detested were still struggling to unseat the Premier from his
leadership of Conservatism....
It was queer to hear once more, after my Asiatic wanderings and
dreamings, those West-End dinner-table politics, those speculations
about "Winston's" future and the possibility of Lloyd George or Ramsay
Macdonald or Macnamara taking office with the Liberals and whether there
might not ultimately be a middle party in which Haldane and Balfour,
Grey and the Cecils could meet upon common ground. It seemed now not
only very small but very far off. She told me too of the huge popularity
of King Edward. He had proved to be interested, curious, understanding
and clever, an unexpectedly successful King. She described how he was
breaking out of the narrow official limits that had kept his mother in a
kind of social bandbox, extending his solvent informality of
friendliness to all sorts of men. He had won the heart of Will Crooks,
the labor member for Poplar, for example, made John Burns a social
success and warmed all France for England.
I surveyed this novel picture of the English throne diffusing
amiability.
"I suppose it's what the throne ought to do," said Rachel. "If it can't
be inspiration, at any rate it can tolerate and reconcile and take the
ill-bred bitterness out of politics."
"My father might have said that."
"I got that from your father," she said; and added after a momentary
pause, "I go over and talk to him."
"You talk to my father!"
"I like to. Or rather I listen and take it in. I go over in the
afternoon. I go sometimes twice or three times a week."
"That's kind of you."
"Not at all. You see---- It sounds impudent, I know, for a girl to say
so, but we've so many interests in common."
§ 2
I was more and more interested by Rachel as the days went on. A man must
be stupid who does not know that a woman is happy in his presence, and
for two years now and more I had met no one with a very strong personal
feeling for me. And quite apart from that, her mind was extraordinarily
interesting to me because it was at once so active and so clear and so
limited by her entirely English circumstances. She had the prosperous
English outlook. She didn't so much see the wide world as get glimpses
of it through the tangle of Westminster and of West End and week-end
limitations. She wasn't even aware of that greater unprosperous England,
already sulking and darkling outside her political world, that greater
England which was presently to make its first audible intimations of
discontent in that remarkable anti-climax to King George's Coronation,
the Railway Strike. India for her was the land of people's cousins,
Germany and the German Dreadnoughts bulked far larger, and all the
tremendous gathering forces of the East were beyond the range of her
imagination. I set myself to widen her horizons.
I told her something of the intention and range of my travels, and
something of the views that were growing out of their experiences.
I have a clear little picture in my mind of an excursion we made to that
huge national Denkmal which rears its head out of the amiable vineyards
of Assmannshausen and Rudesheim over against Bingen. We landed at the
former place, went up its little funicular to eat our lunch and drink
its red wine at the pleasant inn above, and then strolled along through
the woods to the monument.
The Fürstin fell behind with her unwilling escort, a newly arrived
medical student from England, a very pleasant youngster named Berwick,
who was all too obviously anxious to change places with me. She devised
delays, and meanwhile I, as yet unaware of the state of affairs, went on
with Rachel to that towering florid monument with its vast gesticulating
Germania, which triumphs over the conquered provinces.
We fell talking of war and the passions and delusions that lead to war.
Rachel's thoughts were strongly colored by those ideas of a natural
rivalry between Germany and England and of a necessary revenge for
France which have for nearly forty years diverted the bulk of European
thought and energy to the mere waste of military preparations. I jarred
with an edifice of preconceptions when I scoffed and scolded at these
assumptions.
"Our two great peoples are disputing for the leadership of the world," I
said, "and meanwhile the whole world sweeps past us. We're drifting into
a quarrelsome backwater."
I began to tell of the fermentation and new beginnings that were
everywhere perceptible throughout the East, of the vast masses of human
ability and energy that were coming into action in China and India, of
the unlimited future of both North and South America, of the mere
accidentalness of the European advantage. "History," I said, "is already
shifting the significance out of Western Europe altogether, and we
English cannot see it; we can see no further than Berlin, and these
Germans can think of nothing better than to taunt the French with such
tawdry effigies as _this_! Europe goes on to-day as India went on in the
eighteenth century, making aimless history. And the sands of opportunity
run and run...."
I shrugged my shoulders and we stood for a little while looking down on
the shining crescent of the Rhine.
"Suppose," said Rachel, "that someone were to say that--in the House."
"The House," I said, "doesn't hear things at my pitch. Bat outcries. Too
shrill altogether."
"It might. If _you_----"
She halted, hesitated for a moment on the question and asked abruptly:
"When are you coming back to England, Mr. Stratton?"
"Certainly not for six months," I said.
A movement of her eyes made me aware of the Fürstin and Berwick emerging
from the trees. "And then?" asked Rachel.
I didn't want to answer that question, in which the personal note
sounded so clearly. "I am going to America to see America," I said, "and
America may be rather a big thing to see."
"You must see it?"
"I want to be sure of it--as something comprehensive. I want to get a
general effect of it...."
Rachel hesitated, looked back to measure the distance of the Fürstin and
her companion and put her question again, but this time with a
significance that did not seem even to want to hide itself. "_Then_ will
you come back?" she said.
Her face flamed scarlet, but her eyes met mine boldly. Between us there
was a flash of complete understanding.
My answer, if it was lame and ungallant to such a challenge, was at
least perfectly honest. "I can't make up my mind," I said. "I've been
near making plans--taking steps.... Something holds me back...."