WHEN WILLIAM CAME

CHAPTER I: THE SINGING-BIRD AND THE BAROMETER

Cicely Yeovil sat in a low swing chair, alternately looking at herself ina mirror and at the other occupant of the room in the flesh. Bothprospects gave her undisguised satisfaction. Without being vain she wasduly appreciative of good looks, whether in herself or in another, andthe reflection that she saw in the mirror, and the young man whom she sawseated at the piano, would have come with credit out of a more severelycritical inspection. Probably she looked longer and with greaterappreciation at the piano player than at her own image; her good lookswere an inherited possession, that had been with her more or less all herlife, while Ronnie Storre was a comparatively new acquisition, discoveredand achieved, so to speak, by her own enterprise, selected by her owngood taste. Fate had given her adorable eyelashes and an excellentprofile. Ronnie was an indulgence she had bestowed on herself. 

Cicely had long ago planned out for herself a complete philosophy oflife, and had resolutely set to work to carry her philosophy intopractice. "When love is over how little of love even the loverunderstands, " she quoted to herself from one of her favourite poets, andtransposed the saying into "While life is with us how little of life eventhe materialist understands. " Most people that she knew took endlesspains and precautions to preserve and prolong their lives and keep theirpowers of enjoyment unimpaired; few, very few, seemed to make anyintelligent effort at understanding what they really wanted in the way ofenjoying their lives, or to ascertain what were the best means forsatisfying those wants. Fewer still bent their whole energies to the oneparamount aim of getting what they wanted in the fullest possiblemeasure. Her scheme of life was not a wholly selfish one; no one couldunderstand what she wanted as well as she did herself, therefore she feltthat she was the best person to pursue her own ends and cater for her ownwants. To have others thinking and acting for one merely meant that onehad to be perpetually grateful for a lot of well-meant and usuallyunsatisfactory services. It was like the case of a rich man giving acommunity a free library, when probably the community only wanted freefishing or reduced tram-fares. Cicely studied her own whims and wishes, experimented in the best method of carrying them into effect, comparedthe accumulated results of her experiments, and gradually arrived at avery clear idea of what she wanted in life, and how best to achieve it. She was not by disposition a self-centred soul, therefore she did notmake the mistake of supposing that one can live successfully andgracefully in a crowded world without taking due notice of the otherhuman elements around one. She was instinctively far more thoughtful forothers than many a person who is genuinely but unseeingly addicted tounselfishness. 

Also she kept in her armoury the weapon which can be so mightilyeffective if used sparingly by a really sincere individual--the knowledgeof when to be a humbug. Ambition entered to a certain extent into herlife, and governed it perhaps rather more than she knew. She desired toescape from the doom of being a nonentity, but the escape would have tobe effected in her own way and in her own time; to be governed byambition was only a shade or two better than being governed byconvention. 

The drawing-room in which she and Ronnie were sitting was of suchproportions that one hardly knew whether it was intended to be one roomor several, and it had the merit of being moderately cool at two o'clockon a particularly hot July afternoon. In the coolest of its many alcovesservants had noiselessly set out an improvised luncheon table: a temptingarray of caviare, crab and mushroom salads, cold asparagus, slender hockbottles and high-stemmed wine goblets peeped out from amid a setting ofCharlotte Klemm roses. 

Cicely rose from her seat and went over to the piano. 

"Come, " she said, touching the young man lightly with a finger-tip on thetop of his very sleek, copper-hued head, "we're going to havepicnic-lunch to-day up here; it's so much cooler than any of thedownstairs rooms, and we shan't be bothered with the servants trotting inand out all the time. Rather a good idea of mine, wasn't it?"

Ronnie, after looking anxiously to see that the word "picnic" did notportend tongue sandwiches and biscuits, gave the idea his blessing. 

"What is young Storre's profession?" some one had once asked concerninghim. 

"He has a great many friends who have independent incomes, " had been theanswer. 

The meal was begun in an appreciative silence; a picnic in which threekinds of red pepper were available for the caviare demanded a certainamount of respectful attention. 

"My heart ought to be like a singing-bird to-day, I suppose, " said Cicelypresently. 

"Because your good man is coming home?" asked Ronnie. 

Cicely nodded. 

"He's expected some time this afternoon, though I'm rather vague as towhich train he arrives by. Rather a stifling day for railwaytravelling. "

"And is your heart doing the singing-bird business?" asked Ronnie. 

"That depends, " said Cicely, "if I may choose the bird. A missel-thrushwould do, perhaps; it sings loudest in stormy weather, I believe. "

Ronnie disposed of two or three stems of asparagus before making anycomment on this remark. 

"Is there going to be stormy weather?" he asked. 

"The domestic barometer is set rather that way, " said Cicely. "You see, Murrey has been away for ever so long, and, of course, there will be lotsof things he won't be used to, and I'm afraid matters may be ratherstrained and uncomfortable for a time. "

"Do you mean that he will object to me?" asked Ronnie. 

"Not in the least, " said Cicely, "he's quite broad-minded on mostsubjects, and he realises that this is an age in which sensible peopleknow thoroughly well what they want, and are determined to get what theywant. It pleases me to see a lot of you, and to spoil you and pay youextravagant compliments about your good looks and your music, and toimagine at times that I'm in danger of getting fond of you; I don't seeany harm in it, and I don't suppose Murrey will either--in fact, Ishouldn't be surprised if he takes rather a liking to you. No, it's thegeneral situation that will trouble and exasperate him; he's not had timeto get accustomed to the fait accompli like we have. It will break onhim with horrible suddenness. "

"He was somewhere in Russia when the war broke out, wasn't he?" saidRonnie. 

"Somewhere in the wilds of Eastern Siberia, shooting and bird collecting, miles away from a railway or telegraph line, and it was all over beforehe knew anything about it; it didn't last very long, when you come tothink of it. He was due home somewhere about that time, and when theweeks slipped by without my hearing from him, I quite thought he'd beencaptured in the Baltic or somewhere on the way back. It turned out thathe was down with marsh fever in some out-of-the-way spot, and everythingwas over and finished with before he got back to civilisation andnewspapers. "

"It must have been a bit of a shock, " said Ronnie, busy with awell-devised salad; "still, I don't see why there should be domesticstorms when he comes back. You are hardly responsible for thecatastrophe that has happened. "

"No, " said Cicely, "but he'll come back naturally feeling sore and savagewith everything he sees around him, and he won't realise just at oncethat we've been through all that ourselves, and have reached the stage ofsullen acquiescence in what can't be helped. He won't understand, forinstance, how we can be enthusiastic and excited over Gorla Mustelford'sdebut, and things of that sort; he'll think we are a set of callousrevellers, fiddling while Rome is burning. "

"In this case, " said Ronnie, "Rome isn't burning, it's burnt. All thatremains to be done is to rebuild it--when possible. "

"Exactly, and he'll say we're not doing much towards helping at that. "

"But, " protested Ronnie, "the whole thing has only just happened; 'Romewasn't built in a day, ' and we can't rebuild our Rome in a day. "

"I know, " said Cicely, "but so many of our friends, and especiallyMurrey's friends, have taken the thing in a tragical fashion, and clearedoff to the Colonies, or shut themselves up in their country houses, asthough there was a sort of moral leprosy infecting London. "

"I don't see what good that does, " said Ronnie. 

"It doesn't do any good, but it's what a lot of them have done becausethey felt like doing it, and Murrey will feel like doing it too. That iswhere I foresee trouble and disagreement. "

Ronnie shrugged his shoulders. 

"I would take things tragically if I saw the good of it, " he said; "asmatters stand it's too late in the day and too early to be anything butphilosophical about what one can't help. For the present we've just gotto make the best of things. Besides, you can't very well turn down Gorlaat the last moment. "

"I'm not going to turn down Gorla, or anybody, " said Cicely withdecision. "I think it would be silly, and silliness doesn't appeal tome. That is why I foresee storms on the domestic horizon. After all, Gorla has her career to think of. Do you know, " she added, with a changeof tone, "I rather wish you would fall in love with Gorla; it would makeme horribly jealous, and a little jealousy is such a good tonic for anywoman who knows how to dress well. Also, Ronnie, it would prove that youare capable of falling in love with some one, of which I've grave doubtsup to the present. "

"Love is one of the few things in which the make-believe is superior tothe genuine, " said Ronnie, "it lasts longer, and you get more fun out ofit, and it's easier to replace when you've done with it. "

"Still, it's rather like playing with coloured paper instead of playingwith fire, " objected Cicely. 

A footman came round the corner with the trained silence that tactfullycontrives to make itself felt. 

"Mr. Luton to see you, Madam, " he announced, "shall I say you are in?"

"Mr. Luton? Oh, yes, " said Cicely, "he'll probably have something totell us about Gorla's concert, " she added, turning to Ronnie. 

Tony Luton was a young man who had sprung from the people, and had takencare that there should be no recoil. He was scarcely twenty years ofage, but a tightly packed chronicle of vicissitudes lay behind hissprightly insouciant appearance. Since his fifteenth year he had lived, Heaven knew how, getting sometimes a minor engagement at some minor music-hall, sometimes a temporary job as secretary-valet-companion to a rovinginvalid, dining now and then on plovers' eggs and asparagus at one of thesmarter West End restaurants, at other times devouring a kipper or asausage in some stuffy Edgware Road eating-house; always seemingly amusedby life, and always amusing. It is possible that somewhere in such heartas he possessed there lurked a rankling bitterness against the hardthings of life, or a scrap of gratitude towards the one or two friendswho had helped him disinterestedly, but his most intimate associatescould not have guessed at the existence of such feelings. Tony Luton wasjust a merry-eyed dancing faun, whom Fate had surrounded with streetsinstead of woods, and it would have been in the highest degree inartisticto have sounded him for a heart or a heartache. 

The dancing of the faun took one day a livelier and more assured turn, the joyousness became more real, and the worst of the vicissitudes seemedsuddenly over. A musical friend, gifted with mediocre but marketableabilities, supplied Tony with a song, for which he obtained a trialperformance at an East End hall. Dressed as a jockey, for no particularreason except that the costume suited him, he sang, "They quaff the gaybubbly in Eccleston Square" to an appreciative audience, which includedthe manager of a famous West End theatre of varieties. Tony and his songwon the managerial favour, and were immediately transplanted to the WestEnd house, where they scored a success of which the drooping music-hallindustry was at the moment badly in need. 

It was just after the great catastrophe, and men of the London world werein no humour to think; they had witnessed the inconceivable befall them, they had nothing but political ruin to stare at, and they were anxious tolook the other way. The words of Tony's song were more or lessmeaningless, though he sang them remarkably well, but the tune, with itsair of slyness and furtive joyousness, appealed in some unaccountablemanner to people who were furtively unhappy, and who were trying toappear stoically cheerful. 

"What must be, must be, " and "It's a poor heart that never rejoices, "were the popular expressions of the London public at that moment, and themen who had to cater for that public were thankful when they were able tostumble across anything that fitted in with the prevailing mood. For thefirst time in his life Tony Luton discovered that agents and managerswere a leisured class, and that office boys had manners. 

He entered Cicely's drawing-room with the air of one to whom assurance ofmanner has become a sheathed weapon, a court accessory rather than atrade implement. He was more quietly dressed than the usual run of music-hall successes; he had looked critically at life from too many angles notto know that though clothes cannot make a man they can certainly damnhim. 

"Thank you, I have lunched already, " he said in answer to a question fromCicely. "Thank you, " he said again in a cheerful affirmative, as thequestion of hock in a tall ice-cold goblet was propounded to him. 

"I've come to tell you the latest about the Gorla Mustelford evening, " hecontinued. "Old Laurent is putting his back into it, and it's reallygoing to be rather a big affair. She's going to out-Russian theRussians. Of course, she hasn't their technique nor a tenth of theirtraining, but she's having tons of advertisement. The name Gorla isalmost an advertisement in itself, and then there's the fact that she'sthe daughter of a peer. "

"She has temperament, " said Cicely, with the decision of one who makes avague statement in a good cause. 

"So Laurent says, " observed Tony. "He discovers temperament in every onethat he intends to boom. He told me that I had temperament to the finger-tips, and I was too polite to contradict him. But I haven't told you thereally important thing about the Mustelford debut. It is a profoundsecret, more or less, so you must promise not to breathe a word about ittill half-past four, when it will appear in all the six o'clocknewspapers. "

Tony paused for dramatic effect, while he drained his goblet, and thenmade his announcement. 

"Majesty is going to be present. Informally and unofficially, but stillpresent in the flesh. A sort of casual dropping in, carefully heraldedby unconfirmed rumour a week ahead. "

"Heavens!" exclaimed Cicely, in genuine excitement, "what a bold stroke. Lady Shalem has worked that, I bet. I suppose it will go down allright. "

"Trust Laurent to see to that, " said Tony, "he knows how to fill hishouse with the right sort of people, and he's not the one to risk afiasco. He knows what he's about. I tell you, it's going to be a bigevening. "

"I say!" exclaimed Ronnie suddenly, "give a supper party here for Gorlaon the night, and ask the Shalem woman and all her crowd. It will beawful fun. "

Cicely caught at the suggestion with some enthusiasm. She did notparticularly care for Lady Shalem, but she thought it would be just aswell to care for her as far as outward appearances went. 

Grace, Lady Shalem, was a woman who had blossomed into sudden importanceby constituting herself a sort of foster-mother to the fait accompli. Ata moment when London was denuded of most of its aforetime social leadersshe had seen her opportunity, and made the most of it. She had notcontented herself with bowing to the inevitable, she had stretched outher hand to it, and forced herself to smile graciously at it, and herpolite attentions had been reciprocated. Lady Shalem, without being abeauty or a wit, or a grand lady in the traditional sense of the word, was in a fair way to becoming a power in the land; others, more capableand with stronger claims to social recognition, would doubtlessovershadow her and displace her in due course, but for the moment she wasa person whose good graces counted for something, and Cicely was quitealive to the advantage of being in those good graces. 

"It would be rather fun, " she said, running over in her mind thepossibilities of the suggested supper-party. 

"It would be jolly useful, " put in Ronnie eagerly; "you could get allsorts of interesting people together, and it would be an excellentadvertisement for Gorla. "

Ronnie approved of supper-parties on principle, but he was also thinkingof the advantage which might accrue to the drawing-room concert whichCicely had projected (with himself as the chief performer), if he couldbe brought into contact with a wider circle of music patrons. 

"I know it would be useful, " said Cicely, "it would be almost historical;there's no knowing who might not come to it--and things are dreadfullyslack in the entertaining line just now. "

The ambitious note in her character was making itself felt at thatmoment. 

"Let's go down to the library, and work out a list of people to invite, "said Ronnie. 

A servant entered the room and made a brief announcement. 

"Mr. Yeovil has arrived, madam. "

"Bother, " said Ronnie sulkily. "Now you'll cool off about that supperparty, and turn down Gorla and the rest of us. "

It was certainly true that the supper already seemed a more difficultproposition in Cicely's eyes than it had a moment or two ago. 

 "'You'll not forget my only daughter, E'en though Saphia has crossed the sea, '"

quoted Tony, with mocking laughter in his voice and eyes. 

Cicely went down to greet her husband. She felt that she was probablyvery glad that he was home once more; she was angry with herself for notfeeling greater certainty on the point. Even the well-beloved, however, can select the wrong moment for return. If Cicely Yeovil's heart waslike a singing-bird, it was of a kind that has frequent lapses intosilence. 

CHAPTER II: THE HOMECOMING

Murrey Yeovil got out of the boat-train at Victoria Station, and stoodwaiting, in an attitude something between listlessness and impatience, while a porter dragged his light travelling kit out of the railwaycarriage and went in search of his heavier baggage with a hand-truck. Yeovil was a grey-faced young man, with restless eyes, and a ratherwistful mouth, and an air of lassitude that was evidently only atemporary characteristic. The hot dusty station, with its blended crowdsof dawdling and scurrying people, its little streams of suburbanpassengers pouring out every now and then from this or that platform, like ants swarming across a garden path, made a wearisome climax to whathad been a rather wearisome journey. Yeovil glanced quickly, almostfurtively, around him in all directions, with the air of a man who isconstrained by morbid curiosity to look for things that he would rathernot see. The announcements placed in German alternatively with Englishover the booking office, left-luggage office, refreshment buffets, and soforth, the crowned eagle and monogram displayed on the post boxes, caughthis eye in quick succession. 

He turned to help the porter to shepherd his belongings on to the truck, and followed him to the outer yard of the station, where a string of taxi-cabs was being slowly absorbed by an outpouring crowd of travellers. 

Portmanteaux, wraps, and a trunk or two, much be-labelled andtravel-worn, were stowed into a taxi, and Yeovil turned to give thedirection to the driver. 

"Twenty-eight, Berkshire Street. "

"Berkschirestrasse, acht-und-zwanzig, " echoed the man, a bulky spectacledindividual of unmistakable Teuton type. 

"Twenty-eight, Berkshire Street, " repeated Yeovil, and got into the cab, leaving the driver to re-translate the direction into his own language. 

A succession of cabs leaving the station blocked the roadway for a momentor two, and Yeovil had leisure to observe the fact that Viktoria Strassewas lettered side by side with the familiar English name of the street. Anotice directing the public to the neighbouring swimming baths was alsowritten up in both languages. London had become a bi-lingual city, evenas Warsaw. 

The cab threaded its way swiftly along Buckingham Palace Road towards theMall. As they passed the long front of the Palace the traveller turnedhis head resolutely away, that he might not see the alien uniforms at thegates and the eagle standard flapping in the sunlight. The taxi driver, who seemed to have combative instincts, slowed down as he was turninginto the Mall, and pointed to the white pile of memorial statuary infront of the palace gates. 

"Grossmutter Denkmal, yes, " he announced, and resumed his journey. 

Arrived at his destination, Yeovil stood on the steps of his house andpressed the bell with an odd sense of forlornness, as though he were astranger drifting from nowhere into a land that had no cognisance of him;a moment later he was standing in his own hall, the object of respectfulsolicitude and attention. Sprucely garbed and groomed lackeys busiedthemselves with his battered travel-soiled baggage; the door closed onthe guttural-voiced taxi driver, and the glaring July sunshine. Thewearisome journey was over. 

"Poor dear, how dreadfully pulled-down you look, " said Cicely, when thefirst greetings had been exchanged. 

"It's been a slow business, getting well, " said Yeovil. "I'm only three-quarter way there yet. "

He looked at his reflection in a mirror and laughed ruefully. 

"You should have seen what I looked like five or six weeks ago, " headded. 

"You ought to have let me come out and nurse you, " said Cicely; "you knowI wanted to. "

"Oh, they nursed me well enough, " said Yeovil, "and it would have been ashame dragging you out there; a small Finnish health resort, out of theseason, is not a very amusing place, and it would have been worse for anyone who didn't talk Russian. "

"You must have been buried alive there, " said Cicely, with commiserationin her voice. 

"I wanted to be buried alive, " said Yeovil. "The news from the outerworld was not of a kind that helped a despondent invalid towardsconvalescence. They spoke to me as little as possible about what washappening, and I was grateful for your letters because they also told mevery little. When one is abroad, among foreigners, one's country'smisfortunes cause one an acuter, more personal distress, than they wouldat home even. "

"Well, you are at home now, anyway, " said Cicely, "and you can jog alongthe road to complete recovery at your own pace. A little quiet shootingthis autumn and a little hunting, just enough to keep you fit and not toovertire you; you mustn't overtax your strength. "

"I'm getting my strength back all right, " said Yeovil. "This journeyhasn't tired me half as much as one might have expected. It's the awfuldrag of listlessness, mental and physical, that is the worst after-effectof these marsh fevers; they drain the energy out of you in bucketfuls, and it trickles back again in teaspoonfuls. And just now untiring energyis what I shall need, even more than strength; I don't want to degenerateinto a slacker. "

"Look here, Murrey, " said Cicely, "after we've had dinner together to-night, I'm going to do a seemingly unwifely thing. I'm going to go outand leave you alone with an old friend. Doctor Holham is coming in todrink coffee and smoke with you. I arranged this because I knew it waswhat you would like. Men can talk these things over best by themselves, and Holham can tell you everything that happened--since you went away. Itwill be a dreary story, I'm afraid, but you will want to hear it all. Itwas a nightmare time, but now one sees it in a calmer perspective. "

"I feel in a nightmare still, " said Yeovil. 

"We all felt like that, " said Cicely, rather with the air of an elderperson who tells a child that it will understand things better when itgrows up; "time is always something of a narcotic you know. Things seemabsolutely unbearable, and then bit by bit we find out that we arebearing them. And now, dear, I'll fill up your notification paper andleave you to superintend your unpacking. Robert will give you any helpyou want. "

"What is the notification paper?" asked Yeovil. 

"Oh, a stupid form to be filled up when any one arrives, to say wherethey come from, and their business and nationality and religion, and allthat sort of thing. We're rather more bureaucratic than we used to be, you know. "

Yeovil said nothing, but into the sallow greyness of his face there crepta dark flush, that faded presently and left his colour more grey andbloodless than before. 

The journey seemed suddenly to have recommenced; he was under his ownroof, his servants were waiting on him, his familiar possessions were inevidence around him, but the sense of being at home had vanished. It wasas though he had arrived at some wayside hotel, and been asked toregister his name and status and destination. Other things of disgustand irritation he had foreseen in the London he was coming to--thealterations on stamps and coinage, the intrusive Teuton element, thealien uniforms cropping up everywhere, the new orientation of sociallife; such things he was prepared for, but this personal evidence of hissubject state came on him unawares, at a moment when he had, so to speak, laid his armour aside. Cicely spoke lightly of the hateful formalitythat had been forced on them; would he, too, come to regard things in thesame acquiescent spirit?

CHAPTER III: "THE METSKIE TSAR"

"I was in the early stages of my fever when I got the first inkling ofwhat was going on, " said Yeovil to the doctor, as they sat over theircoffee in a recess of the big smoking-room; "just able to potter about abit in the daytime, fighting against depression and inertia, feverish asevening came on, and delirious in the night. My game tracker and myattendant were both Buriats, and spoke very little Russian, and that wasthe only language we had in common to converse in. In matters concerningfood and sport we soon got to understand each other, but on othersubjects we were not easily able to exchange ideas. One day my trackerhad been to a distant trading-store to get some things of which we werein need; the store was eighty miles from the nearest point of railroad, eighty miles of terribly bad roads, but it was in its way a centre andtransmitter of news from the outside world. The tracker brought backwith him vague tidings of a conflict of some sort between the 'MetskieTsar' and the 'Angliskie Tsar, ' and kept repeating the Russian word fordefeat. The 'Angliskie Tsar' I recognised, of course, as the King ofEngland, but my brain was too sick and dull to read any further meaninginto the man's reiterated gabble. I grew so ill just then that I had togive up the struggle against fever, and make my way as best I couldtowards the nearest point where nursing and doctoring could be had. Itwas one evening, in a lonely rest-hut on the edge of a huge forest, as Iwas waiting for my boy to bring the meal for which I was feverishlyimpatient, and which I knew I should loathe as soon as it was brought, that the explanation of the word 'Metskie' flashed on me. I had thoughtof it as referring to some Oriental potentate, some rebellious rajahperhaps, who was giving trouble, and whose followers had possiblydiscomfited an isolated British force in some out-of-the-way corner ofour Empire. And all of a sudden I knew that 'Nemetskie Tsar, ' GermanEmperor, had been the name that the man had been trying to convey to me. I shouted for the tracker, and put him through a breathlesscross-examination; he confirmed what my fears had told me. The 'MetskieTsar' was a big European ruler, he had been in conflict with the'Angliskie Tsar, ' and the latter had been defeated, swept away; the manspoke the word that he used for ships, and made energetic pantomime toexpress the sinking of a fleet. Holham, there was nothing for it but tohope that this was a false, groundless rumour, that had somehow crept tothe confines of civilisation. In my saner balanced moments it waspossible to disbelieve it, but if you have ever suffered from deliriumyou will know what raging torments of agony I went through in the nights, how my brain fought and refought that rumoured disaster. "

The doctor gave a murmur of sympathetic understanding. 

"Then, " continued Yeovil, "I reached the small Siberian town towardswhich I had been struggling. There was a little colony of Russiansthere, traders, officials, a doctor or two, and some army officers. Iput up at the primitive hotel-restaurant, which was the general gathering-place of the community. I knew quickly that the news was true. Russiansare the most tactful of any European race that I have ever met; they didnot stare with insolent or pitying curiosity, but there was somethingchanged in their attitude which told me that the travelling Briton was nolonger in their eyes the interesting respect-commanding personality thathe had been in past days. I went to my own room, where the samovar wasbubbling its familiar tune and a smiling red-shirted Russian boy washelping my Buriat servant to unpack my wardrobe, and I asked for any backnumbers of newspapers that could be supplied at a moment's notice. I wasgiven a bundle of well-thumbed sheets, odd pieces of the Novoe Vremya, the Moskovskie Viedomosti, one or two complete numbers of local paperspublished at Perm and Tobolsk. I do not read Russian well, though Ispeak it fairly readily, but from the fragments of disconnected telegramsthat I pieced together I gathered enough information to acquaint me withthe extent of the tragedy that had been worked out in a few crowded hoursin a corner of North-Western Europe. I searched frantically fortelegrams of later dates that would put a better complexion on thematter, that would retrieve something from the ruin; presently I cameacross a page of the illustrated supplement that the Novoe Vremyapublishes once a week. There was a photograph of a long-fronted buildingwith a flag flying over it, labelled 'The new standard floating overBuckingham Palace. ' The picture was not much more than a smudge, but theflag, possibly touched up, was unmistakable. It was the eagle of theNemetskie Tsar. I have a vivid recollection of that plainly-furnishedlittle room, with the inevitable gilt ikon in one corner, and the samovarhissing and gurgling on the table, and the thrumming music of a balalaikaorchestra coming up from the restaurant below; the next coherent thing Ican remember was weeks and weeks later, discussing in an impersonaldetached manner whether I was strong enough to stand the fatigue of thelong railway journey to Finland. 

"Since then, Holham, I have been encouraged to keep my mind as much offthe war and public affairs as possible, and I have been glad to do so. Iknew the worst and there was no particular use in deepening mydespondency by dragging out the details. But now I am more or less alive man again, and I want to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of whathappened. You know how much I know, and how little; those fragments ofRussian newspapers were about all the information that I had. I don'teven know clearly how the whole thing started. "

Yeovil settled himself back in his chair with the air of a man who hasdone some necessary talking, and now assumes the role of listener. 

"It started, " said the doctor, "with a wholly unimportant disagreementabout some frontier business in East Africa; there was a slight attack ofnerves in the stock markets, and then the whole thing seemed in a fairway towards being settled. Then the negotiations over the affair beganto drag unduly, and there was a further flutter of nervousness in themoney world. And then one morning the papers reported a highly menacingspeech by one of the German Ministers, and the situation began to lookblack indeed. 'He will be disavowed, ' every one said over here, but inless than twenty-four hours those who knew anything knew that the crisiswas on us--only their knowledge came too late. 'War between two suchcivilised and enlightened nations is an impossibility, ' one of ourleaders of public opinion had declared on the Saturday; by the followingFriday the war had indeed become an impossibility, because we could nolonger carry it on. It burst on us with calculated suddenness, and wewere just not enough, everywhere where the pressure came. Our ships weregood against their ships, our seamen were better than their seamen, butour ships were not able to cope with their ships plus their superiorityin aircraft. Our trained men were good against their trained men, butthey could not be in several places at once, and the enemy could. Ourhalf-trained men and our untrained men could not master the science ofwar at a moment's notice, and a moment's notice was all they got. Theenemy were a nation apprenticed in arms, we were not even the idleapprentice: we had not deemed apprenticeship worth our while. There wascourage enough running loose in the land, but it was like unharnessedelectricity, it controlled no forces, it struck no blows. There was notime for the heroism and the devotion which a drawn-out struggle, howeverhopeless, can produce; the war was over almost as soon as it had begun. After the reverses which happened with lightning rapidity in the firstthree days of warfare, the newspapers made no effort to pretend that thesituation could be retrieved; editors and public alike recognised thatthese were blows over the heart, and that it was a matter of momentsbefore we were counted out. One might liken the whole affair to a snapcheckmate early in a game of chess; one side had thought out the moves, and brought the requisite pieces into play, the other side was hamperedand helpless, with its resources unavailable, its strategy discounted inadvance. That, in a nutshell, is the history of the war. "

Yeovil was silent for a moment or two, then he asked:

"And the sequel, the peace?"

"The collapse was so complete that I fancy even the enemy were hardlyprepared for the consequences of their victory. No one had quiterealised what one disastrous campaign would mean for an island nationwith a closely packed population. The conquerors were in a position todictate what terms they pleased, and it was not wonderful that theirideas of aggrandisement expanded in the hour of intoxication. There wasno European combination ready to say them nay, and certainly no one Powerwas going to be rash enough to step in to contest the terms of the treatythat they imposed on the conquered. Annexation had probably never been adream before the war; after the war it suddenly became temptinglypractical. Warum nicht? became the theme of leader-writers in the Germanpress; they pointed out that Britain, defeated and humiliated, but withenormous powers of recuperation, would be a dangerous and inevitableenemy for the Germany of to-morrow, while Britain incorporated within theHohenzollern Empire would merely be a disaffected province, without anavy to make its disaffection a serious menace, and with great tax-payingcapabilities, which would be available for relieving the burdens of theother Imperial States. Wherefore, why not annex? The warum nicht? partyprevailed. Our King, as you know, retired with his Court to Delhi, asEmperor in the East, with most of his overseas dominions still subject tohis sway. The British Isles came under the German Crown as a Reichsland, a sort of Alsace-Lorraine washed by the North Sea instead of the Rhine. We still retain our Parliament, but it is a clipped and pruned-downshadow of its former self, with most of its functions in abeyance; whenthe elections were held it was difficult to get decent candidates to comeforward or to get people to vote. It makes one smile bitterly to thinkthat a year or two ago we were seriously squabbling as to who should havevotes. And, of course, the old party divisions have more or lesscrumbled away. The Liberals naturally are under the blackest of clouds, for having steered the country to disaster, though to do them justice itwas no more their fault than the fault of any other party. In ademocracy such as ours was the Government of the day must more or lessreflect the ideas and temperament of the nation in all vital matters, andthe British nation in those days could not have been persuaded of theurgent need for military apprenticeship or of the deadly nature of itsdanger. It was willing now and then to be half-frightened and to havehalf-measures, or, one might better say, quarter-measures taken toreassure it, and the governments of the day were willing to take them, but any political party or group of statesmen that had said 'the dangeris enormous and immediate, the sacrifices and burdens must be enormousand immediate, ' would have met with certain defeat at the polls. Still, of course, the Liberals, as the party that had held office for nearly adecade, incurred the odium of a people maddened by defeat andhumiliation; one Minister, who had had less responsibility for militaryorganisation than perhaps any of them, was attacked and nearly killed atNewcastle, another was hiding for three days on Exmoor, and escaped indisguise. "

"And the Conservatives?"

"They are also under eclipse, but it is more or less voluntary in theircase. For generations they had taken their stand as supporters of Throneand Constitution, and when they suddenly found the Constitution gone andthe Throne filled by an alien dynasty, their political orientation hadvanished. They are in much the same position as the Jacobites occupiedafter the Hanoverian accession. Many of the leading Tory families haveemigrated to the British lands beyond the seas, others are shut up intheir country houses, retrenching their expenses, selling their acres, and investing their money abroad. The Labour faction, again, are almostin as bad odour as the Liberals, because of having hob-nobbed tooeffusively and ostentatiously with the German democratic parties on theeve of the war, exploiting an evangel of universal brotherhood which didnot blunt a single Teuton bayonet when the hour came. I suppose in timeparty divisions will reassert themselves in some form or other; therewill be a Socialist Party, and the mercantile and manufacturing interestswill evolve a sort of bourgeoise party, and the different religiousbodies will try to get themselves represented--"

Yeovil made a movement of impatience. 

"All these things that you forecast, " he said, "must take time, considerable time; is this nightmare, then, to go on for ever?"

"It is not a nightmare, unfortunately, " said the doctor, "it is areality. "

"But, surely--a nation such as ours, a virile, highly-civilised nationwith an age-long tradition of mastery behind it, cannot be held under forever by a few thousand bayonets and machine guns. We must surely rise upone day and drive them out. "

"Dear man, " said the doctor, "we might, of course, at some given momentoverpower the garrison that is maintained here, and seize the forts, andperhaps we might be able to mine the harbours; what then? In a fortnightor so we could be starved into unconditional submission. Remember, allthe advantages of isolated position that told in our favour while we hadthe sea dominion, tell against us now that the sea dominion is in otherhands. The enemy would not need to mobilise a single army corps or tobring a single battleship into action; a fleet of nimble cruisers anddestroyers circling round our coasts would be sufficient to shut out ourfood supplies. "

"Are you trying to tell me that this is a final overthrow?" said Yeovilin a shaking voice; "are we to remain a subject race like the Poles?"

"Let us hope for a better fate, " said the doctor. "Our opportunity maycome if the Master Power is ever involved in an unsuccessful naval warwith some other nation, or perhaps in some time of European crisis, wheneverything hung in the balance, our latent hostility might have to besquared by a concession of independence. That is what we have to hopefor and watch for. On the other hand, the conquerors have to count ontime and tact to weaken and finally obliterate the old feelings ofnationality; the middle-aged of to-day will grow old and acquiescent inthe changed state of things; the young generations will grow up neverhaving known anything different. It's a far cry to Delhi, as the oldIndian proverb says, and the strange half-European, half-Asiatic Courtout there will seem more and more a thing exotic and unreal. 'The Kingacross the water' was a rallying-cry once upon a time in our history, buta king on the further side of the Indian Ocean is a shadowy competitorfor one who alternates between Potsdam and Windsor. "

"I want you to tell me everything, " said Yeovil, after another pause;"tell me, Holham, how far has this obliterating process of 'time andtact' gone? It seems to be pretty fairly started already. I bought anewspaper as soon as I landed, and I read it in the train coming up. Iread things that puzzled and disgusted me. There were announcements ofconcerts and plays and first-nights and private views; there were evensmall dances. There were advertisements of house-boats and week-endcottages and string bands for garden parties. It struck me that it wasrather like merrymaking with a dead body lying in the house. "

"Yeovil, " said the doctor, "you must bear in mind two things. First, thenecessity for the life of the country going on as if nothing hadhappened. It is true that many thousands of our working men and womenhave emigrated and thousands of our upper and middle class too; they werethe people who were not tied down by business, or who could afford to cutthose ties. But those represent comparatively a few out of the many. Thegreat businesses and the small businesses must go on, people must be fedand clothed and housed and medically treated, and their thousand-and-onewants and necessities supplied. Look at me, for instance; however much Iloathe coming under a foreign domination and paying taxes to an aliengovernment, I can't abandon my practice and my patients, and set up anewin Toronto or Allahabad, and if I could, some other doctor would have totake my place here. I or that other doctor must have our servants andmotors and food and furniture and newspapers, even our sport. The golflinks and the hunting field have been well-nigh deserted since the war, but they are beginning to get back their votaries because out-door sporthas become a necessity, and a very rational necessity, with numbers ofmen who have to work otherwise under unnatural and exacting conditions. That is one factor of the situation. The other affects London moreespecially, but through London it influences the rest of the country to acertain extent. You will see around you here much that will strike youas indications of heartless indifference to the calamity that hasbefallen our nation. Well, you must remember that many things in modernlife, especially in the big cities, are not national but international. In the world of music and art and the drama, for instance, the foreignnames are legion, they confront you at every turn, and some of ourBritish devotees of such arts are more acclimatised to the ways of Munichor Moscow than they are familiar with the life, say, of Stirling or York. For years they have lived and thought and spoken in an atmosphere andjargon of denationalised culture--even those of them who have never leftour shores. They would take pains to be intimately familiar with thedomestic affairs and views of life of some Galician gipsy dramatist, andgravely quote and discuss his opinions on debts and mistresses andcookery, while they would shudder at 'D'ye ken John Peel?' as a piece ofuncouth barbarity. You cannot expect a world of that sort to bepermanently concerned or downcast because the Crown of Charlemagne takesits place now on the top of the Royal box in the theatres, or at the headof programmes at State concerts. And then there are the Jews. "

"There are many in the land, or at least in London, " said Yeovil. 

"There are even more of them now than there used to be, " said Holham. "Iam to a great extent a disliker of Jews myself, but I will be fair tothem, and admit that those of them who were in any genuine sense Britishhave remained British and have stuck by us loyally in our misfortune; allhonour to them. But of the others, the men who by temperament andeverything else were far more Teuton or Polish or Latin than they wereBritish, it was not to be expected that they would be heartbroken becauseLondon had suddenly lost its place among the political capitals of theworld, and became a cosmopolitan city. They had appreciated the free andeasy liberty of the old days, under British rule, but there was a stiffinsularity in the ruling race that they chafed against. Now, puttingaside some petty Government restrictions that Teutonic bureaucracy hasbrought in, there is really, in their eyes, more licence and socialadaptability in London than before. It has taken on some of the aspectsof a No-Man's-Land, and the Jew, if he likes, may almost consider himselfas of the dominant race; at any rate he is ubiquitous. Pleasure, of thecafe and cabaret and boulevard kind, the sort of thing that gave Berlinthe aspect of the gayest capital in Europe within the last decade, thatis the insidious leaven that will help to denationalise London. Berlinwill probably climb back to some of its old austerity and simplicity, aworld-ruling city with a great sense of its position and itsresponsibilities, while London will become more and more the centre ofwhat these people understand by life. "

Yeovil made a movement of impatience and disgust. 

"I know, I know, " said the doctor, sympathetically; "life and enjoymentmean to you the howl of a wolf in a forest, the call of a wild swan onthe frozen tundras, the smell of a wood fire in some little inn among themountains. There is more music to you in the quick thud, thud of hoofson desert mud as a free-stepping horse is led up to your tent door thanin all the dronings and flourishes that a highly-paid orchestra can reelout to an expensively fed audience. But the tastes of modern London, aswe see them crystallised around us, lie in a very different direction. People of the world that I am speaking of, our dominant world at thepresent moment, herd together as closely packed to the square yard aspossible, doing nothing worth doing, and saying nothing worth saying, butdoing it and saying it over and over again, listening to the samemelodies, watching the same artistes, echoing the same catchwords, ordering the same dishes in the same restaurants, suffering each other'scigarette smoke and perfumes and conversation, feverishly, anxiouslymaking arrangements to meet each other again to-morrow, next week, andthe week after next, and repeat the same gregarious experience. If theywere not herded together in a corner of western London, watching eachother with restless intelligent eyes, they would be herded together atBrighton or Dieppe, doing the same thing. Well, you will find that lifeof that sort goes forward just as usual, only it is even more prominentand noticeable now because there is less public life of other kinds. "

Yeovil said something which was possibly the Buriat word for the netherworld. Outside in the neighbouring square a band had been playing atintervals during the evening. Now it struck up an air that Yeovil hadalready heard whistled several times since his landing, an air with acaptivating suggestion of slyness and furtive joyousness running throughit. 

He rose and walked across to the window, opening it a little wider. Helistened till the last notes had died away. 

"What is that tune they have just played?" he asked. 

"You'll hear it often enough, " said the doctor. "A Frenchman writing inthe Matin the other day called it the 'National Anthem of the faitaccompli. '"

CHAPTER IV: "ES IST VERBOTEN"

Yeovil wakened next morning to the pleasant sensation of being in ahousehold where elaborate machinery for the smooth achievement of one'sdaily life was noiselessly and unceasingly at work. Fever and the longweariness of convalescence in indifferently comfortable surroundings hadgiven luxury a new value in his eyes. Money had not always beenplentiful with him in his younger days; in his twenty-eighth year he hadinherited a fairly substantial fortune, and he had married a wealthywoman a few months later. It was characteristic of the man and his breedthat the chief use to which he had put his newly-acquired wealth had beenin seizing the opportunity which it gave him for indulging in unlimitedtravel in wild, out-of-the-way regions, where the comforts of life weremeagrely represented. Cicely occasionally accompanied him to thethreshold of his expeditions, such as Cairo or St. Petersburg orConstantinople, but her own tastes in the matter of roving were more orless condensed within an area that comprised Cannes, Homburg, theScottish Highlands, and the Norwegian Fiords. Things outlandish andbarbaric appealed to her chiefly when presented under artistic but highlycivilised stage management on the boards of Covent Garden, and if shewanted to look at wolves or sand grouse, she preferred doing so in thecompany of an intelligent Fellow of the Zoological Society on some fineSunday afternoon in Regent's Park. It was one of the bonds of union andgood-fellowship between her husband and herself that each understood andsympathised with the other's tastes without in the least wanting to sharethem; they went their own ways and were pleased and comrade-like when theways happened to run together for a span, without self-reproach or heart-searching when the ways diverged. Moreover, they had separate andadequate banking accounts, which constitute, if not the keys of thematrimonial Heaven, at least the oil that lubricates them. 

Yeovil found Cicely and breakfast waiting for him in the cool breakfast-room, and enjoyed, with the appreciation of a recent invalid, the comfortand resources of a meal that had not to be ordered or thought about inadvance, but seemed as though it were there, fore-ordained from thebeginning of time in its smallest detail. Each desire of thebreakfasting mind seemed to have its realisation in some dish, lurkingunobtrusively in hidden corners until asked for. Did one want grilledmushrooms, English fashion, they were there, black and moist andsizzling, and extremely edible; did one desire mushrooms a la Russe, theyappeared, blanched and cool and toothsome under their white blanketing ofsauce. At one's bidding was a service of coffee, prepared with rathermore forethought and circumspection than would go to the preparation of arevolution in a South American Republic. 

The exotic blooms that reigned in profusion over the other parts of thehouse were scrupulously banished from the breakfast-room; bowls of wildthyme and other flowering weeds of the meadow and hedgerow gave it anatmosphere of country freshness that was in keeping with the morningmeal. 

"You look dreadfully tired still, " said Cicely critically, "otherwise Iwould recommend a ride in the Park, before it gets too hot. There is anew cob in the stable that you will just love, but he is rather lively, and you had better content yourself for the present with some more sedateexercise than he is likely to give you. He is apt to try and jump out ofhis skin when the flies tease him. The Park is rather jolly for a walkjust now. "

"I think that will be about my form after my long journey, " said Yeovil, "an hour's stroll before lunch under the trees. That ought not tofatigue me unduly. In the afternoon I'll look up one or two people. "

"Don't count on finding too many of your old set, " said Cicely ratherhurriedly. "I dare say some of them will find their way back some time, but at present there's been rather an exodus. "

"The Bredes, " said Yeovil, "are they here?"

"No, the Bredes are in Scotland, at their place in Sutherlandshire; theydon't come south now, and the Ricardes are farming somewhere in EastAfrica, the whole lot of them. Valham has got an appointment of somesort in the Straits Settlement, and has taken his family with him. TheCollards are down at their mother's place in Norfolk; a German banker hasbought their house in Manchester Square. "

"And the Hebways?" asked Yeovil. 

"Dick Hebway is in India, " said Cicely, "but his mother lives in Paris;poor Hugo, you know, was killed in the war. My friends the Allinsons arein Paris too. It's rather a clearance, isn't it? However, there aresome left, and I expect others will come back in time. Pitherby is here;he's one of those who are trying to make the best of things under the newregime. "

"He would be, " said Yeovil, shortly. 

"It's a difficult question, " said Cicely, "whether one should stay athome and face the music or go away and live a transplanted life under theBritish flag. Either attitude might be dictated by patriotism. "

"It is one thing to face the music, it is another thing to dance to it, "said Yeovil. 

Cicely poured out some more coffee for herself and changed theconversation. 

"You'll be in to lunch, I suppose? The Clubs are not very attractivejust now, I believe, and the restaurants are mostly hot in the middle ofthe day. Ronnie Storre is coming in; he's here pretty often these days. A rather good-looking young animal with something mid-way between talentand genius in the piano-playing line. "

"Not long-haired and Semetic or Tcheque or anything of that sort, Isuppose?" asked Yeovil. 

Cicely laughed at the vision of Ronnie conjured up by her husband'swords. 

"No, beautifully groomed and clipped and Anglo-Saxon. I expect you'lllike him. He plays bridge almost as well as he plays the piano. Isuppose you wonder at any one who can play bridge well wanting to playthe piano. "

"I'm not quite so intolerant as all that, " said Yeovil; "anyhow I promiseto like Ronnie. Is any one else coming to lunch?"

"Joan Mardle will probably drop in, in fact I'm afraid she's a certainty. She invited herself in that way of hers that brooks of no refusal. Onthe other hand, as a mitigating circumstance, there will be a pointd'asperge omelette such as few kitchens could turn out, so don't belate. "

Yeovil set out for his morning walk with the curious sensation of one whostarts on a voyage of discovery in a land that is well known to him. Heturned into the Park at Hyde Park corner and made his way along thefamiliar paths and alleys that bordered the Row. The familiarityvanished when he left the region of fenced-in lawns and rhododendronbushes and came to the open space that stretched away beyond thebandstand. The bandstand was still there, and a military band, in sky-blue Saxon uniform, was executing the first item in the forenoonprogramme of music. Around it, instead of the serried rows of greenchairs that Yeovil remembered, was spread out an acre or so of smallround tables, most of which had their quota of customers, engaged in asteady consumption of lager beer, coffee, lemonade and syrups. Furtherin the background, but well within earshot of the band, a gaily paintedpagoda-restaurant sheltered a number of more commodious tables under itsawnings, and gave a hint of convenient indoor accommodation for wet orwindy weather. Movable screens of trellis-trained foliage and climbingroses formed little hedges by means of which any particular table couldbe shut off from its neighbours if semi-privacy were desired. One or twodecorative advertisements of popularised brands of champagne and Rhinewines adorned the outside walls of the building, and under the centralgable of its upper story was a flamboyant portrait of a stern-faced man, whose image and superscription might also be found on the newer coinageof the land. A mass of bunting hung in folds round the flag-pole on thegable, and blew out now and then on a favouring breeze, a longthree-coloured strip, black, white, and scarlet, and over the whole scenethe elm trees towered with an absurd sardonic air of nothing havingchanged around their roots. 

Yeovil stood for a minute or two, taking in every detail of theunfamiliar spectacle. 

"They have certainly accomplished something that we never attempted, " hemuttered to himself. Then he turned on his heel and made his way back tothe shady walk that ran alongside the Row. At first sight little waschanged in the aspect of the well-known exercising ground. One or tworiding masters cantered up and down as of yore, with their attendantbroods of anxious-faced young girls and awkwardly bumping women pupils, while horsey-looking men put marketable animals through their paces ordrew up to the rails for long conversations with horsey-looking friendson foot. Sportingly attired young women, sitting astride of theirhorses, careered by at intervals as though an extremely game fox wereleading hounds a merry chase a short way ahead of them; it all seemedmuch as usual. 

Presently, from the middle distance a bright patch of colour set in awhirl of dust drew rapidly nearer and resolved itself into a group ofcavalry officers extending their chargers in a smart gallop. They werewell mounted and sat their horses to perfection, and they made a braveshow as they raced past Yeovil with a clink and clatter and rhythmicthud, thud, of hoofs, and became once more a patch of colour in a whirlof dust. An answering glow of colour seemed to have burned itself intothe grey face of the young man, who had seen them pass without appearingto look at them, a stinging rush of blood, accompanied by a choking catchin the throat and a hot white blindness across the eyes. The weakness offever broke down at times the rampart of outward indifference that a manof Yeovil's temperament builds coldly round his heartstrings. 

The Row and its riders had become suddenly detestable to the wanderer; hewould not run the risk of seeing that insolently joyous cavalcade comegalloping past again. Beyond a narrow stretch of tree-shaded grass laythe placid sunlit water of the Serpentine, and Yeovil made a short cutacross the turf to reach its gravelled bank. 

"Can't you read either English or German?" asked a policeman whoconfronted him as he stepped off the turf. 

Yeovil stared at the man and then turned to look at the smallneatly-printed notice to which the official was imperiously pointing; intwo languages it was made known that it was forbidden and verboten, punishable and straffbar, to walk on the grass. 

"Three shilling fine, " said the policeman, extending his hand for themoney. 

"Do I pay you?" asked Yeovil, feeling almost inclined to laugh; "I'mrather a stranger to the new order of things. "

"You pay me, " said the policeman, "and you receive a quittance for thesum paid, " and he proceeded to tear a counterfoil receipt for a threeshilling fine from a small pocket book. 

"May I ask, " said Yeovil, as he handed over the sum demanded and receivedhis quittance, "what the red and white band on your sleeve stands for?"

"Bi-lingual, " said the constable, with an air of importance. "Preferenceis given to members of the Force who qualify in both languages. Nearlyall the police engaged on Park duty are bi-lingual. About as manyforeigners as English use the parks nowadays; in fact, on a fine Sundayafternoon, you'll find three foreigners to every two English. The parkhabit is more Continental than British, I take it. "

"And are there many Germans in the police Force?" asked Yeovil. 

"Well, yes, a good few; there had to be, " said the constable; "there weresuch a lot of resignations when the change came, and they had to befilled up somehow. Lots of men what used to be in the Force emigrated orfound work of some other kind, but everybody couldn't take that line;wives and children had to be thought of. 'Tisn't every head of a familythat can chuck up a job on the chance of finding another. Starvation'sbeen the lot of a good many what went out. Those of us that stayed ongot better pay than we did before, but then of course the duties are muchmore multitudinous. "

"They must be, " said Yeovil, fingering his three shilling State document;"by the way, " he asked, "are all the grass plots in the Park out ofbounds for human feet?"

"Everywhere where you see the notices, " said the policeman, "and that'sabout three-fourths of the whole grass space; there's been a lot of newgravel walks opened up in all directions. People don't want to walk onthe grass when they've got clean paths to walk on. "

And with this parting reproof the bi-lingual constable strode heavilyaway, his loss of consideration and self-esteem as a unit of a sometimeruling race evidently compensated for to some extent by his enhancedimportance as an official. 

"The women and children, " thought Yeovil, as he looked after theretreating figure; "yes, that is one side of the problem. The childrenthat have to be fed and schooled, the women folk that have to be caredfor, an old mother, perhaps, in the home that cannot be broken up. Theold case of giving hostages. "

He followed the path alongside the Serpentine, passing under the archwayof the bridge and continuing his walk into Kensington Gardens. Inanother moment he was within view of the Peter Pan statue and at onceobserved that it had companions. On one side was a group representing ascene from one of the Grimm fairy stories, on the other was Alice inconversation with Gryphon and Mockturtle, the episode lookingdistressingly stiff and meaningless in its sculptured form. Two otherspaces had been cleared in the neighbouring turf, evidently for thereception of further statue groups, which Yeovil mentally assigned toStruwelpeter and Little Lord Fauntleroy. 

"German middle-class taste, " he commented, "but in this matter wecertainly gave them a lead. I suppose the idea is that childish fancy isdead and that it is only decent to erect some sort of memorial to it. "

The day was growing hotter, and the Park had ceased to seem a desirableplace to loiter in. Yeovil turned his steps homeward, passing on his waythe bandstand with its surrounding acreage of tables. It was now nearlyone o'clock, and luncheon parties were beginning to assemble under theawnings of the restaurant. Lighter refreshments, in the shape ofsausages and potato salads, were being carried out by scurrying waitersto the drinkers of lager beer at the small tables. A park orchestra, inbrilliant trappings, had taken the place of the military band. As Yeovilpassed the musicians launched out into the tune which the doctor hadtruly predicted he would hear to repletion before he had been many daysin London; the "National Anthem of the fait accompli. "

CHAPTER V: L'ART D'ETRE COUSINE

Joan Mardle had reached forty in the leisurely untroubled fashion of awoman who intends to be comely and attractive at fifty. She cultivated ajovial, almost joyous manner, with a top-dressing of hearty good will andgood nature which disarmed strangers and recent acquaintances; on gettingto know her better they hastily re-armed themselves. Some one had onceaptly described her as a hedgehog with the protective mimicry of apuffball. If there was an awkward remark to be made at an inconvenientmoment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when theoccasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it. She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that adashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in thehabit of travelling on his particular highway. A great-aunt on hermother's side of the family had married so often that Joan imaginedherself justified in claiming cousin-ship with a large circle ofdisconnected houses, and treating them all on a relationship footing, which theoretical kinship enabled her to exact luncheons and otheraccommodations under the plea of keeping the lamp of family life aglow. 

"I felt I simply had to come to-day, " she chuckled at Yeovil; "I was justdying to see the returned traveller. Of course, I know perfectly wellthat neither of you want me, when you haven't seen each other for so longand must have heaps and heaps to say to one another, but I thought Iwould risk the odium of being the third person on an occasion when twoare company and three are a nuisance. Wasn't it brave of me?"

She spoke in full knowledge of the fact that the luncheon party would notin any case have been restricted to Yeovil and his wife, having seenRonnie arrive in the hall as she was being shown upstairs. 

"Ronnie Storre is coming, I believe, " said Cicely, "so you're notbreaking into a tete-a-tete. "

"Ronnie, oh I don't count him, " said Joan gaily; "he's just a boy wholooks nice and eats asparagus. I hear he's getting to play the pianoreally well. Such a pity. He will grow fat; musicians always do, and itwill ruin him. I speak feelingly because I'm gravitating towardsplumpness myself. The Divine Architect turns us out fearfully andwonderfully built, and the result is charming to the eye, and then Headds another chin and two or three extra inches round the waist, and theeffect is ruined. Fortunately you can always find another Ronnie whenthis one grows fat and uninteresting; the supply of boys who look niceand eat asparagus is unlimited. Hullo, Mr. Storre, we were all talkingabout you. "

"Nothing very damaging, I hope?" said Ronnie, who had just entered theroom. 

"No, we were merely deciding that, whatever you may do with your life, your chin must remain single. When one's chin begins to lead a doublelife one's own opportunities for depravity are insensibly narrowed. Youneedn't tell me that you haven't any hankerings after depravity; peoplewith your coloured eyes and hair are always depraved. "

"Let me introduce you to my husband, Ronnie, " said Cicely, "and thenlet's go and begin lunch. "

"You two must almost feel as if you were honeymooning again, " said Joanas they sat down; "you must have quite forgotten each other's tastes andpeculiarities since you last met. Old Emily Fronding was talking aboutyou yesterday, when I mentioned that Murrey was expected home; 'curioussort of marriage tie, ' she said, in that stupid staring way of hers, 'when husband and wife spend most of their time in different continents. I don't call it marriage at all. ' 'Nonsense, ' I said, 'it's the best wayof doing things. The Yeovils will be a united and devoted couple longafter heaps of their married contemporaries have trundled through theDivorce Court. ' I forgot at the moment that her youngest girl haddivorced her husband last year, and that her second girl is rumoured tobe contemplating a similar step. One can't remember everything. "

Joan Mardle was remarkable for being able to remember the smallestdetails in the family lives of two or three hundred acquaintances. 

From personal matters she went with a bound to the political small talkof the moment. 

"The Official Declaration as to the House of Lords is out at last, " shesaid; "I bought a paper just before coming here, but I left it in theTube. All existing titles are to lapse if three successive holders, including the present ones, fail to take the oath of allegiance. "

"Have any taken it up to the present?" asked Yeovil. 

"Only about nineteen, so far, and none of them representing very leadingfamilies; of course others will come in gradually, as the change ofDynasty becomes more and more an accepted fact, and of course there willbe lots of new creations to fill up the gaps. I hear for certain thatPitherby is to get a title of some sort, in recognition of his literarylabours. He has written a short history of the House of Hohenzollern, for use in schools you know, and he's bringing out a popular Life ofFrederick the Great--at least he hopes it will be popular. "

"I didn't know that writing was much in his line, " said Yeovil, "beyondthe occasional editing of a company prospectus. "

"I understand his historical researches have given every satisfaction inexalted quarters, " said Joan; "something may be lacking in the style, perhaps, but the august approval can make good that defect with the styleof Baron. Pitherby has such a kind heart; 'kind hearts are more thancoronets, ' we all know, but the two go quite well together. And the dearman is not content with his services to literature, he's blossoming forthas a liberal patron of the arts. He's taken quite a lot of tickets fordear Gorla's debut; half the second row of the dress-circle. "

"Do you mean Gorla Mustelford?" asked Yeovil, catching at the name; "whaton earth is she having a debut about?"

"What?" cried Joan, in loud-voiced amazement; "haven't you heard? Hasn'tCicely told you? How funny that you shouldn't have heard. Why, it'sgoing to be one of the events of the season. Everybody's talking aboutit. She's going to do suggestion dancing at the Caravansery Theatre. "

"Good Heavens, what is suggestion dancing?" asked Yeovil. 

"Oh, something quite new, " explained Joan; "at any rate the name is quitenew and Gorla is new as far as the public are concerned, and that isenough to establish the novelty of the thing. Among other things shedoes a dance suggesting the life of a fern; I saw one of the rehearsals, and to me it would have equally well suggested the life of John Wesley. However, that is probably the fault of my imagination--I've either gottoo much or too little. Anyhow it is an understood thing that she is totake London by storm. "

"When I last saw Gorla Mustelford, " observed Yeovil, "she was a ratherserious flapper who thought the world was in urgent need of regenerationand was not certain whether she would regenerate it or take up miniaturepainting. I forget which she attempted ultimately. "

"She is quite serious about her art, " put in Cicely; "she's studied agood deal abroad and worked hard at mastering the technique of herprofession. She's not a mere amateur with a hankering after thefootlights. I fancy she will do well. "

"But what do her people say about it?" asked Yeovil. 

"Oh, they're simply furious about it, " answered Joan; "the idea of adaughter of the house of Mustelford prancing and twisting about the stagefor Prussian officers and Hamburg Jews to gaze at is a dreadful cup ofhumiliation for them. It's unfortunate, of course, that they should feelso acutely about it, but still one can understand their point of view. "

"I don't see what other point of view they could possibly take, " saidYeovil sharply; "if Gorla thinks that the necessities of art, or her owninclinations, demand that she should dance in public, why can't she do itin Paris or even Vienna? Anywhere would be better, one would think, thanin London under present conditions. "

He had given Joan the indication that she was looking for as to hisattitude towards the fait accompli. Without asking a question she haddiscovered that husband and wife were divided on the fundamental issuethat underlay all others at the present moment. Cicely was weavingsocial schemes for the future, Yeovil had come home in a frame of mindthat threatened the destruction of those schemes, or at any rate aserious hindrance to their execution. The situation presented itself toJoan's mind with an alluring piquancy. 

"You are giving a grand supper-party for Gorla on the night of her debut, aren't you?" she asked Cicely; "several people spoke to me about it, so Isuppose it must be true. "

Tony Luton and young Storre had taken care to spread the news of theprojected supper function, in order to ensure against a change of planson Cicely's part. 

"Gorla is a great friend of mine, " said Cicely, trying to talk as if theconversation had taken a perfectly indifferent turn; "also I think shedeserves a little encouragement after the hard work she has been through. I thought it would be doing her a kindness to arrange a supper party forher on her first night. "

There was a moment's silence. Yeovil said nothing, and Joan understoodthe value of being occasionally tongue-tied. 

"The whole question is, " continued Cicely, as the silence becameoppressive, "whether one is to mope and hold aloof from the nationallife, or take our share in it; the life has got to go on whether weparticipate in it or not. It seems to me to be more patriotic to comedown into the dust of the marketplace than to withdraw oneself behindwalls or beyond the seas. "

"Of course the industrial life of the country has to go on, " said Yeovil;"no one could criticise Gorla if she interested herself in organisingcottage industries or anything of that sort, in which she would behelping her own people. That one could understand, but I don't think acosmopolitan concern like the music-hall business calls for personalsacrifices from young women of good family at a moment like the present. "

"It is just at a moment like the present that the people want somethingto interest them and take them out of themselves, " said Cicelyargumentatively; "what has happened, has happened, and we can't undo itor escape the consequences. What we can do, or attempt to do, is to makethings less dreary, and make people less unhappy. "

"In a word, more contented, " said Yeovil; "if I were a German statesman, that is the end I would labour for and encourage others to labour for, tomake the people forget that they were discontented. All this work ofregalvanising the social side of London life may be summed up in thephrase 'travailler pour le roi de Prusse. '"

"I don't think there is any use in discussing the matter further, " saidCicely. 

"I can see that grand supper-party not coming off, " said Joanprovocatively. 

Ronnie looked anxiously at Cicely. 

"You can see it coming on, if you're gifted with prophetic vision of areliable kind, " said Cicely; "of course as Murrey doesn't take kindly tothe idea of Gorla's enterprise I won't have the party here. I'll give itat a restaurant, that's all. I can see Murrey's point of view, andsympathise with it, but I'm not going to throw Gorla over. "

There was another pause of uncomfortably protracted duration. 

"I say, this is a top-hole omelette, " said Ronnie. 

It was his only contribution to the conversation, but it was a valuableone. 

CHAPTER VI: HERR VON KWARL

Herr Von Kwarl sat at his favourite table in the Brandenburg Cafe, thenew building that made such an imposing show (and did such thrivingbusiness) at the lower end of what most of its patrons called theRegentstrasse. Though the establishment was new it had already achievedits unwritten code of customs, and the sanctity of Herr von Kwarl'sspecially reserved table had acquired the authority of a tradition. Aset of chessmen, a copy of the Kreuz Zeitung and the Times, and a slim-necked bottle of Rhenish wine, ice-cool from the cellar, were always tobe found there early in the forenoon, and the honoured guest for whomthese preparations were made usually arrived on the scene shortly aftereleven o'clock. For an hour or so he would read and silently digest thecontents of his two newspapers, and then at the first sign of flagginginterest on his part, another of the cafe's regular customers would marchacross the floor, exchange a word or two on the affairs of the day, andbe bidden with a wave of the hand into the opposite seat. A waiter wouldinstantly place the chessboard with its marshalled ranks of combatants inthe required position, and the contest would begin. 

Herr von Kwarl was a heavily built man of mature middle-age, of the blondNorth-German type, with a facial aspect that suggested stupidity andbrutality. The stupidity of his mien masked an ability and shrewdnessthat was distinctly above the average, and the suggestion of brutalitywas belied by the fact that von Kwarl was as kind-hearted a man as onecould meet with in a day's journey. Early in life, almost before he wasin his teens, Fritz von Kwarl had made up his mind to accept the world asit was, and to that philosophical resolution, steadfastly adhered to, heattributed his excellent digestion and his unruffled happiness. Perhapshe confused cause and effect; the excellent digestion may have beenresponsible for at least some of the philosophical serenity. 

He was a bachelor of the type that is called confirmed, and which mightbetter be labelled consecrated; from his early youth onward to hispresent age he had never had the faintest flickering intention ofmarriage. Children and animals he adored, women and plants he accountedsomewhat of a nuisance. A world without women and roses and asparaguswould, he admitted, be robbed of much of its charm, but with all theircharm these things were tiresome and thorny and capricious, alwayswanting to climb or creep in places where they were not wanted, andresolutely drooping and fading away when they were desired to flourish. Animals, on the other hand, accepted the world as it was and made thebest of it, and children, at least nice children, uncontaminated by grown-up influences, lived in worlds of their own making. 

Von Kwarl held no acknowledged official position in the country of hisresidence, but it was an open secret that those responsible for the realdirection of affairs sought his counsel on nearly every step that theymeditated, and that his counsel was very rarely disregarded. Some of theshrewdest and most successful enactments of the ruling power werebelieved to have originated in the brain-cells of the bovine-frontedStammgast of the Brandenburg Cafe. 

Around the wood-panelled walls of the Cafe were set at intervals well-mounted heads of boar, elk, stag, roe-buck, and other game-beasts of anorthern forest, while in between were carved armorial escutcheons of theprincipal cities of the lately expanded realm, Magdeburg, Manchester, Hamburg, Bremen, Bristol, and so forth. Below these came shelves onwhich stood a wonderful array of stone beer-mugs, each decorated withsome fantastic device or motto, and most of them pertaining individuallyand sacredly to some regular and unfailing customer. In one particularcorner of the highest shelf, greatly at his ease and in nowise to bedisturbed, slept Wotan, the huge grey house-cat, dreaming doubtless ofcertain nimble and audacious mice down in the cellar three floors below, whose nimbleness and audacity were as precious to him as the forwardnessof the birds is to a skilled gun on a grouse moor. Once every day Wotancame marching in stately fashion across the polished floor, halted mid-way to resume an unfinished toilet operation, and then proceeded to payhis leisurely respects to his friend von Kwarl. The latter was said tobe prouder of this daily demonstration of esteem than of his many covetedorders of merit. Several of his friends and acquaintances shared withhim the distinction of having achieved the Black Eagle, but not one ofthem had ever succeeded in obtaining the slightest recognition of theirexistence from Wotan. 

The daily greeting had been exchanged and the proud grey beast hadmarched away to the music of a slumberous purr. The Kreuz Zeitung andthe Times underwent a final scrutiny and were pushed aside, and von Kwarlglanced aimlessly out at the July sunshine bathing the walls and windowsof the Piccadilly Hotel. Herr Rebinok, the plump little Pomeranianbanker, stepped across the floor, almost as noiselessly as Wotan haddone, though with considerably less grace, and some half-minute later wasengaged in sliding pawns and knights and bishops to and fro on the chess-board in a series of lightning moves bewildering to look on. Neither henor his opponent played with the skill that they severally brought tobear on banking and statecraft, nor did they conduct their game with thepoliteness that they punctiliously observed in other affairs of life. Arunning fire of contemptuous remarks and aggressive satire accompaniedeach move, and the mere record of the conversation would have given anuninitiated onlooker the puzzling impression that an easy and crushingvictory was assured to both the players. 

"Aha, he is puzzled. Poor man, he doesn't know what to do . . . Oho, hethinks he will move there, does he? Much good that will do him. . . . Never have I seen such a mess as he is in . . . He cannot do anything, heis absolutely helpless, helpless. "

"Ah, you take my bishop, do you? Much I care for that. Nothing. See, Igive you check. Ah, now he is in a fright! He doesn't know where to go. What a mess he is in . . . "

So the game proceeded, with a brisk exchange of pieces and incivilitiesand a fluctuation of fortunes, till the little banker lost his queen asthe result of an incautious move, and, after several woebegonecontortions of his shoulders and hands, declined further contest. Asleek-headed piccolo rushed forward to remove the board, and theerstwhile combatants resumed the courteous dignity that they discarded intheir chess-playing moments. 

"Have you seen the Germania to-day?" asked Herr Rebinok, as soon as theboy had receded to a respectful distance. 

"No, " said von Kwarl, "I never see the Germania. I count on you to tellme if there is anything noteworthy in it. "

"It has an article to-day headed, 'Occupation or Assimilation, '" said thebanker. "It is of some importance, and well written. It is verypessimistic. "

"Catholic papers are always pessimistic about the things of this world, "said von Kwarl, "just as they are unduly optimistic about the things ofthe next world. What line does it take?"

"It says that our conquest of Britain can only result in a temporaryoccupation, with a 'notice to quit' always hanging over our heads; thatwe can never hope to assimilate the people of these islands in our Empireas a sort of maritime Saxony or Bavaria, all the teaching of history isagainst it; Saxony and Bavaria are part of the Empire because of theirpast history. England is being bound into the Empire in spite of herpast history; and so forth. "

"The writer of the article has not studied history very deeply, " said vonKwarl. "The impossible thing that he speaks of has been done before, anddone in these very islands, too. The Norman Conquest became anassimilation in comparatively few generations. "

"Ah, in those days, yes, " said the banker, "but the conditions werealtogether different. There was not the rapid transmission of news andthe means of keeping the public mind instructed in what was happening; infact, one can scarcely say that the public mind was there to instruct. There was not the same strong bond of brotherhood between men of the samenation that exists now. Northumberland was almost as foreign to Devon orKent as Normandy was. And the Church in those days was a greatinternational factor, and the Crusades bound men together fighting underone leader for a common cause. Also there was not a great national pastto be forgotten as there is in this case. "

"There are many factors, certainly, that are against us, " conceded thestatesman, "but you must also take into account those that will help us. In most cases in recent history where the conquered have stood outagainst all attempts at assimilation, there has been a religiousdifference to add to the racial one--take Poland, for instance, and theCatholic parts of Ireland. If the Bretons ever seriously begin to asserttheir nationality as against the French, it will be because they haveremained more Catholic in practice and sentiment than their neighbours. Here there is no such complication; we are in the bulk a Protestantnation with a Catholic minority, and the same may be said of the British. Then in modern days there is the alchemy of Sport and the Drama to bringmen of different races amicably together. One or two sportsmanlikeGermans in a London football team will do more to break down racialantagonism than anything that Governments or Councils can effect. As forthe Stage, it has long been international in its tendencies. You can seethat every day. "

The banker nodded his head. 

"London is not our greatest difficulty, " continued von Kwarl. "You mustremember the steady influx of Germans since the war; whole districts arechanging the complexion of their inhabitants, and in some streets youmight almost fancy yourself in a German town. We can scarcely hope tomake much impression on the country districts and the provincial towns atpresent, but you must remember that thousands and thousands of the morevirile and restless-souled men have emigrated, and thousands more willfollow their example. We shall fill up their places with our own surpluspopulation, as the Teuton races colonised England in the oldpre-Christian days. That is better, is it not, to people the fat meadowsof the Thames valley and the healthy downs and uplands of Sussex andBerkshire than to go hunting for elbow-room among the flies and fevers ofthe tropics? We have somewhere to go to, now, better than the scrub andthe veldt and the thorn-jungles. "

"Of course, of course, " assented Herr Rebinok, "but while this desirableprocess of infiltration and assimilation goes on, how are you going toprovide against the hostility of the conquered nation? A people with agreat tradition behind them and the ruling instinct strongly developed, won't sit with their eyes closed and their hands folded while you carryon the process of Germanisation. What will keep them quiet?"

"The hopelessness of the situation. For centuries Britain has ruled theseas, and been able to dictate to half the world in consequence; then shelet slip the mastery of the seas, as something too costly and onerous tokeep up, something which aroused too much jealousy and uneasiness inothers, and now the seas rule her. Every wave that breaks on her shorerattles the keys of her prison. I am no fire-eater, Herr Rebinok, but Iconfess that when I am at Dover, say, or Southampton, and see those darkblots on the sea and those grey specks in the sky, our battleships andcruisers and aircraft, and realise what they mean to us my heart beatsjust a little quicker. If every German was flung out of Englandto-morrow, in three weeks' time we should be coming in again on our ownterms. With our sea scouts and air scouts spread in organised networkaround, not a shipload of foodstuff could reach the country. They knowthat; they can calculate how many days of independence and starvationthey could endure, and they will make no attempt to bring about such acertain fiasco. Brave men fight for a forlorn hope, but the bravest donot fight for an issue they know to be hopeless. "

"That is so, " said Herr Rebinok, "as things are at present they can donothing from within, absolutely nothing. We have weighed all thatbeforehand. But, as the Germania points out, there is another Britainbeyond the seas. Supposing the Court at Delhi were to engineer aleague--"

"A league? A league with whom?" interrupted the statesman. "Russia wecan watch and hold. We are rather nearer to its western frontier thanDelhi is, and we could throttle its Baltic trade at five hours' notice. France and Holland are not inclined to provoke our hostility; they wouldhave everything to lose by such a course. "

"There are other forces in the world that might be arrayed against us, "argued the banker; "the United States, Japan, Italy, they all havenavies. "

"Does the teaching of history show you that it is the strong Power, armedand ready, that has to suffer from the hostility of the world?" asked vonKwarl. "As far as sentiment goes, perhaps, but not in practice. Thedanger has always been for the weak, dismembered nation. Think you amoment, has the enfeebled scattered British Empire overseas no undefendedterritories that are a temptation to her neighbours? Has Japan nothingto glean where we have harvested? Are there no North Americanpossessions which might slip into other keeping? Has Russia herself notraditional temptations beyond the Oxus? Mind you, we are not making themistake Napoleon made, when he forced all Europe to be for him or againsthim. We threaten no world aggressions, we are satiated where he wasinsatiable. We have cast down one overshadowing Power from the face ofthe world, because it stood in our way, but we have made no attempt tospread our branches over all the space that it covered. We have nottried to set up a tributary Canadian republic or to partition SouthAfrica; we have dreamed no dream of making ourselves Lords of Hindostan. On the contrary, we have given proof of our friendly intentions towardsour neighbours. We backed France up the other day in her squabble withSpain over the Moroccan boundaries, and proclaimed our opinion that theRepublic had as indisputable a mission on the North Africa coast as wehave in the North Sea. That is not the action or the language ofaggression. No, " continued von Kwarl, after a moment's silence, "theworld may fear us and dislike us, but, for the present at any rate, therewill be no leagues against us. No, there is one rock on which ourattempt at assimilation will founder or find firm anchorage. "

"And that is--?"

"The youth of the country, the generation that is at the threshold now. It is them that we must capture. We must teach them to learn, and coaxthem to forget. In course of time Anglo-Saxon may blend with German, asthe Elbe Saxons and the Bavarians and Swabians have blended with thePrussians into a loyal united people under the sceptre of theHohenzollerns. Then we should be doubly strong, Rome and Carthage rolledinto one, an Empire of the West greater than Charlemagne ever knew. Thenwe could look Slav and Latin and Asiatic in the face and keep our placeas the central dominant force of the civilised world. "

The speaker paused for a moment and drank a deep draught of wine, asthough he were invoking the prosperity of that future world-power. Thenhe resumed in a more level tone:

"On the other hand, the younger generation of Britons may grow up inhereditary hatred, repulsing all our overtures, forgetting nothing andforgiving nothing, waiting and watching for the time when some weaknessassails us, when some crisis entangles us, when we cannot be everywhereat once. Then our work will be imperilled, perhaps undone. There liesthe danger, there lies the hope, the younger generation. "

"There is another danger, " said the banker, after he had pondered overvon Kwarl's remarks for a moment or two amid the incense-clouds of a fatcigar; "a danger that I foresee in the immediate future; perhaps not somuch a danger as an element of exasperation which may ultimately defeatyour plans. The law as to military service will have to be promulgatedshortly, and that cannot fail to be bitterly unpopular. The people ofthese islands will have to be brought into line with the rest of theEmpire in the matter of military training and military service, and howwill they like that? Will not the enforcing of such a measure enfuriatethem against us? Remember, they have made great sacrifices to avoid theburden of military service. "

"Dear God, " exclaimed Herr von Kwarl, "as you say, they have madesacrifices on that altar!"

CHAPTER VII: THE LURE

Cicely had successfully insisted on having her own way concerning theprojected supper-party; Yeovil had said nothing further in opposition toit, whatever his feelings on the subject might be. Having gained herpoint, however, she was anxious to give her husband the impression ofhaving been consulted, and to put her victory as far as possible on thefooting of a compromise. It was also rather a relief to be able todiscuss the matter out of range of Joan's disconcerting tongue andobservant eyes. 

"I hope you are not really annoyed about this silly supper-party, " shesaid on the morning before the much-talked-of first night. "I hadpledged myself to give it, so I couldn't back out without seeming mean toGorla, 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, " saidYeovil. 

"Look here, " said Cicely in her most disarming manner, "it's just as wellto be perfectly frank about the whole matter. If one wants to live inthe London of the present day one must make up one's mind to accept thefait accompli with as good a grace as possible. I do want to live inLondon, and I don't want to change my way of living and start underdifferent conditions in some other place. I can't face the prospect oftearing up my life by the roots; I feel certain that I shouldn't beartransplanting. I can't imagine myself recreating my circle of interestsin some foreign town or colonial centre or even in a country town inEngland. India I couldn't stand. London is not merely a home to me, itis a world, and it happens to be just the world that suits me and that Iam 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 needsend 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 orless accustomed to them, but one must just learn to be philosophical andbear them. "

"Supposing they are not bearable?" said Yeovil; "during the few days thatI've been in the land I've seen things that I cannot imagine will ever bebearable. "

"That is because they're new to you, " said Cicely. 

"I don't wish that they should ever come to seem bearable, " retortedYeovil. "I've been bred and reared as a unit of a ruling race; I don'twant to find myself settling down resignedly as a member of an enslavedone. "

"There's no need to make things out worse than they are, " protestedCicely. "We've had a military disaster on a big scale, and there's beena great political dislocation in consequence. But there's no reason whyeverything shouldn't right itself in time, as it has done after othersimilar disasters in the history of nations. We are not scattered to thewinds or wiped off the face of the earth, we are still an importantracial unit. "

"A racial unit in a foreign Empire, " commented Yeovil. 

"We may arrive at the position of being the dominant factor in thatEmpire, " said Cicely, "impressing our national characteristics on it, andperhaps dictating its dynastic future and the whole trend of its policy. Such things have happened in history. Or we may become strong enough tothrow off the foreign connection at a moment when it can be doneeffectually and advantageously. But meanwhile it is necessary topreserve our industrial life and our social life, and for that reason wemust accommodate ourselves to present circumstances, however distastefulthey may be. Emigration to some colonial wilderness, or holdingourselves 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 thatthe 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 orso, for this national revival to creep and crawl us back into a semblanceof independence and world-importance. I'm afraid I haven't the patienceor the philosophy to sit down comfortably and wait for a change offortune that won't come in my time--if it comes at all. "

Cicely changed the drift of the conversation; she had only introduced theargument for the purpose of defining her point of view and accustomingYeovil to it, as one leads a nervous horse up to an unfamiliar barrierthat he is required eventually to jump. 

"In any case, " she said, "from the immediately practical standpointEngland is the best place for you till you have shaken off all traces ofthat fever. Pass the time away somehow till the hunting begins, and thengo down to the East Wessex country; they are looking out for a new masterafter this season, and if you were strong enough you might take it on fora while. You could go to Norway for fishing in the summer and hunt theEast 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. Itwill be like old times. "

Yeovil looked at his wife and laughed. 

"Who was that old fellow who used to hunt his hounds regularly throughthe fiercest times of the great Civil War? There is a picture of him, byCaton Woodville, I think, leading his pack between King Charles's armyand the Parliament forces just as some battle was going to begin. I haveoften thought that the King must have disliked him rather more than hedisliked the men who were in arms against him; they at least cared, oneway or the other. I fancy that old chap would have a great manyimitators nowadays, though, when it came to be a question of sportagainst soldiering. I don't know whether anyone has said it, but onemight almost assert that the German victory was won on the golf-links ofBritain. "

"I don't see why you should saddle one particular form of sport with aspecial responsibility, " protested Cicely. 

"Of course not, " said Yeovil, "except that it absorbed perhaps more ofthe energy and attention of the leisured class than other sports did, andin this country the leisured class was the only bulwark we had againstofficial indifference. The working classes had a big share of theapathy, and, indirectly, a greater share of the responsibility, becausethe voting power was in their hands. They had not the leisure, however, to sit down and think clearly what the danger was; their own industrialwarfare was more real to them than anything that was threatening from thenation that they only knew from samples of German clerks and Germanwaiters. "

"In any case, " said Cicely, "as regards the hunting, there is no CivilWar or national war raging just now, and there is no immediate likelihoodof one. A good many hunting seasons will have to come and go before wecan think of a war of independence as even a distant possibility, and inthe meantime hunting and horse-breeding and country sports generally arethe things most likely to keep Englishmen together on the land. That iswhy so many men who hate the German occupation are trying to keep fieldsports 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 overthe telephone for the all-important supper-party, leaving Yeovil to turnover in his mind the suggestion that she had thrown out. It was anobvious lure, a lure to draw him away from the fret and fury thatpossessed him so inconveniently, but its obvious nature did not detractfrom its effectiveness. Yeovil had pleasant recollections of the EastWessex, a cheery little hunt that afforded good sport in an unpretentiousmanner, a joyous thread of life running through a rather sleepycountryside, like a merry brook careering through a placid valley. For aman coming slowly and yet eagerly back to the activities of life from theweariness of a long fever, the prospect of a leisurely season with theEast Wessex was singularly attractive, and side by side with itsattractiveness there was a tempting argument in favour of yielding to itsattractions. Among the small squires and yeoman farmers, doctors, country tradesmen, auctioneers and so forth who would gather at thecovert-side and at the hunt breakfasts, there might be a local nucleus ofrevolt against the enslavement of the land, a discouraged and leaderlessband waiting for some one to mould their resistance into effective shapeand keep their loyalty to the old dynasty and the old national causesteadily burning. Yeovil could see himself taking up that position, stimulating the spirit of hostility to the fait accompli, organisingstubborn opposition to every Germanising influence that was brought intoplay, schooling the youth of the countryside to look steadily Delhiward. That was the bait that Yeovil threw out to his conscience, while slowlyconsidering the other bait that was appealing so strongly to his senses. The dry warm scent of the stable, the nip of the morning air, thepleasant squelch-squelch of the saddle leather, the moist earthyfragrance of the autumn woods and wet fallows, the cold white mists ofwinter days, the whimper of hounds and the hot restless pushing of thepack through ditch and hedgerow and undergrowth, the birds that flew upand clucked and chattered as you passed, the hearty greeting and pleasantgossip in farmhouse kitchens and market-day bar-parlours--all theseremembered delights of the chase marshalled themselves in the brain, andmade a cumulative appeal that came with special intensity to a man whowas a little tired of his wanderings, more than a little drawn away fromthe jarring centres of life. The hot London sunshine baking the soot-grimed walls and the ugly incessant hoot and grunt of the motor trafficgave an added charm to the vision of hill and hollow and copse thatflickered in Yeovil's mind. Slowly, with a sensuous lingering overdetail, his imagination carried him down to a small, sleepy, yet withalpleasantly bustling market town, and placed him unerringly in a widestraw-littered yard, half-full of men and quarter-full of horses, with abob-tailed sheep-dog or two trying not to get in everybody's way, butinsisting on being in the thick of things. The horses gradually detachedthemselves from the crowd of unimportant men and came one by one intomomentary prominence, to be discussed and appraised for their good pointsand bad points, and finally to be bid for. And always there was onehorse that detached itself conspicuously from the rest, the ideal hunter, or at any rate, Yeovil's ideal of the ideal hunter. Mentally it was putthrough its paces before him, its pedigree and brief history recounted tohim; mentally he saw a stable lad put it over a jump or two, with creditto all concerned, and inevitably he saw himself outbidding lessdiscerning rivals and securing the desired piece of horseflesh, to be thechief glory and mainstay of his hunting stable, to carry him well andtruly and cleverly through many a joyous long-to-be-remembered run. Thatscene had been one of the recurring half-waking dreams of his long daysof weakness in the far-away Finnish nursing-home, a dream sometimes oftantalising mockery, sometimes of pleasure in the foretaste of a joy tocome. And now it need scarcely be a dream any longer, he had only to godown at the right moment and take an actual part in his oft-rehearsedvision. Everything would be there, exactly as his imagination had placedit, even down to the bob-tailed sheep-dogs; the horse of his imaginingwould 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 dreamand pick up a couple of desirable animals--there would probably be fewerpurchasers for good class hunters in these days than of yore. And withthe coming of this reflection his dream faded suddenly and his mind cameback 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 standardthat floated yellow and black over the frontage of Buckingham Palace. 

Yeovil wandered down to his snuggery, a mood of listless dejectionpossessing him. He fidgetted aimlessly with one or two books and papers, filled a pipe, and half filled a waste-paper basket with torn circularsand accumulated writing-table litter. Then he lit the pipe and settleddown in his most comfortable armchair with an old note-book in his hand. It was a sort of disjointed diary, running fitfully through the wintermonths of some past years, and recording noteworthy days with the EastWessex. 

And over the telephone Cicely talked and arranged and consulted with menand women to whom the joys of a good gallop or the love of a strickenfatherland were as letters in an unknown alphabet. 

CHAPTER VIII: THE FIRST-NIGHT

Huge posters outside the Caravansery Theatre of Varieties announced thefirst performance of the uniquely interesting Suggestion Dances, interpreted by the Hon. Gorla Mustelford. An impressionist portrait of arather severe-looking young woman gave the public some idea of what thedanseuse might be like in appearance, and the further information wasadded that her performance was the greatest dramatic event of the season. Yet another piece of information was conveyed to the public a few minutesafter the doors had opened, in the shape of large notices bearing thebrief announcement, "house full. " For the first-night function most ofthe seats had been reserved for specially-invited guests or else bespokenby those who considered it due to their own importance to be visible onsuch an occasion. 

Even at the commencement of the ordinary programme of the evening (Gorlawas not due to appear till late in the list) the theatre was crowded witha throng of chattering, expectant human beings; it seemed as though everyone had come early to see every one else arrive. As a matter of fact itwas the rumour-heralded arrival of one personage in particular that haddrawn people early to their seats and given a double edge to theexpectancy of the moment. 

At first sight and first hearing the bulk of the audience seemed tocomprise representatives of the chief European races in well-distributedproportions, but if one gave it closer consideration it could be seenthat the distribution was geographically rather than ethnographicallydiversified. Men and women there were from Paris, Munich, Rome, Moscowand Vienna, from Sweden and Holland and divers other cities andcountries, but in the majority of cases the Jordan Valley had suppliedtheir forefathers with a common cradle-ground. The lack of a fireburning on a national altar seemed to have drawn them by universalimpulse to the congenial flare of the footlights, whether as artists, producers, impresarios, critics, agents, go-betweens, or merely as highlyintelligent and fearsomely well-informed spectators. They were prominentin the chief seats, they were represented, more sparsely but still infair numbers, in the cheaper places, and everywhere they were voluble, emphatic, sanguine or sceptical, prodigal of word and gesture, with eyesthat seemed to miss nothing and acknowledge nothing, and a generalrestless dread of not being seen and noticed. Of the theatre-goingLondon public there was also a fair muster, more particularly centred inthe less expensive parts of the house, while in boxes, stalls and circlesa sprinkling of military uniforms gave an unfamiliar tone to the scene inthe eyes of those who had not previously witnessed a first-nightperformance under the new conditions. 

Yeovil, while standing aloof from his wife's participation in this socialevent, had made private arrangements for being a personal spectator ofthe scene; as one of the ticket-buying public he had secured a seat inthe back row of a low-priced gallery, whence he might watch, observantand unobserved, the much talked-of debut of Gorla Mustelford, and thewriting of a new chapter in the history of the fait accompli. Around himhe noticed an incessant undercurrent of jangling laughter, an unendinggive-and-take of meaningless mirthless jest and catchword. He hadnoticed the same thing in streets and public places since his arrival inLondon, a noisy, empty interchange of chaff and laughter that he had beenat a loss to account for. The Londoner is not well adapted for theirresponsible noisiness of jesting tongue that bubbles up naturally in aSouthern race, and the effort to be volatile was the more noticeablebecause it so obviously was an effort. Turning over the pages of a bookthat told the story of Bulgarian social life in the days of Turkish rule, Yeovil had that morning come across a passage that seemed to throw somelight on the thing that had puzzled him:

"Bondage has this one advantage: it makes a nation merry. Wherefar-reaching ambition has no scope for its development the communitysquanders its energy on the trivial and personal cares of its daily life, and seeks relief and recreation in simple and easily obtained materialenjoyment. " The writer was a man who had known bondage, so he spoke atany rate with authority. Of the London of the moment it could not, however, be said with any truth that it was merry, but merely that itsinhabitants made desperate endeavour not to appear crushed under theircatastrophe. Surrounded as he was now with a babble of tongues andshrill mechanical repartee, Yeovil's mind went back to the book and itsaccount of a theatre audience in the Turkish days of Bulgaria, with itslight and laughing crowd of critics and spectators. Bulgaria! Thethought of that determined little nation came to him with a sharp senseof irony. There was a people who had not thought it beneath the dignityof their manhood to learn the trade and discipline of arms. They hadtheir reward; torn and exhausted and debt-encumbered from theircampaigns, they were masters in their own house, the Bulgarian flag flewover the Bulgarian mountains. And Yeovil stole a glance at the crown ofCharlemagne set over the Royal box. 

In a capacious box immediately opposite the one set aside for royalty theLady Shalem sat in well-considered prominence, confident that every presscritic and reporter would note her presence, and that one or two of themwould describe, or misdescribe, her toilet. Already quite a considerablesection of the audience knew her by name, and the frequency with whichshe graciously nodded towards various quarters of the house suggested thepresence of a great many personal acquaintances. She had attained tothat desirable feminine altitude of purse and position when people who goabout everywhere know you well by sight and have never met your dressbefore. 

Lady Shalem was a woman of commanding presence, of that type whichsuggests a consciousness that the command may not necessarily be obeyed;she had observant eyes and a well-managed voice. Her successes in lifehad been worked for, but they were also to some considerable extent theresult of accident. Her public history went back to the time when, inthe person of her husband, Mr. Conrad Dort, she had contested twohopeless and very expensive Parliamentary elections on behalf of herparty; on each occasion the declaration of the poll had shown a heavythough reduced majority on the wrong side, but she might have perpetratedan apt misquotation of the French monarch's traditional message after thedefeat of Pavia, and assured the world "all is lost save honours. " Theforthcoming Honours List had duly proclaimed the fact that Conrad Dort, Esquire, had entered Parliament by another door as Baron Shalem, ofWireskiln, in the county of Suffolk. Success had crowned the lady'sefforts as far as the achievement of the title went, but her socialambitions seemed unlikely to make further headway. The new Baron and hiswife, their title and money notwithstanding, did not "go down" in theirparticular segment of county society, and in London there were othertitles and incomes to compete with. People were willing to worship theGolden Calf, but allowed themselves a choice of altars. No one couldjustly say that the Shalems were either oppressively vulgar orinsufferably bumptious; probably the chief reason for their lack ofpopularity was their intense and obvious desire to be popular. They keptopen house in such an insistently open manner that they created a socialdraught. The people who accepted their invitations for the second orthird time were not the sort of people whose names gave importance to adinner party or a house gathering. Failure, in a thinly-disguised form, attended the assiduous efforts of the Shalems to play a leading role inthe world that they had climbed into. The Baron began to observe to hisacquaintances that "gadding about" and entertaining on a big scale wasnot much in his line; a quiet after-dinner pipe and talk with somebrother legislator was his ideal way of spending an evening. 

Then came the great catastrophe, involving the old order of society inthe national overthrow. Lady Shalem, after a decent interval ofpatriotic mourning, began to look around her and take stock of herchances and opportunities under the new regime. It was easier to achievedistinction as a titled oasis in the social desert that London had becomethan it had been to obtain recognition as a new growth in a ratherovercrowded field. The observant eyes and agile brain quickly noted thiscircumstance, and her ladyship set to work to adapt herself to thealtered conditions that governed her world. Lord Shalem was one of thefew Peers who kissed the hand of the new Sovereign, his wife was one ofthe few hostesses who attempted to throw a semblance of gaiety and lavishelegance over the travesty of a London season following the year ofdisaster. The world of tradesmen and purveyors and caterers, and thethousands who were dependent on them for employment, privately blessedthe example set by Shalem House, whatever their feelings might be towardsthe fait accompli, and the august newcomer who had added an old Saxonkingdom and some of its accretions to the Teutonic realm of Charlemagnewas duly beholden to an acquired subject who was willing to forget thebitterness of defeat and to help others to forget it also. Among otheracts of Imperial recognition an earldom was being held in readiness forthe Baron who had known how to accept accomplished facts with a goodgrace. One of the wits of the Cockatrice Club had asserted that the newearl would take as supporters for his coat of arms a lion and a unicornoublie. 

In the box with Lady Shalem was the Grafin von Tolb, a well-dressed womanof some fifty-six years, comfortable and placid in appearance, yet alertwithal, rather suggesting a thoroughly wide-awake dormouse. Rich, amiable and intelligent were the adjectives which would best havedescribed her character and her life-story. In her own rather difficultsocial circle at Paderborn she had earned for herself the reputation ofbeing one of the most tactful and discerning hostesses in Germany, and itwas generally suspected that she had come over and taken up her residencein London in response to a wish expressed in high quarters; the lavishhospitality which she dispensed at her house in Berkeley Square was aconsiderable reinforcement to the stricken social life of the metropolis. 

In a neighbouring box Cicely Yeovil presided over a large and livelyparty, which of course included Ronnie Storre, who was for once in a wayin a chattering mood, and also included an American dowager, who hadnever been known to be in anything else. A tone of literary distinctionwas imparted to the group by the presence of Augusta Smith, better knownunder her pen-name of Rhapsodic Pantril, author of a play that had had alimited but well-advertised success in Sheffield and the United States ofAmerica, author also of a book of reminiscences, entitled "Things ICannot Forget. " She had beautiful eyes, a knowledge of how to dress, anda pleasant disposition, cankered just a little by a perpetual dread ofthe non-recognition of her genius. As the woman, Augusta Smith, sheprobably would have been unreservedly happy; as the super-woman, Rhapsodic Pantril, she lived within the border-line of discontent. Hermost ordinary remarks were framed with the view of arresting attention;some one once said of her that she ordered a sack of potatoes with theair of one who is making enquiry for a love-philtre. 

"Do you see what colour the curtain is?" she asked Cicely, throwing anote of intense meaning into her question. 

Cicely turned quickly and looked at the drop-curtain. 

"Rather a nice blue, " she said. 

"Alexandrine blue--my colour--the colour of hope, " said Rhapsodieimpressively. 

"It goes well with the general colour-scheme, " said Cicely, feeling thatshe was hardly rising to the occasion. 

"Say, is it really true that His Majesty is coming?" asked the livelyAmerican dowager. "I've put on my nooest frock and my best diamonds onpurpose, and I shall be mortified to death if he doesn't see them. "

"There!" pouted Ronnie, "I felt certain you'd put them on for me. "

"Why no, I should have put on rubies and orange opals for you. Peoplewith our colour of hair always like barbaric display--"

"They don't, " said Ronnie, "they have chaste cold tastes. You areabsolutely mistaken. "

"Well, I think I ought to know!" protested the dowager; "I've livedlonger in the world than you have, anyway. "

"Yes, " said Ronnie with devastating truthfulness, "but my hair has beenthis colour longer than yours has. "

Peace was restored by the opportune arrival of a middle-aged man of blondNorth-German type, with an expression of brutality on his rather stupidface, who sat in the front of the box for a few minutes on a visit ofceremony to Cicely. His appearance caused a slight buzz of recognitionamong the audience, and if Yeovil had cared to make enquiry of hisneighbours he might have learned that this decorated and obviouslyimportant personage was the redoubtable von Kwarl, artificer and shaperof much of the statecraft for which other men got the public credit. 

The orchestra played a selection from the "Gondola Girl, " which was theleading musical-comedy of the moment. Most of the audience, those in themore expensive seats at any rate, heard the same airs two or three timesdaily, at restaurant lunches, teas, dinners and suppers, and occasionallyin the Park; they were justified therefore in treating the music as abackground to slightly louder conversation than they had hithertoindulged in. The music came to an end, episode number two in theevening's entertainment was signalled, the curtain of Alexandrine bluerolled heavily upward, and a troupe of performing wolves was presented tothe public. Yeovil had encountered wolves in North Africa deserts and inSiberian forest and wold, he had seen them at twilight stealing like darkshadows across the snow, and heard their long whimpering howl in thedarkness amid the pines; he could well understand how a magic lore hadgrown up round them through the ages among the peoples of fourcontinents, how their name had passed into a hundred strange sayings andinspired a hundred traditions. And now he saw them ride round the stageon tricycles, with grotesque ruffles round their necks and clown caps ontheir heads, their eyes blinking miserably in the blaze of thefootlights. In response to the applause of the house a stout, atrociously smiling man in evening dress came forward and bowed; he hadhad nothing to do either with the capture or the training of the animals, having bought them ready for use from a continental emporium where wildbeasts were prepared for the music-hall market, but he continued bowingand smiling till the curtain fell. 

Two American musicians with comic tendencies (denoted by the elaboraterags and tatters of their costumes) succeeded the wolves. Their musicalperformance was not without merit, but their comic "business" seemed tohave been invented long ago by some man who had patented a monopoly ofall music-hall humour and forthwith retired from the trade. Some day, Yeovil reflected, the rights of the monopoly might expire and new"business" become available for the knockabout profession. 

The audience brightened considerably when item number five of theprogramme was signalled. The orchestra struck up a rollicking measureand Tony Luton made his entrance amid a rousing storm of applause. Hewas dressed as an errand-boy of some West End shop, with a livery and box-tricycle, as spruce and decorative as the most ambitious errand-boy couldsee himself in his most ambitious dreams. His song was a lively and veryaudacious chronicle of life behind the scenes of a big retailestablishment, and sparkled with allusions which might fitly have beendescribed as suggestive--at any rate they appeared to suggest meanings tothe audience quite as clearly as Gorla Mustelford's dances were likely todo, even with the aid, in her case, of long explanations on theprogrammes. When the final verse seemed about to reach an unpardonableclimax a stage policeman opportunely appeared and moved the livelysongster on for obstructing the imaginary traffic of an imaginary BondStreet. The house received the new number with genial enthusiasm, andmingled its applause with demands for an earlier favourite. Theorchestra struck up the familiar air, and in a few moments the smarterrand-boy, transformed now into a smart jockey, was singing "They quaffthe gay bubbly in Eccleston Square" to an audience that hummed and noddedits unstinted approval. 

The next number but one was the Gorla Mustelford debut, and the housesettled itself down to yawn and fidget and chatter for ten or twelveminutes while a troupe of talented Japanese jugglers performed someartistic and quite uninteresting marvels with fans and butterflies andlacquer boxes. The interval of waiting was not destined, however, to bewithout its interest; in its way it provided the one really important anddramatic moment of the evening. One or two uniforms and eveningtoilettes had already made their appearance in the Imperial box; nowthere was observable in that quarter a slight commotion, an unobtrusivereshuffling and reseating, and then every eye in the suddenly quiet semi-darkened house focussed itself on one figure. There was no publicdemonstration from the newly-loyal, it had been particularly wished thatthere should be none, but a ripple of whisper went through the vastaudience from end to end. Majesty had arrived. The Japanesemarvel-workers went through their display with even less attention thanbefore. Lady Shalem, sitting well in the front of her box, lowered herobservant eyes to her programme and her massive bangles. The evidence ofher triumph did not need staring at. 

CHAPTER IX: AN EVENING "TO BE REMEMBERED"

To the uninitiated or unappreciative the dancing of Gorla Mustelford didnot seem widely different from much that had been exhibited aforetime byexponents of the posturing school. She was not naturally graceful ofmovement, she had not undergone years of arduous tutelage, she had notthe instinct for sheer joyous energy of action that is stored in somenatures; out of these unpromising negative qualities she had produced astyle of dancing that might best be labelled a conscientious departurefrom accepted methods. The highly imaginative titles that she hadbestowed on her dances, the "Life of a fern, " the "Soul-dream of atopaz, " and so forth, at least gave her audience and her criticssomething to talk about. In themselves they meant absolutely nothing, but they induced discussion, and that to Gorla meant a great deal. Itwas a season of dearth and emptiness in the footlights and box-officeworld, and her performance received a welcome that would scarcely havebefallen it in a more crowded and prosperous day. Her success, indeed, had been waiting for her, ready-made, as far as the managerial professionwas concerned, and nothing had been left undone in the way ofadvertisement to secure for it the appearance, at any rate, of popularfavour. And loud above the interested applause of those who had personalor business motives for acclaiming a success swelled the exaggeratedenthusiasm of the fairly numerous art-satellites who are unstinted intheir praise of anything that they are certain they cannot understand. Whatever might be the subsequent verdict of the theatre-filling publicthe majority of the favoured first-night audience was determined to setthe seal of its approval on the suggestion dances, and a steady roll ofapplause greeted the conclusion of each item. The dancer gravely bowedher thanks; in marked contradistinction to the gentleman who had"presented" the performing wolves she did not permit herself the luxuryof a smile. 

"It teaches us a great deal, " said Rhapsodic Pantril vaguely, butimpressively, after the Fern dance had been given and applauded. 

"At any rate we know now that a fern takes life very seriously, " broke inJoan Mardle, who had somehow wriggled herself into Cicely's box. 

As Yeovil, from the back of his gallery, watched Gorla running andricochetting about the stage, looking rather like a wagtail in energeticpursuit of invisible gnats and midges, he wondered how many of the middle-aged women who were eagerly applauding her would have taken the leastnotice of similar gymnastics on the part of their offspring in nursery orgarden, beyond perhaps asking them not to make so much noise. And abitterer tinge came to his thoughts as he saw the bouquets being handedup, thoughts of the brave old dowager down at Torywood, the woman who hadworked and wrought so hard and so unsparingly in her day for the well-being of the State--the State that had fallen helpless into alien handsbefore her tired eyes. Her eldest son lived invalid-wise in the South ofFrance, her second son lay fathoms deep in the North Sea, with the hulkof a broken battleship for a burial-vault; and now the grand-daughter wasstanding here in the limelight, bowing her thanks for the patronage andfavour meted out to her by this cosmopolitan company, with its lavishsprinkling of the uniforms of an alien army. 

Prominent among the flowers at her feet was one large golden-petalledbouquet of gorgeous blooms, tied with a broad streamer of golden riband, the tribute rendered by Caesar to the things that were Caesar's. The newchapter of the fait accompli had been written that night and writtenwell. The audience poured slowly out with the triumphant music ofJancovius's Kaiser Wilhelm march, played by the orchestra as a happyinspiration, pealing in its ears. 

"It has been a great evening, a most successful evening, " said LadyShalem to Herr von Kwarl, whom she was conveying in her electric broughamto Cicely Yeovil's supper party; "an important evening, " she added, choosing her adjectives with deliberation. "It should give pleasure inhigh quarters, should it not?"

And she turned her observant eyes on the impassive face of her companion. 

"Gracious lady, " he replied with deliberation and meaning, "it has givenpleasure. It is an evening to be remembered. "

The gracious lady suppressed a sigh of satisfaction. Memory in highplaces was a thing fruitful and precious beyond computation. 

Cicely's party at the Porphyry Restaurant had grown to imposingdimensions. Every one whom she had asked had come, and so had JoanMardle. Lady Shalem had suggested several names at the last moment, andthere was quite a strong infusion of the Teutonic military and officialworld. It was just as well, Cicely reflected, that the supper was beinggiven at a restaurant and not in Berkshire Street. 

"Quite like ole times, " purred the beaming proprietor in Cicely's ear, asthe staircase and cloak-rooms filled up with a jostling, laughing throng. 

The guests settled themselves at four tables, taking their places wherechance or fancy led them, late comers having to fit in wherever theycould find room. A babel of tongues in various languages reigned roundthe tables, amid which the rattle of knives and forks and plates and thepopping of corks made a subdued hubbub. Gorla Mustelford, the motive forall this sound and movement, this chatter of guests and scurrying ofwaiters, sat motionless in the fatigued self-conscious silence of a greatartist who has delivered a great message. 

"Do sit at Lady Peach's table, like a dear boy, " Cicely begged of TonyLuton, who had come in late; "she and Gerald Drowly have got together, inspite of all my efforts, and they are both so dull. Try and liven thingsup a bit. "

A loud barking sound, as of fur-seals calling across Arctic ice, camefrom another table, where Mrs. Mentieth-Mendlesohnn (one of theMendlesohnns of Invergordon, as she was wont to describe herself) wasproclaiming the glories and subtleties of Gorla's achievement. 

"It was a revelation, " she shouted; "I sat there and saw a whole newscheme of thought unfold itself before my eyes. One could not define it, it was thought translated into action--the best art cannot be defined. One just sat there and knew that one was seeing something one had neverseen before, and yet one felt that one had seen it, in one's brain, allone's life. That was what was so wonderful--yes, please, " she broke offsharply as a fat quail in aspic was presented to her by a questioningwaiter. 

The voice of Mr. Mauleverer Morle came across the table, like anotherseal barking at a greater distance. 

"Rostand, " he observed with studied emphasis, "has been called le Princede l'adjectif Inopine; Miss Mustelford deserves to be described as theQueen of Unexpected Movement. "

"Oh, I say, do you hear that?" exclaimed Mrs. Mentieth-Mendlesohnn to aswide an audience as she could achieve; "Rostand has been called--tellthem what you said, Mr. Morle, " she broke off, suddenly mistrusting herability to handle a French sentence at the top of her voice. 

Mr. Morle repeated his remark. 

"Pass it on to the next table, " commanded Mrs. Mentieth-Mendlesohnn. "It's too good to be lost. "

At the next table however, a grave impressive voice was dwelling atlength on a topic remote from the event of the evening. Lady Peachconsidered that all social gatherings, of whatever nature, were intendedfor the recital of minor domestic tragedies. She lost no time inregaling the company around her with the detailed history of aninterrupted week-end in a Norfolk cottage. 

"The most charming and delightful old-world spot that you could imagine, clean and quite comfortable, just a nice distance from the sea and withinan easy walk of the Broads. The very place for the children. We'dbrought everything for a four days' stay and meant to have a reallydelightful time. And then on Sunday morning we found that some one hadleft the springhead, where our only supply of drinking water came from, uncovered, and a dead bird was floating in it; it had fallen in somehowand got drowned. Of course we couldn't use the water that a dead bodyhad been floating in, and there was no other supply for miles round, sowe had to come away then and there. Now what do you say to that?"

"'Ah, that a linnet should die in the Spring, '" quoted Tony Luton withintense feeling. 

There was an immediate outburst of hilarity where Lady Peach hadconfidently looked for expressions of concern and sympathy. 

"Isn't Tony just perfectly cute? Isn't he?" exclaimed a young Americanwoman, with an enthusiasm to which Lady Peach entirely failed to respond. She had intended following up her story with the account of anothertragedy of a similar nature that had befallen her three years ago inArgyllshire, and now the opportunity had gone. She turned morosely tothe consolations of a tongue salad. 

At the centre table the excellent von Tolb led a chorus of congratulationand compliment, to which Gorla listened with an air of polite detachment, much as the Sheikh Ul Islam might receive the homage of a WesleyanConference. To a close observer it would have seemed probable that herattitude of fatigued indifference to the flattering remarks that wereshowered on her had been as carefully studied and rehearsed as any of herpostures on the stage. 

"It is something that one will appreciate more and more fully every timeone sees it . . . One cannot see it too often . . . I could have sat andwatched it for hours . . . Do you know, I am just looking forward to to-morrow evening, when I can see it again. . . . I knew it was going to begood, but I had no idea--" so chimed the chorus, between mouthfuls ofquail and bites of asparagus. 

"Weren't the performing wolves wonderful?" exclaimed Joan in her freshjoyous voice, that rang round the room like laughter of the woodpecker. 

If there is one thing that disturbs the complacency of a great artist ofthe Halls it is the consciousness of sharing his or her triumphs withperforming birds and animals, but of course Joan was not to be expectedto know that. She pursued her subject with the assurance of one who hashit on a particularly acceptable topic. 

"It must have taken them years of training and concentration to masterthose tricycles, " she continued in high-pitched soliloquy. "The nicething about them is that they don't realise a bit how clever andeducational they are. It would be dreadful to have them putting on airs, wouldn't it? And yet I suppose the knowledge of being able to jumpthrough a hoop better than any other wolf would justify a certain amountof 'side. '"

Fortunately at this moment a young Italian journalist at another tablerose from his seat and delivered a two-minute oration in praise of theheroine of the evening. He spoke in rapid nervous French, with a NorthItalian accent, but much of what he said could be understood by themajority of those present, and the applause was unanimous. At any ratehe had been brief and it was permissible to suppose that he had beenwitty. 

It was the opening for which Mr. Gerald Drowly had been watching andwaiting. The moment that the Italian enthusiast had dropped back intohis seat amid a rattle of hand-clapping and rapping of forks and kniveson the tables, Drowly sprang to his feet, pushed his chair well away, asfor a long separation, and begged to endorse what had been so very aptlyand gracefully, and, might he add, truly said by the previous speaker. This was only the prelude to the real burden of his message; with thedexterity that comes of practice he managed, in a couple of hurriedsentences, to divert the course of his remarks to his own personality andcareer, and to inform his listeners that he was an actor of some note andexperience, and had had the honour of acting under--and here followed astring of names of eminent actor managers of the day. He thought hemight be pardoned for mentioning the fact that his performance of"Peterkin" in the "Broken Nutshell, " had won the unstinted approval ofthe dramatic critics of the Provincial press. Towards the end of whatwas a long speech, and which seemed even longer to its hearers, hereverted to the subject of Gorla's dancing and bestowed on it suchlaudatory remarks as he had left over. Drawing his chair once again intohis immediate neighbourhood he sat down, aglow with the satisfiedconsciousness of a good work worthily performed. 

"I once acted a small part in some theatricals got up for a charity, "announced Joan in a ringing, confidential voice; "the Clapham Couriersaid that all the minor parts were very creditably sustained. Those wereits very words. I felt I must tell you that, and also say how much Ienjoyed Miss Mustelford's dancing. "

Tony Luton cheered wildly. 

"That's the cleverest speech so far, " he proclaimed. He had been askedto liven things up at his table and was doing his best to achieve thatresult, but Mr. Gerald Drowly joined Lady Peach in the unfavourableopinion she had formed of that irrepressible youth. 

Ronnie, on whom Cicely kept a solicitous eye, showed no sign of anyintention of falling in love with Gorla. He was more profitably engagedin paying court to the Grafin von Tolb, whose hospitable mansion inBelgrave Square invested her with a special interest in his eyes. As aprofessional Prince Charming he had every inducement to encourage thecult of Fairy Godmother. 

"Yes, yes, agreed, I will come and hear you play, that is a promise, "said the Grafin, "and you must come and dine with me one night and playto me afterwards, that is a promise, also, yes? That is very nice ofyou, to come and see a tiresome old woman. I am passionately fond ofmusic; if I were honest I would tell you also that I am very fond of good-looking boys, but this is not the age of honesty, so I must leave you toguess that. Come on Thursday in next week, you can? That is nice. Ihave a reigning Prince dining with me that night. Poor man, he wantscheering up; the art of being a reigning Prince is not a very pleasingone nowadays. He has made it a boast all his life that he is Liberal andhis subjects Conservative; now that is all changed--no, not all; he isstill Liberal, but his subjects unfortunately are become Socialists. Youmust play your best for him. "

"Are there many Socialists over there, in Germany I mean?" asked Ronnie, who was rather out of his depth where politics were concerned. 

"Ueberall, " said the Grafin with emphasis; "everywhere, I don't know whatit comes from; better education and worse digestions I suppose. I amsure digestion has a good deal to do with it. In my husband's family forexample, his generation had excellent digestions, and there wasn't a caseof Socialism or suicide among them; the younger generation have nodigestions worth speaking of, and there have been two suicides and threeSocialists within the last six years. And now I must really be going. Iam not a Berliner and late hours don't suit my way of life. "

Ronnie bent low over the Grafin's hand and kissed it, partly because shewas the kind of woman who naturally invoked such homage, but chieflybecause he knew that the gesture showed off his smooth burnished head toadvantage. 

The observant eyes of Lady Shalem had noted the animated conversationbetween the Grafin and Ronnie, and she had overheard fragments of theinvitation that had been accorded to the latter. 

"Take us the little foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines, " shequoted to herself; "not that that music-boy would do much in thedestructive line, but the principle is good. "

CHAPTER X: SOME REFLECTIONS AND A "TE DEUM"

Cicely awoke, on the morning after the "memorable evening, " with thesatisfactory feeling of victory achieved, tempered by a troubled sense ofhaving achieved it in the face of a reasonably grounded opposition. Shehad burned her boats, and was glad of it, but the reek of their burningdrifted rather unpleasantly across the jubilant incense-swinging of herTe Deum service. 

Last night had marked an immense step forward in her social career;without running after the patronage of influential personages she hadseen it quietly and tactfully put at her service. People such as theGrafin von Tolb were going to be a power in the London world for a verylong time to come. Herr von Kwarl, with all his useful qualities ofbrain and temperament, might conceivably fall out of favour in someunexpected turn of the political wheel, and the Shalems would probablyhave their little day and then a long afternoon of diminishing socialimportance; the placid dormouse-like Grafin would outlast them all. Shehad the qualities which make either for contented mediocrity or else forvery durable success, according as circumstances may dictate. She wasone of those characters that can neither thrust themselves to the front, nor have any wish to do so, but being there, no ordinary power can thrustthem away. 

With the Grafin as her friend Cicely found herself in altogether adifferent position from that involved by the mere interested patronage ofLady Shalem. A vista of social success was opened up to her, and she didnot mean it to be just the ordinary success of a popular and influentialhostess moving in an important circle. That people with naturally badmanners should have to be polite and considerate in their dealings withher, that people who usually held themselves aloof should have to begracious and amiable, that the self-assured should have to be just alittle humble and anxious where she was concerned, these things of courseshe intended to happen; she was a woman. But, she told herself, sheintended a great deal more than that when she traced the pattern for herscheme of social influence. In her heart she detested the Germanoccupation as a hateful necessity, but while her heart registered thehatefulness the brain recognised the necessity. The greatfighting-machines that the Germans had built up and maintained, on land, on sea, and in air, were three solid crushing facts that demonstrated thehopelessness of any immediate thought of revolt. Twenty years hence, when the present generation was older and greyer, the chances of armedrevolt would probably be equally hopeless, equally remote-seeming. Butin the meantime something could have been effected in another way. Theconquerors might partially Germanise London, but, on the other hand, ifthe thing were skilfully managed, the British element within the Empiremight impress the mark of its influence on everything German. Thefighting men might remain Prussian or Bavarian, but the thinking men, andeventually the ruling men, could gradually come under British influence, or even be of British blood. An English Liberal-Conservative "Centre"might stand as a bulwark against the Junkerdom and Socialism ofContinental Germany. So Cicely reasoned with herself, in a fashioninduced perhaps by an earlier apprenticeship to the reading of NineteenthCentury articles, in which the possible political and racial developmentsof various countries were examined and discussed and put away in thepigeon-holes of probable happenings. She had sufficient knowledge ofpolitical history to know that such a development might possibly come topass, she had not sufficient insight into actual conditions to know thatthe possibility was as remote as that of armed resistance. And the rolewhich she saw herself playing was that of a deft and courtly politicalintriguer, rallying the British element and making herself agreeable tothe German element, a political inspiration to the one and a socialdistraction to the other. At the back of her mind there lurked an honestconfession that she was probably over-rating her powers of statecraft andpersonality, that she was more likely to be carried along by the currentof events than to control or divert its direction; the politicalday-dream remained, however, as day-dreams will, in spite of the clearlight of probability shining through them. At any rate she knew, asusual, what she wanted to do, and as usual she had taken steps to carryout her intentions. Last night remained in her mind a night of importantvictory. There also remained the anxious proceeding of finding out ifthe victory had entailed any serious losses. 

Cicely was not one of those ill-regulated people who treat the first mealof the day as a convenient occasion for serving up any differences orcontentions that have been left over from the day before or overlooked inthe press of other matters. She enjoyed her breakfast and gave Yeovilunhindered opportunity for enjoying his; a discussion as to the rightcooking of a dish that he had first tasted among the Orenburg Tartars wasthe prevailing topic on this particular morning, and blended well withtrout and toast and coffee. In a cosy nook of the smoking-room, inparticipation of the after-breakfast cigarettes, Cicely made her dashinto debatable ground. 

"You haven't asked me how my supper-party went off, " she said. 

"There is a notice of it in two of the morning papers, with a list ofthose present, " said Yeovil; "the conquering race seems to have been verywell represented. "

"Several races were represented, " said Cicely; "a function of that sort, celebrating a dramatic first-night, was bound to be cosmopolitan. Infact, blending of races and nationalities is the tendency of the age welive in. "

"The blending of races seems to have been consummated already in one ofthe individuals at your party, " said Yeovil drily; "the name Mentieth-Mendlesohnn struck me as a particularly happy obliteration of raciallandmarks. "

Cicely laughed. 

"A noisy and very wearisome sort of woman, " she commented; "she remindsone of garlic that's been planted by mistake in a conservatory. Still, she's useful as an advertising agent to any one who rubs her the rightway. She'll be invaluable in proclaiming the merits of Gorla'sperformance to all and sundry; that's why I invited her. She'll probablylunch to-day at the Hotel Cecil, and every one sitting within a hundredyards of her table will hear what an emotional education they can get bygoing to see Gorla dance at the Caravansery. "

"She seems to be like the Salvation Army, " said Yeovil; "her noisereaches a class of people who wouldn't trouble to read press notices. "

"Exactly, " said Cicely. "Gorla gets quite good notices on the whole, doesn't she?"

"The one that took my fancy most was the one in the Standard, " saidYeovil, picking up that paper from a table by his side and searching itscolumns for the notice in question. "'The wolves which appeared earlierin the evening's entertainment are, the programme assures us, trainedentirely by kindness. It would have been a further kindness, at any rateto the audience, if some of the training, which the wolves doubtless donot appreciate at its proper value, had been expended on MissMustelford's efforts at stage dancing. We are assured, again on theauthority of the programme, that the much-talked-of Suggestion Dances arethe last word in Posture dancing. The last word belongs by immemorialright to the sex which Miss Mustelford adorns, and it would be ungallantto seek to deprive her of her privilege. As far as the educationalaspect of her performance is concerned we must admit that the life of thefern remains to us a private life still. Miss Mustelford has abandonedher own private life in an unavailing attempt to draw the fern into thegaze of publicity. And so it was with her other suggestions. Theysuggested many things, but nothing that was announced on the programme. Chiefly they suggested one outstanding reflection, that stage-dancing isnot like those advertised breakfast foods that can be served up afterthree minutes' preparation. Half a life-time, or rather half a youth-time is a much more satisfactory allowance. '"

"The Standard is prejudiced, " said Cicely; "some of the other papers arequite enthusiastic. The Dawn gives her a column and a quarter of notice, nearly all of it complimentary. It says the report of her fame as adancer went before her, but that her performance last night caught it upand outstripped it. "

"I should not like to suggest that the Dawn is prejudiced, " said Yeovil, "but Shalem is a managing director on it, and one of its biggestshareholders. Gorla's dancing is an event of the social season, andShalem is one of those most interested in keeping up the appearance, atany rate, of a London social season. Besides, her debut gave theopportunity for an Imperial visit to the theatre--the first appearance ata festive public function of the Conqueror among the conquered. Apparently the experiment passed off well; Shalem has every reason tofeel pleased with himself and well-disposed towards Gorla. By the way, "added Yeovil, "talking of Gorla, I'm going down to Torywood one day nextweek. "

"To Torywood?" exclaimed Cicely. The tone of her exclamation gave theimpression that the announcement was not very acceptable to her. 

"I promised the old lady that I would go and have a talk with her when Icame back from my Siberian trip; she travelled in eastern Russia, youknow, long before the Trans-Siberian railway was built, and she'senormously interested in those parts. In any case I should like to seeher again. "

"She does not see many people nowadays, " said Cicely; "I fancy she isbreaking up rather. She was very fond of the son who went down, youknow. "

"She has seen a great many of the things she cared for go down, " saidYeovil; "it is a sad old life that is left to her, when one thinks of allthat the past has been to her, of the part she used to play in the world, the work she used to get through. It used to seem as though she couldnever grow old, as if she would die standing up, with some unfinishedcommand on her lips. And now I suppose her tragedy is that she has grownold, bitterly old, and cannot die. "

Cicely was silent for a moment, and seemed about to leave the room. Thenshe turned back and said:

"I don't think I would say anything about Gorla to her if I were you. "

"It would not have occurred to me to drag her name into ourconversation, " said Yeovil coldly, "but in any case the accounts of herdancing performance will have reached Torywood through thenewspapers--also the record of your racially-blended supper-party. "

Cicely said nothing. She knew that by last night's affair she haddefinitely identified herself in public opinion with the Shalem clique, and that many of her old friends would look on her with distrust andsuspicion on that account. It was unfortunate, but she reckoned it alesser evil than tearing herself away from her London life, its successesand pleasures and possibilities. These social dislocations and severingof friendships were to be looked for after any great and violent changein State affairs. It was Yeovil's attitude that really troubled her; shewould not give way to his prejudices and accept his point of view, butshe knew that a victory that involved estrangement from him would onlybring a mockery of happiness. She still hoped that he would come roundto an acceptance of established facts and deaden his political malaise inthe absorbing distraction of field sports. The visit to Torywood was amisfortune; it might just turn the balance in the undesired direction. Only a few weeks of late summer and early autumn remained before thehunting season, and its preparations would be at hand, and Yeovil mightbe caught in the meshes of an old enthusiasm; in those few weeks, however, he might be fired by another sort of enthusiasm, an enthusiasmwhich would sooner or later mean voluntary or enforced exile for hispart, and the probable breaking up of her own social plans and ambitions. 

But Cicely knew something of the futility of improvising objections whereno real obstacle exists. The visit to Torywood was a graceful attentionon Yeovil's part to an old friend; there was no decent ground on which itcould be opposed. If the influence of that visit came athwart Yeovil'slife and hers with disastrous effect, that was "Kismet. "

And once again the reek from her burned and smouldering boats mingledthreateningly with the incense fumes of her Te Deum for victory. Sheleft the room, and Yeovil turned once more to an item of news in themorning's papers that had already arrested his attention. The ImperialAufklarung on the subject of military service was to be made public inthe course of the day. 

CHAPTER XI: THE TEA SHOP

Yeovil wandered down Piccadilly that afternoon in a spirit ofrestlessness and expectancy. The long-awaited Aufklarung dealing withthe new law of military service had not yet appeared; at any moment hemight meet the hoarse-throated newsboys running along with their papers, announcing the special edition which would give the terms of the edict tothe public. Every sound or movement that detached itself with isolatedsignificance from the general whirr and scurry of the streets seemed toYeovil to herald the oncoming clamour and rush that he was looking for. But the long endless succession of motors and 'buses and vans went by, hooting and grunting, and such newsboys as were to be seen hung aboutlistlessly, bearing no more attractive bait on their posters than theannouncement of an "earthquake shock in Hungary: feared loss of life. "

The Green Park end of Piccadilly was a changed, and in some respects alivelier thoroughfare to that which Yeovil remembered with affectionateregret. A great political club had migrated from its palatial home to ashrunken habitation in a less prosperous quarter; its place was filled bythe flamboyant frontage of the Hotel Konstantinopel. Gorgeous Turkeycarpets were spread over the wide entrance steps, and boys in Circassianand Anatolian costumes hung around the doors, or dashed forth inun-Oriental haste to carry such messages as the telephone was unable totransmit. Picturesque sellers of Turkish delight, attar-of-roses, andbrass-work coffee services, squatted under the portico, on terms ofobvious good understanding with the hotel management. A few doorsfurther down a service club that had long been a Piccadilly landmark wasa landmark still, as the home of the Army Aeronaut Club, and there was aconstant coming and going of gay-hued uniforms, Saxon, Prussian, Bavarian, Hessian, and so forth, through its portals. The mastering ofthe air and the creation of a scientific aerial war fleet, second to nonein the world, was an achievement of which the conquering race waspardonably proud, and for which it had good reason to be duly thankful. Over the gateways was blazoned the badge of the club, an elephant, whale, and eagle, typifying the three armed forces of the State, by land and seaand air; the eagle bore in its beak a scroll with the proud legend: "Thelast am I, but not the least. "

To the eastward of this gaily-humming hive the long shuttered front of adeserted ducal mansion struck a note of protest and mourning amid thenoise and whirl and colour of a seemingly uncaring city. On the otherside of the roadway, on the gravelled paths of the Green Park, smallragged children from the back streets of Westminster looked wistfully atthe smooth trim stretches of grass on which it was now forbidden, in twolanguages, to set foot. Only the pigeons, disregarding the changes ofpolitical geography, walked about as usual, wondering perhaps, if theyever wondered at anything, at the sudden change in the distribution ofpark humans. 

Yeovil turned his steps out of the hot sunlight into the shade of theBurlington Arcade, familiarly known to many of its newer frequenters asthe Passage. Here the change that new conditions and requirements hadwrought was more immediately noticeable than anywhere else in the WestEnd. Most of the shops on the western side had been cleared away, and intheir place had been installed an "open-air" cafe, converting the longalley into a sort of promenade tea-garden, flanked on one side by a lineof haberdashers', perfumers', and jewellers' show windows. The patronsof the cafe could sit at the little round tables, drinking their coffeeand syrups and aperitifs, and gazing, if they were so minded, at thepyjamas and cravats and Brazilian diamonds spread out for inspectionbefore them. A string orchestra, hidden away somewhere in a gallery, wasalternating grand opera with the Gondola Girl and the latest gems ofTransatlantic melody. From around the tightly-packed tables arose ababble of tongues, made up chiefly of German, a South American renderingof Spanish, and a North American rendering of English, with here andthere the sharp shaken-out staccato of Japanese. A sleepy-looking boy, in a nondescript uniform, was wandering to and fro among the customers, offering for sale the Matin, New York Herald, Berliner Tageblatt, and ahost of crudely coloured illustrated papers, embodying the hard-workedwit of a world-legion of comic artists. Yeovil hurried through theArcade; it was not here, in this atmosphere of staring alien eyes andjangling tongues, that he wanted to read the news of the ImperialAufklarung. 

By a succession of by-ways he reached Hanover Square, and thence made hisway into Oxford Street. There was no commotion of activity to be noticedyet among the newsboys; the posters still concerned themselves with theearthquake in Hungary, varied with references to the health of the Kingof Roumania, and a motor accident in South London. Yeovil wanderedaimlessly along the street for a few dozen yards, and then turned downinto the smoking-room of a cheap tea-shop, where he judged that theflourishing foreign element would be less conspicuously represented. Quiet-voiced, smooth-headed youths, from neighbouring shops and wholesalehouses, sat drinking tea and munching pastry, some of them reading, others making a fitful rattle with dominoes on the marble-topped tables. A clean, wholesome smell of tea and coffee made itself felt through theclouds of cigarette smoke; cleanliness and listlessness seemed to be thedominant notes of the place, a cleanliness that was commendable, and alistlessness that seemed unnatural and undesirable where so much youthwas gathered together for refreshment and recreation. Yeovil seatedhimself at a table already occupied by a young clergyman who was smokinga cigarette over the remains of a plateful of buttered toast. He had akeen, clever, hard-lined face, the face of a man who, in an earlier stageof European history, might have been a warlike prior, awkward to tackleat the council-board, greatly to be avoided where blows were beingexchanged. A pale, silent damsel drifted up to Yeovil and took his orderwith an air of being mentally some hundreds of miles away, and utterlyindifferent to the requirements of those whom she served; if she hadbrought calf's-foot jelly instead of the pot of China tea he had askedfor, Yeovil would hardly have been surprised. However, the tea dulyarrived on the table, and the pale damsel scribbled a figure on a slip ofpaper, put it silently by the side of the teapot, and drifted silentlyaway. Yeovil had seen the same sort of thing done on the musical-comedystage, and done rather differently. 

"Can you tell me, sir, is the Imperial announcement out yet?" asked theyoung clergyman, after a brief scrutiny of his neighbour. 

"No, I have been waiting about for the last half-hour on the look-out forit, " said Yeovil; "the special editions ought to be out by now. " Then headded: "I have only just lately come from abroad. I know scarcelyanything of London as it is now. You may imagine that a good deal of itis very strange to me. Your profession must take you a good deal amongall classes of people. I have seen something of what one may call theupper, or, at any rate, the richer classes, since I came back; do tell mesomething about the poorer classes of the community. How do they takethe new order of things?"

"Badly, " said the young cleric, "badly, in more senses than one. Theyare helpless and they are bitter--bitter in the useless kind of way thatproduces no great resolutions. They look round for some one to blame forwhat has happened; they blame the politicians, they blame the leisuredclasses; in an indirect way I believe they blame the Church. Certainly, the national disaster has not drawn them towards religion in any form. One thing you may be sure of, they do not blame themselves. No trueLondoner ever admits that fault lies at his door. 'No, I never!' is anexclamation that is on his lips from earliest childhood, whenever he ischarged with anything blameworthy or punishable. That is why schooldiscipline was ever a thing repugnant to the schoolboard child and itsparents; no schoolboard scholar ever deserved punishment. Howeverobvious the fault might seem to a disciplinarian, 'No, I never'exonerated it as something that had not happened. Public schoolboys andprivate schoolboys of the upper and middle class had their fling and tooktheir thrashings, when they were found out, as a piece of bad luck, but'our Bert' and 'our Sid' were of those for whom there is no condemnation;if they were punished it was for faults that 'no, they never' committed. Naturally the grown-up generation of Berts and Sids, the voters andhouseholders, do not realise, still less admit, that it was they whocalled the tune to which the politicians danced. They had to choosebetween the vote-mongers and the so-called 'scare-mongers, ' and theirverdict was for the vote-mongers all the time. And now they are bitter;they are being punished, and punishment is not a thing that they havebeen schooled to bear. The taxes that are falling on them are a grievoussource of discontent, and the military service that will be imposed onthem, for the first time in their lives, will be another. There is amore lovable side to their character under misfortune, though, " added theyoung clergyman. "Deep down in their hearts there was a very realaffection for the old dynasty. Future historians will perhaps be able toexplain how and why the Royal Family of Great Britain captured theimaginations of its subjects in so genuine and lasting a fashion. Amongthe poorest and the most matter-of-fact, for whom the name of no publicman, politician or philanthropist, stands out with any especialsignificance, the old Queen, and the dead King, the dethroned monarch andthe young prince live in a sort of domestic Pantheon, a recollection thatis a proud and wistful personal possession when so little remains to beproud of or to possess. There is no favour that I am so often asked foramong my poorer parishioners as the gift of the picture of this or thatmember of the old dynasty. 'I have got all of them, only except PrincessMary, ' an old woman said to me last week, and she nearly cried withpleasure when I brought her an old Bystander portrait that filled the gapin her collection. And on Queen Alexandra's day they bring out and wearthe faded wild-rose favours that they bought with their pennies in daysgone by. "

"The tragedy of the enactment that is about to enforce military serviceon these people is that it comes when they've no longer a country tofight for, " said Yeovil. 

The young clergyman gave an exclamation of bitter impatience. 

"That is the cruel mockery of the whole thing. Every now and then in thecourse of my work I have come across lads who were really drifting to thebad through the good qualities in them. A clean combative strain intheir blood, and a natural turn for adventure, made the ordinary anaemicroutine of shop or warehouse or factory almost unbearable for them. Whatsplendid little soldiers they would have made, and how grandly thediscipline of a military training would have steadied them in after-lifewhen steadiness was wanted. The only adventure that their surroundingsoffered them has been the adventure of practising mildly criminalmisdeeds without getting landed in reformatories and prisons; those ofthem that have not been successful in keeping clear of detection arewalking round and round prison yards, experiencing the operation of adiscipline that breaks and does not build. They were merry-hearted boysonce, with nothing of the criminal or ne'er-do-weel in their natures, andnow--have you ever seen a prison yard, with that walk round and round andround between grey walls under a blue sky?"

Yeovil nodded. 

"It's good enough for criminals and imbeciles, " said the parson, "butthink of it for those boys, who might have been marching along to the tapof the drum, with a laugh on their lips instead of Hell in their hearts. I have had Hell in my heart sometimes, when I have come in touch withcases like those. I suppose you are thinking that I am a strange sort ofparson. "

"I was just defining you in my mind, " said Yeovil, "as a man of God, withan infinite tenderness for little devils. "

The clergyman flushed. 

"Rather a fine epitaph to have on one's tombstone, " he said, "especiallyif the tombstone were in some crowded city graveyard. I suppose I am aman of God, but I don't think I could be called a man of peace. "

Looking at the strong young face, with its suggestion of a fighting priorof bygone days more marked than ever, Yeovil mentally agreed that hecould not. 

"I have learned one thing in life, " continued the young man, "and that isthat peace is not for this world. Peace is what God gives us when Hetakes us into His rest. Beat your sword into a ploughshare if you like, but beat your enemy into smithereens first. "

A long-drawn cry, repeated again and again, detached itself from thethrob and hoot and whir of the street traffic. 

"Speshul! Military service, spesh-ul!"

The young clergyman sprang from his seat and went up the staircase in asuccession of bounds, causing the domino players and novelette readers tolook up for a moment in mild astonishment. In a few seconds he was backagain, with a copy of an afternoon paper. The Imperial Rescript was setforth in heavy type, in parallel columns of English and German. As theyoung man read a deep burning flush spread over his face, then ebbed awayinto a chalky whiteness. He read the announcement to the end, thenhanded the paper to Yeovil, and left without a word. 

Beneath the courtly politeness and benignant phraseology of the documentran a trenchant searing irony. The British born subjects of the GermanicCrown, inhabiting the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, hadhabituated themselves as a people to the disuse of arms, and resolutelyexcluded military service and national training from their politicalsystem and daily life. Their judgment that they were unsuited as a raceto bear arms and conform to military discipline was not to be set aside. Their new Overlord did not propose to do violence to their feelings andcustoms by requiring from them the personal military sacrifices andservices which were rendered by his subjects German-born. The Britishsubjects of the Crown were to remain a people consecrated to peacefulpursuits, to commerce and trade and husbandry. The defence of theircoasts and shipping and the maintenance of order and general safety wouldbe guaranteed by a garrison of German troops, with the co-operation ofthe Imperial war fleet. German-born subjects residing temporarily orpermanently in the British Isles would come under the same lawsrespecting compulsory military service as their fellow-subjects of Germanblood in the other parts of the Empire, and special enactments would bedrawn up to ensure that their interests did not suffer from a periodicalwithdrawal on training or other military calls. Necessarily a heavilydifferentiated scale of war taxation would fall on British taxpayers, toprovide for the upkeep of the garrison and to equalise the services andsacrifices rendered by the two branches of his Majesty's subjects. Asmilitary service was not henceforth open to any subject of British birthno further necessity for any training or exercise of a military natureexisted, therefore all rifle clubs, drill associations, cadet corps andsimilar bodies were henceforth declared to be illegal. No weapons otherthan guns for specified sporting purposes, duly declared and registeredand open to inspection when required, could be owned, purchased, orcarried. The science of arms was to be eliminated altogether from thelife of a people who had shown such marked repugnance to its study andpractice. 

The cold irony of the measure struck home with the greater force becauseits nature was so utterly unexpected. Public anticipation had guessed atvarious forms of military service, aggressively irksome or tactfullylightened as the case might be, in any event certain to be bitterlyunpopular, and now there had come this contemptuous boon, which hadremoved, at one stroke, the bogey of compulsory military service from thetroubled imaginings of the British people, and fastened on them the crueldistinction of being in actual fact what an enemy had called them insplenetic scorn long years ago--a nation of shopkeepers. Aye, somethingeven below that level, a race of shopkeepers who were no longer a nation. 

Yeovil crumpled the paper in his hand and went out into the sunlitstreet. A sudden roll of drums and crash of brass music filled the air. A company of Bavarian infantry went by, in all the pomp and circumstanceof martial array and the joyous swing of rapid rhythmic movement. Thestreet echoed and throbbed in the Englishman's ears with the exultantpulse of youth and mastery set to loud Pagan music. A group of lads fromthe tea-shop clustered on the pavement and watched the troops go by, staring at a phase of life in which they had no share. The martialtrappings, the swaggering joy of life, the comradeship of camp andbarracks, the hard discipline of drill yard and fatigue duty, the longsentry watches, the trench digging, forced marches, wounds, cold, hunger, makeshift hospitals, and the blood-wet laurels--these were not for them. Such things they might only guess at, or see on a cinema film, darkly;they belonged to the civilian nation. 

The function of afternoon tea was still being languidly observed in thebig drawing-room when Yeovil returned to Berkshire Street. Cicely wasplaying the part of hostess to a man of perhaps forty-one years of age, who looked slightly older from his palpable attempts to look very muchyounger. Percival Plarsey was a plump, pale-faced, short-leggedindividual, with puffy cheeks, over-prominent nose, and thin colourlesshair. His mother, with nothing more than maternal prejudice to excuseher, had discovered some twenty odd years ago that he was a well-favouredyoung man, and had easily imbued her son with the same opinion. Theslipping away of years and the natural transition of the unathletic boyinto the podgy unhealthy-looking man did little to weaken the tradition;Plarsey had never been able to relinquish the idea that a youthful charmand comeliness still centred in his person, and laboured daily at histoilet with the devotion that a hopelessly lost cause is so often able toinspire. He babbled incessantly about himself and the accessoryfutilities of his life in short, neat, complacent sentences, and in avoice that Ronald Storre said reminded one of a fat bishop blessing abutter-making competition. While he babbled he kept his eyes fastened onhis listeners to observe the impression which his important littleannouncements and pronouncements were making. On the present occasion hewas pattering forth a detailed description of the upholstery and fittingsof his new music-room. 

"All the hangings, violette de Parme, all the furniture, rosewood. Theonly ornament in the room is a replica of the Mozart statue in Vienna. Nothing but Mozart is to be played in the room. Absolutely, nothing butMozart. "

"You will get rather tired of that, won't you?" said Cicely, feeling thatshe was expected to comment on this tremendous announcement. 

"One gets tired of everything, " said Plarsey, with a fat little sigh ofresignation. "I can't tell you how tired I am of Rubenstein, and one dayI suppose I shall be tired of Mozart, and violette de Parme and rosewood. I never thought it possible that I could ever tire of jonquils, and now Isimply won't have one in the house. Oh, the scene the other day becausesome one brought some jonquils into the house! I'm afraid I wasdreadfully rude, but I really couldn't help it. "

He could talk like this through a long summer day or a long winterevening. 

Yeovil belonged to a race forbidden to bear arms. At the moment he wouldgladly have contented himself with the weapons with which nature hadendowed him, if he might have kicked and pommelled the abhorrent specimenof male humanity whom he saw before him. 

Instead he broke into the conversation with an inspired flash ofmalicious untruthfulness. 

"It is wonderful, " he observed carelessly, "how popular that Viennesestatue of Mozart has become. A friend who inspects County Council ArtSchools tells me you find a copy of it in every class-room you go into. "

It was a poor substitute for physical violence, but it was all thatcivilisation allowed him in the way of relieving his feelings; it had, moreover, the effect of making Plarsey profoundly miserable. 

CHAPTER XII: THE TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

The train bearing Yeovil on his visit to Torywood slid and rattledwestward through the hazy dreamland of an English summer landscape. Seenfrom the train windows the stark bare ugliness of the metalled line wasforgotten, and the eye rested only on the green solitude that unfoldeditself as the miles went slipping by. Tall grasses and meadow-weedsstood in deep shocks, field after field, between the leafy boundaries ofhedge or coppice, thrusting themselves higher and higher till theytouched the low sweeping branches of the trees that here and thereovershadowed them. Broad streams, bordered with a heavy fringe of reedand sedge, went winding away into a green distance where woodland andmeadowland seemed indefinitely prolonged; narrow streamlets, lost to viewin the growth that they fostered, disclosed their presence merely by thewater-weed that showed in a riband of rank verdure threading the mellowergreen of the fields. On the stream banks moorhens walked with jerkyconfident steps, in the easy boldness of those who had a couple of otherelements at their disposal in an emergency; more timorous partridgesraced away from the apparition of the train, looking all leg and neck, like little forest elves fleeing from human encounter. And in thedistance, over the tree line, a heron or two flapped with slow measuredwing-beats and an air of being bent on an immeasurably longer journeythan the train that hurtled so frantically along the rails. Now and thenthe meadowland changed itself suddenly into orchard, with close-growingtrees already showing the measure of their coming harvest, and thenstrawyard and farm buildings would slide into view; heavy dairy cattle, roan and skewbald and dappled, stood near the gates, drowsily resentfulof insect stings, and bunched-up companies of ducks halted in seemingirresolution between the charms of the horse-pond and the alluringneighbourhood of the farm kitchen. Away by the banks of some rushingmill-stream, in a setting of copse and cornfield, a village might beguessed at, just a hint of red roof, grey wreathed chimney and old churchtower as seen from the windows of the passing train, and over it allbrooded a happy, settled calm, like the dreaming murmur of a trout-streamand the far-away cawing of rooks. 

It was a land where it seemed as if it must be always summer andgenerally afternoon, a land where bees hummed among the wild thyme and inthe flower beds of cottage gardens, where the harvest-mice rustled amidthe corn and nettles, and the mill-race flowed cool and silent throughwater-weeds and dark tunnelled sluices, and made soft droning music withthe wooden mill-wheel. And the music carried with it the wording of oldundying rhymes, and sang of the jolly, uncaring, uncared-for miller, ofthe farmer who went riding upon his grey mare, of the mouse who livedbeneath the merry mill-pin, of the sweet music on yonder green hill andthe dancers all in yellow--the songs and fancies of a lingering oldentime, when men took life as children take a long summer day, and went tobed at last with a simple trust in something they could not haveexplained. 

Yeovil watched the passing landscape with the intent hungry eyes of a manwho revisits a scene that holds high place in his affections. Hisimagination raced even quicker than the train, following winding roadsand twisting valleys into unseen distances, picturing farms and hamlets, hills and hollows, clattering inn yards and sleepy woodlands. 

"A beautiful country, " said his only fellow-traveller, who was alsogazing at the fleeting landscape; "surely a country worth fighting for. "

He spoke in fairly correct English, but he was unmistakably a foreigner;one could have allotted him with some certainty to the Eastern half ofEurope. 

"A beautiful country, as you say, " replied Yeovil; then he added thequestion, "Are you German?"

"No, Hungarian, " said the other; "and you, you are English?" he asked. 

"I have been much in England, but I am from Russia, " said Yeovil, purposely misleading his companion on the subject of his nationality inorder to induce him to talk with greater freedom on a delicate topic. While living among foreigners in a foreign land he had shrunk fromhearing his country's disaster discussed, or even alluded to; now he wasanxious to learn what unprejudiced foreigners thought of the catastropheand the causes which had led up to it. 

"It is a strange spectacle, a wonder, is it not so?" resumed the other, "a great nation such as this was, one of the greatest nations in moderntimes, or of any time, carrying its flag and its language into all partsof the world, and now, after one short campaign, it is--"

And he shrugged his shoulders many times and made clucking noises at theroof of his voice, like a hen calling to a brood of roving chickens. 

"They grew soft, " he resumed; "great world-commerce brings great luxury, and luxury brings softness. They had everything to warn them, thingshappening in their own time and before their eyes, and they would not bewarned. They had seen, in one generation, the rise of the military andnaval power of the Japanese, a brown-skinned race living in some islandrice fields in a tropical sea, a people one thought of in connection withpaper fans and flowers and pretty tea-gardens, who suddenly marched andsailed into the world's gaze as a Great Power; they had seen, too, therise of the Bulgars, a poor herd of zaptieh-ridden peasants, with a fewstudents scattered in exile in Bukarest and Odessa, who shot up in onegeneration to be an armed and aggressive nation with history in itshands. The English saw these things happening around them, and with awar-cloud growing blacker and bigger and always more threatening on theirown threshold they sat down to grow soft and peaceful. They grew softand accommodating in all things in religion--"

"In religion?" said Yeovil. 

"In religion, yes, " said his companion emphatically; "they had come tolook on the Christ as a sort of amiable elder Brother, whose letters fromabroad were worth reading. Then, when they had emptied all the divinemystery and wonder out of their faith naturally they grew tired of it, oh, but dreadfully tired of it. I know many English of the countryparts, and always they tell me they go to church once in each week to setthe good example to the servants. They were tired of their faith, butthey were not virile enough to become real Pagans; their dancing faunswere good young men who tripped Morris dances and ate health foods andbelieved in a sort of Socialism which made for the greatest dulness ofthe greatest number. You will find plenty of them still if you go intowhat remains of social London. "

Yeovil gave a grunt of acquiescence. 

"They grew soft in their political ideas, " continued the unsparingcritic; "for the old insular belief that all foreigners were devils androgues they substituted another belief, equally grounded on insular lackof knowledge, that most foreigners were amiable, good fellows, who onlyneeded to be talked to and patted on the back to become your friends andbenefactors. They began to believe that a foreign Minister wouldrelinquish long-cherished schemes of national policy and hostileexpansion if he came over on a holiday and was asked down to countryhouses and shown the tennis court and the rock-garden and the youngerchildren. Listen. I once heard it solemnly stated at an after-dinnerdebate in some literary club that a certain very prominent Germanstatesman had a daughter at school in England, and that future friendlyrelations between the two countries were improved in prospect, if notassured, by that circumstance. You think I am laughing; I am recording afact, and the men present were politicians and statesmen as well asliterary dilettanti. It was an insular lack of insight that worked themischief, or some of the mischief. We, in Hungary, we live too muchcheek by jowl with our racial neighbours to have many illusions aboutthem. Austrians, Roumanians, Serbs, Italians, Czechs, we know what theythink of us, and we know what to think of them, we know what we want inthe world, and we know what they want; that knowledge does not send usflying at each other's throats, but it does keep us from growing soft. Ah, the British lion was in a hurry to inaugurate the Millennium and tolie down gracefully with the lamb. He made two mistakes, only two, butthey were very bad ones; the Millennium hadn't arrived, and it was not alamb that he was lying down with. "

"You do not like the English, I gather, " said Yeovil, as the Hungarianwent off into a short burst of satirical laughter. 

"I have always liked them, " he answered, "but now I am angry with themfor being soft. Here is my station, " he added, as the train slowed down, and he commenced to gather his belongings together. "I am angry withthem, " he continued, as a final word on the subject, "because I hate theGermans. "

He raised his hat punctiliously in a parting salute and stepped out on tothe platform. His place was taken by a large, loose-limbed man, withflorid face and big staring eyes, and an immense array of fishing-basket, rod, fly-cases, and so forth. He was of the type that one couldinstinctively locate as a loud-voiced, self-constituted authority onwhatever topic might happen to be discussed in the bars of small hotels. 

"Are you English?" he asked, after a preliminary stare at Yeovil. 

This time Yeovil did not trouble to disguise his nationality; he noddedcurtly to his questioner. 

"Glad of that, " said the fisherman; "I don't like travelling withGermans. "

"Unfortunately, " said Yeovil, "we have to travel with them, as partnersin the same State concern, and not by any means the predominant partnereither. "

"Oh, that will soon right itself, " said the other with loudassertiveness, "that will right itself damn soon. "

"Nothing in politics rights itself, " said Yeovil; "things have to berighted, which is a different matter. "

"What d'y'mean?" said the fisherman, who did not like to have hisassertions taken up and shaken into shape. 

"We have given a clever and domineering people a chance to plantthemselves down as masters in our land; I don't imagine that they aregoing to give us an easy chance to push them out. To do that we shallhave to be a little cleverer than they are, a little harder, a littlefiercer, and a good deal more self-sacrificing than we have been in mylifetime or in yours. "

"We'll be that, right enough, " said the fisherman; "we mean business thistime. The last war wasn't a war, it was a snap. We weren't prepared andthey were. That won't happen again, bless you. I know what I'm talkingabout. I go up and down the country, and I hear what people are saying. "

Yeovil privately doubted if he ever heard anything but his own opinions. 

"It stands to reason, " continued the fisherman, "that a highly civilisedrace like ours, with the record that we've had for leading the wholeworld, is not going to be held under for long by a lot of damned sausage-eating Germans. Don't you believe it! I know what I'm talking about. I've travelled about the world a bit. "

Yeovil shrewdly suspected that the world travels amounted to nothing morethan a trip to the United States and perhaps the Channel Islands, with, possibly, a week or fortnight in Paris. 

"It isn't the past we've got to think of, it's the future, " said Yeovil. "Other maritime Powers had pasts to look back on; Spain and Holland, forinstance. The past didn't help them when they let their sea-sovereigntyslip from them. That is a matter of history and not very distant historyeither. "

"Ah, that's where you make a mistake, " said the other; "oursea-sovereignty hasn't slipped from us, and won't do, neither. There'sthe British Empire beyond the seas; Canada, Australia, New Zealand, EastAfrica. "

He rolled the names round his tongue with obvious relish. 

"If it was a list of first-class battleships, and armoured cruisers anddestroyers and airships that you were reeling off, there would be somecomfort and hope in the situation, " said Yeovil; "the loyalty of thecolonies is a splendid thing, but it is only pathetically splendidbecause it can do so little to recover for us what we've lost. Againstthe Zeppelin air fleet, and the Dreadnought sea squadrons and the newGelberhaus cruisers, the last word in maritime mobility, of what avail isloyal devotion plus half-a-dozen warships, one keel to ten, scatteredover one or two ocean coasts?"

"Ah, but they'll build, " said the fisherman confidently; "they'll build. They're only waiting to enlarge their dockyard accommodation and get theright class of artificers and engineers and workmen together. The moneywill be forthcoming somehow, and they'll start in and build. "

"And do you suppose, " asked Yeovil in slow bitter contempt, "that thevictorious nation is going to sit and watch and wait till the defeatedfoe has created a new war fleet, big enough to drive it from the seas? Doyou suppose it is going to watch keel added to keel, gun to gun, airshipto airship, till its preponderance has been wiped out or even threatened?That sort of thing is done once in a generation, not twice. Who is goingto protect Australia or New Zealand while they enlarge their dockyardsand hangars and build their dreadnoughts and their airships?"

"Here's my station and I'm not sorry, " said the fisherman, gathering histackle together and rising to depart; "I've listened to you long enough. You and me wouldn't agree, not if we was to talk all day. Fact is, I'man out-and-out patriot and you're only a half-hearted one. That's whatyou are, half-hearted. "

And with that parting shot he left the carriage and lounged heavily downthe platform, a patriot who had never handled a rifle or mounted a horseor pulled an oar, but who had never flinched from demolishing hiscountry's enemies with his tongue. 

"England has never had any lack of patriots of that type, " thought Yeovilsadly; "so many patriots and so little patriotism. "

CHAPTER XIII: TORYWOOD

Yeovil got out of the train at a small, clean, wayside station, andrapidly formed the conclusion that neatness, abundant leisure, and adevotion to the cultivation of wallflowers and wyandottes were theprevailing influences of the station-master's life. The train slid awayinto the hazy distance of trees and meadows, and left the travellerstanding in a world that seemed to be made up in equal parts of rockgarden, chicken coops, and whiskey advertisements. The station-master, who appeared also to act as emergency porter, took Yeovil's ticket withthe gesture of a kind-hearted person brushing away a troublesome wasp, and returned to a study of the Poultry Chronicle, which was giving itsreaders sage counsel concerning the ailments of belated July chickens. Yeovil called to mind the station-master of a tiny railway town inSiberia, who had held him in long and rather intelligent converse on thepoetical merits and demerits of Shelley, and he wondered what the resultwould be if he were to engage the English official in a discussion onLermontoff--or for the matter of that, on Shelley. The temptation toexperiment was, however, removed by the arrival of a young groom, withbrown eyes and a friendly smile, who hurried into the station and tookYeovil once more into a world where he was of fleeting importance. 

In the roadway outside was a four-wheeled dogcart with a pair of thefamous Torywood blue roans. It was an agreeable variation in modernlocomotion to be met at a station with high-class horseflesh instead ofthe ubiquitous motor, and the landscape was not of such a nature that onewished to be whirled through it in a cloud of dust. After a quick spinof some ten or fifteen minutes through twisting hedge-girt country roads, the roans turned in at a wide gateway, and went with dancing, rhythmicstep along the park drive. The screen of oak-crowned upland suddenlyfell away and a grey sharp-cornered building came into view in a settingof low growing beeches and dark pines. Torywood was not a stately, reposeful-looking house; it lay amid the sleepy landscape like a couchedwatchdog with pricked ears and wakeful eyes. Built somewhere about thelast years of Dutch William's reign, it had been a centre, ever since, for the political life of the countryside; a storm centre of discontentor a rallying ground for the well affected, as the circumstances of theday might entail. On the stone-flagged terrace in front of the house, with its quaint leaden figures of Diana pursuing a hound-pressed stag, successive squires and lords of Torywood had walked to and fro with theirfriends, watching the thunderclouds on the political horizon or theshifting shadows on the sundial of political favour, tapping thepolitical barometer for indications of change, working out a partycampaign or arranging for the support of some national movement. To andfro they had gone in their respective generations, men with the passionfor statecraft and political combat strong in their veins, and many oft-recurring names had echoed under those wakeful-looking casements, namesspoken in anger or exultation, or murmured in fear and anxiety:Bolingbroke, Charles Edward, Walpole, the Farmer King, Bonaparte, Pitt, Wellington, Peel, Gladstone--echo and Time might have graven those nameson the stone flags and grey walls. And now one tired old woman walkedthere, with names on her lips that she never uttered. 

A friendly riot of fox terriers and spaniels greeted the carriage, leaping and rolling and yelping in an exuberance of sociability, asthough horses and coachman and groom were comrades who had been absentfor long months instead of half an hour. An indiscriminatelyaffectionate puppy lay flat and whimpering at Yeovil's feet, sending uplittle showers of gravel with its wildly thumping tail, while two of theterriers raced each other madly across lawn and shrubbery, as though toshow the blue roans what speed really was. The laughing-eyed young groomdisentangled the puppy from between Yeovil's legs, and then he wasushered into the grey silence of the entrance hall, leaving sunlight andnoise and the stir of life behind him. 

"Her ladyship will see you in her writing room, " he was told, and hefollowed a servant along the dark passages to the well-remembered room. 

There was something tragic in the sudden contrast between the vigour andyouth and pride of life that Yeovil had seen crystallised in thosedancing, high-stepping horses, scampering dogs, and alert, clean-limbedyoung men-servants, and the age-frail woman who came forward to meet him. 

Eleanor, Dowager Lady Greymarten, had for more than half a century beenthe ruling spirit at Torywood. The affairs of the county had notsufficed for her untiring activities of mind and body; in the wider fieldof national and Imperial service she had worked and schemed and foughtwith an energy and a far-sightedness that came probably from the blend ofcaution and bold restlessness in her Scottish blood. For many educatedminds the arena of politics and public life is a weariness of dust anddisgust, to others it is a fascinating study, to be watched from thecomfortable seat of a spectator. To her it was a home. In her townhouse or down at Torywood, with her writing-pad on her knee and thetelephone at her elbow, or in personal counsel with some trustedcolleague or persuasive argument with a halting adherent orhalf-convinced opponent, she had laboured on behalf of the poor and theill-equipped, had fought for her idea of the Right, and above all, forthe safety and sanity of her Fatherland. Spadework when necessary andleadership when called for, came alike within the scope of heractivities, and not least of her achievements, though perhaps she hardlyrealised it, was the force of her example, a lone, indomitable fightercalling to the half-caring and the half-discouraged, to the laggard andthe slow-moving. 

And now she came across the room with "the tired step of a tired king, "and that look which the French so expressively called l'air defait. Thecharm which Heaven bestows on old ladies, reserving its highest gift tothe end, had always seemed in her case to be lost sight of in the dignityand interest of a great dame who was still in the full prime of herfighting and ruling powers. Now, in Yeovil's eyes, she had suddenly cometo be very old, stricken with the forlorn languor of one who knows thatdeath will be weary to wait for. She had spared herself nothing in thelong labour, the ceaseless building, the watch and ward, and in one shortautumn week she had seen the overthrow of all that she had built, thefalling asunder of the world in which she had laboured. Her life's endwas like a harvest home when blight and storm have laid waste the fruitof long toil and unsparing outlay. Victory had been her goal, the deathor victory of old heroic challenge, for she had always dreamed to diefighting to the last; death or victory--and the gods had given herneither, only the bitterness of a defeat that could not be measured inwords, and the weariness of a life that had outlived happiness or hope. Such was Eleanor, Dowager Lady Greymarten, a shadow amid the young red-blooded life at Torywood, but a shadow that was too real to die, a shadowthat was stronger than the substance that surrounded it. 

Yeovil talked long and hurriedly of his late travels, of the vastSiberian forests and rivers, the desolate tundras, the lakes and marsheswhere the wild swans rear their broods, the flower carpet of the summerfields and the winter ice-mantle of Russia's northern sea. He talked asa man talks who avoids the subject that is uppermost in his mind, and inthe mind of his hearer, as one who looks away from a wound or deformitythat is too cruel to be taken notice of. 

Tea was served in a long oak-panelled gallery, where generations ofMustelfords had romped and played as children, and remained yet ineffigy, in a collection of more or less faithful portraits. After teaYeovil was taken by his hostess to the aviaries, which constituted thesole claim which Torywood possessed to being considered a show place. Thethird Earl of Greymarten had collected rare and interesting birds, somewhere about the time when Gilbert White was penning the last of hisdeathless letters, and his successors in the title had perpetuated thehobby. Little lawns and ponds and shrubberies were partitioned off forthe various ground-loving species, and higher cages with interlacingperches and rockwork shelves accommodated the birds whose naturalexpression of movement was on the wing. Quails and francolins scurriedabout under low-growing shrubs, peacock-pheasants strutted and sunnedthemselves, pugnacious ruffs engaged in perfunctory battles, from forceof habit now that the rivalry of the mating season was over; choughs, ravens, and loud-throated gulls occupied sections of a vast rockery, andbright-hued Chinese pond-herons and delicately stepping egrets wadedamong the waterlilies of a marble-terraced tank. One or two dusky shapesseen dimly in the recesses of a large cage built round a hollow treewould be lively owls when evening came on. 

In the course of his many wanderings Yeovil had himself contributed threeor four inhabitants to this little feathered town, and he went round theenclosures, renewing old acquaintances and examining new additions. 

"The falcon cage is empty, " said Lady Greymarten, pointing to a largewired dome that towered high above the other enclosures, "I let thelanner fly free one day. The other birds may be reconciled to theircomfortable quarters and abundant food and absence of dangers, but Idon't think all those things could make up to a falcon for the wild rangeof cliff and desert. When one has lost one's own liberty one feels aquicker sympathy for other caged things, I suppose. "

There was silence for a moment, and then the Dowager went on, in awistful, passionate voice:

"I am an old woman now, Murrey, I must die in my cage. I haven't thestrength to fight. Age is a very real and very cruel thing, though wemay shut our eyes to it and pretend it is not there. I thought at onetime that I should never really know what it meant, what it brought toone. I thought of it as a messenger that one could keep waiting out inthe yard till the very last moment. I know now what it means. . . . Butyou, Murrey, you are young, you can fight. Are you going to be afighter, or the very humble servant of the fait accompli?"

"I shall never be the servant of the fait accompli, " said Yeovil. "Iloathe it. As to fighting, one must first find out what weapon to use, and how to use it effectively. One must watch and wait. "

"One must not wait too long, " said the old woman. "Time is on theirside, not ours. It is the young people we must fight for now, if theyare ever to fight for us. A new generation will spring up, a weakermemory of old glories will survive, the eclat of the ruling race willcapture young imaginations. If I had your youth, Murrey, and your sex, Iwould become a commercial traveller. "

"A commercial traveller!" exclaimed Yeovil. 

"Yes, one whose business took him up and down the country, into contactwith all classes, into homes and shops and inns and railway carriages. And as I travelled I would work, work on the minds of every boy and girlI came across, every young father and young mother too, every youngcouple that were going to be man and wife. I would awaken or keep alivein their memory the things that we have been, the grand, brave thingsthat some of our race have done, and I would stir up a longing, adetermination for the future that we must win back. I would be a counter-agent to the agents of the fait accompli. In course of time theGovernment would find out what I was doing, and I should be sent out ofthe country, but I should have accomplished something, and others wouldcarry on the work. That is what I would do. Murrey, even if it is to bea losing battle, fight it, fight it!"

Yeovil knew that the old lady was fighting her last battle, rallying thediscouraged, and spurring on the backward. 

A footman came to announce that the carriage waited to take him back tothe station. His hostess walked with him through the hall, and came outon to the stone-flagged terrace, the terrace from which a former LadyGreymarten had watched the twinkling bonfires that told of Waterloo. 

Yeovil said good-bye to her as she stood there, a wan, shrunken shadow, yet with a greater strength and reality in her flickering life than thoseparrot men and women that fluttered and chattered through London drawing-rooms and theatre foyers. 

As the carriage swung round a bend in the drive Yeovil looked back atTorywood, a lone, grey building, couched like a watchdog with prickedears and wakeful eyes in the midst of the sleeping landscape. An oldpleading voice was still ringing in his ears:

 Imperious and yet forlorn, Came through the silence of the trees, The echoes of a golden horn, Calling to distances. 

Somehow Yeovil knew that he would never hear that voice again, and heknew, too, that he would hear it always, with its message, "Be afighter. " And he knew now, with a shamefaced consciousness that sprangsuddenly into existence, that the summons would sound for him in vain. 

The weary brain-torturing months of fever had left their trail behind, alassitude of spirit and a sluggishness of blood, a quenching of thedesire to roam and court adventure and hardship. In the hours of wakingand depression between the raging intervals of delirium he hadspeculated, with a sort of detached, listless indifference, on thechances of his getting back to life and strength and energy. Theprospect of filling a corner of some lonely Siberian graveyard or Finnishcemetery had seemed near realisation at times, and for a man who wasalready half dead the other half didn't particularly matter. But when hehad allowed himself to dwell on the more hopeful side of the case it hadalways been a complete recovery that awaited him; the same Yeovil as ofyore, a little thinner and more lined about the eyes perhaps, would gothrough life in the same way, alert, resolute, enterprising, ready tostart off at short notice for some desert or upland where the eagles werecircling and the wild-fowl were calling. He had not reckoned that Death, evaded and held off by the doctors' skill, might exact a compromise, andthat only part of the man would go free to the West. 

And now he began to realise how little of mental and physical energy hecould count on. His own country had never seemed in his eyes so comfort-yielding and to-be-desired as it did now when it had passed into alienkeeping and become a prison land as much as a homeland. London with itsthin mockery of a Season, and its chattering horde of empty-hearted self-seekers, held no attraction for him, but the spell of English countrylife was weaving itself round him, now that the charm of the desert wasreceding into a mist of memories. The waning of pleasant autumn days inan English woodland, the whir of game birds in the clean harvestedfields, the grey moist mornings in the saddle, with the magical cry ofhounds coming up from some misty hollow, and then the delicious abandonof physical weariness in bathroom and bedroom after a long run, and theheavenly snatched hour of luxurious sleep, before stirring back to lifeand hunger, the coming of the dinner hour and the jollity of awell-chosen house-party. 

That was the call which was competing with that other trumpet-call, andYeovil knew on which side his choice would incline. 

CHAPTER XIV: "A PERFECTLY GLORIOUS AFTERNOON"

It was one of the last days of July, cooled and freshened by a touch ofrain and dropping back again to a languorous warmth. London looked atits summer best, rain-washed and sun-lit, with the maximum of coming andgoing in its more fashionable streets. 

Cicely Yeovil sat in a screened alcove of the Anchorage Restaurant, afeeding-ground which had lately sprung into favour. Opposite her satRonnie, confronting the ruins of what had been a dish of prawns in aspic. Cool and clean and fresh-coloured, he was good to look on in the eyes ofhis companion, and yet, perhaps, there was a ruffle in her soul thatcalled for some answering disturbance on the part of that superblytranquil young man, and certainly called in vain. Cicely had set up forherself a fetish of onyx with eyes of jade, and doubtless hungered attimes with an unreasonable but perfectly natural hunger for something offlesh and blood. It was the religion of her life to know exactly whatshe wanted and to see that she got it, but there was no possibleguarantee against her occasionally experiencing a desire for somethingelse. It is the golden rule of all religions that no one should reallylive up to their precepts; when a man observes the principles of hisreligion too exactly he is in immediate danger of founding a new sect. 

"To-day is going to be your day of triumph, " said Cicely to the youngman, who was wondering at the moment whether he would care to embark onan artichoke; "I believe I'm more nervous than you are, " she added, "andyet I rather hate the idea of you scoring a great success. "

"Why?" asked Ronnie, diverting his mind for a moment from the artichokequestion and its ramifications of sauce hollandaise or vinaigre. 

"I like you as you are, " said Cicely, "just a nice-looking boy to flatterand spoil and pretend to be fond of. You've got a charming young bodyand you've no soul, and that's such a fascinating combination. If youhad a soul you would either dislike or worship me, and I'd much ratherhave things as they are. And now you are going to go a step beyond that, and other people will applaud you and say that you are wonderful, andinvite you to eat with them and motor with them and yacht with them. Assoon as that begins to happen, Ronnie, a lot of other things will come toan end. Of course I've always known that you don't really care for me, but as soon as the world knows it you are irrevocably damaged as aplaything. That is the great secret that binds us together, theknowledge that we have no real affection for one another. And thisafternoon every one will know that you are a great artist, and no greatartist was ever a great lover. "

"I shan't be difficult to replace, anyway, " said Ronnie, with what heimagined was a becoming modesty; "there are lots of boys standing roundready to be fed and flattered and put on an imaginary pedestal, most ofthem more or less good-looking and well turned out and amusing to talkto. "

"Oh, I dare say I could find a successor for your vacated niche, " saidCicely lightly; "one thing I'm determined on though, he shan't be amusician. It's so unsatisfactory to have to share a grand passion with agrand piano. He shall be a delightful young barbarian who would thinkSaint Saens was a Derby winner or a claret. "

"Don't be in too much of a hurry to replace me, " said Ronnie, who did notcare to have his successor too seriously discussed. "I may not score thesuccess you expect this afternoon. "

"My dear boy, a minor crowned head from across the sea is coming to hearyou play, and that alone will count as a success with most of yourlisteners. Also, I've secured a real Duchess for you, which is rather anachievement in the London of to-day. "

"An English Duchess?" asked Ronnie, who had early in life learned toapply the Merchandise Marks Act to ducal titles. 

"English, oh certainly, at least as far as the title goes; she was bornunder the constellation of the Star-spangled Banner. I don't suppose theDuke approves of her being here, lending her countenance to the faitaccompli, but when you've got republican blood in your veins a Kaiser isquite as attractive a lodestar as a King, rather more so. And CanonMousepace is coming, " continued Cicely, referring to a closely-writtenlist of guests; "the excellent von Tolb has been attending his churchlately, and the Canon is longing to meet her. She is just the sort ofperson he adores. I fancy he sincerely realises how difficult it will befor the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and he tries to make up forit by being as nice as possible to them in this world. "

Ronnie held out his hand for the list. 

"I think you know most of the others, " said Cicely, passing it to him. 

"Leutnant von Gabelroth?" read out Ronnie; "who is he?"

"In one of the hussar regiments quartered here; a friend of the Grafin's. Ugly but amiable, and I'm told a good cross-country rider. I supposeMurrey will be disgusted at meeting the 'outward and visible sign' underhis roof, but these encounters are inevitable as long as he is inLondon. "

"I didn't know Murrey was coming, " said Ronnie. 

"I believe he's going to look in on us, " said Cicely; "it's just as well, you know, otherwise we should have Joan asking in her loudest voice whenhe was going to be back in England again. I haven't asked her, but sheoverheard the Grafin arranging to come and hear you play, and I fancythat will be quite enough. "

"How about some Turkish coffee?" said Ronnie, who had decided against theartichoke. 

"Turkish coffee, certainly, and a cigarette, and a moment's peace beforethe serious business of the afternoon claims us. Talking about peace, doyou know, Ronnie, it has just occurred to me that we have left out one ofthe most important things in our affaire; we have never had a quarrel. "

"I hate quarrels, " said Ronnie, "they are so domesticated. "

"That's the first time I've ever heard you talk about your home, " saidCicely. 

"I fancy it would apply to most homes, " said Ronnie. 

"The last boy-friend I had used to quarrel furiously with me at leastonce a week, " said Cicely reflectively; "but then he had dark slumberouseyes that lit up magnificently when he was angry, so it would have been asheer waste of God's good gifts not to have sent him into a passion nowand then. "

"With your excursions into the past and the future you are making me feeldreadfully like an instalment of a serial novel, " protested Ronnie; "wehave now got to 'synopsis of earlier chapters. '"

"It shan't be teased, " said Cicely; "we will live in the present and gono further into the future than to make arrangements for Tuesday's dinner-party. I've asked the Duchess; she would never have forgiven me if she'dfound out that I had a crowned head dining with me and hadn't asked herto meet him. "

* * * * *

A sudden hush descended on the company gathered in the great drawing-roomat Berkshire Street as Ronnie took his seat at the piano; the voice ofCanon Mousepace outlasted the others for a moment or so, and thensubsided into a regretful but gracious silence. For the next nine or tenminutes Ronnie held possession of the crowded room, a tense slenderfigure, with cold green eyes aflame in a sudden fire, and smoothburnished head bent low over the keyboard that yielded a disciplined riotof melody under his strong deft fingers. The world-weary Landgraf forgotfor the moment the regrettable trend of his subjects towardsParliamentary Socialism, the excellent Grafin von Tolb forgot all thatthe Canon had been saying to her for the last ten minutes, forgot thedepressing certainty that he would have a great deal more that he wantedto say in the immediate future, over and above the thirty-five minutes orso of discourse that she would contract to listen to next Sunday. AndCicely listened with the wistful equivocal triumph of one whose goose hasturned out to be a swan and who realises with secret concern that she hasonly planned the role of goosegirl for herself. 

The last chords died away, the fire faded out of the jade-coloured eyes, and Ronnie became once more a well-groomed youth in a drawing-room fullof well-dressed people. But around him rose an explosive clamour ofapplause and congratulation, the sincere tribute of appreciation and theequally hearty expression of imitative homage. 

"It is a great gift, a great gift, " chanted Canon Mousepace, "You mustput it to a great use. A talent is vouchsafed to us for a purpose; youmust fulfil the purpose. Talent such as yours is a responsibility; youmust meet that responsibility. "

The dictionary of the English language was an inexhaustible quarry, fromwhich the Canon had hewn and fashioned for himself a great reputation. 

"You must gom and blay to me at Schlachsenberg, " said the kindly-facedLandgraf, whom the world adored and thwarted in about equal proportions. "At Christmas, yes, that will be a good time. We still keep the Christ-Fest at Schlachsenberg, though the 'Sozi' keep telling our schoolchildrenthat it is only a Christ myth. Never mind, I will have theVice-President of our Landtag to listen to you; he is 'Sozi' but we aregood friends outside the Parliament House; you shall blay to him, myyoung friendt, and gonfince him that there is a Got in Heaven. You willgom? Yes?"

"It was beautiful, " said the Grafin simply; "it made me cry. Go back tothe piano again, please, at once. "

Perhaps the near neighbourhood of the Canon inspired this command, butthe Grafin had been genuinely charmed. She adored good music and she wasunaffectedly fond of good-looking boys. 

Ronnie went back to the piano and tasted the matured pleasure of arepeated success. Any measure of nervousness that he may have felt atfirst had completely passed away. He was sure of his audience and heplayed as though they did not exist. A renewed clamour of excitedapproval attended the conclusion of his performance. 

"It is a triumph, a perfectly glorious triumph, " exclaimed the Duchess ofDreyshire, turning to Yeovil, who sat silent among his wife's guests;"isn't it just glorious?" she demanded, with a heavy insistent intonationof the word. 

"Is it?" said Yeovil. 

"Well, isn't it?" she cried, with a rising inflection, "isn't it justperfectly glorious?"

"I don't know, " confessed Yeovil; "you see glory hasn't come very much myway lately. " Then, before he exactly realised what he was doing, heraised his voice and quoted loudly for the benefit of half the room:

 "'Other Romans shall arise, Heedless of a soldier's name, Sounds, not deeds, shall win the prize, Harmony the path to fame. '"

There was a sort of shiver of surprised silence at Yeovil's end of theroom. 

"Hell!"

The word rang out in a strong young voice. 

"Hell! And it's true, that's the worst of it. It's damned true!"

Yeovil turned, with some dozen others, to see who was responsible forthis vigorously expressed statement. 

Tony Luton confronted him, an angry scowl on his face, a blaze in hisheavy-lidded eyes. The boy was without a conscience, almost without asoul, as priests and parsons reckon souls, but there was a slumberingdevil-god within him, and Yeovil's taunting words had broken the slumber. Life had been for Tony a hard school, in which right and wrong, highendeavour and good resolve, were untaught subjects; but there was asterling something in him, just that something that helped poor street-scavenged men to die brave-fronted deaths in the trenches of Salamanca, that fired a handful of apprentice boys to shut the gates of Derry andstare unflinchingly at grim leaguer and starvation. It was just thatnameless something that was lacking in the young musician, who stood atthe further end of the room, bathed in a flood of compliment andcongratulation, enjoying the honey-drops of his triumph. 

Luton pushed his way through the crowd and left the room, withouttroubling to take leave of his hostess. 

"What a strange young man, " exclaimed the Duchess; "now do take me intothe next room, " she went on almost in the same breath, "I'm just dyingfor some iced coffee. "

Yeovil escorted her through the throng of Ronnie-worshippers to thedesired haven of refreshment. 

"Marvellous!" Mrs. Menteith-Mendlesohnn was exclaiming in ringing trumpettones; "of course I always knew he could play, but this is not mere pianoplaying, it is tone-mastery, it is sound magic. Mrs. Yeovil hasintroduced us to a new star in the musical firmament. Do you know, Ifeel this afternoon just like Cortez, in the poem, gazing at the newlydiscovered sea. "

"'Silent upon a peak in Darien, '" quoted a penetrating voice that couldonly belong to Joan Mardle; "I say, can any one picture Mrs. Menteith-Mendlesohnn silent on any peak or under any circumstances?"

If any one had that measure of imagination, no one acknowledged the fact. 

"A great gift and a great responsibility, " Canon Mousepace was assuringthe Grafin; "the power of evoking sublime melody is akin to the power ofawakening thought; a musician can appeal to dormant consciousness as thepreacher can appeal to dormant conscience. It is a responsibility, aninstrument for good or evil. Our young friend here, we may be sure, willuse it as an instrument for good. He has, I feel certain, a sense of hisresponsibility. "

"He is a nice boy, " said the Grafin simply; "he has such pretty hair. "

In one of the window recesses Rhapsodie Pantril was talking vaguely butbeautifully to a small audience on the subject of chromatic chords; shehad the advantage of knowing what she was talking about, an advantagethat her listeners did not in the least share. "All through his playingthere ran a tone-note of malachite green, " she declared recklessly, feeling safe from immediate contradiction; "malachite green, mycolour--the colour of striving. "

Having satisfied the ruling passion that demanded gentle and dextrousself-advertisement, she realised that the Augusta Smith in her cravedrefreshment, and moved with one of her over-awed admirers towards thehaven where peaches and iced coffee might be considered a certainty. 

The refreshment alcove, which was really a good-sized room, a sort ofchapel-of-ease to the larger drawing-room, was already packed with acrowd who felt that they could best discuss Ronnie's triumph betweenmouthfuls of fruit salad and iced draughts of hock-cup. So brief ishuman glory that two or three independent souls had even now drifted fromthe theme of the moment on to other more personally interesting topics. 

"Iced mulberry salad, my dear, it's a specialite de la maison, so tospeak; they say the roving husband brought the recipe from Astrakhan, orSeville, or some such outlandish place. "

"I wish my husband would roam about a bit and bring back strangepalatable dishes. No such luck, he's got asthma and has to keep on agravel soil with a south aspect and all sorts of other restrictions. "

"I don't think you're to be pitied in the least; a husband with asthma islike a captive golf-ball, you can always put your hand on him when youwant him. "

"All the hangings, violette de Parme, all the furniture, rosewood. Nothing is to be played in it except Mozart. Mozart only. Some of myfriends wanted me to have a replica of the Mozart statue at Vienna put upin a corner of the room, with flowers always around it, but I reallycouldn't. I couldn't. One is so tired of it, one sees it everywhere. Icouldn't do it. I'm like that, you know. "

"Yes, I've secured the hero of the hour, Ronnie Storre, oh yes, rather. He's going to join our yachting trip, third week of August. We're goingas far afield as Fiume, in the Adriatic--or is it the AEgean? Won't itbe jolly. Oh no, we're not asking Mrs. Yeovil; it's quite a small yachtyou know--at least, it's a small party. "

The excellent von Tolb took her departure, bearing off with her theLandgraf, who had already settled the date and duration of Ronnie'sChristmas visit. 

"It will be dull, you know, " he warned the prospective guest; "ourLandtag will not be sitting, and what is a bear-garden without the bears?However, we haf some wildt schwein in our woods, we can show you somesport in that way. "

Ronnie instantly saw himself in a well-fitting shooting costume, with aTyrolese hat placed at a very careful angle on his head, but he confessedthat the other details of boar-hunting were rather beyond him. 

With the departure of the von Tolb party Canon Mousepace gravitateddecently but persistently towards a corner where the Duchess, still atconcert pitch, was alternatively praising Ronnie's performance and themulberry salad. Joan Mardle, who formed one of the group, was not openlypraising any one, but she was paying a silent tribute to the salad. 

"We were just talking about Ronnie Storre's music, Canon, " said theDuchess; "I consider it just perfectly glorious. "

"It's a great talent, isn't it, Canon, " put in Joan briskly, "and ofcourse it's a responsibility as well, don't you think? Music can be suchan influence, just as eloquence can; don't you agree with me?"

The quarry of the English language was of course a public property, butit was disconcerting to have one's own particular barrow-load of sentence-building material carried off before one's eyes. The Canon's impressivehomily on Ronnie's gift and its possibilities had to be hastily whittleddown to a weakly acquiescent, "Quite so, quite so. "

"Have you tasted this iced mulberry salad, Canon?" asked the Duchess;"it's perfectly luscious. Just hurry along and get some before it's allgone. "

And her Grace hurried along in an opposite direction, to thank Cicely forpast favours and to express lively gratitude for the Tuesday to come. 

The guests departed, with a rather irritating slowness, for which perhapsthe excellence of Cicely's buffet arrangements was partly responsible. The great drawing-room seemed to grow larger and more oppressive as thehuman wave receded, and the hostess fled at last with some relief to thenarrower limits of her writing-room and the sedative influences of acigarette. She was inclined to be sorry for herself; the triumph of theafternoon had turned out much as she had predicted at lunch time. Heridol of onyx had not been swept from its pedestal, but the pedestalitself had an air of being packed up ready for transport to some othertemple. Ronnie would be flattered and spoiled by half a hundred people, just because he could conjure sounds out of a keyboard, and Cicely feltno great incentive to go on flattering and spoiling him herself. AndRonnie would acquiesce in his dismissal with the good grace born ofindifference--the surest guarantor of perfect manners. Already he hadsocial engagements for the coming months in which she had no share; thedrifting apart would be mutual. He had been an intelligent and amusingcompanion, and he had played the game as she had wished it to be played, without the fatigue of keeping up pretences which neither of them couldhave believed in. "Let us have a wonderfully good time together" hadbeen the single stipulation in their unwritten treaty of comradeship, andthey had had the good time. Their whole-hearted pursuit of materialhappiness would go on as keenly as before, but they would hunt indifferent company, that was all. Yes, that was all. . . . 

Cicely found the effect of her cigarette less sedative than she wasdisposed to exact. It might be necessary to change the brand. Some tenor eleven days later Yeovil read an announcement in the papers that, inspite of handsome offers of increased salary, Mr. Tony Luton, theoriginal singer of the popular ditty "Eccleston Square, " had terminatedhis engagement with Messrs. Isaac Grosvenor and Leon Hebhardt of theCaravansery Theatre, and signed on as a deck hand in the Canadian Marine. 

Perhaps after all there had been some shred of glory amid the trumpettriumph of that July afternoon. 

CHAPTER XV: THE INTELLIGENT ANTICIPATOR OF WANTS

Two of Yeovil's London clubs, the two that he had been accustomed tofrequent, had closed their doors after the catastrophe. One of them hadperished from off the face of the earth, its fittings had been sold andits papers lay stored in some solicitor's office, a tit-bit of materialfor the pen of some future historian. The other had transplanted itselfto Delhi, whither it had removed its early Georgian furniture and itstraditions, and sought to reproduce its St. James's Street atmosphere asnearly as the conditions of a tropical Asiatic city would permit. Thereremained the Cartwheel, a considerably newer institution, which hadsprung into existence somewhere about the time of Yeovil's last sojournin England; he had joined it on the solicitation of a friend who wasinterested in the venture, and his bankers had paid his subscriptionduring his absence. As he had never been inside its doors there could beno depressing comparisons to make between its present state and aforetimeglories, and Yeovil turned into its portals one afternoon with theadventurous detachment of a man who breaks new ground and challenges newexperiences. 

He entered with a diffident sense of intrusion, conscious that hisstanding as a member might not be recognised by the keepers of the doors;in a moment, however, he realised that a rajah's escort of elephantsmight almost have marched through the entrance hall and vestibule withoutchallenge. The general atmosphere of the scene suggested a blend of therailway station at Cologne, the Hotel Bristol in any European capital, and the second act in most musical comedies. A score of brilliant andbrilliantined pages decorated the foreground, while Hebraic-lookinggentlemen, wearing tartan waistcoats of the clans of their adoption, flitted restlessly between the tape machines and telephone boxes. Thearmy of occupation had obviously established a firm footing in thehospitable premises; a kaleidoscopic pattern of uniforms, sky-blue, indigo, and bottle-green, relieved the civilian attire of the groups thatclustered in lounge and card rooms and corridors. Yeovil rapidly came tothe conclusion that the joys of membership were not for him. He hadturned to go, after a very cursory inspection of the premises and theirhuman occupants, when he was hailed by a young man, dressed withstrenuous neatness, whom he remembered having met in past days at thehouses of one or two common friends. 

Hubert Herlton's parents had brought him into the world, and some twenty-one years later had put him into a motor business. Having taken thesepardonable liberties they had completely exhausted their ideas of what todo with him, and Hubert seemed unlikely to develop any ideas of his ownon the subject. The motor business elected to conduct itself without hisconnivance; journalism, the stage, tomato culture (without capital), andother professions that could be entered on at short notice were submittedto his consideration by nimble-minded relations and friends. He listenedto their suggestions with polite indifference, being rude only to acousin who demonstrated how he might achieve a settled income of from twohundred to a thousand pounds a year by the propagation of mushrooms in aLondon basement. While his walk in life was still an undeterminedpromenade his parents died, leaving him with a carefully-invested incomeof thirty-seven pounds a year. At that point of his career Yeovil'sknowledge of him stopped short; the journey to Siberia had taken himbeyond the range of Herlton's domestic vicissitudes. 

The young man greeted him in a decidedly friendly manner. 

"I didn't know you were a member here, " he exclaimed. 

"It's the first time I've ever been in the club, " said Yeovil, "and Ifancy it will be the last. There is rather too much of the fightingmachine in evidence here. One doesn't want a perpetual reminder of whathas happened staring one in the face. "

"We tried at first to keep the alien element out, " said Herltonapologetically, "but we couldn't have carried on the club if we'd stuckto that line. You see we'd lost more than two-thirds of our old membersso we couldn't afford to be exclusive. As a matter of fact the wholething was decided over our heads; a new syndicate took over the concern, and a new committee was installed, with a good many foreigners on it. Iknow it's horrid having these uniforms flaunting all over the place, butwhat is one to do?"

Yeovil said nothing, with the air of a man who could have said a greatdeal. 

"I suppose you wonder, why remain a member under those conditions?"continued Herlton. "Well, as far as I am concerned, a place like this isa necessity for me. In fact, it's my profession, my source of income. "

"Are you as good at bridge as all that?" asked Yeovil; "I'm a fairlysuccessful player myself, but I should be sorry to have to live on mywinnings, year in, year out. "

"I don't play cards, " said Herlton, "at least not for serious stakes. Mywinnings or losings wouldn't come to a tenner in an average year. No, Ilive by commissions, by introducing likely buyers to would-be sellers. "

"Sellers of what?" asked Yeovil. 

"Anything, everything; horses, yachts, old masters, plate, shootings, poultry-farms, week-end cottages, motor cars, almost anything you canthink of. Look, " and he produced from his breast pocket a bulky note-book illusorily inscribed "engagements. "

"Here, " he explained, tapping the book, "I've got a double entry of everylikely client that I know, with a note of the things he may have to selland the things he may want to buy. When it is something that he has forsale there are cross-references to likely purchasers of that particularline of article. I don't limit myself to things that I actually knowpeople to be in want of, I go further than that and have theories, carefully indexed theories, as to the things that people might want tobuy. At the right moment, if I can get the opportunity, I mention thearticle that is in my mind's eye to the possible purchaser who has alsobeen in my mind's eye, and I frequently bring off a sale. I started achance acquaintance on a career of print-buying the other day merely bytelling him of a couple of good prints that I knew of, that were to behad at a quite reasonable price; he is a man with more money than heknows what to do with, and he has laid out quite a lot on old printssince his first purchase. Most of his collection he has got through me, and of course I net a commission on each transaction. So you see, oldman, how useful, not to say necessary, a club with a large membership isto me. The more mixed and socially chaotic it is, the more serviceableit is. "

"Of course, " said Yeovil, "and I suppose, as a matter of fact, a goodmany of your clients belong to the conquering race. "

"Well, you see, they are the people who have got the money, " saidHerlton; "I don't mean to say that the invading Germans are usuallypeople of wealth, but while they live over here they escape the crushingtaxation that falls on the British-born subject. They serve theircountry as soldiers, and we have to serve it in garrison money, shipmoney and so forth, besides the ordinary taxes of the State. The Germanshoulders the rifle, the Englishman has to shoulder everything else. Thatis what will help more than anything towards the gradual Germanising ofour big towns; the comparatively lightly-taxed German workman over herewill have a much bigger spending power and purchasing power than hisheavily taxed English neighbour. The public-houses, bars, eating-houses, places of amusement and so forth, will come to cater more and more formoney-yielding German patronage. The stream of British emigration willswell rather than diminish, and the stream of Teuton immigration will beequally persistent and progressive. Yes, the military-service ordinancewas a cunning stroke on the part of that old fox, von Kwarl. As acivilian statesman he is far and away cleverer than Bismarck was; hesmothers with a feather-bed where Bismarck would have tried to smash witha sledge-hammer. "

"Have you got me down on your list of noteworthy people?" asked Yeovil, turning the drift of the conversation back to the personal topic. 

"Certainly I have, " said Herlton, turning the pages of his pocketdirectory to the letter Y. "As soon as I knew you were back in England Imade several entries concerning you. In the first place it was possiblethat you might have a volume on Siberian travel and natural history notesto publish, and I've cross-referenced you to a publisher I know whorather wants books of that sort on his list. "

"I may tell you at once that I've no intentions in that direction, " saidYeovil, in some amusement. 

"Just as well, " said Herlton cheerfully, scribbling a hieroglyphic in hisbook; "that branch of business is rather outside my line--too little init, and the gratitude of author and publisher for being introduced to oneanother is usually short-lived. A more serious entry was the item thatif you were wintering in England you would be looking out for a hunter ortwo. You used to hunt with the East Wessex, I remember; I've got justthe very animal that will suit that country, ready waiting for you. Abeautiful clean jumper. I've put it over a fence or two myself, and youand I ride much the same weight. A stiffish price is being asked for it, but I've got the letters D. O. After your name. "

"In Heaven's name, " said Yeovil, now openly grinning, "before I die ofcuriosity tell me what D. O. Stands for. "

"It means some one who doesn't object to pay a good price for anythingthat really suits him. There are some people of course who won'tconsider a thing unless they can get it for about a third of what theyimagine to be its market value. I've got another suggestion down againstyou in my book; you may not be staying in the country at all, you may beclearing out in disgust at existing conditions. In that case you wouldbe selling a lot of things that you wouldn't want to cart away with you. That involves another set of entries and a whole lot of crossreferences. "

"I'm afraid I've given you a lot of trouble, " said Yeovil drily. 

"Not at all, " said Herlton, "but it would simplify matters if we take itfor granted that you are going to stay here, for this winter anyhow, andare looking out for hunters. Can you lunch with me here on Wednesday, and come and look at the animal afterwards? It's only thirty-fiveminutes by train. It will take us longer if we motor. There is a two-fifty-three from Charing Cross that we could catch comfortably. "

"If you are going to persuade me to hunt in the East Wessex country thisseason, " said Yeovil, "you must find me a convenient hunting boxsomewhere down there. "

"I have found it, " said Herlton, whipping out a stylograph, and hastilyscribbling an "order to view" on a card; "central as possible for all themeets, grand stabling accommodation, excellent water-supply, bigbathroom, game larder, cellarage, a bakehouse if you want to bake yourown bread--"

"Any land with it?"

"Not enough to be a nuisance. An acre or two of paddock and about thesame of garden. You are fond of wild things; a wood comes down to theedge of the garden, a wood that harbours owls and buzzards and kestrels. "

"Have you got all those details in your book?" asked Yeovil; "'woodadjoining property, O. B. K. '"

"I keep those details in my head, " said Herlton, "but they are quitereliable. "

"I shall insist on something substantial off the rent if there are nobuzzards, " said Yeovil; "now that you have mentioned them they seem anindispensable accessory to any decent hunting-box. Look, " he exclaimed, catching sight of a plump middle-aged individual, crossing the vestibulewith an air of restrained importance, "there goes the delectablePitherby. Does he come on your books at all?"

"I should say!" exclaimed Herlton fervently. "The delectable P. Nourishes expectations of a barony or viscounty at an early date. Mostof his life has been spent in streets and squares, with occasionalmigrations to the esplanades of fashionable watering-places or thegravelled walks of country house gardens. Now that noblesse is about toimpose its obligations on him, quite a new catalogue of wants has sprunginto his mind. There are things that a plain esquire may leave undonewithout causing scandalised remark, but a fiercer light beats on a baron. Trigger-pulling is one of the obligations. Up to the present Pitherbyhas never hit a partridge in anger, but this year he has commissioned meto rent him a deer forest. Some pedigree Herefords for his 'home farm'was another commission, and a dozen and a half swans for a swannery. Theswannery, I may say, was my idea; I said once in his hearing that it gavea baronial air to an estate; you see I knew a man who had got a lot ofsurplus swan stock for sale. Now Pitherby wants a heronry as well. I'veput him in communication with a client of mine who suffers fromsuperfluous herons, but of course I can't guarantee that the birds'nesting arrangements will fall in with his territorial requirement. I'mgetting him some carp, too, of quite respectable age, for a carp pond; Ithought it would look so well for his lady-wife to be discovered byinterviewers feeding the carp with her own fair hands, and I put the sameidea into Pitherby's mind. "

"I had no idea that so many things were necessary to endorse a patent ofnobility, " said Yeovil. "If there should be any miscarriage in thebestowal of the honour at least Pitherby will have absolved himself fromany charge of contributory negligence. "

"Shall we say Wednesday, here, one o'clock, lunch first, and go down andlook at the horse afterwards?" said Herlton, returning to the matter inhand. 

Yeovil hesitated, then he nodded his head. 

"There is no harm in going to look at the animal, " he said. 

CHAPTER XVI: SUNRISE

Mrs. Kerrick sat at a little teak-wood table in the verandah of a low-pitched teak-built house that stood on the steep slope of a brownhillside. Her youngest child, with the grave natural dignity of nine-year old girlhood, maintained a correct but observant silence, lookingcarefully yet unobtrusively after the wants of the one guest, andchecking from time to time the incursions of ubiquitous ants that wereobstinately disposed to treat the table-cloth as a foraging ground. Thewayfaring visitor, who was experiencing a British blend of Easternhospitality, was a French naturalist, travelling thus far afield in questof feathered specimens to enrich the aviaries of a bird-collecting BalkanKing. On the previous evening, while shrugging his shoulders andunloosing his vocabulary over the meagre accommodation afforded by thenative rest-house, he had been enchanted by receiving an invitation totransfer his quarters to the house on the hillside, where he found notonly a pleasant-voiced hostess and some drinkable wine, but three brown-skinned English youngsters who were able to give him a mass ofintelligent first-hand information about the bird life of the region. Andnow, at the early morning breakfast, ere yet the sun was showing over therim of the brown-baked hills, he was learning something of the life ofthe little community he had chanced on. "I was in these parts many yearsago, " explained the hostess, "when my husband was alive and had anappointment out here. It is a healthy hill district and I had pleasantmemories of the place, so when it became necessary, well, desirable letus say, to leave our English home and find a new one, it occurred to meto bring my boys and my little girl here--my eldest girl is at school inParis. Labour is cheap here and I try my hand at farming in a small way. Of course it is very different work to just superintending the dairy andpoultry-yard arrangements of an English country estate. There are somany things, insect ravages, bird depredations, and so on, that one onlyknows on a small scale in England, that happen here in wholesale fashion, not to mention droughts and torrential rains and other tropicalvisitations. And then the domestic animals are so disconcertinglydifferent from the ones one has been used to; humped cattle never seem tobehave in the way that straight-backed cattle would, and goats and geeseand chickens are not a bit the same here that they are in Europe--and ofcourse the farm servants are utterly unlike the same class in England. One has to unlearn a good deal of what one thought one knew about stock-keeping and agriculture, and take note of the native ways of doingthings; they are primitive and unenterprising of course, but they have anaccumulated store of experience behind them, and one has to tread warilyin initiating improvements. "

The Frenchman looked round at the brown sun-scorched hills, with thedusty empty road showing here and there in the middle distance and otherbrown sun-scorched hills rounding off the scene; he looked at the lizardson the verandah walls, at the jars for keeping the water cool, at thenumberless little insect-bored holes in the furniture, at the heat-drawnlines on his hostess's comely face. Notwithstanding his presentwanderings he had a Frenchman's strong homing instinct, and he marvelledto hear this lady, who should have been a lively and popular figure inthe social circle of some English county town, talking serenely of theways of humped cattle and native servants. 

"And your children, how do they like the change?" he asked. 

"It is healthy up here among the hills, " said the mother, also lookinground at the landscape and thinking doubtless of a very different scene;"they have an outdoor life and plenty of liberty. They have their poniesto ride, and there is a lake up above us that is a fine place for them tobathe and boat in; the three boys are there now, having their morningswim. The eldest is sixteen and he is allowed to have a gun, and thereis some good wild fowl shooting to be had in the reed beds at the furtherend of the lake. I think that part of the joy of his shootingexpeditions lies in the fact that many of the duck and plover that hecomes across belong to the same species that frequent our English moorsand rivers. "

It was the first hint that she had given of a wistful sense of exile, theyearning for other skies, the message that a dead bird's plumage couldbring across rolling seas and scorching plains. 

"And the education of your boys, how do you manage for that?" asked thevisitor. 

"There is a young tutor living out in these wilds, " said Mrs. Kerrick;"he was assistant master at a private school in Scotland, but it had tobe given up when--when things changed; so many of the boys left thecountry. He came out to an uncle who has a small estate eight miles fromhere, and three days in the week he rides over to teach my boys, andthree days he goes to another family living in the opposite direction. To-day he is due to come here. It is a great boon to have such anopportunity for getting the boys educated, and of course it helps him toearn a living. "

"And the society of the place?" asked the Frenchman. 

His hostess laughed. 

"I must admit it has to be looked for with a strong pair offield-glasses, " she said; "it is almost as difficult to get a good bridgefour together as it would have been to get up a tennis tournament or asubscription dance in our particular corner of England. One has toignore distances and forget fatigue if one wants to be gregarious even ona limited scale. There are one or two officials who are our chief socialmainstays, but the difficulty is to muster the few available souls underthe same roof at the same moment. A road will be impassable in onequarter, a pony will be lame in another, a stress of work will preventsome one else from coming, and another may be down with a touch of fever. When my little girl gave a birthday party here her only little girl guesthad come twelve miles to attend it. The Forest officer happened to dropin on us that evening, so we felt quite festive. "

The Frenchman's eyes grew round in wonder. He had once thought that thecapital city of a Balkan kingdom was the uttermost limit of socialdesolation, viewed from a Parisian standpoint, and there at any rate onecould get cafe chantant, tennis, picnic parties, an occasional theatreperformance by a foreign troupe, now and then a travelling circus, not tospeak of Court and diplomatic functions of a more or less sociablecharacter. Here, it seemed, one went a day's journey to reach anevening's entertainment, and the chance arrival of a tired official tookon the nature of a festivity. He looked round again at the rollingstretches of brown hills; before he had regarded them merely as thebackground to this little shut-away world, now he saw that they wereforeground as well. They were everything, there was nothing else. Andagain his glance travelled to the face of his hostess, with its bright, pleasant eyes and smiling mouth. 

"And you live here with your children, " he said, "here in thiswilderness? You leave England, you leave everything, for this?"

His hostess rose and took him over to the far side of the verandah. Thebeginnings of a garden were spread out before them, with young fruittrees and flowering shrubs, and bushes of pale pink roses. Exuberanttropical growths were interspersed with carefully tended vestiges ofplants that had evidently been brought from a more temperate climate, andhad not borne the transition well. Bushes and trees and shrubs spreadaway for some distance, to where the ground rose in a small hillock andthen fell away abruptly into bare hillside. 

"In all this garden that you see, " said the Englishwoman, "there is onetree that is sacred. "

"A tree?" said the Frenchman. 

"A tree that we could not grow in England. "

The Frenchman followed the direction of her eyes and saw a tall, barepole at the summit of the hillock. At the same moment the sun came overthe hilltops in a deep, orange glow, and a new light stole like magicover the brown landscape. And, as if they had timed their arrival tothat exact moment of sunburst, three brown-faced boys appeared under thestraight, bare pole. A cord shivered and flapped, and something ranswiftly up into the air, and swung out in the breeze that blew across thehills--a blue flag with red and white crosses. The three boys baredtheir heads and the small girl on the verandah steps stood rigidly toattention. Far away down the hill, a young man, cantering into viewround a corner of the dusty road, removed his hat in loyal salutation. 

"That is why we live out here, " said the Englishwoman quietly. 

CHAPTER XVII: THE EVENT OF THE SEASON

In the first swelter room of the new Osmanli Baths in Cork Street four orfive recumbent individuals, in a state of moist nudity andself-respecting inertia, were smoking cigarettes or making occasionalpretence of reading damp newspapers. A glass wall with a glass door shutthem off from the yet more torrid regions of the further swelterchambers; another glass partition disclosed the dimly-lit vault whereother patrons of the establishment had arrived at the stage of beingpounded and kneaded and sluiced by Oriental-looking attendants. Thesplashing and trickling of taps, the flip-flap of wet slippers on a wetfloor, and the low murmur of conversation, filtered through glass doors, made an appropriately drowsy accompaniment to the scene. 

A new-comer fluttered into the room, beamed at one of the occupants, andsettled himself with an air of elaborate languor in a long canvas chair. Cornelian Valpy was a fair young man, with perpetual surprise impinged onhis countenance, and a chin that seemed to have retired from competitionwith the rest of his features. The beam of recognition that he had givento his friend or acquaintance subsided into a subdued but lingeringsimper. 

"What is the matter?" drawled his neighbour lazily, dropping the end of acigarette into a small bowl of water, and helping himself from a silvercase on the table at his side. 

"Matter?" said Cornelian, opening wide a pair of eyes in which unhealthyintelligence seemed to struggle in undetermined battle with uttervacuity; "why should you suppose that anything is the matter?"

"When you wear a look of idiotic complacency in a Turkish bath, " said theother, "it is the more noticeable from the fact that you are wearingnothing else. "

"Were you at the Shalem House dance last night?" asked Cornelian, by wayof explaining his air of complacent retrospection. 

"No, " said the other, "but I feel as if I had been; I've been readingcolumns about it in the Dawn. "

"The last event of the season, " said Cornelian, "and quite one of themost amusing and lively functions that there have been. "

"So the Dawn said; but then, as Shalem practically owns and controls thatpaper, its favourable opinion might be taken for granted. "

"The whole idea of the Revel was quite original, " said Cornelian, who wasnot going to have his personal narrative of the event forestalled byanything that a newspaper reporter might have given to the public; "acertain number of guests went as famous personages in the world'shistory, and each one was accompanied by another guest typifying theprevailing characteristic of that personage. One man went as JuliusCaesar, for instance, and had a girl typifying ambition as his shadow, another went as Louis the Eleventh, and his companion personifiedsuperstition. Your shadow had to be someone of the opposite sex, yousee, and every alternate dance throughout the evening you danced withyour shadow-partner. Quite a clever idea; young Graf von Schnatelsteinis supposed to have invented it. "

"New York will be deeply beholden to him, " said the other;"shadow-dances, with all manner of eccentric variations, will be the ragethere for the next eighteen months. "

"Some of the costumes were really sumptuous, " continued Cornelian; "theDuchess of Dreyshire was magnificent as Aholibah, you never saw so manyjewels on one person, only of course she didn't look dark enough for thecharacter; she had Billy Carnset for her shadow, representing UnspeakableDepravity. "

"How on earth did he manage that?"

"Oh, a blend of Beardsley and Bakst as far as get-up and costume, and ofcourse his own personality counted for a good deal. Quite one of thesuccesses of the evening was Leutnant von Gabelroth, as GeorgeWashington, with Joan Mardle as his shadow, typifying InconvenientCandour. He put her down officially as Truthfulness, but every one hadheard the other version. "

"Good for the Gabelroth, though he does belong to the invading Horde;it's not often that any one scores off Joan. "

"Another blaze of magnificence was the loud-voiced Bessimer woman, as theGoddess Juno, with peacock tails and opals all over her; she had RonnieStorre to represent Green-eyed Jealousy. Talking of Ronnie Storre and ofjealousy, you will naturally wonder whom Mrs. Yeovil went with. I forgetwhat her costume was, but she'd got that dark-headed youth with her thatshe's been trotting round everywhere the last few days. "

Cornelian's neighbour kicked him furtively on the shin, and frowned inthe direction of a dark-haired youth reclining in an adjacent chair. Theyouth in question rose from his seat and stalked into the further swelterroom. 

"So clever of him to go into the furnace room, " said the unabashedCornelian; "now if he turns scarlet all over we shall never know how muchis embarrassment and how much is due to the process of being boiled. LaYeovil hasn't done badly by the exchange; he's better looking thanRonnie. "

"I see that Pitherby went as Frederick the Great, " said Cornelian'sneighbour, fingering a sheet of the Dawn. 

"Isn't that exactly what one would have expected Pitherby to do?" saidCornelian. "He's so desperately anxious to announce to all whom it mayconcern that he has written a life of that hero. He had an uninspiring-looking woman with him, supposed to represent Military Genius. "

"The Spirit of Advertisement would have been more appropriate, " said theother. 

"The opening scene of the Revel was rather effective, " continuedCornelian; "all the Shadow people reclined in the dimly-lit centre of theballroom in an indistinguishable mass, and the human characters marchedround the illuminated sides of the room to solemn processional music. Every now and then a shadow would detach itself from the mass, hail itspartner by name, and glide out to join him or her in the procession. Then, when the last shadows had found their mates and every one waspartnered, the lights were turned up in a blaze, the orchestra crashedout a whirl of nondescript dance music, and people just let themselvesgo. It was Pandemonium. Afterwards every one strutted about for half anhour or so, showing themselves off, and then the legitimate programme ofdances began. There were some rather amusing incidents throughout theevening. One set of lancers was danced entirely by the Seven Deadly Sinsand their human exemplars; of course seven couples were not sufficient tomake up the set, so they had to bring in an eighth sin, I forget what itwas. "

"The sin of Patriotism would have been rather appropriate, consideringwho were giving the dance, " said the other. 

"Hush!" exclaimed Cornelian nervously. "You don't know who may overhearyou in a place like this. You'll get yourself into trouble. "

"Wasn't there some rather daring new dance of the 'bunny-hug' variety?"asked the indiscreet one. 

"The 'Cubby-Cuddle, '" said Cornelian; "three or four adventurous couplesdanced it towards the end of the evening. "

"The Dawn says that without being strikingly new it was strikinglymodern. "

"The best description I can give of it, " said Cornelian, "is summed up inthe comment of the Grafin von Tolb when she saw it being danced: 'if theyreally love each other I suppose it doesn't matter. ' By the way, " headded with apparent indifference, "is there any detailed account of mycostume in the Dawn?"

His companion laughed cynically. 

"As if you hadn't read everything that the Dawn and the other morningpapers have to say about the ball hours ago. "

"The naked truth should be avoided in a Turkish bath, " said Cornelian;"kindly assume that I've only had time to glance at the weather forecastand the news from China. "

"Oh, very well, " said the other; "your costume isn't described; yousimply come amid a host of others as 'Mr. Cornelian Valpy, resplendent asthe Emperor Nero; with him Miss Kate Lerra, typifying Insensate Vanity. 'Many hard things have been said of Nero, but his unkindest critics havenever accused him of resembling you in feature. Until some very clearevidence is produced I shall refuse to believe it. "

Cornelian was proof against these shafts; leaning back gracefully in hischair he launched forth into that detailed description of his lastnight's attire which the Dawn had so unaccountably failed to supply. 

"I wore a tunic of white Nepaulese silk, with a collar of pearls, realpearls. Round my waist I had a girdle of twisted serpents in beatengold, studded all over with amethysts. My sandals were of gold, lacedwith scarlet thread, and I had seven bracelets of gold on each arm. Roundmy head I had a wreath of golden laurel leaves set with scarlet berries, and hanging over my left shoulder was a silk robe of mulberry purple, broidered with the signs of the zodiac in gold and scarlet; I had it madespecially for the occasion. At my side I had an ivory-sheathed dagger, with a green jade handle, hung in a green Cordova leather--"

At this point of the recital his companion rose softly, flung hiscigarette end into the little water-bowl, and passed into the furtherswelter room. Cornelian Valpy was left, still clothed in a look ofineffable complacency, still engaged, in all probability, in reclothinghimself in the finery of the previous evening. 

CHAPTER XVIII: THE DEAD WHO DO NOT UNDERSTAND

The pale light of a November afternoon faded rapidly into the dusk of aNovember evening. Far over the countryside housewives put up theircottage shutters, lit their lamps, and made the customary remark that thedays were drawing in. In barn yards and poultry-runs the greediestpullets made a final tour of inspection, picking up the stray remainingmorsels of the evening meal, and then, with much scrambling andsquawking, sought the places on the roosting-pole that they thoughtshould belong to them. Labourers working in yard and field began to turntheir thoughts homeward or tavernward as the case might be. And throughthe cold squelching slush of a water-logged meadow a weary, bedraggled, but unbeaten fox stiffly picked his way, climbed a high bramble-grownbank, and flung himself into the sheltering labyrinth of a stretchingtangle of woods. The pack of fierce-mouthed things that had rattled himfrom copse and gorse-cover, along fallow and plough, hedgerow and woodedlane, for nigh on an hour, and had pressed hard on his life for the lastfew minutes, receded suddenly into the background of his experiences. Thecold, wet meadow, the thick mask of woods, and the oncoming dusk hadstayed the chase--and the fox had outstayed it. In a short time he wouldfall mechanically to licking off some of the mud that caked on his wearypads; in a shorter time horsemen and hounds would have drawn offkennelward and homeward. 

Yeovil rode through the deepening twilight, relying chiefly on his horseto find its way in the network of hedge-bordered lanes that presumablyled to a high road or to some human habitation. He was desperately tiredafter his day's hunting, a legacy of weakness that the fever hadbequeathed to him, but even though he could scarcely sit upright in hissaddle his mind dwelt complacently on the day's sport and looked forwardto the snug cheery comfort that awaited him at his hunting box. Therewas a charm, too, even for a tired man, in the eerie stillness of thelone twilight land through which he was passing, a grey shadow-hung landwhich seemed to have been emptied of all things that belonged to thedaytime, and filled with a lurking, moving life of which one knew nothingbeyond the sense that it was there. There, and very near. If there hadbeen wood-gods and wicked-eyed fauns in the sunlit groves and hill sidesof old Hellas, surely there were watchful, living things of kindred mouldin this dusk-hidden wilderness of field and hedge and coppice. 

It was Yeovil's third or fourth day with the hounds, without taking intoaccount a couple of mornings' cub-hunting. Already he felt that he hadbeen doing nothing different from this all his life. His foreigntravels, his illness, his recent weeks in London, they were part of atapestried background that had very slight and distant connection withhis present existence. Of the future he tried to think with greaterenergy and determination. For this winter, at any rate, he would huntand do a little shooting, entertain a few of his neighbours and makefriends with any congenial fellow-sportsmen who might be within reach. Next year things would be different; he would have had time to look roundhim, to regain something of his aforetime vigour of mind and body. Nextyear, when the hunting season was over, he would set about finding outwhether there was any nobler game for him to take a hand in. He wouldenter into correspondence with old friends who had gone out into thetropics and the backwoods--he would do something. 

So he told himself, but he knew thoroughly well that he had found hislevel. He had ceased to struggle against the fascination of his presentsurroundings. The slow, quiet comfort and interest of country lifeappealed with enervating force to the man whom death had half conquered. The pleasures of the chase, well-provided for in every detail, anddovetailed in with the assured luxury of a well-ordered, well-staffedestablishment, were exactly what he wanted and exactly what his life downhere afforded him. He was experiencing, too, that passionate recurringdevotion to an old loved scene that comes at times to men who havetravelled far and willingly up and down the world. He was very much athome. The alien standard floating over Buckingham Palace, the Crown ofCharlemagne on public buildings and official documents, the grey ships ofwar riding in Plymouth Bay and Southampton Water with a flag at theirstern that older generations of Britons had never looked on, these thingsseemed far away and inconsequent amid the hedgerows and woods and fallowsof the East Wessex country. Horse and hound-craft, harvest, game broods, the planting and felling of timber, the rearing and selling of stock, theletting of grasslands, the care of fisheries, the up-keep of markets andfairs, they were the things that immediately mattered. And Yeovil sawhimself, in moments of disgust and self-accusation, settling down intothis life of rustic littleness, concerned over the late nesting of apartridge or the defective draining of a loose-box, hugely busy overaffairs that a gardener's boy might grapple with, ignoring the struggle-cry that went up, low and bitter and wistful, from a dethroneddispossessed race, in whose glories he had gloried, in whose struggle helent no hand. In what way, he asked himself in such moments, would hislife be better than the life of that parody of manhood who upholsteredhis rooms with art hangings and rosewood furniture and babbled over theeffect?

The lanes seemed interminable and without aim or object except to bisectone another; gates and gaps disclosed nothing in the way of a landmark, and the night began to draw down in increasing shades of darkness. Presently, however, the tired horse quickened its pace, swung round asharp corner into a broader roadway, and stopped with an air of thankfulexpectancy at the low doorway of a wayside inn. A cheerful glow of lightstreamed from the windows and door, and a brighter glare came from theother side of the road, where a large motorcar was being got ready for animmediate start. Yeovil tumbled stiffly out of his saddle, and in answerto the loud rattle of his hunting crop on the open door the innkeeper andtwo or three hangers-on hurried out to attend to the wants of man andbeast. Flour and water for the horse and something hot for himself wereYeovil's first concern, and then he began to clamour for geographicalinformation. He was rather dismayed to find that the cumulative opinionsof those whom he consulted, and of several others who joined unbidden inthe discussion, placed his destination at nothing nearer than nine miles. Nine miles of dark and hilly country road for a tired man on a tiredhorse assumed enormous, far-stretching proportions, and although he dimlyremembered that he had asked a guest to dinner for that evening he beganto wonder whether the wayside inn possessed anything endurable in the wayof a bedroom. The landlord interrupted his desperate speculations with areally brilliant effort of suggestion. There was a gentleman in the bar, he said, who was going in a motorcar in the direction for which Yeovilwas bound, and who would no doubt be willing to drop him at hisdestination; the gentleman had also been out with the hounds. Yeovil'shorse could be stabled at the inn and fetched home by a groom the nextmorning. A hurried embassy to the bar parlour resulted in the news thatthe motorist would be delighted to be of assistance to afellow-sportsman. Yeovil gratefully accepted the chance that had soobligingly come his way, and hastened to superintend the housing of hishorse in its night's quarters. When he had duly seen to the tiredanimal's comfort and foddering he returned to the roadway, where a youngman in hunting garb and a livened chauffeur were standing by the side ofthe waiting car. 

"I am so very pleased to be of some use to you, Mr. Yeovil, " said the car-owner, with a polite bow, and Yeovil recognised the young Leutnant vonGabelroth, who had been present at the musical afternoon at BerkshireStreet. He had doubtless seen him at the meet that morning, but in hishunting kit he had escaped his observation. 

"I, too, have been out with the hounds, " the young man continued; "I haveleft my horse at the Crow and Sceptre at Dolford. You are living atBlack Dene, are you not? I can take you right past your door, it is allon my way. "

Yeovil hung back for a moment, overwhelmed with vexation andembarrassment, but it was too late to cancel the arrangement he hadunwittingly entered into, and he was constrained to put himself underobligation to the young officer with the best grace he could muster. After all, he reflected, he had met him under his own roof as his wife'sguest. He paid his reckoning to mine host, tipped the stable lad who hadhelped him with his horse, and took his place beside von Gabelroth in thecar. 

As they glided along the dark roadway and the young German reeled off astring of comments on the incidents of the day's sport, Yeovil lay backamid his comfortable wraps and weighed the measure of his humiliation. Itwas Cicely's gospel that one should know what one wanted in life and takegood care that one got what one wanted. Could he apply that test ofachievement to his own life? Was this what he really wanted to be doing, pursuing his uneventful way as a country squire, sharing even his sportsand pastimes with men of the nation that had conquered and enslaved hisFatherland?

The car slackened its pace somewhat as they went through a small hamlet, past a schoolhouse, past a rural police-station with the new monogramover its notice-board, past a church with a little tree-grown graveyard. There, in a corner, among wild-rose bushes and tall yews, lay some ofYeovil's own kinsfolk, who had lived in these parts and hunted and foundlife pleasant in the days that were not so very long ago. Whenever hewent past that quiet little gathering-place of the dead Yeovil was wontto raise his hat in mute affectionate salutation to those who were nowonly memories in his family; to-night he somehow omitted the salute andturned his head the other way. It was as though the dead of his race sawand wondered. 

Three or four months ago the thing he was doing would have seemed animpossibility, now it was actually happening; he was listening to thegay, courteous, tactful chatter of his young companion, laughing now andthen at some joking remark, answering some question of interest, learningsomething of hunting ways and traditions in von Gabelroth's own country. And when the car turned in at the gate of the hunting lodge and drew upat the steps the laws of hospitality demanded that Yeovil should ask hisbenefactor of the road to come in for a few minutes and drink something alittle better than the wayside inn had been able to supply. The youngofficer spent the best part of a half hour in Yeovil's snuggery, examining and discussing the trophies of rifle and collecting gun thatcovered the walls. He had a good knowledge of woodcraft, and the beastsand birds of Siberian forests and North African deserts were to him newpages in a familiar book. Yeovil found himself discoursing eagerly withhis chance guest on the European distribution and local variation of suchand such a species, recounting peculiarities in its habits and incidentsof its pursuit and capture. If the cold observant eyes of Lady Shalemcould have rested on the scene she would have hailed it as another root-fibre thrown out by the fait accompli. 

Yeovil closed the hall door on his departing visitor, and closed his mindon the crowd of angry and accusing thoughts that were waiting to intrudethemselves. His valet had already got his bath in readiness and in a fewminutes the tired huntsman was forgetting weariness and the consciousnessof outside things in the languorous abandonment that steam and hot waterinduce. Brain and limbs seemed to lay themselves down in a contentedwaking sleep, the world that was beyond the bathroom walls dropped awayinto a far unreal distance; only somewhere through the steam cloudspierced a hazy consciousness that a dinner, well chosen, was being wellcooked, and would presently be well served--and right well appreciated. That was the lure to drag the bather away from the Nirvana land of warmthand steam. The stimulating after-effect of the bath took its due effect, and Yeovil felt that he was now much less tired and enormously hungry. Acheery fire burned in his dressing-room and a lively black kitten helpedhim to dress, and incidentally helped him to require a new tassel to thecord of his dressing-gown. As he finished his toilet and the kittenfinished its sixth and most notable attack on the tassel a ring was heardat the front door, and a moment later a loud, hearty, and unmistakablyhungry voice resounded in the hall. It belonged to the local doctor, whohad also taken part in the day's run and had been bidden to enliven theevening meal with the entertainment of his inexhaustible store ofsporting and social reminiscences. He knew the countryside and thecountryfolk inside out, and he was a living unwritten chronicle of theEast Wessex hunt. His conversation seemed exactly the rightaccompaniment to the meal; his stories brought glimpses of wet hedgerows, stiff ploughlands, leafy spinneys and muddy brooks in among the rich oldWorcester and Georgian silver of the dinner service, the glow and crackleof the wood fire, the pleasant succession of well-cooked dishes andmellow wines. The world narrowed itself down again to a warm, drowsy-scented dining-room, with a productive hinterland of kitchen and cellarbeyond it, and beyond that an important outer world of loose box andharness-room and stable-yard; further again a dark hushed region wherepheasants roosted and owls flitted and foxes prowled. 

Yeovil sat and listened to story after story of the men and women andhorses of the neighbourhood; even the foxes seemed to have a personality, some of them, and a personal history. It was a little like HansAndersen, he decided, and a little like the Reminiscences of an IrishR. M. , and perhaps just a little like some of the more probable adventuresof Baron Munchausen. The newer stories were evidently true to thesmallest detail, the earlier ones had altered somewhat in repetition, asplants and animals vary under domestication. 

And all the time there was one topic that was never touched on. Of halfthe families mentioned it was necessary to add the qualifying informationthat they "used to live" at such and such a place; the countryside knewthem no longer. Their properties were for sale or had already passedinto the hands of strangers. But neither man cared to allude to thegrinning shadow that sat at the feast and sent an icy chill now and againthrough the cheeriest jest and most jovial story. The brisk run with thehounds that day had stirred and warmed their pulses; it was an eveningfor comfortable forgetting. Later that night, in the stillness of hisbedroom, with the dwindling noises of a retiring household dropping offone by one into ordered silence, a door shutting here, a fire being rakedout there, the thoughts that had been held away came crowding in. Thebody was tired, but the brain was not, and Yeovil lay awake with histhoughts for company. The world grew suddenly wide again, filled withthe significance of things that mattered, held by the actions of men thatmattered. Hunting-box and stable and gun-room dwindled to a mere pin-point in the universe, there were other larger, more absorbing things onwhich the mind dwelt. There was the grey cold sea outside Dover andPortsmouth and Cork, where the great grey ships of war rocked and swungwith the tides, where the sailors sang, in doggerel English, that bitter-sounding adaptation, "Germania rules t'e waves, " where the flag of aWorld-Power floated for the world to see. And in oven-like cities ofIndia there were men who looked out at the white sun-glare, theheat-baked dust, the welter of crowded streets, who listened to theunceasing chorus of harsh-throated crows, the strident creaking of cart-wheels, the buzz and drone of insect swarms and the rattle call of thetree lizards; men whose thoughts went hungrily to the cool grey skies andwet turf and moist ploughlands of an English hunting country, men whosememories listened yearningly to the music of a deep-throated hound andthe call of a game-bird in the stubble. Yeovil had secured for himselfthe enjoyment of the things for which these men hungered; he had knownwhat he wanted in life, slowly and with hesitation, yet neverthelesssurely, he had arrived at the achievement of his unconfessed desires. Here, installed under his own roof-tree, with as good horseflesh in hisstable as man could desire, with sport lying almost at his door, with hiswife ready to come down and help him to entertain his neighbours, MurreyYeovil had found the life that he wanted--and was accursed in his owneyes. He argued with himself, and palliated and explained, but he knewwhy he had turned his eyes away that evening from the little graveyardunder the trees; one cannot explain things to the dead. 

CHAPTER XIX: THE LITTLE FOXES

 "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines"

On a warm and sunny May afternoon, some ten months since Yeovil's returnfrom his Siberian wanderings and sickness, Cicely sat at a small table inthe open-air restaurant in Hyde Park, finishing her after-luncheon coffeeand listening to the meritorious performance of the orchestra. Oppositeher sat Larry Meadowfield, absorbed for the moment in the slow enjoymentof a cigarette, which also was not without its short-lived merits. Larrywas a well-dressed youngster, who was, in Cicely's opinion, distinctlygood to look on--an opinion which the boy himself obviously shared. Hehad the healthy, well-cared-for appearance of a country-dweller who hasbeen turned into a town dandy without suffering in the process. His blue-black hair, growing very low down on a broad forehead, was brushed backin a smoothness that gave his head the appearance of a rain-polishedsloe; his eyebrows were two dark smudges and his large violet-grey eyesexpressed the restful good temper of an animal whose immediaterequirements have been satisfied. The lunch had been an excellent one, and it was jolly to feed out of doors in the warm spring air--the onlydrawback to the arrangement being the absence of mirrors. However, if hecould not look at himself a great many people could look at him. 

Cicely listened to the orchestra as it jerked and strutted through afantastic dance measure, and as she listened she looked appreciatively atthe boy on the other side of the table, whose soul for the moment seemedto be in his cigarette. Her scheme of life, knowing just what you wantedand taking good care that you got it, was justifying itself by results. Ronnie, grown tiresome with success, had not been difficult to replace, and no one in her world had had the satisfaction of being able to condolewith her on the undesirable experience of a long interregnum. Tofeminine acquaintances with fewer advantages of purse and brains andlooks she might figure as "that Yeovil woman, " but never had she giventhem justification to allude to her as "poor Cicely Yeovil. " And Murrey, dear old soul, had cooled down, as she had hoped and wished, from hiswhite heat of disgust at the things that she had prepared herself toaccept philosophically. A new chapter of their married life and man-and-woman friendship had opened; many a rare gallop they had had togetherthat winter, many a cheery dinner gathering and long bridge evening inthe cosy hunting-lodge. Though he still hated the new London and heldhimself aloof from most of her Town set, yet he had not shown himselfrigidly intolerant of the sprinkling of Teuton sportsmen who hunted andshot down in his part of the country. 

The orchestra finished its clicking and caracoling and was accorded ashort clatter of applause. 

"The Danse Macabre, " said Cicely to her companion; "one of Saint-Saens'best known pieces. "

"Is it?" said Larry indifferently; "I'll take your word for it. 'Fraid Idon't know much about music. "

"You dear boy, that's just what I like in you, " said Cicely; "you're sucha delicious young barbarian. "

"Am I?" said Larry. "I dare say. I suppose you know. "

Larry's father had been a brilliantly clever man who had married abrilliantly handsome woman; the Fates had not had the least intentionthat Larry should take after both parents. 

"The fashion of having one's lunch in the open air has quite caught onthis season, " said Cicely; "one sees everybody here on a fine day. Thereis Lady Bailquist over there. She used to be Lady Shalem you know, before her husband got the earldom--to be more correct, before she got itfor him. I suppose she is all agog to see the great review. "

It was in fact precisely the absorbing topic of the forthcoming Boy-Scoutmarch-past that was engaging the Countess of Bailquist's earnestattention at the moment. 

"It is going to be an historical occasion, " she was saying to Sir LeonardPitherby (whose services to literature had up to the present receivedonly a half-measure of recognition); "if it miscarries it will be aserious set-back for the fait accompli. If it is a success it will bethe biggest step forward in the path of reconciliation between the tworaces that has yet been taken. It will mean that the younger generationis on our side--not all, of course, but some, that is all we can expectat present, and that will be enough to work on. "

"Supposing the Scouts hang back and don't turn up in any numbers, " saidSir Leonard anxiously. 

"That of course is the danger, " said Lady Bailquist quietly; "probablytwo-thirds of the available strength will hold back, but a third or evena sixth would be enough; it would redeem the parade from the calamity offiasco, and it would be a nucleus to work on for the future. That iswhat we want, a good start, a preliminary rally. It is the first stepthat counts, that is why to-day's event is of such importance. "

"Of course, of course, the first step on the road, " assented Sir Leonard. 

"I can assure you, " continued Lady Bailquist, "that nothing has been leftundone to rally the Scouts to the new order of things. Specialprivileges have been showered on them, alone among all the cadet corpsthey have been allowed to retain their organisation, a decoration ofmerit has been instituted for them, a large hostelry and gymnasium hasbeen provided for them in Westminster, His Majesty's youngest son is tobe their Scoutmaster-in-Chief, a great athletic meeting is to be held forthem each year, with valuable prizes, three or four hundred of them areto be taken every summer, free of charge, for a holiday in the BavarianHighlands and the Baltic Seaboard; besides this the parent of every scoutwho obtains the medal for efficiency is to be exempted from part of thenew war taxation that the people are finding so burdensome. "

"One certainly cannot say that they have not had attractions held out tothem, " said Sir Leonard. 

"It is a special effort, " said Lady Bailquist; "it is worth making aneffort for. They are going to be the Janissaries of the Empire; theyounger generation knocking at the doors of progress, and thrusting backthe bars and bolts of old racial prejudices. I tell you, Sir Leonard, itwill be an historic moment when the first corps of those little khaki-clad boys swings through the gates of the Park. "

"When do they come?" asked the baronet, catching something of hiscompanion's zeal. 

"The first detachment is due to arrive at three, " said Lady Bailquist, referring to a small time-table of the afternoon's proceedings; "three, punctually, and the others will follow in rapid succession. The Emperorand Suite will arrive at two-fifty and take up their positions at thesaluting base--over there, where the big flag-staff has been set up. Theboys will come in by Hyde Park Corner, the Marble Arch, and the AlbertGate, according to their districts, and form in one big column overthere, where the little flags are pegged out. Then the young Prince willinspect them and lead them past His Majesty. "

"Who will be with the Imperial party?" asked Sir Leonard. 

"Oh, it is to be an important affair; everything will be done toemphasise the significance of the occasion, " said Lady Bailquist, againconsulting her programme. "The King of Wurtemberg, and two of theBavarian royal Princes, an Abyssinian Envoy who is over here--he willlend a touch of picturesque barbarism to the scene--the generalcommanding the London district and a whole lot of other military bigwigs, and the Austrian, Italian and Roumanian military attaches. "

She reeled off the imposing list of notables with an air of quietsatisfaction. Sir Leonard made mental notes of personages to whom hemight send presentation copies of his new work "Frederick-William, theGreat Elector, a Popular Biography, " as a souvenir of to-day's auspiciousevent. 

"It is nearly a quarter to three now, " he said; "let us get a goodposition before the crowd gets thicker. "

"Come along to my car, it is just opposite to the saluting base, " saidher ladyship; "I have a police pass that will let us through. We'll askMrs. Yeovil and her young friend to join us. "

Larry excused himself from joining the party; he had a barbarian'sreluctance to assisting at an Imperial triumph. 

"I think I'll push off to the swimming-bath, " he said to Cicely; "see youagain about tea-time. "

Cicely walked with Lady Bailquist and the literary baronet towards thecrowd of spectators, which was steadily growing in dimensions. A newsboyran in front of them displaying a poster with the intelligence "Essexwickets fall rapidly"--a semblance of county cricket still survived underthe new order of things. Near the saluting base some thirty or fortymotorcars were drawn up in line, and Cicely and her companions exchangedgreetings with many of the occupants. 

"A lovely day for the review, isn't it?" cried the Grafin von Tolb, breaking off her conversation with Herr Rebinok, the little Pomeranianbanker, who was sitting by her side. "Why haven't you brought young Mr. Meadowfield? Such a nice boy. I wanted him to come and sit in mycarriage and talk to me. "

"He doesn't talk you know, " said Cicely; "he's only brilliant to lookat. "

"Well, I could have looked at him, " said the Grafin. 

"There'll be thousands of other boys to look at presently, " said Cicely, laughing at the old woman's frankness. 

"Do you think there will be thousands?" asked the Grafin, with an anxiouslowering of the voice; "really, thousands? Hundreds, perhaps; there issome uncertainty. Every one is not sanguine. "

"Hundreds, anyway, " said Cicely. 

The Grafin turned to the little banker and spoke to him rapidly andearnestly in German. 

"It is most important that we should consolidate our position in thiscountry; we must coax the younger generation over by degrees, we mustdisarm their hostility. We cannot afford to be always on the watch inthis quarter; it is a source of weakness, and we cannot afford to beweak. This Slav upheaval in south-eastern Europe is becoming a seriousmenace. Have you seen to-day's telegrams from Agram? They are badreading. There is no computing the extent of this movement. "

"It is directed against us, " said the banker. 

"Agreed, " said the Grafin; "it is in the nature of things that it must beagainst us. Let us have no illusions. Within the next ten years, soonerperhaps, we shall be faced with a crisis which will be only a beginning. We shall need all our strength; that is why we cannot afford to be weakover here. To-day is an important day; I confess I am anxious. "

"Hark! The kettledrums!" exclaimed the commanding voice of LadyBailquist. "His Majesty is coming. Quick, bundle into the car. "

The crowd behind the police-kept lines surged expectantly into closerformation; spectators hurried up from side-walks and stood craning theirnecks above the shoulders of earlier arrivals. 

Through the archway at Hyde Park Corner came a resplendent cavalcade, with a swirl of colour and rhythmic movement and a crash of exultantmusic; life-guards with gleaming helmets, a detachment of Wurtemberglancers with a flutter of black and yellow pennons, a rich medley ofstaff uniforms, a prancing array of princely horsemen, the ImperialStandard, and the King of Prussia, Great Britain, and Ireland, Emperor ofthe West. It was the most imposing display that Londoners had seen sincethe catastrophe. 

Slowly, grandly, with thunder of music and beat of hoofs, the processionpassed through the crowd, across the sward towards the saluting base, slowly the eagle standard, charged with the leopards, lion and harp ofthe conquered kingdoms, rose mast-high on the flag-staff and fluttered inthe breeze, slowly and with military precision the troops and suite tookup their position round the central figure of the great pageant. Trumpetsand kettledrums suddenly ceased their music, and in a moment there rosein their stead an eager buzz of comment from the nearest spectators. 

"How well the young Prince looks in his scout uniform. " . . . "The Kingof Wurtemberg is a much younger man than I thought he was. " . . . "Isthat a Prussian or Bavarian uniform, there on the right, the man on ablack horse?" . . . "Neither, it's Austrian, the Austrian militaryattache" . . . "That is von Stoppel talking to His Majesty; he organisedthe Boy Scouts in Germany, you know. " . . . "His Majesty is looking verypleased. " "He has reason to look pleased; this is a great event in thehistory of the two countries. It marks a new epoch. " . . . "Oh, do yousee the Abyssinian Envoy? What a picturesque figure he makes. How wellhe sits his horse. " . . . "That is the Grand Duke of Baden's nephew, talking to the King of Wurtemberg now. "

On the buzz and chatter of the spectators fell suddenly three soundstrokes, distant, measured, sinister; the clang of a clock strikingthree. 

"Three o'clock and not a boy scout within sight or hearing!" exclaimedthe loud ringing voice of Joan Mardle; "one can usually hear their drumsand trumpets a couple of miles away. "

"There is the traffic to get through, " said Sir Leonard Pitherby in anequally high-pitched voice; "and of course, " he added vaguely, "it takessome time to get the various units together. One must give them a fewminutes' grace. "

Lady Bailquist said nothing, but her restless watchful eyes were turnedfirst to Hyde Park Corner and then in the direction of the Marble Arch, back again to Hyde Park Corner. Only the dark lines of the waiting crowdmet her view, with the yellow newspaper placards flitting in and out, announcing to an indifferent public the fate of Essex wickets. As far asher searching eyes could travel the green stretch of tree and swardremained unbroken, save by casual loiterers. No small brown columnsappeared, no drum beat came throbbing up from the distance. The littleflags pegged out to mark the positions of the awaited scout-corpsfluttered in meaningless isolation on the empty parade ground. 

His Majesty was talking unconcernedly with one of his officers, theforeign attaches looked steadily between their chargers' ears, as thoughnothing in particular was hanging in the balance, the Abyssinian Envoydisplayed an untroubled serenity which was probably genuine. Elsewhereamong the Suite was a perceptible fidget, the more obvious because it waselaborately cloaked. Among the privileged onlookers drawn up near thesaluting point the fidgeting was more unrestrained. 

"Six minutes past three, and not a sign of them!" exclaimed Joan Mardle, with the explosive articulation of one who cannot any longer hold back atruth. 

"Hark!" said some one; "I hear trumpets!"

There was an instant concentration of listening, a straining of eyes. 

It was only the toot of a passing motorcar. Even Sir Leonard Pitherby, with the eye of faith, could not locate as much as a cloud of dust on thePark horizon. 

And now another sound was heard, a sound difficult to define, withoutbeginning, without dimension; the growing murmur of a crowd waking to aslowly dawning sensation. 

"I wish the band would strike up an air, " said the Grafin von Tolbfretfully; "it is stupid waiting here in silence. "

Joan fingered her watch, but she made no further remark; she realisedthat no amount of malicious comment could be so dramatically effectivenow as the slow slipping away of the intolerable seconds. 

The murmur from the crowd grew in volume. Some satirical wit startedwhistling an imitation of an advancing fife and drum band; others took itup and the air resounded with the shrill music of a phantom army on themarch. The mock throbbing of drum and squealing of fife rose and fellabove the packed masses of spectators, but no answering echo came frombeyond the distant trees. Like mushrooms in the night a muster ofuniformed police and plain clothes detectives sprang into evidence on allsides; whatever happened there must be no disloyal demonstration. Thewhistlers and mockers were pointedly invited to keep silence, and one ortwo addresses were taken. Under the trees, well at the back of thecrowd, a young man stood watching the long stretch of road along whichthe Scouts should come. Something had drawn him there, against his will, to witness the Imperial Triumph, to watch the writing of yet anotherchapter in the history of his country's submission to an accepted fact. And now a dull flush crept into his grey face; a look that was partly new-born hope and resurrected pride, partly remorse and shame, burned in hiseyes. Shame, the choking, searing shame of self-reproach that cannot bereasoned away, was dominant in his heart. He had laid down hisarms--there were others who had never hoisted the flag of surrender. Hehad given up the fight and joined the ranks of the hopelesslysubservient; in thousands of English homes throughout the land there wereyoung hearts that had not forgotten, had not compounded, would not yield. 

The younger generation had barred the door. 

And in the pleasant May sunshine the Eagle standard floated and flapped, the black and yellow pennons shifted restlessly, Emperor and Princes, Generals and guards, sat stiffly in their saddles, and waited. 

And waited. . . .