robin had been at cambridge about a fortnight, and on a certain sunday afternoon was sitting with jim in the window-seat of the latter’s room over-looking the court. the bell for afternoon chapel had begun, but since they had both been there in the morning, they proposed to abstain from any further religious exercises. the menace of tempest that for the last week had been so swiftly piling up over europe had barely as yet flecked the scholastic calm of cambridge with the faintest ruffling of its tranquil surface. mr. waters, indeed, was perhaps the only member of st. stephen’s who had been at all acutely affected, since he had thought it wiser not to go to baireuth, and had been unable to dispose of his tickets.
robin was blowing tobacco smoke on to a small green insect that clung to a stalk of mignonette in the window-box.
“it is for its good,” he said. “it will make it feel sick, and so when it grows up it will instinctively dislike the smell of tobacco and so not spend its money, like me, on cigarettes. talking of which, i’ve run short. hope you’ve got some?”
“i’m smoking my last. what’s to be done?”
“go into the town and buy some. damn, i{182}t’s sunday! oh, there’s jelf! got any cigarettes, judas?”
jelf had lately been very strong on what he called effete christian superstitions. nobody cared in the least what jelf believed, but it was obvious that his name was judas. he strolled on to the grass below the window.
“yes, plenty, thank you,” he said, “if you were speaking to me. but my name is jelf.”
“i know. do be a good chap, and bring us a handful. jim and i have run out. you can hang yourself afterwards. i’ll even give you some tea first, and you can talk to a pretty lady who’s coming to tea, too.”
“who’s that?” asked jim.
“friend of my mother’s, lady gurtner. she’s motoring in from her house somewhere near for chapel. about the cigarettes now. you aren’t judas, jelf. i can’t imagine what i was thinking about. but for god’s sake fetch some cigarettes, and then you needn’t hang yourself.”
“you’re quite sure?” asked jelf.
“absolutely certain. thanks, awfully.”
jim put down off the window-seat one of robin’s legs which was incommoding him.
“germany declared war on russia yesterday,” he said. “wonder what’s going to happen next?”
“i don’t know. i suppose there’ll be a battle. it’s rather exciting, and i’m glad we’re on an island. this queer bug doesn’t seem to mind tobacco smoke. hullo, badders! why going to chapel again?”
“why not?” said badsley from the path outside. “i say, i believe there’s going to be a gory war.”
“well, we’re not in it, so what does it matter? jim and i are dining with you to-night, aren’t we?”
“i think you told me so.{183}”
“i was sure i hadn’t forgotten to. thanks, we’ll come. hurrah! there’s ju—jelf with cigarettes.”
jelf entered, brandishing his cigarettes like a wave-offering.
“christianity hasn’t made much of a show in nineteen hundred years,” he remarked. “total effect up to date is that we’re going to have the biggest war that ever happened. moslems are forbidden to fight against moslems, you know, but christians may kill as many of each other as they please.”
“have a cigarette? one of yours,” said jim, changing the subject.
“war!” said jelf. “of all the insane and senseless things in the world war is the worst. two fellows quarrel, or two nations quarrel, and by way of finding out which of them is right they hit each other till one goes down. then the other stamps on him, and everyone goes to a thanksgiving service in church because god has been on his side. don’t know what the fellow who is stamped on does. probably he goes to hell. it must be jolly puzzling to have two nations or more all on their knees fervently praying for absolutely opposite things, especially if you have promised to grant prayers addressed to you. he ought to have thought of that before he promised.”
“o lor’!” said robin.
“it’s no use saying ‘o lor’.’ you fellows hate anything that makes you think, because you can’t think. i’ve told you that before.”
“i know; that’s what makes it tedious,” said robin.
“well, i find you tedious, too,” said jelf. “i hate the english. they’re a mixture of sentiment and sport. they can’t think. but do be serious a minute and try to think. germany and russia are at war now. everything good has come from germany, beer{184} and bach and beethoven and christmas trees, except what has come out of russia, which is tolstoi and turgeniev and nijinski and pavlova. and now they’re fighting because of a rotten little dung-heap called serbia. france might as well go to war on behalf of monte carlo. what’s the good of the little nations, anyway? they ought to belong to somebody else.”
robin had taken up an illustrated magazine, and was playing noughts and crosses on the back of it with jim. but the lack of attention on the part of his audience never discomposed jelf.
“and now as like as not france and we will have to join in,” he went on, “and there you’ll have all the civilized nations of europe killing each other on account of a little rotten country that neither of you could find on a map. germany has already threatened to march through belgium to get at france, and belgium—another rotten little country—has appealed to england.”
“oh, when did that happen?” asked jim. “two to you, birds.”
“to-day. it was on the tape down at the ‘union.’ not that anybody cared, except mackenzie, who sees a future for his aeroplane engine.”
“why?”
“because aeroplanes, as he says, are going to win the war for somebody. you can scout all behind the enemy’s lines. we’ve got about three aeroplanes at present.... i say, isn’t there anything you fellows are interested in except cricket?”
“yes, cigarettes,” said robin. “and we like hearing you talk, as long as we needn’t listen. but aren’t you and mackenzie getting on rather quick?”
“not as quick as things are getting on. i had an argument with mackenzie{185}——”
“you don’t say so!” said jim.
“i did. i think war is the devil. if england went to war, nothing would induce me to stop protesting against it.”
“oh, are you a—a pacific?” hazarded robin.
“ocean. try pacifist. of course i am; so would you be if you thought. how does killing people prove your point? if you said i had a green nose, i shouldn’t kill you in order to prove it wasn’t green. and if you killed me, it wouldn’t prove that it was. my nose would remain precisely the same colour whether you killed me or not.”
“it might become crimson first,” said robin.
“i suppose that’s funny. war is utterly illogical and uncivilized. only schoolboys fight when they disagree.”
“if you’ll stop talking, i’ll bet you half-a-crown that we shan’t go to war. besides, we’ve got an invincible fleet, and i suppose germany’s got an invincible army. will the army swim out and board the fleet, or will our sailors put off in small boats and fight the germans on land? it’s all rot. your move, jim.”
“i take that half-crown. i can’t bear the thought of germany being smashed up. i spent three months there last year, and i loved them.”
“as much as you hate the english?”
“just about. i hope to goodness we shall be sensible and keep out of it. germans have got brains: if you talk to a german he understands what you say, which is such an advantage.”
“whereas if you talk to an englishman, he plays noughts and crosses,” said robin. “lord, they’re coming out of chapel. i must go and find lady gurtner.”
it was not very hard to find lady gurtner, for she{186} was quite the most conspicuous object in the crowd that poured out of chapel. she was also in the highest spirits, for in the motor that waited for her at the gate, guarded by a footman, lay the sables that her soul had so ardently desired, which her husband had just purchased for her. this implied some big financial coup, the nature of which she knew. for his foresight on that night when he had sat up till dawn “writing and thinking for her,” had, in conjunction with more work next day, produced results that were excessively pleasant.
before there had been anything like alarm on the stock exchange of europe he had sold at peace prices enormous blocks of shares in english, german and french funds, with a view to repurchasing them at panic prices when the shadow of war spread. simultaneously he had purchased interests in such holdings as coal and shipping companies, and in armament and ammunition works, such as krupps and vickers, which, instead of being adversely affected by the prospect of war, would be bound to appreciate. this sagacity also was turning out very well, and though he had intended to come with aline into cambridge that afternoon, from his country house a dozen miles off, he had judged it more prudent to get back to london that night, so as to be on the spot for the very agitated opening which the stock exchange would no doubt experience on monday morning, and be ready for the psychological moment at which to put in his sickle and reap the golden harvest which awaited him on some of those transactions. but in his absence aline felt that the sables made the only adequate substitute for him.
she had come to a decision on that question of national sympathy, which he had put so crudely before her at that tragic interview which succeeded her{187} triumphant party. it was quite possible to be good friends with everybody, so she had determined. no doubt her german blood called to her, but her position, now strongly held in england, called to her also. the english, should that terrible event of england’s entering the war be realized (as her husband now deemed to be inevitable) should see how completely she had embraced the cause of her adopted country. she would be clever about it, too: she would frankly say how her heart was torn, but she would no less show that it had been torn into two very unequal portions, by far the largest of which was english. she developed those tactfulnesses at once, as she walked back to robin’s rooms, talking rather loud.
“i never saw such a beautiful place,” she said, “and what singing! my dear, fancy living in this divine court! are your rooms really here? do you live here? what an atmosphere to be soaked in! no wonder you english boys are the most delightful creatures under the sun. you utterly lucky person, robin. you go to school at eton, and then you come here, and when you are away on your holidays you live at grote. thank goodness, my sons are going to do just the same. what wouldn’t i give to be a boy at eton with this to follow! and are we really going to walk under this arch to your rooms? i am sick with envy of you. i shall die of discontent when i get back to my horrid house.”
they passed through the arch and into robin’s room, which looked out away from the big court on to a small space of grass with a mulberry tree in the middle. robin introduced jelf, who in this interval had been useful with regard to making the kettle boil over a spirit-lamp, and lady gurtner became equally effusive to him.{188}
“and so you’re another of the spoiled children of the world,” she said. “and that’s a mulberry tree out there, isn’t it? how old-world and lovely! i can see the fruit on it. but that’s the sort of thing you can’t get, unless you’ve five hundred years behind you. do you read your greek under the mulberry tree? i’m sure you do. there’s nothing like cambridge in the whole of germany. poor germany! have you ever been to germany, mr. jelf?”
there was no possibility of replying to lady gurtner’s remarks, when she was determined on making an impression, for having asked a question, she turned to other matters that lay littered about in her hopping, bird-like mind. she paused only for a second’s space to think how greatly hermann would admire and extol her for her inimitable tact in being so convincingly english.
“all the german students do nothing but drink beer,” she said, “except when they are fighting duels. what delicious tea! and a bun—yes, please, a bun—i am sure it was baked in the kitchen that henry the sixth built. how good! buttered, too, on its lovely inside. i never saw such sybarites. and here you all live, and don’t bother with anything else that happens outside. that is so sensible. you are just english boys; i wish the recipe could be known. how jolly and comfortable we should all be!”
her mouth was full for the moment of the delicious bun, and she could not prevent robin asking a question:
“but do you mean we are not all going to be jolly and comfortable?” he said.
“ah, yes, you mean about this dreadful news to-day,” she said, rapidly disposing of the delicious bun by a hurried swallow and a sip of tea. “i know my husband thinks it all very serious: it is as if that great{189} brutal germany was insisting on a quarrel. i have not been there for years, though i was going last week, when all the trouble began. i shall never go there again if she goes to war with that lovely france, russia too!”
“won’t she find herself in a pretty nasty place between them?” asked robin.
for a moment her tact deserted her: the call of the blood silenced all other voices.
“ah, you don’t know the might of germany if you think that,” she said. “she is invincible: not all the armies of europe could stand against her. her fleet, too——”
she stopped suddenly, feeling that hermann would not admire these last remarks quite as sincerely as her previous felicities. but she could not stand anybody else, even one of those adorable english boys, running down the fatherland.
“after all, there is an english fleet,” said robin.
once again she had to put a firm hand on herself, in order to prevent her tongue running away with her on the magnificence of the german navy. but it escaped through another bolt-hole, making a not very happy diversion.
“but england is not going to fight germany,” she said. “you have your hands full with these miserable irish affairs, and besides, what quarrel have you with germany? it is all about serbia, so my husband tells me, which surely does not matter to england.”
now, somehow, even to the immature perception of the two undergraduates, these words, though nearly identical with jelf’s, sounded quite different, took on a sinister meaning when spoken by lady gurtner. jelf had said that small nations had no place, but the moment lady gurtner said that serbia did not matter{190} to england, she began to matter. no one took jelf seriously: his tirades were but the expression of a mind that delighted in argument, that was eager to see the reverse of conventional views. it was merely “jelfish” that he should proclaim his love for germans and his dislike of the english, but that didn’t really represent jelf. in fact he liked shocking you, and failed, whereas lady gurtner liked pleasing, and in this instance failed also. suddenly and inexplicably, a hostile and uncomfortable atmosphere diffused itself. robin got up with a laugh.
“just before you came in, lady gurtner,” he said, “mr. jelf was telling me i didn’t know where serbia was on the map. it’s quite true: one knows the sort of place, just as one knows the sort of place where shropshire is. i’m sure you don’t know where shropshire is. do have some more tea. or a cigarette. smoke as many cigarettes as you like: they’re not mine. and then you must walk down to the backs. have you seen my mother lately?”
there were plenty of amiable topics spread out here for selection, and lady gurtner, eager to re-establish herself, grabbed at a handful of them.
“yes, i saw your beloved mother only three days ago,” she said, “and she promised to pay me a visit some time during august. you must come, too, robin, if you can tear yourself away from this place. do give me a cigarette, though i suppose i mayn’t smoke it out of doors. and then i insist on just going down to the backs, if they aren’t very far off. and aren’t we all ignorant about geography? i shall get a map as soon as i go home, and look out shropshire and serbia.”
robin saw lady gurtner off, admired the sables, and returned to his room, where jelf was still smoking his{191} own cigarettes. they looked at each other in silence a moment, and then jelf said:
“i talked the most awful rot this afternoon. but you know that, don’t you?”
“oh, lord, yes,” said robin. “let’s go and see if there’s any more news.”
there was nothing more of which the tape at the union had cognizance, and after dinner robin and jim, with their host, started a mild game of poker. but whether it was that three do not constitute an adequate assembly for this particular form of hazard to become entertaining, the game very soon languished, and the three sat unusually silent. badsley lay in the window seat with his pipe croaking in the dusk as he drew on it, jim got up and wandered aimlessly about the room, and robin, with tilted chair, still sat at the table where they had played, building card-houses that never aspired beyond the second story. occasionally one or other dropped a remark that passed almost unheeded. jim was watching robin put on the roof of the first story.
“what’ll war mean?” he said. “a european war, not just a scrimmage in the balkans.”
“don’t know. damn, you shook the table.”
robin began his edifice again, and this time spoke himself.
“we must come in, mustn’t we?” he said. “haven’t we got some sort of arrangement with france and russia? we’ve got to keep that.”
nobody answered, and badsley knocked out the half-smoked ashes of his pipe into the window-box.
“pretty mean trick of germany, threatening to invade belgium, when she’s sworn she wouldn’t,” he said. “whisky, anybody?{192}”
he went across to his cupboard and poured some out for himself, as he received no answer. the syphon-handle was stiff, then gave way suddenly, and a fountain of whisky and soda aspired like a geyser.
“have some whisky and soda,” said robin.
“got some, thanks: chiefly up my sleeve. hell!” robin abandoned the attempt to build, and began flicking counters across the table.
“what was your mother’s friend like?” asked jim.
“oh, a sort of bird of paradise in furs. i never liked her much, and to-day i didn’t like her at all.”
“why?”
“she swanked about the german army.”
badsley had succeeded better with his second attempt to obtain refreshment.
“jolly fine woman, i thought,” he said. “i saw her with my little eye in chapel. after that i didn’t attend any more. why didn’t you ask me to tea, birds?”
“because i was going to dine with you, and i thought tea as well would be too much pleasure. i say, i feel rather rotten to-night. sort of feeling that one doesn’t know what’s going to happen.”
“you didn’t seem to care two straws this afternoon,” said jim.
“i know i didn’t. but it’s just beginning to be real. whisky? yes, why not whisky? i say, shan’t we want an army if we go to war? where’s that to come from?”
robin drank his glass at a draught.
“i think i’ll go to bed,” he said. “it’s no use trying to play poker if you’re thinking about something else. good-night, badders; thanks awfully for dinner.{193}”
jim, as a matter of course, came out with him and took his arm.
“stroll down to the bridge first?” he asked.
“yes; may as well,” said robin.
the moon with the clippings of three nights off the right side of its circle had risen and cleared the tree tops, and rode high in a sky dappled with mackerel-skin patches of cloud, through which its rays shone with a diffused opalescence. now and then it streamed down a channel of clear and starry sky, and the lights and shadows became sharp-cut, but for the most part those shoals of thin cloud, on which it cast the faint colours of a pearl’s rainbow, gave to the night an illumination as of some grey, diminished day.
to-night there was no dew on the grass; over the river, bats, hunting the nocturnal insects flitted with slate-pencil squeaks, scarcely audible. a little wind blew downstream from out of the arch of the bridge, ruffling patches of the water’s surface, and lightning, very remote, winked on the horizon westwards, but so far away that no sound of its answering thunder could be heard. in a set of rooms of the buildings near the river someone was picking out a music-hall tune with painstaking study and long pauses on a metallic piano, and a boat with one solitary oarsman in it went by with the sound of dripping oar-blades and rattle of rowlocks. but for all the normal tranquillity, there was some hint of menace abroad: the puffs of wind might enlarge into a gale, the remote storm might move up with fierce, flashing blinks of lightning and sonorous gongs, and instead of the small squeaking bats, some prodigy of preying teeth and claws might launch itself on to the night.
they leaned against the stone parapet of the bridge for a minute in silence. some indefinable ominous{194}ness was certainly abroad. it had come up as swiftly as a storm that spreads, as by the stroke of a black wing, over a clear sky.
“i feel as if someone was counting the hours,” said robin. “there are a few more left before some clock strikes, and—and a great door opens. what is it, jim?”
“i don’t know. but i know what i’m afraid of.”
“what’s that?” asked robin.
“that when the clock strikes, all the life we’ve yet known will be over. cambridge will be over——”
robin shivered.
“like going out of a warm-lit house into the night,” said he, “when you’ve had a jolly evening. is that it? but why do we both feel like that? even if there is a war—is it the thought of that which upsets us?”
“yes: it’s not knowing in the slightest what it’s all going to be like. what’s certain is that things can’t be the same.”
there was a moment’s silence, and again a distant flash, not quite so remote, leaped in the west.
“lightning,” said jim, looking up.
robin pulled himself together, and looked down.
“bats,” he said. “come to bed. or shall we go back to badders?”
“no, bed i think. to-morrow’s monday: i wonder what’ll happen on monday.”
there was a small gathering in mr. waters’ rooms that night, and as the two boys passed his lit windows on the ground floor of the fellows’ buildings they could see the tall, spare form of mr. jackson, evidently in the rostrum, for his head was judicially tilted, as when he lectured. he had come down from his house after dinner, under the stress of the prevalent unrest,{195} to see if there was any fresh news. for himself, he felt a sturdy optimism that, war or no war, cambridge would go on much as usual.
“upon my word, i don’t see what there is to be disturbed about,” he said, “and if i had been you, waters, i think i should have gone to baireuth, just the same.”
“i will be happy to present you with my tickets, and you can start to-morrow,” said waters, with a shade of acidity. he felt that this personal inconvenience, owing to the abandonment of his plans, was likely to remain the bitterest fruit of the european crisis.
“well, i may be wrong about it,” said jackson, “but i don’t think that all this agitation is likely to lead to much. i expect to give my lectures pretty much as usual in the october term. someone was saying to-day that war was practically certain, and that there would be a huge call for young men to join the army. in my opinion, both propositions are highly unlikely. as for undergraduates interrupting their residence here, in order to join up, such a supposition is totally out of the question.”
alison had already finished his glass of alison’s own, which, as usual, encouraged him to independence of thought. he was employed on a game of patience, since whist was not considered a sabbatical diversion in these decorous circles. but there was nothing inharmonious between patience and sunday.
“i should not be too sure of that,” he said. “a european war might prove subversive of even such well-established phenomena as lectures on thucydides.”
“and i am disposed to add as a scholium to your text the simple word ‘fiddlesticks,’” said jackson with some severity.{196}
“you are at liberty to add any scholia you choose,” said alison, putting a black king on a red queen.
there was a certain acrimonious flavour about this, and waters intervened.
“scholia or no scholia,” he said, “i don’t suppose anyone imagines that the war will not be over by christmas.”
“with a rider to the effect that the war will not have begun by christmas,” said jackson. “if anyone cares to know my opinion as to the date of the outbreak of war between england and germany, i unhesitatingly name the greek calends.”
“so now we know,” said alison rebelliously. there was a hitch in his patience, and that, combined with the hitch in european harmony, rendered him a little irritable.
the home to which lady gurtner had returned, enveloped in sables and good humour and joy of life after her tea and her tact with robin, had come into her husband’s hands some six years before over a foreclosed mortgage. it was red-brick, jacobean in structure, with the mellow seal of three hundred years imprinted on its walls and gardens. it seemed to have grown out of the ample and secure soil in serene dignity and fitness, and it was as hard to imagine that once it rose in layers of new brick and mortar, as it would be to unthink the great elm avenue that led up to its plain, comely front, and see again the little saplings from which those leafy towers had expanded. the same air of robust and undecayed antiquity pervaded its gardens: the lawns were clad in the luxuriant velvet that age, instead of thinning, had but thickened to a closer pile; the decades but strengthened the yew hedges to a compacter resilience, and the deep, spacious flower-borders,{197} that lay like some medieval illumination round the black lines of text, glowed with the mellow traditions of the soil.
even where lady gurtner had planted, the habit of the sweet old garden mollified the harshness of new designs, and the sunk rose-garden, with its paths of old paving-stone, might almost have been part of the original scheme. a lead balustrade (a “literary coping,” as it was aptly described by mrs. pounce) ran along the top of the house: nisi dominus custodiat domum seemed to be the guarantee of its secular stability. above all, the exterior of the house and its ancient gardens were completely and unmistakably english. statelier chateaux than it might have grown in france, a more decorative formality might have sprung from italian soil, a more bepinnacled schloss have crowned a german hill, but none of those would have been more instinct with their legitimate pedigree than this serene and english domain.
inside, the house had not fared so well: when sir hermann exercised his right to possession, it tottered for repairs, and repairs had been given it as by the hand of some ruthless surgeon intent on expensive operations. the mouldering panels of the hall had been stripped away, and cedar-wood, as smart as solomon’s temple, had taken their place. just as silver was “nothing accounted of” in his days, so here, rich and rare were the golden emblazonings that ran round cornice and panel and pilaster. the chimney-piece was of rose-coloured marble, the floor was of marble also, and looked like a petrified aubusson carpet with the gurtner arms (leaving room for an eventual coronet above them) planted, florid and dominant, in the centre. two italian bridal cassoni served no longer to contain{198} the embroideries and dresses of the bride, but to support on their carved lids the hats and coats of visitors. rafters painted in the venetian manner—for this was the italian hall—supported the ceiling, and set into the centre was an immense oval of ground glass, framed in gilt, from behind which, at fall of day, a few million power electric lights shed a diffused radiance. besides the fireplace there were, for purposes of heating, three stacks of water-pipes resembling sofas set into embrasures in the wall: to sir hermann it was a never-failing source of amusement to get an unwary visitor to sit down on one of them, and observe his subsequent swift uprising as the unusual warmth amazed him....
altogether, the italian hall looked like a vestibule in a turkish bath for millionaires, and for all the splendour of its appurtenances it suited the old house about as well as if a set of dazzling false teeth, taken haphazard from the case of an advertising dentist in the street, had been forced and hammered into its protesting mouth, after the extraction of the stumps of its panelling and oak-flooring.
the genoese brocade curtains which separated the outer hall from the inner hall, out of which opened the dining-room and drawing-rooms, and from which aspired the new german staircase of iron scroll-work and marble steps, were of far too magnificent a solidity to belly in draughts, and the cedar-wood doors that drew out from their resting-places in the walls were seldom used. one end of this inner hall was taken up by an immense organ case brought from nuremberg, the pipes of which came right up to the ceiling; indeed, some of them had been cut to admit their insertion. the rash visitor, with knowledge of organs, might have lamented the loss of tone which this would imply, but{199} he would speedily be relieved of his melancholy, for sir hermann would take him round the end of the organ, where once a blower supplied it with the inspiration for its many-throated singing, and show him that the case alone and the front pipes remained, and that the whole interior of the organ was but an electric lift, which would save him the necessity of mounting those slippery german stairs. but as if to perpetuate the memory of the old “house of sounds,” as if indeed to materialize its ghost, aline had hit on a very quaint and pretty notion, and the mechanism of the lift was so arranged that all the time during which it was in motion, a colossal musical box, embedded in the perforated roof, played old german chorales.
sir hermann never entered the lift without thinking how dichterlich was this contrivance, and sometimes he was moved to hum an approximate solo to the tinkling accompaniment of the ceiling of the lift. the walls of this inner hall were decorated with the heads of stags and bisons and antelopes, the spoils of some unknown hunter. they had been left in the house by the former owners, and, in sir hermann’s opinion, gave a sporting touch to the inner hall, a characteristically english note. a trophy of blunderbusses and other antique fire-arms endorsed this pleasant impression.
three velvety drawing-rooms lay en suite down the length of the house. here the german taste had been permitted to assert its legitimate claim, and the general effect was that of saloon carriages, station waiting-rooms decorated for the arrival of royal visitors, and wedding-cakes. the dining-room reverted to the ancestral atmosphere again, for sir hermann had collected together half a dozen romneys and reynoldses; and side by side at one end of the room hung portraits of himself and his wife by laszlo. the rest of the{200} house consisted mainly of bedrooms with bathrooms attached.
aline gurtner found to her great pleasure when she arrived at ashmore that her husband had not yet started for town, but had waited to dine with her, and drive up afterwards. he and the three children met her half-way up the avenue, and she got out, and put her lovely new muff, in the manner of a bearskin, on to hermann’s head.
“look, kinder,” she said. “daddy has become a great guardsman.”
“o-oh! daddy’s a soldier,” said freddy excitedly. “let’s all march and kill the french. ein, zwei, drei....”
the guardsman cast one glance at the chauffeur and footmen, who waited with perfectly blank, impassive faces. aline rushed in where freddy dared to tread....
“no, darling, daddy’s an english guardsman,” she interpolated. “yes, you can drive on, giles. i will walk. now, darlings, tell me all you have been doing since mummie went away.”
“first we had tea,” began bertie, “and then freddy was sick——”
“no, i wasn’t,” screamed freddy. “i was sick first, and had tea afterwards. have you had tea, mummie?”
“yes, my darling, but i wasn’t sick. what were you sick about?”
“about cherries,” said freddy promptly. “and then i was quite well again and had tea. may we play horses? may you or daddy be my horses?”
she took hermann’s arm, who began prancing in the most equine manner.
“yes: here we go. but you mustn’t drive us too{201} fast, liebster, because mummie has just been shod with high-heeled shoes, and she can’t run as fast as usual.”
the two other boys insisted on being postillions, and thus loaded, the steeds soon had enough of their transmigration, and became human again.
“and you enjoyed your afternoon, heart’s dearest?” asked hermann.
“very much. i went to chapel, and then had tea with robin. those english boys are such dears; they were so jolly and friendly. and i was very careful.”
“das ist gut.”
he continued to speak in the language in which he thought, when, as so often, he thought definitely, as he had been taught to do as a child. he could remember his mother saying to him, “never be vague when you think, mein hermann: vague thought makes weak action. articulate your thought, as if you were speaking aloud. that makes for thoroughness....”
“but i have no longer any doubt whatever that the situation is beyond cure, aline,” he said. “that is why i must certainly be in the city to-morrow morning. i must make the best of a bad job.”
“but you are going to make a good job out of it, are you not?” she asked.
“as far as a little money goes, yes,” said he. “if i do not bring you home half a million pounds, you may smash my silly face for me.”
freddy followed this.
“daddy’s going to bring home half a million pounds,” he shrieked. “daddy, how much may i have?”
aline picked him up.
“you may have half a million kisses from mummie, dearest,” she said.{202}
“me, too,” cried bertie.
“me, too,” cried jackie.
she bent down and smothered herself in the midst of those soft, warm faces.
“darlings, mummie’s own darlings,” she said. “you are a million times better than daddy’s pounds which he is going to bring home. look, what is that under the trees there? why, it’s a pig! it must have got out of its pig-house. run across to the farm and tell whalley that there is a pig got loose.”
“but it won’t bite us?” asked bertie.
“not if you salute it. call out, ‘guten tag: morgen ist mittwoch.’”
“but it’s only sunday,” said freddy.
“never mind. that’s what you must always say to a pig when you meet it, and then it will be pleased.... now, run along, and then we’ll all go home, and you shall have your supper, and when you’re in bed mummie will come to see you, and wish you good-night.”
the children ran gaily off across the grass, shouting out their salutations to the pig, delicious little figures, two in their sunday sailor suits, the third barelegged to above the knee, and soon they were half swallowed up in a tall belt of bracken. aline’s eyes followed them till they disappeared, her whole face tender and shining with mother-love, and then she turned to hermann again. the light died from her eyes: they became hard and unhappy again.
“hermann, what is to happen to us all?” she said. “already, even before we are at war, the war has begun in me. you told me i should have to decide where my sympathies lay, and i have decided. at least, there was no decision about it. i only knew that i knew.{203}”
“and what do you know?” he asked.
“i will tell you. it happened this afternoon. i was having tea with robin, feeling tremendously english, and then some boy who was having tea with us said something about germany being crushed between russia and france. and i had spoken before i knew i had spoken, and found that i had said that not all the armies of europe could stand against germany. it—it flared out, like flame when you strike a dull brown head of a match against a dull brown strip on the side of its box. i couldn’t bear anyone to talk of germany like that.”
“but, dearest, you must keep a guard on yourself,” said he. “you are too impulsive. remember, you have great english sympathies as well. your home is here, your friends are here, you have boys who will go to eton.”
she began to get voluble and excited, as she always did when anyone hinted that she was not completely wise and admirable and marvellous.
“i know, and it’s just that which makes it so difficult for me,” she said, “and you don’t consider for a moment what terrible anguish i shall suffer. apart from me and the children, there is no one in the world that you care for as i care for hundreds of my friends. you don’t love people as i do, hermann; but i am too affectionate. of course it is my fault, i ought to be colder and less tender-hearted, but i am made like that. and i love germany, too, in a way that you have no conception of. you are taken up with your money-getting, and you don’t care where it comes from, so long as you know where it goes to. sometimes i think we made a mistake: we ought to have gone away when kuhlmann went. it was my affection for my home and my friends, which{204} you now throw in my teeth, that kept me from dreaming of going.”
“i throw nothing in your teeth,” said he. “but i do tell you to keep a guard on yourself.”
“and that is very unkind of you,” said she, scaling up the heights of egoism. “you ought to sympathize with me, instead of scolding me. it makes me miserable to think of what may be coming. i do not know what i have done that such unhappiness should be sent me. just when everything was going so well, and the children were strong and healthy, and i was making so many friends.”
“ah, enough, enough,” said he impatiently, “it is just that sort of talk of the struggle in your tender heart which you must utterly avoid. and there must be no more matches struck, aline: there is too much inflammable material about. there! do not cry, i beg you. you know very well i am not unkind.”
they had come into the italian hall, and her eyes fell on the sables which reposed on one of the cassoni. the effort of realizing that he was not unkind was much mitigated by the sight....
there followed the hour which, apart from great social triumphs, she loved almost best in all the day. the three boys had already had their baths, and clad in their brilliant wool-and-silk pyjamas were careering about the night-nursery in a wild romp before going to bed. but the moment she appeared they all ran to her, and freddy sat on her right knee, and bertie on her left, and jackie squeezed himself somehow in between. they had, so it was shrilly announced, already said their prayers to nanna, so that tiresome business being over, there was nothing but sheer enjoyment for as long as mummie would stop. she often thought what{205} a divine picture could be made of her sitting half-submerged in this beloved wave of children, but she could not think of any living artist capable of doing justice to the exquisite theme....
“well, darlings, what are we going to do to-night?” she said. “shall i tell you a story?”
“no!” said freddy firmly.
“stories are stupid,” said bertie. “let’s sing. we’ll sing ‘stille nacht.’”
so all together, aline gurtner in her pretty contralto voice, and the three piping childish trebles sang, “stille nacht, heilige nacht,” while nanna turned down their beds, and made the night-nursery tidy.
“that was lovely,” said bertie with complete conviction, at the end. “now we’ll have ‘the watch by the rhine.’”
“no, darlings, not to-night,” said she. “i must go and dress, because daddy and i are dining early, as he’s going to drive up to london afterwards.”
“to get his half a million pounds?” asked jackie.
“some of it, perhaps. now, then, i shall say, ‘one, two, three,’ and see who’s in bed first.”
they counted with her, bertie preferring to do it in german, and a wild scamper across the nursery followed.
but the concert apparently was not over yet, for as she went downstairs, she heard, obscuring the chorale that was rising from the lift, which was on its journey up, a trio rendering of “the watch by the rhine,” with curious intervals, but of unmistakable identity.... she felt that she must instantly begin to teach them “god save the king.”
two days later the english ultimatum was delivered in berlin, and the war of the world, the thought of which made aline gurtner so depressed, had begun. the same evening mr. waters had occasion to write a note to mr. jackson, and did not forget to date it at the top, “the greek calends. ”
