The Pretty Lady Part 5

Sir Francis remarked:

"Your hearing's much better, Bob."

"It is," answered Bob. "The fact is, I got hold of a marvellous feller at Birmingham." He laughed sardonically. "I hope to go down to history as the first judge that ever voluntarily retired because of deafness.

And now, thanks to this feller at Birmingham, I can hear better than seventy-five per cent of the Bench. The Lord Chancellor gave me a hint I might care to return, and so save a pension to the nation. I told him I'd begin to think about that when he'd persuaded the Board of Works to ventilate my old Court." He laughed again. "And now I see the Press Bureau is enunciating the principle that it won't permit criticism that might in any way weaken the confidence of the people in the administration of affairs."

Bob opened his mouth wide and kept it open.

Sir Francis, with no diminution of the mild and bland benevolence of his detachment, said:

"The voice is the Press Bureau's voice, but the hands are the hands of the War Office. Can we reasonably hope to win, or not to lose, with such a mentality at the head? I cannot admit that the War Office has changed in the slightest degree in a hundred years. From time to time a brainy civilian walks in, like Cardwell or Haldane, and saves it from becoming patently ridiculous. But it never really alters. When I was War Secretary in a transient government it was precisely the same as it had been in the reign of the Duke of Cambridge, and to-day it is still precisely the same. I am told that Haldane succeeded in teaching our generals the value of Staff work as distinguished from das.h.i.+ng cavalry charges. I don't appreciate that. The Staffs are still wide open to men with social influence and still closed to men without social influence. My grandson is full of great modern notions about tactics. He may have talent for all I know. He got a Staff appointment--because he came to me and I spoke ten words to an old friend of mine with oak leaves in the club next door but one. No questions asked. I mean no serious questions. It was done to oblige me--the very existence of the Empire being at stake, according to all accounts. So that I venture to doubt whether we're going to hold Ypres, or anything else."

Bob, unimpressed by the speech, burst out:

"You've got the perspective wrong. Obviously the centre of gravity is no longer in the West--it's in the East. In the West, roughly, equilibrium has been established. Hence Poland is the decisive field, and the measure of the Russian success or failure is the measure of the Allied success or failure."

Sir Francis inquired with gentle joy:

"Then we're all right? The Russians have admittedly recovered from Tannenberg. If there is any truth in a map they are doing excellently.

They're more brilliant than Potsdam, and they can put two men into the field to the Germans' one--two and a half in fact."

Bob fiercely rumbled:

"I don't think we're all right. This habit of thinking in men is dangerous. What are men without munitions? And without a clean administration? Nothing but a rabble. It is notorious that the Russians are running short of munitions and that the administration from top to bottom consists of outrageous rascals. Moreover I see to-day a report that the Germans have won a big victory at Kutno. I've been expecting that. That's the beginning--mark me!"

"Yes," Sir Francis cheerfully agreed. "Yes. We're spending one million a day, and now income tax is doubled! The country cannot stand it indefinitely, and since our only hope lies in our being able to stand it indefinitely, there is no hope--at any rate for unbiased minds.

Facts are facts, I fear."

Bob cried impatiently:

"Unbiased be d.a.m.ned! I don't want to be unbiased. I won't be. I had enough of being unbiased when I was on the Bench, and I don't care what any of you unbiased people say--I believe we shall win."

G.J. suddenly saw a boy in the old man, and suddenly he too became boyish, remembering what he had said to Christine about the war not having begun yet; and with fervour he concurred:

"So do I."

He rose, moved--relieved after a tension which he had not noticed until it was broken. It was time for him to go. The two old men were recalled to the fact of his presence. Bob raised the newspaper again.

Sir Francis asked:

"Are you going to the--er--affair in the City?"

"Yes," said G.J. with careful unconcern.

"I had thought of going. My granddaughter worried me till I consented to take her. I got two tickets; but no sooner had I arrayed myself this morning than she rang me up to say that her baby was teething and she couldn't leave it. In view of this important creature's indisposition I sent the tickets back to the Dean and changed my clothes. Great-grandfathers have to be philosophers. I say, Hoape, they tell me you play uncommonly good auction bridge."

"I play," said G.J. modestly. "But no better than I ought."

"You might care to make a fourth this afternoon, in the card-room."

"I should have been delighted to, but I've got one of these war-committees at six o'clock." Again he spoke with careful unconcern, masking a considerable self-satisfaction.

Chapter 10

THE MISSION

The great dim place was full, but crowding had not been permitted.

With a few exceptions in the outlying parts, everybody had a seat.

G.J. was favourably placed for seeing the whole length of the interior. Accustomed to the restaurants of fas.h.i.+onable hotels, auction-rooms, theatrical first-nights, the haunts of sport, clubs, and courts of justice, he soon perceived, from the numerous samples which he himself was able to identify, that all the London worlds were fully represented in the mult.i.tude--the official world, the political, the clerical, the legal, the munic.i.p.al, the military, the artistic, the literary, the dilettante, the financial, the sporting, and the world whose sole object in life apparently is to be observed and recorded at all gatherings to which admittance is gained by privilege and influence alone.

There were in particular women the names and countenances and family history of whom were familiar to hundreds of thousands of ill.u.s.trated-newspaper readers, even in the most distant counties, and who never missed what was called a "function," whether "brilliant,"

"exclusive," or merely scandalous. At murder trials, at the sales of art collections, at the birth of musical comedies, at boxing matches, at historic debates, at receptions in honour of the renowned, at luscious divorce cases, they were surely present, and the entire Press surely noted that they were present. And if executions had been public, they would in the same religious spirit have attended executions, rousing their maids at milkmen's hours in order that they might a.s.sume the right cunning frock to fit the occasion. And they were here. And no one could divine why or how, or to what eternal end.

G.J. hated them, and he hated the solemn self-satisfaction that brooded over the haughty faces of the throng. He hated himself for having accepted a ticket from the friend in the War Office who was now sitting next to him. And yet he was pleased, too. A disturbed conscience could not defeat the instinct which bound him to the whole fas.h.i.+onable and powerful a.s.semblage. For ever afterwards, to his dying hour, he could say--casually, modestly, as a matter of course, but he could still say--that he had been there. The Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, tradesmen glittering like Oriental potentates, pa.s.sed slowly across his field of vision. He thought with contempt of the City, living ghoulish on the buried past, and obstinately and humanly refusing to make a pile of its putrefying interests, set fire to it, and perish thereon.

The music began. It was the Dead March in _Saul_. The long-rolling drums suddenly rent the soul, and destroyed every base and petty thought that was there. Clergy, headed by a bishop, were walking down the cathedral. At the huge doors, nearly lost in the heavy twilight of November noon, they stopped, turned and came back. The coffin swayed into view, covered with the sacred symbolic bunting, and borne on the shoulders of eight sergeants of the old regiments of the dead man.

Then followed the pall-bearers--five field-marshals, five full generals, and two admirals; aged men, and some of them had reached the highest dignity without giving a single gesture that had impressed itself on the national mind; nonent.i.ties, apotheosised by seniority; and some showed traces of the bitter rain that was falling in the fog outside. Then the Primate. Then the King, who had supervened from nowhere, the magic production of chamberlains and comptrollers. The procession, headed by the clergy, moved slowly, amid the vistas ending in the dull burning of stained gla.s.s, through the congregation in mourning and in khaki, through the lines of yellow-glowing candelabra, towards the crowd of scarlet under the dome; the summit of the dome was hidden in soft mist. The music became insupportable in its sublimity.

G.J. was afraid, and he did not immediately know why he was afraid.

The procession came nearer. It was upon him.... He knew why he was afraid, and he averted sharply his gaze from the coffin. He was afraid for his composure. If he had continued to watch the coffin he would have burst into loud sobs. Only by an extraordinary effort did he master himself. Many other people lowered their faces in self-defence.

The searchers after new and violent sensations were having the time of their lives.

The Dead March with its intolerable genius had ceased. The coffin, guarded by flickering candles, lay on the lofty catafalque; the eight sergeants were pretending that their strength had not been in the least degree taxed. Princes, the ill.u.s.trious, the champions of Allied might, dark Indians, adventurers, even Germans, surrounded the catafalque in the gloom. G.J. sympathised with the man in the coffin, the simple little man whose non-political mission had in spite of him grown political. He regretted horribly that once he, G.J., who protested that he belonged to no party, had said of the dead man: "Roberts! Well-meaning of course, but senile!" ... Yet a trifle! What did it matter? And how he loathed to think that the name of the dead man was now befouled by the calculating and impure praise of schemers.

Another trifle!

As the service proceeded G.J. was overwhelmed and lost in the grandeur and terror of existence. There he sat, grizzled, dignified, with the great world, looking as though he belonged to the great world; and he felt like a boy, like a child, like a helpless infant before the enormities of destiny. He wanted help, because of his futility. He could do nothing, or so little. It was as if he had been training himself for twenty years in order to be futile at a crisis requiring crude action. And he could not undo twenty years. The war loomed about him, co-extensive with existence itself. He thought of the sergeant who, as recounted that morning in the papers, had led a victorious storming party, been decorated--and died of wounds. And similar deeds were being done at that moment. And the simple little man in the coffin was being tilted downwards from the catafalque into the grave close by. G.J. wanted surcease, were it but for an hour. He longed acutely, unbearably, to be for an hour with Christine in her warm, stuffy, exciting, languorous, enervating room hermetically sealed against the war. Then he remembered the tones of her voice as she had told her Belgian adventures.... Was it love? Was it tenderness? Was it sensuality? The difference was indiscernible; it had no importance.

Against the stark background of infinite existence all human beings were alike and all their pa.s.sions were alike.

The gaunt, ruthless autocrat of the War Office and the frail crowned descendant of kings fronted each other across the open grave, and the coffin sank between them and was gone. From the choir there came the chanted and soothing words:

_Steals on the ear the distant triumph-song_.

G.J. just caught them clear among much that was incomprehensible. An intense patriotism filled him. He could do nothing; but he could keep his head, keep his balance, practise magnanimity, uphold the truth amid prejudice and superst.i.tion, and be kind. Such at that moment seemed to be his mission.... He looked round, and pitied, instead of hating, the searchers after sensations.

A being called the Garter King of Arms stepped forward and in a loud voice recited the earthly t.i.tles and honours of the simple little dead man; and, although few qualities are commoner than physical courage, the whole catalogue seemed ridiculous and tawdry until the being came to the two words, "Victoria Cross". The being, having lived his glorious moments, withdrew. The Funeral March of Chopin tramped with its excruciating dragging tread across the ruins of the soul. And finally the cathedral was startled by the sudden trumpets of the Last Post, and the ceremony ended.

"Come and have lunch with me," said the young red-hatted officer next to G.J. "I haven't got to be back till two-thirty, and I want to talk music for a change. Do you know I'm putting in ninety hours a week at the W.O.?"

"Can't," G.J. replied, with an affectation of jauntiness. "I'm engaged for lunch. Sorry."

"Who you lunching with?"

"Mrs. Smith."

The Staff officer exclaimed aghast: