The Devil's Paw Part 7

"You write about politics? Or perhaps you are an art critic? I ought to be on my best behaviour, in case."

"I know little about art," he a.s.sured her. "My chief interest in life--outside my profession, of course--lies in sociology."

His little confession had been impulsive. She raised her eyebrows.

"You are in earnest, I believe!" she exclaimed. "Have I really found an Englishman who is in earnest?"

"I plead guilty. It is incorrect philosophy but a distinct stimulus to life."

"What a pity," she sighed, "that you are so handicapped by birth!

Sociology cannot mean anything very serious for you. Your perspective is naturally distorted."

"What about yourself?" he asked pertinently.

"The vanity of us women!" she murmured. "I have grown to look upon myself as being an exception. I forget that there might be others. You might even be one of our prophets--a Paul Fiske in disguise."

His eyes narrowed a little as he looked at her closely. From across the table, the Bishop broke off an interesting discussion on the subject of his addresses to the working cla.s.ses, and the Earl set down his winegla.s.s with an impatient gesture.

"Does no one really know," Mr. Stenson asked, "who Paul Fiske is?"

"No one, sir," Mr. Hannaway Wells replied. "I thought it wise, a short time ago, to set on foot the most searching enquiries, but they were absolutely fruitless."

The Bishop coughed.

"I must plead guilty," he confessed, "to having visited the offices of The Monthly Review with the same object. I left a note for him there, in charge of the editor, inviting him to a conference at my house. I received no reply. His anonymity seems to be impregnable."

"Whoever he may be," the Earl declared, "he ought to be muzzled. He is a traitor to his country."

"I cannot agree with you, Lord Maltenby," the Bishop said firmly. "The very danger of the man's doctrines lies in their clarity of thought, their extraordinary proximity to the fundamental truths of life."

"The man is, at any rate," Doctor Lennard interposed, "the most brilliant anonymous writer since the days of Swift and the letters of Junius."

Mr. Stenson for a moment hesitated. He seemed uncertain whether or no to join in the conversation. Finally, impulse swayed him.

"Let us all be thankful," he said, "that Paul Fiske is content with the written word. If the democracy of England found themselves to-day with such a leader, it is he who would be ruling the country, and not I."

"The man is a pacifist!" the Earl protested.

"So we all are," the Bishop declared warmly. "We are all pacifists in the sense that we are lovers of peace. There is not one of us who does not deplore the horrors of to-day. There is not one of us who is not pa.s.sionately seeking for the master mind which can lead us out of it."

"There is only one way out," the Earl insisted, "and that is to beat the enemy."

"It is the only obvious way," Julian intervened, joining in the conversation for the first time, "but meanwhile, with every tick of the clock a fellow creature dies."

"It is a question," Mr. Hannaway Wells reflected, "whether the present generation is not inclined to be mawkish with regard to human life.

History has shown us the marvellous benefits which have accrued to the greatest nations through the lessening of population by means of warfare."

"History has also shown us," Doctor Lennard observed, "that the last resource of force is force. No brain has ever yet devised a logical scheme for international arbitration."

"Human nature, I am afraid, has changed extraordinarily little since the days of the Philistines," the Bishop confessed.

Julian turned to his companion.

"Well, they've all settled it amongst themselves, haven't they?" he murmured. "Here you may sit and listen to what may be called the modern voice."

"Yet there is one thing wanting," she whispered. "What do you suppose, if he were here at this moment, Paul Fiske would say? Do you think that he would be content to listen to these brazen voices and accept their verdict?"

"Without irreverence," Julian answered, "or comparison, would Jesus Christ?"

"With the same proviso," she retorted, "I might reply that Jesus Christ, from all we know of him, might reign wonderfully in the Kingdom of Heaven, but he certainly wouldn't be able to keep together a Cabinet in Downing Street! Still, I am beginning to believe in your sincerity. Do you think that Paul Fiske is sincere?"

"I believe," Julian replied, "that he sees the truth and struggles to express it."

The women were leaving the table. She leaned towards him.

"Please do not be long," she whispered. "You must admit that I have been an admirable dinner companion. I have talked to you all the time on your own subject. You must come and talk to me presently about art."

Julian, with his hand on the back of his chair, watched the women pa.s.s out of the soft halo of the electric lights into the gloomier shadows of the high, vaulted room, Catherine a little slimmer than most of the others, and with a strange grace of slow movement which must have come to her from some Russian ancestor. Her last words lingered in his mind.

He was to talk to her about art! A fleeting vision of the youth in the yellow oilskins mocked him. He remembered his morning's tramp and the broken-down motor-car under the trees. The significance of these things was beginning to take shape in his mind. He resumed his seat, a little dazed.

CHAPTER V

Maltenby was one of those old-fas.h.i.+oned houses where the port is served as a lay sacrament and the call of the drawing-room is responded to tardily. After the departure of the women, Doctor Lennard drew his chair up to Julian's.

"An interesting face, your dinner companion's," he remarked. "They tell me that she is a very brilliant young lady."

"She certainly has gifts," acknowledged Julian.

"I watched her whilst she was talking to you," the Oxford don continued.

"She is one of those rare young women whose undoubted beauty is put into the background by their general attractiveness. Lady Maltenby was telling me fragments of her history. It appears that she is thinking of giving up her artistic career for some sort of sociological work."

"It is curious," Julian reflected, "how the cause of the people has always appealed to gifted Russians. England, for instance, produces no real democrats of genius. Russia seems to claim a monopoly of them."

"There is nothing so stimulating as a sense of injustice for bringing the best out of a man or woman," Doctor Lennard pointed out. "Russia, of course, for many years has been shamefully misgoverned."

The conversation, owing to the intervention of other of the guests, became general and plat.i.tudinal. Soon after, Mr. Stenson rose and excused himself. His secretary; who had been at the telephone, desired a short conference. There was a brief silence after his departure.

"Stenson," the Oxonian observed, "is beginning to show signs of strain."

"Why not?" Lord Shervinton pointed out. "He came into office full of the most wonderful enthusiasm. His speeches rang through the world like a clarion note. He converted waverers. He lit fires which still burn. But he is a man of movement. This present stagnation is terribly irksome to him. I heard him speak last week, and I was disappointed. He seems to have lost his inspiration. What he needs is a stimulus of some sort, even of disaster."

"I wonder," the Bishop reflected, "if he is really afraid of the people?"

"I consider his remark concerning them most ill-advised," Lord Maltenby declared pompously.