by John Buchan
“Birkpool!” she exclaimed. “That’s going to be a tough proposition. Instead of being content with a few functions — Lady Armine’s Charity Ball, the Mayor’s dinners — that sort of thing, after the peaceful fashion of his forbears, he must needs stick his nose into all the unsavoury corners and shout his criticisms from the roof-tops. He has quarrelled with half the councillors because he told them they were silly old men who didn’t understand their silly old jobs. He is on to housing at present — says it’s a howling scandal, and that he’ll show up the grafters if he has to spend the rest of his days fighting libel actions. He has managed to hang up the new Town Hall — says that Birkpool must wash its face first before it thinks about a bib and tucker.
“Popular?” she went on. “Ken will always be popular with his own kind. Most of the respectables hate him and blackguard him in private, but they are too great snobs to attack him openly. The press crabs him respectfully and regretfully. The man in the street is ready to cheer him on as he would back a dog in a fight. I do my best to keep the peace by making love to the womenkind of the magnates. I stuff the Court with week-end parties that need the tact of an archangel, and my face is perpetually contorted in an uneasy smile. . . . Adam, I verily believe you had something to do with all this. Ken is constantly quoting you. If you have, you have done an ill turn to a woman that always wished you well.”
“I think you rather like it,” said Adam.
“I don’t dislike it — yet, for I love a row. But I’m worried about where it is going to lead. I’m a wife and a mother and I want peace. Birkpool is rapidly becoming a powder magazine. There’s Ken, and there’s the Labour man Utlaw. Of course you know him. And you know his sweetheart, too. There’s a clever girl if you want ‘em clever. I’ve made great friends with Miss Florence Covert, pronounced Court. I like Utlaw, and Ken swears by him, but the association of the two bodes trouble. Ken, if you please, is President of the Conservative Association, and spends most of his time with the Labour leaders, so honest Tories feel as if they were standing on their heads. Utlaw’s salvation will be his wife — they are to be married next month, you know. You thought her very rabid and class-conscious. So she is, but I’m not quite sure which class. It may not be her husband’s. . . . And last of all there’s Frank, and he’s the worst. It’s hard luck for Birkpool that all the high explosives should be concentrated there. God knows what will happen when Frank gets into his stride, and adds the thunder of Sinai to the very considerable noise which Ken and Utlaw are making. Lilah may get her Peter the Hermit after all accompanying the crusade to Westminster.”
She looked across the room to where Creevey and Mrs Pomfrey were talking in a corner. The two heads seen in the shadowed light had a certain resemblance in their suggestions of massiveness and restrained power.
“What, by the way, do you make of Lilah?” she asked. “No, I forgot, you never attempt hasty summaries of people. You’ve only just got to know her? Well, I’ll give you the benefit of my larger knowledge. Lilah fascinates me — she is so good, so unscrupulously good. There is no trouble she won’t take to help a friend, and there’s none I believe she wouldn’t take to down an enemy, if she had one. She is always quite convinced that she is on the side of the angels. How blessed that must be! I wish I had half her conviction.”
“She has an odd face,” said Adam. “What do you read in it? A woman is the best judge of a woman.”
“I read heart — genuine goodness of heart. I read brains. There’s no doubt about that. I haven’t any myself, but I can recognise them and admire them from afar. Ask Kit Stannix, and he will tell you that she knows more and can reason better than most men. . . . I read also complete lack of imagination. She has sympathy, but it is of the obvious kind, without insight — and she has no wings. She is devoted to brother Frank, and very good for him. She may be his salvation, just as Florence Covert may be the salvation of Utlaw. Oh no, I don’t mean that they’re in love or will ever marry. Frank is not the marrying kind, and Lilah has had all the matrimony she wants. But she will keep his feet on the ground, and prevent him becoming an ineffectual angel. . . . You don’t look as if you liked the prospect. I believe you have a morbid weakness for angels.”
II
After his marriage Utlaw moved to a little raw house in the Portsdown Road, and Adam occupied his former rooms on the ground-floor in Charity Row. This was convenient in many ways, for it enabled him to put up Amos in his old room, when that worthy descended upon Birkpool from the North. Also he could leave the house inconspicuously at odd hours without distracting Mrs Gallop.
In these days he had gone back to his former habits. The bagman remained only for the benefit of his landlady and the Utlaws. Marrish before he left England had put him in touch with the disgruntled section of Birkpool Labour, and with Amos’s help he had penetrated to circles which even the Utlaws scarcely touched. He was now a Scot, back from South Africa, who had been much about on the Continent and had the name of an extremist. He talked little, but he looked the part of a maker of revolutions, and hints from Amos skilfully established that repute. So bit by bit he got the confidence of the wilder elements without scaring the moderates. One conclusion he soon reached. He felt under his hand the throbbing of a great unrest which must sooner or later be dangerous. There was no confidence in the masters, and less in the Government; so soon as the economic strain began — and that was daily drawing nearer — there would be a perilous stirring of overwrought nerves and puzzled brains.
But there was confidence in Utlaw — that was plain. Even the fiercest was not prepared to do more than respectfully criticise. The man had some dæmonic power which gave him an unquestioned mastery. Perhaps the main reason was that which Amos had once given, that he was Englishness incarnate, and therefore a natural leader of Englishmen. His familiar kindliness endeared him even to those who suffered from the rough edge of his tongue. He was credited with illimitable “guts.” His joyous ribaldries were affectionately quoted. They were proud of him too — he had placed their Union on the national map in a way that old Deverick had never done — he was a “coming man,” and when he arrived his followers would not be forgotten. Deverick was due for retirement soon, and Utlaw must be his successor. There was talk of Parliament too. Birkpool chuckled to think how Joe would batter the hard faces there, and set the frozen feet jigging.
One afternoon Adam went to call on Mrs Utlaw. Jacqueline Armine had warned him of a change in that young woman.
“We had the Utlaws at the Court for the weekend before last,” she told him. “It was rather a wonderful menagerie even for me. We had three couples of Birkpool grandees: Sir Thomas and Lady, Sir Josiah and Lady — war knights, you know — and the Clutterbucks, who have just bought the Ribstones’ place and are setting up as gentry. Rather nice couples they were, very genteel, very mindful of their manners, and the womenkind had the latest Paris models. Their fine feathers made me feel a crone. Then we had the Lamanchas by way of pleasing Birkpool, and I must say Mildred played up nobly. But the real yeast in the loaf was the Utlaws. Do you know, Adam, that’s an extraordinary fellow? He can lay himself alongside any type of man or woman and get on with them. He had been having all kinds of rows with the grandees and been calling them outrageous names and making game of them, which is what they like least, but he hadn’t been an hour in their company before they would have fed out of his hand. I think it’s his gift of liking people and showing that he likes them. He had them roaring at his jokes, and I believe they actually came to regard him as a sort of ally, for I heard old Clutterbuck confiding to him some of his grievances against Ken. Charles Lamancha, too. You know how he behaves — elaborately civil to anybody he regards as an inferior, but shockingly impolite to his equals. Well, Charles was very polite to the grandees, but he wasn’t polite to Utlaw, and that’s the greatest compliment he could have paid him. It was ‘Sir Thomas’ and ‘Sir Josiah’ and ‘Mr Clutterbuck,’ but it was ‘Utlaw’ and ‘Don’t be a damned fool’ — Char
les’s best barrack-room form. I believe he asked him to stay with him when he could take a holiday — I know he liked him — you could see it in Charles’s crooked smile. How does Utlaw manage it? I suppose it was his regimental training which has made him at home with Charles’s type. He would have made a great diplomat if he had been caught young.”
“And the bride?” Adam asked.
“That was the greatest marvel of all. Florrie — oh, we’re on Christian terms now — was the perfect little lady. She cast back to her great-grandmother, who I believe was a Risingham. You would have thought she had spent all her life in the soft lazy days of an old country house. She had the air, you know, of helping Mildred and me to put the Birkpool people at their ease. No effort, no show, very quiet and modest, but perfectly secure. She’s beginning to learn how to dress herself, too. All the men fell in love with her, and Mildred took her to her bosom, and you know that our dear Mildred is not forthcoming. But I could see that the grandee ladies hated her. Not that she patronised them, but they could feel that she was of a different type and they weren’t prepared for it. That young person is going to raise antagonisms which her husband won’t find it easy to settle.”
The Utlaws’ house was the ordinary suburban bungalow, but its mistress had made the interior delightful. It was furnished with economy and taste, the little drawing-room was full of flowers and books, and Adam was given tea out of very pretty china. Jacqueline was right. Florrie Utlaw had begun to take pains with her appearance. Her hair was better waved, her face was less thin, and a new air of well-being revealed its charming contours, while her deep eyes, though hungry as ever, were also happy.
She greeted Adam with a quiet friendliness. He was on her man’s side and therefore she was on his. She had given up her job at Eaton’s she told him — Joe had insisted — and now she reigned in a little enclave of their own which was going to enlarge itself some day into a great domain.
There was none of the uneasy inverted snobbery in her manner which he had formerly noted. She talked briskly of affairs and personages in the world in which Utlaw was making his mark, but with a cool businesslike air. She condescended a little to Adam, for he was not of that world; he was not a person to be cultivated for any use he might be — only to be welcomed for his loyalty. . . . Of Judson, him of the smashing repartees, once to her a demigod, she was frankly critical. “He’s so rough that people believe him to be a diamond,” she said. “That’s not mine, it’s Joe’s. I think the men are growing a little tired of him — the perpetual steam-hammer business is getting to be a bore.” Gray was still a hero, for he had magnetism and poetry. About Trant, the party leader, she was enthusiastic. Joe had been seeing a lot of him lately, and was being brought into private consultation. “He is a great gentleman,” she said, “for he has no vanity. Joe always says that the man without vanity can do anything he pleases.” Friendliness to Joe was of course a sufficient passport to her favour, but Adam remembered also that Sir Derrick Trant belonged to a family that had fought at Crécy.
He asked how the new Mayor was doing. Her eyes sparkled.
“You remember what I said when we first met, Mr Milford? I was utterly wrong. Lord Armine is a real man. He is on the wrong side of course, but he has courage and big ideas, many of them quite sound. It’s great luck that Joe and he were in the same battalion, for they meet on a proper basis. They are like two schoolboys when they get together — it’s ‘Mr Utlaw’ and ‘Lord Armine’ at the start, and at the end it’s ‘Joe’ and ‘Sniffy.’ I love Lady Armine, too, and think her perfectly beautiful. You know her a little, don’t you? She told me she remembered meeting you.”
There was no mention of the Utlaws’ visit to the Court. If there was any snobbishness in Florrie, she was too clever to show it.
Chiefly she talked of Joe’s career. There was a chance of an early seat in Parliament, for Robson was dying and the East division of Flackington was in the pocket of the Union. She was anxious for him to get at once into the House. “He needs a proper sounding-board,” she said, “to make his voice carry. Meetings up and down the country are all very well, but the papers only report the big men. In the House Joe would be a national figure within six months. He is a deadly debater, not a tub-thumper like Judson. Trant says he would give anything to have him at his back when the Factory Bill comes on.”
But the urgent matter was the national secretaryship of the Union when Deverick resigned next month. Mrs Utlaw’s new matronly calm slipped from her and she became the eternal female fighting for her mate’s rights.
“It’s a test case,” she declared. “Joe is far the biggest man in the show, and if it goes by merit nobody else can have a look in. If they pass him over, then there’s no gratitude in the movement, and no decency.”
She let herself go, and Adam was introduced to a long roll of grievances. It was a thankless job serving the people — plenty of kicks, no ha’pence, and only once in a blue moon a thank you. Florrie twined her fingers, her eyes glowed, and her words were like a torrent long dammed. Adam understood that this was her way of seeking relief; she could do it with him, for he was obscure and safe. He was very certain that to most of the complaints Utlaw himself would never have given a second thought; he had mentioned them in her presence in his expansive way, and she had docketed them and stored them up in her heart. He realised two other things. Florrie — perhaps Utlaw too — was getting a little out of sympathy with the whole Trade Union machine and the political party of which it was the centre. And there was a reasonable chance that Utlaw would not succeed Deverick.
Lord Lamancha, a member of the Cabinet, gave a dinner with a small party to follow, and, since a royal personage was to be present, Adam had to wear his miniature medals. They made a formidable string, for a number of foreign orders had been thrown upon him unsought, dispensed from the pool which his superiors had had at their discretion. He hated displaying them, but it was less conspicuous to fall in with the conventional etiquette than to disregard it. He had accepted the invitation, because a German statesman was to be there whom he wanted to meet.
It was a man’s dinner, and his seat was on the right hand of the German guest, whose name was Hermann Loeffler, with on his other side Christopher Stannix. Loeffler was a small spare man who carried himself so well that he seemed to be of the ordinary height. He looked fifty, but was probably younger, for his thick black hair was prematurely grizzled. It grew low on a broad forehead, beneath which the face narrowed till it terminated in a short beard. This beard obscured the lower part, but Adam had a notion that, if the man were clean-shaved, his mouth and jaw would be seen to be firmly and delicately modelled.
Loeffler was in the uneasy German Cabinet — Minister of Commerce, Adam thought — and like most of his colleagues, his career had been variegated. He had begun life as a scholar, and long ago had published a learned work on St Augustine. Then for a short period he had been a journalist on a famous Rhineland paper, where he had become a friend of Walter Rathenau, who had detected in him a special financial talent and had brought him into the banking business. He had served during the four years of war in a Westphalian regiment, and after the Armistice, again under the ægis of Rathenau, had entered politics. He was sprung from the lower bourgeoisie, and was the kind of man who would never have risen under the old regime, but who might have a career in a middle-class republic. Stannix had praised him — said he was honest and courageous and reasonable, the sort of fellow one could work with.
But it was not Loeffler’s political prospects that interested Adam. Once early in 1918 a certain middle-aged Danish business man called Randers, who had a neat blond moustache and wore big horn-rimmed spectacles like an American, had found himself in a difficult position in a Rhineland town. Circumstances had arisen which caused the military authorities to have their suspicions about this well-credentialled Dane. In particular there had been a Major Loeffler, who had been badly wounded at Cambrai and had been given a base job for six months. Of all his war exp
eriences Adam looked back upon his examination by Loeffler as his severest trial. He had liked him, he remembered, liked his honest eyes and his good manners, and he had profoundly respected his acumen. This was one of the men whom he had hoped to meet again, and the first mention of him in the press had set him following his career.
Loeffler spoke English slowly and badly, though he understood it fairly well, so after he had been engaged in an embarrassed conversation with Lamancha for a quarter of an hour he was relieved when his other neighbour addressed him in German. Excellent German, too, spoken with the idiom, and almost with the accent, of his own district. Adam pushed his name card towards him, and Loeffler read it with eye-glasses poised on the tip of his blunt nose.
“You speak our language to admiration,” he said. “Ah, you learned it as a staff officer long ago? You English are better linguists than us Germans — your tongues are more adaptable. Maybe your minds also.” He smiled in his friendly, peering way.
They slipped into an intimate conversation, for Loeffler found it easy to be frank with one to whom understanding seemed to come readily and who had an air of good-will. He spoke of the sufferings of his country — the middle-classes for the most part ruined, with all their careful standards of life crumbling about them — world-famous scholars earning their bread by typing and copying — little businesses that had been so secure and comfortable gone in a night. “They are bearing it well,” he said. “My people have much stoicism in their bones, and they can endure without crying out.” He spoke of evil elements, the financiers who flourished in any débâcle, the hordes of the restless and disinherited, the poison of Communism filtering through from Russia. “Yet there is hope. We have a stalwart youth growing up which, if it is well guided, may build our land again. The peril is that even honest men may be tempted to seek short cuts, and the good God does not permit of short cuts in this life of ours. If they are shown a little light, even though it is at the end of a long tunnel, they will endure. But if not — if they have no hope — they may break loose, and that will mean a world-confusion.