The Passing Bells

by Phillip Rock

  “I haven’t been in a perfectly luxurious bed in months. I’ll never get up again. No . . . I’ll just take an hour on the couch.”

  She helped him out of his jacket, laughing at the complexities of the Sam Browne belt, which resisted both their efforts to detach it. Finally, he was lying down, jacket and shoes off, head resting on a cushion. She covered him with a lap robe and kissed him on the brow.

  “I feel such a fool,” he muttered drowsily. “With the prettiest girl in England and I . . . take a nap on her couch.”

  She kissed him again. “I shan’t breathe a word to your brother officers. It would ruin your reputation.”

  He fell asleep almost instantly, and she stood for a moment looking down at him, so blissful in sleep, so boyishly vulnerable. She felt a purely maternal emotion and tucked the robe gently around him, brushed a lock of hair from his eyes, and tiptoed from the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

  Would he do it? She thought about it, seated in the morning room, staring through the tall windows at the green oval of the square. How dark and forbidding the iron railings looked, how bleak the sodden, leafless trees. A man crossed the road toward South Audley Street, clutching a wind-whipped umbrella with both hands. Would he? She lit a cigarette and puffed on it, drawing the smoke into her mouth and then blowing it out again rapidly. Yes. She had the feeling that he would. That this time he would. It was the uniform, being part of something that his father was not part of. In the war. His father might be Lord Stanmore, ninth earl, but he was Charles Greville, second lieutenant, the Royal Windsor Fusiliers. The importance of their respective statures had flip-flopped, at least for the time being.

  Oh, we do love the soldier boy,

  The lads in khaki proud.

  And Jolly Jack Tar and the bold marine,

  Who guard the empire ’round.

  A silly music-hall ditty, but one that captured the public mood. Nothing was too good for the men who served King and Country. She half-closed her eyes against the caustic smoke of the cigarette and envisioned Charles standing in the House of Lords, his right arm neatly bound in a sling, a bandage about his Shakespearean brow, pleading his case with passion.

  “My father is an honorable man, but I am not without honor of my own, the honor of shedding my blood for England. . . . And to have the woman I love denied my father’s blessing. . . . Shame, I say . . . shame.”

  She almost laughed at the vision. It was so impossibly romantic, like a scene out of one of Alexandra’s trashy novels.

  There was a rumble of voices in the corridor, and then the door opened and her father stepped into the room, followed by a short, slender, dark-haired man of forty-five.

  “Good weather for ducks,” Archie Foxe growled, peeling furlined leather gloves from his pudgy hands. “Is that Charles sleepin’ in the drawing room?”

  “Yes,” Lydia said, snuffing out her cigarette. Archie did not approve of women smoking.

  “Anything the matter with the lad?”

  “No, just tired.”

  “The rigors of army life, eh?”

  “Something like that,” she said.

  “I have some telephone calls to make. Will you see to it that Mr. Langham gets a double brandy and soda to ward off the chill?”

  “Of course. How are you, Mr. Langham?”

  “Wet, Miss Foxe. Quite damp to the bone.”

  He was not, of course, wet at all, having stepped from a limousine to the front door under a large umbrella. His dark wool overcoat with astrakhan collar was unblemished by rain. Archie Foxe went off down the corridor toward the stairs and his office-bedroom on the second floor, the minister’s overcoat was taken by the butler, and a large brandy and soda brought in on a silver tray. David Selkirk Langham, neat as a pin in striped trousers and cutaway coat, walked slowly about the room, his dark, piercing eyes taking in every detail.

  “Sumptuous. There is no finer combination than a great deal of money and faultless taste. Did you choose the furnishings?”

  “Yes,” Lydia said.

  “In all of your father’s numerous abodes?”

  She smiled faintly. “Those that I know of.”

  “Ah, yes.” He chuckled. “I dare say the sly fox has his secret den or two.”

  “Complete with vixen.”

  “I detect a note of disapproval in your tone, Miss Foxe. One should not begrudge a man his amusements.”

  There was something devilish about his face, Lydia decided. The Tory papers often caricatured him as the Prince of Darkness whispering into Asquith’s ear, or Lloyd George’s. He had a narrow spade-shaped face with a long, sharp nose, thin eyebrows like pencil lines, and a trim Vandyke beard. The devil’s countenance, but there was no hint of evil about him, only a quality of restrained amusement, as though he were always on the verge of breaking into peals of mocking laughter. David Selkirk Langham, born in a Liverpool slum, self-educated solicitor, advocate for the Mersey dockworkers, Member of Parliament, cabinet minister. A married man with five children, but there had been salacious stories whispered about him since the day he had entered Parliament in 1908. Women, it was said, were hypnotized by his eyes and his air of blunt, forceful virility. Tory lies, her father had said, but she wasn’t so sure. She had heard too many stories to dismiss every one of them as false, and she had merely to look into his eyes to read the challenge there.

  “The young man on the couch . . . is that Charles Greville?”

  “Yes.”

  “The earl referred to me as a blackguard once during a speech in the House. Of course, there was nothing personal in the remark. He was merely angry at the way the election had turned out. Is the son as Tory as the father?”

  “No. He has no political feelings one way or the other.”

  Langham raised one eyebrow in a sharply quizzical arch. “Is that so? Doesn’t he know it’s politics that makes the world go round? That it’s politics that has him in a uniform and politics that’s likely to keep him in it for a long time?”

  “He doesn’t look upon the war quite that way.”

  “Foolish of him. It pays to be realistic in this day and age. The way some of these soldier lads talk, you’d think they were going off in suits of armor for to fight the King of France. It’s going to be a long war and a bitter one . . . a war of political ideologies, a war of—”

  Her laugh interrupted him. “Mr. Langham, you’re not in the Commons making a speech.”

  He bowed slightly. “My apologies. It used to be my fame that I would make a speech on any street corner or in any public house for no better reason than to hear the sound of my own voice. Those are days long gone. There are more enjoyable things to talk about with a young, beautiful woman than the turmoil of European politics.”

  “Such as?”

  “Why, the pure pleasure of your company . . . as just one example.” He eyed her boldly, a smile lurking behind his dark eyes. He reminded her of a ferret toying with a rabbit. She could understand why many women would find him intriguing. There was nothing subtle or circumspect about him. Totally sure of himself and his power over the weaker sex. And he was such a little man. So trim and dapper one would have taken him for a tailor if he weren’t so obviously a cabinet minister whose star was on the rise. She felt a vague excitement, a small knot of tension in the pit of her stomach. How many women, she wondered, had experienced that sense of excitement and succumbed to it? Her hand went idly to her throat and she looked away from him. Rain drummed against the windows.

  “Where are you and Father off to this afternoon?”

  Langham smiled at the huskiness of her voice and took a sip of his drink. “A meeting with the Prime Minister at number ten. Kitchener will be there to discuss this Dardanelles business.”

  “What do you think about it?”

  “Brilliant in concept . . . just what one would expect from young Mr. Churchill’s fertile mind. My own mind is not made up about it. Should the enterprise fail, the political repercussions could be disastro
us.”

  “You don’t strike me as a man who would be afraid of risk.”

  There was a sound in his throat, like muffled laughter or the purring of a cat. His hand brushed her arm, gentle as silk.

  “Some games are always worth the candle and some are not. Don’t you think that’s true, Lydia Foxe?”

  She ignored his touch, her eyes fixed on the cold glass windowpanes.

  “I’m not certain, Mr. Langham. It’s not candles I care about in games, only prizes.”

  11

  Martin Rilke sat in Regent’s Park tossing pellets of bread to a flotilla of ducks. It had been a long, hard winter, and the ducks were celebrating the approach of spring by eating everything that was cast upon the waters. Martin sprinkled what remained of four slices of bread among the reeds and then stood up and walked slowly along a broad gravel path toward Clarence Gate. His hands were in the pockets of his overcoat, one hand curled around a crumpled letter from Chicago. The letter had arrived in the morning post and had contained a check from the Express for eighty-five dollars and some words of advice from Harrington Comstock Briggs.

  Dear Rilke:

  The enclosed check does not reflect your worth but does measure pretty accurately the extent of your usefulness to us at this time. The good folk in the Midwest are getting a bit irritated at old Europe and her wars. Sympathy along the lake-front from Milwaukee to Gary is pretty evenly divided. Many German-Americans are becoming vocal in their condemnation of England, France, and Russia—especially England—for conducting what they feel is a crush-German-trade war. The British naval blockade is certainly playing havoc with the grain merchants and the iron-ore shippers. Folks in these parts can’t understand why they should be prevented from selling to the Central Powers. Even Washington is irked at the blockade, so you can well imagine how feelings run in certain sections of Chicago and everywhere in Milwaukee.

  Your Belgium sketches were good and fair, but your current things on wartime Britain are becoming too overtly Anglophilic to suit our readers. Never lose sight of the fact that the redcoats burned the White House—although I can think of a Republican or two who would gladly burn it down today as long as Mr. Wilson was inside. No, Rilke, I can’t think of any good reason for you to stay in London any longer. Joe Finley had one bottle of rye too many, so there is now an opening on the police beat. The job is yours if you’ll send me a cable. A simple yes or no will suffice. If you’re short of the fare, say so.

  P.S. I have to go with the Phillies this year for the pennant. Cliff Cravath and Grover Cleveland Alexander—too tough a combination to beat.

  He removed the letter from his pocket, wadded it into a tight ball, and sent a hard fast one curving out and away from Cliff Cravath’s knees. The paper hit the water and brought a flurry of ducks to the scene.

  Jacob Golden was stretched out on the living room couch, staring at the ceiling. It was a position he had been in, almost without interruption, since returning from Serbia in January. He had said little and written less about his experiences there with General Putnik’s armies. Some rift had developed between Jacob and his father, but until now Martin had not tried to nose out the cause of it.

  “Enjoy the April sunshine?” Jacob drawled as Martin hung up his coat in the tiny hall.

  “Yes . . . went up to the park and fed the ducks.”

  “Reach any firm decision?”

  Martin shrugged and slumped into a chair. “Go back to Chicago, I guess.”

  “Turning your back on the war, eh?”

  “It’s being turned for me.”

  Jacob yawned and sat up. He had lost a good deal of weight and looked skeletal; the skin stretched across his face like parchment over a bone frame.

  “Why don’t you join the Daily Post? The guv’nor likes your writing, and he’s sending me to Egypt to cover the Dardanelles expedition. You could take my spot. I plan to quit the old paper.”

  Martin mulled that information over for a few seconds. There was a clatter of dishes from the restaurant below. The Hungarians were gone, innocent victims of the war, replaced by a large Italian family, verbose and operatic.

  “When did you decide that?”

  “Been considering it for months.”

  “What happened in Serbia, Jacob?”

  Golden ran his hands through his hair. “Christ! Nothing that I hadn’t expected to happen. I told you that there was an unholy amount of hate in that part of the world. The war gave it an impetus and an outlet. Rape, torture, and butchery are simply words until one has seen the victims. I saw what the Austrians did to Serbian villagers, and I saw what Serbians did to Austrians after Putnik counterattacked across the Sava River. My dispatches detailed the atrocities on both sides, but only the Austrian outrages were printed.”

  “That shouldn’t have come as a surprise.”

  “No, of course it didn’t. I hardly expected gallant little Serbia to be vilified in the press.” He smiled sardonically. “War and truth do not blend very well. I suppose I have an obligation as a journalist to bear witness to events even if the new censorship regulations prevent me from publishing all the facts, but I can’t do it. There’s something hideously wrong about this war. It’s going to be a mindless, pointless, chaotic slaughter, and I don’t wish to be involved in it.”

  “It’s going to be difficult not to be involved, isn’t it? Where will you go?”

  “Why, into the army, of course. Best place in the world to avoid emotional involvements of any kind. Chap I knew at Oxford is in the Royal Corps of Signals. Gave him a ring the other day and he offered me a commission. Back-room job in Whitehall . . . thinking up codes and ciphers. Cryptography has always been a passion of mine since I was six years old. How do you think I’ll look in a uniform?”

  “Gaunt.”

  He winced and ran a hand across his jaw. “Quite right. A bit on the lean and hungry side. I miss all that sour cream and paprika from downstairs. I suppose I’d better develop a taste for pasta and put some flesh on my bones.”

  “You seem to be a bit more cheerful all of a sudden.”

  “It’s getting it off my chest, old boy. You’re a marvelous chap, Martin. You let people speak without clucking your tongue or acting pontifically. I truly think you’d have lent a sympathetic ear to Attila the Hun.”

  “I suppose that’s a compliment,” Martin said with a dubious air, “but I’m not without some strong views.”

  “Of course you’re not. It’s just that you’re far more objective about things than I am . . . and more truly tolerant of mankind’s insanities than I could ever hope to be. This war is going to need a few unbiased witnesses, and you should definitely be one of them. Would you like to go to the Dardanelles?”

  “If I can . . . sure.”

  “Right! I’ll get on the blower and fix it up. Pop a cork of bubbly while I mend a fence or two with the guv’nor.”

  Jacob was on the telephone to his father when Martin came back from the kitchen with a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

  “It just seemed the decent thing to do,” Jacob was saying, his tone unctuously patriotic. “No reasonably healthy Englishman should be out of uniform, and so . . . Yes, Royal Corps of Signals . . . a full lieutenancy . . . their need for me is rather desperate . . . codes, ciphers, decoding—that sort of thing. Yes . . . posted here in London . . . top-hole sort of job in Whitehall . . . Yes, should make Mother happy. . . . Quite right . . . they don’t use code experts in the trenches. Glad you understand, Father . . . that’s why I’ve been so moody and out of sorts lately . . . trying to make up my mind as to the best thing to do. . . . Thank you, Father . . . I appreciate your saying that. . . . Now then, as for this Mediterranean business, I can’t think of anyone more suited to take my place than Martin Rilke. . . .”

  An outsider, he stayed apart from the other newspaper correspondents. He was “that American chap,” tolerated but resented. The number of press representatives allowed to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force was lim
ited to a scant half-dozen. Kitchener would have preferred none, but General Sir Ian Hamilton, commanding the expedition, had permitted a few select men to come along as observers. Most of them were elderly men who had covered military affairs since the Boer War and even before. They were on a first-name basis with all the staff officers and fitted neatly into the social order of the mess. They could, in fact, have been colonels or majors in mufti, so complete was their grasp of military procedures and ethics. Martin’s very presence had been subject to doubt almost up to the hour of sailing from Southampton. The advisability of a neutral coming along had been questioned by the War Office, but Lord Crewe’s arguments had prevailed in the end. It was his contention that Martin Rilke should be allowed to accompany the expedition precisely because he was a neutral. America, he had stated in a strongly worded note to the War Office, must be made aware of the scope and grandeur of the British adventure to the east. American sentiment about the British war effort was at a low ebb, and British newspaper accounts of it were looked on as biased reporting. “Let the truth come out in American papers, documented by an American whose sympathy and understanding for the English people in this war is beyond question,” Lord Crewe had said.

  And so he was part of the host gathering in Egypt for an assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula, a lone American strolling the gritty, crowded streets of Alexandria in an open-necked shirt, Kodak slung over one shoulder, notebook and pencil in hand. Little of what he wrote was passed uncensored by GHQ, and none of his photographs had been stamped with the censor’s seal. It seemed curious to Martin that the British would be so touchy about what could or could not be sent back to London. The smallest, most ragged Egyptian shoeshine boy knew that the English were preparing to sail for Gallipoli by the last week in April. Fishing boats from Greece drifted with impunity through the vast armada of ships anchored in the roadstead. It was common knowledge that at least half of the Greek fishermen were either Turkish sympathizers or Turkish spies, and yet the censors sliced out the most innocuous comments from the newsmen’s copy, as though a remark such as “The Australian and New Zealand soldiers appear to be very much at home amid the rock-strewn desolation of the Egyptian desert” were of prime military importance.