by E. F. Benson
“You will wonder why, having agreed to accept your gratifying proposal to drive down to Grote alone with you, I have in the lurch left you, and why I put you to the trouble of going down at so inconvenient an hour to the opera, when you would find nobody. The reasons are three:
“The first is that I wish for ever to cast off the dust and the dirt of your disagreeable land, and to do it in as inconvenient and humiliating a manner as possible. Believing, as I do, that before but a few weeks are out we good Germans will be sinking your ships, and would be battering into pulp your armies, if you had any, I take permission to declare my hostility, before the rest of my nation, and get safe back to my beloved Fatherland before I suffer outrage in your barbarous country.
“Secondly, I leave you to find out that I have gone without telling you before I am safe away, since I feel sure you would make the scenes, and try to induce me to stop, at least for the satisfaction of your amiable purposes. But a scene with one who is quite indifferent to me lacks all excitement, and is merely a bore. I therefore escape a scene with you, via the Hook of Holland.
“Thirdly, you have often told me that the pleasantest thing in an experience is the anticipation of it. I therefore have taken the opportunity to lengthen your anticipation out to its utmost possible limits. I hope you have had two charming days.
“If further justification for my action was necessary, which it is not, it would lie in the fact that when I accepted your invitation to Grote, I had not quite made up my mind. I did so a few hours afterwards, when I decided I would sooner spend Sunday in Germany than with you. I shall sleep better in my German bed. You have been most useful to me in my stay in England, and the use you have been to me, and your pleasant hospitality and the English gold I so plentifully carry away with me, I consider are the proper tribute to a great artist. I honour you by allowing myself to accept these offerings. I need not speak about your own personal feeling for me, for no man of true Kultur willingly alludes to his triumphs, however unsought. I need only say that the continued existence of your husband, your nationality, and my own disinclination prevent my making you into an honest woman. With regard to my sudden departure, I need but say that I trust the hospitable Sir Gurtner’s judgment more than that of our German Ambassador.
“Finally, gracious lady, I have met many women more beautiful than yourself, but none more facile. Your friends disagree with me about the standard of your beauty, but they are of my mind regarding your facility. Pray do not think I state these facts from the desire to insult gratuitously; I base my statements on the ground of the instinct of one of England’s bitterest foes.
“FRIEDRICH KUHLMANN.”
Helen Grote took up the little speaking trumpet, and put the light out.
“Straight to Grote,” she said.
The gas-lit streets whirled by, and she sat observing with no less intentness than before the pavement that was still aswarm with the Saturday night crowd. It was not yet more than an hour since she had passed eastwards through those streets, feeling an ecstatic kinship with the couples that lined the pavements. But now she acknowledged a closer spiritual affinity to the solitary, be-feathered women uneasily flitting about at the street corners, and peering into the faces of passers-by. Had they, too, arranged assignations which were not kept, had they been given rendez-vous like her, where one only rendered herself?... In her hands she still held the letter that she had received at the stage-door, but she did not need to read it twice, for every word of it had impressed itself on her brain. But what should she do with it, this last word of a man who for three months past had so dominated her with the effortless force of a savage nature? She held there, in the hand from which, in anticipation, she had already slipped her glove, his final expression of himself, the last and the fullest exhibition of his real nature. Up till now, perhaps, he had but treated her, so she had conjectured, as a toy, or perhaps there had been a quickened beat or two of his animal heart for her; but whatever the truth of that might be, there was no doubt now of the unveiled sincerity of his last word. If she had been but a toy, she was a toy which he hated and detested with a virulent, overmastering force. And in the strange ways of her woman’s heart, she felt, in those first moments of her knowledge of him, not so much the sting of an outraged pride, or the saltness of the waters of her humiliation, but a perverse thrill of excitement that at last, one way or another, he felt strongly about her. His avowed contempt and dislike did not wound her as much as his expressed indifference would have done.
The car had left the bright streets and enclosed places behind, and in the isolation of the night and the darkness she let free her imprisoned thoughts again, and wondered at the vagueness of them. An hour ago they had been clamorous and brightly coloured; now they were but indistinct pallors with no firm outline. Apart from that one thrill of excitement that at last he felt keenly about her, though the keenness was but an edge of hate and contempt, her conscious mind recorded nothing vivid; the whole outrage that he had committed, in act and word, did not seem to have fallen on her, but was presented to her merely as an external picture. But for some reason her mouth was dry, and for some reason her hand, as it still held his letter, was violently trembling.
Something inside her, she supposed, was in tumult, and caused that physical agitation. But at present her mind sat apart, and only contemplated what had been done to her. It was as if some local anæsthetic had been applied, and she sat by, wholly conscious, but feeling none of the pain of the surgeon’s knife. A hideous operation was going on, and she watched it without any touch of pain or of self-pity.
She found herself repeating sentences of his letter in her mind, and imagining him saying them. No conscious effort of imagination was necessary; merely his voice sounded in that inner temple of the ear to which sounds come not from outside but from the brain.
“I have seen many women more beautiful, but none more facile,” was one of those sentences with which her ears were ringing. “If it were not for the continued existence of your husband, your nationality, and my own disinclination, I would make an honest woman of you,” was another. But this externally inaudible repetition of them did not hurt her; it was only benumbed tissues that were being cut and slashed and dissected. They and others like them were insults aimed and dealt at herself; but there was another class of insults altogether, aimed not at her personally but at England, the country that had lavished on him wealth and fame, for until he came to London he was not of outstanding distinction in the operatic world. And now he shook the dust of England off his feet, he signed himself the bitterest of her foes; he spoke of war as imminent. Like the rest of London, she was aware that the relations between Austria and Russia were strained over the question of Serbia, and, like the rest of London, she had thought of it all only as a temporary tangle which the deft fingers of diplomacy would soon unravel. It was only two days ago that the Anglo-German party had met at Aline Gurtner’s, and not a breath of ruffling rumour had disturbed the settled cordiality. But here was Kuhlmann saying that his sudden departure was due to his confidence in Hermann Gurtner’s judgment. What did it all mean?
Her car had turned in at the lodge gates; the moon had risen, and straight in front of her, standing out sharp and clear against the night of stars rose the roofs of Grote, with the windows emblazoned by the moonlight, so that it looked as if the whole house was lit from end to end magnificently to welcome her on her home-coming. And just as the car stopped beneath the portico, swiftly as the return of sensation after an anaesthetic, the numbness of her perceptions passed off, and she knew why her mouth was dry and her hand shook. He had flung back in her face, with insults and contempt, all — all she had given him; he had treated her as no decent man would have treated the most mercenary creature of the street-corners.
And yet, deep down in her heart she knew that if, as some wild, disordered fancy suggested to her, he had at that moment come to the door now opening with that firm, quick step and confident carriage, there was her ungloved
hand for him, which already would have torn to atoms his infamous letter.
CHAPTER VIII
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 overlooking 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, it’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.”
“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 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—”
“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 light 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 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 desir
ed, 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 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.