by E. F. Benson
“I never saw such a beautiful place,” she said, “and what singing! My dear, fancy living in this divine court! Are your rooms really here? Do you live here? What an atmosphere to be soaked in! No wonder you English boys are the most delightful creatures under the sun. You utterly lucky person, Robin. You go to school at Eton, and then you come here, and when you are away on your holidays you live at Grote. Thank goodness, my sons are going to do just the same. What wouldn’t I give to be a boy at Eton with this to follow! And are we really going to walk under this arch to your rooms? I am sick with envy of you. I shall die of discontent when I get back to my horrid house.”
They passed through the arch and into Robin’s room, which looked out away from the big court on to a small space of grass with a mulberry tree in the middle. Robin introduced Jelf, who in this interval had been useful with regard to making the kettle boil over a spirit-lamp, and Lady Gurtner became equally effusive to him.
“And so you’re another of the spoiled children of the world,” she said. “And that’s a mulberry tree out there, isn’t it? How old-world and lovely! I can see the fruit on it. But that’s the sort of thing you can’t get, unless you’ve five hundred years behind you. Do you read your Greek under the mulberry tree? I’m sure you do. There’s nothing like Cambridge in the whole of Germany. Poor Germany! Have you ever been to Germany, Mr. Jelf?”
There was no possibility of replying to Lady Gurtner’s remarks, when she was determined on making an impression, for having asked a question, she turned to other matters that lay littered about in her hopping, bird-like mind. She paused only for a second’s space to think how greatly Hermann would admire and extol her for her inimitable tact in being so convincingly English.
“All the German students do nothing but drink beer,” she said, “except when they are fighting duels. What delicious tea! And a bun — yes, please, a bun — I am sure it was baked in the kitchen that Henry the Sixth built. How good! Buttered, too, on its lovely inside. I never saw such Sybarites. And here you all live, and don’t bother with anything else that happens outside. That is so sensible. You are just English boys; I wish the recipe could be known. How jolly and comfortable we should all be!”
Her mouth was full for the moment of the delicious bun, and she could not prevent Robin asking a question: “But do you mean we are not all going to be jolly and comfortable?” he said.
“Ah, yes, you mean about this dreadful news today,” she said, rapidly disposing of the delicious bun by a hurried swallow and a sip of tea. “I know my husband thinks it all very serious: it is as if that great brutal Germany was insisting on a quarrel. I have not been there for years, though I was going last week, when all the trouble began. I shall never go there again if she goes to war with that lovely France, Russia too!”
“Won’t she find herself in a pretty nasty place between them?” asked Robin.
For a moment her tact deserted her: the call of the blood silenced all other voices.
“Ah, you don’t know the might of Germany if you think that,” she said. “She is invincible: not all the armies of Europe could stand against her. Her fleet, too—”
She stopped suddenly, feeling that Hermann would not admire these last remarks quite as sincerely as her previous felicities. But she could not stand anybody else, even one of those adorable English boys, running down the Fatherland.
“After all, there is an English fleet,” said Robin.
Once again she had to put a firm hand on herself, in order to prevent her tongue running away with her on the magnificence of the German Navy. But it escaped through another bolt-hole, making a not very happy diversion.
“But England is not going to fight Germany,” she said. “You have your hands full with these miserable Irish affairs, and besides, what quarrel have you with Germany? It is all about Serbia, so my husband tells me, which surely does not matter to England.”
Now, somehow, even to the immature perception of the two undergraduates, these words, though nearly identical with Jelf’s, sounded quite different, took on a sinister meaning when spoken by Lady Gurtner. Jelf had said that small nations had no place, but the moment Lady Gurtner said that Serbia did not matter to England, she began to matter. No one took Jelf seriously: his tirades were but the expression of a mind that delighted in argument, that Was eager to see the reverse of conventional views. It was merely “Jelfish” that he should proclaim his love for Germans and his dislike of the English, but that didn’t really represent Jelf. In fact he liked shocking you, and failed, whereas Lady Gurtner liked pleasing, and in this instance failed also. Suddenly and inexplicably, a hostile and uncomfortable atmosphere diffused itself. Robin got up with a laugh.
“Just before you came in, Lady Gurtner,” he said, “Mr. Jelf was telling me I didn’t know where Serbia was on the map. It’s quite true: one knows the sort of place, just as one knows the sort of place where Shropshire is. I’m sure you don’t know where Shropshire is. Do have some more tea. Or a cigarette. Smoke as many cigarettes as you like: they’re not mine. And then you must walk down to the Backs. Have you seen my mother lately?”
There were plenty of amiable topics spread out here for selection, and Lady Gurtner, eager to re-establish herself, grabbed at a handful of them.
“Yes, I saw your beloved mother only three days ago,” she said, “and she promised to pay me a visit some time during August. You must come, too, Robin, if you can tear yourself away from this place. Do give me a cigarette, though I suppose I mayn’t smoke it out of doors. And then I insist on just going down to the Backs, if they aren’t very far off. And aren’t we all ignorant about geography? I shall get a map as soon as I go home, and look out Shropshire and Serbia.”
Robin saw Lady Gurtner off, admired the sables, and returned to his room, where Jelf was still smoking his own cigarettes. They looked at each other in silence a moment, and then Jelf said:
“I talked the most awful rot this afternoon. But you know that, don’t you?”
“Oh, Lord, yes,” said Robin. “Let’s go and see if there’s any more news.”
There was nothing more of which the tape at the Union had cognizance, and after dinner Robin and Jim, with their host, started a mild game of poker. But whether it was that three do not constitute an adequate assembly for this particular form of hazard to become entertaining, the game very soon languished, and the three sat unusually silent. Badsley lay in the window seat with his pipe croaking in the dusk as he drew on it, Jim got up and wandered aimlessly about the room, and Robin, with tilted chair, still sat at the table where they had played, building card-houses that never aspired beyond the second story. Occasionally one or other dropped a remark that passed almost unheeded. Jim was watching Robin put on the roof of the first story.
“What’ll war mean?” he said. “A European war, not just a scrimmage in the Balkans.”
“Don’t know. Damn, you shook the table.”
Robin began his edifice again, and this time spoke himself.
“We must come in, mustn’t we?” he said. “Haven’t we got some sort of arrangement with France and Russia? We’ve got to keep that.”
Nobody answered, and Badsley knocked out the half-smoked ashes of his pipe into the window-box.
“Pretty mean trick of Germany, threatening to invade Belgium, when she’s sworn she wouldn’t,” he said. “Whisky, anybody?”
He went across to his cupboard and poured some out for himself, as he received no answer. The syphon handle was stiff, then gave way suddenly, and a fountain of whisky and soda aspired like a geyser.
“Have some whisky and soda,” said Robin.
“Got some, thanks: chiefly up my sleeve. Hell!”
Robin abandoned the attempt to build, and began flicking counters across the table.
“What was your mother’s friend like?” asked Jim.
“Oh, a sort of bird of paradise in furs. I never liked her much, and to-day I didn’t like her at all.”
“Why?”
“She swanked about the German Army.”
Badsley had succeeded better with his second attempt to obtain refreshment.
“Jolly fine woman, I thought,” he said. “I saw her with my little eye in chapel. After that I didn’t attend any more. Why didn’t you ask me to tea, Birds?”’
“Because I was going to dine with you, and I thought tea as well would be too much pleasure. I say, I feel rather rotten to-night. Sort of feeling that one doesn’t know what’s going to happen.”
“You didn’t seem to care two straws this afternoon,” said Jim.
“I know I didn’t. But it’s just beginning to be real. Whisky? Yes, why not whisky? I say, shan’t we want an army if we go to war? Where’s that to come from?”
Robin drank his glass at a draught.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” he said. “It’s no use trying to play poker if you’re thinking about something else. Good-night, Badders; thanks awfully for dinner.”
Jim, as a matter of course, came out with him and took his arm.
“Stroll down to the bridge first?” he asked.
“Yes; may as well,” said Robin.
The moon with the clippings of three nights off the right side of its circle had risen and cleared the tree tops, and rode high in a sky dappled with mackerel-skin patches of cloud, through which its rays shone with a diffused opalescence. Now and then it streamed down a channel of clear and starry sky, and the lights and shadows became sharp-cut, but for the most part those shoals of thin cloud, on which it cast the faint colours of a pearl’s rainbow, gave to the night an illumination as of some grey, diminished day.
To-night there was no dew on the grass; over the river, bats, hunting the nocturnal insects flitted with slate-pencil squeaks, scarcely audible. A little wind blew downstream from out of the arch of the bridge, ruffling patches of the water’s surface, and lightning, very remote, winked on the horizon westwards, but so far away that no sound of its answering thunder could be heard. In a set of rooms of the buildings near the river someone was picking out a music-hall tune with painstaking study and long pauses on a metallic piano, and a boat with one solitary oarsman in it went by with the sound of dripping oar-blades and rattle of rowlocks. But for all the normal tranquillity, there was some hint of menace abroad: the puffs of wind might enlarge into a gale, the remote storm might move up with fierce, flashing blinks of lightning and sonorous gongs, and instead of the small squeaking bats, some prodigy of preying teeth and claws might launch itself on to the night.
They leaned against the stone parapet of the bridge for a minute in silence. Some indefinable ominousness was certainly abroad. It had come up as swiftly as a storm that spreads, as by the stroke of a black wing, over a clear sky.
“I feel as if someone was counting the hours,” said Robin. “There are a few more left before some clock strikes, and — and a great door opens. What is it, Jim?”
“I don’t know. But I know what I’m afraid of.”
“What’s that?” asked Robin.
“That when the clock strikes, all the life we’ve yet known will be over. Cambridge will be over—”
Robin shivered.
“Like going out of a warm-lit house into the night,” said he, “when you’ve had a jolly evening. Is that it? But why do we both feel like that? Even if there is a war — is it the thought of that which upsets us?”
“Yes: it’s not knowing in the slightest what it’s all going to be like. What’s certain is that things can’t be the same.”
There was a moment’s silence, and again a distant flash, not quite so remote, leaped in the west.
“Lightning,” said Jim, looking up.
Robin pulled himself together, and looked down.
“Bats,” he said. “Come to bed. Or shall we go back to Badders?”
“No, bed I think. To-morrow’s Monday: I wonder what’ll happen on Monday.”
There was a small gathering in Mr. Waters’ rooms that night, and as the two boys passed his lit windows on the ground floor of the Fellows’ Buildings they could see the tall, spare form of Mr. Jackson, evidently in the rostrum, for his head was judicially tilted, as when he lectured. He had come down from his house after dinner, under the stress of the prevalent unrest, to see if there was any fresh news. For himself, he felt a sturdy optimism that, war or no war, Cambridge would go on much as usual.
“Upon my word, I don’t see what there is to be disturbed about,” he said, “and if I had been you, Waters, I think I should have gone to Baireuth, just the same.”
“I will be happy to present you with my tickets, and you can start to-morrow,” said Waters, with a shade of acidity. He felt that this personal inconvenience, owing to the abandonment of his plans, was likely to remain the bitterest fruit of the European crisis.
“Well, I may be wrong about it,” said Jackson, “but I don’t think that all this agitation is likely to lead to much. I expect to give my lectures pretty much as usual in the October term. Someone was saying to-day that war was practically certain, and that there would be a huge call for young men to join the army. In my opinion, both propositions are highly unlikely. As for undergraduates interrupting their residence here, in order to join up, such a supposition is totally out of the question.”
Alison had already finished his glass of Alison’s Own, which, as usual, encouraged him to independence of thought. He was employed on a game of Patience, since Whist was not considered a Sabbatical diversion in these decorous circles. But there was nothing inharmonious between Patience and Sunday.
“I should not be too sure of that,” he said. “A European war might prove subversive of even such well-established phenomena as lectures on Thucydides.”
“And I am disposed to add as a scholium to your text the simple word ‘fiddlesticks,’” said Jackson with some severity.
“You arc at liberty to add any scholia you choose,” said Alison, putting a black king on a red queen.
There was a certain acrimonious flavour about this, and Waters intervened.
“Scholia or no scholia,” he said, “I don’t suppose anyone imagines that the war will not be over by Christmas.”
“With a rider to the effect that the war will not have begun by Christmas,” said Jackson. “If anyone cares to know my opinion as to the date of the outbreak of war between England and Germany, I unhesitatingly name the Greek Calends.”
“So now we know,” said Alison rebelliously. There was a hitch in his Patience, and that, combined with the hitch in European harmony, rendered him a little irritable.
The home to which Lady Gurtner had returned, enveloped in sables and good humour and joy of life after her tea and her tact with Robin, had come into her husband’s hands some six years before over a foreclosed mortgage. It was red-brick, Jacobean in structure, with the mellow seal of three hundred years imprinted on its walls and gardens. It seemed to have grown out of the ample and secure soil in serene dignity and fitness, and it was as hard to imagine that once it rose in layers of new brick and mortar, as it would be to unthink the great elm avenue that led up to its plain, comely front, and see again the little saplings from which those leafy towers had expanded. The same air of robust and undecayed antiquity pervaded its gardens: the lawns were clad in the luxuriant velvet that age, instead of thinning, had but thickened to a closer pile; the decades but strengthened the yew hedges to a compacter resilience, and the deep, spacious flower-borders, that lay like some medieval illumination round the black lines of text, glowed with the mellow traditions of the soil.
Even where Lady Gurtner had planted, the habit of the sweet old garden mollified the harshness of new designs, and the sunk rose-garden, with its paths of old paving-stone, might almost have been part of the original scheme. A lead balustrade (a “literary coping,” as it was aptly described by Mrs. Pounce) ran along the top of the house: Nisi Domimis custodial domum seemed to be the guarantee of its secular stability. Above all, the exterior of the house and its ancient gardens were co
mpletely and unmistakably English. Statelier châteaux than it might have grown in France, a more decorative formality might have sprung from Italian soil, a more bepinnacled schloss have crowned a German hill, but none of those would have been more instinct with their legitimate pedigree than this serene and English domain.
Inside, the house had not fared so well: when Sir Hermann exercised his right to possession, it tottered for repairs, and repairs had been given it as by the hand of some ruthless surgeon intent on expensive operations. The mouldering panels of the hall had been stripped away, and cedar-wood, as smart as Solomon’s temple, had taken their place. Just as silver was “nothing accounted of” in his days, so here, rich and rare were the golden emblazonings that ran round cornice and panel and pilaster. The chimney-piece was of rose-coloured marble, the floor was of marble also, and looked like a petrified Aubusson carpet with the Gurtner arms (leaving room for an eventual coronet above them) planted, florid and dominant, in the centre. Two Italian bridal cassoni served no longer to contain the embroideries and dresses of the bride, but to support on their carved lids the hats and coats of visitors. Rafters painted in the Venetian manner — for this was the Italian hall — supported the ceiling, and set into the centre was an immense oval of ground glass, framed in gilt, from behind which, at fall of day, a few million power electric lights shed a diffused radiance. Besides the fireplace there were, for purposes of heating, three stacks of water-pipes resembling sofas set into embrasures in the wall: to Sir Hermann it was a never-failing source of amusement to get an unwary visitor to sit down on one of them, and observe his subsequent swift uprising as the unusual warmth amazed him....
Altogether, the Italian hall looked like a vestibule in a Turkish bath for millionaires, and for all the splendour of its appurtenances it suited the old house about as well as if a set of dazzling false teeth, taken haphazard from the case of an advertising dentist in the street, had been forced and hammered into its protesting mouth, after the extraction of the stumps of its panelling and oak-flooring.