CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We parted in London next day, I hardly know where. She seemed so part ofmy being, was for me so little more than an intellectual force, solittle of a physical personality, that I cannot remember where my eyeslost sight of her.
I had desolately made the crossing from country to country, had convoyedmy aunt to her big house in one of the gloomy squares in a certaindistrict, and then we had parted. Even afterward it was as if she werestill beside me, as if I had only to look round to find her eyes uponme. She remained the propelling force, I a boat thrust out upon amill-pond, moving more and more slowly. I had been for so long in theshadow of that great house, shut in among the gloom, that all thislight, this blazing world--it was a June day in London--seemedimpossible, and hateful. Over there, there had been nothing but veryslow, fading minutes; now there was a past, a future. It was as if Istood between them in a cleft of unscalable rocks.
I went about mechanically, made arrangements for my housing, moved inand out of rooms in the enormous mausoleum of a club that was all thehome I had, in a sort of stupor. Suddenly I remembered that I had beenthinking of something; that she had been talking of Churchill. I had hada letter from him on the morning of the day before. When I read it,Churchill and his "_Cromwell_" had risen in my mind like preposterousphantoms; the one as unreal as the other--as alien. I seemed to havepassed an infinity of aeons beyond them. The one and the other belongedas absolutely to the past as a past year belongs. The thought of themdid not bring with it the tremulously unpleasant sensations that, as arule, come with the thoughts of a too recent _temps jadis_, but ratheras a vein of rose across a gray evening. I had passed his letter over;had dropped it half-read among the litter of the others. Then there hadseemed to be a haven into whose mouth I was drifting.
Now I should have to pick the letters up again, all of them; set to workdesolately to pick up the threads of the past; and work it back intolife as one does half-drowned things. I set about it listlessly. Thereremained of that time an errand for my aunt, an errand that would takeme to Etchingham; something connected with her land steward. I think theold lady had ideas of inducting me into a position that it had growntacitly acknowledged I was to fill. I was to go down there; to see aboutsome alterations that were in progress; and to make arrangements for myaunt's return. I was so tired, so dog tired, and the day still had somany weary hours to run, that I recognised instinctively that if I wereto come through it sane I must tire myself more, must keep ongoing--until I sank. I drifted down to Etchingham that evening, I sent amessenger over to Churchill's cottage, waited for an answer that told methat Churchill was there, and then slept, and slept.
I woke back in the world again, in a world that contained the landsteward and the manor house. I had a sense of recovered power from thesight of them, of the sunlight on the stretches of turf, of the mellow,golden stonework of the long range of buildings, from the sound of achime of bells that came wonderfully sweetly over the soft swelling ofthe close turf. The feeling came not from any sense of prospectiveownership, but from the acute consciousness of what these things stoodfor. I did not recognise it then, but later I understood; for thepresent it was enough to have again the power to set my foot on theground, heel first. In the streets of the little town there was asensation of holiday, not pronounced enough to call for flags, butenough to convey the idea of waiting for an event.
The land steward, at the end of a tour amongst cottages, explained therewas to be a celebration in the neighbourhood--a "cock-and-hen show witha political annex"; the latter under the auspices of Miss Churchill.Churchill himself was to speak; there was a possibility of apronouncement. I found London reporters at my inn, men I half knew. Theyexpressed mitigated delight at the view of me, and over a lunch-tablelet me know what "one said"--what one said of the outside of events Iknew too well internally. They most of them had the air of my aunt'ssolicitor when he had said, "Even I did not realise...." their positionssaving them the necessity of concealing surprise. "One can't know_everything_." They fumbled amusingly about the causes, differed withone another, but were surprisingly unanimous as to effects, as to thepanic and the call for purification. It was rather extraordinary, too,how large de Mersch loomed on the horizon over here. It was as if thewhole world centred in him, as if he represented the modern spirit thatmust be purified away by burning before things could return to theirnormal state. I knew what he represented ... but there it was.
It was part of my programme, the attendance at the poultry show; I wasto go back to the cottage with Churchill, after he had made his speech.It was rather extraordinary, the sensations of that function. I went inrather late, with the reporter of the _Hour_, who was anxious to do methe favour of introducing me without payment--it was his way of makinghimself pleasant, and I had the reputation of knowing celebrities. It_was_ rather extraordinary to be back again in the midst of this sort ofthing, to be walking over a crowded, green paddock, hedged in with talltrees and dotted here and there with the gaily striped species of tentthat is called marquee. And the type of face, and the style of thecostume! They would have seemed impossible the day before yesterday.
There were all Miss Churchill's gang of great dames, muslin, rustling,marriageable daughters, a continual twitter of voices, and a sprinklingof the peasantry, dun-coloured and struck speechless.
One of the great ladies surveyed me as I stood in the centre of an openspace, surveyed me through tortoise-shell glasses on the end of a longhandle, and beckoned me to her side.
"You are unattached?" she asked. She had pretensions to voice thecounty, just as my aunt undoubtedly set the tone of its doings, decidedwho was visitable, and just as Miss Churchill gave the political tone."You may wait upon me, then," she said; "my daughter is with her youngman. That is the correct phrase, is it not?"
She was a great lady, who stood nearly six foot high, and whom one wouldhave styled buxom, had one dared. "I have a grievance," she went on; "Imust talk to someone. Come this way. _There_!" She pointed with thehandle of her glasses to a pen of glossy blackbirds. "You see!... Noteven commended!--and I assure you the trouble I have taken over them,with the idea of setting an example to the tenantry, is incredible. Theygive a prize to one of our own tenants ... which is as much as tellingthe man that he is an example to _me_. Then they wonder that the countryis going to the dogs. I assure you that after breakfast I have had thescraps collected from the plates--that was the course recommended by thepoultry manuals--and have taken them out with my own hands."
The sort of thing passed for humour in the county, and, being deliveredwith an air and a half Irish ruefulness, passed well enough.
"And that reminds me," she went on, "--I mean the fact that the countryis going to the dogs, as my husband [You haven't seen him anywhere, haveyou? He is one of the judges, and I want to have a word with him aboutmy Orpingtons] says every morning after he has looked at his paper--that... oh, that you have been in Paris, haven't you? with your aunt. Then,of course, you have seen this famous Duc de Mersch?"
She looked at me humourously through her glasses. "I'm going to pumpyou, you know," she said, "it is the duty that is expected of me. I haveto talk for a countyful of women without a tongue in their heads. Sotell me about him. Is it true that he is at the bottom of all thismischief? Is it through him that this man committed suicide? They sayso. He _was_ mixed up in that Royalist plot, wasn't he?--and the peoplethat have been failing all over the place _are_ mixed up with him,aren't they?"
"I ... I really don't know," I said; "if you say so...."
"Oh, I assure you I'm sound enough," she answered, "the Churchills--Iknow you're a friend of his--haven't a stauncher ally than I am, and Ishould only be too glad to be able to contradict. But it's so difficult.I assure you I go out of my way; talk to the most outrageous people,deny the very possibility of Mr. Churchill's being in any wayimplicated. One knows that it's impossible, but what can one do? I havesaid again and again--to people like grocers' wives; even to thegrocers, for that matter--that M
r. Churchill is a statesman, and that ifhe insists that this odious man's railway must go through, it is in theinterests of the country that it should. I tell them...."
She paused for a minute to take breath and then went on: "I was speakingto a man of that class only this morning, rather an intelligent man andquite nice--I was saying, 'Don't you see, my dear Mr. Tull, that it is aquestion of international politics. If the grand duke does not get themoney for his railway, the grand duke will be turned out of his--what isit--principality? And that would be most dangerous--in the presentcondition of affairs over there, and besides....' The man listened veryrespectfully, but I could see that he was not convinced. I buckled toagain...."
"'And besides,' I said, 'there is the question of Greenland itself. WeEnglish must have Greenland ... sooner or later. It touches you, even.You have a son who's above--who doesn't care for life in a country town,and you want to send him abroad--with a little capital. Well, Greenlandis just the place for him.' The man looked at me, and almost shook hishead in my face."
"'If you'll excuse me, my lady,' he said, 'it won't do. Mr. Churchillis a man above hocus-pocus. Well I know it that have had dealings withhim. But ... well, the long and the short of it is, my lady, that youcan't touch pitch and not be defiled; or, leastwise, people'll thinkyou've been defiled--those that don't know you. The foreign nations areall very well, and the grand duchy--and the getting hold of Greenland,but what touches me is this--My neighbour Slingsby had a little money,and he gets a prospectus. It looked very well--very well--and he bringsit in to me. I did not have anything to do with it, but Slingsby did.Well, now there's Slingsby on the rates and his wife a lady born,almost. I might have been taken in the same way but for--for the graceof God, I'm minded to say. Well, Slingsby's a good man, and used to be ahard-working man--all his life, and now it turns out that thatprospectus came about by the man de Mersch's manoeuvres--"wild-catschemes," they call them in the paper that I read. And there's anynumber of them started by de Mersch or his agents. Just for what? Thatde Mersch may be the richest man in the world and a philanthropist.Well, then, where's Slingsby, if that's philanthropy? So Mr. Churchillcomes along and says, in a manner of speaking, "That's all very well,but this same Mr. Mersch is the grand duke of somewhere or other, and wemust bolster him up in his kingdom, or else there will be trouble withthe powers." Powers--what's powers to me?--or Greenland? when there'sSlingsby, a man I've smoked a pipe with every market evening of my life,in the workhouse? And there's hundreds of Slingsbys all over thecountry.'"
"The man was working himself--Slingsby _was_ a good sort of man. Itshocked even me. One knows what goes on in one's own village, of course.And it's only too true that there's hundreds of Slingsbys--I'm notboring you, am I?"
I did not answer for a moment. "I--I had no idea," I said; "I have beenso long out of it and over there one did not realise the ... thefeeling."
"You've been well out of it," she answered; "one has had to suffer, Iassure you." I believed that she had had to suffer; it must have takena good deal to make that lady complain. Her large, ruddy featuresfollowed the droop of her eyes down to the fringe of the parasol thatshe was touching the turf with. We were sitting on garden seats in thedappled shade of enormous elms.
There was in the air a touch of the sounds discoursed by a yeomanry bandat the other end of the grounds. One could see the red of their uniformsthrough moving rifts in the crowd of white dresses.
"That wasn't even the worst," she said suddenly, lifting her eyes andlooking away between the trunks of the trees. "The man has been readingthe papers and he gave me the benefit of his reflections. 'Someone's gotto be punished for this;' he said, 'we've got to show them that youcan't be hand-and-glove with that sort of blackguard, without paying forit. I don't say, mind you, that Mr. Churchill is or ever has been. Iknow him, and I trust him. But there's more than me in the world, andthey can't all know him. Well, here's the papers saying--or they don'tsay it, but they hint, which is worse in a way--that he must be, or hewouldn't stick up for the man. They say the man's a blackguard out andout--in Greenland too; has the blacks murdered. Churchill says theblacks are to be safe-guarded, that's the word. Well, they may be--butso ought Slingsby to have been, yet it didn't help him. No, my lady,we've got to put our own house in order and that first, before thinkingof the powers or places like Greenland. What's the good of the sanerpolicy that Mr. Churchill talks about, if you can't trust anyone withyour money, and have to live on the capital? If you can't sleep at nightfor thinking that you may be in the workhouse to-morrow--like Slingsby?The first duty of men in Mr. Churchill's position--as I see it--is tosee that we're able to be confident of honest dealing. That's what wewant, not Greenlands. That's how we all feel, and you know it, too, orelse you, a great lady, wouldn't stop to talk to a man like me. And,mind you, I'm true blue, always have been and always shall be, and, ifit was a matter of votes, I'd give mine to Mr. Churchill to-morrow. Butthere's a many that wouldn't, _and_ there's a many that believe thehintings.'"
My lady stopped and sighed from a broad bosom. "What could I say?" shewent on again. "I know Mr. Churchill and I like him--and everyone thatknows him likes him. I'm one of the stalwarts, mind you; I'm not forgiving in to popular clamour; I'm for the 'saner policy,' likeChurchill. But, as the man said: 'There's a many that believe thehintings.' And I almost wish Churchill.... However, you understand whatI meant when I said that one had had to suffer."
"Oh, I understand," I said. I was beginning to. "And Churchill?" I askedlater, "he gives no sign of relenting?"
"Would you have him?" she asked sharply; "would you make him if youcould?" She had an air of challenging. "I'm for the 'saner policy!' costwhat it may. He owes it to himself to sacrifice himself, if it comes tothat."
"I'm with you too," I answered, "over boot and spur." Her enthusiasm wascontagious, and unnecessary.
"Oh, he'll stick," she began again after consultation with the parasolfringe. "You'll hear him after a minute. It's a field day to-day.You'll miss the other heavy guns if you stop with me. I do itostentatiously--wait until they've done. They're all trembling; all ofthem. My husband will be on the platform--trembling too. He is a type ofthem. All day long and at odd moments at night I talk to him--out-talkhim and silence him. What's the state of popular feeling to him? He'sfor the country, not the town--this sort of thing has nothing to do withhim. It's a matter to be settled by Jews in the City. Well, he sees itat night, and then in the morning the papers undo all my work. He beginsto talk about his seat--which _I_ got for him. I've been the 'voice ofthe county' for years now. Well, it'll soon be a voice without acounty.... What is it? 'The old order changeth.' So, I've arranged itthat I shall wait until the trembling big-wigs have stuttered theirspeeches out, and then I'm going to sail down the centre aisle andlisten to Churchill with visible signs of approval. It won't do muchto-day, but there was a time when it would have changed the course of anelection.... Ah, there's Effie's young man. It's time."
She rose and marched, with the air of going to a last sacrifice, acrossthe deserted sward toward a young man who was passing under the calicoflag of the gateway.
"It's all right, Willoughby," she said, as we drew level, "I've foundsomeone else to face the music with me; you can go back to Effie." Abronzed and grateful young man murmured thanks to me.
"It's an awful relief, Granger," he said; "can't think how you can doit. I'm hooked, but you...."
"He's the better man," his mother-in-law-elect said, over her shoulder.She sailed slowly up the aisle beside me, an almost heroic figure of amatron. "Splendidly timed, you see," she said, "do you observe myhusband's embarrassment?"
It was splendid to see Churchill again, standing there negligently, withthe diffidence of a boy amid the bustle of applause. I understoodsuddenly why I loved him so, this tall, gray man with the delicate,almost grotesque, mannerisms. He appealed to me by sheer force ofpicturesqueness, appealed as some forgotten mediaeval city might. I wasconcerned for him as for some such dying place, standing above
thelevel plains; I was jealous lest it should lose one jot of its glory, ofits renown. He advocated his saner policy before all those people; stoodup there and spoke gently, persuasively, without any stress of emotion,without more movement than an occasional flutter of the glasses he heldin his hand. One would never have recognised that the thing was afighting speech but for the occasional shiver of his audience. They werethinking of their Slingsbys; he affecting, insouciantly, to treat themas rational people.
It was extraordinary to sit there shut in by that wall of people all ofone type, of one idea; the idea of getting back; all conscious that aforce of which they knew nothing was dragging them forward over the edgeof a glacier, into a crevasse. They wanted to get back, were struggling,panting even--as a nation pants--to get back by their own way that theyunderstood and saw; were hauling, and hauling desperately, at theweighted rope that was dragging them forward. Churchill stood up thereand repeated: "Mine is the only way--the saner policy," and his wordswould fly all over the country to fall upon the deaf ears of thepanic-stricken, who could not understand the use of calmness, oftrifling even, in the face of danger, who suspected the calmness as onesuspects the thing one has not. At the end of it I received his summonsto a small door at the back of the building. The speech seemed to havepassed out of his mind far more than out of mine.
"So you have come," he said; "that's good, and so.... Let us walk alittle way ... out of this. My aunt will pick us up on the road." Helinked his arm into mine and propelled me swiftly down the bright, broadstreet. "I'm sorry you came in for that, but--one has to do thesethings."
There was a sort of resisted numbness in his voice, a lack of anyresiliency. My heart sank a little. It was as if I were beside aninvalid who did not--must not--know his condition; as if I were pledgednot to notice anything. In the open the change struck home as a hammerstrikes; in the pitiless searching of the unrestrained light, hisgrayness, his tremulousness, his aloofness from the things about him,came home to me like a pang.
"You look a bit fagged," I said, "perhaps we ought not to talk aboutwork." His thoughts seemed to come back from a great distance, oh, froman infinite distance beyond the horizon, the soft hills of that fatcountry. "You want rest," I added.
"I--oh, no," he answered, "I can't have it ... till the end of thesession. I'm used to it too."
He began talking briskly about the "_Cromwell_;" proofs had emerged fromthe infinite and wanted attention. There were innumerable littlematters, things to be copied for the appendix and revisions. It wasimpossible for me to keep my mind upon them.
It had come suddenly home to me that this was the world that I belongedto; that I had come back to it as if from an under world; that to this Iowed allegiance. She herself had recognised that; she herself had biddenme tell him what was a-gate against him. It was a duty too; he was myfriend. But, face to face with him, it became almost an impossibility.It was impossible even to put it into words. The mere ideas seemed to beuntranslatable, to savour of madness. I found myself in the veryposition that she had occupied at the commencement of our relations:that of having to explain--say, to a Persian--the working principles ofthe telegraph. And I was not equal to the task. At the same time I hadto do something. I had to. It would be abominable to have to go throughlife forever, alone with the consciousness of that sort of treachery ofsilence. But how could I tell him even the comprehensibles? What kind ofsentence was I to open with? With pluckings of an apologetic string,without prelude at all--or how? I grew conscious that there was need forhaste; he was looking behind him down the long white road for thecarriage that was to pick us up.
"My dear fellow...." I began. He must have noted a change in my tone,and looked at me with suddenly lifted eyebrows. "You know my sister isgoing to marry Mr. Gurnard."
"Why, no," he answered--"that is ... I've heard...." he began to offergood wishes.
"No, no," I interrupted him hurriedly, "not that. But I happen to knowthat Gurnard is meditating ... is going to separate from you in publicmatters." An expression of dismay spread over his face.
"My dear fellow," he began.
"Oh, I'm not drunk," I said bitterly, "but I've been behind thescenes--for a long time. And I could not ... couldn't let the thing goon without a word."
He stopped in the road and looked at me.
"Yes, yes," he said, "I daresay.... But what does it lead to?... Even ifI could listen to you--_I_ can't go behind the scenes. Mr. Gurnard maydiffer from me in points, but don't you see?..." He had walked onslowly, but he came to a halt again. "We had better put these mattersout of our minds. Of course you are not drunk; but one is tied down inthese matters...."
He spoke very gently, as if he did not wish to offend me by this closingof the door. He seemed suddenly to grow very old and very gray. Therewas a stile in the dusty hedge-row, and he walked toward it, meditating.In a moment he looked back at me. "I had forgotten," he said; "I meantto suggest that we should wait here--I am a little tired." He perchedhimself on the top bar and became lost in the inspection of the cord ofhis glasses. I went toward him.
"I knew," I said, "that you could not listen to ... to the sort ofthing. But there were reasons. I felt forced. You will forgive me." Helooked up at me, starting as if he had forgotten my presence.
"Yes, yes," he said, "I have a certain--I can't think of the rightword--say respect--for your judgment and--and motives ... But you see,there are, for instance, my colleagues. I couldn't go to them ..." Helost the thread of his idea.
"To tell the truth," I said, with a sudden impulse for candour, "itisn't the political aspect of the matter, but the personal. I spokebecause it was just possible that I might be of service toyou--personally--and because I would like you ... to make a good fightfor it." I had borrowed her own words.
He looked up at me and smiled. "Thank you," he said. "I believe youthink it's a losing game," he added, with a touch of gray humour thatwas like a genial hour of sunlight on a wintry day. I did not answer. Alittle way down the road Miss Churchill's carriage whirled into sight,sparkling in the sunlight, and sending up an attendant cloud of dustthat melted like smoke through the dog-roses of the leeward hedge.
"So you don't think much of me as a politician," Churchill suddenlydeduced smilingly. "You had better not tell that to my aunt."
I went up to town with Churchill that evening. There was nothing waitingfor me there, but I did not want to think. I wanted to be among men,among crowds of men, to be dazed, to be stupefied, to hear nothing forthe din of life, to be blinded by the blaze of lights.
There were plenty of people in Churchill's carriage; a military memberand a local member happened to be in my immediate neighbourhood. Theirminds were full of the financial scandals, and they dinned theiralternating opinions into me. I assured them that I knew nothing aboutthe matter, and they grew more solicitous for my enlightenment.
"It all comes from having too many eggs in one basket," the local membersummed up. "The old-fashioned small enterprises had theirdisadvantages, but--mind you--these gigantic trusts.... Isn't that so,General?"
"Oh, I quite agree with you," the general barked; "at the same time...."Their voices sounded on, intermingling, indistinguishable, soothingeven. I seemed to be listening to the hum of a threshing-machine--apassage of sound booming on one note, a passage, a half-tone higher, andso on, and so on. Visible things grew hazy, fused into one another.