CHAPTER EIGHT
After that I began to live, as one lives; and for forty-nine weeks. Iknow it was forty-nine, because I got fifty-two atmospheres in all;Callan's and Churchill's, and those forty-nine and the last one thatfinished the job and the year of it. It was amusing work in its way;people mostly preferred to have their atmospheres taken at their countryhouses--it showed that they had them, I suppose. Thus I spent a coupleof days out of every week in agreeable resorts, and people were verynice to me--it was part of the game.
So I had a pretty good time for a year and enjoyed it, probably becauseI had had a pretty bad one for several years. I filled in the rest of myweeks by helping Fox and collaborating with Mr. Churchill and adoringMrs. Hartly at odd moments. I used to hang about the office of the_Hour_ on the chance of snapping up a blank three lines fit for asubtle puff of her. Sometimes they were too hurried to be subtle, andthen Mrs. Hartly was really pleased.
I never understood her in the least, and I very much doubt whether sheever understood a word I said. I imagine that I must have talked to herabout her art or her mission--things obviously as strange to her as tothe excellent Hartly himself. I suppose she hadn't any art; I am certainshe hadn't any mission, except to be adored. She walked about the stageand one adored her, just as she sat about her flat and was adored, andthere the matter ended.
As for Fox, I seemed to suit him--I don't in the least know why. Nodoubt he knew me better than I knew myself. He used to get hold of mewhilst I was hanging about the office on the chance of engaging spacefor Mrs. Hartly, and he used to utilise me for the ignoblest things. Isaw men for him, scribbled notes for him, abused people through thetelephone, and wrote articles. Of course, there were the pickings.
I never understood Fox--not in the least, not more than I understoodMrs. Hartly. He had the mannerisms of the most incredible vulgarian andhad, apparently, the point of view of a pig. But there was somethingelse that obscured all that, that forced one to call him a _wonderful_man. Everyone called him that. He used to say that he knew what hewanted and that he got it, and that was true, too. I didn't in the leastwant to do his odd jobs, even for the ensuing pickings, and I didn'twant to be hail-fellow with him. But I did them and I was, without evenrealising that it was distasteful to me. It was probably the same witheverybody else.
I used to have an idea that I was going to reform him; that one day Ishould make him convert the _Hour_ into an asylum for writers of merit.He used to let me have my own way sometimes--just often enough to keepmy conscience from inconveniencing me. He let me present Lea with anoccasional column and a half; and once he promised me that one day hewould allow me to get the atmosphere of Arthur Edwards, the novelist.
Then there was Churchill and the _Life of Cromwell_ that progressedslowly. The experiment succeeded well enough, as I grew less domineeringand he less embarrassed. Toward the end I seemed to have become afamiliar inmate of his house. I used to go down with him on Saturdayafternoons and we talked things over in the train. It was, to an idlerlike myself, wonderful the way that essential idler's days were cut outand fitted in like the squares of a child's puzzle; little passages ofwork of one kind fitting into quite unrelated passages of somethingelse. He did it well, too, without the remotest semblance of hurry.
I suppose that actually the motive power was his aunt. People used tosay so, but it did not appear on the surface to anyone in close contactwith the man; or it appeared only in very small things. We used to workin a tall, dark, pleasant room, book-lined, and giving on to a lawn thatwas always an asylum for furtive thrushes. Miss Churchill, as a rule,sat half forgotten near the window, with the light falling over hershoulder. She was always very absorbed in papers; seemed to be spendinglaborious days in answering letters, in evolving reports. Occasionallyshe addressed a question to her nephew, occasionally received gueststhat came informally but could not be refused admittance. Once it was asemi-royal personage, once the Duc de Mersch, my reputed employer.
The latter, I remember, was announced when Churchill and I were finallyfinishing our account of the tremendous passing of the Protector. Inthat silent room I had a vivid sense of the vast noise of the storm inthat twilight of the crowning mercy. I seemed to see the candlesa-flicker in the eddies of air forced into the gloomy room; the greatbed and the portentous uncouth form that struggled in the shadows of thehangings. Miss Churchill looked up from the card that had been placed inher hands.
"Edward," she said, "the Duc de Mersch."
Churchill rose irritably from his low seat. "Confound him," he said, "Iwon't see him."
"You can't help it, I think," his aunt said, reflectively; "you willhave to settle it sooner or later."
I know pretty well what it was they had to settle--the Greenland affairthat had hung in the air so long. I knew it from hearsay, from Fox,vaguely enough. Mr. Gurnard was said to recommend it for financialreasons, the Duc to be eager, Churchill to hang back unaccountably. Inever had much head for details of this sort, but people used to explainthem to me--to explain the reasons for de Mersch's eagerness. They wererather shabby, rather incredible reasons, that sounded too reasonable tobe true. He wanted the money for his railways--wanted it very badly. Hewas vastly in want of money, he was this, that, and the other in certaininternational-philanthropic concerns, and had a finger in this, that,and the other pie. There was an "All Round the World Cable Company" thatunited hearts and hands, and a "Pan-European Railway, Exploration, andCivilisation Company" that let in light in dark places, and an"International Housing of the Poor Company," as well as a number ofothers. Somewhere at the bottom of these seemingly bottomless concerns,the Duc de Mersch was said to be moving, and the _Hour_ certainlycontained periodically complimentary allusions to their higherphilanthropy and dividend-earning prospects. But that was as much as Iknew. The same people--people one met in smoking-rooms--said that theTrans-Greenland Railway was the last card of de Mersch. Britishinvestors wouldn't trust the Duc without some sort of guarantee fromthe British Government, and no other investor would trust him on anyterms. England was to guarantee something or other--the interest for anumber of years, I suppose. I didn't believe them, of course--one makesit a practice to believe nothing of the sort. But I recognised that theevening was momentous to somebody--that Mr. Gurnard and the Duc deMersch and Churchill were to discuss something and that I was remotelyinterested because the _Hour_ employed me.
Churchill continued to pace up and down.
"Gurnard dines here to-night," his aunt said.
"Oh, I see." His hands played with some coins in his trouser-pockets. "Isee," he said again, "they've ..."
The occasion impressed me. I remember very well the manner of bothnephew and aunt. They seemed to be suddenly called to come to a decisionthat was no easy one, that they had wished to relegate to an indefinitefuture.
She left Churchill pacing nervously up and down.
"I could go on with something else, if you like," I said.
"But I don't like," he said, energetically; "I'd much rather not seethe man. You know the sort of person he is."
"Why, no," I answered, "I never studied the Almanac de Gotha."
"Oh, I forgot," he said. He seemed vexed with himself.
Churchill's dinners were frequently rather trying to me. Personages ofenormous importance used to drop in--and reveal themselves as ratherasinine. At the best of times they sat dimly opposite to me, discomposedme, and disappeared. Sometimes they stared me down. That night therewere two of them.
Gurnard I had heard of. One can't help hearing of a Chancellor of theExchequer. The books of reference said that he was the son of oneWilliam Gurnard, Esq., of Grimsby; but I remember that once in my club aman who professed to know everything, assured me that W. Gurnard, Esq.(whom he had described as a fish salesman), was only an adoptive father.His rapid rise seemed to me inexplicable till the same man accounted forit with a shrug: "When a man of such ability believes in nothing, andsticks at nothing, there's no saying how far he may go. He has kickedaway every lad
der. He doesn't mean to come down."
This, no doubt, explained much; but not everything in his fabulouscareer. His adherents called him an inspired statesman; his enemies sethim down a mere politician. He was a man of forty-five, thin, slightlybald, and with an icy assurance of manner. He was indifferent to attacksupon his character, but crushed mercilessly every one who menaced hisposition. He stood alone, and a little mysterious; his own party wasafraid of him.
Gurnard was quite hidden from me by table ornaments; the Duc de Merschglowed with light and talked voluminously, as if he had for years andyears been starved of human society. He glowed all over, it seemed tome. He had a glorious beard, that let one see very little of his floridface and took the edge away from an almost non-existent forehead anddepressingly wrinkled eyelids. He spoke excellent English, ratherslowly, as if he were forever replying to toasts to his health. Itstruck me that he seemed to treat Churchill in nuances as an inferior,whilst for the invisible Gurnard, he reserved an attitude of nervousself-assertion. He had apparently come to dilate on the _SystemeGroenlandais_, and he dilated. Some mistaken persons had insinuated thatthe _Systeme_ was neither more nor less than a corporate exploitation ofunhappy Esquimaux. De Mersch emphatically declared that those _mistaken_people were _mistaken_, declared it with official finality. TheEsquimaux were not unhappy. I paid attention to my dinner, and let thediscourse on the affairs of the Hyperborean Protectorate lapse into anunheeded murmur. I tried to be the simple amanuensis at the feast.
Suddenly, however, it struck me that de Mersch was talking at me; thathe had by the merest shade raised his intonation. He was dilating uponthe immense international value of the proposed Trans-Greenland Railway.Its importance to British trade was indisputable; even the oppositionhad no serious arguments to offer. It was the obvious duty of theBritish Government to give the financial guarantee. He would not insistupon the moral aspect of the work--it was unnecessary. Progress,improvement, civilisation, a little less evil in the world--more light!It was our duty not to count the cost of humanising a lower race.Besides, the thing would pay like another Suez Canal. Its terminus andthe British coaling station would be on the west coast of the island....I knew the man was talking at me--I wondered why.
Suddenly he turned his glowing countenance full upon me.
"I think I must have met a member of your family," he said. The solutionoccurred to me. I was a journalist, he a person interested in a railwaythat he wished the Government to back in some way or another. Hisattempts to capture my suffrage no longer astonished me. I murmured:
"Indeed!"
"In Paris--Mrs. Etchingham Granger," he said.
I said, "Oh, yes."
Miss Churchill came to the rescue.
"The Duc de Mersch means our friend, your aunt," she explained. I had anunpleasant sensation. Through fronds of asparagus fern I caught the eyesof Gurnard fixed upon me as though something had drawn his attention. Ireturned his glance, tried to make his face out. It had nothingdistinctive in its half-hidden pallid oval; nothing that one could seizeupon. But it gave the impression of never having seen the light of day,of never having had the sun upon it. But the conviction that I hadaroused his attention disturbed me. What could the man know about me? Iseemed to feel his glance bore through the irises of my eyes into theback of my skull. The feeling was almost physical; it was as if someincredibly concentrant reflector had been turned upon me. Then theeyelids dropped over the metallic rings beneath them. Miss Churchillcontinued to explain.
"She has started a sort of _Salon des Causes Perdues_ in the FaubourgSaint Germain." She was recording the vagaries of my aunt. The Duclaughed.
"Ah, yes," he said, "what a menagerie--Carlists, and Orleanists, andPapal Blacks. I wonder she has not held a bazaar in favour of your WhiteRose League."
"Ah, yes," I echoed, "I have heard that she was mad about the divineright of kings."
Miss Churchill rose, as ladies rise at the end of a dinner. I followedher out of the room, in obedience to some minute signal.
We were on the best of terms--we two. She mothered me, as she motheredeverybody not beneath contempt or above a certain age. I liked herimmensely--the masterful, absorbed, brown lady. As she walked up thestairs, she said, in half apology for withdrawing me.
"They've got things to talk about."
"Why, yes," I answered; "I suppose the railway matter has to besettled." She looked at me fixedly.
"You--you mustn't talk," she warned.
"Oh," I answered, "I'm not indiscreet--not essentially."
The other three were somewhat tardy in making their drawing-roomappearance. I had a sense of them, leaning their heads together over theedges of the table. In the interim a rather fierce political dowagerconvoyed two well-controlled, blond daughters into the room. There was acontinual coming and going of such people in the house; they did withMiss Churchill social business of some kind, arranged electoralraree-shows, and what not; troubled me very little. On this occasionthe blond daughters were types of the sixties' survivals--the type thatunemotionally inspected albums. I was convoying them through a volume ofviews of Switzerland, the dowager was saying to Miss Churchill:
"You think, then, it will be enough if we have...." When the door openedbehind my back. I looked round negligently and hastily returned to theconsideration of a shining photograph of the Dent du Midi. A verygracious figure of a girl was embracing the grim Miss Churchill, as agracious girl should virginally salute a grim veteran.
"Ah, my dear Miss Churchill!" a fluting voice filled the large room, "wewere very nearly going back to Paris without once coming to see you. Weare only over for two days--for the Tenants' Ball, and so my aunt ...but surely that is Arthur...."
I turned eagerly. It was the Dimensionist girl. She continued talking toMiss Churchill. "We meet so seldom, and we are never upon terms," shesaid lightly. "I assure you we are like cat and dog." She came toward meand the blond maidens disappeared, everybody, everything disappeared. Ihad not seen her for nearly a year. I had vaguely gathered from MissChurchill that she was regarded as a sister of mine, that she had, withwealth inherited from a semi-fabulous Australian uncle, revived theglories of my aunt's house. I had never denied it, because I did notwant to interfere with my aunt's attempts to regain some of the family'sprosperity. It even had my sympathy to a small extent, for, after all,the family was my family too.
As a memory my pseudo-sister had been something bright and clear-cut andrather small; seen now, she was something that one could not look at forglow. She moved toward me, smiling and radiant, as a ship moves beneathtowers of shining canvas. I was simply overwhelmed. I don't know whatshe said, what I said, what she did or I. I have an idea that weconversed for some minutes. I remember that she said, at some point,
"Go away now; I want to talk to Mr. Gurnard."
As a matter of fact, Gurnard was making toward her--a deliberate, slowprogress. She greeted him with nonchalance, as, beneath eyes, a womangreets a man she knows intimately. I found myself hating him, thinkingthat he was not the sort of man she ought to know.
"It's settled?" she asked him, as he came within range. He looked at meinquiringly--insolently. She said, "My brother," and he answered:
"Oh, yes," as I moved away. I hated the man and I could not keep my eyesoff him and her. I went and stood against the mantel-piece. The Duc deMersch bore down upon them, and I welcomed his interruption until I sawthat he, too, was intimate with her, intimate with a pomposity offlourishes as irritating as Gurnard's nonchalance.
I stood there and glowered at them. I noted her excessive beauty; heralmost perilous self-possession while she stood talking to those twomen. Of me there was nothing left but the eyes. I had no mind, nothoughts. I saw the three figures go through the attitudes ofconversation--she very animated, de Mersch grotesquely _empresse_,Gurnard undisguisedly saturnine. He repelled me exactly as grosslyvulgar men had the power of doing, but he, himself, was not that--therewas something ... something. I could not quite make out his face, Inever
could. I never did, any more than I could ever quite visualisehers. I wondered vaguely how Churchill could work in harness with such aman, how he could bring himself to be closeted, as he had just been,with him and with a fool like de Mersch--I should have been afraid.
As for de Mersch, standing between those two, he seemed like a countrylout between confederate sharpers. It struck me that she let me see,made me see, that she and Gurnard had an understanding, made manifest tome by glances that passed when the Duc had his unobservant eyes turnedelsewhere.
I saw Churchill, in turn, move desultorily toward them, drawn in, like astraw toward a little whirlpool. I turned my back in a fury of jealousy.