"Where is it to be produced?" "The Parthenon. Good big house."

The Parthenon is one of the largest of the London Music Halls. Gorman's play was, I suppose, to take its place in the usual way between an exhibition of pretty frocks with orchestral accompaniment and an imitation of the Russian dancers.

"I shall be there," I said, "on the first night. You can count on my applause."

It occurred to me after Gorman left me that the revival of his play offered me an excellent opportunity of entertaining the Aschers. Ascher had been exceedingly kind to me in giving me letters of introduction to all the leading bankers in South America. Mrs. Ascher had been steadily friendly to me. I owed them something and had some difficulty about the best way of paying the debt. I did not care to ask them to dinner in my rooms in Clarges Street. My landlord keeps a fairly good cook, and I could, I daresay, have bought some wine which Ascher would have drunk. But I could not have managed any kind of entertainment afterwards. I did not like to give them dinner at a restaurant without taking them on to the theatre; and the Aschers are rather superior to most plays. I had no way of knowing which they would regard as real drama. The revival of Gorman's play solved my difficulty. I knew that Mrs. Ascher regarded him as an artist and that Ascher had the highest respect for his brilliant and paradoxical Irish mind. After luncheon I took a taxi and drove out to Hampstead. I owed a call at the house in any case and, if Mrs. Ascher happened to be at home, I could arrange the whole matter with her in the way that would suit her best.

Mrs. Ascher was at home. She was in the studio, a large bare room at the back of the house. Gorman was with her.

I saw at once that Mrs. Ascher was in a highly emotional condition. I suspected that Gorman had been talking to her about the latest wrong that had been done to Ireland, his Ireland, by the other part of Ireland which neither he nor Mrs. Ascher considered as Ireland at all. On the table in the middle of the room there was a little group on which Mrs. Ascher had been at work earlier in the day. A female figure stood with its right foot on the neck of a very disagreeable beast, something like a pig, but prick-eared and hairy. It had one horn in the middle of its forehead. The female figure was rather well conceived. It was appealing, with a sort of triumphant confidence, to some power above, heaven perhaps. The prick-eared pig looked sulky.

"Emblematic," said Gorman, "symbolical."

"The Irish party," I said, "trampling on Belfast."

"The spirit of poetry in Ireland," said Mrs. Ascher, "defying materialism."

"That," I said, "is a far nicer way of putting it."

I took another look at the spirit of poetry. Mrs. Ascher was evidently beginning to understand Ireland. Instead of being nude, or nearly nude, as spirits generally are, this one was draped from head to foot. In Ireland we are very particular about decency, and we like everything to have on lots of clothes.

"But now," said Mrs. Ascher, tragically, "the brief dream is over. Materialism is triumphant, is armed, is mighty."

I looked at Gorman for some sort of explanation.

"I've just been telling Mrs. Ascher," he said, "about the gun-running at Larne."

"The mailed fist," said Mrs. Ascher, "will beat into the dust the tender shoots of poesy and all high imaginings; will crush the soul of Ireland, and why? Oh, why?"

"Perhaps it won't," I said. "My own idea is that Malcolmson doesn't mean to use those guns aggressively. He'll keep quite quiet unless the soul of poetry in Ireland goes for him in some way."

"We can make no such compromise," said Mrs. Ascher. "Art must be all or nothing, must be utterly triumphant or else perish with uncontaminated soul."

"The exclusion of Ulster from the scope of the Bill," said Gorman, "is the latest proposition; but we won't agree to it."

"Well," I said, "it's your affair, not mine. I mean to stay in London and keep safe; but I warn you that if the spirit of poesy attempts to triumph utterly over Malcolmson he'll shoot at it. I know him and you don't. You think he's a long-eared pig, but that ought to make you all the more careful. Pigs are noted for their obstinacy."

"What we've got to do," said Gorman, "is devise some way of countering this new move. Something picturesque, something that newspapers will splash with big headlines."

I do not think that Mrs. Ascher heard this. She was looking at the upper part of the window with a sort of rapt, Joan of Arc expression of face. I felt that she was meditating lofty things, probably trying to hit on some appropriate form of self-sacrifice.

"I shall go among the people," she said, "your people, my people, for I am spiritually one of them. I shall go from cottage to cottage, from village to village, walking barefooted along the mountain roads, dressed in a peasant woman's petticoat. They will take me for one of themselves and I shall sing war songs to them, the great inspiring chants of the heroes of old. I shall awake them to a sense of their high destiny. I shall set the young men's feet marching, thousands and thousands of them. I shall fill the women's hearts with pride."

Then, for the first and only time since I have known him, Gorman's patience gave way. I do not blame him. The thought of Mrs. Ascher as an Irish peasant, singing street ballads outside public houses, would have upset the temper of Job.

"That's all very well," he said, "but the other people have the guns."

"We must have guns, too," said Mrs. Ascher, "and shining swords and long spears tipped with light. Buy guns."

With a really impressive gesture she dragged the rings from the fingers, first of one hand, then of the other, and flung them on the ground at Gorman's feet. Even when working in her studio Mrs. Ascher wears a great many rings.

"Buy. Buy," she said.

She unclasped the necklace which she wore and flung it down beside the rings. It was a pearl necklace, but not by any means the handsomest pearl necklace she owned.

"More," she said, "you must have more."

She pranced out of the room, stepping high, like an actress taking a part in one of Shakespeare's plays or a well-bred carriage horse.

"Gorman," I said, "you're not going to take her wedding ring, are you? I don't think you ought to. Ascher's really fond of her and I'm sure he wouldn't like it."

"I wish to goodness," said Gorman, "that she wouldn't behave in this wild way. If she wants to subscribe to the party funds why doesn't she write a cheque instead of shying jewellery at me? I should certainly be arrested on suspicion if I went to try and pawn those things. Nobody would believe that she gave them to me."

He picked up the rings as he spoke and laid them in a row on the table.

"If we don't get her stopped," he said, "she'll have everybody laughing at us."

"Laughing at you, Gorman, not at me. I've nothing to do with the poetic soul of Ireland. It's your property."

"The English have no real sense of humour," said Gorman.

"They've got quite enough to see this joke," I said. "An owl would giggle if it saw Mrs. Ascher going barefoot about Ireland and you following her round carrying a long spear tipped with light in your hand."

"We must stop her," said Gorman. "Oh, damn! Here she is again."

Mrs. Ascher came in carrying a large morocco leather covered box, her jewel case, I suppose. She was a little calmer than when she left us but still very determined.

"Take this," she said. "Take all there is in it. I give it gladly—to Ireland."

Gorman looked at the jewel case and then pulled himself together with an effort.

"Mrs. Ascher," he said, "your gift is princely, but——"

"I give it freely," said Mrs. Ascher.

"And I shall receive it," said Gorman, "receive it as the gift of a queen, given with queenly generosity. I shall receive it when the hour comes, but the time is not yet."

Gorman rising to an occasion is a sight which fills me with admiration. That promise of a time to come was masterly. I should never have thought of it; but of course it came more easily to Gorman than it would to me. He is a politician and accustomed to draw cheques on rather distant futures.

"Our people," said Gorman, "are as yet unprepared, not ready to face the crisis of their destiny. Keep these." Gorman laid his hand on the jewel box as if giving it a sort of benediction, consecrating its contents to the service of Ireland. "Keep these as a sacred trust until the hour is upon us."

I very nearly applauded. Mrs. Ascher seemed a little disappointed.

"Why not now?" she said. "Why should we delay any longer?"

"We must trust our leaders," said Gorman. "They will tell us when the time for action comes."

That would have been good enough for any ordinary constituency. It did not satisfy Mrs. Ascher. I saw her looking a little doubtfully at Gorman. She is a curious woman. She uses the very finest kind of language herself; but she always gets suspicious when any one else talks about sacred trusts and things of that kind. The fact is, I suppose, that she means what she says, lives, as well as talks, finely. Gorman and I do not—quite.

I felt that Gorman needed and deserved a little help. He had done well enough so far, but he scarcely understood how near to the edge of Mrs. Ascher's credulity he had gone.

"What Mr. Gorman means," I said, "is that you must have men, organised, you know, and drilled, before you can give them guns. Just at present there are very few volunteers in Mr. Gorman's part of Ireland. He's going to enroll a lot more. When he has them he'll ask you for a subscription for the gun fund."

I did not think that Mrs. Ascher was really satisfied. In the light of subsequent events I found out that she certainly was not. But she said no more at the moment and made no further effort to press her jewel case on Gorman. I did not feel that the moment was a good one for giving her the invitation I had planned. It is impossible, without something like indecency, to invite a woman to dinner in a restaurant while she is meditating a barefooted pilgrimage through the wild places of Holy Ireland.

Gorman and I left the house together. I hired a taxi to take us home so that we could talk comfortably.

"Extraordinary woman," I said.

"Very, very. But don't let's talk about her. That was rather a good idea of yours. May be something in it.

"I didn't know I had an idea," I said. "Are you sure you're not mixing me up with Mrs. Ascher? She has lots."

"Not at all," said Gorman. "It was you who suggested organising the National Volunteers."

There was at that time in Ireland a small number of extreme patriots who rather admired Malcolmson because they thought he was going to fight against England, and despised Gorman because they knew he was not. These men had enrolled themselves in a semi-military organisation and called themselves the National Volunteers. Gorman and his friends did their best to suppress them and kept all mention of their existence out of the English papers as far as possible. It surprised me to hear him speak in a casual way of organising these declared enemies of his.

"You can't do that," I said. "Those fellows hate you like poison, worse than Malcolmson does. They're—well, I should call them rebels. They certainly won't do what you tell them."

"Oh, yes, they will, if treated properly. My idea is to flood the organisation with reliable men, fellows we can trust. When we've got a majority of our own people enrolled we'll tell them to elect their own leaders, democratic idea. Army choosing its own officers. Sure to catch on."

"Sure to, and then?"

"Oh, then they'll elect us. See? Every member of Parliament will be a colonel. We needn't drill or anything; but there's nothing to prevent our saying that we have 200,000 trained men. The Ulster fellows have gone no trumps on their 100,000——"

"I should be inclined to say gone No Home Rule."

Gorman grinned.

"Gone no something," he said, "and we double them. I expect that will set English opinion swinging round again."

"It ought to," I said, "but why bother about all these preliminaries? Why put everybody in Ireland to the trouble of enrolling themselves in a new organisation and electing officers and all that? It's just as easy to say you have 200,000 trained men before being made a colonel as afterwards."

"You don't understand politics," said Gorman. "In politics there must be a foundation of some sort for every fact. It needn't be much of a foundation, but there must be some."

"Hard on the Irish people," I said, "being put to all that trouble and bother just to make a foundation."

"Not at all," said Gorman. "They'll like it. But I hope to goodness that fanatic woman won't insist on our buying guns. It would be the devil and all if the fellows I'm thinking about got guns in their hands. You simply couldn't tell what they'd do. You'll have to try and keep Mrs. Ascher quiet."

"I'm going to ask her to dine with me and go to see your play," I said. "That may distract her mind from guns for a while."

"You use your influence with her," said Gorman. "I've the greatest belief in influence."

He has.



CHAPTER XIV.

That evening I wrote my invitation to the Aschers. They immediately accepted it, expressing the greatest pleasure at the prospect of seeing Gorman's play again.

I arranged to have dinner at the Berkeley and ordered it with some care, avoiding as far as I could the more sumptuous kinds of restaurant food, and drawing on my recollection of the things Ascher used to eat when Gorman ordered his dinner for him on the Cunard steamer. With the help of the head waiter I chose a couple of wines and hoped that Ascher would drink them. As it turned out he preferred Perrier water. But that was not my fault. No restaurant in London could have supplied the delicate Italian white wines which Ascher drinks in his own house.

We dawdled over dinner and I lengthened the business out as well as I could by smoking three cigarettes afterwards, very slowly. I did not want to reach the Parthenon in time for the musical display of new frocks. I could not suppose that Ascher was interested in seeing a number of young women parading along a platform through the middle of the theatre even though they wore the latest creations of Paris fancy in silks and lingerie. I knew that Mrs. Ascher would feel it her duty to make some sort of protest against the music of the orchestra.

Gorman had told me the hour at which his play might be expected to begin and my object was to hit off the time exactly. Unfortunately I miscalculated and got to the theatre too soon. The last of the young women was waving a well-formed leg at the audience as we entered the box I had engaged. I realised that we should have to sit through a whole tune from the orchestra before the curtain went up again for Gorman's play. I expected trouble and was pleasantly surprised when none came. Mrs. Ascher had a cold. I daresay that made her slightly deaf and mitigated the torture of the music.

She sat forward in the box and looked round at the audience with some show of interest. The audience looked at her with very great interest. Her clothes that night were more startling than any I have ever seen her wear. A young man in the stalls stared at her for some time, and then, just when I thought he had fully taken her in, bowed to her. She turned to Ascher.

"Who is that?" she said. "The man in the fifth row, three seats from the end, yes, there. He has a lady with him."

I saw the man distinctly, a well-set-up young fellow with a carefully waxed, fair moustache. The way his hair was brushed and something about the cut of his clothes made me sure that he was not an Englishman. The lady with him was, quite obviously, not a lady in the old-fashioned sense of the word. She seemed to me the kind of woman who would have no scruples about forming a temporary friendship with a man provided he would give her dinner, wine, and some sort of entertainment.

Ascher fumbled for his pince-nez, which he carries attached to a black silk ribbon. He fixed them on his nose and took a good look at the young man.

"Ah," he said, "my nephew, Albrecht von Richter. You remember him. He dined with us two or three times when we were in Berlin in 1912. I did not know he was in London."

I somehow got the impression that Ascher was not particularly pleased to see his nephew Albrecht. Ascher was not looking very well. I had not seen him for some time, and I noticed even at dinner that his face was pale and drawn. In the theatre he seemed worse and I thought that the sudden appearance of his nephew had annoyed him. The young man whispered something to his companion and left his seat. The orchestra was still thrashing its way through its tune and there seemed no immediate prospect of the curtain going up.

A few minutes later there was a tap at the door of our box and Von Richter came in. Mrs. Ascher held out her hand to him. He bent over it and kissed it with very pretty courtesy. He shook hands with Ascher who introduced him to me.

"Captain von Richter—Sir James Digby."

Von Richter bowed profoundly. I nodded.

"Have you been long in London?" said Ascher. "You did not let me know that you were here."

"I arrived here this afternoon," said Von Richter, "only this afternoon, at five o'clock."

He spoke English remarkably well, with no more than a trace of foreign accent.

"I've been in Ireland," he said, "for six weeks."

"Indeed!" said Ascher. "In Ireland?"

He was looking at his nephew without any expression of surprise, apparently without any suggestion of inquiry; but I could not help noticing that his fingers were fidgeting with the ribbon of his pince-nez. Ascher, as a rule, does not fidget. He has his nerves well under control.

Mrs. Ascher was frankly excited when she heard that Von Richter had been in Ireland.

"Tell me," she said, "all about Ireland. About the people, what they are saying and thinking."

"We are all," I said, "tremendously interested in Irish politics at present."

"Alas!" said Von Richter, "and I can tell you nothing. My business was dull. I saw very little. I was in Dublin and Belfast, not in the picturesque and beautiful parts of that charming country. I was buying horses. Oh, there is no secret about it. I was buying horses for my Government."

It is certainly possible to buy horses in Dublin and Belfast; but I was slightly surprised to hear that Von Richter had not been further afield. Any one who understood horse-buying in Ireland would have gone west to County Galway or south to County Cork.

The band showed signs of getting to the end of its tune. Von Richter laid his hand on the door of the box.

"Shall I see you to-morrow?" said Ascher.

"Unfortunately," said Von Richter, "I leave London early to-morrow morning. Back to Berlin and the drill yard." He kissed Mrs. Ascher's hand again. "We poor soldiers have to work hard."

"Perhaps," I said, "you can join us at the Carlton after the play. Mr. and Mrs. Ascher have promised to have supper there with me. If you are not engaged———?"

I glanced at the lady in the stalls. I was not going to ask her to supper.

"I shall be delighted," said Von Richter. "I have no engagement of any importance."

The lady in the stalls was evidently the sort of lady who could be dismissed without trouble.

"Good," I said, "we leave directly this play is over; but you may want to see the rest of the performance. The dancing is good I am told. Join us at the Carlton as soon as you're tired of this entertainment."

Von Richter slipped away. The curtain went up almost immediately.

Gorman came in to receive our congratulations as soon as his play was over. I asked him to join our supper party but he had an engagement of his own, a supper at the Savoy. I do not blame him. The lady who acted the principle part in his play had been very charming. She deserved any supper that Gorman could give her.

We reached the Carlton very early, long before the rush of supper parties began. Von Richter joined us as we sat down at the table. He was an intelligent, agreeable young man with plenty of tact. He listened and was apparently interested while Mrs. Ascher poured out her hopes and fears for Ireland's future. When she came, as she did in the end, to her own plan of buying guns for the Nationalist Volunteers Von Richter became almost enthusiastic.

"You Americans," he said. "You are always on-the side of the oppressed. Alone among the nations of the earth you have a pat for the head of the bottom dog."

Von Richter's English is not only correct, it is highly idiomatic. Mrs. Ascher bridled with pleasure. It pleased her to think that she was patting the bottom dog's head. I did not remind her that in the group which she had just modelled the Spirit of Irish Poetry, for whose benefit she intended to buy guns, had got its foot firmly planted on the pig. That animal—and I still believed it to represent Belfast—was the one which a tender-hearted American ought to have patted.

"Perhaps I may be able to assist you," said Von Richter, "I know something of rifles. That is my trade, you know. If I can be of any help—there is a firm in Hamburg——"

He was glancing at Ascher as he spoke. He wondered, I suppose, how far Ascher was committed to the scheme of arming Gorman's constituents. But Ascher did not appear to be listening to him. He had allowed me to pour out some champagne for him and sat fingering the stem of his glass without drinking.

No one was eating or drinking much. I proposed that we should leave the supper room and have our coffee in the hall outside. I felt slightly uncomfortable at the turn the conversation was taking. Mrs. Ascher was very much in earnest about Ireland. Von Richter, I suppose, really knew where to buy guns. I entirely agreed with Gorman that the distribution of firearms in Ireland was a most undesirable thing.

"I always think," I said, "that one of the things to do in London is to watch the people going in and out of the supper room here. There is nothing quite like it anywhere in the world. It is the best example there is of the pride of life, 'superbia vitae.' I forget the Greek words at the moment; but a bishop whom I happen to know once told me that they mean the exultation of living. You know the sort of thing—gems and glitter, colour, scent, beauty, stateliness, strength. 'The pride of heraldry, the pomp of power.'"

I made way for Mrs. Ascher and followed her as she moved among the tables towards the staircase at the end of the room. Von Richter hooked his arm in Ascher's and spoke a few sentences to him rapidly in German. He spoke without making any attempt to lower his voice. He evidently did not think it likely that any one within earshot, except Ascher, would understand German. We reached the hall and secured comfortable seats, from which we could watch the long procession of men and women which was already beginning to stream towards the supper room. I ordered coffee, brandy and tobacco, cigars for Von Richter and myself, a box of cigarettes for Mrs. Ascher. Ascher refused to smoke and did not touch his brandy.

Our little party divided itself into halves. I do not know how it happened but Von Richter managed to get himself placed beside Mrs. Ascher in such a way that his back was partly turned to me. General conversation became impossible. Von Richter and Mrs. Ascher talked to each other eagerly and somehow seemed to get further away from Ascher and me. They were still discussing the landing of guns in Ireland, in Connaught, I think. After a while I could no longer hear what they said. Ascher began to talk to me.

A party, two young women and one older one with three men behind them, passed us and ascended the staircase to the supper room.

"There is something very fine," said Ascher, "about the insolence of well-bred Englishwomen. You see how they walk and how they look, straight in front of them. It is not an easy thing to walk well across a long brightly lighted space with many eyes watching." I am not sure that I like Ascher's word "insolence." I recognise the quality which he intended to describe, which is, I think, the peculiar possession of English women of a certain class; but I should not call it insolence.

Another party fluttered past us, a man and a woman.

"There," said Ascher, "is a French woman. She is Madame de Berthier, the wife of one of the Ministers in the last Government, a very prominent woman in Paris. I know her pretty well, but even if I did not know her I should recognise her as French. You see that she is conscious all the time that she is a woman and therefore that men's eyes are on her. She does not escape from that consciousness. If a German lady were to pass us we should see that she also is sex conscious; but she would be aware that she is only a woman, the inferior of the men with her. The Englishwoman does not admit, does not feel, that she has any superiors and she can walk as if she did not care whether people looked at her and admired her or not. Even the American woman cannot or does not do that. She wants to please and is always trying to please. The Englishwoman is not indifferent to admiration and she tries to please if she thinks it worth while. But she has learnt to bear herself as if she does not care; as if the world and all that is in it were hers of right."

Two men—one of them almost forty years of age, the other much younger—walked slowly up the hall looking to right and left of them. They failed to find the friends whom they sought. The elder spoke a few words and they sat down opposite to us, probably to wait until the rest of their party should arrive. "The men of your English upper classes," said Ascher, "are physically very splendid, the sons of the women we have been looking at are sure to be that. They possess a curious code of honour, very limited, very irrational, but certainly very fine as far as it goes. And I think they are probably true to it."

"I should have said," I replied, "that the idea of honour had almost disappeared, what used to be called the honour of a gentleman."

"You do not really think that," said Ascher. "Or perhaps you may. In a certain sense honour has disappeared among your upper classes. It is no longer displayed. To the outsider it is scarcely noticeable. It is covered up by affectation of cynicism, of greed, of selfishness. To pose as cynical and selfish is for the moment fashionable. But the sense of honour—of that singular arbitrary English honour—is behind the pose, is the reality. Look at those two men opposite us. They are probably—but perhaps I offend you in talking this way. You yourself belong to the same class as those men."

"You do not offend me in the least," I said. "I'm not an Englishman for one thing. Gorman won't let me call myself Irish, but I stick to it that I'm not English. Please go on with what you were saying."

"Those men," said Ascher slowly, "are probably self indulgent. Their morality—sex morality—is most likely very low. We may suppose that they have many prejudices and very few ideas. They—I do not know those two personally. I take them simply as types of their class. They are wholly indifferent to, even a little contemptuous of art and literature. But if it happened that a duty claimed them, a duty which they recognised, they would not fail to obey the call. I can believe for instance that they would fight, would suffer the incredible hardships of a soldier's life, would endure pain and would die, without any heroics or fuss or shouting. Men of my class and my training could not do those things without great effort. Those men would do them simply, naturally."

"Ascher," I said, "I have a confession to make to you. I understand German. I happen to know the language, learned it as a boy." Ascher looked at me curiously for a moment. I do not think that he was much surprised at what I said or that my confession made him uneasy.

"Ah! You are thinking of what my nephew said to me as we left the supper room. You heard?"

"Yes," I said, "I felt like an eavesdropper, but I couldn't help myself. He spoke quite loudly."

"And you understood?"

As a matter of fact I had not understood at the moment. Von Richter said very little, and what little he said concerned Ascher's business and had nothing to do with me. He told Ascher to move very cautiously, to risk as little as possible, to keep the money of his firm within reach for a few months. That, as well as I can remember, was all he said; but he repeated it. "Your money should be realisable at a moment's notice."

"You understood?" said Ascher, patiently persistent.

"I don't understand yet," I said, "but what you have just said about Englishmen being capable of fighting has put thoughts into my mind. Did Captain von Richter mean——?"

"He meant to warn me," said Ascher, "that what I have always looked forward to with horror and dread is imminent—a great war. You remember a talk we had long ago in New York; the night we were at the circus and saw the trapeze swingers. Well, if my nephew is right, the whole delicate balance of that performance is going to be upset. There will be a crash, inevitably."

"And you?"

Ascher smiled faintly.

"For me as well as for the others," he said. "The fact that my affairs are greater than those of most men will only make my fall the worse."

"But you have been warned in time."

"I scarcely needed the warning. I was aware of the danger. My nephew only told me what I knew. His warning, coming from him, an officer who stands high in the German military service—it confirms my fears, no more."

"But you can save yourself and your business," I said. "Knowing what is before you, you can—you need not lend money, accept obligations. You can gradually draw out of the stream of credit in which your fortune is involved, get into a backwater for a while. You have time enough. I am expressing myself all wrong; but you know what I mean."

"I know. And you think I ought to do that?"

"There is no 'ought' about it," I said. "It is the natural thing to do."

"You were a soldier once. I think you told me so."

I nodded.

"Suppose," said Ascher, "that this warning had come to you then, while you were still a soldier. Suppose that you had known what your brother officers did not know, or the men under you, that war was coming, you would have resigned your commission. Is it so?"

"No," I said, "I shouldn't."

"It would have been, from my point of view—for I am a coward—it would have been the natural thing to do."

"It wouldn't have been natural to me," I said. "I couldn't have done it. I don't know why, but I couldn't. I'm not professing to be particularly brave or chivalrous or anything of that sort. But to resign under those circumstances——! Well, one doesn't do it."

"Nor do I know why," said Ascher, "but I cannot do it either. It is, you see, the same thing. I must, of course, go on; just as you would have felt yourself obliged to go on. The warning makes no difference."

The idea that a banker feels about his business as a soldier does about his profession was new to me. But I understood more or less what Ascher meant. If he had that kind of sense of obligation there was clearly no more to be said about the point.

"And England?" I said. "Is she to be in it?"

"Who knows? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I hope not. The disaster will be far less terrible if England is able to remain at peace."

"Tell me this," I said, "or if I am impertinent, say so, and I shall not ask again. What was Captain von Richter doing in Ireland?"

"I do not know. I can only guess."

"Not buying horses?"

"I do not suppose he went there to buy horses though he may have bought some. He went to see, to learn, to understand. That is what I guess. I do not know."

"He has probably made up his mind," I said, "that in the course of the next couple of months England will find herself with her hands full, so full with Irish affairs that it will be impossible for her to act elsewhere. A civil war in Ireland——"

"My nephew," said Ascher, "is not very clever. He may think that. He is, I believe, an excellent soldier. But if he were a banker I should not employ him to find out things for me. I should not rely on the reports he brought me. He lacks intelligence. Very likely he believes what you have said."

"But you don't?"

"No. I do not. I do not believe that Irish affairs will be in such a state that they will determine England's action. You see I have the privilege of knowing Gorman."

"You don't know Malcolmson," I said, "and he's a most important factor in the problem. He's like your nephew, an excellent soldier, but lacking in intelligence. You don't realise what Malcolmson is capable of."

"I do not know Colonel Malcolmson personally," said Ascher. "I am right, am I not, in styling him Colonel Malcolmson?"

"Yes. He retired some years ago as Colonel of my old regiment"

"Does a man retire from his loyalty," said Ascher, "when he retires from his regiment? Will your friend give up his honour because he has given up his command? Will he aid the enemies of England?"

"Of course," I said, "if you put it to Malcolmson in that way—— He's a positive fanatic on the subject of loyalty. But he doesn't know, he doesn't understand. He hasn't had the warning that your nephew has just given you."

"You are an Irishman," said Ascher, "and you ought to know your countrymen better than I do. But it will surprise me very much if England finds herself hampered by Ireland when the crisis comes."

It was Von Richter who broke up our party. He pleaded the necessity for early rising next morning as his excuse for going away before the hour at which the law obliges people to stop eating supper in restaurants. I wondered whether he and Mrs. Ascher had made a satisfactory plan for running guns into Galway. According to Ascher it did not make much difference whether the Irish peasants had rifles in their hands or not. It was soothing, though humbling, to feel that, guns or no guns, Volunteers or no Volunteers, Ireland would not matter in the least.



CHAPTER XV.

Gorman's play achieved a second success. The Parthenon was crammed every night, and it was the play, not the pretty dresses or the dancing, which filled the house. Gorman made money, considerable sums of money. I know this because he called on me one morning in the middle of July and told me so. He did more. He offered me a very substantial and quite unanswerable proof that he felt rich.

"If you don't mind," he said, "I'd like to pay you whatever you've spent on this new invention of Tim's."

"I haven't spent anything," I said. "I've invested a little. I believe in Tim's new cinematograph. I expect to get back every penny I've advanced to him and more."

This did not satisfy Gorman. He got out his cheque book and a fountain pen.

"There was the hundred pounds you gave him to buy looking glasses," he said. "You didn't give him more than that, did you?"

"Not so much," I said. "The bill for those mirrors was only L98-7-6; and I made the man knock off the seven and sixpence as discount for cash. I'm learning to be a business man by degrees."

Gorman wrote down L98 on the cover of his cheque book.

"And the hire of the hall?" he said. "What will that come to?"

I had hired a small hall for the exhibition of Tim's moving picture ghosts. I had invited about a hundred people to witness the show. Gorman himself, a brother of the inventor, had promised to preside over the gathering and to make a few introductory remarks on the progress of science or anything else that occurred to him as appropriate to such an occasion. But I could not possibly allow him to pay for the entertainment.

"My dear Gorman," I said, "it's my party. The people are my friends. At least some of them are. The invitations have gone out in my name. You might just as well propose to pay for the tea I mean to offer them to drink as for the hire of the room in which I am going to receive them."

"Will L150 cover the whole show?" said Gorman.

"If you insist on heaping insults on my head," I said, "I shall retire into a nursing home and cancel all the invitations."

"You're an obstinate man," said Gorman.

"Very. In matters of this kind."

"All the same," said Gorman, "I'll get rid of that money. I don't consider it's mine. I ought to have paid for Tim, and I would, only that I hadn't a penny at the time."

"If you like to give L150 to a charity," I said, "that's your affair."

"That," said Gorman, "would be waste. I rather think I'll give a party myself."

He slipped his cheque book back into his pocket.

"Invite me to meet the lady who acts in your play," I said.

"Miss Gibson?" said Gorman. "Right. Who else shall we have?"

"Why have anybody else?"

"There are difficulties," said Gorman, "about the rest of the party. You wouldn't care to meet my friends."

"Oh, yes, I would."

"No, you wouldn't. I know you. You don't consider Irish Nationalists fit to associate with. We're not respectable."

That was putting it too strongly; but it is a fact that I do not know, or particularly want to know, any of Gorman's political associates.

"And your friends," said Gorman, "wouldn't know me."

Again Gorman was guilty of over-statement; but my friends are, for the most part, of conservative and slightly military tastes. They would not get on well with Gorman.

"I'll think it over," said Gorman, "and let you know."

Two days later I got my invitation. Gorman, in the excitement of sudden great possessions, had devised an expensive kind of party. The invited guests were Mr. and Mrs. Ascher, Miss Gibson, Tim and myself. We were to voyage off from Southampton in a motor yacht, hired by Gorman, to see the Naval Review at Spithead. We were to start at ten o'clock from Waterloo station in a saloon carriage reserved for our party.

"We have to be back in time for Miss Gibson to go to the theatre," Gorman wrote, "so we must start early. I believe the show is to be worth seeing. British Navy at its best. King there. Royal salutes from Dreadnoughts. Rank, fashion and beauty in abundance."

The week was to be one of exciting festivities. Gorman had fixed his party for the day before my exhibition of Tim's new invention.

I was shaving—shortly after eight o'clock on the morning of Gorman's party—when my servant came into my room.

"I beg pardon, sir," he said, "but there's a young man waiting in the hall, says that he wants to see you."

It seemed odd that any one should want to see me at that hour.

"Who is he?" I said.

"Don't know, sir. Gives his name as Gorman. But he's not our Mr. Gorman."

"It may be Tim," I said. "Does he look as if he had an artistic soul?"

"Couldn't say, sir. Might have, sir. Artists is very various. Doesn't seem to me, sir, as if his man looked after his clothes proper."

"Must be Tim," I said. "Show him in."

"In here, sir?"

"Yes. And have an extra kidney cooked for breakfast."

Tim came in very shyly and sat down on a chair near the door. He certainly did not look as if his clothes had been properly cared for. He was wearing the blue suit which I suspected was the best he owned. It was even more crumpled and worse creased than when I saw it down in Hertfordshire.

"I hope you don't mind my coming here," he said. "I didn't like to go to Mr. Ascher, and I was afraid to go to Michael. He'd have been angry with me."

"Has anything gone wrong with your apparatus? Smashed a mirror?"

Tim brightened up at the mention of his apparatus.

"Oh, no," he said. "That's all right. In fact I've been able to improve it greatly. You remember the trouble I had with the refraction from the second prism. The adjustment of the angles—— The way the light fell——"

I could not, especially before breakfast, argue about prisms.

"If your machinery's all right," I said, "what's the matter with you?"

"It's this party of Michael's," he said. "I forgot all about it till yesterday afternoon."

"Well, you remembered it then. If you'd forgotten it till this afternoon it would have been a much more serious matter."

"But," said Tim, "Michael told me to get some new clothes. He said he'd pay for them, which was very kind of him. But when I got up to London the shops were shut. I hurried as much as I could, but there were one or two things I had to do before I started. And now I'm afraid Michael will be angry. He said most particularly that I must be well dressed because there are ladies coming."

"Stand up," I said, "and let me have a look at you."

Poor Tim stood up, looking as if he expected me to box his ears. There was no disguising the fact that his costume fell some way short of the standard maintained by Cowes yachtsmen.

Tim surveyed himself with a rueful air. He was certainly aware of the condition of his clothes.

"If I could even have got a ready made suit," he said, "it might have fitted. But I couldn't do that. I didn't get to London till nearly ten o'clock. There was a train at four. I wish now that I'd caught it. It was only a few minutes after three when I remembered about the party and I might have caught that train. But I didn't want to leave just then. There were some things that I had to do. Perhaps now I'd better not go to the party. Michael will be angry if I don't; but I expect he'll be angrier if I go in these clothes. I think I'd better not go at all."

He looked at me wistfully. He was hoping, I am sure, that I might decide that he was too disreputable to appear.

"No," I said, "you can't get out of it that way. You'll have to come."

"But can I? You know better than I do. I did brush my trousers a lot this morning—really. I brushed them for quite half an hour; but there are some mark——"

He held out his right leg and looked at it hopelessly.

"Stains, I suppose," he said.

"You'd be better," I said, "if you had a tie."

Tim put his hand up to his neck and felt about helplessly.

"I must have forgotten to put it on," he said. "I have one, I know. But it's very hard to remember ties. They are such small things."

"Take one of mine," I said, "and put it on before you forget again."

"Anything else?" said Tim.

"I don't think," I said, "that there's anything else we can do. My clothes wouldn't fit you. I might lend you a pair of boots but I doubt if you'd get them on. I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll get yours cleaned. Take them off."

I do not think that my servant liked cleaning Tim's boots. But he did it and I daresay it was good for him.

I was a little anxious about the meeting between Mrs. Ascher and Tim. When they parted in New York she was deeply vexed with him and I could not think it likely that a woman as devout as she is would readily forgive a man who had been guilty of blasphemy. On the other hand she had very graciously accepted my invitation to be present when the new invention was shown off. She might, of course, only wish to hear the other Gorman making a speech; but she might have forgotten Tim's offence, or changed her mind about its heinousness. In any case Tim's clothes would make no difference to her. Miss Gibson might think less of him for being shabby. But Mrs. Ascher was quite likely to prefer him in rags. Many people regard unkemptness as a sign of genius; which is, I daresay, the reason why poets seldom wash their necks.

I need not have troubled myself about the matter. Mrs. Ascher took no notice of Tim. She was sitting in the saloon carriage when we reached the station and was surrounded with newspapers. She greeted me with effusion.

"Isn't it glorious?" she said. "Splendid. We have shown them that we too can do daring things, even the sort of things in which they take a special pride. The practical things which the world boasts of, which we artists are not supposed to be able to do at all."

"I haven't seen a paper this morning," I said. "Has any one assassinated the Prime Minister?"

"Look!" she said.

She held out one of the newspapers towards me. I did not have to take it in my hand to see the news. I could have read the headlines from the far side of the platform.

"Steam yacht lands guns on Galway Coast. National Volunteers muster to receive Arms. Coastguards Paralysed. Police Helpless. Crushing Reply to Ulster Lawlessness."

That, of course, was a Liberal paper. There was a Unionist paper open on the floor at my feet. Its statement of the facts was almost identical; but its interpretation was different Instead of regarding the incident as a lesson in loyalty to Malcolmson it said:

"Act of Rebellion in Connaught. Civil War Breaks Out."

"In the broad light of day," said Mrs. Ascher, "at noon. Without an attempt at concealment. Now, now at last, Ireland has asserted herself, has shown that the idealism of the artist is a match for the sordid materialism of the worshippers of efficiency."

I looked round for Gorman. I wanted to see how he was taking the news. He was on the platform, talking seriously, I fear sternly, to Tim; no doubt about his clothes. Ascher was standing near them; but was not, I think, listening to Gorman. He had the air of patient politeness which is common with him on pleasure parties and excursions of all kinds.

"I can't help hoping," I said, "that they haven't got any ammunition. It sounds an unkind thing to say, but—I'm not much of a patriot, I know, but I've just enough love of country in me to dislike the idea of Irishmen shooting each other."

"Oh," said Mrs. Ascher, "there would be no risk of that if—if men like you—the natural leaders—would place yourselves at the head of the people. Think—think——"

I did think. The more I thought the less inclined I felt to agree with Mrs. Ascher. It seemed to me that if I took to paralysing coastguards and reducing policemen to helplessness there would be considerably more risk of shooting than if I stayed quietly in London. The proper leaders of the people—proper though perhaps not natural—are the politicians. The only risk of real trouble in Ireland rose from the fact that men like Malcolmson—natural leaders—had done what Mrs. Ascher wanted me to do, put themselves at the head of the people. If they had been content to leave the question of Home Rule to the politicians it could have been settled quietly. Gorman, for instance, has an instinct for stopping in time. Malcolm-son and men like him confuse games with real affairs. I might turn out to be just as bad as Malcolmson if I took to placing myself at the head of the people. Besides I do not like the people.

Gorman came in with Miss Gibson and I was introduced to her. She seemed a nice, quiet little girl, and smiled rather shyly as we shook hands. She sat down beside Mrs. Ascher and refused the cigarette which was offered her. She did not in the least correspond to my idea of what a leading lady in a popular play should be. However I had not much opportunity just then of forming an opinion of her. Gorman, having settled the two ladies, took Ascher and me to the far end of the carriage. The train started.

"That's a damned silly performance," said Gorman, "landing those guns in Galway."

"I should have thought," I said, "that you'd have been pleased. You were talking to me the other day about the necessity for pulling off some coup of a striking and theatrical kind by way of diverting the sympathy of the English people from Ulster."

"But this," said Gorman, "is a totally different thing. I happen to know what I'm talking about. The fellows who've got these guns are wild, irresponsible, unpractical fools. They've been giving us trouble for years, far more trouble than all the Unionist party put together. They don't understand politics in the least. They've no sense. They're like—like——" he looked round for some comparison, "in some ways they're rather like Tim."

"Dreamers," I said.

"Exactly," said Gorman. "They ought to be writing poetry."

"Lofty souls," I said, "idealists. Just exactly what Mrs. Ascher thinks you are."

"Take the case of Tim," said Gorman. "You'll hardly believe it but—just look at his clothes, will you?"

Tim was standing by himself in the middle of the carriage. He looked forlorn. He was too shy, I imagine, to sit down beside Mrs. Ascher or Miss Gibson, and too much afraid of his brother to join our group. We had every opportunity of studying his clothes.

"And I told him to buy a new suit," said Gorman.

"That," I said, "is just the kind of man that Mrs. Ascher believes in. She was saying to me a few minutes ago that there is nothing more sordid and detestable than the worship of efficiency in practical matters."

The mention of Mrs. Ascher's name recalled Gorman to a sense of his duties as a host. The two ladies were not getting on very well together. I imagine that Mrs. Ascher was too much excited by her Irish news to care for talking about the Naval Review we were going to see, and that was a topic which would inevitably suggest itself to Miss Gibson. Miss Gibson, though anxious to be polite, was not likely to know or care anything about Ireland. Gorman left us and joined them.

"Well," I said to Ascher, "what do you think of this performance in Galway?"

"Have you read the newspapers?" he said.

"The headlines," I replied. "I couldn't very well help reading them."

Ascher stepped across the carriage and picked up one of the papers from the floor. It was the one which declared that civil war had broken out in Ireland.

"I wish," he said, "that I knew exactly the measure of my nephew's intelligence."

"Captain von Richter?" I said.

"Yes. He may—almost anything is possible with a man like him. He may believe that."

Ascher pointed to the words, "Civil War."

"I don't think you need worry about that," I said. "Whatever Malcolmson and his lot may do those fellows in Galway won't fight. Gorman and the priests will stop them. You can always count on the politicians and the priests. They'll prevent anything really serious. The Connaught Celt will never start a civil war; at least not unless he gives up his religion and takes to hanging Members of Parliament. He's a splendid fighting man—none better—but he won't run the risk of losing his soul for the sake of a battle. He must be told he ought to fight by some one whose authority he recognises. That's where we're safe. All the authorities are against violence."

"I have no doubt you are right," said Ascher. "No civil war will be started in the way these papers suggest. I am not anxious about that. It is impossible. But I am anxious lest it should be believed possible by men who do not understand. My nephew, for instance. He will not know what you know. He may believe—and those over him in Berlin—they will not understand. They may think that the men in Ireland who have got the guns will use them. They may even have had something to do with supplying the guns. That is where the danger lies. A miscalculation—not in Ireland—but elsewhere."

I did not like to ask whether Mrs. Ascher's enthusiasm for the cause of Ireland had led her to finance the Galway gun-running. Nor did I care to question Ascher about his suggestion that Von Richter had something to do with buying and shipping that cargo or the other which was landed at Larne. Ascher seemed disinclined to discuss the matter further. We joined Gorman and the two ladies at the far end of the carriage, picking up Tim on our way.

Gorman was sitting beside Miss Gibson. He was leaning forward, pointing with outstretched hand to the country through which the train was passing.

"This is the playground of England," he said. "Here the rich and idle build themselves beautiful houses, plant delightful gardens, live surrounded by a parasitic class, servants, ministers to luxury; try to shut out, succeed to a great extent in shutting out all sense and memory of real things, of that England where the world's work is done, the England which lies in the smoky hinterland." He waved his hand with a comprehensive gesture towards the north. "Far from all the prettinesses of glorified villadom."

"I do think," said Miss Gibson, "that Surrey and Hampshire are sweetly pretty."

Miss Gibson may be regarded, I suppose, as one of England's toys. It was only natural that she should appreciate the playground. It was, so she thought, a district very well suited to the enjoyment of life. She told us how she had driven, in the motor of a wealthy member of Parliament, through the New Forest. From time to time she had spent week-ends at various well-appointed villas in different parts of the South of England, and, as a nice-minded young woman should, had enjoyed these holidays of hers. She frankly preferred the playground to that other, more "real" England which Gorman contrasted with it, the England of the midlands, where the toilers dwelt, in an atmosphere thick with smuts.

Mrs. Ascher, of course, took quite a different view. It filled her with sadness to think that a small number of people should play amid beautiful surroundings while a great number—she dwelt particularly on the case of women who made chains—should live hard lives in hideous places. Mrs. Ascher is more emotional than intellectual. The necessity for consistency in a philosophy of life troubles her very little. As a devout worshipper of art she ought to have realised that her goddess can only be fitly honoured by people wealthy enough to buy leisure, that the toiling millions want bread much more than they want beauty. I have no quarrel with the description of the life of Birmingham as more "real"—both Gorman and Mrs. Ascher kept using the word—than the life of the Isle of Wight. Nor should I want to argue with any one who said that beauty and art are the only true realities, and that the struggle of the manufacturing classes for wealth is a striving after wind. But I felt slightly irritated with Mrs. Ascher for not seeing that she cannot have it both ways.

Gorman, of course, was simply trying to be agreeable. I pointed out—when I succeeded in seizing a place in the conversation—that if Gorman's theory were applied to Ireland Belfast would come out as a reality while Cork, Limerick, and other places like them would be as despicable as Dorsetshire.

"Wicklow," I said, "is the playground of Ireland, and it returns nothing but Nationalist members to Parliament. You ought not to go back on your own side, Gorman."

Mrs. Ascher shuddered at the mention of Belfast and would not admit that it could be as "real" as Manchester or Leeds.

Miss Gibson broke in with a reminiscence of her own. She told us that she had been in Belfast once with a touring company, and thought it was duller on Sunday than any other city in the British Isles.

Gorman, after winking at me, appealed to Ascher on the subject of Belfast's prosperity. In his opinion the apparent wealth of that city is built up on an insecure foundation of credit. There is no solidity about it The farmers of the south and west of Ireland, on the other hand, have real wealth, actual savings, stored up in the Post Office Banks, or placed on deposit, in other banks, or hoarded in stockings.

Ascher was most unwilling to join in the discussion. He noticed, as I did, that Miss Gibson's attention was wandering. In the end, goaded by Gorman, he said that some one ought to teach the Irish farmers to invest their savings in high class international stocks and bonds. He added that L1 notes kept in drawers and desks are not wealth but merely frozen potentialities of credit.

After that, conversation, as might be expected, became impossible for some time, although Ascher apologised humbly.

Gorman restored us to cheerfulness by opening a parcel and handing round two enormous boxes of chocolates. One box was settled on the seat between Miss Gibson and Tim. They ate with healthy appetites and obvious delight. When we reached Southampton that box was nearly empty and neither of them seemed any the worse. The other box lay on Mrs. Ascher's knee. She and I and Gorman did our best, but we did not get through the top layer. Ascher only took one small chocolate and, when he thought no one was looking, dropped it out of the window.

The motor yacht which Gorman had hired for us turned out to be a swift and well-found ship with a small cabin and possibilities of comfort in a large cockpit aft. We sped down Southampton Water, one of a whole fleet of pleasure vessels large and small. A racing cutter stooped under the pressure of a fresh westerly breeze, to leeward of us. We slipped close past a little brown sailed yawl, steered by a man in white flannels. Two laughing girls in bright red caps sat on the coachroof cabin top. An arrogant white steam yacht, flying the ensign of the Royal Yacht Squadron, sliced her silent way through the water behind us. Shabby boats with stained, discoloured sails and chipped paint bore large parties seaward. The stiff front of Netley Hospital shone white in the sun. The conical buoy at the entrance of Hamley river bent its head shorewards as the strong tide swept past it. From the low point beneath Calshott Castle a flying machine rose suddenly, circled round in a wide sweep and then sped swiftly eastwards towards Spit-head. In the roads off Cowes we could discern many yachts at anchor. One of the Hamburg-American lines crept cautiously up the Solent. A belated cruiser, four-funneled, black and grim, on her way to join the Fleet, followed the huge German steamer. The waters of the Solent tumbled in irregular white-topped waves, tide and wind opposed to each other, struggling for mastery.

Gorman hauled luncheon baskets from the cabin. He set Tim and me to open them. The look of a ham which Tim thoughtlessly asked her to hold while he unpacked the dish belonging to it, finished Mrs. Ascher. Our boat was rolling quite appreciably. She retired to the cabin. Even the glass of champagne with which Gorman hurriedly provided her failed to enable her to eat. Miss Gibson fortunately was unaffected. She ate everything that was offered to her and in the course of the afternoon finished Mrs. Ascher's box of chocolates.

Before we stopped eating we caught our first sight of the Fleet. The ships lay in three long, straight lines off Spithead; battleships, cruisers, lean destroyers, submarines. A hydroplane raced past us, flinging showers of spray and foam high on each side of her. Two naval aeroplanes, their canoe-shaped floats plainly visible, hovered and circled overhead. Pleasure boats were everywhere, moving in and out among the motionless ironclads. A handsome barque-rigged yacht, some very rich man's summer home, came slowly towards us, her sails furled, using auxiliary steam power.

We swiftly approached the Fleet Already the vast bulk of the battleships oppressed our spirits. We looked up from the cockpit of our dancing pleasure boat and saw the huge misshapen iron monsters towering over us, minatory, terrible. We swept in and out, across the sharp bows, under the gloomy sterns of the ships of the first line. Ascher gazed at them. His eyes were full of sorrow, sorrow and a patient resignation.

"Your protection," I said. "Because those ships are there, because they are black and strong, stronger than any other ships, because men everywhere are afraid of them, because this navy of England's is great, your net of commerce and credit can trawl across the world and gather wealth."

"Protection," said Ascher. "Protection and menace. This Navy is only one of the world's guarantees of peace, of peace guaranteed by fear. It is there as you say, and the German Army is there; that men may fear them and peace be thus made sure. But can peace be secured through fear? Will not these navies and armies some day fulfil the end of their being, rend all our nets as they rush across the seas and desolate the lands? They are more menace than protection."

Gorman was standing with his back to us. His elbows were resting on the slide of the roof above the steps which led to the cabin. His chin was on his hands and he was staring at the ships. Suddenly he turned.

"The world's great delusion," he said. "Hypnotised by the governing classes the workers are everywhere bearing intolerable burdens in order to provide statesmen and kings with these dangerous toys. Men toil, and the fruits of their toil are taken from them to be squandered on vast engines whose sole use is to destroy utterly in one awful moment what we have spent the painful effort of ages in building up."

He swept his hand out towards the great ship under whose shadow we were passing.

"Was there ever plainer proof," he said, "that men are mad?"

Miss Gibson sat beside me. While Ascher spoke and while Gorman spoke, she held my glasses in her hand and watched the ships through them. She neither heard nor heeded the things they said. At last she laid the glasses on my knee and began to recite Kipling's "Recessional." She spoke low at first. Gradually her voice grew stronger, and a note of passion, tense and restrained, came into it. She is more than a charming woman. She has a great actress' capacity for emotion.

We moved through waters consecrate, and she expressed for us the spirit which hovered over them. Here English guns raked the ships of Spain. Here, staggering homewards, shot-riddled, came the frigates and privateers of later centuries, their shattered prizes under their lee. Through these waters men have sailed away to fight and conquer and rule in India and in many distant lands. Back through these waters, some of them have come again, generation after generation of them, their duty done, their adventuring over, asking no more than to lay their bones at last in quiet churchyards, under the shadow of the cross, near the grey walls of some English church.

Miss Gibson's voice, resonant, passionate, devout, lingered on the last syllables of the poem.

"The imperial idea," I said, "after all, Gorman, it has its greatness."

Then Tim spoke, shyly, eagerly.

"I wonder," he said, "if they would let us go on board one of the submarines. I should like to see—— Oh, there are a lot of things I should like to see in any of those ships. They must be nearly perfect, I mean mechanically. The steering gear, for instance——"

His voice trailed off into silence.

"What a pity," said Miss Gibson, "that the King can't be here. I suppose now there'll, be no royal salutes fired and we shan't see his yacht."

"All Mr. Gorman's fault," I said. "If he had not nagged on in the way he has about Home Rule, the King would be here with the rest of us. As it is he has to stay in London while politicians abuse each other in Buckingham Palace."

"That conference," said Gorman, "is an unconstitutional manoeuvre of the Tory party."

"What's it all about?" said Miss Gibson.

"The dispute at present," I said, "centres round two parishes in County Tyrone and because of them a public holiday is being spoiled. All Mr. Gorman's fault."



CHAPTER XVI.

It must have been the novelty of the thing which brought people flocking to the hall I hired for the exhibition of Tim Gorman's new cinematograph. I was aware, in a vague way, that my invitations had been very generally accepted; but I made no list of my expected guests, and I did not for a moment suppose that half the people who said they were coming would actually arrive. I have some experience of social life and I have always found that it is far easier to accept invitations than to invent plausible excuses for refusing them. I do not consider that I am in any way bound by my acceptance in most cases. Dinners are exceptional. It is not fair to say that you will dine at a house unless you really mean to do it. But the givers of miscellaneous entertainments, of dances, receptions, private concerts and such things are best dealt with by accepting their invitations and then consulting one's own convenience. That is what I thought people were doing to me.

I had no reason to expect any other treatment. I was not offering food or wine in large quantities or of fine kind. I was not a prominent figure in London society. My party was of no importance from a political or a financial point of view and I could scarcely expect the scientific world to take a cinematograph seriously. Yet I found myself the host of a number of very distinguished guests, many of whom I did not even know by sight.

Three Cabinet Ministers arrived, looking, as men immersed in great affairs ought to look, slightly absent-minded and rather surprised to find themselves where they were. They were Cabinet Ministers of a minor kind, not men in the first flight. I owed their presence to Gorman's exertions in the House of Commons. He told me that he intended to interest the Government in Tim's invention on the ground that it promised an opportunity of popularising and improving national education. I had a seat kept for Ascher beside the Cabinet Ministers. I did not suppose that he would particularly want to talk to them, but I was sure that they would like to spend the evening in the company of one of our greatest financiers.

No less than five members of the Royal Society came, bringing their wives and a numerous flock of daughters. They were men of high scientific attainments. One of them was engaged in some experiments with pigs, experiments which were supposed to lead to important discoveries in the science of eugenics. I cannot even imagine why he came to see a cinematograph. Another of them had written a book to expound a new theory of crystallisation. I have never studied crystallisation, but I believe it is a process by which particles of solid matter, temporarily separated by some liquid medium, draw together and coalesce. My scientists and their families afforded a good example of the process. They arrived at different times, went at first to different parts of the hall, got mixed up with all sorts of other people, but long before the entertainment began they had drawn together and formed a solid block among my guests.

Two Royal Academicians, one of them a well-known portrait painter, arrived a little late. They were men whom I knew pretty well and liked. They have urbane and pleasant manners, and are refreshingly free from affectations and fads. In my opinion they both paint very good pictures. I introduced them to Mrs. Ascher; but this, as I should have known if I had stopped to think, was a mistake. Mrs. Ascher regards the Royal Academy as the home of an artistic anti-Christ and Academicians as the deadliest foes of art. Not even the suave courtesy of my two friends saved them from the unpleasant experience of hearing the truth about themselves. Mrs. Ascher was not, of course, bluntly rude to them, and did not speak with offensive directness. She poked the truth at them edgeways, the truth that is, as she saw it.

The church did not support me very well. I distinctly remember inviting six bishops. Only one came and he was Irish. However, he wore silk stockings and a violet coat of aggressively ecclesiastical cut, so he looked quite as well as if he had had a seat in the House of Lords. I introduced him to the eugenic pig breeder, but they did not seem to hit it off together. After a few remarks, probably about the weather, they separated. The eugenist is rather a shaggy man to look at. That may have prejudiced the bishop against him. I imagine that most bishops feel shagginess to be embarrassing.

Lady Kingscourt brought a large party, chiefly women in very splendid attire. There were, I think, eight of them altogether, and they had only one man with them, a subaltern in a Guards regiment. He slipped away almost at once, telling me as he passed out, that he wanted to telephone to a friend and that he would be back in a few minutes. I do not think he came back at all. He probably went to his club. I do not know what was said to him the next day by the ladies he deserted. I thanked Lady Kingscourt for coming. I really think it was very good of her to come. She had fair warning that Gorman was going to make a speech and she knew that all Gorman's political friends, probably Gorman himself, regarded her as an abandoned woman who played fast and loose with the morals of military officers and undermined their naturally enthusiastic loyalty to Liberal Governments. By way of acknowledgment of my quite sincere thanks Lady Kingscourt squeezed my hand.

"I always make a point," she said, "of encouraging any movement for the good of the masses. They are such deserving dear things, aren't they?"

It is impossible to guess at what Lady Kingscourt thought we were doing; but her heart was warm and kind. If ever class hatred comes to play an important part in English life it will not be the fault of the aristocracy. I doubt whether any labourer would sacrifice his evening's leisure to encourage a movement for the good of Lady Kingscourt. Nor would the kindliest Socialist speak of women of the upper classes as "deserving dear things." The nicest term used by progressive people to describe these ladies is "parasites," and they often, as we had just been learning, call them worse names than that.

Lady Kingscourt and her party represented the highest layer of fashionable life. I had, besides her, a large number of women of slightly dimmer glory who were yet quite as finely dressed as Lady Kings-court, and were, I am sure, equally eager for the good of the masses. My hall, not a very large one, was well filled before nine o'clock. I had every reason to congratulate myself on the success of my party, so far. It remained to be seen whether Gorman would make a good speech and whether Tim's ghosts would exhibit themselves satisfactorily. Between the speech and the ghosts my guests would have an opportunity of drinking tea and champagne cup, handed round by twelve nice looking girls wearing black and white dresses, hired out to me (both the girls and the dresses) for the evening by the firm which had undertaken to manage the refreshments.

According to my time table Gorman ought to have begun his speech at nine o'clock. Instead of doing so he came to me and whispered that he would give late comers ten minutes law.

"Nothing more unpleasant for an audience," he said, "than having their toes trodden on by people who come in late, just as they are beginning to get interested in what is going on."

Nothing, I imagine, is more unpleasant for a speaker than to have his audience looking round to see who the newcomers are, just as he is beginning to warm to his subject. I gathered from his anxiety about the audience, that Gorman intended to make a great effort. I looked forward to his speech. Gorman, at his best, is really a very fine speaker.

At ten minutes past nine Gorman mounted the platform, the narrow strip of platform left for him in front of the pits occupied by Tim's apparatus. The clatter of general conversation ceased, and the Cabinet Ministers, sitting in the front row with Ascher, clapped their hands. The rest of the audience, realising that applause was desirable, also clapped their hands. Gorman bowed and smiled.

Then my elbow was jerked sharply. I looked round and saw Jack Heneage. Jack is a nice boy, the son of an old friend of mine. I have known him ever since he first went to school. About six months ago his father and I between us secured a very nice appointment for the boy, a sort of private secretaryship or something of that sort. I understood at the time that Jack's business was to run messages for an important man's wife; and that the appointment would lead on to something good in the political world. I was surprised to see him standing beside me for I had not asked him to my party and he was not wearing evening clothes. Jack would never go anywhere, willingly, unless he were properly dressed.

"Sit down," I said, "and don't talk. Mr. Gorman is just going to make a speech."

"Is Ascher here?" said Jack.

"He is; in the front row."

"Thank God. I've been chasing him all over London. Office, club, private house, tearing round in a taxi for hours. My Chief wants him."

"Your chief can't get him now," I said. "Not for half an hour, perhaps three quarters. Gorman isn't likely to stop under three quarters. Till he does you can't get Ascher."

"I must," said Jack. "I simply must. It's—it's frightfully important."

Gorman began his speech. I did not hear what he said because I was trying to restrain Jack Heneage, but the audience laughed, so I suppose he began with a joke. Jack shook off my hold on his arm and walked right up to the front of the hall. I saw Gorman scowling at him but Jack did not seem to mind that in the least. He handed a note to Ascher. Gorman said something about the very distinguished audience before him, a remark plainly intended to fill in the time while Jack and Ascher were finishing their business. Ascher read the note, rose from his seat and came towards me. Everybody looked at him and at Jack who was following him. Gorman repeated what he had said about the distinguished audience.

"I find," Ascher said to me, "that I am obliged to leave you. I am very sorry."

"I have a taxi outside," said Jack, pushing Ascher towards the door.

Ascher lingered, looking at me wistfully. "I may not be able to return," he said. "If I cannot will you bring my wife home? The car will be here and can drive you back to your rooms afterwards."

I was a little surprised at the request. Mrs. Ascher is, I should think, pretty well able to take care of herself.

"I think we ought to start, sir," said Jack Heneage, taking Ascher by the arm.

"Perhaps," said Ascher to me, "if you are kind enough to see my wife home you will wait in my house till I get back. I may have something to say to you. It is possible that I shall reach the house before you do, but I may be late. I do not know. Will you wait for me?"

"Won't you come on, sir?" said Jack.

I noticed, then, that Jack was excited and nervous. I do not ever remember having seen him excited or nervous before, not even when he went in second wicket down in the Eton and Harrow match with seventy runs to make and an hour left to play. I held Ascher's coat for him and watched them get into the taxi together.

When I got back to the hall Gorman was well into his speech and had captured the attention of his audience. I was able to pick up the thread of what he was saying almost at once. He was discoursing on the arts of peace, contrasting them with the arts of war. In past ages, so Gorman said, the human intellect had occupied itself mainly in devising means for destroying life and had been indifferent to the task of preserving it. Gunpowder was invented long before the antitoxin for diphtheria was discovered. Steel was used for swords ages before any one thought of making it into motor cars. These were Gorman's illustrations. I should not have thought that motor cars actually preserve life; but Gorman is a good orator and a master in the art of concealing the weak points of his argument. His hearers were quite ready to ignore the mortality statistics of our new motor traffic. The pig-breeding scientist led a round of applause.

Gorman developed his theme. The intellect of the modern world, he said, was not only occupied with the problems of preserving life, but was bent on making life more convenient and happier, especially the life of the toiling masses of our people. The mediaeval world built cathedrals, fine castles, Doge's palaces and such things. We have supplied mankind with penny postage stamps. Which, Gorman asked, is the greater achievement: to house a Doge or two in a building too big for them or to enable countless mothers—sorrowing and lonely women—to communicate by letter with the children who had left the maternal home?

After dwelling for some time on the conveniences Gorman passed on to speak of the pleasures of modern life. He said that pleasures were more important than work, because without pleasures no work could be really well done. When he reached that point I began to see how he meant to work up to the cinematograph and Tim's invention. I tried to get a glimpse of Mrs. Ascher's face. I wanted to find out how she was taking this glorification of Tim's blasphemy against art. Unfortunately I could only see the back of her head. I moved along the side of the hall as much as I dared in the hope of getting a sight of her face from some angle. I failed. To this day I do not know whether Mrs. Ascher admired Gorman's art as an orator enough to make her forgive the vile purpose for which it was used.

When I began to listen to the speech again Gorman had reached his peroration.

The arts of war, he said, were the natural fruits of the human intellect in a society organised on an aristocratic basis. The development of the arts of peace and pleasure followed the birth of democracy. Tyrants and robber barons in old days loved to fight and lived to kill. The common, kindly men and women of our time, the now at length sovereign people, lived to love and desire peace above all things.

"The spirit of democracy," said Gorman, "is moving through the world. Its coming is like the coming of the spring, gentle, kindly, gradual. We see it not, but in the fields and hedgerows of the world, past which it moves, we see the green buds bursting into leaf, the myriad-tinted flowers opening their petals to the sunlight. We see the lives of humble men made glad, and our hearts are established with strong faith; faith in the spirit whose beneficence we recognise, the spirit which at last is guiding the whole wide world into the way of peace."

I gathered from these concluding remarks that all danger of war had passed from the horizon of humanity since the Liberal Government muzzled the House of Lords.

Gorman did not mention this great feat in plain words. He suggested it in such a way that the Cabinet Ministers in front of him understood what he meant, while Lady Kingscourt and her friends thought he was referring to a revolution in China or Portugal or the establishment of some kind of representative government in Thibet. Thus every one was pleased and Gorman climbed down from the platform amid a burst of applause.

Lady Kingscourt clapped her pretty hands as loudly as any one. Her husband is a territorial magnate. Her brothers are soldiers. But she is prepared to welcome democracy and universal peace as warmly as any of us. Perhaps what attracted her in Gorman's programme was the prospect of a great increase in the pleasures of life.

We drank tea, ate sandwiches, cheered our hearts with champagne cup, chattered loudly, and, the men of the party, stretched our legs for half an hour. Then we settled down again to gape at Tim's moving figures. The new mirrors were well worth the money I spent on them. The thing worked better, far better, than when I saw it in the barn. I think the audience was greatly pleased. Everybody said so to me when the time came for escape from the hall.

Mrs. Ascher and I drove back to Hampstead together. I told her how Ascher had left the hall and that it might be late before he got home. She sat silent beside me and I thought that she was wondering what had happened to her husband. Just before we reached the house she spoke, and I discovered that she had all the time been thinking of something else, not Ascher's absence.

"I was wrong," she said, "in condemning the cinematograph and this new invention. It is—at present it is vile beyond words, vile as I thought it; but I see now that there are possibilities."

"May I tell Tim that?" I said. "It would cheer him greatly. The poor boy has never really got over what you said to him in New York, about blasphemy, you know."

"You may tell him," said Mrs. Ascher, "that his invention is capable of being used for the ends of art; that he has created a mechanical body and that we, the artists, must breathe into it the breath of life."

We reached the house.

"I am coming in, if I may," I said. "Mr. Ascher asked me to see him to-night if possible. I promised to wait for him even if he does not get home till very late."

"I shall not sit up with you," said Mrs. Ascher. "I want to be alone to think. I want to discover the way in which art is to take possession of mechanics, how it is to inspire all new discoveries, to raise them from the level of material things up and up to the mountain tops of beautiful emotion."

"I shall tell Tim that," I said. "He'll be awfully pleased."

Mrs. Ascher held my hand, bidding me an impressive good-night.

"There is a spirit," she said, "which moves among the multitudinous blind gropings of humanity. It moves all unseen and unknown by men, guiding their pitiful endeavours to the Great End. That End is Duty. That spirit is Art. To recognise it is Faith."

The Irish bishop who attended my party is a liberal and highly educated churchman. He once told me about a Spirit which moves very much as Mrs. Ascher's does. Its aim was goodness and the bishop called it God. His definition of faith was, except for the different object, precisely Mrs. Ascher's.

Gorman propounds a somewhat similar philosophy of life, and occasionally talks about faith in the same rapt way. I do not suppose that he actually holds the faith he preaches, certainly not as Mrs. Ascher and the bishop hold theirs. No Irishman is, or ever can be, a Liberal after the English fashion; but Gorman does talk about the spirit of democracy and says he looks forward to its guiding Humanity to a great end, universal peace.

I made my way into Ascher's study, wondering how long I should have to wait for him.

I wondered where he was and what he was doing. Who sent Jack Heneage to search for Ascher? I could not remember whose private secretary Jack was. Mrs. Ascher was thinking of art and beauty, the bishop, no doubt about God and goodness. Gorman was turning over in his mind nice new phrases about democracy and peace. What was Ascher doing?



CHAPTER XVII.

Ascher's servant followed me into the study. He placed a little table beside the chair on which I sat. He set a decanter of whisky, a syphon of soda water and a box of cigars at my elbow. He brought a reading lamp and put it behind me, switching on the electric current so that the light fell brightly over my shoulder. He turned off the other lights in the room. He asked me if there were anything else he could do for me. Then he left me.

A clock, somewhere behind me, chimed. It was a quarter to twelve. I poured out some whisky and lit a cigar. I sat wondering what Ascher was doing. The clock chimed again and then it struck. It was twelve o'clock. It was a clock with a singularly mellow gong. The sounds it made were soft and unaggressive. There was no rude challenge in its assertion that time was passing on, but the very gentleness of its warnings, a gentleness deeply tinged with melancholy, infected me with a strange restlessness. When for the third time its chiming broke the heavy silence of the room, I rose from my chair. The gloom which surrounded the circle of light in which I sat weighed on my spirits. I touched a switch and set the lights above the fireplace shining.

Over the mantelpiece hung a picture, a landscape painting. A flock of sheep wandered through a misty valley. There were great mountains in the background, their slopes and tops dimly, discernible through a haze. The haze and the mist wreaths would certainly soon clear away, dispersed by a rising sun. The whole scene would be stripped of its mystery. The mountain sides, the valley stream and the grazing sheep would be seen clear and bare in the merciless light of a summer morning. The painter had chosen the moment while the mystery of dawn endured. I felt that he feared the passing of it, that he shrank from the inevitable coming of the hour when everything would be clear and all the outlines sharp, when the searching sun would tear away the compassionate coverings, when nature would appear less beautiful than his heart hoped it was. It was with this picture, with this and one other, that Ascher chose to live.

I moved round the room, turning on yet other lights. Over Ascher's writing desk hung a full length portrait of a woman, of Mrs. Ascher, but painted many years ago. I have no idea who the artist was but he had seen his sitter in no common way. The girl, she was no more than a girl when the picture was painted, stood facing me from the canvas. She was dressed in a long, trailing, pale green robe. Her hands were folded in front of her. Her head was a little thrown back, so that her neck was visible. Her skin, even then in the early days of her womanhood, was almost colourless. The red colour of her hair saved the picture from deathly coldness, contrasting sharply with the mass of pale green drapery and the pallid skin.

I have never thought of Mrs. Ascher as a beautiful woman or one who at any time of her life could have been beautiful. But the artist, whoever he was, had seen in her a singular alluring charm. I cannot imagine that I could ever have been affected by her even if I had seen her as the artist did, as no doubt Ascher did. I like normal people and common things. I should have been afraid of the woman in the picture. I am in no way like Keats' "Knight at Arms." I should simply have run away from the "Belle Dame sans merci," and no amount of fairy songs or manna dew would have enabled her to have me in thrall. But I could understand how Ascher, who evidently has a taste for that kind of thing, might have been fascinated by the morbid beauty of the girl in the picture. I could understand how the fascination might become an enduring thing; a great love; how Ascher would still be drawn to the woman long after the elfishness of girlhood passed away. The soul would still remain gleaming out of those narrow eyes.

The clock chimed close beside me. It was a quarter to one. I sat down again, poured out more whisky and lit a fresh cigar. I left all the lights in the room shining. I was determined to drag myself back to the commonplace and to cheerfulness.

I took a book from the table beside me. It was evidently a book which Ascher had been reading. A thin ivory blade lay between the pages, marking the place he had reached. The book was a prophetic forecast of the State of the future, a record of one of those dreams of better, calmer times, which haunt the spirits of brave and good men, to which cowards turn when they are made faint by the contemplation of present evil things. I read a page or two in one part of the book and a page or two in another. I read in one place a whole chapter. I discerned in the author an underlying faith in the natural goodness of man. He believed, his whole argument was based on the belief, that all men, but especially common men, the manual workers, would gladly turn away from greed and lust and envy, would live in beauty and peace, naturally, without effort, if only they were set free from the pressure of want and the threat of hunger. The evil which troubles us, so this dreamer seemed to hold, is not in ourselves or of our nature. It is the result of the conditions in which we live, conditions created by our mistakes, not by our vices. I wondered if Ascher, with his wide knowledge of the world, believed in such a creed or even cherished a hope that it might be true. Do men, in fact, become saints straightway when their bellies are full?

It is strange how childish memories awaken in us suddenly. As I laid down Ascher's book there came to me a picture of a scene in my old home. We were at prayers in the dining-room. My father sat at a little table with a great heavy Bible before him. Ranged along the wall in front of him was the long line of servants, the butler a little apart from the others as befitted the chief of the staff. My governess and I sat together in a corner near the fire. My father read, in a flat, unemotional voice, read words which he absolutely believed to be the words of God. "Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God."

Well, that is a different creed. To me it seems more consonant with the facts of life. Man as he is can neither enter into nor create a great society nor enjoy peace which comes of love. Hitherto the new birth of the Spirit, which bloweth where it listeth, has been for a few in every generation. The hour of rebirth for the mass of men still lingers. Will it ever come—the time when all the young men see visions and all the old men dream dreams?

I stirred uneasily in my chair and looked up. I had not heard him enter the room, but Ascher stood beside me.

"I am glad you are here," he said. "I hoped you would be; but I am very late."

"Yes," I said, "you are very late. It is long after midnight. Where have you been? What have you been doing?"

Ascher sat down opposite to me, and for some time he did not speak. I made no attempt to press my questions. If Ascher wanted to talk to me he would do so in his own time and in the way he chose. I supposed that he did want to talk to me. He had asked me to his house. He had bidden me wait for him.