Gossamer Part 19

However, that anti-climax was still some way off.

I stuffed the three Liberal papers into my pocket and went to call on Lady Kingscourt. She is the only peeress I am intimate with who moves in really fas.h.i.+onable circles and is both rich and beautiful. It would have been interesting to hear what she said when I pointed out to her that she had been seducing subalterns. She was not at home when I reached her house. The butler told me that she had gone to a bazaar got up to raise funds for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families' a.s.sociation, in itself a suspicious circ.u.mstance. If I were Lady Kingscourt and my character was attacked as hers was, I should keep clear of any charity with the word soldier in its name. I was sorry to miss her, though I scarcely expected that she would have tried to fascinate me. It is a good many years since I resigned my commission.

The next person I thought of seeing was Gorman. It was nearly five o'clock, so I went to the House of Commons.

Gorman, when I found him, seemed very much pleased to see me, and was in a hospitable mood. He took me to a room, which must have originally been meant for a cellar, and gave me tea.

"I've been ringing you up on the telephone all day," he said, "and couldn't get you. Where have you been?"

"Down at the club," I said, "talking to Malcolmson about the plot--what you'd call the situation I suppose. You can hardly be expected to admit that there is a plot. Now, do tell me what you think about the situation."

"d.a.m.n the situation!" said Gorman.

"That," I said, "seems the sensible view to take. Is it the one usually held? Is that what they're saying up there?"

I pointed to the ceiling with my thumb. Somewhere above my head, it might be supposed, statesmen with furrowed brows were taking anxious counsel together for the safety of the nation, retiring now and then when utterly exhausted, to d.a.m.n the situation in private rooms.

"Some of them are a bit fussed," said Gorman. "Silly a.s.ses! But it isn't that wretched business that I wanted to speak to you about."

"Good gracious! Do you mean to say that you can talk of anything else?

that you didn't ring me up to tell me what will happen?"

"Nothing will happen," said Gorman. "Two or three muddled-headed young fools at the Curragh will get court-martialled. That's all. What I wanted to see you about is this new invention of Tim's. There's really something in it."

"Gorman," I said. "You're fiddling while Rome is burning. How can you reconcile it to your conscience to play with cinematographs when a horrible conspiracy is threatening life and liberty?"

"Surely," said Gorman, "you don't really believe that we plotted, as they call it, to murder people in Belfast?"

"I don't know whether you did or not," I said. "But that's not the conspiracy I'm alluding to. Look here."

I pulled out of my pocket the three papers which I had meant for Lady Kingscourt and showed Gorman the articles about the fas.h.i.+onable ladies seducing soldiers.

"You can't expect our side," I said, "to sit down under this kind of thing without a struggle. We shall make counter accusations. I shall do it myself if n.o.body else does. I'm warning you beforehand, Gorman, so that you won't be surprised when you find your character in rags."

Gorman looked at his watch.

"I know you like talking that sort of nonsense," he said, "and I don't mind listening, not a bit; but just let me ask you this before you start. Will you come down with me this evening and see Tim's invention?

If you will I'll order a motor from Harrod's or somewhere, and we'll run down after dinner. There's no use going in broad daylight, for we can't see the thing properly till after dark."

"I shall be delighted," I said.

"Very well. Excuse me a moment while I go and get on the 'phone to engage the motor."

I waited, feeling a little sore. I daresay I do talk nonsense and like talking it, but no politician who ever lived has a right to tell me so. I intended to greet Gorman when he returned with the proverb about living in gla.s.s houses and throwing stones. He came back, smiling radiantly. My ill-humour pa.s.sed away at once.

"Now," he said, "go on with what you were telling me.

"I pointed out to you," I said, "that d.u.c.h.esses, marchionesses, countesses, and other abandoned women of that kind have been flirting with military officers in such a way as to interfere with the governing of this country in accordance with the principles of democracy."

"Is that what they say?" said Gorman.

He picked up one of the papers which I had laid on the table and satisfied himself that the thing was really in print.

"Well," he said, "they had to say something. I daresay people will believe them. The English are an extraordinarily credulous race, fools in fact. That's why I'm a Home Ruler."

"You must remember," I said, "that I'm a Unionist."

"Are you? Speaking confidentially, now, are you really?"

"My father was," I said, "and I don't like to see these things in print about the party without making some kind of reply. What I'm thinking of doing is writing a sort of circular letter to all the papers on our side and saying that to my certain knowledge you and Mrs. Ascher have been using undue and unfair influence over each other for the last six months. If it's wrong for a woman to talk politics to a soldier it must be much more wrong for one to talk art to a politician."

"Mrs. Ascher," said Gorman, "is an extraordinary woman. The more I see of her, the less inclined I am to be surprised at anything she says or does. She's tremendously keen just now on Home Rule and Ireland generally."

"That is amazing," I said.

"It isn't in itself," said Gorman, "but the way she gets at it is. I mean that theory of hers about----"

"Yes. I know. She will insist on thinking that you and everybody else on your side are artists."

"And yet," said Gorman, "I can't persuade her to look at Tim's new invention."

Mrs. Ascher's prejudice against cinematographs, improved or unimproved, was certainly strong. I found it hard to understand exactly how she felt. She found no difficulty in regarding Gorman, a devoted politician, as a hero. When she had no objection to the form of entertainment with which he provided the public, it was difficult to see why she kicked against moving pictures. I should have thought that the performances at Westminster were considerably more vulgar, certainly far less original and striking, than the things shown on the cinematograph.

Gorman and I dined at Scott's, chiefly on lobsters, at seven o'clock, an uncomfortably early hour. We had a twenty-five-mile drive before us to reach the farm, somewhere in the depths of Hertfords.h.i.+re, where Tim was making his experiments. The drive was a very pleasant one. The first part of it lay along one of the great artery roads which lead from the centre of London to the North. The evening was fine and warm without being stuffy, one of those evenings which are the peculiar glory of the early English summer. It seemed to me that many thousands of people were pa.s.sing along that road towards the country. Parties of laughing boys and girls pedalled northwards on bicycles, swerving in and out through the traffic. Stout, middle-aged men, with fat, middle-aged women beside them, drove st.u.r.dy ponies, or lean, high-stepping horses, in curious old-fas.h.i.+oned gigs. Motor cyclists, young men with outstretched chins and set faces, sped by us, outstripping our car. Others we pa.s.sed, riders who had side cars attached to their cycles, young men these, too, but soberer, weighted with responsibility. They had their wives in the side cars, wives who looked little more than girls, though many of them held babies in their arms, and one now and then had a well-grown child wrapped in rugs at her feet.

"Life!" said Gorman, waving his cigar comprehensively towards the moving crowds. "Wonderful thing life! Keeps going on. Don't know why it should, but it does. Nothing seems to make any difference to it."

"Not even your politics," I said. "Curious thing, isn't it, how little all that fuss of yours matters? It doesn't make any difference which of your parties is in power. All this goes on just the same. That young fellow--there, the one who didn't quite break his neck at the lamp post--would go down to his office to-morrow exactly as he always does, if every member of the House of Commons dies in the night. You see that girl with the baby--the one on our left--she'd have had that baby just the same if the Long Parliament were still sitting. None of your laws could have made her have that baby, or stopped her. You are simply fussing in an unimportant way, raising silly little clouds of dust which will settle down again at once. She's keeping the world going and she probably doesn't even know the name of the Prime Minister."

"That's all very well," said Gorman, "but we're seeing that these people get their rights, their fair share of what's going. If it wasn't for us and the laws we pa.s.s, the rich would grow richer and richer while these men and women would gradually sink into the position of slaves. I'm not a socialist. I don't believe in that theory; but capitalists have had things far too much their own way in the past."

"Ascher!"

"Oh, Ascher! I like Ascher, of course, personally; but speaking of him as a typical member of a cla.s.s, he's simply a parasite. All financiers are. He ought to be abolished, wiped out, done away with. He fulfils no useful function."

Our motor sped along. A cycle with a side car just kept pace with us for a while. A nice, clean-shaven, honest-looking young fellow was in the saddle. His girl-wife sat beside him in the basket-work slipper which he dragged along. It was her baby which I had pointed out to Gorman a moment before.

"Perhaps," I said, "they have had tinned peaches for tea."

"Very likely," said Gorman, "just the sort of thing they would have. I know that cla.s.s. Lived among them for years. He comes home at half past six. She has put on a clean blouse and tidied her hair so that he'll kiss her, and he does. Then he kisses the baby, probably likes doing that, too, as it's the first. Then he has a wash and she brings in the tea. Bread and b.u.t.ter for her with a pot of marmalade, an egg--at this time of year certainly an egg--for him."

"And tinned peaches."

"Eaten with teaspoons out of saucers," said Gorman, "and they'll enjoy them far more than you did that lobster salad at Scott's."

"I'm sure they will. And that is just where Ascher comes in."

"I don't see it," said Gorman, "unless you mean that they'd be eating hothouse peaches if there were no Aschers."