Gossamer Part 22

It has fetched the audience."

"Awkward situation for you," I said.

"We'll have to do something," said Gorman.

"Arrest the ringleaders? Imprison Malcolmson?"

"Lord, no. We may be fools, but we're not such fools as that."

"Still," I said, "he's broken the law. After all, a party like yours in close alliance with the Government of the country must do something to maintain the majesty of the law."

"Law be d.a.m.ned," said Gorman. "What the devil does law matter to us or the Government either? What we've got to consider is popular opinion."

"And that," I said, "seems to be setting against you. According to the theory of democracy as I understand it, you're bound to go the way popular opinion is blowing you. You can't, without gross inconsistency, start beating to windward against it."

"Winds sometimes change," said Gorman.

"They do. This one has. It was all in your favour a fortnight ago.

Now, what with your 'plot' and this really striking little episode in Larne----"

"The art of government," said Gorman, "consists in manipulating the wind, making it blow the way it's wanted to. What we've got to do is to go one better than the Ulster men."

"Ah," I said, "they imported rifles. You might land a s.h.i.+pload of large cannons. Is that the idea?"

"They needn't necessarily be real cannons. I don't think our funds would run to real cannons. Besides, what good would they be when we had them? But you've got the main idea all right. Our game is to pull off something which will startle the blessed British public, impress it with the fact that we're just as desperate as the other fellows."

"What about the police?" I said. "The police have always had a down on your side. It's a tradition in the force."

"The police aren't fools," said Gorman. "They know jolly well that any policemen who attempted to interfere with our coup, whatever it may be, would simply be dismissed. After all, we're not doing any harm. We're not going to shoot any one. We're simply going to influence public opinion. Every one has a right to do that. By the way, did I mention that my play is being revived? Talking of public opinion reminded me of it. It had quite a success when it was first put on."

Gorman is charming. He never sticks to one subject long enough to be really tiresome.

"I'm delighted to hear it," I said. "I hope it will-do even better this time."

"It ought to," said Gorman. "We've got a capital press agent, and, of course, my name is far better known than it was. It isn't every day the public gets a play written by a Member of Parliament."

"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 p.r.i.c.k-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 p.r.i.c.k-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 s.h.i.+ning 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."