Part 14

"I like the restraint of the better English newspapers, and there are still five or six monthly journals that demand a high standard of writing from their contributors. Some of the popular English magazines, however, publish stories that would hardly pass muster as a blushing schoolgirl's first attempt at authorship. I remember my mother used to say to me, 'Out of nothing, nothing comes.' She had obviously never seen one of these fiction magazines.

"Judging by the advertisements in these publications and in the society illustrated papers, I would say that manufacturing women's underwear, or 'undies,' as they are coyly called, is the greatest commercial industry here. The advertisements state that an officer can send a lady a complete set of these garments with his regimental crest on them. I am still trying to gauge the mental attitude of an officer who would do so.

"The political situation puzzles me. Lloyd George looks like a mighty big man, but he has to spend most of his time dodging snipers from behind. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning, but a certain section of the House of Commons goes in for absolute symphonies while Britain is locked in the death-grip with Germany. But she's a dear old country, and her people are as brave and cheery as in the days when she was Merrie England, and not England of Many Sorrows.

"To hear her people talk, you would think that the Canadians and the Australians had done all the fighting, and that the United States was the savior of the world; but I know there's hardly a home in England or Scotland that hasn't lost a son--and often the last son too. And when the old families send their boys, it's right into the trenches, not back on the lines of communication.

"There--you can see why I have not written before. Incoherency alone is hardly sufficient. I haven't seriously sorted my impressions as yet. As you would say, the chaos has not yet become cosmos.

"By-the-by, the British Navy mothered us from the coast of Ireland like an eagle with her young.

"Every one is most cordial, and invitations are showered on us from every quarter. I'm going to-morrow to visit the Earl of Lummersdale, who seems to want to entertain a real, live American. As I have six days' leave, I'm going to let him. They tell me he comes of a very old family, so look out for an article on the aristocracy.

"This letter is rambling most aimlessly. I suppose you are bored to tears. Just a minute, till I read over what I have written.... Yes--I might add in my comments on the English theater that a chap named Beecham is doing opera in English, and it's pretty nearly the finest opera I have ever heard. Then, of course, Barrie produces a play every now and then, just to show that he hasn't lost his genius of tenderness and whimsical charm.

"Perhaps my visit to the Earl of Lummersdale will crystallize some of my vagrant impressions. Good-by, dear patron.--Faithfully yours,

"LAWRENCE CRAIGHOUSE (Lt.),

"c/o American Officers' Club, London.

"P.S.--We're working like beavers getting things ready for the American Army which is coming. It looks slow, but when Uncle Sam's men are ready, Fritz is going to enjoy a real avalanche. This, I promise you.

"L. C."

IV

One morning a south coast train contained a first-class compartment which was shared by Lieutenant Craighouse, U.S.A., and a timorously proper gentleman who read the _Times_ for twenty minutes, and then stared at nothing very intently--an art highly developed amongst those who worship at the shrine of good form.

Craighouse was silent also for over an hour, which was a feat of the first magnitude for him. He was thinking of some official figures shown to him, in confidence, a week past--figures which gave the totals of England's manufacture of munitions and guns, her construction of aeroplanes and tanks, her production of all the minutiæ of war essentials, in quantities which his brain could hardly grasp.

Judged by any standard, the achievement was amazing. For a nation at peace it would have been stupendous; but, in addition, this country that amused Americans, this nation of obsolete methods and lack of organization, had held the seas open and frustrated Germany's plans on land. He wondered if he had been a fool--if, after all, the English were not the most efficient race on earth. Just then an advertisement, conspicuously placed beside the mirror in the compartment, smote his eye, and he gasped.

"How many people ride in a carriage like this in one day?" he asked abruptly.

The well-bred one cleared his throat and shook his head. They had not been introduced; and, besides, he didn't know.

"Ten, twenty, forty--say thirty?" said Craighouse.

"Very probably--oh, yes--rather--quite." The words were decorously languid.

"Thirty people a day," went on Craighouse rapidly; "say a thousand a month. In a year that would mean, roughly--oh, put it at ten thousand. Am I right?"

The Englishman shifted uneasily. "Very probably--oh yes--rather--quite."

"The war has been going on for three years." The American was warming to his subject. "Three years mean that approximately thirty thousand passengers have traveled in this compartment since the beginning of the war, eh?"

His companion reached for his cigarettes. "Very probably," he said. "Oh yes--rath----"

"How many of these carriages are in use?" interrupted Craighouse. "Two hundred, four hundred--say three hundred?"

"Very probably--oh yes----"

"I may be short or long on that estimate, but putting it at three hundred, this line has had about--well, roughly, nine million first-class passengers. Is that correct?"

"Very pro----"

"Then, great Scott! look at the advertisement behind you, the most prominent one in the compartment. This line has had a chance to have a heart-to-heart talk with nine million average, well-to-do passengers. From the standpoint of propaganda, figure out the national importance of that. From the commercial point of view, estimate the value of that space. And yet, after three years of war, it says that the steamship line from Newhaven to Dieppe is the shortest route to Austria, south Germany, and Spain! And it gives a map! Austria, south Germany, and Spain!----" The American's tirade ended in a splutter of indignation.

The train stopped at a junction station, and both men emerged, the Englishman proffering his cigarettes.

"Thanks very much," said Craighouse, taking one. "Good-morning." And he disappeared into the crowd.

The Englishman paused to light his cigarette.

"What extraordinary people these Americans are!" he said to himself--which recalls the well-known saying of a Quaker to his wife, "Every one is queer but thee and me; and thou beest a little queer."

V

When one passed the lodge which guarded the entrance to the Lummersdale estate, all sense of present-day responsibilities fell away like a cloak. Decades made no impression upon Oaklands; centuries very little. The family was surrounded by traditions; the past pointed the way to each succeeding generation, as sign-posts direct itinerant motor-cars upon their course. A Lummersdale never was forced to plan his own future, and there is no record of one ever having done so. Whoever bore the proud title felt that his children did not really belong to him; he was but a pruner, and they were branches to be trimmed to an absolute uniformity. A Lummersdale must resemble nothing so much as a Lummersdale; the associations of Oaklands and a judicious period spent at a public school succeeded admirably in effecting the required standardization.

To this home Lieutenant Craighouse, of the U.S.A. Engineers, brought his ultra-modern and Western Hemispheric personality. Like all men born in a republic, he had instinctive leanings towards Socialism; like most men of artistic tastes, he was distinctly susceptible to luxury. He snorted disapprovingly when the castle-like turrets of Oaklands appeared, but he drank in the green of the lawns and the colors of the flowers like a desert traveler who finds a pool in his path.

The earl and his lady welcomed him with simple dignity, spoke of the pleasure it afforded them to entertain an American officer; and the butler then took charge of him. Craighouse made a facetious remark to that gentleman as they went upstairs, but received no encouragement. Within the precincts of his chamber he made another attempt with creditable bonhomie, but Mr. Watkins's reply was not stimulating.

"Your bath, sir, is next door, and will be ready for you immediately. The family breakfasts at nine; lunch is at one-thirty, tea at five; and dinner is served at eight-fifteen. The gong is sounded, and the family assembles in the saloon." Whereupon, with an air of deferential superiority, Mr. Watkins cruised from the room with no apparent physical effort whatever.

Luncheon produced Second Lieutenant Viscount Oaklands, the twenty-year-old son and heir, who was leaving that afternoon to join the --th Horse Guards in France. He was of good athletic physique, and had a high, clear complexion which spoke not only of an out-of-door life, but a clean one as well. He was rather languid, and, in an amiable, impersonal way, appeared somewhat bored. The second son, on three days' leave from Dartmouth, was two years younger, but differed very little from the viscount in any other respect.

There was also a daughter. (Craighouse knew instinctively that, if the countess had been enumerating her family, she would have said, "I also have a daughter.") She was apparently twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, possessed of an exquisite skin, eyes which were both blue and deep, and a golden luxury of hair. With all these fundamentals of feminine beauty, her appearance was rather disappointing--a lack of animation in the eyes, a stolidity about the mouth. Craighouse felt, like Pygmalion, that if this statue could only come to life she would be irresistible.

The conversation at lunch consisted of flattering questions about America's preparations--questions to which Craighouse, who was never an economist in words, did full justice. They all said that it was perfectly splendid of America to come into the war; in fact, they didn't know what Britain would have done without her.

"I know," blurted Craighouse. "She'd have gone on fighting until every family was drained to the last man; and, by Jove! I believe the women would have carried on then. America is going to make victory possible, thank God! but England never would have been beaten."

He stopped, surprised at his own vehemence. The Earl of Lummersdale protested that he was too generous. The countess echoed her husband's opinion. The sub and naval cadet sons supported their parents' protests languidly. The daughter, in acknowledged order of precedence, ended the chorus by the statement that it was ripping of him to say so. Had they been discussing the commentaries of Cæsar they could not have shown less enthusiasm. Craighouse pictured a similar situation at home if an English officer had paid a corresponding compliment. He had not learned as yet that carrying emotional moderation to excess is part of the English paradox.

At four that afternoon a trap drove up to the door, and the kit of Viscount Oaklands appeared followed a moment later by that young gentleman himself. He kissed his mother, and gave his sister a half-embrace; then he shook hands with his paternal progenitor, and nodded to his younger brother.

"Good-by, old man," he said, shaking hands with Craighouse. "Look me up if you ever get near the regiment, won't you?"

For a few minutes every one spoke of the military situation, the delightful fellow-officers he would have, and other things which well-bred people talk of. Amidst all this the trap started, then stopped at a sign from the viscount.

"I say, dad."

"Yes, Douglas?"

"Do tell Edwards to see that the hounds get some exercise this week.--Cheer-o, mater!" And thus the eldest son and heir to Oaklands, which he was never to see again, went to the war.

VI

Dazed at the bloodlessness of the scene, feeling his heart torn by the apparent lack of depth in the most primeval of all emotions, the parent love, Craighouse strolled away, to find that the daughter was by his side.

"You will miss your brother," he said.

"We shall," she said; "though, as a matter of fact, I haven't seen much of Douglas the last three or four years."

"How is that?"

"Oh, he was at Eton, and only home during the holidays. I was always away at those times; and, of course, he's been training for the last year."

"He is joining the Horse Guards?"

"Yes. The eldest son always goes into the army until he succeeds to the title."

"And the second son?"

"The navy."

A smile lurked in the corners of his mouth. "Supposing the second son proved a bad sailor, what then?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I suppose he would stay on shore, and probably go to the devil."

He stooped to pick a blade of grass, and munched it meditatively. "And what happens to the girls?" he asked, after a pause.

Her lips, which were like pomegranates, straightened into a line. "The girls are not of great account," she said, a note of suppressed tension in her voice, which he quite failed to note. "We are educated in a sort of a way, introduced to the arts, but not allowed to pursue the acquaintanceship; then we marry--if at all--some one of our set and everybody says, 'Didn't she do well to get him?'"

"And then?"

Again she made a pretty shrug with her shoulders. "Then we move into our new homes, which are much the same as the old ones, and we bring up a family of descendants for our husbands. When the husband dies, the eldest male child takes over the estate, and his wife rules in the mother's place."

"And she leaves, in her declining years, the home which, naturally, she has grown to love?"

"Yes. Why not?"

For several moments neither spoke. Always hasty in its judgments, his brain was fired with a rankling sense of injustice. He thought he saw the explanation of the bloodless good-by to the viscount. The mental inertia of the sons and the emotional placidity of the girl were natural consequences of a hereditary system which dulled personalities and drove initiative into the scrap-heap of tradition. It was monstrous that one's future and entity should be planned like the life of a hot-house plant; it was no longer a puzzle to him that England's real leaders and thinkers sprang from obscurity. He thanked "whatever gods there be" that he was born in a country which had only one tradition--that it once rebelled against the past.

He turned towards the girl and gazed argumentatively into her very deep and very blue eyes; then he gasped, and a far-away look crept into his own dark, restless ones.

"_Galatea_," he said, "_is coming to life_."

Subconsciously she had caught his spirit of resentment, and, being a woman, she thrilled to the sense of rebellion in his nature. With the unlocking of her emotions had come the sparkle in the blue depths of her eyes, and the animation which had lit at once the dormant radiancy of her beauty--and his sudden admiration. In addition--though none was needed--the mellowing sun lingered on her hair till it seemed like strands of gold.

"You look like a wild rose," he said irrelevantly, then dashed on into a sea of words. "Are you content with this? Do you never feel a divine restlessness in your nature, urging you to be the architect of your own fate? Are you satisfied to be a mere link in the chain of generations? Surely the individualistic instinct is not dead in this country?"

He paused, rather astonished, but quite pleased with his burst of oratory.

"What would you have me do?"

"Anything--everything that expresses your own personality. Be yourself, and get away from type."

"I have done a little."

"What? Appeared in a few charity _tableaux vivants_? Posed for your photo in the _Sketch_ as a woman interested in war work?"

"I am sorry," she said demurely, "that you disapprove of me."

"Great Scott!" he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets with an air of defiance, "you are one of the most charming women I've ever seen." He drew himself up to his full height. "But before I succumb to the beauty of these surroundings and the--the--loveliest----"

"Yes? Please don't hesitate."

"You are mocking me."

"Not at all, Don Quixote. Only why shy at the windmill?"

He surveyed her carefully with his head cocked to one side. "I believe you have a sense of humor," he said.

"The daughter of an earl humorous?" She laughed gaily, and her beauty was exceedingly good to look upon.

An uncomfortable feeling crept into the mind of Lawrence Craighouse, officer and satirist, that, though armed with the broadsword of masculine self-assurance, he was being beaten by the stiletto of feminism. His embarrassment, however, was broken by the approach of a servant.

"Pardon me," said Lady Dorothy. "It's the mail."

She took from the salver a letter, which bore the stamp of the Red Cross, and opened it.

"I am so glad," she said, looking up at him; "I have been accepted for France."

"As what?"

"As a V.A.D., my dear knight. I have been one for two years."

He began to think that his broadsword was decidedly worsted, but he made one final and thoroughly masculine attempt to retain the posture of superiority.

"I supposed you soothed a great many convalescent and gallant lieutenants?" he said airily. It was a lamentable attempt, but he felt a sudden jealously of all wounded subalterns.

She pirouetted daintily.

"I was in a Tommies' hospital," she said; "and when I wasn't scrubbing floors I was waiting on the nurses at table--and you have no idea what cats some of them were."

Whereupon Lawrence Craighouse of New York handed over his sword and surrendered unconditionally.

VII

Three days later Craighouse wrote another letter to Mr. Townsend. That gentleman read it with great interest, and noted particularly these passages: "They have a library, but nearly every book I have opened has uncut pages." "The daughter, Lady Dorothy Oaklands by name, is quite good-looking, but mentally and emotionally she is asleep." "The old boy showed me the portraits of his ancestors this morning. I made the mistake of asking what each one _did_. It appears that they merely _were_." "I am trying an experiment in feminine psychology--I am acting Pygmalion to Lady Dorothy's Galatea." "The earl appears to be very rich, but quite respectable." "We had some titled women to lunch to-day. I have at last found out what countesses talk about--how to secure exemption for their gardeners. It has quite done away with the former vice of gossip." "Lady Dorothy plays the piano rather nicely, but with no soul." "Have I mentioned the daughter, Lady Dorothy? She is refreshingly beautiful at times." "I do like the speaking voices of English women when they are not putting on side. Lady Dorothy has a contralto lilt in her voice that is rather pleasing." "Dinner is a tremendous affair. A prune may constitute a course, but nothing reduces the ritual performed by the high priest and his assistant."

That evening Mr. Townsend looked over the table at his wife.

"My dear," he said, "what happens when an American young man falls in love with the daughter of an English earl?"

"Why, both families object, naturally," said the companion of his joys and sorrows.

VIII

It was the last evening before his departure, and Lady Dorothy had played for him for an hour; played little melodies from _La Bohème_, lesser gems from _Chu Chin Chow_, and twice had explored the delightful memories of Gilbert and Sullivan. Once he sang very softly to her accompaniment, and when they finished she turned abruptly to him.

"You have a voice," she said.

"You play beautifully," he answered.

"It is easy to play when an artist is listening."

"Have you found that, too?"

She turned to the piano and softly fingered the opening strains of Rudolpho's aria in the first act of _La Bohème_.

"It is just a matter of personality," he said softly. "One woman chokes a man's artistry; another reveals the heights which are in his soul. I suppose it is the same with men?"

She played on in silence for a few moments, then murmured, "What happened to the statue when it came to life?"

"You mean Galatea?"

She nodded her head.

"I don't know," he said pensively. "I have quite forgotten the ending."

She went on playing, and in the soothing light of the music-room she made a picture that lingered for months in his memory.

"Some day I will tell you," she said suddenly. "Here are mother and dad."

That night, while in the act of disrobing, he heard the calm knock of Mr. Watkins at his door.

"Come in," he said. "I am going at seven to-morrow morning."

"Very good, sir."

Mr. Watkins carefully placed a pitcher of hot water on the stand.

"Are you married, Watkins?"

The butler considered deferentially. "No, sir," he said, after mature reflection.

"You ought to be," said the American.

The butler carefully drew the window-curtains together. "Are you, sir?"

"No," said Craighouse with great energy; "but when I do marry it will be with some girl born in the United States of America."

Mr. Watkins drifted towards the door. "Your bath will be ready at six, and breakfast at six-thirty," he said.

What Mr. Watkins had taken for persiflage was in reality another American declaration of independence.

IX

It was late in March, 1918, that two American officers sat by the side of a road in France and watched a stream of refugees go by in an endless pageant of misery. Old men crawled along on bleeding, ill-shod feet; women were carrying grotesque bundles and leading absurd ponies that drew household goods on rickety carts; and there were girls, half-women, who bore infants in their arms, and who looked neither to right nor left, but followed on in mute fatigue and tearless agony.

Craighouse, who wore the badges of a captain, swore softly to himself. His companion bit his lip.

"I hear the Germans are smashing through everywhere," said the latter.

"God! I wonder if we have been too late."

Several ambulances passed in rapid succession, their bandaged and bleeding occupants lying crowded together.

A girl, less than eighteen years of age, dropped to the ground opposite to them. In a bound Craighouse was by her side and had lifted her to her feet. For a moment his strong hands gripped her arms tenaciously as though he would transmit some of his strength to her.

Without a word, without a look at him, she freed herself and staggered on, her face livid except where a slight flush showed beneath the black hollows of her eyes.

Craighouse went back to the other officer, but his face was gray and drawn, while his clenched fists drove the nails into his palms. His companion cursed blasphemously.

The roar of the guns grew louder, like a storm that is driven on the wings of a hurricane. They heard the snorting of engines behind them, and looking quickly, they saw a long line of London omnibuses crowded with English soldiers. They were shouting encouragement to the refugees, and waved gaily as they passed the Americans.

"Those chaps will be in action in an hour," said Craighouse, and swallowed noticeably. "Simpson," he went on, "do you realize that it's little England who has kept this thing from us for three and a half years? It's England who stood by her word; and now that she's drained of her men and boys, she doesn't reproach Russia for letting her down; she hasn't uttered a word of impatience for our slow arrival--asking nothing for herself, blaming no one. It's little England who is gathering the spear-points into her breast that your children and mine may live like human beings!"