Part 33

Villette-es-Vosges is well suited for the work of the old diplomacy. It is, to begin with, a _Ville d'eaux_; and in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, statesmen who were negotiating treaties and alliances or resolving problems which threatened war, usually met at some gay place near their frontiers where they could, under the guise of "taking the waters," carry on their conversations with one another and draft protocols of conspiracy or of agreement. Consequently, in late August and early September, 1911, Villette was unusually thronged: not only by its accustomed clientele of middle-aged invalids trying to combat all manner of diseases for which its springs were efficacious, but also by their _demoiselles-a-marier_, their gawky boys and bread-and-butter, pigtailed girls, playing tennis, croquet, and crowding into the cinemas while their parents sip and bathe and undergo _massage sous l'eau_; by wicked gamblers, obvious adventurers, demure cocottes (needing a month's repose and a reduction of their figures); and by European statesmen trying to look like tourists. The German diplomatists have dressed and hatted themselves to resemble the Frenchman of caricature; the French ministers and ex-ministers are out-doing the average English gentleman in bluff "sports" costumes; and there are Russians and Austrians too quaint for words, _a pouffer de rire_, as Sibyl says; with such weeping whiskers, such forked beards, such frock-coats in the early morning and such tall hats as you never saw, except in pictures of Society in Paris under the Second Empire.

These diplomatists foregather in the theatrically beautiful park with its swan-pools, its canalized river, its groves and bosquets, pavilions, tea-houses, summer-houses, chalets, kiosques of newspapers and salacious novels, open-air orchestras, croquet-lawns, and tennis-courts. Or if the problem is very grave, and excited speech should not be audible nor gesticulations visible to prowling journalists, they stroll away to the race-course, to the golf links.

It is the glorious summer of 1911, when there was little rain between the beginning of June and the end of September. Nevertheless, if you should weary of the heat or if there should be a sudden shower you have a long cool arcade of tempting shops, a Grand Guignol, and the necessary retreats--on a large scale--for those who are summarily affected by the cathartic action of the waters, especially that very potent _Source Salee_, which is never mentioned without respect, except where it is the foundation of Rabelaisian stories. The medicinal springs are housed in temples of great architectural beauty. The town of pleasure, with its eight or nine hotels, rises in terraces that survey the park--not long ago a forest in which wolves roamed in winter time. New Villette contains a theatre, a _Club des Etrangers_ with gambling rooms, a _Salle de lecture_, a Concert Hall, an _Eglise Anglicane_, and a Catholic church, a post-office, doctors' houses and laboratories, and the necessary _usines_ and _garages_. A mile away is the real Villette, a common-place Lorraine town of purely agricultural interests, turning its back, so to speak, on the adjoining health resort which has made its name famous.

In the arcade is a large black notice-board, whereon besides local notices are pinned the _Havas_ telegrams. Hither, during one critical week, comes a throng of anxious readers. _Is it to be peace or War_? Will Germany be satisfied with French Congo and give up Morocco? Should we pack to-night and leave before Mother has completed her cure, _in case_ mobilization upsets the trains? Will my husband be called up? _What_ will happen to my boy?

Sibyl, lying on her comfortably-sloped invalid chair in the verandah of the Pavilion des Dejeuners, opines the Germans must be _perfect beasts_ to upset every one like this, and all over some place on the Sahara coast where there are just a few verminous Moors. She is not in favour of anarchism, but she really _does_ wish some one would assassinate the Kaiser....

Roger looks grave and essays the hopeless task of defending Germany. "It is all this mania for 'Empires across the Seas.' Germany gets mad when our Empire, the French Empire, the Russian Empire each year get bigger, while she is prevented everywhere from expanding----, etc., etc."

_Victoria Masham_ hazards the conjecture: "_If only_ the dear Queen were alive! She would soon...."

_Sibyl_ interrupts: "My dear Vicky, you must look facts in the face. Queen Victoria would now be 92. She would not be of much use at that age ... See! There is obviously our Foreign Minister ... disguised with smoked glasses, but you can't mistake his nose. I think he's _so_ good-looking.... And there is young Hawk of the F.O. He's just been sent to Brussels. I hear the Villierses are expected to-morrow. That man in the straw hat and the cricketing flannels is Monsieur Viviani, and the handsome old lion with the grey mane is Leon Bourgeois. The tight-trousered man you'd take for a 'booky' is Count Palastro--and there's no mistaking that stuffed figure of the last century, in a stove-pipe hat, a buttoned-up frock-coat, and pointed whiskers: that's Polanoff of the Russian Foreign Office. We saw him when we were in Japan.... 'Whithersoever the carcass is, there are the eagles gathered together.'"

_Roger_: "I suppose the carcass is the unhappy peoples of Europe?"

_Sibyl_: "I suppose so. Vicky, dear. Go and have breakfast at the hotel this morning. D'you mind? Maud has taken off the two girls to some violent sports' competition, and Clithy has motored over to Domremy." (To Roger): "He is studying local colour for the libretto of an opera on Joan of Arc. His great _clou_--if he can only bring it off--is the last scene. Joan of Arc, while bound to the stake and encircled with flames, sings a scena of the fireworks kind. Clithy says it would be natural under the circumstances. He thinks if they can devise some kind of asbestos shift for the prima donna and the usual chemical flames that don't burn much it could be arranged...." (To Vicky): "I want Roger all to myself this morning. We are going to have our breakfast together, here, in case events call him to sterner duties...." (Vicky acquiesces with a good grace--in her new transformation to which a _little_ more grey has been added, she looks surprisingly well, and younger than Sibyl, though she is ten years older).

A pause. The waiter lays the table between them for Roger's dejeuner a la fourchette. He is accustomed to preparing Sibyl's special dietary and arranges for that also. He is a pleasant-faced man, deeply deploring "le peu de progres que fait M'ame la Baronne...."

_Sibyl_: "What a scene for a dying woman to be looking at!"

_Roger_: "Sibyl! _Don't_ be so lugubrious...."

_Sibyl_: "Why? Do you suppose I don't pretty well know my own condition? I am dying slowly of cancer, what the doctors call 'un lent deperissement.' I expect this is what Mother died of later in life. The doctors would be ready enough to operate again if there was any chance.... As it is, they know it is more merciful to let me linger out my few remaining weeks or months than submit me to the shock of an operation which might kill me at once. I _may_ live to October, Dr. Perigord thinks. Or he puts it more pleasantly: 'Vers le mois d'Octobre nous saurons oui ou non, si la guerison de M'ame la Baronne s'effectuera. Les eaux de Villette operent parfois des miracles: esperons toujours.' ... And so on.... I don't suffer much pain--as yet. When it comes on they'll put me under morphia. I shall stay here till this political crisis is over or the fine weather begins to break. Then Clithy will motor me to Calais and from Dover to Engledene. Engledene will be the best place to die at. And, of course, _remember_, I want to be buried at Aldermaston, near Lucy--and near where you'll be laid some day--unless you marry again, which I should hardly think you'll do. I shall have a perfect right to occupy a small space in Aldermaston churchyard, because I'm a parishioner. I bought the farm that father so ridiculously mismanaged and that you made so prosperous. I've left it in my will to my brother Gerry, as some compensation for having taken no notice of him since I got married.... But, as I said before, _what_ a scene! Not even your beloved Happy Valley could better those flowers in the urns and vases and borders and parterres--those scarlet geraniums, scarlet cannas, scarlet salvias, and scarlety-crimson Lobelia cardinalis. We grow them at Engledene, but they're nothing like these. _And_ the heliotrope, and ageratum ... and those blue salvias and orange calceolarias. I know it's rather vulgar, but the whole effect is superbly staged; don't you think so?....

"And the women's dresses. Many of them, of course, are mannequins, just showing off for the Paris shops. And then to see pass by all the celebrated if over-rated people you've heard so much about, just as though they were well-made-up supers on the stage. And the music of those alternate orchestras... and such African sunlight ... and ... _you_ next to me...."

_Roger_: "Look here, if you talk so much I shan't wonder you get weaker instead of stronger. Eat up your breakfast and drink your milk."

_Sibyl_: "I will. But I _must_ talk to you. I shall soon be silenced for ever...."

_Roger_: "So shall _I_, when my time comes. So will every one. You don't give yourself a chance, talking in this morbid way. The doctors are often wrong. Remember the case of Lady Waterford?"

_Sibyl_: "Blanchie?"

_Roger_: "Yes.... A good soaking in Villette water may get rid of all your trouble and some day you may be weeping over me as I lie dying of Bright's disease."

_Sibyl_ (not paying much attention): "Roger! Do you think there is going to be War?"

_Roger_: "Not this time. Look there! D'you see those _gardes champetres_ in that green uniform?"

_Sibyl_: "That nice-looking man, with the blond moustaches?"

_Roger_: "Yes, and that ugly-looking fellow with the red nose. Well: a week ago they mysteriously vanished, and I asked what had become of them. I was told they had joined up ... the Reserve, you know. Now they're back again. _That_ shows the Germans and French have come to terms. The War is _partie remise_--this year--but it's certain to come, unless Germany can be squared. Remains to be seen what she wants and what we can afford to give...."

A pause. Sibyl eats a little food and sips her milk. Roger finishes his breakfast and lights a cigarette.

_Sibyl_: "Do you think there can be _any_ survival after death?"

_Roger_: "How can _I_ tell? Who knows _anything_ about it? Not even Edison or Marconi. And they come nearest..."

_Sibyl_: "I mean, of course, our minds, our intelligence, our love. Our poor diseased bodies simply dissolve and are redistributed and worked up again. But the _personality_ we have created in our brains?"... (takes a cigarette from Roger and smokes it). "Talking of personality, isn't it _extraordinary_ how _that_ can be affected through our stomachs; chemically, so to speak? You saw that woman in the dark green dress, who waved to me just now? Recognize her?" (Roger shakes his head)... "_That_ is Cecilia Bosworth, the Marchioness of Bosworth, quite the proudest woman in the Three kingdoms--enough in herself to provoke a middle-class revolution. Her husband's remote ancestor was a by-blow of the Plantagenets, a natural son of 'false fleeting Clarence.' He went over to that usurper--I've always spoken up for Richard the Third--that _usurper_, Henry the Seventh, at the battle of Bosworth, and so was created Earl of Bosworth, and afterwards Elizabeth made his grandson a marquis. Well, even you, as an African hermit, _must_ have heard of that woman's insolence in Society? She even mocked at the Royal Family and said her husband--a perfect oaf--was more Plantadge than they were and the rightful king.... She wanted Prince Eddy to marry her daughter and make things come right." (A pause ... smokes)...

"Well, when she came here six weeks ago, nobody was good enough to mix with her; she went round blighting us all. My doctor said it was all due to liver and he'd soon cure her. He put her on to _La Source Salee_--and a slice of melon afterwards. And, _my dear_, she went through _agonies_, I believe. I used to hear her _shrieking_ as she passed along the corridor....

"But it's cured her. See what a pleasant nod she gave me just now? And there she is, talking to those very pretty girls--and their father's only a Leeds manufacturer.

"Well, how do you work _that_ problem out?"

_Roger_: "Give it up! ... But by the look in your eyes, I should say _you've_ got the beginning of a temperature. Let me wheel you back to the Hotel and call for Sophie. Then if you are good and obedient and get an after-breakfast nap, I will come at three and take you and Vicky out for a very gentle motor drive...."

Sibyl submits. The waiter assists with the chair till it is out of the intricacies of the approach to the Breakfast Pavilion. Roger draws it through the gay throng. The church bells of all denominations are clanging in carillons, either because it is Sunday or because Peace--this time--has been definitely assured by an exchange of signatures. A few people raise their hats or wave hands to Sibyl, though she is semi-disguised in smoked glasses and a diaphanous veil; and numerous men nod to Colonel Brentham: who, panting, draws the wheeled chair up to the perron of the hotel.

Here there is a pause while Sophie is sent for. Then the disentanglement of the sick woman from the chair and from shawls, and her slow walk, supported by Roger and her maid, to the ground floor rooms where a white-capped nurse receives her.

Roger went to Germany at the end of September, when Sibyl was being taken back to England by her son. He spent six weeks lecturing the Germans on the advisability of joining Britain and France in a world-wide understanding. His lectures were politely forbidden on Prussian territory, which made South Germany all the more eager to hear him. And when he left for England at the beginning of November, it was with the assurance that a German representative deputation would come to England in the spring of 1912 to promote an Anglo-German understanding.

On reaching London, however, he learnt that Sibyl had died two days previously, at Engledene. In the last weeks of her agony she had been much under morphia. Before she reached that stage she had insisted with Maud and Vicky that Roger was _not_ to be bothered by bad reports of her condition, as he was engaged in doing what he believed to be the right thing.

*CHAPTER XXIV*

*ALL ENDS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY*

Colonel Brentham's anticipations of the Millennium to be achieved by the adjustment of colonial ambitions were not to be realized. On the 28th of June, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated in the Bosnian capital. Maurice Brentham, meeting his brother the same day outside the Travellers' Club, asked what he thought of this bolt from the blue........

"I think very badly of it," Roger replied. "Whether or not the plot was engineered in Servia, it is clear from the sayings and antics of the Russian minister in Belgrade that Russia is egging on Servia against Austria and using her as a mask under which Russia may place herself athwart German-Austrian ambitions in the Balkan peninsula, and bar the way to Constantinople. She is, in fact, challenging directly the substantial results of our agreements....

"Well and if she does, what will happen then?"

"The Great War we have been striving to avert."

When War was declared on August 4th, Brentham found himself in the dilemma of many of his able-bodied, disengaged fellow-countrymen: what service could he render to the British Empire at this crisis of its fate? Like most of us he had a strong predilection as to the kind of service he might best render. In his case it was to proceed as quickly as possible to East Africa and watch over the fortunes of the Happy Valley. John was already in India with his regiment; Ambrose had best remain at Cambridge unless there was anything like Universal service; Maud would take up hospital work and her nieces could help her.

He therefore proceeded to offer his services to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. If Africa could not be kept out of the War area--as he had at first hoped--then, if we did not occupy German East Africa, the Germans would soon proceed to invade our adjacent possessions: in short, a terrible struggle was about to take place for supremacy in the Dark Continent between Britain, France, and Belgium on the one side and Germany on the other. In such a struggle, surely his qualities as geographer, linguist, and a person of great local influence ought to be of value in the East African campaign?

The Colonial Office replied coldly that it had handed over the whole question of attack and defence in East Africa to the War Office. To the War Office he therefore repaired one very warm day at the end of August. With the greatest difficulty he obtained access to the Secretary of State for War, then the most powerful person in the kingdom. He faced those "desert eyes" like the optics of a harpy eagle, and made a stammering, voluble proffer of his services, which gradually slackened under the stare and the silence. When he paused to invite a reply, the great man interjected: "How old are you?"

"Fifty-six, Sir."

"_Much_ too old.... Couldn't stand ... strain of campaign.... Besides ... all arranged with Indian War Department.... They mightn't like their Intelligence Division ... interfered with.... No doubt contingency long foreseen ... plan of campaign cut-and-dried.... Sorry.... We must make use of you elsewhere.... Send you America ... or recruiting, p'raps.... Scotland, Ireland, Canada. Let you know later.... Good morning...."

Roger, fearful of being caught in the machine as some little wheel or cog of no importance, lay low, considered, inquired and made his plans, thinking of nothing but how to reach and save the Happy Valley. Passports and visas were still matters of trifling importance. The direct route to East Africa was closed to him; fighting had already begun, rather disastrously for the British. But the Belgians were preparing for a great war-effort against German East Africa. Roger made, his way to Antwerp ... saw the Belgian Minister for the Congo, saw the grave and courteous young King ... was given permission to accompany the Belgian forces assembling on Tanganyika....

Then: picture him having reached the mouth of the Congo, late on in 1914 ... a little rusty for this adventure in Equatorial Africa. No one with him as assistant, servant, valet. His son John had been as far back as the preceding July marked down for service with the first Indian contingent which would in case of war be dispatched across the Indian Ocean to take part in the mismanaged attack on Tanga. Can you picture Brentham in those dreary weeks of waiting at Boma, the Congo capital--hothouse heat, mosquitoes, sand, dense forest, rancid smell of palm oil--unutterably lonely, asking himself torturingly "whether he had done the right thing"? Ought he not to have stayed at home, fought in Flanders? Looked after Ambrose, waited for orders from Lord Kitchener? Was he absolutely single-minded in his attachment to the Happy Valley? Had he chosen the right way to get there quickest?

At last they were off up-river to take the train to Stanley Pool. The Belgian officers with whom he travelled were one and all nice fellows, _bons compagnons_, intelligent, respectful of this grave English colonel's knowledge of Africa; but a little puzzled _quand meme_ at his Quixotry, a little reserved. "Il parait qu'il a vecu longtemps avec les Boches," he overheard one of them saying in the mess, as he was sauntering in. It seemed to convey a doubt as to his good faith.... At Leopoldville, he encountered a stately-looking Negro in a familiar costume--long white _kanzu_, small white open-work skull-cap--speaking in Swahili. With what joy he recognized that once familiar tongue can only be appreciated by those who have known the nostalgia of East Africa. He addressed the man in Kiswahili and was greeted with respect and interest. A bargain was struck with his employer, and the man, Omari bin Brahimu, originally a boy recruit for Stanley, entered Brentham's service, to accompany him to East Africa. Half the misery of the adventure was now over. Here was a potential nurse in sickness, an efficient valet, a packer, steward, if-need-be cook, gun-bearer, counsellor, interpreter, and ever present help in trouble....

Colonel Brentham soon showed the Belgians he was not there as an encumbrance, as a tiresome elderly guest. His knowledge of Bantu tongues enabled him to pick up a smattering of Bangala, the _lingua franca_ of the Congolese soldiery. He worked in his shirtsleeves and in football shorts at every emergency, knew something about steamer engines, shot for the pot, drilled recruits, and evidently knew the Germans' position and resources thoroughly. By the time the swelling contingent of reinforcements had reached Stanley Falls he, was voted the nicest Englishman--_point de morgue, simple et instruit, ban garcon jusqu'au bout des angles_--they had ever met. Between Stanley Falls and Tanganyika he was very ill and nearly died of black-water fever; but pulled through, thanks to Omari's nursing, and reached Ujiji a yellow spectre, after the Belgians had in several actions on the lake and on shore gained possession of Tanganyika. They had been marvellously helped by a naval contingent sent out by the British Admiralty through Nyasaland. It was a joy which conduced to Brentham's recovery to meet the brave, jolly, resourceful British naval officers and picked seamen. In some way it righted his own position. He felt less a lonely Don Quixote, a solitary specimen of the British allies of Belgium.

The year 1915 had been the nadir of his life. Cut off from all news--he was not to know for another year that his sons were both dead, John, shot through the head in a maize plantation outside Tanga, and Ambrose, who had enlisted a month after his father's departure, blown to pieces by a shell at Ypres; not to know how his sister and his daughters were faring; whether the British Empire still stood firm, and what people said or thought about his own disappearance. He was often sick, tired, lonely, with little to read, and his thoughts a torture to him; for they dwelt on the remembering of happier things. He wished at times he might have in humdrum daily life the delusions that came to him in dreams or in attacks of fever; that Lucy was once more by his side, that Sibyl had sat by him, that Maud or Maurice or Mrs. Stott had come into his wretched palm-leaf hut.

From Ujiji to Tabora he fought alongside the Belgian Negro army, feeling every step he took eastward more and more at home. He nearly cried with joy at finding himself once more among the Wanyamwezi and actually recognizing among those who came forward to offer their services against the Germans a few of the men who had been his soldier-porters in bygone days.