Part 29 (2/2)
”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 G.o.d. 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 ant.i.toxin for diphtheria was discovered. Steel was used for swords ages before any one thought of making it into motor cars. These were Gorman's ill.u.s.trations. 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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.
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