Part 35 (1/2)

Joan told her plans. ”You'll be able to get along without me for a little while?” she asked doubtfully.

Mrs. Denton laughed. ”I haven't much more to do,” she answered. ”Just tidying up, as you see; and two or three half-finished things I shall try to complete. After that, I'll perhaps take a rest.”

She took from among the litter a faded photograph and handed it to Joan.

”Odd,” she said. ”I've just turned it out.”

It represented a long, thin line of eminently respectable ladies and gentlemen in early Victorian costume. The men in peg-top trousers and silk stocks, the women in crinolines and poke bonnets. Among them, holding the hand of a benevolent-looking, stoutish gentleman, was a mere girl. The terminating frills of a white unmentionable garment showed beneath her skirts. She wore a porkpie hat with a feather in it.

”My first public appearance,” explained Mrs. Denton. ”I teased my father into taking me with him. We represented Great Britain and Ireland. I suppose I'm the only one left.”

”I shouldn't have recognized you,” laughed Joan. ”What was the occasion?”

”The great International Peace Congress at Paris,” explained Mrs. Denton; ”just after the Crimean war. It made quite a stir at the time. The Emperor opened our proceedings in person, and the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury both sent us their blessing. We had a copy of the speeches presented to us on leaving, in every known language in Europe, bound in vellum. I'm hoping to find it. And the Press was enthusiastic. There were to be Acts of Parliament, Courts of Arbitration, International Laws, Diplomatic Treaties. A Sub-Committee was appointed to prepare a special set of prayers and a Palace of Peace was to be erected. There was only one thing we forgot, and that was the foundation.”

”I may not be here,” she continued, ”when the new plans are submitted.

Tell them not to forget the foundation this time. Tell them to teach the children.”

Joan dined at a popular restaurant that evening. She fancied it might cheer her up. But the noisy patriotism of the over-fed crowd only irritated her. These elderly, flabby men, these fleshy women, who would form the spectators, who would loll on their cus.h.i.+oned seats protected from the sun, munching contentedly from their well-provided baskets while listening to the dying groans rising upwards from the drenched arena. She glanced from one podgy thumb to another and a feeling of nausea crept over her.

Suddenly the band struck up ”G.o.d Save the King.” Three commonplace enough young men, seated at a table near to her, laid down their napkins and stood up. Yes, there was something to be said for war, she felt, as she looked at their boyish faces, transfigured. Not for them Business as usual, the Capture of German Trade. Other visions those young eyes were seeing. The little imp within her brain had seized his drum again.

”Follow me”--so he seemed to beat--”I teach men courage, duty, the laying down of self. I open the gates of honour. I make heroes out of dust.

Isn't it worth my price?”

A figure was loitering the other side of the street when she reached home. She thought she somehow recognized it, and crossed over. It was McKean, smoking his everlasting pipe. Success having demanded some such change, he had migrated to ”The Albany,” and she had not seen him for some time. He had come to have a last look at the house--in case it might happen to be the last. He was off to Scotland the next morning, where he intended to ”join up.”

”But are you sure it's your particular duty?” suggested Joan. ”I'm told you've become a household word both in Germany and France. If we really are out to end war and establish the brotherhood of nations, the work you are doing is of more importance than even the killing of Germans. It isn't as if there wouldn't be enough without you.”

”To tell the truth,” he answered, ”that's exactly what I've been saying to myself. I shan't be any good. I don't see myself sticking a bayonet into even a German. Unless he happened to be abnormally clumsy. I tried to shoot a rabbit once. I might have done it if the little beggar, instead of running away, hadn't turned and looked at me.”

”I should keep out of it if I were you,” laughed Joan.

”I can't,” he answered. ”I'm too great a coward.”

”An odd reason for enlisting,” thought Joan.

”I couldn't face it,” he went on; ”the way people would be looking at me in trains and omnibuses; the things people would say of me, the things I should imagine they were saying; what my valet would be thinking of me.

Oh, I'm ashamed enough of myself. It's the artistic temperament, I suppose. We must always be admired, praised. We're not the stuff that martyrs are made of. We must for ever be kow-towing to the cackling geese around us. We're so terrified lest they should hiss us.”

The street was empty. They were pacing it slowly, up and down.

”I've always been a coward,” he continued. ”I fell in love with you the first day I met you on the stairs. But I dared not tell you.”

”You didn't give me that impression,” answered Joan.

She had always found it difficult to know when to take him seriously and when not.

”I was so afraid you would find it out,” he explained.

”You thought I would take advantage of it,” she suggested.