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Storm Of London

<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> A few days after, Dick Danford was at his master’s house; he walked nimbly through the hall and reached the Roman bath Lionel had now constructed for his use. He had started the fashion of receiving his friends at the late hour of the afternoon, five o’clock, in what the Romans called the Frigidarium. Those who wished to bathe could do so in the marble swimming-bath cut out in the centre of the hall, others who only came to converse sat in the recess carved into the surrounding wall, or stood against the pilasters which divided the recesses. There, for an hour or two, they discussed past doings, foreshadowed events; wit was acclaimed, philosophy commended. As Dan entered he viewed a gay scene: Lionel just stepping out of the bath, meeting his valet, Temple, ready to friction his body with the strigil—a sort of flesh brush—others, like George Murray the novelist, and Ronald Sinclair the art critic, sitting in recesses; whilst many of the Upper Ten and the artistic world splashed and dived in the piscina. “Here comes Dan!” proclaimed Lionel. “What news since I last saw you? I have missed you much these two days; but I daresay your business was pressing.” “Hail, Danford! the surest, safest, most comforting of all guides! While we sip our tea tell us the town news.” This was Tom Hornsby, reclining in one of the recesses. The splashing ceased, they one after another grouped themselves—some in the niches, the rest lying down, whilst Danford, standing against a pilaster, surveyed with intense satisfaction this picture of recherché cleanliness, and inhaled the fragrance of exquisite perfumes. “Plenty of news, gentlemen. First of all, the Bishop of Sunbury—” “Oh! my old prelate of the Islington Tournament? Excuse me, Dan, for interrupting you.” “Yes, my lord, the very same—has decided to preach a sermon at St Paul’s on the new Society he is organising.” “What is that, Dick?” “It is a profound secret, my lord,” answered Dick as he bowed courteously. “Well, mind you tell me when it comes off,” said Lionel. “Still no news of the war, Danford?” broke in Lord Mowbray, the amateur mimic. “How can there be when we receive no letters. Perhaps the War Office has important wires from the seat of war, although it has not communicated them to the public. But it is strange how little the war has affected Society; the heavy blows that have fallen on nearly everyone in your circles have arrived very much softened by distance; and it seems really as if the whole tragedy were being acted in some other planet. Besides which, has not college and home life taught well-bred people to bear with fortitude all mishaps and sorrow? Civilisation is a thick ice which covers the current rushing beneath it; you must wait for a crack on the surface, to be able to notice which way runs the stream.” “I suppose you would consider the London storm a crack on the surface, would you?” ironically inquired Sinclair, lighting a cigarette. “By all means, Mr Sinclair, and those who have watched carefully through the crevice must have seen that, for a long time, we have been going the contrary way of the tide.” “I do not know how it is to end—no regiments have been ordered out since our catastrophe.” This was Lord Mowbray again, who was not fond of ethics and preferred coming back to facts. “The passing of regiments through the town would turn out a failure in our present condition,” retorted Danford. “No windows would be thrown open, no hearty cheers would rejoice the hearts of departing warriors; that excitement is over for ever—it was even on the wane before we stood as we are now. I often wonder why Society did not raise a regiment of Duchesses and Peeresses? That would have fetched the masses, and perhaps might have provoked a general surrendering of the enemy to an Amazon battalion; for certainly the novelty of the enterprise, and the incontestable beauty of the Peeresses’ physique, would do a great deal towards enlivening the old rotten game of warfare. But they missed the opportunity of putting new wine into old bottles, and now it is too late. After all, patriotism is only a question of coloured bunting: tear down the flags, and nationality will die a natural death.” “What a sans patrie you are, Mr Danford,” contemptuously said Lord Mowbray, whose conception of Fatherland reduced itself to a season in London, a summer in Switzerland, and a winter on the Riviera. “Danford is an unconscious prophet,” remarked Lionel, “for it is clear to whoever observes minutely the evolution of nationalities that we are all unwittingly working at the creation of a vast humanity. The more man will know of man—and it is impossible he should do otherwise, when you consider the map of the world and view the huge cobweb of railways which unite countries to one another—the more, I repeat, man will know of man, the fainter will become frontiers which have for so long separated human beings and turned them into enemies. The first time that men of different nationalities met and shook hands in a universal Exhibition, that day a muffled knell was heard in the far distance announcing the slow agony of nationalities. But it is again a question of the thick ice over the current. Progress in every branch is the name for which we labour and suffer; but conquest is the real aim of all our strenuous efforts. We have too long minimised the power of the current, and one day, whether we like it or not, we shall have to go where it leads us.” “You are quite didactic, my dear Lionel,” said Lord Mowbray, who since the storm looked on his host with suspicion, and on all social guides in general, and Danford in particular, with contempt. He had absolutely declined to avail himself of the services of Music Hall artists, relying on his own powers of observation to guide him through life. He had even gone so far as to seek an engagement as a guide himself; but Society, however it may pat on the back every amateur or exponent of mediocrity, has the wisdom, in emergencies, to draw the line and to appeal to the professionals who, they well know, do not fail in technique. Lord Mowbray was therefore unemployed and generally uninformed. Left to his own conceit and ignorance, he constantly made the most terrible mistakes in drawing-rooms, and ignored the public guides stationed at different corners of crowded thoroughfares, who had taken the place of old-fashioned constables; to these guides Mowbray would never apply, passing them with haughty disdain. Each day he committed every conceivable faux pas; bowing to his friends’ butlers, passing by ignominiously his smart friends; in fact; he was the laughing-stock of Society, although he was blatantly happy and thoroughly unconscious of his folly. “What I really came for this afternoon, my lord,” suddenly broke in Danford, “was to tell you of a very serious reform in our new mode of life—or, at least, death. There are to be no more funerals!” “What do you mean?” “You are joking!” “No more burials?” “Are we to be thrown away like dogs and cats?” “How are you going to hand us over to the other side?” All these indignant questions fell like a volley on Danford the imperturbable, who looked at his pupil. “We again need your support, my lord. This is the point: without plumes, palls, muffled drums, mutes, how are we to know a Peer’s obsequies from a pauper’s? The chairman of our Committee put it to me in these words yesterday: ‘My dear Dan, try and make Society leaders see that complete privacy in that last and not least important function is of most vital import, if they wish to keep up a certain prestige.’ I promised to mention this to you, and I must add that I am struck myself with the unfitness of a lord of the realm having no better funeral than a vagabond; it seems to me irrelevant.” “There is the rub of this new state of ours; it has awakened in us the sense of the incongruous,” remarked George Murray. “We used not to be so discriminate, and what struck me most, formerly, was the total lack of humour in people who passed for witty.” “I cannot tell you,” warmly proceeded Danford, “how shocked I have been at fashionable funerals. There was a time when women did not consider it delicate to attend such functions; it was left to the sterner sex to accompany a beloved parent, whose female relations remained at home to mourn over their loss. But women are not any more to be put aside so easily; they have invaded the smoke-room, banged open the doors of City offices; it is not likely they would remain long away from graveyard excitement. The last I was at, a few weeks before the storm, was a sight, and the pitch of levity to which it rose fairly sickened me. Had I not pinched myself, and rubbed my eyes, I could have believed myself at an At Home. The hostess, a widow, was going from one guest to another, shaking hands with the one, thanking the other for coming; the bereaved daughters skipped over tombs and newly-digged graves to have a word with this one and that one. I instinctively looked round, thinking I might see an improvised buffet in the shade of a mausoleum; I quite expected to see plates of sandwiches handed round, and to hear the jingling of spoons and cups and saucers. Upon my soul, I have no doubt that had not the storm put a stop to Society’s doings, we should have been treated this season to a churchyard tea and a funeral cake. The idea seized hold of me then, and a fit of laughter choked me, when I thought what a good termination to this gruesome farce it would be, were the lamented defunct, on whom they had dropped a shovelful of cut flowers, just to stand up and apostrophise them thus: ‘I say, do not quite forget it is all owing to me that you are having all this fun!’ For I assure you they were entirely oblivious of the poor departed in the excitement of small-talk. Of course all this is at an end practically, and funerals have been quite neglected latterly, for this very good reason that the mourners did not know each other; we are therefore saved from the sad spectacle of levity and callousness which were the distinct traits of our past Society.” “Then what is to be done, Dan?” inquired Lionel. “Well, there is nothing to be done except to be cremated unostentatiously. ‘Let the dead bury their dead’; but Society decided otherwise, for it was the living that despatched the dead, which was a most unequal job.” “I wonder what will be the ultimate result of all these reforms?” lazily said George Murray. “If you reform burials, you must also some day reform marriage; you will find a great deal of incongruity and of levity in that ceremony also; then will follow the reform of the relations between the sexes, between employers and employees, and goodness only knows what next. You will have your work cut out for you, my poor Danford; and dear Lionel’s mission will not be a sinecure if he has to patronise every scheme your Committee brings forward.” “You have my entire assent to every reform you may suggest to me, Dan,” concluded Lionel, smiling at his guide, who remarked that he had never yet seen that smile on his pupil’s lips nor ever remarked that look in his eyes; he was sure something new had happened to illumine the face of the Mayfair cynic. “I am afraid you will come in for a good share in this evolution, Murray,” and Lionel turned his face towards the novelist. “Fiction as you conceive it is a thing of the past. Clothes and environment have clung like a Nessus robe round your feminine heroines and masculine personages, and given them a rag-shop philosophy. Tear the bandages that swathed your fictional humanity, and send into the open air your dramatis personæ, to compete, fight and win in the race of life. You have believed yourself long enough the apostle of subtle psychology and of morbid physiology; for once be the humble disciple of Dame Nature, for she is now turning her bull’s-eye lantern right into your face and making you squint.” “My lord is right,” crowed the mischievous buffoon. “I feel sure your publisher will not bring out your next book; sorry for you, old fellow, but you see there is no money in it any more. I saw Christopher a few days ago, and he led me to understand that the kind of fiction you excelled in will not appeal any longer to the general public. One of the two; either the feminine reader is one who harbours a sickly regret for her past toggery, or she is a modern woman won over to the cause of true modesty. In the first case she will throw your book away, for it will make her feel discontented with her present state; and in the latter instance she will shut your pages while blushes will cover her lovely cheeks at the mere thought of anything so indecent as—clothes. But, of course, I forget that the books published now will necessarily be very limited, as parchment is the only available material on which written thought can be printed.” “And an excellent thing it is. We have written too much—written ourselves dry; and now has come a breathing-time in which we shall be able to incubate.” This was Tom Hornsby, who indeed had written himself to desiccation in the <cite>Weekly Mirror</cite>. “We have game laws, and we know precious well how to enforce them. Why should we compel our sapless brains to generate when we know so well their incapacity even to conceive? Brains are no more inexhaustible than is the cow’s milk; still, we do not give to the children of our minds the proper breeding period, and we hail the events of our abortions as if it were the advent of some divine prophecy.” “That is about what old Christopher led me to understand,” said Danford. “But, however well these abortions may have paid formerly, he knows now that they will not satisfy an Edenic public any longer. Publishers are first-rate at feeling the public’s pulse.” “I wonder they were not chosen as social guides instead of Music Hall artists,” retorted Mowbray, who never failed to have a hit at his rivals. “We thought of them, Lord Mowbray, but, after careful consideration, we judged that publishers having been trained to convert human brains into ingots of gold, they would hardly be suitable for our social work, which consists more especially, at present, in developing the extrinsic knowledge of individuals.” “It is a pity that nothing has been done towards organising a body of Parliamentary guides.” Lord Mowbray was again at his pet grievance; he had never forgiven the Speaker for refusing to accept his services in the House, and he was convinced that the country’s ruin and Parliamentary decadence would be the results of their refusal. “Oh! that has been the worst nut to crack; but we had to give it up,” and Danford sat down in one of the marble niches ensconced in the wall. “The House of Commons has its susceptibilities, its vanities, and, above all, its traditions; and it would not hear any of our suggestions. Just imagine for one minute, Ministers of State, Party leaders, being escorted by guides! The idea appeared preposterous to the Honourable Members, who thought they knew their own business better than any one else.” “Certainly, at first, it seems natural to know one’s own party,” murmured Lionel as in a dream; “but in the long run it becomes more difficult than one imagines.” “It must evidently be the case,” said Tom Hornsby in a bitter voice, “for you see what a hash they made with the Housing question. The House carried unanimously the Bill which, for a long time, had been obstructed at its second reading.” “Very remarkable indeed,” sententiously said Danford. “I was there that day, and enjoyed the fun gloriously. I watched the House eagerly. The social and political labels were off, so they all listened unprejudiced to the orator’s convincing arguments. His reasons were not so much convincing from his own powers of persuasion, but because the listeners were off their guard and therefore accessible to rational impressions; and here we are the richer for one good law, and one that we never could have hoped for had Society continued to know one another by their exterior labels.” “This will inevitably lead to the dissolution of the Upper House,” said Lionel. “It remains with you to give the hint of abdication, my lord.” The little buffoon stood up and faced his pupil, while Temple, the empty cup in his hand, stood between the two, alternately looking at the one and the other. The group of men surrounding them were silent; and the sun, having slowly disappeared behind the trees of Hyde Park, had left the Frigidarium in a mysterious twilight most appropriate to the ominous words of Danford. “They will all follow your lordship. The reform must come from within. The dark days are over when you said to the rushing wave of the people: ‘Thou shalt go no further.’ They leapt over the rocks then, and, to prove their power, cut your heads off; which on the whole was a poor argument of persuasion, even if it was one of force. No lasting reform can be obtained but from within; and the Upper House has it in its power to avert the catastrophe of its downfall by taking voluntarily a leading part in all the reforms of our Society.” “You mean by taking a backseat,” sniggered Lord Mowbray. The spell was broken, and the twilight scene of prophecy was transformed into one of malicious discord. “I cannot see what you want with the co-operation of publishers, Mr Danford; you are Diogenes and Lycurgus both rolled into one, and methinks you need no one to assist you in fixing our destinies.” “I only give gentle hints concerning your future relations towards each other, Lord Mowbray; publishers will step in later, to inform you as to your intrinsic value.” Danford bowed to Lord Mowbray and, turning to Lionel, said, “Where do you intend going this evening, my lord?” “After a light collation I am taking Hornsby to the Empire to see Holophernes; it was one of the great attractions before the storm.” “Yes, and likely to be the last of that kind; but I shall leave your lordship to judge for yourself.” “Ta-ta, Danford—shall see you to-morrow early about the Dining-Halls scheme.” <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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