III
But the party was not a success. Very shortly after lunch, during which Feo and Mrs. Malwood had put in good work in an unprecedented attempt to charm their new acquisitions, they all adjourned to the terrace,—that wonderful old terrace of weather-beaten stone giving on to a wide view of an Italian garden backed by a panorama of rolling hills and of the famous beech forest ten miles deep, under which, in certain parts, especially in the Icknield Way through which the Romans had passed, the leaves of immemorial summers, all red and dry, lay twenty feet deep.
Gilbert Jermyn, Feo’s brother, had dashed over on his motor bicycle from Great Marlow where he was staying with several friends, ex-flying men like himself and equally devoid of cash, trying to formulate some scheme whereby they might get back into adventure once more. Lord Amesbury had gone down to a pet place of his own to take a nap in the long grass with the sun on his face. Feo, who had been dancing until five o’clock that morning, was lying full stretch on a dozen cushions in the shadow of the house, Macquarie in attendance. Mrs. Malwood, petulant and disgruntled, was sitting near by with David Dowth. Gilbert Jermyn, who could see that he was superfluous, sat by himself on the balustrade gazing into the distance. His clean-cut face was heavy with despondency. He had forgotten to light his cigarette.
“You’re about the liveliest undertaker I’ve ever struck,” said Feo. “What the deuce is the matter with you?”
Macquarie shrugged his shoulders,—his girlishly cut coat with its tight waist and tight sleeves crinkling as he did so. “Oh, my dear,” he said, “it’s no good your expecting anything from me to-day. Under the circumstances it’s impossible for me to scintillate.”
“What do you mean?” asked Feo roughly. She had ordered this man down in her royal way, being rather taken with his tallness, youngness and smoothness, and demanded scintillation.
“But look at the position! I hate to be mercenary and talk about money, but you know, my dear thing, almost every bob I’ve got is invested in the three musical comedies now running, and if things go on as they are, every one of them will be shut down because of the coal strike. That’s a jolly nice lookout. I’m no Spartan, and I confess that I find it very difficult to be merry and bright among the gravestones of my hopes.”
And while he went on like that, dropping in many “my dears” and “you dear things” as though he had known Feo all his life, instead of more or less for twenty minutes, making gestures in imitation of those of the spoilt small-part lady, Lord Amesbury’s daughter and Fallaray’s wife became gradually more and more aware of the fact that she had made a fool of herself. There was something broadly déclassé about this man which, even to one of her homogeneous nature, became a reproach. She was getting, she could see, a little careless in her choice of friends and for this one, whom she had picked out of semi-society and the musical comedy night life of London—so dull, so naked, so hungry and thirsty and so diamond seeking—to play the yellow dog and find excuses for his lack of entertainment left her, she found with astonishment, wholly without adjectives. It was indeed altogether beyond words. And she sat watching and listening to this vain and brainless person with a sort of admiration for his audacity.
As for Dowth and Mrs. Malwood they, too, were not hitting it off, and in reply to Mrs. Malwood’s impatient question the young Welshman’s answer had many points of excuse. “Three of my mines have been flooded,” he said gravely, “which knocks my future income all cock-eyed. God knows how I shall emerge from this frightful business. A week ago I was one of the richest men in England. To-day I face pauperism. It’s appalling. You expect me to sit at your feet and make love to you with the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. It can’t be done, Mrs. Malwood. And, mind you, even if the remainder of my mines escape ruin, I go under. That’s as plain as the nose on my face. The Government, always in terror of labor, has been amazingly supported in this business by the whole sanity of England, but the end of it will be that the miners will be given less wages but large shares in the profits of the coal owners. I shall probably be able to make a better living by becoming a miner myself. You sit there petulant and annoyed because I am in the depths of despondency. You’ll cry out for cake when bread has run out, like all the women of your kind, but you see in me a doomed man unable to raise a finger to save property which has been in my family for several generations. I simply can’t jibber and giggle and crack jokes with you and talk innuendoes. I was a fool to come down at all.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Malwood aghast. “Oh—I suppose you think that I ought to amuse you?”
“Yes, I do,” said Dowth.
And Mrs. Malwood also was at a loss for adjectives.
And when, presently, Rip Van Winkle appeared, smiling and sun-tanned to join what he expected to be a jovial group, he found a strange silence and a most uncomfortable air of jarring temperaments. He was well accustomed to these little parties of Feo’s and to watch her at work with new men whom she collected on her way through life. Usually they were rather riotous affairs, filled with mirth and daring. What in the name of all that was wonderful had happened to this one? He joined his son and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Gibbie,” he said, “enlighten me.”
But he got no explanation from this young man, who seemed to be like a bird whose wings had been cut. “My dear Father,” he said, “I’ve no sympathy with Feo’s little pranks. She and the Malwood girl seem to have picked up a bounder and a shivering Welsh terrier this time, and even they probably regret it. I ran over this afternoon to yarn with you, as a matter of fact. Come on, let’s get out of this. Let’s go down to the stream and sit under the trees and have it out.”
And so they left together, unnoticed by that disconcerted foursome with whose little games fate had had the impudence to interfere. And presently, seated on the bank of the brook which ran through the lower part of the park, Lord Gilbert Jermyn, ex-major Royal Air Force, D. S. O., M. C., got it off his chest. “O God,” he began, “how fed up I am with this infernal peace.”
The old man gazed at his son with amazement. “I don’t follow you,” he said. “Peace? My dear lad, we have all been praying for it and we haven’t got it yet.”
The boy, and he was nothing more than that, sat with rounded shoulders and a deep frown on his face, hunched up, flicking pieces of earth into the bubbling water.
“I know all about that,” he went on. “Of course you’ve prayed for peace. So did everybody over twenty-four. But what about us,—we who were caught as kids, before we knew anything, and taught the art of flying and sent up at any old time, careless of death, the eyes of the artillery, the protectors of the artillery, the supermen with beardless faces. What about us in this so-called peace of yours? Here we are at a loose end, with no education, because that was utterly interrupted, able to do absolutely nothing for a living,—let down, let out, looked on rather as though we were brigands because we have grown into the habit of breaking records, smashing conventions and killing as a pastime. Do you see my point, old boy? We herd together in civics when we’re not in the police courts for bashing bobbies and not in the divorce courts for running off with other people’s wives, and we ask ourselves, in pretty direct English, what the hell is going to become of us,—and echo answers what. But I can tell you this. What we want is war, perpetual bloody war, never mind who’s the enemy. You made us want it, you fitted us for it and for nothing else. We’re all pretty excellent in the air and in consequence utterly useless on earth. And when I read the papers, and I never read more than the headlines anyway, I long to see that Germany is going to take advantage of the damned stupidity of all the Allied governments, including that of America, gather up the weapons that she hasn’t returned and the men who are going to refuse to pay reparations and start the whole business over again. My God, how eagerly I’d get back into my uniform, polish up my buttons, stop drinking and smoking and get fit for flying once more. I’d sing like Caruso up there among the clouds and empty my machine gun at the first Boche who came along with a thrill of joy. That’s my job. I know no other.”
The old man’s hair stood on end,—all of it, like a white bush.