To-morrow and to-morrow ... a novel - 1

By STEPHEN McKENNA

NOVELS:

To-Morrow and To-Morrow

Vindication

The Commandment of Moses

Soliloquy

The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman

The Sensationalists:

I Lady Lilith

II The Education of Eric Lane

III The Secret Victory

Sonia Married

Midas and Son

Ninety-Six Hours’ Leave

Sonia

The Sixth Sense

Sheila Intervenes

The Reluctant Lover

By Intervention of Providence

While I Remember

Tex: A Chapter in the Life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

TO-MORROW AND

TO-MORROW . . .

A NOVEL

STEPHEN McKENNA

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1924

By Stephen McKenna.

Published, October, 1924

Printed in the United States of America

MARION

Three years ago, The Secret Victory brought to an end the trilogy which I called The Sensationalists. This book and the antecedent volumes—Lady Lilith and The Education of Eric Lane—described the fortunes of certain men and women who constituted part of the larger groups which I had approached in Sonia, Midas and Son and Sonia Married.

By the accident of birth, fortune or talent, “these our actors” were made to fill a position—before, during and after the war—which attracted to them more attention than was warranted by their historical importance. My defence—if I must defend myself—is that the butterfly in every age has claimed more notice than the bee. The social scene, to change my metaphor, presented by so single-minded a writer as Mr. Greville has to find room for the D’Orsays, the Egremonts, the Sidney Smiths and the Madame de Lievens, who throng his stage in act after act, as well as for the Peels, Wellingtons and Melbournes.

Is a defence still necessary for continuing the life of a character from one novel to another? Mr. Disraeli, in his splendid progress through a part of Mr. Greville’s period, refused to cut the thread of an imaginary existence at the moment when his last page was bound into its cover; and the novel-sequence which aims to describe a social and political scene must, no less than succeeding volumes of memoirs, call back to the stage the same leaders and the same camp-followers. If this present series have any artistic or historical value, I should like it to be found in the completed picture.

I attempted, in Sonia, to trace the adolescence of the generation that grew to manhood in time to meet the shock of the war. That war ends in the first line of the present volume; and, before the last page, the government that was charged to bring peace back to the sparse survivors has itself passed away. One phase in history has been concluded; and this series, which aimed at describing a single English scene in the life of a single generation, ends with the end of that phase.

I ask no one to share any regret which I may feel in taking leave of characters that have been my constant companions for more than eight years. If they are no more likable than the men and women we meet in daily life, I have at least never allowed parental affection to cover up their shortcomings. I present them to you as a small mark of a deep devotion.

Stephen McKenna.

“All our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.” . . .

Shakespeare: Macbeth.

CONTENTS

PART ONE

CHAPTER

I	[Truce]
II	[Retrospect]
III	[The Dawning of Morn]
IV	[After the Deluge]
V	[The Red Account]


PART TWO

I	[The Nakedness of the Land]
II	[That Which Remained]
III	[As You Sow]
IV	[In a Gilded Cage]
V	[“Un Sacrifice Inutile”]


PART THREE

I	[To-morrow and To-morrow]
II	[The Test]
III	[Two in the Field]

PART ONE