This bold challenge was received in chilling silence. Stuart glanced round the room with a disdain he hardly tried to conceal, and saw one after the other shrink back.
Without rising from his seat, St. John put a question to the secretary.
“Has the Princess been consulted?”
Des Louvres shook his head.
“Her Majesty’s position is a difficult one,” he explained. “As a German Princess she is exposed to pressure from Berlin. We cannot expect her to give us any open countenance. As long as she does not publicly repudiate us, that is as much as we have any right to ask.”
After a silence full of eloquence, the waverers found a champion in Mr. Basil Dyke. The novelist was on the eve of completing his reconciliation with the bourgeoisie by marriage with a lady whose father’s liver pills enjoyed a celebrity such as literature cannot attain, although it was part of the understanding that in the future Mr. Dyke’s productions were to be recommended in the same organs of publicity as his father-in-law’s. The reformed Decadent looked forward to entering the House of Commons in the character of a supporter of Church and Throne; and with such a prospect in view it was evidently time for him to dissociate himself from the political profligacies of his youth.
“I cannot agree with the Comte des Louvres that we have any right to speak on behalf of the Princess, without her express authority,” he said. “Neither do I see what we have to gain by coming forward at this particular time. We have proclaimed our principles, the public is aware of them, and any assertion of them at this moment would be taken badly. It would be said that we were guilty of bad taste—that we were advertising ourselves on the occasion of a funeral.”
Alistair smiled. It seemed to him very English, this unctuous horror of advertisement on the part of a man who had won notoriety with a treacherous libel and was about to confirm it by an alliance with liver pills. Basil Dyke was clearly marked out for a knighthood under the new reign. He was one of those whom England delights to honor.
There was no doubt that the novelist had on his side the majority of those present. The disappointed Count vainly tried to strike a responsive chord.
“What is the Guild for, if it is not to act at a crisis like this?” he demanded.