“Yes, and is it not wonderful the way the Russians are getting on? They’re pouring into Galicia, aren’t they? I see the papers call them the steam-roller pounding along to Berlin. Fancy seeing the Russian troops marching down the Unter den Linden. And what is your war-work being, Mr. Boyton?”
Mr. Boyton was, for the time being, much in the same state as Lady Grote, desiring merely, with such powers of purpose as were left in a stunned mind, to escape, as far as possible, from all thoughts and mention of the war. All his autumn plans had been upset: his carefully arranged September and October with their succession of country-house parties had collapsed like a card-house, and instead he was obliged to spend those months at home in Hampstead.
London, it is true, was very full, but all his friends were busy, like Lady Massingberd, over funds and associations and societies for purposes of providing luxuries or necessities for soldiers and sailors, and were not thinking of him at all, or giving him those little luncheon-parties and dinner-parties which were the light and decoration of his life. His engagement-book, and therefore his existence, was empty, and this eternal monotony of war-talk was bringing him sensibly nearer melancholia. He had accepted this invitation to Lady Gurtner’s with enthusiasm, thinking that this house, with its conflicting interests of blood, would at least be an oasis in the sea of windy patriots, and here was his hostess quite unable to get off the subject of the war, and expecting him to go out shooting with her husband. He hated and distrusted fire-arms, never knowing what they would do next; but Lady Gurtner, more English than the English, was expecting every man to be employed in war-work, and if he was too old to shoot Germans at the front, to occupy his leisure in shooting birds in the turnips. He answered her as with a playful touch of a cat’s velvet paw, in which the claws are conjectured though not quite visible.
“Dear lady,” he said, “my war-work at the moment is to keep an English citizen sane, that citizen being myself. I thought it would be the best possible treatment for me to come down to your delicious and sequestered glades. May we forget for a little that there is anything in the world beyond this adorable domain of yours? I even shrink from the thought of shooting: there is a hint of destruction and death connected with it. I should be exceedingly unlikely to destroy anything except perhaps a beater or two, but when, as I gather, we need men so badly, I should be sorry to do even that. Peace and plenty! Let us take that for our text.”
Oddly enough, the moment that he uttered sentiments which were so completely in accord with Helen Grote’s purpose in coming here, she felt herself disowning them as regards her own part, and disdaining them as regards his. It was really awful that a man should speak like that. Imagine Robin or her husband, who worked all day in the censor’s office, uttering these bloodless, boudoir sentiments! On the other hand, Aline’s war-talk was not a whit preferable, and it had been Aline’s war-talk that had provoked this polished little tirade. But whatever its demerits, it had the one merit of sincerity, whereas she had experienced a slight difficulty in accepting the complete genuineness of Aline’s rapture at the thought of the Russians marching down the avenues of Berlin. But there was no need for the moment of steering a fresh course, for they drew up at the great red-brick portico of the house. A big climbing-rose sprawled over it: bees hummed in the flower-beds, it basked in the serene afternoon sun.
The place, when the mortgage was foreclosed by Sir Hermann, had belonged to some cousins of Helen’s: there were early memories connected with its shabby distinction: the fragrance of long-forgotten things was wafted out of its cool portals.
“Ah, how delicious,” she said. “I quite share your feeling of being at home here, Aline. And here is Sir Hermann.”
He came out of the hall to meet them, dressed in his golfing clothes which Aline had so mistakenly supposed to be a shooting-suit. He carried a golf club over his shoulder in the manner of a gun, and his homespun pockets bulged with balls. He looked like a biting caricature of an English squire as seen on the stage of a Parisian music-hall. From the hall inside came the cries and laughter of the children, who were seated on a rug which Freddy pulled across the slippery marble floor. Bertie, who when excited always talked German, was starting him with an “Ein, zwei, drei”....
“Come and say how-do-you-do at once to Lady Grote,” called their mother, and the three jolly little boys ran out into the porch.
“Ah, my chicks,” said Lady Gurtner, “have you been having a nice game? And did I hear you talking German? For shame! Yes, the right hand, Jackie, and shake hands with Mr. Boyton, too. Let us go straight out through the house, Helen, and have tea in the garden, where it will be ready.”