“I have a taxi outside,” said Jack, pushing Ascher towards the door.
Ascher lingered, looking at me wistfully. “I may not be able to return,” he said. “If I cannot will you bring my wife home? The car will be here and can drive you back to your rooms afterwards.”
I was a little surprised at the request. Mrs. Ascher is, I should think, pretty well able to take care of herself.
“I think we ought to start, sir,” said Jack Heneage, taking Ascher by the arm.
“Perhaps,” said Ascher to me, “if you are kind enough to see my wife home you will wait in my house till I get back. I may have something to say to you. It is possible that I shall reach the house before you do, but I may be late. I do not know. Will you wait for me?”
“Won’t you come on, sir?” said Jack.
I noticed, then, that Jack was excited and nervous. I do not ever remember having seen him excited or nervous before, not even when he went in second wicket down in the Eton and Harrow match with seventy runs to make and an hour left to play. I held Ascher’s coat for him and watched them get into the taxi together.
When I got back to the hall Gorman was well into his speech and had captured the attention of his audience. I was able to pick up the thread of what he was saying almost at once. He was discoursing on the arts of peace, contrasting them with the arts of war. In past ages, so Gorman said, the human intellect had occupied itself mainly in devising means for destroying life and had been indifferent to the task of preserving it. Gunpowder was invented long before the antitoxin for diphtheria was discovered. Steel was used for swords ages before any one thought of making it into motor cars. These were Gorman’s illustrations. I should not have thought that motor cars actually preserve life; but Gorman is a good orator and a master in the art of concealing the weak points of his argument. His hearers were quite ready to ignore the mortality statistics of our new motor traffic. The pig-breeding scientist led a round of applause.
Gorman developed his theme. The intellect of the modern world, he said, was not only occupied with the problems of preserving life, but was bent on making life more convenient and happier, especially the life of the toiling masses of our people. The mediaeval world built cathedrals, fine castles, Doge’s palaces and such things. We have supplied mankind with penny postage stamps. Which, Gorman asked, is the greater achievement: to house a Doge or two in a building too big for them or to enable countless mothers—sorrowing and lonely women—to communicate by letter with the children who had left the maternal home?
After dwelling for some time on the conveniences Gorman passed on to speak of the pleasures of modern life. He said that pleasures were more important than work, because without pleasures no work could be really well done. When he reached that point I began to see how he meant to work up to the cinematograph and Tim’s invention. I tried to get a glimpse of Mrs. Ascher’s face. I wanted to find out how she was taking this glorification of Tim’s blasphemy against art. Unfortunately I could only see the back of her head. I moved along the side of the hall as much as I dared in the hope of getting a sight of her face from some angle. I failed. To this day I do not know whether Mrs. Ascher admired Gorman’s art as an orator enough to make her forgive the vile purpose for which it was used.