And so Francis—who imagined himself to have seen, for a moment, behind that Veil of God which does not lift until the time appointed—returned to London; sold his house in Curzon Street, his cars and his pictures, his gold plate and his Aubusson carpets; and retired, taking with him only Prout, his old manservant, to this high apartment at the top of the eighteenth-century Georgian building in Mecklenburgh Square.
All “literary” London knew a Francis Gordon, a versifier whose technique they admired, whose pose they applauded. But the Francis, they did not know. Nor, had they known him, would they have, at that time, admired.
For the Francis—the man who, for all his fine aspirations, was still utterly incapable of formulating clean thought into simple words—had conceived another dream. And this was the shape of it.
He had learned from Beatrice, and from her parents, something—though very little—of the real America. He had taught her something—though very little—of the real England. He realized, as few Englishmen of his time, how the two nations had drifted apart; misunderstood one another. And it seemed to him, in his presumption, that a few words, a trumpery poem, could set this misunderstanding right.
Of course—(he was too much in love with the phantom of Beatrice for any except a prejudiced judgment)—he blamed his own countrymen exclusively. Equally of course, the great poem of his projecting, became—the moment pen touched paper—an artificial web of phrases through which the man’s real belief in a Spiritual Federation of the English-speaking Peoples oozed to nothingness. Still, it says something for the influence of a girl who only wrote in calm friendship, confident of his ultimate success as a writer, but by no manner of means—consciously at any rate—in love with him, that Francis Gordon should have held to this belief, unflinchingly, through all those weary months when other Englishmen—better informed on material points though utterly ignorant of the spiritual reluctance to realize that a world-crime was being committed (which reluctance alone kept America so long out of the War)—were saying to themselves, “Can’t they see things? Won’t they see things? Must we fight this greatest of all battles without them?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Jameson, Sir,” announced the elderly manservant.
§ 3
Nothing in the outward appearance of the Francis Gordon who rose at the entrance of his cousin’s wife, suggested the conventional (or unconventional) poet. Short dark hair parted at the side, clipped moustache, well-cared-for hands, creaseless gold-pinned soft collar, well-tailored blue suit—all proclaimed the ordinary idle young man of the period. And as such, to tell the truth, his cousin Peter—to whom, except for a certain lack of dourness about the expression, he bore an amazing resemblance—regarded him.
His surroundings, too, helped this illusion of the idle commonplace. The room was large, white-walled and green-carpeted; crowded mahogany book-shelves completely lined one wall; a spacious writing-table—scrupulously tidy—set square in the centre of two big windows—the other. Chippendale chairs, a tea-table already laid, and a revolving bookcase filled with foreign dictionaries, Roget’s Thesaurus, and other reference-works, completed the furniture. Two mahogany doors—one, through which Patricia and Peter had just entered, leading to the narrow hall—the other to the bedroom and bathroom—glowed darkly against the rough white of the wall-paper.