What she intended to convey I have no more idea than the man in the moon... The night before, her meaning was never in doubt; and I am waiting for her to put it into words, to charge Will or me or both of us with deliberately damaging our car...
But you will see that anything she says in her present state, poor child, must be accepted with charitable reserve.
IV
LADY ANN SPENWORTH IS CONTENT WITH A LITTLE MUSIC
Lady Ann (to a friend of proved discretion): I am easily satisfied, I ask for nothing better than a little music after dinner. If only the rising generation were rather less self-conscious... When I was a girl, it was a law of the Medes and Persians that, if any one asked us to play or sing, we at once complied. None of this modern absurdity of not playing in public, insisting on the hush of the grave, looking round the room first to see if by chance there is some great maestro present... When I tell you that I once sang before Jenny Lind, being too young and ignorant to know who she was... And no one could have been sweeter...
I am not a musician in any sense of the word. (I am almost tempted to add: "Thank goodness!") When one sees and hears the devotees at Covent Garden, talking a language of their own which I am quite sure half of them don't understand, ready to set one right in a moment if one presumes to offer an opinion... If any one said to me: "I want to be a social success and I don't know how to begin," I should answer: "Learn the musical jargon and use it rudely, especially to people who for one reason or another have not had to fight their way into any little niche that they may occupy." I won't mention names... But I see you have guessed! And do you not agree? That man, for all his millions, would be received nowhere but for his alleged love of music; but take a double box at the opera, go every night, allow yourself to be seen at all the concerts, give immense parties of your own, support and bring out three new geniuses a month—everything is forgiven you!
I did not know him before the war ... when, by the way, I understand he passed by the name of Sir Adolf Erckmann. One saw, indeed, his not very prepossessing beard and bald head protruding from his box—a red, anxious face and single eye-glass, positively scattering bows right and left at the people he had succeeded in getting to know in his upward progress. Originally, I believe, a German-Jewish banker, with immense interests of all kinds in every part of the world and a very unsavoury domestic reputation. He was nothing to me, nor I to him; and it would have been no true kindness for me to "take him up," as Connie Maitland was always urging me to do. No doubt we should have been surfeited with invitations to Westbourne Terrace and Rock Hill; but we are not yet reduced to scouring London for free meals, like some people we could think of, and, without being cynical, I always felt that the Erckmanns would try to use us as a means of getting to know Spenworth and Brackenbury so that in time their triumphal progress might carry them to Cheniston and the Hall. If I could have done any good, it would have been a different matter; but you remember the Erckmanns were a test-case before the war, in the days when the energy of Christine Malleson and my Lady Maitland and the rest had broken down so many barriers which hitherto had been at least a convenience. Not only Spenworth and Brackenbury, but a dozen more as good as said that they could not continue to know me if I consented to know Erckmann...
When the war came, things materially altered. The Erckmanns vanished—in every sense of the word. The old friends, who had plagued me to receive him, now denied with cursing and swearing, as it were, saying: "I know not the man." One or two of the radical papers made a bitter personal attack on him because harmless German hair-dressers and waiters were being interned while this wealthy international financier, who was in a position to collect information and influence opinion, was left at large, thanks to highly-placed friends and a title. They said that some of the Cabinet were absolutely dependent on him... Though I saw nothing of the man, I could not help hearing of him, for the mob broke his windows in Westbourne Terrace whenever there was an air-raid; they said he was shewing lights to guide the Zeppelins to Paddington. Whether there was a word of truth in it I can't say... And, when he erected an enormous hospital at Rock Hill, even this was not accounted to him for righteousness: the men there held him to ransom, his own patients. Some one would whisper that he had a secret wireless apparatus on his roof; and immediately Sir Adolf would build another ward or a recreation-room or a picture theatre...
And in another sense they disappeared: as Will said, "Plant an Erckmann in England, and up comes an Erskine." Poor souls, if they had changed their names before the war and if some one could have performed an operation to rid Sir Adolphus of that appalling guttural accent... I really began to feel sorry for them when all their friends—led, if you please, by my Lady Maitland—turned the cold shoulder. "Satisfy me," I said to Arthur, "that he is a truly loyal subject, and I should like to see if I could not shew him a little kindness."
"He's a noxious creature," said Arthur with his usual intolerance, "but all these stories of spying and of blackmailing ministers are sheer flumdiddle. It isn't worth his while. Whoever wins, Erskine will make money. He's technically loyal; but he's a man without patriotism, because the whole world is his country. For the Lord's sake, don't throw your mantle over him; as long as there are national distinctions, I object to the way these international Jew financiers settle in England for their own convenience."