The Pretty Lady by Arnold Bennett (top 10 most read books in the world .TXT) 📖

empty. Not a member; not a servant! It waited, content to be inhabited, equally content with its own solitude. This apartment had made an adjunct even of the war; the function of the war in this apartment was to render it more impressive, to increase, if possible, its importance, for nowhere else could the war be studied so minutely day by day.

A strange thing! G.J.'s sense of duty to himself had been quickened by the defection of his valet. He felt that he had been failing to comprehend in detail the cause and the evolution of the war, and that even his general ideas as to it were inexcusably vague; and he had determined to go every morning to the club, at whatever inconvenience, for the especial purpose of studying and getting the true hang of the supreme topic. As he sat down he was aware of the solemnity of the great room, last fastness of the old strict decorum in the club. You might not smoke in it until after 10 p.m.

Two other members came in immediately, one after the other. The first, a little, very old and very natty man, began to read _The Times_ at a stand. The second, old too, but of larger and firmer build, with a long, clean-shaven upper lip, such as is only developed at the Bar, on the Bench, and in provincial circles of Noncomformity, took an easy-chair and another copy of _The Times_. A few moments elapsed, and then the little old man glanced round, and, assuming surprise that he had not noticed G.J. earlier, nodded to him with a very bright and benevolent smile.

G.J. said:

"Well, Sir Francis, what's your opinion of this Ypres business. Seems pretty complicated, doesn't it?"

Sir Francis answered in a tone whose mild and bland benevolence matched his smile:

"I dare say the complications escape me. I see the affair quite simply. We are holding on, but we cannot continue to hold on. The Germans have more men, far more guns, and infinitely more ammunition. They certainly have not less genius for war. What can be the result? I am told by respectable people that the Germans lost the war at the Marne. I don't appreciate it. I am told that the Germans don't realise the Marne. I think they realise the Marne at least as well as we realise Tannenberg."

The slightly trembling, slightly mincing voice of Sir Francis denoted such detachment, such politeness, such kindliness, that the opinion it emitted seemed to impose itself on G.J. with extraordinary authority. There was a brief pause, and Sir Francis ejaculated:

"What's your view, Bob?"

The other old man now consisted of a newspaper, two seamy hands and a pair of grey legs. His grim voice came from behind the newspaper, which did not move:

"We've no adequate means of judging."

"True," said Sir Francis. "Now, another thing I'm told is that the War Office was perfectly ready for the war on the scale agreed upon for ourselves with France and Russia. I don't appreciate that either. No War Office can be said to be perfectly ready for any war until it has organised its relations with the public which it serves. My belief is that the War Office had never thought for one moment about the military importance of public opinion and the Press. At any rate, it has most carefully left nothing undone to alienate both the public and the Press. My son-in-law has the misfortune to own seven newspapers, and the tales he tells about the antics of the Press Bureau--" Sir Francis smiled the rest of the sentence. "Let me see, they offered the Press Bureau to you, didn't they, Bob?"

_The Times_ fell, disclosing Bob, whose long upper lip grew longer.

"They did," he said. "I made a few inquiries, and found it was nothing but a shuttlecock of the departments. I should have had no real power, but unlimited quantities of responsibility. So I respectfully refused."

Sir Francis remarked:

"Your hearing's much better, Bob."

"It is," answered Bob. "The fact is, I got hold of a marvellous feller at Birmingham." He laughed sardonically. "I hope to go down to history as the first judge that ever voluntarily retired because of deafness. And now, thanks to this feller at Birmingham, I can hear better than seventy-five per cent of the Bench. The Lord Chancellor gave me a hint I might care to return, and so save a pension to the nation. I told him I'd begin to think about that when he'd persuaded the Board of Works to ventilate my old Court." He laughed again. "And now I see the Press Bureau is enunciating the principle that it won't permit criticism that might in any way weaken the confidence of the people in the administration of affairs."

Bob opened his mouth wide and kept it open.

Sir Francis, with no diminution of the mild and bland benevolence of his detachment, said:

"The voice is the Press Bureau's voice, but the hands are the hands of the War Office. Can we reasonably hope to win, or not to lose, with such a mentality at the head? I cannot admit that the War Office has changed in the slightest degree in a hundred years. From time to time a brainy civilian walks in, like Cardwell or Haldane, and saves it from becoming patently ridiculous. But it never really alters. When I was War Secretary in a transient government it was precisely the same as it had been in the reign of the Duke of Cambridge, and to-day it is still precisely the same. I am told that Haldane succeeded in teaching our generals the value of Staff work as distinguished from dashing cavalry charges. I don't appreciate that. The Staffs are still wide open to men with social influence and still closed to men without social influence. My grandson is full of great modern notions about tactics. He may have talent for all I know. He got a Staff appointment--because he came to me and I spoke ten words to an old friend of mine with oak leaves in the club next door but one. No questions asked. I mean no serious questions. It was done to oblige me--the very existence of the Empire being at stake, according to all accounts. So that I venture to doubt whether we're going to hold Ypres, or anything else."

Bob, unimpressed by the speech, burst out:

"You've got the perspective wrong. Obviously the centre of gravity is no longer in the West--it's in the East. In the West, roughly, equilibrium has been established. Hence Poland is the decisive field, and the measure of the Russian success or failure is the measure of the Allied success or failure."

Sir Francis inquired with gentle joy:

"Then we're all right? The Russians have admittedly recovered from Tannenberg. If there is any truth in a map they are doing excellently. They're more brilliant than Potsdam, and they can put two men into the field to the Germans' one--two and a half in fact."

Bob fiercely rumbled:

"I don't think we're all right. This habit of thinking in men is dangerous. What are men without munitions? And without a clean administration? Nothing but a rabble. It is notorious that the Russians are running short of munitions and that the administration from top to bottom consists of outrageous rascals. Moreover I see to-day a report that the Germans have won a big victory at Kutno. I've been expecting that. That's the beginning--mark me!"

"Yes," Sir Francis cheerfully agreed. "Yes. We're spending one million a day, and now income tax is doubled! The country cannot stand it indefinitely, and since our only hope lies in our being able to stand it indefinitely, there is no hope--at any rate for unbiased minds. Facts are facts, I fear."

Bob cried impatiently:

"Unbiased be damned! I don't want to be unbiased. I won't be. I had enough of being unbiased when I was on the Bench, and I don't care what any of you unbiased people say--I believe we shall win."

G.J. suddenly saw a boy in the old man, and suddenly he too became boyish, remembering what he had said to Christine about the war not having begun yet; and with fervour he concurred:

"So do I."

He rose, moved--relieved after a tension which he had not noticed until it was broken. It was time for him to go. The two old men were recalled to the fact of his presence. Bob raised the newspaper again.

Sir Francis asked:

"Are you going to the--er--affair in the City?"

"Yes," said G.J. with careful unconcern.

"I had thought of going. My granddaughter worried me till I consented to take her. I got two tickets; but no sooner had I arrayed myself this morning than she rang me up to say that her baby was teething and she couldn't leave it. In view of this important creature's indisposition I sent the tickets back to the Dean and changed my clothes. Great-grandfathers have to be philosophers. I say, Hoape, they tell me you play uncommonly good auction bridge."

"I play," said G.J. modestly. "But no better than I ought."

"You might care to make a fourth this afternoon, in the card-room."

"I should have been delighted to, but I've got one of these war-committees at six o'clock." Again he spoke with careful unconcern, masking a considerable self-satisfaction.


Chapter 10


THE MISSION

The great dim place was full, but crowding had not been permitted. With a few exceptions in the outlying parts, everybody had a seat. G.J. was favourably placed for seeing the whole length of the interior. Accustomed to the restaurants of fashionable hotels, auction-rooms, theatrical first-nights, the haunts of sport, clubs, and courts of justice, he soon perceived, from the numerous samples which he himself was able to identify, that all the London worlds were fully represented in the multitude--the official world, the political, the clerical, the legal, the municipal, the military, the artistic, the literary, the dilettante, the financial, the sporting, and the world whose sole object in life apparently is to be observed and recorded at all gatherings to which admittance is gained by privilege and influence alone.

There were in particular women the names and countenances and family history of whom were familiar to hundreds of thousands of illustrated-newspaper readers, even in the most distant counties, and who never missed what was called a "function," whether "brilliant," "exclusive," or merely scandalous. At murder trials, at the sales of art collections, at the birth of musical comedies, at boxing matches, at historic debates, at receptions in honour of the renowned, at luscious divorce cases, they were surely present, and the entire Press surely noted that they were present. And if executions had been public, they would in the same religious spirit have attended executions, rousing their maids at milkmen's hours in order that they might assume the right cunning frock to fit the occasion. And they were here. And no one could divine why or how, or to what eternal end.

G.J. hated them, and he hated the solemn self-satisfaction that brooded over the haughty faces of the throng. He hated himself for having accepted a ticket from the friend in the War Office who was now sitting next to him. And yet he was pleased, too. A disturbed conscience could not defeat the instinct which bound him to the whole fashionable and powerful assemblage. For ever afterwards, to his dying hour, he could say--casually, modestly, as a matter of course, but he could still say--that he had been there. The Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, tradesmen glittering