Gossamer Part 16

"Still working with that circus?"

"Oh, dear no. Left that months ago. He got some money. No, I didn't give it to him. I fancy it must have been Ascher. Anyhow he's got it. He's down in Hertfordshire now, living in a barn."

"Why? A barn seems an odd place to live in. Draughty, I should think."

"He wanted s.p.a.ce," said Gorman, "a great deal of s.p.a.ce to work at his experiments. I'm inclined to think there may be something in this new idea of his."

"The living picture idea? Making real ghosts of the figures?"

"That's it. And, do you know, he's getting at it. He showed me some perfectly astonishing results the other day. If he pulls it off----"

"You won't let Ascher get hold of it this time," I said.

Gorman frowned.

"I wouldn't let Ascher touch it if I could help it, but what the devil can I do? We shall want capital and I suppose Ascher is no worse than the rest of them."

By "them" Gorman evidently meant capitalists in general and financiers in particular.

"That's the way," he said. "Not only do these scoundrels control politics, reducing the whole system of democracy to a farce----"

"Come now," I said, "don't blame the capitalists for that. Democracy would be a farce if there never was such a thing as a capitalist."

"Not content with that," said Gorman, "they keep an iron grip upon industry. They fatten on the fruits of other men's brains. They hold the working man in thrall, exploiting his energy for their own selfish greed, starving his women and children----"

Gorman ought to keep that sort of thing for public meetings. It is thoroughly bad form to make speeches to an audience of one. I must say that he seldom does. I suppose that his intimate a.s.sociation with Mrs.

Ascher had spoiled his manners in this respect. She encouraged him to be oratorical. But I am not Mrs. Ascher, and I saw no reason why I should stand that kind of thing at my own dinner table.

"But the day is coming," I said, "when organised labour will rise in its might and claim its heritage in the fair world which lies bathed in the sunlight of a n.o.bler age."

Gorman looked at me doubtfully for an instant, only for a single instant. Almost immediately his eyes twinkled and he smiled good-humouredly.

"You ought to go in for politics," he said. "You really ought. I apologise. Can't think what came over me to talk like that."

I cannot resist Gorman when he smiles. I felt that I too owed an apology.

"After all," I said, "you must practise somewhere. I don't blame you in the least; though I don't profess to like it. No one can do that sort of thing extempore and if it happens to suit you to rehea.r.s.e at dinner----"

"Nonsense," said Gorman. "There's not the slightest necessity for practice. I could do it by the hour and work sums in my head at the same time. Any one could."

Gorman is modest. Very few people can make speeches like his, fortunately for the world.

"All the same," he said, reverting abruptly to the starting point of his speech, "it's a pity we have to let Ascher into this new cinematograph racket; but we can't help it. In fact I expect he's in already."

"Lending money to Tim for experiments?"

"He wouldn't do that," said Gorman, "unless he'd made sure of his share of the spoil afterwards."

"Gorman," I said, "why don't you make a law to suppress Ascher. You believe in making laws, and, according to your own showing, that would be a very useful one."

Gorman gave me no answer. I knew he could not, because there is no answer to give. If laws had any effect on life, as Gorman pretends to believe, he would make one which would do away with Ascher. But he knows in his heart that he might just as well make a law forbidding the wind to blow from the east. Instead of taking any notice of my question he pulled out his watch and looked at it.

"Nine o'clock," he said. "I must be off to the House at once. An important division has been arranged for a quarter past. Just ask your man to call a taxi, will you?"

"Why go?" I said. "If the division is arranged the result will be arranged too."

"Of course it is," said Gorman. "You don't suppose the Whips leave that to chance."

"I must say you manage these things very badly. Here you are smoking comfortably after dinner, not in the least inclined to stir, and yet you say you have to go. Why don't you introduce a system of writing cheques?

'Pay the Whip of my Party or bearer 150 votes. Signed Michael Gorman, M.

P.'"

"That's rather a good idea," said Gorman. "It would save a lot of trouble."

"The cheque could be pa.s.sed in to some sort of clearing house where a competent clerk, after going over all the cheques, would strike a balance and place it to the credit of your side or the other. That would be the Government's Majority, and you wouldn't have to go near the House of Commons at all except when you wanted to make a speech. I don't think you need go even then. You might make your speeches quietly in your own home to a couple of reporters."

"It would simplify parliamentary life enormously," said Gorman, "there's no doubt of that. But I don't think it would do. I don't really. The people wouldn't stand it."

"If the people stand the way you go on at present they'll stand anything."

"I wish," said Gorman, "that you'd ring for a taxi." I rang the bell and five minutes later Gorman left me. He had not told me anything about Home Rule, or how his party meant to deal with a recalcitrant Ulster. He seemed very little interested in Ulster. Yet Malcolmson was indubitably in earnest. I felt perfectly sure about that.

CHAPTER XI.

I intended to call on the Aschers as soon as I could after I returned to London. I owed Ascher some thanks for his kindness in providing me with letters of introduction for my tour. However, they heard that I was home again before I managed to pay my visit. I daresay Gorman told them. He sees Mrs. Ascher two or three times a week and he must get tired talking about Ireland. A little item of gossip, like the news of my return, would come as a relief to Gorman, and perhaps even to Mrs. Ascher, after a long course of poetic politics mixed with art.

I had a note from Mrs. Ascher, in which she invited me to dinner.

"Very quietly," she said. "I know my husband would like to have a talk with you, so I shall not ask any one to meet you. Please fix your own night. We have no engagements this week."

I got the note on Monday and fixed Wednesday for our dinner. I could not think that Ascher really wanted to talk to me. I did not see what he had to talk to me about; but I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to tell him about my tour and to give him some idea of the effect which my glimpse at his business had produced on my mind. I also wanted to find out what he thought about Irish affairs. I had heard a good deal more talk about the Ulster situation. Malcolmson got at me nearly every day, and several other men, much more level-headed than Malcolmson, seemed to regard the situation as serious. I heard it hinted that the Army would not relish the idea of shooting the Ulstermen. I understood the feeling. If I were still in the Army I should not like to be told to kill Malcolmson. He was my brother officer at one time, and I found him a good comrade. The same feeling must exist among the rank and file. Northeast Ulster was, at one time, a favourite recruiting ground for the Guards. Malcolmson's volunteer army was leavened with old Guardsmen, reservists, many of them quite well known to the men still serving in the Brigade.

I could not, of course, expect Ascher to be much interested in Irish affairs. Ireland is the one country in the world over which financiers have not cast their net, possibly because they would catch next to nothing there. So we, who escaped the civilisation of Roman law, almost escaped the philosophy of the mediaeval church, were entirely untouched by the culture of the Renaissance, remained a kind of Gideon's fleece when the dew of the industrial system of the 19th century was moistening Europe, are now left untouched by the new civilisation of international finance. Yet Ascher, if not personally interested in our destiny, has a cool and unprejudiced mind. His opinion on Irish affairs would be of the greatest interest to me. I was not satisfied with Gorman's reading of the situation. Nor did I feel sure that Malcolmson, though he was certainly in earnest, quite understood what a big thing he was letting himself in for.

The Aschers live near Golders Hill, a part of London totally unknown to me. They have a large old-fashioned house with a considerable amount of ground round it. Some day when Ascher is dead the house will be pulled down and the grounds cut up into building plots. In the meanwhile Ascher holds it. I suppose it suits him. Neither he nor Mrs. Ascher cares for fashionable life, and a Mayfair address has no attraction for them. The few artistic and musical people whom they wish to know are quite willing to go to Hampstead. Every one else who wants to see Ascher, and a good many people do, calls at his office or dines with him in a club. Ascher knows most of the chief men in the political world, for instance, but even Prime Ministers are not often invited to the house at Golders Hill. If Ascher really controls them, as Gorman says, he does so without allowing them to interfere with his private life.

The house and its appointments impressed me greatly. The architecture was Georgian, a style familiar to any one who has lived much in Dublin.

It gave me a feeling of s.p.a.ciousness and dignity. The men who built these houses knew what it was to live like gentlemen. I can imagine them guilty of various offences against the code of Christian morality, but I do not think they can ever have been either fussy or mean. There is a restlessness about our fashionable imitations of the older kinds of English domestic architecture. Our picturesque gables, dormer windows and rooms with all sorts of odd angles, our finicky windows stuck high up in unexpected parts of walls, our absurd leaded diamond panes and crooked metal fastenings, all make for fussiness of soul. Nor can I believe that people who live under ceilings which they can almost touch ever attain a great and calm outlook upon life.

There was nothing "artistic" about Ascher's house. This surprised me at first. I did not, of course, expect that Mrs. Ascher would have surrounded herself with the maddening kind of furniture which is distinguished by its crookedness and is designed by men who find their inspiration by remembering the things which they see in nightmares. Nor did I think it likely that she would have crammed her rooms with those products of the east which are imported into this country by house furnishers with reputations for aestheticism. I knew that she had pa.s.sed that stage of culture. But I did expect to find the house full of heavily embroidered copes of mediaeval bishops, hung on screens; candlesticks looted from Spanish monasteries, standing on curiously carved shelves; chairs and cabinets which were genuine relics of the age of Louis XV.; and pictures by artists who lived in Italy before the days when Italians learned to paint.

I found myself in a house which was curiously bare of furniture. There were a few pictures in each of the rooms I entered, modern pictures, and I suppose good, but I am no judge of such things. There were scarcely any ornaments to be seen and very few tables and chairs. My own feeling is that a house should be furnished in such a way as to be thoroughly comfortable. I like deep soft chairs and sofas to sit on. I like to have many small tables on which to lay down books, newspapers and pipes. I like thick carpets and curtains which keep out draughts. I would not live in Ascher's house, even if I were paid for doing so by being given Ascher's fortune. But I would rather live in Ascher's house than in one of those overcrowded museums which are the delight of very wealthy New York Jews. I should, in some moods, find a pleasure in the fine proportions of the rooms which Ascher refuses to spoil. I could never, I know, be happy in a place where I ran the risk of dropping tobacco ashes on thirteenth century tapestry and dared not move suddenly lest I should knock over some priceless piece of china.

We ate at a small table set at one end of a big dining-room, a dining-room in which, I suppose, thirty people could have sat down together comfortably. There was no affectation of shaded lights and gloomy, mysterious s.p.a.ces. Ascher had aimed at and achieved something like a subdued daylight by means of electric lamps, shaded underneath, which shone on the ceiling. I could see all the corners of the room, the walls with their pictures and the broad floor across which the servants pa.s.sed. The dinner itself was very short and simple. If I had been actually hungry, as I am in the country after shooting, I should have called the dinner meagre. For a London appet.i.te there was enough, but not more than enough. I might, a younger and more vigorous man would, have got up from the table hungry. But the food was exquisite. The cook must be a descendant of one of those artists whom Lord Beaconsfield described in "Tancred," and he has found in Ascher's house a situation which ought to satisfy him. Ascher does not care for sumptuousness or abundance; but he knows how to eat well. We had one wine, a very delicately flavoured white Italian wine, perhaps from Capri, the juice of some rare crops of grapes in that sunny island.

"We found ourselves in a little difficulty," said Ascher, "when you fixed on to-night for your visit to us."