The Devil's Paw Part 14

"I have a petrol launch," Julian explained, "and I shall land you practically in the dining room in another ten minutes."

"Let us proceed," Mr. Stenson suggested briskly. "What a queer fellow Miles Furley is! Quite a friend of yours, isn't he, Miss Abbeway?"

"I have seen a good deal of him lately," she answered, walking on and making room for Stenson to fall into step by her side, but still keeping her face a little averted. "A man of many but confused ideas; a man, I should think, who stands an evil chance of muddling his career away."

"We offered him a post in the Government," Stenson ruminated.

"He had just sense enough to refuse that, I suppose," she observed, moving slowly to the right and thereby preventing Julian from taking a place by her side. "Yet," she went on, "I find in him the fault of so many Englishmen, the fault that prevents their becoming great statesmen, great soldiers, or even," she added coolly, "successful lovers."

"And what is that?" Julian demanded.

She remained silent. It was as though she had heard nothing. She caught Mr. Stenson's arm and pointed to a huge white seagull, drifting down the wind above their heads.

"To think," she said, "with that model, we intellectuals have waited nearly two thousand years for the aeroplane!"

CHAPTER VIII

According to plans made earlier in the day, a small shooting party left the Hall immediately after luncheon and did not return until late in the afternoon. Julian, therefore, saw nothing more of Catherine until she came into the drawing-room, a few minutes before the announcement of dinner, wearing a wonderful toilette of pale blue silk, with magnificent pearls around her neck and threaded in her Russian headdress. As is the way with all women of genius, Catherine's complete change of toilette indicated a parallel change in her demeanour. Her interesting but somewhat subdued manner of the previous evening seemed to have vanished.

At the dinner table she dominated the conversation. She displayed an intimate acquaintance with every capital of Europe and with countless personages of importance. She exchanged personal reminiscences with Lord Shervinton, who had once been attached to the Emba.s.sy at Rome, and with Mr. Hannaway Wells, who had been first secretary at Vienna. She spoke amusingly of Munich, at which place, it appeared, she had first studied art, but dilated, with all the artist's fervour, on her travellings in Spain, on the soft yet wonderfully vivid colouring of the southern cities. She seemed to have escaped altogether from the gravity of which she had displayed traces on the previous evening. She was no longer the serious young woman with a purpose. From the chrysalis she had changed into the b.u.t.terfly, the brilliant and cosmopolitan young queen of fashion, ruling easily, not with the arrogance of rank, but with the actual gifts of charm and wit. Julian himself derived little benefit from being her neighbour, for the conversation that evening, from first to last, was general. Even after she had left the room, the atmosphere which she had created seemed to linger behind her.

"I have never rightly understood Miss Abbeway," the Bishop declared.

"She is a most extraordinarily brilliant young woman."

Lord Shervinton a.s.sented.

"To-night you have Catherine Abbeway," he expounded, "as she might have been but for these queer, alternating crazes of hers--art and socialism.

Her brain was developed a little too early, and she was unfortunately, almost in her girlhood, thrown in with a little clique of brilliant young Russians who attained a great influence over her. Most of them are in Siberia or have disappeared by now. One Anna Katinski--was brought back from Tobolsk like a royal princess on the first day of the revolution."

"It is strange," the Earl p.r.o.nounced didactically, "that a young lady of Miss Abbeway's birth and gifts should espouse the cause of this Labour rabble, a party already cursed with too many leaders."

"A woman, when she takes up a cause," Mr. Hannaway Wells observed, "always seeks either for the picturesque or for something which appeals to the emotions. So long as she doesn't mix with them, the cause of the people has a great deal to recommend it. One can use beautiful phrases, can idealise with a certain amount of logic, and can actually achieve things."

Julian shrugged his shoulders.

"I think we are all a little blind," he remarked, "to the danger in which we stand through the great prosperity of Labour to-day."

The Bishop leaned across the table.

"You have been reading Fiske this week."

"Did I quote?" Julian asked carelessly. "I have a wretched memory. I should never dare to become a politician. I should always be pa.s.sing off other people's phrases as my own."

"Fiske is quite right in his main contention," Mr. Stenson interposed.

"The war is rapidly creating a new cla.s.s of bourgeoisie. The very differences in the earning of skilled labourers will bring trouble before long--the miner with his fifty or sixty shillings, and the munition worker with his seven or eight pounds--men drawn from the same cla.s.s."

"England," declared the Earl, indulging in his favourite speech, "was never so contented as when wages were at their lowest."

"Those days will never come again," Mr. Hannaway Wells foretold grimly.

"The working man has tasted blood. He has begun to understand his power.

Our Ministers have been asleep for a generation. The first of these modern trades unions should have been treated like a secret society in Italy. Look at them now, and what they represent! Fancy what it will mean when they have all learnt to combine!--when Labour produces real leaders!"

"Can any one explain the German democracy?" Lord Shervinton enquired.

"The ubiquitous Fiske was trying to last week in one of the Reviews,"

Mr. Stenson replied. "His argument was that Germany alone, of all the nations in the world, possessed an extra quality or an extra sense--I forget which he called it--the sense of discipline. It's born in their blood. Generations of military service are responsible for it.

Discipline and combination--that might be their motto. Individual thought has been drilled into grooves, just as all individual effort is specialised. The Germans obey because it is their nature to obey. The only question is whether they will stand this, the roughest test they have ever had--whether they'll see the thing through."

"Personally, I think they will," Hannaway Wells p.r.o.nounced, "but if I should be wrong--if they shouldn't--the French Revolution would be a picnic compared with the German one. It takes a great deal to drive a national idea out of the German mind, but if ever they should understand precisely and exactly how they have been duped for the glorification of their masters--well, I should pity the junkers."

"Do your essays in journalism," the Bishop asked politely, "ever lead you to touch upon Labour subjects, Julian?"

"Once or twice, in a very mild way," was the somewhat diffident reply.

"I had an interesting talk with Furley this morning," the Prime Minister observed. "He tells me that they are thinking of making an appeal to this man Paul Fiske to declare himself. They want a leader--they want one very badly--and thank heavens they don't know where to look for him!"

"But surely," Julian protested, "they don't expect necessarily to find a leader of men in an anonymous contributor to the Reviews? Fiske, when they have found him, may be a septuagenarian, or a man of academic turn of mind, who never leaves his study. 'Paul Fiske' may even be the pseudonym of a woman."

The Earl rose from his place.

"This afternoon," he announced, "I read the latest article of this Paul Fiske. In my opinion he is an exceedingly mischievous person, without the slightest comprehension of the forces which really count in government."

The Bishop's eyes twinkled as he left the room with his hand on his G.o.dson's arm.

"It would be interesting," he whispered, "to hear this man Fiske's opinion of your father's last speech in the House of Lords upon land interests!"

It was not until the close of a particularly unsatisfactory evening of uninspiring bridge that Julian saw anything more of Catherine. She came in from the picture gallery, breathless, followed by four or five of the young soldiers, to whom she had been showing the steps of a new dance, and, turning to Julian with an impulsiveness which surprised him, laid her fingers imperatively upon his arm.

"Take me somewhere, please, where we can sit down and talk," she begged, "and give me something to drink."

He led the way into the billiard room and rang the bell.

"You have been overtiring yourself," he said, looking down at her curiously.

"Have I?" she answered. "I don't think so. I used to dance all through the night in Paris and Rome, a few years ago. These young men are so clumsy, though--and I think that I am nervous."

She lay back in her chair and half closed her eyes. A servant brought in the Evian water for which she had asked and a whisky and soda for Julian. She drank thirstily and seemed in a few moments to have overcome her fatigue. She turned to her companion with an air of determination.

"I must speak to you about that packet, Mr. Orden," she insisted.

"Again?"

"I cannot help it. You forget that with me it is a matter of life or death. You must realise that you were only entrusted with it. You are a man of honour. Give it to me."

"I cannot."