The Rustle of Silk Part 12

"England has Labor by the seat of the pants, you should say, Sparrow.

Take my word for it, the strike is not only doomed to eventual failure, however the fluctuations go, but the Labor movement will grow less and less terrorist in its methods from this day onwards."

Mr. Sparrow threw back his head and laughed loudly,-showing an incomplete collection of very disastrous teeth. "Well, there won't be a d.a.m.ned train running by this time Monday," he said.

"I'll bet you a thousand oak apples to one there will," replied Lord Amesbury, "and I'll tell you why. Every sane and law-abiding Englishman, from the small clerk to the most doddering duke, has begun to organize and this mighty revolution of yours is already as dead as mutton."

"Oh, is that so?" Mr. Sparrow laughed again.

"That is so. You see, Sparrow, you Labor gentlemen, talking paradoxically, have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, not merely in this country but all over the world. You have been the bullies of the school and for a considerable number of years you have made our politicians stiff with fright. They have licked your boots and given way to you whenever you demanded higher wages. They pampered and petted you all through the War, from which you emerged with swollen heads and far too many pianos. When history turns its cold eye upon you, you will be summed up as a set of pretty dirty blackguards who did less to win the War than all the dud sh.e.l.ls piled into a heap. You slacked, grumbled, threatened and held up governments for wages out of all proportion to your work. You proved the possession of criminal as well as unpatriotic instincts and you finally showed yourselves up in your true light when you deserted the mines and took the pumpers away. There isn't any word in any dictionary to define the sort of indignation which that dastardly and wanton action has caused. The result of it has been to put the first big nail in the coffin of Labor unions. You have been discovered as men with a yellow streak. Governments now see, what they have never been able to recognize before, that labor does not form the most important section of the three sections of society, the other two being capital and the purchasing power. You have made clear to them, Master Sparrow, that labor and capital are at the mercy of the third element,-the great middle cla.s.s, the people who buy from capital, pay your wages and who can at any moment, by not buying, reduce both capital and labor to nothingness. The new strike, the epoch-making strike, is of this middle cla.s.s, and they haven't struck against you but against strikes. At last the worm has turned and I venture to prophesy, foolish as it is, that after a series of damaging and expensive kicks, labor will descend to its proper place, with a just share in profits that will enable it to get a little joy out of life, freed from the tyrannical hand of unions, and with more spare time than is at present enjoyed by the members of the middle cla.s.s who will continue to take the rough with the smooth, without squealing, as heretofore. In fact, I look upon this strike of miners as one of the best things that has ever happened in history and nothing gives me greater joy and greater satisfaction than to watch, as I shall do from to-day onwards, the gradual diminishing of the excessive size of the labor head.-How are your potatoes coming along?"

Without waiting for an answer, the tall old man turned quietly and left the room; while the parlor Bolshevist, stuffed with the pamphlets of Hyndman and Marks, Lenin and Trotsky, gave a vicious kick to the leg of the table and eyed the receding figure with venom.

The train was late and so Rip Van Winkle killed time by studying the contents of the bookstall, looking with a sort of incredulity at the stuff on which the public is fed,-illiterate fiction with glaring covers and cheap weeklies filled with egregious gossip and suggestive drawings.

The extra fifteen minutes of waiting was pa.s.sed very pleasantly by his Lordship because many of his old friends from the village came up to him and talked. The chemist, who had driven down personally to collect his monthly box of drugs from London, was very affable. So also was the blacksmith who had known Lord Amesbury for many years and treated him with _bonhomie_. They talked racing with great earnestness. The postman, the gardener from the house of the war profiteer, and the village policeman, all of them very good friends of the man upon whom they looked as representing the good old days, livened things up. With the real democracy that belongs solely to the aristocrat, Rip Van Winkle knew all about the ailments of their wives, the prospects of their children, the number of their hens and pigs and their different forms of religious worship, which he duly respected, whether they were Little Baptists, Big Baptists or Middle-sized Baptists, Minor Methodists or Major Methodists, Independent Churchmen or Dependent Churchmen, Roman Catholics or Anglicans whose Catholicism is interpreted intelligently.

The village consisted perhaps of twenty-five hundred souls, but they all had their different cures, and there were as many churches and chapels in and off the High Street as there were public houses. It had always seemed to Feo's father that honest beer is infinitely preferable to the various sorts of religion which were to be obtained in those other public houses in their various bottles, all labeled differently, and he hoped that the prohibition which had been the means of developing among the people of the United States so many drinks far more injurious than those in which alcohol prevailed would never be forced by graft and hypocrisy, self-seeking and salary-making upon the tight little island,-not always so tight as prohibitionists supposed.

Lady Feo bounded out of the train, followed by Mrs. Malwood and their two new friends recently picked up,-Feo's latest fancy, Gordon Macquarie, a glossy young man who backed musical plays in order that he might dally with the pretty members of his choruses, and Mrs. Malwood's most recent time-killer whose name was Dowth,-David Dowth, the Welsh mine owner, who had just succeeded to his father's property and had invaded London to see life. Cambridge was still upon the latter's face and very obviously upon his waistcoat. He was a green youth who would learn about women from Mrs. Malwood. They were both new to Rip Van Winkle and for that reason all the more interesting. Lola, carrying a jewel case, emerged from a compartment at the back of the train with Mrs. Malwood's maid, similarly burdened, and it was at Lola that Lord Amesbury threw his most appreciative glance.

"French," he said to himself. "The reincarnation of those pretty little people made immortal by Fragonard."

Feo threw her arms round her father's neck and kissed him on those places of his cheeks which were clear of undergrowth. "Good old Rip,"

she said. "Always on the spot. Been bored, old boy?"

Lord Amesbury laughed. "To be perfectly frank, yes," he said. "I have missed my race meetings and my bridge at Boodles, but I have been studying the awakening of spring and the psychology of bird life, all very delightful. Also I have been watching the daily changes among the trees in the beech forest. Amazingly dramatic, my dear. But it's good to see you again and I hope your two friends are gamblers. Possibly I can make a bit out of them."

He patted her on the shoulder and looked her up and down with admiration not unmixed with astonishment. Among the many riddles which he had never been able to solve he placed the fact that he of all men was Feo's father. What extraordinary twist had nature performed in making his only daughter a girl instead of a boy? Standing there in her short skirt and manly looking golf shoes with lopping tongues, her beautiful square shoulders lightly covered with a coa.r.s.ely knitted sweater of chestnut brown and a sort of Tyrolean hat drawn down over her ears, she looked like a young officer in the First Life Guards masquerading in women's clothes.

II

When Lord Amesbury mounted the box with Feo at his side and turned out of the station yard into the long road which led to the old village of Princes Risborough, the first thing that caught Lola's eyes was the white cross cut by the Romans in the chalk of the hill, on the top of which sat Chilton Park. Again and again she had stood in front of photographs of this very view. They hung in Miss Breezy's room, neatly framed. Many times Miss Breezy herself had explained to Lola the meaning of that cross, so far as its historical significance went, and Lola had been duly impressed. The Romans,-how long ago they must have lived. But to her, more and more as her love and adoration grew, that white cross stood as a mark for the place to which Fallaray went from time to time for peace, to listen to the wind among the beech trees, to watch the sheep on the distant hills, to wander among the gardens of his old house and forget the falsity and the appalling inept.i.tude of his brother Ministers. The photographs had indicated very well the beauty of this scene but the sight of it in the life, all green in the first flush of spring, brought a sob to Lola's throat. Once more the feeling came all over her that it would be at Chilton Park that she would meet Fallaray at last alone and discover her love to him,-not as lady's maid but as the little human thing, the Eve.

She sat shoulder to shoulder with the groom opposite to Mrs. Malwood's maid,-Dowth, Macquarie and Mrs. Malwood in close juxtaposition. But she had no ears for their conversation. As the village approached, not one single feature of it escaped her eager eyes,-its wide cobbled street, its warm Queen Anne houses, its old-fashioned shops, its Red Lion and Royal George and Black Bull, its funny little post office up three stairs, its doctor's house all covered with creeper, its ancient church sitting hen-wise among her children. It seemed to her that all these things, old and quiet and honest, had gone to the making of Fallaray's character; that he belonged to them and was part of them and represented them; and it gave her a curious feeling of being let into Fallaray's secrets as she went along.

From time to time people hatted Lady Feo and one or two old women, riddled with rheumatism, bobbed-not because of any sense of serfdom, but because they liked to do so-a pleasant though inverted sense of egotism which is at the bottom of all tradition. Rip Van Winkle saluted every one with his whip; the butchers-and there were several, although meat was still one of the luxuries-the landlords of the public houses who were not so fat as they used to be before the War, the vicar, a high churchman with an astonishingly low collar, and the usual comic person who invariably retires to such villages, lives in a workman's cottage among the remnants of pa.s.sed glory and talks to any one who will listen to him of the good old days when he tooled his team of spanking bays and hobn.o.bbed in London, when society really _was_ society, with men of famous names and ladies of well-known frailty. This particular gentleman, Augustus Warburgh, p.r.o.nounced Warborough, made himself up to look like Whistler and wore the sort of clothes which would have appealed greatly to a character actor. What he lived on no one knew. One or two people with nasty minds were convinced that his small income was derived from blackmail,-probably a most pernicious piece of libel. On his few pounds a week, however, he did himself extremely well and lived alone in a four-room cottage as antediluvian as himself, in which there were some very charming pieces of Jacobean furniture, a collection of excellent sporting prints and numerous books all well-thumbed, "Barry Lyndon" being the most favored.

In this little place, with its old beams and uneven floors of oak, Augustus Warburgh "did" for himself, cooking his own meals, making his own bed and bringing home from his occasional trips to London mysterious bottles filled with delicatessen from Appenrodts, amazing pickles and an occasional case of unblended Balblair which he got from a relative of his who owned half of the isle of Skye. Nips of this glorious but dangerous juice he offered to his cronies in his expansive moods and delighted in seeing them immediately slide under his table with the expression worn by Charlie Chaplin after he has been plumped on the head with a meat axe. Needless to say that he and Rip Van Winkle got along together like a house on fire. They talked the same language, enjoyed the same highly spiced food, dipped back into the same period and had inevitably done the same people. The Warburgh bow as the brake pa.s.sed in the High Street was not Albertian but Elizabethan.

Feo laughed as she waved her hand. "When he dies," she said, "and I don't think he ever will, Princes Risborough will lose one of its most beautiful notes,-like London when they did away with Jimmies. Not that I remember Jimmies, except from what you've told me about it. Let's have him up to dinner one night and make him drunk."

"You can't," said Lord Amesbury. "It's impossible. There is a hole in every one of the soles of his shoes through which all the fumes of alcohol leak. You can stew him, you can pickle him, you can float him, but you cannot sink him. When everybody else is down and out, that is the time when Augustus takes the floor and rises to the eloquence and vitriolic power of Dr. Johnson.-Tell me, Feo, who is that remarkable child that you have got in tow?"

"My maid, you mean? She's the niece of my old Breezy. Isn't she charming? Such an honest little soul too. Does her job with the most utter neatness and nicety of touch and listens excellently. I rescued her from the stage,-I mean, of course, the chorus. A good deed in a naughty world." That's how she liked to put it, her memory being a little hazy. "I don't know what will become of her. Of course, she can't be my maid forever. Judging from the way in which my male friends look at her whenever they get the chance, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if one of these days she eloped with a duke. It would fill me with joy to meet her in her husband's ancestral home all covered with the family jewels and do my best to win a gracious smile. Or else she'll marry Simpkins, who is, I hear, frightfully mashed on her, and retire to a village pub, there to imitate the domestic cat and litter the world with kittens. I dunno. Anything may happen to a girl like that. But whatever it is, it will be one of these two extremes. I hate to think about it because I like her. It's very nice to have her about me."

Rip Van Winkle smiled. "To parody a joke in last week's _La Vie Parisienne_, I am not so old as I look, my dear."

"You dare," said Feo. But she laughed too. "Good Lord, Father, don't go and do a thing like that. If I had to call that girl Mother, I think that even my sense of humor would crack."

"A little joke, Feo," said Rip. "Nothing more. I can't even keep myself, you see."

Whereupon, having left the village, the brake turned into the road that ran up to Whitecross at an angle of forty-five. The old man slowed the horses down to a walk and waved his whip towards the screen of trees which hid Chilton Park from the public gaze. "It's been a wonderful spring," he said. "I have watched it with infinite pleasure. It has filled my old brain with poetry and very possibly with regrets. All the same, I'm glad you have come down. I've been rather lonely here. The evenings are long and ghosts have a knack of coming out and standing round my chair.-How is Edmund? I regret that I have forgotten to ask you about him before. One somehow always forgets to ask about Edmund, although I see that he is regarded by George Lytham and his crowd as the new Messiah."

Feo laughed again, showing all her wonderful teeth. "I had a quaint few minutes with Edmund the other night on the steps of Langham Hall. He had taken his mother and Aunt Betsy to a symphony concert. Do you know, I rather think that George is right about Edmund? He has all the makings of a Messiah and of course all the opportunities. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he emerged from the present generation of second-raters and led England out of its mora.s.s. But he'll only achieve this if he continues to remain untouched by any feminine hand. Of course, he's absolutely safe so far as I'm concerned, but there was a most peculiar look in his face the other night which startled me somewhat. I thought he'd fallen in love with me,-which would have been most inconvenient.

But I was wrong.-Well, here we are at the old homestead. How it reeks of Fallaray and worthiness."

III

But the party was not a success. Very shortly after lunch, during which Feo and Mrs. Malwood had put in good work in an unprecedented attempt to charm their new acquisitions, they all adjourned to the terrace,-that wonderful old terrace of weather-beaten stone giving on to a wide view of an Italian garden backed by a panorama of rolling hills and of the famous beech forest ten miles deep, under which, in certain parts, especially in the Icknield Way through which the Romans had pa.s.sed, the leaves of immemorial summers, all red and dry, lay twenty feet deep.

Gilbert Jermyn, Feo's brother, had dashed over on his motor bicycle from Great Marlow where he was staying with several friends, ex-flying men like himself and equally devoid of cash, trying to formulate some scheme whereby they might get back into adventure once more. Lord Amesbury had gone down to a pet place of his own to take a nap in the long gra.s.s with the sun on his face. Feo, who had been dancing until five o'clock that morning, was lying full stretch on a dozen cushions in the shadow of the house, Macquarie in attendance. Mrs. Malwood, petulant and disgruntled, was sitting near by with David Dowth. Gilbert Jermyn, who could see that he was superfluous, sat by himself on the bal.u.s.trade gazing into the distance. His clean-cut face was heavy with despondency. He had forgotten to light his cigarette.

"You're about the liveliest undertaker I've ever struck," said Feo.

"What the deuce is the matter with you?"

Macquarie shrugged his shoulders,-his girlishly cut coat with its tight waist and tight sleeves crinkling as he did so. "Oh, my dear," he said, "it's no good your expecting anything from me to-day. Under the circ.u.mstances it's impossible for me to scintillate."

"What do you mean?" asked Feo roughly. She had ordered this man down in her royal way, being rather taken with his tallness, youngness and smoothness, and demanded scintillation.

"But look at the position! I hate to be mercenary and talk about money, but you know, my dear thing, almost every bob I've got is invested in the three musical comedies now running, and if things go on as they are, every one of them will be shut down because of the coal strike. That's a jolly nice lookout. I'm no Spartan, and I confess that I find it very difficult to be merry and bright among the gravestones of my hopes."

And while he went on like that, dropping in many "my dears" and "you dear things" as though he had known Feo all his life, instead of more or less for twenty minutes, making gestures in imitation of those of the spoilt small-part lady, Lord Amesbury's daughter and Fallaray's wife became gradually more and more aware of the fact that she had made a fool of herself. There was something broadly decla.s.se about this man which, even to one of her h.o.m.ogeneous nature, became a reproach. She was getting, she could see, a little careless in her choice of friends and for this one, whom she had picked out of semi-society and the musical comedy night life of London-so dull, so naked, so hungry and thirsty and so diamond seeking-to play the yellow dog and find excuses for his lack of entertainment left her, she found with astonishment, wholly without adjectives. It was indeed altogether beyond words. And she sat watching and listening to this vain and brainless person with a sort of admiration for his audacity.

As for Dowth and Mrs. Malwood they, too, were not hitting it off, and in reply to Mrs. Malwood's impatient question the young Welshman's answer had many points of excuse. "Three of my mines have been flooded," he said gravely, "which knocks my future income all c.o.c.k-eyed. G.o.d knows how I shall emerge from this frightful business. A week ago I was one of the richest men in England. To-day I face pauperism. It's appalling. You expect me to sit at your feet and make love to you with the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. It can't be done, Mrs. Malwood. And, mind you, even if the remainder of my mines escape ruin, I go under. That's as plain as the nose on my face. The Government, always in terror of labor, has been amazingly supported in this business by the whole sanity of England, but the end of it will be that the miners will be given less wages but large shares in the profits of the coal owners. I shall probably be able to make a better living by becoming a miner myself. You sit there petulant and annoyed because I am in the depths of despondency. You'll cry out for cake when bread has run out, like all the women of your kind, but you see in me a doomed man unable to raise a finger to save property which has been in my family for several generations. I simply can't jibber and giggle and crack jokes with you and talk innuendoes. I was a fool to come down at all."

"Oh," said Mrs. Malwood aghast. "Oh-I suppose you think that I ought to amuse _you_?"

"Yes, I do," said Dowth.

And Mrs. Malwood also was at a loss for adjectives.

And when, presently, Rip Van Winkle appeared, smiling and sun-tanned to join what he expected to be a jovial group, he found a strange silence and a most uncomfortable air of jarring temperaments. He was well accustomed to these little parties of Feo's and to watch her at work with new men whom she collected on her way through life. Usually they were rather riotous affairs, filled with mirth and daring. What in the name of all that was wonderful had happened to this one? He joined his son and put his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Gibbie," he said, "enlighten me."

But he got no explanation from this young man, who seemed to be like a bird whose wings had been cut. "My dear Father," he said, "I've no sympathy with Feo's little pranks. She and the Malwood girl seem to have picked up a bounder and a shivering Welsh terrier this time, and even they probably regret it. I ran over this afternoon to yarn with you, as a matter of fact. Come on, let's get out of this. Let's go down to the stream and sit under the trees and have it out."

And so they left together, unnoticed by that disconcerted foursome with whose little games fate had had the impudence to interfere. And presently, seated on the bank of the brook which ran through the lower part of the park, Lord Gilbert Jermyn, ex-major Royal Air Force, D. S.

O., M. C., got it off his chest. "O G.o.d," he began, "how fed up I am with this infernal peace."

The old man gazed at his son with amazement. "I don't follow you," he said. "Peace? My dear lad, we have all been praying for it and we haven't got it yet."

The boy, and he was nothing more than that, sat with rounded shoulders and a deep frown on his face, hunched up, flicking pieces of earth into the bubbling water.