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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gossamer, by George A. Birmingham
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Gossamer
+       1915
+
+Author: George A. Birmingham
+
+Release Date: January 21, 2008 [EBook #24394]
+Last Updated: February 17, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOSSAMER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+GOSSAMER
+
+By G. A. Birmingham
+
+Copyright, 1915, George H. Doran Company
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+“For that mercy,” said Gorman, “you may thank with brief thanksgiving
+whatever gods there be.” We were discussing, for perhaps the twentieth
+time, the case of poor Ascher. Gorman had reminded me, as he often
+does, that I am incapable of understanding Ascher or entering into his
+feelings, because I am a man of no country and therefore know nothing
+of the emotion of patriotism. This seems a curious thing to say to a
+man who has just had his leg mangled in a battle; but I think Gorman is
+quite right about his fact I went out to the fight, when the fight came
+on, but only because I could not avoid going. I never supposed that I
+was fighting for my country. But Gorman is wrong in his inference. I
+have no country, but I believe I can understand Ascher quite as well as
+Gorman does. Nor am I sure that I ought to be thankful for my immunity
+from the fever of patriotism. Ascher suffered severely because at a
+critical moment in his life a feeling of loyalty to his native land
+gripped him hard. I have also suffered, a rending of the body at
+least comparable to Ascher’s rending of the soul. But I have not the
+consolation of feeling that I am a hero.
+
+I have often told Gorman that if he were as thorough-going as he
+pretends to be he would call himself O’Gorabhain or at the very least,
+O’Gorman. He is an Irishman by birth, sympathy and conviction. He is a
+Member of Parliament, pledged to support the cause of Ireland, and this
+in spite of the fact that he has brains. He might have been a brilliant,
+perhaps even a successful and popular novelist. He wrote two
+stories which critics acclaimed, which are still remembered and even
+occasionally read. He might have risen to affluence as a dramatist. He
+was the author of one single-act play which made the fortune of a very
+charming actress ten years ago. He has made a name for himself as a
+journalist, and his articles are the chief glory of a leading weekly
+paper. But the business to which he has really devoted himself is that
+of an Irish patriot. He says amazingly foolish things in public and,
+in private, is always quite ready to laugh at his own speeches. He is
+a genuine lover of Ireland, an inheritor of that curious tradition of
+Irish patriotism which has survived centuries of disappointed hopes,
+and, a much stranger thing, has never been quite asphyxiated by its own
+gases.
+
+I happen to belong to that unfortunate class of Irishmen whom neither
+Gorman nor any one else will recognise as being Irish at all. I owned,
+at one time, a small estate in Co. Cork. I sold it to my tenants
+and became a man of moderate income, encumbered with a baronetcy
+of respectable antiquity and occupied chiefly in finding profitable
+investments for my capital. By way of recreation I interest myself in my
+neighbours and acquaintances, in the actual men and women rather than
+in their affairs. No definition of the Irish people has yet been
+framed which would include me, though I am indubitably a person--I take
+“person” to be the singular of people which is a noun of multitude--and
+come of a family which held on to an Irish property for 300 years. My
+religion consists chiefly of a dislike of the Roman Catholic Church and
+an instinctive distrust of the priests of all churches. My father was
+an active Unionist, and I have no political opinions of any sort. I am
+therefore cut off, both by religion and politics, from any chance of
+taking part in Irish affairs. On the other hand I cannot manage to
+feel myself an Englishman. Even now, though I have fought in their army
+without incurring the reproach of cowardice, I cannot get out of the
+habit of looking at Englishmen from a distance. This convinces me that I
+am not one of them.
+
+I am thus--Gorman is quite right about this--a man of no country. But I
+understand Ascher as well as Gorman does; though I take a different view
+of Ascher’s ultimate decision.
+
+I met Gorman first on board a Cunard steamer in the autumn of 1913.
+
+I was on my way to Canada. My excuse, the reason I gave to myself for
+the journey, was the necessity of looking into the affairs of certain
+Canadian companies in which I had invested money. There were rumours
+current in England at that time which led me to suspect that the boom in
+Canadian securities had reached its height and was about to subside. I
+did not really believe that I was likely to find out anything of
+value by stopping in an hotel at Montreal or travelling in a train
+to Vancouver. But I was tired of London and thought the trip might be
+pleasant. I went to Canada by way of New York, partly because the big
+Cunarders are comfortable steamers, partly because I find New York an
+agreeable city. I have several friends there and I like the life of the
+place--for a fortnight at a time. I do not know whether I should like it
+for a longer time because I have never had money enough to live in New
+York for more than a fortnight. As a regular place of residence it might
+be too stimulating for me; but I shall probably never know how I should
+feel about it at the end of six weeks.
+
+It was Gorman who took the initiative on board the steamer. I do not
+think that I should ever have made his acquaintance if he had not
+forced himself on me. He accosted me, introduced himself, carried the
+acquaintance through to an intimacy by sheer force of personality, and
+ended by inducing me to like him. He began his attack on me during that
+very uncomfortable time just before the ship actually starts. It is
+never possible to settle down to the ordinary routine of life at sea
+until the screw begins to revolve. There is an hour or two, after the
+passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy. Mail bags, so
+I understand, are being put on board. Stewards, carrying cabin trunks,
+swarm in the corridors. Passengers wander restlessly about or hurry,
+with futile energy, from place to place. Pushing men hustle each other
+at the windows of the purser’s office, under pretence of expecting
+letters or despatching telegrams. Women passengers eye other women
+passengers with suspicion and distrust. It is very interesting to notice
+how people who scowl at each other on the first day of a voyage exchange
+cards and promise to pay each other visits after six days as fellow
+travellers. At the end of another six days--such is the usual
+unfortunate experience--the cards are lost and the promises forgotten.
+A poet and, following him, a novelist have compared human intercourse to
+the “speaking” of ships that pass in the night. They would have found a
+more forcible, though perhaps less poetic, illustration of their idea
+in the friendships formed by passengers in the same steamer. They are
+intimate, but they are as a rule utterly transitory. However I have no
+right to complain. The friendship which Gorman forced on me has lasted
+eighteen months and shows no sign yet of wearing thin.
+
+He caught me in the smoking room. I had settled down quietly in a
+comfortable chair, and was wondering, as I always do in that smoking
+room, at the grain of the wood in the panel above the fireplace. There
+was no one else in the room except a steward who hovered near the door
+which leads to the bar. Experience has taught me that the smoking room,
+the most populous part of the ship during the voyage, is generally empty
+during the two hours before the start. I thought I should have the place
+to myself. I was half way through my cigar and had failed to decide
+whether the panel is a fake or a natural curiosity when Gorman entered.
+He is a big man and fat. He is clean shaved and has bushy grey eyebrows.
+Heavy rolls of skin hang down from his jaws. He wears an unusually large
+gold signet ring. His appearance is not attractive. He sat down beside
+me and addressed me at once.
+
+“Sir James Digby?” he said.
+
+That is my name. I admitted it by nodding.
+
+“I was glancing over the passenger list,” he said, “and saw you were on
+board. The purser told me you were up here somewhere. My name’s Gorman,
+Michael Gorman.”
+
+The name gave me no information beyond the fact that the speaker was an
+Irishman. There must be several thousand Gormans in Ireland and I could
+not remember that I was acquainted with any one of them. I nodded again.
+
+“I don’t suppose you remember me,” said Gorman, “but you used to see me
+pretty frequently once, about twenty-five years ago. My father kept the
+only shop in Curraghbeg, and you used to come in and buy sweets, a penny
+worth at a time. You were a small boy then. I was a bit older, fifteen
+or sixteen perhaps.”
+
+Curraghbeg is a miserable village standing in the middle of the tract
+of land which used to be my property. It is close to Curraghbeg House,
+where my father kept up such state as befitted an Irish gentleman of his
+day. I believe I was born there. If I thought of any place in the world
+as home I suppose it would be Curraghbeg; but I have no feeling for
+the place except a mild dislike. The House is now a nunnery, in better
+repair, but almost certainly more gauntly hideous than when I owned
+it. The village, I expect, is still as sordid as when I saw it last. I
+remembered Gorman’s shop, a dirty little public house, where sacks of
+flour, tea and sugar candy were sold, as well as whisky and emigration
+tickets. I also remembered my father’s opinion of Gorman, old Dan
+Gorman, the father of the man beside me. He was “one of the worst
+blackguards in the county, mixed up with every kind of League and
+devilment.” Those were the days when the land agitation was at its
+height and Irish gentlemen--they were fighting for their existence as a
+class--felt rather strongly about the leaders of the people.
+
+Of any younger Gorman I had no recollection whatever. Nor did I at that
+moment, or for some time afterwards, connect the son of the ruffianly
+old publican with the journalist and politician of whom I had heard a
+good deal.
+
+“Funny thing,” he said, “running into you like this. Let’s have a drink
+of some sort.”
+
+He snapped his fingers to attract the attention of the steward.
+
+I am not, I fear, thoroughly modernised. Though I like American social
+life I have never been able to accept the theory of the wickedness
+of class distinctions. As a political system democracy seems to me
+extraordinarily foolish, but I would not go out of my way to protest
+against it. My servant is, so far as I am concerned, welcome to as many
+votes as he can get. I would very gladly make mine over to him if I
+could. I do not suppose that it matters much in reality whether laws
+are made by dukes or cornerboys, but I like, as far as possible, to
+associate with gentlemen in private life. I was not prepared to sit
+drinking with the son of old Dan Gorman if I could help it.
+
+I intended to say so, as politely as such a thing can be said. The man’s
+face made me pause. He was looking at me with a curious smile, half
+innocent, half whimsical. His eyes expressed friendliness of a perfectly
+simple, unaffected kind. I realised that he was not a snob, that he was
+not trying to push himself on me for the sake of my position and title,
+the position of a disinherited Irish landlord and a title which, for all
+any one could tell by hearing it, might be the reward of a successful
+provincial doctor. I realised also, with an uncomfortable shiver, that
+he understood my feeling and was slightly amused at it. It struck me
+suddenly that I, and not Gorman, was the snob.
+
+The steward stood at his elbow.
+
+“Whisky and soda?” said Gorman. “We are still in English waters. Or
+shall I say cocktails, as we’re on our way to America?”
+
+I am a temperate man and have made it a rule not to drink before
+luncheon. But I was so much ashamed of my first feeling about
+Gorman that I thought it well to break my rule. I should, under the
+circumstances, have considered myself justified in breaking a temperance
+pledge, on the principle, once explained to me by an archdeacon, that
+charity is above rubrics. I gave my vote for whisky and soda as the
+more thorough-going drink of the two. A cocktail is seldom more than a
+mouthful. Gorman gave the order.
+
+“Don’t you think,” he said, “that it would be rather a good plan for us
+to sit together at meals? I’ll make arrangements with the steward and
+have a table reserved for us in the upper saloon. I can manage it all
+right. I often cross on this boat and everybody knows me.”
+
+Again he looked at me and again smiled in his fascinating childlike way.
+
+“I’m A-1 at ordering meals,” he said, “and it really does make a
+difference on these ships if you know how to get the best that’s going.”
+
+That was the one attempt he made to justify himself in forcing his
+company on me. But it was not the hope of better dinners, though I like
+good dinners, which led me to agree to his proposal. I was captivated by
+his smile. Besides, I had not, so far as I knew, a single acquaintance
+among the passengers. I should be better off with Gorman as messmate
+than set down beside some chance stranger who might smile in a
+disagreeable way, or perhaps not smile at all.
+
+“Very well,” I said. “You arrange it.”
+
+“It would be pleasant,” he said, “if we could get hold of a couple of
+other interesting people, and make four at our table.”
+
+I do not deny that Gorman is an interesting person, but I did not see
+what right he had to put me in that select class. I could only hope
+that the other interesting people would regard me as he did. He pulled a
+passenger list out of his pocket and turned over the pages.
+
+“What about the Aschers?” he said.
+
+He handed the list to me. There was a pencil mark opposite the name of
+Mr. Carl Ascher. Immediately below it was “Mrs. Ascher and maid.”
+
+“I don’t know him,” I said. “Who is he? Has he done anything
+particular?”
+
+“Heavens above!” said Gorman. “Who is Ascher! But perhaps you don’t
+recognise him apart from the rest of the firm. Ever heard of Ascher,
+Stutz & Co.?”
+
+I recognised the name then. Ascher is a banker, one of those
+international financiers who manage, chiefly from London offices, a
+complicated kind of business which no ordinary man understands anything
+about, a kind of foreign business which for some reason very few
+Englishmen undertake.
+
+“If the man’s a millionaire,” I said, “he won’t care to dine with
+us--and he’s probably a Jew--not that I’ve any particular prejudice
+against Jews.”
+
+“He’s not a Jew,” said Gorman. “He’s an Englishman. At least he’s as
+English as any man with a name like that can be. I expect he’ll jump at
+the chance of feeding with us. We’re the only people on board the least
+likely to interest him.”
+
+I admire Gorman’s splendid self-confidence, but I do not share it. I
+shrank from seeking the friendship of a millionaire.
+
+“He has his wife with him,” I said. “Perhaps she----”
+
+I meant to suggest that Mrs. Ascher might not care to be thrown with
+a couple of stray men of whom she knew nothing. Gorman thought I meant
+something quite different.
+
+“She’s an American,” he said, “or was before she married Ascher. I hear
+she goes in for music and pictures and literature and all that sort of
+thing, which may be boring. But I daresay we shan’t see very much of
+her. She’ll probably be seasick the whole time.”
+
+I have often wondered where Gorman gets all his astonishingly accurate
+information about people whom he does not know. He was very nearly right
+about Mrs. Ascher. She was seasick for four out of the six days of our
+voyage.
+
+“Anyhow,” he went on, “we must put up with her if we want to get hold
+of the husband. And I should like to do that. I’ve never had a chance
+before of being intimate with one of the big bugs of finance. I want to
+know what it is that those fellows really do.”
+
+When Gorman put it to me that way I withdrew all my objections to his
+plan. I very much want to know “what those fellows really do.” I am
+filled with curiosity and I want to know what every kind of fellow
+really does. I want to have a long talk with a Parisian dressmaker,
+one of the men who settles what shape women are to be for the next six
+months. I want to get at the mind of a railway manager. I want to know
+how a detective goes about the job of catching criminals. Of course I
+want to understand international banking.
+
+“Besides,” said Gorman, “a millionaire is a very useful kind of man to
+know.”
+
+Millionaires are useful acquaintances because there is always a chance
+of getting money from them.
+
+“Don’t count on me as a bridge player,” I said. “I’m no good at the game
+and never play for high points. You wouldn’t win anything worth while
+with me as one of the party.”
+
+“I wasn’t thinking of bridge,” said Gorman.
+
+He was not. He was thinking, I fancy, of his brother. But we did not get
+to Gorman’s brother for more than a week.
+
+Having got my consent, Gorman went off to “set” Ascher. I use the word
+“set” deliberately, for Gorman, when bent on getting anything done,
+reminds me of a well-trained sporting dog. He ranges, quarters the
+ground in front of him and finally--well, he set me as if I had been a
+grouse. He set Ascher, I have no doubt, in the same way.
+
+I did not think it likely that he would secure the Aschers. Millionaires
+are usually shy birds, well accustomed to being pursued by all sorts
+of ordinary men. They develop, I suppose, a special cunning in avoiding
+capture, a cunning which the rest of us never achieve. However Ascher’s
+cunning was no use to him in this case. Gorman is an exceedingly clever
+dog.
+
+The trumpet, bugle, cornet, or whatever the instrument is which
+announces meals at sea, was blaring out its luncheon tune when Gorman
+returned to me. He was in high triumph. He had captured the Aschers,
+reserved the nicest table in the upper saloon and secured the
+exclusive service of the best table steward in the ship. I think he had
+interviewed the head cook. I began to appreciate Gorman’s qualities as a
+travelling companion. His handling of the servants of the Cunard Company
+during the voyage was masterly. I never was so well looked after before,
+though I always make it a practice to tip generously.
+
+Gorman proposed that we should have another whisky and soda before going
+down to luncheon. He is a genial soul. No churl would want to drink two
+glasses of whisky in the early part of one day. When I refused he looked
+disappointed.
+
+On the way down to luncheon he asked the lift boy how his mother had got
+over her operation. It would never have occurred to me that the lift
+boy had a mother. If I had thought the matter out carefully I might have
+reached the conclusion that there must be or at one time have been a
+mother for every lift boy in the world. But Gorman did not reason. He
+simply knew, and knew too that this particular lift boy’s mother had
+been in a Liverpool hospital, a fact which no method of reasoning known
+to me would have enabled him to arrive.
+
+The lift boy loved Gorman. His grins of delight showed that. Our table
+steward, a very competent young man, adored him. The head cook--I
+judged by the meals we had sent up to us--had a very strong personal
+affection for Gorman. I do not wonder. I am myself fond of Gorman now.
+So is Ascher. Mrs. Ascher goes further still. She respects and admires
+Gorman. But Mrs. Ascher is a peculiar woman. She respects people whom
+the rest of us only like.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+We saw very little of Ascher and nothing at all of his wife during the
+first two days of our voyage. My idea was that they stayed in their
+cabins--they had engaged a whole suite of rooms--in order to avoid
+drifting into an intimacy with Gorman and me. A millionaire would
+naturally, so I supposed, be suspicious of the advance of any one who
+was not a fellow millionaire. I was mistaken. Ascher was simply seasick.
+When he recovered, two days before Mrs. Ascher raised her head from
+the pillow, he showed every sign of wanting to know Gorman and had no
+objection to dining with me.
+
+In the meanwhile I found out a great deal about Gorman. He was
+delightfully unreserved, not only about his own past, but about his
+opinions of people and institutions. Old Dan Gorman had, it appeared,
+married a new wife when he was about sixty. This lady turned Michael,
+then a young man, out of the house. He bore her no ill will whatever,
+though she deprived him in the end of his inheritance as well as his
+home. For several years he “messed about”--the phrase is his--with
+journalism, acting as reporter and leader writer for several Irish
+provincial papers, a kind of work which requires no education or
+literary talent. Then he, so to speak, emerged, becoming somehow,
+novelist, playwright, politician. I have never made out how he achieved
+his success. I do not think he himself knows that. According to his
+own account--and I never could get him to go into details--“things just
+happened to come along.”
+
+He was entirely frank about his opinions. He regarded landlords as the
+curse of Ireland and said so to me. He did not seem satisfied that they
+are innocuous, even when, being deprived of their estates, they are no
+longer landlords. I do not like being called a curse--hardly any one
+does--but I found myself listening to the things which Gorman said about
+the class to which I belong without any strong resentment. His treatment
+of us reminded me of Robbie Burns’ address to the devil. The poet
+recognised that the devil was a bad character and that the world would
+be in every way a brighter and happier place if there were no such
+person. But his condemnation was of a kindly sort, not wholly without
+sympathy. He held out a hope that “ould Nickie Ben” might still “hae
+some stake”--stake in the country I suppose--if he would take thought
+and mend. The reformation would have to be a drastic one, nothing less
+than a complete change of his habits, character and opinions. But such a
+thing was not wholly impossible. That was very much what Gorman thought
+about me.
+
+Next to Irish landlords Gorman disliked financiers more than any other
+people in the world. He did not, by his own confession, know anything
+about them; but he had got into touch with a group of journalists in
+London which specialises in abuse of the class. Gorman repeated all the
+stock arguments to me and illuminated the subject with some very well
+worn apologues.
+
+“A financier,” he said, “is a bloated spider, which sits in a murky den
+spinning webs and sucks the life-blood of its victims.”
+
+I wondered how Ascher would like this kind of talk if he ever joined our
+party.
+
+There was not, of course, the same note of personal bitterness in
+Gorman’s condemnation of financiers which I noticed in his attacks on
+landlords. He had learned to hate my class during the impressionable
+years of childhood. He had only found out about financiers when he was a
+grown man. And no one, not even a convert to a new faith, ever believes
+anything with real intensity except what he was taught before he was
+eight years old. But it was not to be expected that Ascher would be as
+patient as I was, even if the abuse with which Gorman assailed his class
+lacked something of the conviction with which he attacked me.
+
+I asked Gorman one evening why, holding the opinions he did, he had
+chosen as his table mates a banker and an unrepentant landlord. He had
+a whole shipload of passengers to choose from, most of them, no doubt
+believers in democracy, some of them perhaps even socialists, the kind
+of socialists who travel first class on crack Cunard steamers. He seemed
+surprised at the question and did not answer me at once. An hour or so
+after we had passed away from the subject he returned to it suddenly and
+explained that it was necessary to distinguish between individuals
+and the classes to which they belong. A class, so I understood, may be
+objectionable and dangerous in every way though the men who form it are
+delightful.
+
+“Take the Irish priests, for instance,” he said. “The minute we get Home
+Rule, we’ll----”
+
+He paused significantly.
+
+“Deal with them?” I suggested.
+
+He nodded with an emphasis which was positively vicious.
+
+“All the same,” he said, “there are lots of priests whom I really
+like, capital fellows that I’d be glad to dine with every day in the
+week--except Friday.”
+
+Apparently he was glad to dine with Ascher and me every day in the week,
+including Friday.
+
+“There’s no sense,” he said, “in refusing to talk to a man just because
+you don’t like his opinions.”
+
+I agreed. I even offered proof of my agreement. I was at that moment
+talking to Gorman and I certainly did not like his opinions.
+
+When Ascher joined us at dinner on the third evening of our voyage, he
+turned out to be a very quiet, gentle little man with no outward sign of
+great wealth about him. He drank nothing but Perrier Water which was
+a surprise and, I fancy, something of a disappointment to Gorman. He
+expected Ascher to order champagne and was quite ready to take his turn
+in paying for the wine. Ascher smoked half a cigarette after dinner and
+another half cigarette before he went to bed. Gorman confided to me that
+millionaires and half-crown cigars had always been associated in his
+mind before he met Ascher. To me the most surprising thing about the
+man was the low opinion he had of himself and his own abilities. He
+was deferential to Gorman and even seemed to think what I said worth
+listening to. He knew all about Gorman’s two novels and his play. He had
+read many of Gorman’s newspaper articles. He used to try and make
+Gorman talk about literature and art. Gorman, being a man of great
+intelligence, hates talking about literature, and suspects that any one
+who accuses him of art is poking fun at him. Ascher took both literature
+and art quite seriously. He evidently thought that men who write books
+belong to a superior class. As a matter of fact Ascher has far more
+brains than any author I have ever met; but he does not know this.
+
+Ascher lay down without protest under all the outrageous things which
+Gorman said about financiers. His extreme meekness seemed to stimulate
+Gorman.
+
+“No qualities,” said Gorman, “are required for success as a financier
+except a low kind of cunning and a totally unscrupulous selfishness.”
+
+Ascher seemed to agree with him. I wanted to point out that considering
+the very large number of men who are cunning and the general prevalence
+of selfishness the number of successful financiers is surprisingly
+small. But Gorman did not give me a chance of speaking.
+
+“Political life in every modern state,” said Gorman, “is poisoned,
+poisoned at its source by the influence of the great financial houses.
+Democracy is in shackles. Its leaders are gagged. Progress is stopped.
+Politics are barren----” He delivered this oration at dinner one night,
+and when he came to the barrenness of politics he knocked over Ascher’s
+bottle of Perrier Water with a sweep of his hand “and it is the subtle
+influence of the financiers, the money kings, what the Americans used to
+call the Gold Bugs, which is responsible for the mischief.”
+
+Ascher assented with a sort of wavering smile.
+
+“The proof of what I say,” said Gorman, “is to be found in the
+well-known fact----”
+
+I interrupted him at this point. He had cited his well-known fact to
+me several times. The son of a Liberal Cabinet Minister married the
+daughter of a well-known Conservative who had been a Cabinet Minister.
+It may be my stupidity but I cannot see how that union proves that
+financiers control politics. I am not, and never shall be either a money
+king or a gold bug, but in mere dread of hearing Gorman produce his
+well-known fact again I took up the task of defending the class to which
+Ascher belongs.
+
+“After all, Gorman,” I said, “you ought to be a little grateful. You
+know perfectly well that there wouldn’t be any politics if financiers
+and other capitalists did not pay for them.”
+
+“That’s just what I say,” said Gorman.
+
+“No,” I said. “That’s not what you say. You say that financiers poison
+politics. But there’s the greatest difference between paying for
+a performance and poisoning the performers. Take a theatre for
+instance----”
+
+“Talking of theatres,” said Gorman, “there’s a rattling good circus
+going on in New York at present. I’ll take you two men to see it some
+night.”
+
+But I was not going to let Gorman ride away in this manner from an
+argument in which he was being worsted.
+
+“Do let me finish what I am saying,” I said. “All your Parliaments and
+legislative assemblies are simply national theatres kept up for the
+amusement of the people. Somebody has to put up the money to keep them
+going. The ordinary man won’t do it. You can’t even get him to vote
+without hypnotising him first by means of a lot of speeches and
+newspaper articles and placards which stare at him from hoardings. Even
+after you’ve hypnotised him you have to drag him to your polling booth
+in motor cars. He wouldn’t go if you didn’t. As for paying for your
+show, you know perfectly well that there’d be no money for the running
+of it if it weren’t for a few financiers and rich men.”
+
+One of Gorman’s most delightful characteristics is that he bears no
+malice when an argument goes against him.
+
+“Begad, you’re right,” he said. “Right all the way along. At the present
+moment I’m on my way to America to get money for the Party. There’s
+a man I have my eye on out in Detroit, a fellow with millions, and an
+Irishman. I mean to get a good subscription out of him. That’s why I’m
+on this ship.”
+
+“Curious,” I said. “I’m after money too. I have some investments in
+Canadian railway shares--nothing much, just a few thousands, but a good
+deal to me. I’m a little uneasy----”
+
+I looked at Ascher. A man in his position, the head of one of the great
+financial houses, ought to be able to give very good advice about my
+shares. A word from him about the prospects of Canada generally and the
+companies in which I am interested in particular, would be very valuable
+to me. Gorman was also looking inquiringly at Ascher. I daresay a tip on
+the state of the stock market would be interesting to him. I do not know
+whether party funds are invested or kept on deposit receipt on a
+bank; but Gorman is likely to have a few pounds of his own. Ascher
+misinterpreted our glances. He thought we wanted to know why he was
+going to America.
+
+“The condition of Mexico at present,” he said, “is causing us all some
+anxiety. My partner in New York wants to have a consultation with me.
+That’s what’s bringing me over.”
+
+“Ah!” said Gorman. “I rather respect those Mexicans. It’s pleasant to
+hear of wealthy men like you being hit sometimes.”
+
+“It’s not exactly that,” said Ascher. “As a firm we don’t lose directly
+whatever happens in Mexico. What we have to consider is the interest
+of our customers, the people, some of them quite small people, who went
+into Mexican railways on our advice. Banking houses don’t put their
+money into investments. That’s not our business. But banking is a very
+dull subject. Let’s talk of something else.”
+
+He turned to me as he spoke.
+
+“You were speaking just now,” he said, “about the necessity of putting
+up money for the support of theatres. If we are to have any real
+dramatic art in England----”
+
+Banking is a fascinatingly interesting subject compared to art; but
+Ascher does not think so, and Ascher had taken hold of the conversation.
+He appealed to Gorman as a man whose services to literature and drama
+had never been properly recognised. He appealed to me as a member of
+a cultured class. Neither of us was sympathetic or responsive. Gorman
+knows that he has never rendered any service to literature at all, that
+he wrote novels because he wanted money in the days before a grateful
+country paid him £400 a year for walking round the lobbies of the House
+of Commons, that he tumbled into his play by accident and made money out
+of it because a very charming lady was more charming than usual in the
+part he wrote for her.
+
+Gorman--this is one of the advantages of being an Irishman--has no
+illusions about himself. I have none about my class. It is not cultured
+and does not want to be.
+
+When Ascher had smoked his half cigarette we left the dining saloon and
+went to our special corner in the lounge. Ascher talked on till nearly
+ten o’clock about art and drama and music as if they were the only
+things of any interest or importance in the world. Then he went to
+bed. Gorman and I agreed that art, drama, and music are of very little
+importance and less interesting than anything else. Gorman’s weekly
+articles, quite the best things of their kind then being published, are
+all about art, so he has a perfect right to express his opinion. What we
+wanted to hear Ascher talk about was money.
+
+“I’ve always wanted to know what high finance really is,” I said.
+“It seems a pity not to be able to find out now we’ve got a man who
+understands it.”
+
+“I’ll take him in hand to-morrow,” said Gorman. “There’s no use our
+having him to dine with us and looking after him all the way across if we
+don’t get anything out of him.”
+
+Gorman’s words were cryptic. I wanted to get knowledge--the sort of
+knowledge which would satisfy my curiosity--out of Ascher; chiefly
+knowledge though I would not have refused a little inside information
+about Canadian affairs. Gorman might very well want something more. He
+might want a subscription to the funds of his party. I hoped he would
+not get it; either out of Ascher or out of the man at Detroit of whom he
+spoke. I am not a member of any political party but I hate that to which
+Gorman belongs. If I were attached to a party and if Gorman’s friends
+joined it in a body, I should leave it at once. My opinion, so far as I
+have any opinion, is that what Ireland wants is to be let alone. But if
+the Irish Nationalist Party were to adopt a policy of deliberately doing
+nothing and preventing other people from doing anything I should not
+support it. I should then search about for something revolutionary and
+try to insist on carrying it out. Nothing would induce me to be on the
+same side as Gorman and his friends. Such is the nature of an Irish
+gentleman.
+
+I lay awake for a long time that night, smoking cigarettes in my berth
+and meditating on the fact that, of the three of us I was the one who
+was going to America for purely selfish purposes. Gorman was trying to
+get money for his party, for his own ultimate advantage no doubt, but
+in the first instance the money was not for himself but for a cause.
+And Gorman is a politician, a member of a notoriously corrupt and
+unscrupulous professional class. Ascher was taking a long journey in
+order to devise some means of rescuing his clients’ property from the
+clutches of a people which had carried the principles of democracy
+rather further than is usual. And Ascher is a financier. No one expects
+anything but enlightened greed from financiers. I belong by birth and
+education to an aristocracy, a class which is supposed to justify its
+existence by its altruism. There was no doubt a valuable lesson to be
+learned from these considerations. I fell asleep before I found out
+exactly what it was.
+
+Gorman did as he promised. He took Ascher in hand next day. He made
+the poor man walk up and down the deck with him. There is nothing on
+shipboard more detestable than that tramp along the deck. Only the
+strongest minded man can avoid counting his steps, making an estimate of
+yards, and falling into the bondage of trying to walk a fixed number of
+miles. Conversation and even coherent thought become impossible when the
+mind is set on the effort to keep count of the turns made at the end of
+the deck. I am sure that Ascher did not enjoy himself; but Gorman kept
+him at it for more than an hour. I watched them from the deck chair in
+which I sat, rolled up very comfortably in my rug. At one o’clock, when
+we ought to have gone down to lunch, Gorman stopped opposite my chair.
+He proclaimed his success jubilantly.
+
+“We’ve been talking about finance,” he said, “high finance. Pity you
+wouldn’t join us.”
+
+Ascher bowed towards me. Gorman described Ascher’s manners as foreign.
+I daresay they are. There is a certain flavour of formal courtesy
+about them which Englishmen rarely practise, of which Irishmen of my
+generation, partly anglicised by their education, have lost the trick.
+
+“Sir James would only have been bored,” said Ascher.
+
+“Not he,” said Gorman, “he’s just as keen as I am to know what bankers
+do with money.”
+
+“It’s a dull trade,” said Ascher, “very dull. Some day I shall give it
+up and devote the rest of my time to----”
+
+“Don’t say art,” said Gorman.
+
+Ascher opened his eyes and looked at Gorman with a mild kind of wonder.
+
+“Of course,” he said, “I can never be an artist. I haven’t got the
+temperament, the soul, the capacity for abandon. But I might find
+enjoyment, the highest pleasure, in understanding, in appreciating,
+perhaps even in encouraging----”
+
+“Sort of Mecenas,” said Gorman. “I wonder if Mecenas was a banker. He
+seems to have been a rich man.”
+
+“He was a descendant of kings,” I said, “but that’s no reason why he
+shouldn’t have made money.”
+
+“Anyhow,” said Gorman, “you’d find art just as dull as banking if you
+went in for it systematically.”
+
+“But artists----!” said Ascher, “genuine artists! Men with inspiration!”
+
+“Selfish conceited swine,” said Gorman.
+
+“Well,” I said, “you ought to know. You’re an artist yourself. Ascher
+told me so yesterday.”
+
+“I remember your two novels,” said Ascher, “and I recognised in them the
+touch, the unmistakable touch.”
+
+“Let’s go down to lunch,” said Gorman.
+
+He left the deck as he spoke. Even Gorman does not like to stand
+self-convicted of being a selfish conceited swine. Ascher laid his hand
+on my arm as we went down to the saloon.
+
+“What a brilliant fellow he is,” he whispered. “I never realised before
+how magnificently paradoxical your Irish minds are. That pose of abject
+self depreciation which is in reality not wholly a pose but a vehement
+protest against the shallow judgment of a conventionalised culture----”
+
+Ascher’s language was a little confusing to me, but I could guess at
+what he meant. Gorman appeared to him to be an unappreciated Oscar
+Wilde, one of those geniuses--I am bound to admit that they are mostly
+Irish--who delude the world into thinking they are uttering profound
+truths when they are merely outraging common sense.
+
+It would be going too far perhaps to say that Ascher fawned on Gorman
+during luncheon. He certainly showed his admiration for him very
+plainly.
+
+During the afternoon we talked finance again. Ascher did it because he
+wanted to please Gorman. I listened and learned several things which
+interested me very much. I got to understand, for instance, why a
+sovereign is sometimes worth more, sometimes less, when you try to
+exchange it for dollars or francs; a thing which had always puzzled me
+before. I learned why gold has to be shipped in large quantities from
+one country to another by bankers, whereas I, a private individual, need
+only send a cheque to pay my modest debts. I learned what is meant by
+a bill drawn on London. It took me nearly half an hour to grasp that.
+Gorman pretended to see it sooner than I did, but when he tried to
+supplement Ascher’s explanation with one of his own he floundered
+hopelessly.
+
+It was while we were at tea that afternoon that Mrs. Ascher put in an
+appearance for the first time. She was a tall, lean woman, with dark red
+hair--Gorman called it bronze--and narrow eyes which never seemed quite
+open. Her face was nearly colourless. I was inclined to attribute this
+to her long suffering from seasickness, but when I got to know her
+better I found out that she is never anything but pallid, even when she
+has lived for months on land and has been able to eat all she wants. The
+first thing she did after we were introduced to her was to put her hands
+up to her ears and give a low moan, expressive of great anguish. Ascher
+explained to us that she was very musical and suffered acutely from the
+ship’s band. I made up my mind definitely that she was not the sort of
+woman I like. Gorman, on the other hand, took to her at once. He could
+not stop the band, but he led the lady away to a distant corner of the
+writing room.
+
+For the rest of the voyage Gorman devoted himself to her. I do not mean
+to suggest that he flirted with her either frivolously, or with yearning
+artistic seriousness. Gorman enjoys the society of women and is never
+long happy without it, but I do not think he cares for love-making in
+any form. Besides he spent most of his time in her company watching her
+playing Patience. Owen Meredith wrote a poem in which he glorified the
+game of chess as an aid to quiet conjugal love-making. But so far as I
+know no one has suggested that Canfield--it was Mrs. Ascher’s favourite
+kind of Patience--has ever been used as an excuse for flirtation. No
+woman, not even if she has eyes of Japanese shape, can look tenderly at
+a man when she has just buried a valuable two under a pile of kings and
+queens in her rubbish heap.
+
+The result of Gorman’s devotion to the lady was that I was left to
+improve my acquaintance with her husband. The more I talked to Ascher
+the better I liked him. His admiration for his wife’s sensitiveness to
+sound was very touching. I am convinced that he knew a great deal
+more about music than she did and appreciated it more. But her sudden
+outbursts of petulance when the band played seemed to Ascher a plain
+proof that she had the spirit of an artist. He confided in me that
+it gave him real pleasure to see her and Gorman together because, as
+artists, they must have much in common. Ascher has a very simple and
+beautiful nature. No one with any other kind of nature could put up with
+Mrs. Ascher as a wife.
+
+Mere simplicity of soul and beauty of character would not, I am afraid,
+have kept me at Ascher’s side for the rest of the voyage. Virtue, like
+the innocence of the young, is admirable but apt to be tiresome.
+What attracted me most to Ascher was his ability, the last thing he
+recognised in himself. When he found out that I was interested in his
+business he talked to me quite freely about it, though always with a
+certain suggestion of apology. There was no need for anything of the
+sort. He revealed to me a whole world of fascinating romance of which I
+had never before suspected the existence. Some day, perhaps, a poet--he
+will have to be a great poet--will discover that the system of credit
+by means of which our civilisation works, deserves an epic. Neither
+the wanderings of Ulysses nor the discoveries of a traveller through
+Paradise and Purgatory make so splendid an appeal to the imagination
+as this vastly complex machine which Ascher and men like him guide. The
+oceans of the world are covered thick with ships. Long freight trains
+wind like serpents across continents. Kings build navies. Ploughmen turn
+up the clay. The wheels of factories go round. The minds of men bend
+nature to their purposes by fresh inventions. Science creeps forward
+inch by inch. Human beings everywhere eat, drink and reproduce
+themselves. The myriad activities of the whole wide world go profitably
+on. They can go on only because the Aschers, sitting at their office
+desks in London or New York, direct the purchase or sale of what are but
+scratches with a pen on bits of paper.
+
+There is, no doubt, another way of looking at the system. The ships, the
+kings, the mighty minds, the common men, are all of them in bondage
+to Ascher and his kind. He and his brother financiers are the unseen
+rulers, the mysteriously shrouded tyrants of the world. This system of
+credit, which need not be at all or might be quite other than it is, has
+given them supreme, untempered power, which they use to the injury of
+men. This is Gorman’s view. But is it any less romantic than the other?
+An epic can be written round a devil as greatly as round a hero. Milton
+showed us that. What is wanted in a poet’s theme is grandeur, either
+fine or terrible. Ascher’s grip upon the world has surely that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+We landed in New York and to my satisfaction I secured the rooms I
+usually occupy. They are in a small hotel off Fifth Avenue, half way
+between the streets which boast of numbers higher than fifty, and those
+others which follow the effete European customs of having names. It
+is one of the paradoxes of New York that the parts of the city where
+fashionable people live and spend their money are severely business-like
+in the treatment of streets, laying them out so as to form correct
+parallelograms and distinguishing them by numbers instead of names, as
+if terrified of letting imagination loose for a moment. Down town where
+the money is made and the offices of the money makers are piled one
+on top of another, the streets are as irregular as those of London or
+Paris, and have all sorts of fascinatingly suggestive names. My hotel
+stands in the debatable land between the two districts. Fashionable life
+is ebbing away from its neighbourhood. Business is, as yet, a little shy
+of invading it. The situation makes an appeal to me. I may be, as Gorman
+says, a man of no country, but I am a man of two worlds. I cling to the
+skirts of society, something of an outsider, yet one who has the right
+of entry, if I choose to take the trouble, the large amount of trouble
+necessary to exercise the right. I am one who is trying to make money,
+scarcely more than an amateur among business men, but deeply interested
+in their pursuits. This particular hotel seems to me therefore a
+convenient, that is to say a suitable place of residence for me. It is
+not luxurious, nor is it cheap, but it is comfortable, which is perhaps
+the real reason why I go to it.
+
+I gave Gorman my address before I left the ship, but I did not expect
+him to make any use of it. I thought that I had seen the last of him
+when I crossed the gangway and got caught in the whirlpool of fuss which
+eddied round the custom house shed. I was very much surprised when
+he walked in on me at breakfast time on the second morning after our
+arrival. I was eating an omelette at the time. I offered him a share of
+it and a cup of coffee. Gorman refused both; but he helped himself to
+a glass of iced water. This shows how adaptable Gorman is. Hardly any
+European can drink iced water at or immediately after breakfast during
+the first week he spends in America. I do not take to the stuff till
+I have been there about a fortnight. But Gorman, in spite of his
+patriotism, has a good deal of the cosmopolitan about him. Strange foods
+and drinks upset him very little.
+
+“Doing anything this evening?” he asked. “If not will you spend it with
+me? Ascher has promised to come. We’re going to a circus and on for
+supper afterwards. You remember the circus I mentioned to you on the
+steamer.”
+
+I hesitated before I answered. I suppose I looked a little astonished.
+That Gorman should propose an evening out was natural enough. I should
+not call him a dissipated man, but he has a great deal of vitality and
+he likes what he calls “a racket” occasionally. What surprised me was
+that a circus should be his idea of dissipation. A circus is the sort of
+entertainment to which I send my nephew--a boy of eleven--when he
+spends the night with me in London on his way to school. My servant,
+a thoroughly trustworthy man, takes him there. I pay for the tickets.
+Gorman, Ascher, and I were three grown men and we could not boast of a
+child among us to serve as an excuse for going to a circus.
+
+“It’s quite a good show,” said Gorman.
+
+I tried to think of Ascher at a circus. I failed to picture him, a man
+educated up to the highest forms of art, gazing in delight while a lady
+in short petticoats jumps through a hoop from the back of a galloping
+horse. I had not been at a circus for about thirty years, since my tenth
+birthday indeed, but I do not believe that the form of entertainment
+has changed much since then. The clowns’ jokes--I judge from my nephew’s
+reports--are certainly the same as they were in my time. But even very
+great improvements would not make circuses tolerable to really artistic
+people like Ascher.
+
+“I’ve got free passes for the best seats,” said Gorman.
+
+He had mistaken the cause of my hesitation. I was not thinking of the
+cost of our evening’s amusement.
+
+“You journalists,” I said, “are wonderful. You get into the front row
+every time without paying, whether it’s a coronation or a funeral. How
+did you manage it this time?”
+
+“My brother Tim is connected with the show. I daresay you don’t remember
+him at Curraghbeg. He was fifteen years younger than me. My father
+married a second time, you know. Tim is my half-brother.”
+
+I did not remember Gorman himself in Curraghbeg. I could not be expected
+to remember Tim who must have been still unborn when I left home to join
+the Army.
+
+“Tim has the brains of our family,” said Gorman. “His mother was a very
+clever woman.”
+
+I never heard Gorman say anything worse than that about his step-mother,
+and yet she certainly treated him very badly.
+
+“You’re all clever,” I said. “Your father drove mine out of the country
+and deprived him of his property. It took ability to do that. You are a
+Member of Parliament and a brilliant journalist. Timothy--I hardly like
+to speak of him as Tim--owns a splendid circus.”
+
+“He doesn’t own it,” said Gorman.
+
+“Well, runs it,” I said. “I expect it takes more brains to run a circus
+than to own one.”
+
+“He doesn’t exactly run it,” said Gorman. “In fact he only takes the
+money at the door. But he has brains. That’s why I want Ascher to meet
+him. I didn’t ask Mrs. Ascher,” he added thoughtfully, “though she
+hinted for an invitation, rather made a set at me, in fact.”
+
+“Give her my ticket,” I said. “I don’t mind a bit. I’ll buy another for
+myself in a cheap part of the house, and join you at supper afterwards.
+You ought not to disappoint Mrs. Ascher.”
+
+“I don’t want Mrs. Ascher this time. She’d be in the way. She’s a
+charming woman, of course, though she does bore me a bit about music and
+talks of her soul.”
+
+“Good Heavens!” I said. “You haven’t been discussing religion with her,
+surely. I didn’t think you’d do a thing like that, Gorman. You oughtn’t
+to.”
+
+“Never mentioned religion to her in my life. Nothing would induce me to.
+For one thing I don’t believe she has any.”
+
+“You’re a Roman Catholic yourself, aren’t you?”
+
+“Well,” said Gorman, “I don’t know that I can say that I am exactly; but
+I’m not a Protestant or a Jew. But that’s nothing to do with it. Mrs.
+Ascher doesn’t talk about her soul in a religious way. In fact--I don’t
+know if you’ll understand, but what she means by a soul is something
+quite different, not the same sort of soul.”
+
+I understood perfectly. I have met several women of Mrs. Ascher’s kind.
+They are rather boastful about their souls and even talk of saving or
+losing them. But they do not mean what one of Gorman’s priests would
+mean, or what my poor father, who was a strongly evangelical Protestant,
+meant by the phrases.
+
+“We are not accustomed to souls like hers in Ireland. We only go in for
+the commonplace, old-fashioned sort.”
+
+Gorman smiled.
+
+“She wouldn’t be seen with one of them about her,” he said. “They’re
+vulgar things. Everybody has one.”
+
+“Soul or no soul,” I said, “you ought to invite Mrs. Ascher to your
+party. Why not do the civil thing?”
+
+“I’ll do the civil thing some other time. I’ll take her to a concert,
+but I don’t want her to-night.”
+
+“Perhaps,” I said, “your brother’s circus is a little--shall we say
+Parisian? I don’t think you need mind that. Mrs. Ascher isn’t exactly a
+girl. It would take a lot to shock her. In fact, Gorman, my experience
+of these women with artistic souls is that the riskier the thing is the
+better they like it.”
+
+That is, as I have noticed, one of the great differences between a
+commonplace, so to speak, religious soul and a soul of the artistic
+kind. You save the one by keeping it as clean as you can. The other
+seems to thrive best when heavily manured. It is no disparagement of the
+artistic soul to say that it likes manure. Some of the most delicious
+and beautiful things in the world are like that, raspberries for
+instance, which make excellent jam, roses about which poets write, and
+begonias. I knew a man once who poured bedroom slops into his begonia
+bed every day and he had the finest flowers I ever saw.
+
+“Gorman,” I said, “did it ever occur to you that Mrs. Ascher’s soul is
+like a begonia?”
+
+“Bother Mrs. Ascher’s soul!” said Gorman. “I’m not thinking about it.
+The circus is a show you might take a nun to. Nobody could possibly
+object to it. The reason I headed her off was because I wanted to talk
+business to Ascher, very particular business and rather important. In
+fact,” here he sank his voice to a confidential whisper, “I want you to
+help me to rope him in.”
+
+“If you’ve succeeded in roping him into a circus,” I said, “I should
+think you could rope him into anything else without my help. Would you
+mind telling me what the scheme is?”
+
+“I’m trying to,” he said, “but you keep interrupting me with silly
+riddles about begonias.”
+
+“I’m sorry I mentioned begonias. All the same it’s a pity you wouldn’t
+listen. You’d have liked the part about manure. But never mind. Go on
+about Ascher.”
+
+“My brother Tim,” said Gorman, “has invented a new cash register. He’s
+always inventing things; been at it ever since he was a boy. But they’re
+mostly quite useless things though as cute as the devil. In fact I don’t
+think he ever hit on anything the least bit of good till he got this
+cash register.”
+
+“Before we go further,” I said, “what is a cash register?”
+
+“It’s a machine used in shops and cheap tea-places for----”
+
+“I know now,” I said. “It has keys like a typewriter. That’s all right.
+I thought for a moment it might be a book, a ledger, you know. Go on.”
+
+“Well, Tim’s machine is out and away the best thing of its kind ever
+seen. There’s simply no comparison between it and the existing cash
+registers. I’ve had it tested in every way and I know.”
+
+I began, so I thought, to see what Ascher was to be roped into.
+
+“You want money to patent it, I suppose,” I said.
+
+But that was not it. Gorman had scraped together whatever money was
+necessary to make his brother’s invention secure in Europe and America.
+He had done more, he had formed a small private company in which he held
+most of the shares himself. He had manufactured a hundred of the new
+machines and was prepared to put them on the market.
+
+“Ah,” I said. “Now I see what you’re at. You want more capital. You want
+to work the thing on a big scale. I might take a share or two myself,
+just for the sake of having a flutter.”
+
+“We don’t want you,” said Gorman. “The fewer there are in it the better.
+I don’t want to have to divide the profits with a whole townful of
+people. But we might let you in if you get Ascher for us. You have a lot
+of influence with Ascher.”
+
+I had, of course, no influence whatever with Ascher. But Gorman, though
+he is certainly a clever man, has the defects of his class and his
+race. He was an Irish peasant to start with and there never was an Irish
+peasant yet who did not believe in a mysterious power which he calls
+“influence.” It is curious faith, though it justifies itself pretty well
+in Ireland. In that country you can get nearly anything done, either
+good or bad, if you persuade a sufficiently influential person to
+recommend it. Gorman’s mistake, as it seemed to me, lay in supposing
+that influence is equally potent outside Ireland. I am convinced that it
+is no use at all in dealing with a man like Ascher. If a big financial
+magnate will not supply money for an enterprise on the merits of the
+thing he is not likely to do so because a friend asks him. Besides I
+cannot, or could not at that time, boast of being Ascher’s intimate
+friend. However Gorman’s mistake was no affair of mine.
+
+“If Ascher goes in at all,” I said, “he’ll do it on a pretty big scale.
+He’ll simply absorb the rest of you.”
+
+“The fact is,” said Gorman, “I don’t want Ascher to join. I don’t want
+him to put down a penny of money. All I want him to do is to back us.
+Of course he’ll get his whack of whatever we make, and if he likes to be
+the nominal owner of some bonus shares in our company he can. That would
+regularise his position. The way the thing stands is this.”
+
+I had finished my breakfast and lit a cigar. Gorman pulled out his pipe
+and sat down opposite to me. I am not, I regret to say, a business man,
+but I succeeded in understanding fairly well what he told me.
+
+His brother’s cash register, if properly advertised and put on the
+market, would drive out every other cash register in the world. In the
+long run nothing could stand against it. Of that Gorman was perfectly
+convinced. But the proprietors of the existing cash registers would not
+submit without a struggle.
+
+Gorman nodded gravely when he told me this. Evidently their struggles
+were the very essence of the situation.
+
+“What can they do?” I said. “If your machine is much better than theirs
+surely----”
+
+“They’ll do what people always do on these occasions. They’ll infringe
+our patents.”
+
+“But the law----”
+
+“Yes,” said Gorman, “the law. It’s just winning law suits that would
+ruin us. Every time we got a judgment in our favour the case would be
+appealed to a higher court. That would happen here and in England and
+in France and in every country in the world civilised enough to use cash
+registers. Sooner or later, pretty soon too--we should have no money
+left to fight with.”
+
+“Bankrupt,” I said, “as a consequence of your own success. What an odd
+situation!”
+
+“Now,” said Gorman, “you see where Ascher comes in.”
+
+“I do. But I don’t expect he’ll spend his firm’s money fighting
+speculative law suits all over the world just to please you.”
+
+“You don’t see the position in the least. There’ll be no law suits and
+he won’t spend a penny. Once it’s known that his firm is behind us no
+one will attempt to touch our patent. People aren’t such fools as to
+start playing beggar-my-neighbour with Ascher, Stutz & Co. The whole
+world knows that their firm has money enough to go on paying lawyers
+right on until the day of judgment.”
+
+“I hope to goodness,” I said, “that we shan’t meet lawyers then.”
+
+Gorman smiled. Up to that point it had been impossible to move him from
+his desperate earnestness, but a joke at the expense of lawyers is sure
+of a smile under any circumstances. With the possible exception of the
+mother-in-law joke, the lawyer joke is the oldest in the world and like
+all well tested jokes it may be relied on.
+
+“There won’t be any lawyers then,” said Gorman. “They’ll go straight to
+hell without the formality of a trial.”
+
+This seemed to me to be carrying the joke too far. I have known several
+lawyers who were no worse than other professional men, quite upright and
+honourable compared to doctors. I should have liked to argue the point
+with Gorman. But for the moment I was more interested in the future of
+the new cash register than in the ultimate destiny of lawyers.
+
+“If you get Ascher to back you,” I said, “and your patents are safe,
+you’ll want to begin making machines on a big scale. Where will you get
+the money for that?”
+
+“You haven’t quite caught on yet,” said Gorman. “I don’t want to make
+the things at all. Why should I? There would have to be a large company.
+I have neither time nor inclination to manage it. Tim hasn’t that kind
+of brains. Besides it would be risky. Somebody might come along any day
+with a better machine and knock ours out. People are always inventing
+things, you know. What I want is a nice large sum of hard cash without
+any bother or risk. Don’t you see that the other people, the owners of
+the present cash registers, will have to buy us out? If our machine
+is the best and they daren’t go to law with us they must buy us out.
+There’s no other course open to them. What’s more, they’ll have to pay
+pretty nearly what we ask. In fact, if we put up a good bluff there’s
+hardly any end to the extent to which we can bleed them. See?”
+
+I saw something which looked to me like a modernised form of highway
+robbery.
+
+“Is that sort of thing common?” I said.
+
+“Done every day,” said Gorman. “It’s business.”
+
+“Well,” I said, “there’s one justification for your proceedings. If half
+what you say about your brother’s invention is true the world will get
+the benefit of a greatly improved cash register. I suppose that’s the
+way civilisation advances.”
+
+“The world be damned,” said Gorman. “It’ll get nothing. You don’t
+suppose the people who buy us out are going to start making Tim’s
+machine. They can if they like, of course, once they’ve paid us. But it
+will cost them hundreds of thousands if they do. They’d have to scrap
+all their existing plant and turn their factories inside out, and in
+the end they wouldn’t make any more profit than they’re making now. No.
+They’ll simply suppress Tim’s invention and the silly old world will go
+on with the machines it has at present.”
+
+“Gorman,” I said, “you gave me to understand a minute or so ago that
+you went in for the old-fashioned kind of soul, the kind we were both
+brought up to. I’m not at all sure that I wouldn’t rather have Mrs.
+Ascher’s new kind, even if it----”
+
+“Don’t start talking about begonias again,” said Gorman.
+
+“I wasn’t going to. I was only going to say that even plays in which
+nothing happens and grimy women say indecent things--that’s art you
+know--seem to me better than the sort of things your soul fattens on.”
+
+“I don’t see any good talking about souls,” said Gorman. “This is a
+matter of business. The other people will crush us if they can. If they
+can’t, and they won’t be able to if Ascher backs us, they’ll have to
+pay us. There’s nothing wrong about that, is there? Look at it this way.
+We’ve got something to sell----”
+
+“Cash registers,” I said. “But you don’t propose to sell them.”
+
+“Not cash registers, but the right to make a certain kind of cash
+registers. That’s what we’re going to sell. We could sell it to the
+public, form a company to use the rights. It suits us better for various
+reasons to sell it to these people. It suits them to buy. They needn’t
+unless they like. But they will like. Now if we want to sell and they
+want to buy and we agree on the price where does anybody’s soul come
+in?”
+
+“There is evidently,” I said, “a third kind of soul. The original,
+religious kind, the artistic kind, and what we may call the business
+soul. You have a mixture of all three in you, Gorman.”
+
+“I wish you’d stop worrying about my soul and tell me this. Are you
+going to help to rope in Ascher or not? He’ll come if you use your
+influence with him.”
+
+“My dear fellow,” I said. “Of course I’m going to help. Haven’t you
+offered me a share of the loot?”
+
+“I thought you would,” said Gorman triumphantly. “But what about your
+own soul?”
+
+“I haven’t got one,” I said.
+
+I used to have a sort of instinct called honour which served men of my
+class instead of a soul. But Gorman and Gorman’s father before him and
+their political associates have succeeded in abolishing gentlemen in
+Ireland. There is no longer the class of gentry in that country and
+the few surviving individuals have learned that honour is a silly
+superstition. I am now a disinterested spectator of a game which my
+ancestors played and lost. The virtue desirable in a spectator is not
+honour but curiosity. I wanted very much to see how Ascher would take
+Gorman’s proposal and how the whole thing would work out. I promised to
+sit through the circus, to attend the supper party afterwards and to do
+the best I could to persuade Ascher to join our robber band.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Mrs. Ascher is not the woman to miss an entertainment she desires merely
+because she lacks an invitation. She arrived at the door of the circus
+in a taxicab with Ascher. Gorman and I were there and when he first saw
+Mrs. Ascher he swore. However he was forced to give her some sort of
+welcome and he did it pretty well, though I fear Ascher might have
+noticed a note of insincerity in his voice. But that was only at first.
+Gorman’s temper changed when we reached our seats and Mrs. Ascher threw
+off her cloak.
+
+She was wearing an evening gown of the most startling design and colour.
+I should have said beforehand that a woman with a skin as pallid as that
+of a corpse and so little flesh that her bones stick up jaggedly would
+be wise to avoid very low dresses. Mrs. Ascher displayed, when she took
+off her cloak, as much skin and bone as she could without risking arrest
+at the hands of the police. Her gown, what there was of it, was of a
+vivid orange colour and she wore emeralds round her neck. If the main
+object of wearing clothes is, as some philosophers maintain, to attract
+attention, then Mrs. Ascher understands the art of dress. She created a
+sensation. That was what pleased Gorman. He is a man who likes to be
+the centre of interest wherever he is, or if that is not possible, to
+be attached to the person who has secured that fortunate position. Mrs.
+Ascher attracts the public gaze wherever she goes. I have seen people
+turn round to stare at her in the dining room of the Ritz in New York
+and at supper in the Carlton in London. The men and women who formed
+the audience in Gorman’s circus were unaccustomed to daring splendour of
+raiment. They actually gasped when Mrs. Ascher threw off her cloak and
+Gorman felt glad that she had come.
+
+She said a few words to me about the delight which an artist’s soul
+feels in coming into direct contact with the seething life of the
+people, and she mentioned with appreciation a French picture, one of
+Degas’ I think, which represents ballet dancers practising their art.
+Then she and Gorman settled down in two of the three seats reserved for
+us. Ascher and I retired modestly to the back of what I may call the
+dress circle. After a while when the performance was well under way,
+Gorman’s brother came in. I suppose the greater part of his evening’s
+work was done and he was able to leave the task of dealing with late
+comers to some subordinate clerk. He looked a mere boy, younger than I
+expected, as he stood at the end of the row of seats trying to attract
+his brother’s attention. Gorman was so much occupied with Mrs. Ascher
+that for some time he did not notice Tim. I had time to observe the
+boy. He had fair hair, and large, childlike blue eyes. He was evidently
+nervous, for he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He kept
+pulling at his tie, and occasionally patting his hair. He was quite
+right to be uncomfortable about his hair. It was very untidy and one
+particular lock stood out stiffly at the back of his head.
+
+Gorman saw him at last and immediately introduced him to Ascher and to
+me. But Tim was far too nervous to sit down beside us. He crept after
+his brother and took a chair, three seats beyond Gorman, away from Mrs.
+Ascher. She spotted him directly and insisted on his sitting beside her.
+She is a woman who likes to have a man of some sort on each side of her.
+Tim Gorman was little more than a boy but he was plainly frightened of
+her. I suppose that gave zest to the sport of annexing him. Besides, his
+eyes are very fine, and, if souls really shine through eyes, showed that
+he was refreshingly innocent. I expect, too, that there was something
+piquant in the company of the clerk who takes the money at the door of
+a second-rate entertainment. Mrs. Ascher has often told me that she
+is more interested in life than in anything else, even art. She
+distinguishes between life and real life. Mine, I gather, is not nearly
+so real as that of a performer in a travelling circus. I do not know why
+this should be so, but I have no doubt that it is. Mrs. Ascher is not
+by any means the only person who thinks so. Tim Gorman’s life was
+apparently real enough to attract her greatly. She paid him the
+compliment of talking a good deal to the boy, though she was far too
+clever a woman to let the elder brother feel himself neglected.
+
+A learned horse had just begun its performance when Tim Gorman entered.
+It went on for some time picking out large letters from a pile in front
+of it and arranging them so as to spell out “yes” or “no” in answer to
+questions asked by a man with a long whip in his hand. The animal used
+one of its front hoofs in arranging the letters, and looked singularly
+undignified. Ascher sat quite still with an air of grave politeness.
+I tried to get him to tell me what he thought of the learned horse but
+could get nothing out of him. Long silences make me uncomfortable. I
+felt at last that it was better to talk nonsense than not to talk at
+all.
+
+“I suppose,” I said, “that learned men look almost as grotesque to the
+angels as learned horses do to us. I can fancy Raphael watching a German
+professor writing a book on the origin of religion. He would feel all
+the while that the creature’s front paw was meant by nature for nobler
+uses.”
+
+“Yes,” said Ascher, “yes. Quite so.”
+
+He spoke vaguely. I think he did not hear what I said. Or perhaps the
+learned horse struck him differently. Or his mind may have been entirely
+occupied with the problem of Mexican railways so that he could pay no
+attention either to the learned horse or to me. If so, he was wakened
+from his reverie by the next performance.
+
+A company of acrobats in spangled tights, three men and one young woman,
+took possession of the arena. At first they tumbled, turned somersaults,
+climbed on each other’s shoulders and assumed attitudes which I should
+have said beforehand were impossible for any creature with bones. Then
+a large net was stretched some six feet from the ground and several
+trapezes which had been tied to the roof were allowed to hang down. The
+acrobats climbed up by a ladder and swung from one trapeze to another.
+The business was commonplace enough, but I became aware that Ascher was
+very much interested in it. He became actually excited when we reached
+the final act, the climax of the performance.
+
+The programme, at which I glanced, spoke of “The Flying Lady.” The
+woman, her spangles aglitter in a blaze of lime light, did indubitably
+fly, if rushing unsupported through the air at some height from solid
+ground is the essence of flying. Two of the men hung on their trapezes,
+one by his hands and the other by his legs. They swung backwards and
+forwards. The length of the ropes was so great that they passed through
+large arcs, approaching each other and then swinging back until there
+was a long space between them. The young woman, standing on a third
+trapeze, swung too. Suddenly, at the upward end of a swing, just as her
+trapeze hung motionless for an instant, she launched herself into the
+air. The man on the next trapeze came swinging towards her. She caught
+him by the feet at the very moment when he was nearest to her. He swung
+back and she dangled below him. When he reached the highest point of the
+half circle through which he passed, she was stretched out, making
+with him a horizontal line. At that moment she let go and shot, feet
+foremost, through the air. The man who hung head downwards from the next
+trapeze came swiftly towards her and caught her by the ankles. The two
+swung back together and at the end of his course he let her go. The
+impulse of his swing sent her, turning swiftly as she flew, towards
+a ladder at the end of the row. She alighted on her feet on a little
+platform, high up near the roof of the building. There she stood, bowing
+and smiling.
+
+The people burst into a shout of cheering. Ascher leaned forward in his
+seat and gazed at her. The two men still kept their trapezes in full
+swing. The third man, standing on a platform at the other end of the
+row, set the remaining trapeze swinging, that from which the woman had
+begun her flight. A minute later she flung herself from the platform
+and the whole performance was repeated. I could hear Ascher panting with
+excitement beside me.
+
+“A horribly risky business,” I said, “but wonderful, really wonderful.
+If one of those swings were a fraction late---- But of course the whole
+thing is exactly calculated.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Ascher, “calculated, of course. It’s a matter of
+mathematics and accurate timing of effort. But if it were worked by
+machinery, with lay figures, we should think nothing of it. Somebody
+would do sums and there would be nothing particular in it. The wonderful
+thing is the confidence. The timing of the swings might be all right;
+but if the woman hesitated for an instant, or if one of the men felt the
+slightest doubt about the thing’s coming off--If they didn’t all feel
+absolutely sure that the hands would be there to grasp her at just the
+proper moment--It’s the perfect trust which the people have, of each
+other, of the calculations--Don’t you see?”
+
+I began to see that Ascher was profoundly moved by this performance. I
+also began to see why.
+
+“It’s like--like some things in life,” I said, “or what some things
+ought to be.”
+
+“It’s like what my life is,” said Ascher. “Don’t you see it?”
+
+“I should be rather stupid if I didn’t see it, considering the trouble
+you took to explain the working of international credit to me for two
+whole days.”
+
+“Then you do understand.”
+
+“I understand,” I said, “that you are that woman. Your whole complex
+business is very like hers. It’s the meeting of obligations exactly at
+the end of their swing, the fact that at the appointed moment there will
+be something there for you to grasp.”
+
+“And the confidence,” said Ascher. “If the bankers in any country doubt
+the solvency of the bankers in another country, if there’s the smallest
+hesitation, an instant’s pause of distrust or fear, then international
+credit collapses and----”
+
+He flung out his arm with a gesture of complete hopelessness. I realised
+that if anything went wrong between bankers in their trapeze act there
+would be a very ugly smash.
+
+“And in your case,” I said, “there’s no net underneath.”
+
+The girl and the three men were safe on firm ground again. They were
+bowing final acknowledgments to the cheering crowd. I suppose they do
+the same thing every night of their lives, but they were still able to
+enjoy the cheering. Their faces were flushed and their eyes sparkled.
+They are paid, perhaps pretty well paid, for risking their lives; but
+the applause is the larger part of the reward.
+
+“Also,” I said to Ascher, “nobody cheers you. Nobody knows you’re doing
+it.”
+
+“No. Nobody knows we’re doing it. Nobody sees our flights through the
+air or guesses the supreme confidence we bankers must have in each
+other. When anybody does notice us it’s--well, our friend Gorman, for
+instance.”
+
+Gorman holds the theory that financial men, Ascher and the rest, are
+bloated spiders who spend their time and energy in trapping the world’s
+workers, poor flies, in gummy webs.
+
+“And of course Gorman is right in a way,” said Ascher. “I can’t help
+feeling that things ought to be better managed. But--but it’s a pity
+that men like him don’t understand.”
+
+Ascher is wonderful. I shall never attain his mental attitude of
+philosophic tolerance. I do not feel that Gorman is in any way right
+about the Irish landlords. I felt, though I like the man personally,
+that he and his friends are deliberately and wickedly perverse.
+
+“Some day,” said Ascher, “something will go wrong. A rope will break, or
+a man will miss his grip, and then people in one place will be starving,
+while people somewhere else have food all round them rotting in heaps.
+Men will want all sorts of things and will not be able to get them,
+though there will be plenty of them in the world. Men will think that
+the laws of nature have stopped working, that God has gone mad. Hardly
+any one will understand what has happened, just that one trapeze rope has
+broken, or that one man has lost his nerve and missed his grip.”
+
+“She might have fallen clear of the net,” I said, “and come down on the
+audience.”
+
+“When we slip a trick,” said Ascher, “it will be on the audience that we
+shall come down; and the audience, the people, will be bruised and hurt,
+won’t in the least know what has happened.”
+
+Gorman--I suddenly recollected this--had an adventure in finance to
+propose. If Ascher goes into the scheme I shall have an opportunity of
+watching an interesting variant of the trapeze act. We shall get the
+people, who own the existing cash registers on the swing and then hold
+them to ransom. We shall set our small trapeze oscillating right across
+their airy path and decline to remove it unless they agree to part with
+some of the very shiniest of their spangles and hand them over to us
+for our adornment. I wondered how Ascher, who is so deeply moved by
+the perils of his own flights, would like the idea of destroying other
+people’s confidence and upsetting their calculations.
+
+I looked down and saw that Gorman had left his seat. Mrs. Ascher had
+been making good progress with Tim. The boy was leaning towards her and
+talking eagerly. She lay back in her seat and smiled at him. If she
+were not interested in what he was saying she succeeded very well in
+pretending that she was. All really charming women practise this form of
+deception and all men are taken in by it if it is well done. Mrs. Ascher
+does it very well.
+
+When the net was cleared away and the trapezes slung up again in the
+roof, we had a musical ride, performed by six men and six women mounted
+on very shiny horses. Mrs. Ascher, of course, objected strongly to the
+music. I could see her squirming in her seat. Ascher did not find
+the thing interesting and began to fidget. It was, indeed, much less
+suggestive than either the learned horse or the acrobats. You cannot
+discover in a musical ride any parable with a meaning applicable to
+life. Nothing in the world goes so smoothly and pleasantly. There are
+always risks even when there are no catastrophes, and catastrophes are
+far too common. Ascher probably felt that we were out of touch with
+humanity. He kept looking round, as if seeking some way of escape.
+
+Fortunately Gorman turned up again very soon.
+
+“I hope you won’t mind,” he said, “but I have changed the arrangement
+for supper. Mrs. Ascher,” he nodded towards the seat in which she was
+writhing, “wants to meet the Galleotti family. They’re not a family, you
+know, and of course they’re not called Galleotti. The woman is a Mrs.
+Briggs, and the tallest of the men is her husband. The other two are no
+relation. I don’t know their names, but Tim will introduce us.”
+
+I looked at my programme again. It was under the name of the Galleotti
+Family that the acrobats performed.
+
+“That will be most interesting,” I said.
+
+“I’m afraid it won’t,” said Gorman. “People like that are usually
+quite stupid. However Mrs. Ascher wanted it, so of course I made
+arrangements.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher evidently wanted to see life, the most real kind of life,
+thoroughly. Not contented with having the doorkeeper of a cheap circus
+sitting, so to speak, in her lap all evening, she was now bent on
+sharing a meal with a troupe of acrobats.
+
+“It’s rather unlucky,” Gorman went on, “but Mrs. Briggs simply refuses
+to go to the Plaza. I had a table engaged there.”
+
+“How regal of you, Gorman!” I said.
+
+“You’d have thought she’d have liked it,” he said. “But she made a fuss
+about clothes. It’s extraordinary how women will.”
+
+“You can hardly blame her,” I said; “I expect the head waiter would turn
+her out if she appeared in that get-up of hers. Very absurd of him, of
+course, but----”
+
+I was not conscious that my eyes had wandered to Mrs. Ascher’s dress
+until Gorman winked at me. Fortunately Ascher noticed neither my glance
+nor Gorman’s wink. I had not thought of suggesting that Mrs. Briggs’
+stage costume was no more daring than what Mrs. Ascher wore.
+
+“Of course,” said Ascher, “she wouldn’t come to supper in tights. It’s
+her other clothes she’s thinking of. I daresay they are shabby.”
+
+I could understand what Mrs. Briggs felt. Gorman could not. I do not
+think that any feeling about the shabbiness of his coat would make him
+hesitate about dining with an Emperor.
+
+“I hope you won’t mind,” he said to Ascher, “but we’re going to rather a
+third-rate little place.”
+
+Gorman had evidently meant to do us well in the way of supper, champagne
+probably. He may have had the idea that good food would soften Ascher’s
+heart towards the cash register scheme, but Mrs. Ascher’s insistence on
+meeting the Galleotti family spoiled the whole plan. We could not talk
+business across Mrs. Briggs, so it mattered little what sort of supper
+we had.
+
+Mrs. Ascher left her seat and joined us. Tim, looking more nervous than
+ever, followed her at a distance.
+
+“Take me out of this,” she said to me. “Take me out of this or I shall
+go mad. That dreadful band!”
+
+She spoke in a kind of intense hiss, and I took her out at once, leaving
+the others to collect our hats and coats and to hunt up the Galleotti
+family. When we reached the entrance hall she sank into a seat. I
+thought she was going to faint and felt very uncomfortable. She shut
+her eyes and murmured in a feeble way. I bent down to hear what she
+was trying to say, and was relieved to find that she was asking for a
+cigarette. I gave her one at once. I even lit it for her as she seemed
+very weak. It did her good. When she had inhaled three or four mouthfuls
+of smoke she was able to speak quite audibly and had forgotten all about
+the horror of the band. Her mind went back to the Galleotti family.
+
+“Did you notice the muscular development of those men?” she said. “I
+don’t think I ever saw more perfect symmetry, the tallest of the three
+especially. The play of his shoulder muscles was superb. I wonder if
+he would sit for me. I do a little modelling, you know. Some day I must
+show you my things. I did a baby faun just before I left London. It
+isn’t good, of course; but I can’t help knowing that it has feeling.”
+
+The tallest Galleotti probably has feeling too, of a different kind.
+I expect he would have refused Gorman’s invitation to supper if he had
+known that he was invited in order to give Mrs. Ascher an opportunity of
+studying his muscular development at close quarters. Perhaps he had some
+idea that he was to be on show and did not like it. Instead of wearing
+his spangled tights he came to supper in a very ill-fitting tweed suit,
+which completely concealed his symmetry. The other two men were equally
+inconsiderate. Mrs. Briggs wore a rusty black skirt and a somewhat
+soiled blouse. Mrs. Ascher was disappointed.
+
+She showed her annoyance by ignoring the Galleotti Family. This was
+rather hard on Gorman, who had invited the family solely to please her
+and then found that she would not speak to them. She took a chair in a
+corner next the wall, and beckoned to Tim Gorman to sit beside her.
+Tim was miserably frightened and dodged about behind the tallest of
+the Galleottis to avoid her eye. I expect her manner when the band was
+playing had terrified him. I felt certain that I should be snubbed, but,
+to avoid general awkwardness, I took the chair beside Mrs. Ascher.
+
+I tried to cheer her up a little.
+
+“Just think,” I whispered, “if Mr. Briggs looks so commonplace in
+every-day clothes, other men, even I perhaps, might be as splendid as he
+was if we put on spangled tights.”
+
+I had to whisper because Mr. Briggs was near me, and I did not want to
+hurt his feelings. Mrs. Ascher may not have heard me. She certainly did
+not answer; I went on:
+
+“Thus there may be far more beauty in the world than we suspect. We may
+be meeting men every day who have the figures of Greek gods underneath
+their absurd coats. It’s a most consoling thought.”
+
+It did not console Mrs. Ascher in the least; but I thought a little more
+of it might be good for her.
+
+“In the same way,” I said, “heroic hearts may be beating under the
+trappings of conventionality and great souls may----”
+
+I meant to work the idea out; but Mrs. Ascher cut me short by saying
+that she had a headache. There was every excuse for her. She wanted to
+see the muscles of Mr. Briggs’ shoulders and she wanted Tim Gorman to
+sit beside her. Double disappointments of this kind often bring on the
+most violent headaches.
+
+The supper party was a failure. The Galleotti men would talk freely
+only to Tim Gorman and relapsed into gaping silence when Ascher spoke
+to them. Mrs. Briggs would not speak at all, until Gorman, who has the
+finest social talent of any man I ever met, talked to her about her
+baby. On that subject she actually chattered to the disgust of Mrs.
+Ascher, who has no children herself and regards women who have as her
+personal enemies. We had sausages and mashed potatoes to eat. We drank
+beer. Even Ascher drank a little beer, though I know he hated it.
+
+Not a word was said about Tim’s cash register until the Galleotti
+family went away and the party broke up. Then Gorman suddenly sprang
+the subject on Ascher. Mrs. Ascher, having snubbed me with her headache
+story, at last captured Tim Gorman. She spoke quite kindly to him and
+tried to teach him to help her on with her cloak, a garment which Tim
+was at first afraid to touch. I heard her, when Tim was at last holding
+the cloak, asking him to sit for her in her studio. Tim has no very
+noticeable physical development, but he has very beautiful eyes. Mrs.
+Ascher may have wanted him as a model for a figure of Sir Galahad. Her
+interest in the boy gave us a chance of talking business.
+
+It was not a chance that I should have used if I had been Gorman. It
+seemed to me foolish to lay a complicated scheme before a man who has
+just been severely tried in temper by unaccustomed kinds of food and
+drink. However, Gorman set out the case of the cash register in a few
+words. He did not go into details, and I do not know whether Ascher
+understood what was expected of him. He invited Gorman to bring Tim and
+the machine to the bank next day and promised to look into the matter.
+Gorman, still under the delusion that influence matters, insisted on my
+being one of the party. He described me as a shareholder in the company.
+Ascher said he would be glad to see me, too, next day. My impression
+is that he would have agreed to receive the whole circus company rather
+than stand any longer in that grimy restaurant talking to Gorman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Gorman called for me at my hotel next morning at 9 o’clock.
+
+“Time to start,” he said, “if we’re to keep our appointment with
+Ascher.”
+
+I was still at breakfast and did not want to start till I had finished.
+
+“Do you think,” I said, “that it’s wise to tackle him quite so early?
+Most men’s tempers improve as the day goes on,--up to a certain point,
+not right into the evening. Now I should say that noon would be the very
+best hour for business of our kind.”
+
+But Gorman is very severe when he is doing business. He took no notice
+whatever of my suggestion. He pulled a long envelope out of his pocket
+and presented it to me. It contained a nicely printed certificate, which
+assured me that I was the owner of one thousand ordinary shares in the
+New Excelsior Cash Register Company, Ltd. The face value of the shares
+was five dollars each.
+
+“I did not mean to take quite so many shares,” I said. “However, I
+don’t mind. If you will work out the rate of exchange while I finish my
+coffee, I’ll give you an English cheque for the amount.”
+
+Gorman laughed at the proposal.
+
+“You needn’t pay anything,” he said. “All we want from you is your name
+on our list of directors and your influence with Ascher. Those shares
+will be worth a couple of hundred dollars each at least when we begin
+our squeeze and you don’t run the slightest risk of losing anything.”
+
+The owning of shares of this kind seems to me the easiest way there
+is of making money. I thanked Gorman effusively and pocketed the
+certificate.
+
+We went down town by the elevated railway, and got out at Rector Street.
+Tim Gorman met us at the bottom of the steps which lead to the station.
+He was carrying his cash register in his arms. We hurried across
+Broadway and passed through the doors of a huge sky-scraper building. I
+thought we were entering Ascher’s office. We were not. We were taking a
+short cut through a kind of arcade like one of the covered shopping ways
+which one sees in some English towns, especially in Birmingham. There
+was a large number of little shops in it, luncheon places, barbers’
+shops, newspaper stalls, tobacconists’ stalls, florists’ stalls, and
+sweet shops, which displayed an enormous variety of candies. We were in
+the very centre of the business part of the city, a part to which women
+hardly ever go, unless they are typists or manicure girls. Above our
+heads were offices, tiers and tiers of them. I wondered why there were
+so many florists’ shops and sweet shops. The American business man must,
+I imagine, have a gentle and childlike heart. No one who has lost his
+first innocence would require such a supply of flowers and chocolate at
+his office door.
+
+There were lifts on each side of this arcade, dozens of them, in cages.
+Some were labelled “Express” and warned passengers that they would make
+no stop before the eleventh floor. I should have liked very much to make
+a journey in an express lift, and I hoped that Ascher’s office might
+turn out to be on the 25th or perhaps the 30th floor of the building. I
+was disappointed. Gorman hurried us on.
+
+We emerged into the open air and found ourselves in a narrow, crooked
+street along which men were hurrying in great numbers and at high speed.
+On both sides of it were enormously tall houses. There was just one
+building, right opposite to us, which was of English height. It was not
+in the least English in any other way. It was white and very dignified.
+Its lines were severely classical. It had tall, narrow windows and
+a door which somehow reminded me of portraits of the first Duke of
+Wellington. The architect may perhaps have been thinking of the great
+soldier’s nose. Gorman walked straight up to that door.
+
+“Here we are,” he said.
+
+“Surely,” I said, “this Greek temple can’t be Ascher’s office?”
+
+“This is the exact spot.”
+
+“Tell me,” I said, “do we take off our shoes at the threshold or say
+grace, or perform some kind of ceremonial lustration? We can’t go in
+just as we are.”
+
+Gorman did not answer me. He went through the door, the terribly
+impressive door, without even bowing. There was nothing for me to do but
+follow him. Tim followed me, nursing his cash register as if it had been
+a baby, a very heavy and awkwardly shaped baby.
+
+We passed into the outer office. At the first glance it seemed to
+me like a very orderly town. It was built over with small houses of
+polished mahogany and plate glass. Through the plate-glass fronts--they
+were more than windows--I could see the furniture of the houses--rolltop
+desks of mahogany, broad mahogany tables, chairs and high stools. All
+the mahogany was very highly polished. The citizens of this town flitted
+from one glass-fronted house to another. They met in narrow streets and
+spoke to each other with grave dignity. They spoke in four languages,
+and English was the one used least. From the remoter parts of the
+place, the slums, if such a polished town has slums, came the sound of
+typewriters worked with extreme rapidity. The manual labourers, in this
+as in every civilised community, are kept out of sight. Only the sound
+of their toil is allowed to remind the other classes of their happier
+lot. Some of the citizens--I took them to be men of very high standing,
+privy counsellors or magistrates--held cigars in their mouths as they
+walked about. These cigars are badges of office, like the stripes on
+soldiers’ coats. No one was actually smoking.
+
+Gorman was our spokesman. He explained who we were and what we wanted.
+We were handed over to a clerk. I suppose he was a clerk, but to me he
+seemed a gentleman in waiting of some mysterious monarch, or--my feeling
+wavered--one of the inferior priests of a strange cult. He led us
+through doors into a large room, impressively empty and silent. There
+for a minute we left while he tapped reverently at another door. The
+supreme moment arrived. We passed into the inmost shrine where Ascher
+sat. My spirit quailed.
+
+Every great profession has its own way of hypnotising the souls of
+simple men. Indeed I think that professions are accounted great in
+accordance with their power of impressing on the world a sense of their
+mysteriousness. Ecclesiastics, those of them who know their business,
+build altars in dim recesses of vast buildings, light them with
+flickering tapers, and fill the air with clouds of stupefying incense
+smoke. Surgeons and dentists allow us fleeting glimpses of bright steel
+instruments, very strangely shaped. It is contrived that we see them in
+a cold, clear light, the light of scientific relentlessness. There is a
+suggestion of torture, not brutal but exquisitely refined, of perfected
+pain, achieved by the stimulation of recondite nerves of very delicate
+sensibility. Lawyers wear archaic robes and use a strange language in
+their mysteries, conveying to us a belief that Justice is an ancient
+witch whose evil eye can be averted only by the incantation and
+grotesque posturing of her initiate priests. But I am not sure that
+financiers do not understand the art of hypnotic suggestion best of all.
+I have worshipped in cathedrals, sweated cold in operating theatres,
+trembled before judges, but there is something about large surfaces of
+polished mahogany and very soft, dimly coloured turkey carpets which
+quells my feeble spirit still more completely.
+
+There was a heavy deadening silence in Ascher’s private office, and our
+voices, when they broke it, sounded like the cheeping of ghosts.
+There was an odour more oppressive than the smell of incense or the
+penetrating fumes of iodoform. Some one, many hours before, must have
+smoked a very good cigar in the room, and the scent of it lingered. The
+doors of huge safes must have been opened. From the recesses of these
+steel chambers had oozed air which had lain stagnant and lifeless round
+piles of gold bonds and rich securities for years and years. The faint,
+sickly odour of sealing wax must have been distilled from immense
+sticks of that substance and sprinkled overnight upon the carpets and
+leather-seated chairs. I breathed and my very limbs felt numb.
+
+But certain souls are proof against the subtlest forms of hypnotism.
+Gorman had escaped from the influence of his church. He would flip a
+sterilised lancet across a glass slab with his finger and laugh in the
+face of the surgeon who owned it. He walked with buoyant confidence into
+Ascher’s office. My case was different. I stood and then sat, the victim
+of a partial anaesthetic. I saw and heard dimly as if in a dream, or
+through a mist. Poor Tim trembled as he laid his cash register down on
+one of Ascher’s mahogany tables. I could hear the keys and bars of the
+machine rattling together while he handled it.
+
+Ascher spoke through a telephone receiver which stood at his elbow.
+Another man entered the room. We all shook hands with him. He was Stutz,
+the New York partner of the firm. Then Ascher spoke through the receiver
+again, and another man came in.
+
+With him we did not shake hands, but he bowed to us and we to him. He
+was Mr. Mildmay. He stood near the door, waiting for orders.
+
+Tim Gorman unpacked his machine and exhibited it. I have not the remotest
+idea what its peculiar virtues are, but Tim believed in them. His
+nervousness seemed to pass away from him as he spoke about his invention
+with simple-minded enthusiasm. Love casts out fear, and there is no
+doubt that Tim loved every screw and lever of the complicated mechanism.
+
+Mr. Mildmay left his place near the door and came forward. His
+deferential manner dropped off from him. He revealed himself as a
+mechanical expert with a special knowledge of cash registers. He and
+Tim Gorman pressed keys, twisted handles and bent together in absorbed
+contemplation over some singular feature of the machine’s organism.
+Gorman, the elder brother, watched them with a confident smile. Ascher
+and Stutz sat gravely silent. They waited Mildmay’s opinion. He was the
+man of the moment. A few minutes before he had bowed respectfully to
+Ascher. In half an hour he would be bowing respectfully to Ascher
+again. Just then, while he handled Tim Gorman’s machine, he was Ascher’s
+master, and mine of course. They were all my masters.
+
+The inspection of the machine was finished at last. Tim stood flushed
+and triumphant. The child of his ingenious brain had survived the tests
+of an expert. Mildmay turned to Ascher and bowed again.
+
+“It’s a wonderful invention,” he said. “I see no reason why it should
+not be a commercial success.”
+
+“Perhaps, Mr. Mildmay,” said Ascher, “you will study the subject further
+and submit a report to us in writing.”
+
+Mr. Mildmay left the room. I had no doubt that he would report
+enthusiastically on the new cash register. Mechanical experts do not, I
+suppose, write poetry, but there was without doubt a lyric in Mildmay’s
+heart as he left the room. Tim packed the thing up again. Now that the
+mechanical part of the business was over, he relapsed into shy silence
+in a corner. His brother took out a cigarette and lit it. I would not
+have ventured to light a cigarette in that sanctuary for a hundred
+pounds. But Gorman is entirely without reverence.
+
+“Well,” he said, “there’s no doubt about the value of the invention.”
+
+“We shall wait for Mr. Mildmay’s report,” said Ascher, “before we
+come to any decision; but in the meanwhile we should like to hear any
+proposal you have to make.”
+
+“Yes,” said Stutz, “your proposals. We are prepared to listen to them.”
+
+Stutz seemed to me to speak English with difficulty. His native language
+was perhaps German, perhaps Hebrew or Yiddish or whatever the language
+is which modern Jews speak in private life.
+
+“The matter is simple enough,” said Gorman. “Our machine will drive
+any other out of the market. There’s no possibility of competition. The
+thing is simply a dead cert. It can’t help going.”
+
+“A large capital would be required,” said Stutz, “a very large capital.”
+
+“Yes,” said Gorman, “a very large capital, much larger than I should
+care to see invested in the thing. I may as well be quite frank with you
+gentlemen. At present the patents of my brother’s invention are owned
+by a small company in which I am the chief shareholder. If we ask the
+public for a million dollars and get them--I don’t say we can’t get
+them. We may. But if we do I shall be a very small shareholder. I shall
+get 5 per cent, or 6 per cent, or perhaps 10 per cent, on my money. Now
+I want more than that. I’m speaking quite frankly, you see. I believe in
+frankness.”
+
+He looked at Ascher for approval. Stutz bowed, with an impassive face.
+On Ascher’s lips there was the ghost of a mournful little smile. I
+somehow gathered that he had come across frankness like Gorman’s before
+and had not altogether liked it. Gorman went on. He explained, as he had
+explained to me, the plan he had made for forcing the owners of existing
+cash registers to buy his company out. At last he got to the central,
+the vitally important point.
+
+“All we want, gentlemen, is your backing. You needn’t put down any
+money. Your names will be enough. I will make over to you such bonus
+shares as may be agreed upon. The only risk we run is lawsuits about
+our patent rights. You understand how that game is worked. I needn’t
+explain.”
+
+It was evident that both Ascher and Stutz understood that game
+thoroughly. It was also plain to me, though not, I think, to Gorman,
+that it was a game which neither one nor other of them would be willing
+to play.
+
+“But if we have your names,” said Gorman, “that game’s off. It simply
+wouldn’t pay. I don’t want to flatter you, gentlemen, but there isn’t a
+firm in the world that would care to start feeing lawyers in competition
+with Ascher, Stutz & Co.”
+
+“That is so,” said Stutz.
+
+“And your proposal?” said Ascher.
+
+“If they can’t crush us,” said Gorman, “and they can’t if you’re behind
+us, they must buy us. I need scarcely say that your share in the profits
+will be satisfactory to you. Sir James Digby is one of our directors.
+There are only four others, and three of them scarcely count. There
+won’t be many of us to divide what we get.”
+
+I felt that my time had come to speak. If I was to justify Gorman’s
+confidence in me as an “influence,” I must say something. Besides Ascher
+was looking at me inquiringly.
+
+“I’m not a business man,” I said, “and I’m afraid that my opinion isn’t
+worth much, but I think----”
+
+I hesitated. Ascher’s eyes were fixed on me, and there was a curiously
+wistful expression in them. I could not understand what he wanted me to
+say.
+
+“I think,” I said, “that Gorman’s plan sounds feasible, that it ought to
+work.”
+
+“But your own opinion of it?” said Ascher.
+
+He spoke with a certain gentle insistency. I could not very well avoid
+making some answer.
+
+“We are able to judge for ourselves,” he said, “whether it will work.
+But the plan itself--what do you think of it?”
+
+“Well,” I said, “I’m a modern man. I have accepted all the ideas and
+standards of my time and generation. I can hardly give you an opinion
+that I could call my own, but if my father’s opinion would be of any
+use to you---- He was an old-fashioned gentleman, with all the rather
+obsolete ideas about honour which those people had.”
+
+“He’s dead, isn’t he?” said Gorman.
+
+“Oh, yes,” I said. “He’s been dead for fifteen years. Still I’m sure I
+could tell you what he’d have said about this.”
+
+“I do not think,” said Stutz, “that we need consider the opinion of Sir
+James Digby’s father, who has been dead for fifteen years.”
+
+“I quite agree with you,” I said. “It would be out of date, hopelessly.”
+
+“But your own opinion?” said Ascher, still mildly insistent.
+
+“Well,” I said, “I’ve been robbed of my property--land in Ireland, Mr.
+Stutz--by Gorman and his friends. Everybody says that they were quite
+right and that I ought not to have objected; so, I suppose, robbery must
+be a proper thing according to our contemporary ethics.”
+
+“And that is your opinion of the scheme?” said Ascher.
+
+“Yes,” I said. “I hope I’ve made myself clear. I think we are justified
+in pillaging when we can.”
+
+“You Irish,” said Ascher, “with your intellects of steel, your delight
+in paradox and your reckless logic!”
+
+Stutz was not interested in the peculiarities of the Irish mind. He went
+back to the main point with a directness which I admired.
+
+“This is not,” he said, “the kind of business we care to do.”
+
+“Mr. Gorman,” said Ascher, “we shall wait for Mr. Mildmay’s report
+on your brother’s invention. If it turns out to be favourable, as I
+confidently expect, we may have a proposal to lay before you. Our firm
+cannot, you will understand, take shares in your company. That is not a
+bank’s business. But I myself, in my private capacity, will consider
+the matter. So will Mr. Stutz. It may be possible to arrange that your
+brother’s machine shall be put on the market.”
+
+“But your proposal,” said Stutz obstinately. “It is not the kind of
+business we undertake.”
+
+The interview was plainly at an end. We rose and left the room.
+
+Tim Gorman did not understand, perhaps did not hear, a word of what was
+said. He followed us out of the office nursing his machine and plainly
+in high delight. Curiously enough, the elder Gorman seemed equally
+pleased.
+
+“We’ve got them,” he said when we reached the street. “We’ve got Ascher,
+Stutz & Co quite safe. I don’t see what’s to stop us now.”
+
+My own impression was that both Ascher & Stutz had definitely refused to
+entertain our proposal or fall in with our plans. I said so to Gorman.
+
+“Not at all,” he said. “You don’t understand business or business men.
+Ascher and Stutz are very big bugs, very big indeed, and they have to
+keep up appearances. It wouldn’t do for them to admit to you and me, or
+even to each other, that they were out for what they could get from the
+old company. They have to keep up the pretence that they mean legitimate
+business. That’s the way these things are always worked. But you’ll find
+that they won’t object to pocketing their cheques when the time comes
+for smashing up Tim’s machine and suppressing his patents.”
+
+I turned, when I reached the far side of the street, to take another
+look at Ascher’s office. I was struck again by the purity of line and
+the severe simplicity of the building. Two thousand years ago men would
+have had a statue of Pallas Athene in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+I spent a very pleasant fortnight in New York among people entirely
+unconnected with the Aschers or Gorman. I was kept busy dining,
+lunching, going to the theatre, driving here and there in motor cars,
+and enjoying the society of some of the least conventional and most
+brilliant women in the world. I only found time to call on the Aschers
+once and then did not see either of them. They were stopping in the
+Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and the young man in the office told me that Mrs.
+Ascher spent the whole of every day in her studio. Her devotion to art
+was evidently very great. She could not manage to spend a holiday in
+New York without hiring a studio. I inquired whether any members of the
+Galleotti family were sitting for her, but the hotel clerk did not know
+that. He told me, however, that Mr. Ascher was in Washington. Gorman
+always says that the strings of government in modern states are pulled
+by financiers. Ascher was probably chucking at those which are fastened
+to the arms and legs of the President of the United States, with a view
+to making that potentate dance threateningly in the direction of Mexico.
+I am sure that Ascher does this sort of thing very nicely and kindly
+if indeed he does it at all. He would not willingly destroy the
+self-respect even of a marionette.
+
+Of Gorman I saw nothing more before I left New York. I think he went off
+to Detroit almost immediately after our interview with Ascher and
+Stutz. Gorman is not exactly the man to put his public duties before
+his private interests, but I am sure the public duties always come in a
+close second. Having settled, or thought he had settled, the affair of
+the cash register, he immediately turned his attention to that wealthy
+motor man in Detroit from whom he meant to get a subscription. The
+future of the Irish Party possibly, its comforts probably, depended
+on the success of Gorman’s mission. And a party never deserved comfort
+more. The Home Rule Bill was almost passed for the third and last time.
+Nothing stood between Ireland and the realisation of Gorman’s hopes
+for her except the obstinate perversity of the Ulster men. A few more
+subscriptions, generous subscriptions, and that would be overcome.
+
+After enjoying myself in New York for a fortnight I went to Canada.
+I did not gather much information about the companies in which I was
+interested. But I learned a good deal about Canadian politics. The
+men who play that game out there are extraordinarily clearsighted and
+honest. They frankly express lower opinions of each other than the
+politicians of any other country would dare to hold of the players
+in their particular fields. In the end the general frankness became
+monotonous and I tired of Canada. I went back to New York, hoping to
+pick up someone there who would travel home with me by way of the West
+Indies, islands which I had never seen. I thought it possible that I
+might persuade the Aschers, if they were still in New York, to make the
+tour with me. There was just a chance that I might come across Gorman
+again and that he would be taken with the idea of preaching the
+doctrines of Irish nationalism in Jamaica. I called on the Aschers twice
+and missed them both times. But the second visit was not fruitless. Mrs.
+Ascher rang me up on the telephone and asked me to go to see her in
+her studio. She said that she particularly wanted to see me and had
+something very important to say.
+
+I obeyed the summons, of course. I found Mrs. Ascher clad in a long,
+pale-blue pinafore. Over-all is, I believe, the proper name for the
+garment. But it looked to me like a child’s pinafore, greatly enlarged.
+It completely covered all her other clothes in front and almost
+completely covered them behind. I recognised it as the sort of thing a
+really earnest artist would wear while working. Her hair was hanging
+in loops and wisps about her head, a disorder which was effective with
+dark-red hair. Her hands were damp and dirty. Her face was smudged here
+and there, as if, in moments of artistic travail, she had pressed her
+muddy fingers against her forehead and chin. The room had very little
+furniture in it, but there were several tables, large and small. On
+these stood what seemed to me shapeless lumps of various sizes, swathed
+in damp rags. They reminded me a little of the shrouded objects on the
+tables of dissecting rooms after the students have gone home. There was
+the same suggestion of mutilated human forms. Mrs. Archer saw me looking
+at them.
+
+“Some of my little things,” she said, “but nothing finished. I don’t
+know why it is, but here in New York I find it very difficult to finish
+anything.”
+
+“You’re not singular in that,” I said. “The New York people themselves
+suffer in exactly the same way. There isn’t a street in their city that
+they’ve finished or ever will finish. If anything begins to look
+like completion they smash it up at once and start afresh. It must be
+something in the air, a restlessness, a desire of the perfection which
+can never be realised.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher very carefully unwrapped a succession of damp rags from one
+of the largest of her lumps which was standing on a table by itself. I
+have, since then, seen nurses unwrapping the bandages from the wounded
+limbs of men. The way they did it always reminded me of Mrs. Ascher.
+The removal of the last bandage revealed to me a figure about eighteen
+inches high of a girl who seemed to me to be stretching herself after
+getting out of bed before stepping into her bath.
+
+“Psyche,” said Mrs. Ascher.
+
+I had to show my admiration in some way. The proper thing, I believe,
+when shown a statue by a sculptor, is to stroke it with your fingers and
+murmur, “Ah!” I was afraid to stroke Psyche because she was certainly
+wet and probably soft. A touch might have dinted her, made a dimple in
+a wrong place. I dared not risk it. It became all the more necessary to
+speak.
+
+The first thing I thought of was a quotation from Edgar Allan Poe.
+
+“I pacified Psyche and kissed her,” I murmured, “and tempted her out of
+the gloom.”
+
+I said the lines in what I am convinced is the proper way, as if they
+were forced from me, as if I spoke them to myself and did not mean them
+to be heard. I do not think Mrs. Ascher knew them. I fear she suspected
+me of making some sort of joke. I hastened to redeem my character.
+
+“Psyche,” I said, “the soul.”
+
+I was right so far. Psyche is the Greek for the soul. I ventured
+further.
+
+“The human soul, the artistic soul.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher appeared to be absolutely hanging on my words. I plunged on.
+
+“Aspiring,” I said, “reaching after the unattainable.”
+
+I would not have said, “hoping for a yawn” for anything that could have
+been offered me; but the young woman who stood for Mrs. Ascher’s Psyche
+must have longed for that relief. The attitude in which she was posed
+suggested yawning all the time, and we all know how fatal it is to think
+of a yawn.
+
+“Quite unfinished,” said Mrs. Ascher with a sigh.
+
+“The fault of New York,” I said. “When you get home again----”
+
+I hesitated. I did not wish to commit myself to a confession of
+ignorance, and I do not know whether a damp, soft Psyche can be packed
+up and transported across the Atlantic to be finished in London.
+
+“But the aspiration is there,” I said, “and you owe that to New York.
+The air, the very same air which forbids completion, is charged with
+aspiration. We all feel it. The city itself aspires. Since the great
+days when men set out to build a tower the top of which should reach
+unto heaven, there has never been such aspiration anywhere in the world.
+Look at the Woolworth Building.”
+
+I was maundering and I knew it. Mrs. Ascher’s statuette was very nice
+and graceful; a much better thing than I expected to see, but there was
+nothing in it, nothing at all in the way of thought or emotion. There
+must be hundreds of people who can turn out clay girls just as good
+as that Psyche. Somehow I had expected something different from Mrs.
+Ascher, less skill in modelling, less care, but more temperament.
+
+“There’s nothing else worth showing,” she said, “except perhaps this.
+Yes, except this.”
+
+She unwrapped more bandages. A damp, pale-grey head appeared. It was
+standing in a large saucer or soup plate. At first I thought she had
+been at John the Baptist and had chosen the moment when his head lay
+in the charger ready for the dancing girl to take to her mother.
+Fortunately I looked at it carefully before speaking. I saw that it was
+Tim Gorman’s head.
+
+“He sat to me,” said Mrs. Ascher, “and by degrees I came to know him
+very well. One does, one cannot help it, talking to a person every day
+and watching, always watching. Do you think----?”
+
+“I think it’s wonderful,” I said.
+
+This time I spoke with real and entire conviction. I am no expert judge
+of anything in the world except perhaps a horse or a bottle of claret,
+but I was impressed by this piece of Mrs. Ascher’s work. Tim Gorman’s
+fine eyes were the only things about him which struck me as noticeable.
+No artist can model eyes in clay. But Mrs. Ascher had got all that I saw
+in his eyes into the head before me--all and a great deal more. She had
+somehow succeeded in making the lips, the nostrils, the forehead, the
+cheek-bones, express the fact that Tim Gorman is an idealist, a dreamer
+of fine dreams and at the same time innocent as a child which looks out
+at the world with wonder. I do not know how the woman did it. I should
+not have supposed her capable of even seeing what she had expressed in
+her clay, but there it was.
+
+“You really like it?”
+
+She spoke with a curious note of humility in her voice. My impulse was
+to say that I liked her, for the first time saw the real good in her;
+but I could not say that.
+
+“Like it!” I said. “It isn’t for me to like or dislike it. I don’t know
+anything about those things. I am not capable of judging. But this seems
+to me to be really great.”
+
+“Ah!” said Mrs. Ascher, “and this time you are sincere.”
+
+She looked at me quite gravely as she spoke. Then a smile slowly
+broadened her mouth.
+
+“That’s not the way you spoke of poor Psyche’s aspiration,” she said,
+“you were laughing at me then.”
+
+A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. The woman had understood every
+word I said to her, understood what I meant as well as what I wanted to
+convey to her, two very different things. She was immensely more clever
+than I suspected or could have guessed.
+
+“Mrs. Ascher,” I said, “I beg your pardon.”
+
+“You were quite right,” she said. “That other thing isn’t Psyche. It’s
+just a silly little girl, the model---- There wasn’t anything about her
+that I could see, nothing but just a pretty body.”
+
+So she dismissed my apology and turned to Tim Gorman’s head again. She
+ran her finger lightly round the rim of the saucer.
+
+“What shall I do with this?” she said. “What is his head to stand on,
+to rise from? I was thinking of water-lily leaves, as if the head were
+emerging----”
+
+I felt that I owed Mrs. Ascher some frankness in return for my first
+insult to her intelligence. Besides, I was moved. I was, as I had not
+been for years, emotional. Tim Gorman’s head gripped me in a curious
+way.
+
+“Good God, Woman,” I said, “anything in the world but that! Wrap up that
+chorus girl of a Psyche in leaves if you like. Sprinkle rose petals over
+her or any other damned sentimentalism. But this man is a mechanic. He
+has invented a cash register. What in the name of all that’s holy has
+he got to do with water-lily leaves? Put hammers round his head, and
+pincers, and long nails.”
+
+I stopped. I realised suddenly that I was making an unutterable fool of
+myself. I was talking as I never talked in my life before, saying out
+loud the sort of things I have carefully schooled myself neither to feel
+nor to think.
+
+“After all,” said Mrs. Ascher, “you have an artist’s soul.”
+
+I shuddered. Mrs. Ascher looked at me and smiled again, a half-pitiful
+smile.
+
+“I suppose I must have,” I said. “But I won’t let it break loose in that
+way again. I’ll suppress it. It’s--it’s--this is rather an insulting
+thing to say to you, but it’s a humiliating discovery to make that I
+have----”
+
+Mrs. Ascher nodded.
+
+“My husband always says that you Irish----”
+
+“He’s quite wrong,” I said; “quite wrong about me at all events. I hate
+paradoxes. I’m a plain man. The only thing I really admire is common
+sense.”
+
+“I understand,” she said. “I understand exactly what you feel.”
+
+She is a witch and very likely did understand. I did not.
+
+“Now,” she said. “Now, I can talk to you. Sit down, please.”
+
+She pulled over a low stool, the only seat in the room. I sat on it.
+Mrs. Ascher stood, or rather drooped in front of me, leaning on one
+hand, which rested, palm down, on the table where Tim Gorman’s image
+stood. I doubt whether Mrs. Ascher ever stands straight or is capable of
+any kind of stiffness. But even drooping, she had a distinct advantage
+over me. My stool was very low and my legs are long. If I ventured to
+lean forwards, my knees would have touched my chin, a position in which
+it is impossible for a man to assert himself.
+
+“I am so very glad,” she said, “that you like the little head.”
+
+I was not going to be caught again. One lapse into artistic fervour
+was enough for me. Even at the risk of offending Mrs. Ascher beyond
+forgiveness, I was determined to preserve my self-respect.
+
+“I wish you wouldn’t take my word for it’s being good,” I said. “Ask
+somebody who knows. The fact that I like it is a proof that it’s bad,
+bad art, if it’s a proof of anything. I never really admire anything
+good, can’t bear, simply can’t bear old masters, or”--I dimly
+recollected some witty essays by my brilliant fellow-countryman Mr.
+George Moore--“I detest Corot. My favourite artist is Leader.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher smiled all the time I was speaking.
+
+“I know quite well,” she said, “that my work isn’t good. But you saw
+what I meant by it. You can’t deny it now, and you know that the boy is
+like that.”
+
+“I don’t know anything of the sort. I don’t know anything at all about
+him. The only time I ever came into touch with him he was helping his
+brother to persuade Mr. Ascher to go into a doubtful--well, to make
+money by what I’d call sharp practice.”
+
+“I don’t think he was,” said Mrs. Ascher. “The elder brother may have
+been doing what you say; but Tim wasn’t.”
+
+“He was in the game,” I said.
+
+I spoke all the more obstinately because I knew that Tim was not in the
+game, I was determined not to be hysterical again.
+
+“I’ve had that poor boy here day after day,” said Mrs. Ascher, “and I
+really know him. He has the soul of an artist. He is a creator. He is
+one of humanity’s mother natures. You know how it is with us. Something
+quickens in us. We travail and bring to the birth.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher evidently included herself among the mother natures. It
+seemed a pity that she had not gone about the business in the ordinary
+way. I think she would have been happier if she had. However, the head
+of Tim Gorman was something. She had produced it.
+
+“That is art,” she said dreamily, “conception, gestation, travail,
+birth. It does not matter whether the thing born is a poem, a picture, a
+statue, a sonata, a temple----”
+
+“Or a cash register,” I said.
+
+The thing born might apparently be anything except an ordinary baby. The
+true artist does not think much of babies. They are bourgeois things.
+
+“Or a cash register,” she said. “It makes no difference. The man who
+creates, who brings into being, has only one desire, that his child,
+whatever it may be, shall live. If it is stifled, killed, a sword goes
+through his heart.”
+
+It seemed to me even then with Mrs. Ascher’s eyes on me, that it was
+rather absurd to talk about a cash register living. I do not think that
+men have ever personified this machine. We talk of ships and engines by
+the names we give them and use personal pronouns, generally feminine,
+when we speak of them. But did any one ever call a cash register
+“Minnie” or talk of it familiarly as “she”?
+
+“He thinks,” said Mrs. Ascher, “indeed he is sure--he says his brother
+told him----”
+
+“I know,” I said. “The machine isn’t going to be put on the market at
+all. It is to be used simply as a threat to make other people pay what I
+should call blackmail.”
+
+“That must not be,” said Mrs. Ascher.
+
+Her voice was pitched a couple of tones higher than usual. I might
+almost say she shrieked.
+
+“It must not be,” she repeated, “must not. It is a crime, a vile act,
+the murder of a soul.”
+
+Cash registers have not got souls. I am as sure of that as I am of
+anything.
+
+“That boy,” she went on, “that passionate, brave, pure boy, he must not
+be dragged down, defiled. His soul----”
+
+It was Tim Gorman’s soul then, not the cash registers, which she was
+worrying about. Having seen her presentation of the boy’s head, having
+it at that moment before my eyes, I understood what she meant. But I
+was not going to let myself be swept again into the regions of artistic
+passion to please Mrs. Ascher.
+
+“Well,” I said, “it does seem rather a shady way of making money. But
+after all----”
+
+I have mentioned that Mrs. Ascher never stands upright. She went very
+near it when I mentioned money.
+
+She threw her head back, flung both her arms out wide, clenched her
+fists tightly, and, if the expression is possible, drooped backwards
+from her hips. A slightly soiled light-blue overall is not the garment
+best suited to set off the airs and attitudes of high tragedy. But Mrs.
+Ascher’s feelings were strong enough to transfigure even her clothes.
+
+“Money!” she said. “Oh, Money! Is there nothing else? Do you care for,
+hope for, see nothing else in the world? What does it matter whether you
+make money or not, or how you make it?”
+
+It is only those who are very rich indeed or those who are on the outer
+fringe of extreme poverty who can despise money in this whole-hearted
+way. The wife of a millionaire--the millionaire himself probably
+attaches some value to money because he has to get it--and the regular
+tramp can say “Oh, money? Is there nothing else?” The rest of us find
+money a useful thing and get what we can of it.
+
+Mrs. Ascher let her arms fall suddenly to her sides, folded herself up
+and sat down, or rather crouched, on the floor. From that position she
+looked up at me with the greatest possible intensity of eye.
+
+“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re thinking of my husband.
+But he hates money just as much as I do. All he wants is to escape, to have
+done with it, to live peaceably with me, somewhere far away, far, far
+away from everywhere.”
+
+Her eyes softened as she spoke. They even filled with water, tears, I
+suppose. But she seemed to me to be talking nonsense. Ascher was making
+money, piling it up. He could stop if he liked. So I thought. So any
+sensible man must think. And as for living somewhere far, far away, what
+did the woman want to get away from? Every possible place of residence
+on the earth’s surface is near some other place. You cannot get far, far
+away from everywhere. The thing is a physical impossibility. I made an
+effort to get back to common sense.
+
+“About Tim Gorman’s cash register?” I said. “What would you suggest?”
+
+“You mustn’t let them do that hateful thing,” she said. “You can stop
+them if you will.”
+
+“I don’t believe I can,” I said. “I’m extraordinarily feeble and
+ineffectual in every way. In business matters I’m a mere babe.”
+
+“Mr. Gorman will listen to you,” she said. “He will understand if you
+explain to him. He is a writer, an artist. He must understand.”
+
+I shook my head. Gorman can write. I admit that. His writing is a great
+deal better than Mrs. Ascher’s modelling, though she did do that head
+of Tim. I do not hail Gorman’s novels or his plays as great literature,
+though they are good. But some of his criticism is the finest thing of
+its kind that has been published in our time. But Gorman does not look
+at these matters as Mrs. Ascher does. I do not believe he ever wrote a
+line in his life without expecting to be paid for it. He would not write
+at all if he could find any easier and pleasanter way of making money.
+There was no use saying that to Mrs. Ascher. All I could do when she
+asked me to appeal to Gorman’s artistic soul was to shake my head. I
+shook it as decisively as I could.
+
+“And my husband will listen to you,” she said.
+
+“My dear lady! wouldn’t he be much more likely to listen to you?”
+
+“But we never talk about such things,” she said. “Never, never. Our life
+together is sacred, hallowed, a thing apart,
+
+     ‘Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
+          Which men call earth.’”
+
+It surprised me to hear Mrs. Ascher quote Milton. I did not somehow
+expect to find that she knew or liked that particular poet. I am nearly
+sure he would not have liked her.
+
+“We cannot desecrate our union,” she said, “by talking about money.”
+
+The subject to be discussed with Ascher was plainly not money, but Tim
+Gorman’s soul. Money only came incidentally. However, there was no use
+arguing a point like that. There was no use arguing any point. I gave in
+and promised to see Ascher about the matter. I prefer Ascher to Gorman
+if I have to persuade any one to act midwife at the birth of a cash
+register. Gorman would be certain to laugh. Ascher would at all events
+listen to me courteously.
+
+“To-morrow,” said Mrs. Ascher.
+
+“Certainly,” I said. “To-morrow, quite early.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher uncoiled herself and rose from the floor. I struggled to my
+feet rather stiffly, for my stool was far too low. She took my hand and
+held it. I feared for a moment that she meant to kiss it.
+
+“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you again and again.”
+
+I took a long walk after I left the studio. I wanted to assimilate a new
+fact, to get my mental vision into focus again.
+
+Ever since I thought about things at all, I have regarded the “artist”
+ outlook upon life as a pose, and the claim to artistic temperament as an
+excuse for selfishness and bad temper in private life. Mrs. Ascher had
+convinced me that, in her case at least, the artist soul is a reality.
+She was hysterical and ridiculous when she talked to me, but she was
+sincere. She was not posing even when she crumpled herself upon the
+floor and looked like a sick serpent. She was in simple earnest when
+she mouthed her lines about money, money. There might be, probably were,
+several other people in the world like Mrs. Ascher, might even be many
+others. That was the new fact which I wanted to digest.
+
+I reflected that I myself was kin to her, had in me, latent and
+undeveloped, an artist’s soul. I had felt the thing fluttering when
+I lost my self-control and talked flamboyantly about the head of Tim
+Gorman. It was necessary that I should keep a firm grip on myself. I
+belong to a class which has lost everything except its sanity. I think
+it is true of the Irish aristocracy that even its period of greatest
+glory, even when Grattan was waving his arms and shouting “Esto
+Perpetua!”, it remained sane. I have nothing else left of what my
+forefathers bequeathed to me, but I still have this temperament. A man
+clings desperately to the last remnants of his heritage.
+
+The artist’s soul is a reality. I admitted that. But it is also a
+disease. I had learned to believe in it as a man learns to believe in
+influenza when his temperature runs up to 104 degrees and his bones ache
+furiously. But there is a difference between admitting the existence of
+a disease and deliberately cultivating the germs of it.
+
+I crossed 5th Avenue at 32nd Street in great peril of my life, for the
+traffic at that point is as wild as the emotions of the artistic soul.
+
+It came into my mind that quite possibly the thrills and throbs which
+Mrs. Ascher enjoys, of which I myself had a brief and mild experience,
+are not only real, but worth while. There may after all be something
+greater in the world than common sense. I fell to dreaming of what life
+might be like to the man who refused to take it as it is, who insisted
+on seeing above him, not silly little twinkling stars, but great worlds
+coursing through the infinite spaces of eternity. I ran into a boy
+carrying books, while I was thinking about eternity. His books were
+scattered over the pavement and I hurt my knee. I decided that my faint
+longing for what Mrs. Ascher would call “higher possibilities” is a
+temptation, something to be conquered. I finished my meditation with a
+“Retro Satanas”, and returned to my hotel for luncheon confident that I
+should come out victor in my struggle.
+
+Ascher has certainly far more determination and force of character
+than I have; but he does not seem able to break himself of the habit of
+making money. His wife says that he hates doing it and wants to stop.
+But he goes on doing it. He has formed a habit of making money, and
+habit is almost unconquerable. It was plainly the path of wisdom for me
+to check my tendency towards art at the very beginning, not to allow the
+habit of feeling artistically, indeed of feeling at all, to form itself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+I had no idea of breaking the promise I made Mrs. Ascher; but I felt
+a certain hesitation about entering again the Holiest of Holies in the
+office of Ascher, Stutz & Co. I was a little afraid of Stutz, who seemed
+to me a severe man, very little tolerant of human folly. Still I would
+have faced Stutz without shrinking, especially in a good cause. What I
+really disliked was the idea of suggesting a business policy to
+Ascher. The man was immeasurably my superior in natural ability and in
+experience. I felt that I should be guilty of insolence if I offered him
+any advice, and of something worse than insolence if I insisted on my
+advice being taken. Yet it was just this which Mrs. Ascher expected of
+me, and I did not want to disappoint her.
+
+It is true that I was a shareholder in the New Excelsior Cash Register
+Company. I may have been a director. Gorman said something about my
+being a director. I had accepted the office, pledged beforehand to the
+approval of Gorman’s policy and therefore had no right to intervene.
+What claim had I to insist on Ascher’s doing this or that? I should
+not feel myself justified in calling on an archbishop and insisting
+on drastic alterations in the Apostle’s Creed. Ascher is at least an
+archbishop, possibly a patriarch, or even a cardinal, in that truly
+catholic church which worships Mammon.
+
+But I had promised.
+
+I went to the office next morning, early. Having forgotten to make an
+appointment with Ascher beforehand I had to wait some time before I saw
+him. I sat in the large anteroom through which I had passed when I first
+visited the office with Gorman. Through the glass door I was able to see
+the public office outside where men went busily to and fro.
+
+I understood just enough about this business of Ascher’s to be able to
+read romance, the romance which was certainly there, in the movements
+of the quiet men who passed and repassed before my eyes, or bent with
+rarely lifted heads over huge ledgers, or turned over with deft fingers
+piles of papers in stuffed filing boxes. These men were in touch with
+the furthest ends of the earth. Coded telegrams fluttered from their
+hands and went vibrating across thousands of miles of land or through
+the still depths of oceans, over unlighted tracts of ooze on the
+sea-bottom. In London the words were read and men set free pent up,
+dammed streams of money. In Hongkong the words were read and some
+steamer went out, laden, from her harbour. Gold was poured into the
+hands of tea-planters in Ceylon. Scanty wages in strange coins, dribbled
+out to factory workers in Russian cotton mills. Gangs of navvies went to
+work laying railway lines across the veldt in Bechuanaland. There was no
+end to the energy controlled, directed by these cable messages, nor any
+bounds to the field of their influence. Somewhere in Ireland a farmer
+would go home along a desolate road, crossing brown bogs, thirsty and
+disconsolate, his lean beasts unsold at a fair where buyers were scarce
+or shy. What did he know of Ascher or Ascher know of him? Yet the price
+which he might take or must refuse for those hardly reared bullocks of
+his depended at the end of a long chain, on what the Aschers in their
+offices said and did.
+
+Perhaps hardly one of all the busy men I watched quite knew what he was
+doing. They juggled with figures, made précis of the reports of money
+markets, dissected and analysed the balance sheets of railway companies,
+decoded messages from London or from Paris, transcribed formulae as
+abstract, as remote from tangible things as the x and y of algebraic
+equations. These men all worked--the apologue of the quadratic equation
+held my mind--moving their symbols here and there, extracting roots,
+dissolving close-knit phrases into factors, cancelling, simplifying, but
+always dealing with symbols meaningless, unreal in themselves. Behind
+them was Ascher, Ascher and I suppose Stutz, who expressed realities
+in formulae, and, when the sums were done, extracted realities from the
+formulae again, achieving through the seemingly sterile processes new
+facts, fresh grasp of the things which are, greater power to deal with
+them. They knew and understood and held the whole world in leading
+strings, delicate as silk, invisible, impalpable, but strong.
+
+The door of Ascher’s private office opened and a man passed out. I
+glanced at him. He was a clean-shaved, keen-eyed, square-jawed man, the
+type which American business methods have produced, a man of resource
+and quick decision, but a man, so I guessed, who dealt with things, and
+money only as the price of things, the reward of making them. He lacked,
+so I felt, something of the fine spirituality of Ascher, the scientific
+abstraction of the man who lives in a rarer atmosphere of pure finance.
+
+A clerk at my elbow invited me to leave my place and take my turn with
+Ascher.
+
+I could not bring myself to plunge straightway into my business. I began
+by pretending that I had no real business at all.
+
+“Any chance,” I asked, “of our being travelling companions again? I am
+leaving New York almost at once.”
+
+“I’m afraid not,” said Ascher. “I’ve a great deal to do here still.”
+
+“Those Mexican affairs?”
+
+“Those among others.”
+
+“The Government here seems to be making rather a muddle of Mexico,” I
+said.
+
+Opinion on this subject was, so far as I knew, nearly unanimous among
+business men. Everyone who owned shares in Mexican companies, everyone
+who had invested hopefully a little while before in Mexican railways,
+everyone who had any kind of interest in Mexico was of the same opinion
+about the inaction of the American Government.
+
+“I think it is a muddle,” said Ascher, “but the idea in the minds of the
+men who are making the muddle is a fine one. If only the world could be
+worked on those principles----”
+
+“But it can’t.”
+
+“Not yet,” said Ascher. “Perhaps never. Yet the idea on which
+the Government in Washington proceeds is a noble one. Respect for
+constitutional order should be a greater thing as a principle of
+statesmanship than obvious expediency.”
+
+The man’s unnatural detachment of view worried me. It was the same when
+Gorman blared out his stereotyped abuse of financiers, his well-worn
+cliches about money kings and poison spiders. Ascher agreed with
+him. Ascher, apparently, had some approval for the doctrinaire
+constitutionalism of university professors turned diplomats. I could not
+follow him to those heights of his.
+
+“I was thinking,” I said, “of going home by way of the West Indies.”
+
+“Yes? You will find it very agreeable. I was there in 1903 and remember
+enjoying myself greatly.”
+
+“I wish you and Mrs. Ascher would come too. It would be much pleasanter
+for me if I had you with me.
+
+“It’s very kind of you to say so; but----”
+
+“Besides,” I said, “I should see so much more. If I go by myself I shall
+step from a steamer into an hotel and from an hotel into a steamer.
+I shall be forced to buy a Baedeker, if there is a Baedeker for those
+regions. I shall be a tourist of the ordinary kind. But if I travelled
+with you I should really see things.”
+
+Ascher took up the telephone receiver.
+
+“If you like,” he said, “I can give you letters of introduction to our
+correspondents wherever you go. They are bankers, of course, but you
+will find them intelligent men.”
+
+He summoned a clerk.
+
+“If you give me an idea of your route----” he said.
+
+“At present,” I said, “my plans are very vague. I haven’t settled
+anything. Perhaps you will give me your advice.”
+
+He drew a sheet of paper towards him and began to write.
+
+“You ought to see the work at Panama,” he said. “It is very interesting
+and of course of immense importance. Certainly you must see that.
+Afterwards----”
+
+He scribbled on his sheet of paper, making lists of place names and
+adding notes about ways of travelling.
+
+“If you go further south still----” he said. “I don’t recommend the
+Amazon, a huge river of course, but unless you are interested in rubber
+or entomology. The insect life I believe----”
+
+“I’m interested in everything,” I said, “even insects which bite.”
+
+“Well, Para, perhaps, then south again. The South American ports are
+worth seeing.”
+
+A clerk entered while he was speaking. Ascher handed him the list he had
+written.
+
+“Look out the names of our agents in these places,” he said, “and have
+letters of introduction made out to them for Sir James Digby.”
+
+The clerk left the room and I thanked Ascher warmly. It seemed to me
+that he was taking a great deal of trouble for which he could expect no
+kind of reward. He waved my gratitude aside.
+
+“I think,” he said, “that our agents will be able to make your trip
+interesting for you. They can tell you what you want to know about the
+trade and the natural wealth of the places you visit. They will put you
+in the way of finding out the trend of political feeling. It is their
+business to know these things, and in visiting new countries--new in
+the sense that they have only lately felt the influences of our
+civilisation--it is just these things that you will want to know. If you
+were going to Italy, or Egypt, or Greece----”
+
+Ascher sighed. I felt that he would have preferred Italy to Brazil if he
+had been travelling for pleasure.
+
+“Ah, there,” I said, “an artist or a scholar would be a better friend to
+have than a banker.”
+
+“Even there,” said Ascher, “the present and the future matter more than
+the past, perhaps. But are you tied at all by time? The tour which I
+have indicated will take some months.”
+
+“I am an idle man,” I said. “I shall go on as long as your introductions
+last, gathering knowledge which will not be the slightest use to me or
+any one else.”
+
+“I had better provide you with a circular letter of credit,” said
+Ascher. “It is never wise to carry considerable sums about in your
+pocket.”
+
+We had got to money, to business in the strictest sense of the word.
+My opportunity had plainly come for attacking the subject of the cash
+register. Yet I hesitated. A banker ought to be the easiest man in the
+world to talk business to. There is no awkwardness about the subject
+of toothache in a dentist’s parlour. He expects to be talked to about
+teeth. It ought to have been an equally simple thing to speak to Ascher
+about the future of a company in which we were both interested. Yet I
+hesitated. There was something in his manner, a grave formality, which
+kept me miles away from him. I thanked him for the promise of the letter
+of credit and then sat silent for a minute.
+
+“By the way,” said Ascher, “I have just had a visit from a man on
+business in which you are interested.”
+
+“Was that the man who passed me in the anteroom before I was shown in
+here?”
+
+“Yes. He came to talk to me about Gorman’s new cash register. He was
+not an accredited agent, you will understand. He did not profess to
+represent anybody. He was not empowered to treat with us in any way,
+but----”
+
+Ascher smiled faintly.
+
+“I understand,” I said, “a sort of informal ambassador who could easily
+be disowned if anything he said turned out to be inconvenient. In
+politics men of that sort are very useful; but I somehow had the idea
+that business methods are more straightforward.”
+
+“All negotiations,” said Ascher, “whether in politics or business are
+carried on in much the same way. But before I go into his suggestions I
+had better tell you how the matter stands. Mildmay sent us his report
+and it was entirely favourable to the new machine. I think the invention
+is likely to turn out a valuable property. We have made inquiries and
+find out that the patent rights are duly protected here and in all the
+chief European countries. In fact----”
+
+“It was really that and not my travels which I came to talk to you about
+to-day. I may take it that we have got a good thing.”
+
+“We think so,” said Ascher, “and our opinion is confirmed by the fact
+that we are not the only people who think so. If I am right about the
+man who visited me this morning we have very good evidence that our
+opinion is sound. The men who are in the best position to know about
+cash registers, who are most interested in their future----”
+
+“The makers of the existing machines?”
+
+“Exactly. That is to say, if I am right about my visitor.”
+
+“But how did they--how could any one know about Tim Gorman’s invention?”
+
+Ascher shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Surely,” I said, “Gorman can’t have been such a fool as to talk to
+newspaper reporters.”
+
+“We need not suppose so,” said Ascher. “My experience is that anything
+worth knowing always is known. The world of business is a vast
+whispering gallery. There is no such thing as secrecy.”
+
+“Well,” I said, “the main point is that this man did know. What did he
+want?”
+
+“He wanted us to sell the patent rights,” said Ascher. “What he said
+was that he had a client--he posed as some kind of commission agent--who
+would pay a substantial sum for them.”
+
+“That is just what Gorman said would happen once it was understood that
+your firm is behind the new company.”
+
+“Gorman is--well, astute. But you understand, I am sure, that we cannot
+do that kind of business.”
+
+“I always had a suspicion,” I said, “that Gorman’s scheme was fishy.”
+
+“I do not say fishy,” said Ascher. “Gorman’s plan is legitimate,
+legitimate business, but business of an unenlightened kind. What is
+wrong with Gorman is that he does not see far enough, does not grasp the
+root principle of all business. We have a valuable invention. I do not
+mean merely an invention which will put money into the pocket of the
+inventor and into our pockets. If it were valuable only in that way
+Gorman would be quite right, and our wisest course would be to take what
+we could get with the least amount of risk and trouble, in other words
+to accept the best price which we could induce the buyers to give us.
+But this invention is valuable in quite another way. The new machine,
+if we are right about it, is going to facilitate the business of retail
+sellers all over the world. It will save time, increase accuracy, and,
+being cheaper, make its way into places where the old machines never
+went.”
+
+“Ah,” I said, “curiously enough I looked at the matter in that way when
+Gorman first mentioned it to me. I said that the world ought to get the
+benefit of this invention.”
+
+Ascher nodded.
+
+“I see that,” I went on. “I understand that way of looking at it. But
+surely that’s altruism, not business. Business men don’t risk their
+money with the general idea of benefiting humanity. That isn’t the way
+things are done.”
+
+“I agree,” said Ascher. “It’s not the way things are done or can be done
+at present, though there is more altruism in business than most people
+think. Even we financiers----”
+
+“I know you subscribe to charity,” I said, “largely, enormously.”
+
+“That’s not what I mean,” said Ascher. “But we need not go into that. I
+believe that business is not philanthropy, finance is not altruism.”
+
+“Then why----?” I said. “On strict business principles, altruism apart,
+why not take what we can get out of Tim Gorman’s invention and let the
+thing itself drop into the dustheap?”
+
+“On business principles,” said Ascher, “on the strictest business
+principles, it would be foolish to do that. From time to time men hit
+on some improvement in the way of making things or in the way of dealing
+with things after they are made, that is to say in business methods.
+Every such improvement increases the wealth of the world, tends to make
+everybody richer. This invention which we have got hold of is a small
+thing. It’s only going to do a little, a very little to make the world
+richer, but it is going to do something for it is going to lessen the
+labour required for certain results and therefore is going to increase
+men’s power, a little, just a little. That is why we must make the
+thing available, if we can; in order to add to the general wealth, and
+therefore to our own wealth. Those are business principles.”
+
+Ascher paused. I had nothing to say for a moment. Business principles as
+he explained them were not the business principles I was accustomed to,
+certainly not the business principles on which Gorman acted. After a
+minute’s silence Ascher went on.
+
+“The mistake which is most often made in business,” he said, “is to
+suppose that we grow rich by taking riches from other men, or that
+nations prosper by depriving other nations of prosperity. That would be
+true if riches consisted of money, and if there were just so much money
+and no more in the world. Then business and finance would be a scramble,
+in which the roughest and strongest scrambler would get most. But that
+is not so.”
+
+“Isn’t it?” I said. “I should have thought that business just is a
+scramble.”
+
+“No,” said Ascher, “it is not. Nations grow rich, that is to say, get
+comfort, ease, and even luxury, only when other nations are growing rich
+too, only because other nations are growing rich.”
+
+“The way to grow rich,” I said, “is to make other people rich. Is that
+it? It sounds rather like one of the--what do you call them?--counsels
+of perfection in the Gospel.”
+
+“Perhaps it is a religious truth too,” said Ascher. “I don’t know. I
+have never studied religion. Some day I think I shall. There must be a
+great deal that is very interesting in the New Testament.”
+
+“Confound you, Ascher! Is there anything in heaven or earth that you
+don’t look at from the outside, as if you were some kind of superior
+epicurean god?”
+
+“I beg your pardon. I ought not to have spoken in that way. You are, no
+doubt, a Christian.”
+
+“Of course I am--in--in a general way.”
+
+“I have often thought,” said Ascher slowly, “that I should like to be.
+But from the little I know of that religion----”
+
+“I expect you know as much as I do,” I said.
+
+“It must be,” said Ascher, “very hard to be a Christian.”
+
+I was not going to discuss that point with Ascher. It was bad enough
+to have an artistic soul awakened in me by Mrs. Ascher. I could not
+possibly allow her husband to lead me to the discovery that I had
+the other kind of soul. Nor was it any business of mine to work out
+harmonies between Christian ethics and the principles of modern banking.
+I detest puzzles of all kinds. It is far better, at all events far
+more comfortable, to take life as one finds it, a straightforward,
+commonplace affair. I have the greatest respect for Christianity of a
+moderate, sensible kind and I subscribe to the funds of the Church
+of Ireland. But when it comes to practical matters I find myself in
+agreement with Wordsworth’s “Rob Roy”,
+
+          “The good old rule
+     Sufficeth me, the simple plan,
+     That they should take who have the power
+     And they should keep who can.”
+
+So long, of course, as one does not do anything shady. I do not like
+lying or theft.
+
+Ascher sat looking at me as if he expected me to tell him exactly how
+hard it is to be a Christian. I made a determined effort to get back
+again to cash registers.
+
+“Tim Gorman’s invention will get its chance then?”
+
+“Yes. If we can manage it the thing will get its chance. It will be made
+and, I think, people will use it.”
+
+“Mrs. Ascher will be very pleased to hear that.”
+
+“Ah,” said Ascher. “Is she interested? But I remember now. Young Gorman
+has been sitting to her. She would naturally be interested in him.”
+
+“Her idea,” I said, “is that Tim Gorman is producing a baby, with all
+the usual accompaniments of that difficult business, labour, you know,
+and pain. She regards you as the doctor in attendance, and she thinks it
+would be exceedingly wrong of you to choke the little thing.”
+
+Ascher looked at me quite gravely. For a moment I was afraid that he
+was going to say something about the paradoxical brilliance of the Irish
+mind. I made haste to stop him.
+
+“That’s Mrs. Ascher’s metaphor,” I said, “not mine. I should never have
+thought of it. I don’t know enough about the artistic soul to appreciate
+the feelings of people who give birth to cash registers. But the idea
+is plain enough. Tim Gorman will be bitterly disappointed if he does
+not see girls in cheap restaurants putting actual shillings into those
+machines of his.”
+
+“From my wife’s point of view,” said Ascher, “and from mine, too, that
+ought to be an important consideration. It’s the artist’s feeling; but
+business and art--unfortunately business and art----”
+
+“I don’t see why they shouldn’t kiss and be friends,” I said. “They’re
+not nearly such irreconcilable enemies as business and religion. Now
+that those two have lain down together like a lion and a lamb--I don’t
+quite see how they do it, but in that new philosophy of yours it seemed
+quite a simple matter--there’s no real reason why art shouldn’t come in
+too.”
+
+But Ascher shook his head. He did not seem hopeful of a marriage between
+art and business. He knows a good deal about both of them, far more, by
+his own confession, than he knows about religion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Ascher was very generous to me in the matter of letters of introduction.
+A large bundle of them arrived at my hotel two days after I paid
+my visit to his office. There must have been fifty or sixty of them
+altogether. I sent for an atlas and found that I had a friend ready made
+for me in every port of any importance in the West Indies and on the
+east coast of South America as far down as Buenos Aires, and in a good
+many places inland. I was fascinated by the idea of such a tour; but
+it was plainly not an excursion to be undertaken without care and
+consideration. I lingered in New York for a fortnight, buying some
+additional clothes, getting together a few books on the South American
+republics, and working out steamboat routes.
+
+I saw young Tim Gorman. He called on me, sent by Mrs. Ascher, to
+thank me for my good offices. I deserved no thanks; but on the general
+principle of taking what I could get I allowed the boy to pour gratitude
+all over me.
+
+“I think,” I said, “you ought to do fairly well out of the thing,
+financially, I mean.”
+
+“I don’t care about that,” said Tim, “at least not exactly. I--I----” he
+hesitated for a moment and then blurted out, “I don’t particularly want
+to be rich.”
+
+“That,” I said, “is precisely how you ought to feel at your age, but
+when you get to be forty--I’m forty, so I know--you’ll probably be glad
+enough to have some money.”
+
+“I want some money now,” said Tim. “Do you think I could get----? How
+much do you think I’ll get out of my cash register?”
+
+“Well,” I said, “it’s hard to name an exact figure, but it will be
+something pretty substantial.”
+
+“One thousand dollars?” said Tim anxiously.
+
+“A great deal more than that. If Mr. Ascher makes the arrangements he
+contemplates you’ll get a great deal more.”
+
+I had only the vaguest idea what Ascher meant to do, and could make no
+kind of guess at how much Tim would ultimately get, but I felt pretty
+safe in promising two hundred pounds.
+
+“Do you think I could get it at once?” said Tim. “Or even five hundred
+dollars? I think I could manage with five hundred dollars. The fact
+is----”
+
+“You want to get out of that circus,” I said. “I don’t wonder. It must
+be a very tiresome job.”
+
+“Oh, no. I don’t mind the circus. It’s rather a nuisance of course
+moving about, and we always are moving. But I have plenty of time to
+myself. It isn’t to get away from the circus that I want the money. The
+fact is that I’m making some experiments.”
+
+“Another invention?” I said. “What a prolific creature you are! No
+sooner have you perfected a cash register than you start----”
+
+“Oh, I’ve been at this for some time, for years. I believe I’ve hit on a
+dodge---- I say, do you know anything about movies?”
+
+The word, though common on our side of the Atlantic now, was at that
+time peculiar to the American language.
+
+“Cinematographs?” I said. “I’ve seen them of course. You have them in
+your circus, haven’t you, as part of the show?”
+
+“Yes. That’s what set me thinking about them. I’ve always felt that the
+next step in perfecting the cinematograph would be doing away with the
+screen, putting the figures on the stage, that is to say reflections
+of them, so that they would actually move about backwards and forwards
+instead of on a flat surface. You understand?”
+
+When I was a boy there was a popular entertainment known as “Pepper’s
+Ghost.” What appeared to be a real figure moved about before the eyes
+of the audience, was pierced by swords and otherwise ill-treated without
+suffering any inconvenience. The thing was worked by some arrangement of
+mirrors. Tim evidently had a plan for combining this illusion with the
+cinematograph.
+
+“Don’t you think,” he said, “that it would be a great thing?”
+
+“It would be a perfectly beastly thing,” I said. “The cinematograph is
+bad enough already. If you add a grosser realism to it----”
+
+Tim looked at me. I am nearly sure that there were tears in his eyes.
+
+“That’s just what Mrs. Ascher thinks,” he said.
+
+“I daresay she does. She probably regards the cinematograph as a sin
+against art. What you propose would be an actual blasphemy.”
+
+“Oh,” said Tim, “that’s exactly what she said. Blasphemy! Do you really
+think so too? I wouldn’t go on with my experiments if I thought that.
+But I don’t believe you can be right. I--I went round to see Father
+Bourke. That was after Mrs. Ascher said it was blasphemy and I really
+wanted to know. Father Bourke is one of the priests at St. Gabriel’s. I
+consulted him.”
+
+“Well,” I said, “what did he tell you?”
+
+“He said it was all right and that I needn’t bother about what
+Protestants said was blasphemy. They don’t know. At least Father Bourke
+seemed to think they couldn’t know.”
+
+“You go by what Father Bourke says and you’ll be safe.”
+
+I should particularly like to hear Father Bourke and Mrs. Ascher arguing
+out the subject of blasphemy together. They might go on for years and
+years before either of them began to understand what the other meant by
+the word. But it would be little less than a crime to involve the simple
+soul of Tim Gorman in the maze of two separate kinds of casuistry.
+
+“In any case,” I said, “I don’t take Mrs. Ascher’s view of the matter. I
+don’t agree with her.”
+
+“I don’t see,” said Tim, “how cinematographs can be blasphemies so long
+as there aren’t any pictures of religious things. I’m sure it must be
+all right and I can go on with what I want to do. If I can succeed in
+making the figures stand out from one another, as if they were really
+there----”
+
+“You’ll add a new terror to life,” I said. “But that needn’t stop you
+doing it if you can.”
+
+“I think I can,” he said eagerly. “You see it’s the next thing to be
+done. The cinematograph is perfect up to that point. It must make a new
+start if it’s to go any further. I should like to be the man who makes
+the next step possible. What’s wanted now is--is----”
+
+“The illusion of distance.”
+
+“That’s it. That’s what I mean. It’s a matter of optics. Just making a
+few adjustments, and I think I see the way to manage it.”
+
+“If you do,” I said, “you’ll make an immense fortune. The world will
+pay anything, absolutely anything to the man who provides it with a new
+torture. It’s an odd twist in human nature--though I don’t know why I
+should say that. Oddness is really the normal thing in human nature.”
+
+“But I want a thousand dollars,” said Tim, “or five hundred dollars at
+the very least. I must try experiments.”
+
+“If you ask your brother----” I said.
+
+“Michael isn’t nice to me about it,” said Tim. “He isn’t nice at all.
+When I asked him for a thousand dollars he said he’d get it for me on
+condition that I allowed him to manage my cash register in his own way.
+But I won’t do that. I know what he wants to do.”
+
+“His idea,” he said, “is to let your invention lapse.”
+
+“I know. The machine will never be made. But I want it to be made. I
+want to see it working everywhere all over the world. You see I’m always
+travelling about with the circus, sometimes in America, sometimes in
+England. We go to a lot of different towns. We go to all the big towns
+there are. I want to be able to go into shops everywhere, in every town
+in the world and see my machine there. Don’t you understand?”
+
+“Perfectly,” I said. “Mrs. Ascher explained the whole position to me
+thoroughly. It’s the artist’s soul in you.”
+
+A look of puzzled annoyance came over the boy’s face. His forehead
+wrinkled and his fine eyes took an expression of painful doubt as they
+met mine.
+
+“Mrs. Ascher says things like that,” he said, “and I don’t know what she
+means. I am not an artist. I never learned to draw, even; at least not
+pictures. I can do geometrical drawing, of course, and make plans of
+machines; but that’s not being an artist. I can’t paint. Why does she
+say I am an artist?”
+
+“That,” I said, “is one of her little mannerisms. You will have to put
+up with it.”
+
+Tim uses the word artist in a simple old-fashioned way, very much as
+Father Bourke uses “blasphemy.” There is a good deal to be said for
+their practice. People like Mrs. Ascher ought to invent new terms when
+they want to express uncommon thoughts. They have no right to borrow
+words like “artist” and “blasphemy” from common speech in order to set
+them parading about the world with novel meanings attached to them. It
+is not fair to people like Tim Gorman and his Father Bourke. It is not
+fair to the words themselves. I should not like to be treated in that
+way if I were a word. I cannot imagine anything more annoying to a
+respectable, steady-going word than to be called upon suddenly to
+undertake work to which it is not accustomed. The domestic housemaid
+is perfectly right in resisting any effort to make her do new kinds of
+work. Her formula, “It’s not my place,” used when she is asked to make a
+slice of toast, is unanswerable. Why should words be worse treated than
+housemaids? It is the business of “artist” to stand for the man who
+paints pictures in oils. “Blasphemy” describes aggravated breaches of
+the third commandment. What right had Mrs. Ascher or any one else to
+press them into new services? There ought to be a strong trade union
+among words.
+
+“And now,” said Tim, “she says I’m not an artist after all because I
+want to make movies more real. And she’s angry with me. She turned
+me out of her studio because I wouldn’t promise not to. Of course, I
+wouldn’t promise such a thing. I think I see how it can be done. The
+great difficulty is to secure an exact adjustment of the mirrors. There
+are other difficulties. There’s the awkwardness of transparent figures
+crossing in front of each other. Also----”
+
+“My dear boy,” I said, “don’t explain the thing to me. I am totally
+incapable of understanding anything connected with mechanics, optics or
+hydrostatics.”
+
+I can make as good an attempt as most men at replying intelligently to
+Mrs. Ascher even when she talks of “values”, “atmospheres”, “feeling”
+ and “sympathy”, though her use of these familiar words conveys only
+the vaguest ideas to my mind. I can, after a period of intense mental
+effort, understand what Ascher means by exchanges, premiums, discounts
+and bills, though he uses these words in unfamiliar ways. But I am
+defeated utterly by the man who talks about escapements, compensating
+balances and clutches. I suspected that Tim Gorman would pelt me with
+even more recondite scientific terms if I let things go on.
+
+“You may take my word for it,” I said, “that you’ll get a thousand
+dollars and more, in the end; but you may have to wait for it. In the
+meanwhile keep on thinking out your plan for doubling the horrors of our
+places of popular entertainment.”
+
+That was all I could do for Tim Gorman. I do not think that he deserved
+more than cold comfort and disagreeable advice. I might have given him,
+or lent him, a little money, if he had been at work on a really useful
+invention, something which would benefit humanity. There are lots
+of such things waiting to be invented. There ought to be some way
+of stabbing a man who insists on ringing you up on the telephone at
+unreasonable hours and saying tiresome things. We cannot claim to be
+civilised until we have some weapon for legitimate self defence attached
+to every telephone, something which could be operated easily and swiftly
+by pressing a button at the side of the receiver. It is not necessary
+that the man at the other end of the wire should be struck dead, but
+he ought to suffer severe physical pain. If Tim Gorman would turn his
+inventive genius in that direction, I should not hesitate to advance
+money to him, even to the half of my possessions.
+
+I called on Mrs. Ascher again before I left New York. I wanted to hear
+her version of the misunderstanding with Tim. I went, of course, to
+the studio, not to the hotel. Mrs. Ascher is at her best in the studio.
+Besides I was much more likely to find her there than anywhere else.
+
+She was hard at work when I entered on a figure, at least two feet high,
+of a man of very fine muscular development. I glanced at it and then
+asked where Tim Gorman’s head was.
+
+“You know,” I said, “that I admired that piece of work greatly.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher waved her hand towards a table in the darkest corner of the
+room.
+
+“It’s not finished,” she said, “and never will be. I’ve lost all
+interest in it. If you like it take it away. I’ll give it to you with
+pleasure.”
+
+I found poor Tim, not even swathed in wet bandages, among a litter of
+half finished fauns and nymphs and several attempts at a smooth-haired
+dog. Mrs. Ascher had done very little work at him since I saw him
+before. She had, in pursuance of her own idea, turned half the saucer
+on which the head stood into a mat of water-lily leaves. The other
+half--and I felt gratified when I saw this--was worked up into an
+unmistakable hammer and a number of disproportionately large nails.
+Tim’s face and head still expressed lofty idealism in the way which had
+fascinated me when I first saw the thing. But Mrs. Ascher had evidently
+neglected some necessary precaution in dealing with her material. The
+neck--and Tim’s neck is an unusually long one--had collapsed. A jagged
+crack ran half round it close under the right ear. The left side of
+the neck was curiously crumpled. The head leaned rakishly towards the
+water-lily side of the saucer.
+
+I remember hearing once of an irreverent choir boy. At a Christmas
+party, a sort of feast of an Abbot of Unreason held in the less sacred
+parts of the cathedral precincts, the brat decorated the statue of an
+Archbishop with a pink and blue paper cap taken from a cracker. The
+effect must have been much the same as that produced by the subsidence
+of Tim Gorman’s neck.
+
+“Do you really mean to give it to me?” I said. “I should like to have
+it very much. I should set it up on my writing table and call it
+‘Disillusion.’ But do you think it will collapse any more?”
+
+“Has it collapsed? I suppose it did not dry properly.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher did not even look at it.
+
+“Oh,” I said, “the present effect, the cynical contempt for the
+original noble spirituality, is the result of an accident? What tricks
+circumstances play on us! A slight irregularity in drying and a hero
+becomes a clown. The case of ‘Imperial Caesar dead and turned to clay’
+is not so bad as that of an idealist whose neck has cracked.”
+
+“I’m dreadfully disappointed in that boy,” said Mrs. Ascher. “Will you
+forgive me if I do not talk of him? Even now I cannot bear to.”
+
+She sighed heavily, showing how much she felt the loss of Tim’s soul.
+Then she turned to me with one of those bright smiles, one of those
+charmingly bright smiles, which are the greatest achievements of serious
+women. Very religious women, women with artists’ souls and the intenser
+suffragists have these bright smiles. They work them up, I suppose, so
+as to show that they can be as cheerful as any one else when they choose
+to try.
+
+“Come and see what I’m doing now,” she said.
+
+I looked very carefully at the man’s figure in front of her.
+
+“This,” she said, “is manhood, virility, energy, simple strength,
+directness, all that this poor neurotic world is yearning for, the
+primal force, uncomplex, untroubled, just the exultation of the delight
+of being.”
+
+“It reminds me faintly of some one,” I said, “the head and face, I mean;
+but I can’t quite fix the likeness.”
+
+She clapped her hands with delight.
+
+“You see it,” she said, “I am so glad. It’s not meant to be a mere
+likeness. I need not tell you that. Still I’m glad you see that it
+resembles him. I am working to express his soul, the mere features,
+the limbs, are nothing. The being which burns within, that is what I am
+trying to express. But the fact that you see the external likeness makes
+me feel more sure that my interpretation of the physical features is the
+right one.”
+
+“Surely,” I said, “it’s not Gorman, the other Gorman, the elder Gorman,
+Michael!”
+
+“Yes,” she said.
+
+“Has he been sitting for you?” I asked.
+
+I stopped myself just in time. I was very nearly saying “sitting to you
+like that?” The figure on which she was at work was entirely undraped.
+I do not suppose that Mrs. Ascher would have been the least embarrassed
+even if I had said “like that.” The artist’s soul scorns conventions.
+But I should have felt awkward if she had answered “Yes.”
+
+“Not exactly sitting to me,” she said. “He just comes here and talks.
+While he talks I catch glimpses of his great, buoyant, joyous soul and
+fashion the poor clay to express it.”
+
+“I did not know he was back in New York,” I said.
+
+“Oh, yes, he has been here a week, perhaps more. To me it seems as if he
+had been here for ever.”
+
+I could not even guess at what she meant by that so I did not try to
+answer her.
+
+“I wonder he didn’t look me up,” I said.
+
+“Ah,” said Mrs. Ascher, “he has had no time. That abundant, restless
+energy of his is for ever pressing out into fresh activities.”
+
+I gathered, more from her tone than from her actual words that only an
+effete, devitalised creature would call on me. A man of abundant energy
+would naturally sit half the day in Mrs. Ascher’s studio, while she made
+a fancy body for him in damp clay.
+
+She clasped her hands and gazed with rapt intensity at the statue of
+Gorman’s soul.
+
+“His patriotism!” she said. “After living in that atmosphere of nebulous
+cosmopolitanism which is what we hypercivilised people have created in
+the world, it is everything to get back to the barbaric simplicity of
+the old love for country.”
+
+“Did he happen to mention,” I asked, “whether he succeeded in wheedling
+five thousand dollars out of that Detroit man?”
+
+Mrs. Ascher did not hear that; or if she did chose to ignore it.
+
+“The splendid destiny of Ireland,” she said, “has been to escape age
+after age the malarial fever of culture. The Romans never touched her
+shores. The renaissance passed her by. She has not bowed the knee to our
+modern fetish of education. You and I have our blood diluted with----”
+
+Gorman must have been at his very best while he talked to Mrs. Ascher.
+He had evidently made a kind of whirlpool of her mind. Her version of
+his philosophy of history and politics seemed to me to be going round
+and round in narrowing circles with confusing speed. The conception of
+the Romans as apostles of the more malarial kinds of culture was new to
+me. I had been brought up to believe--not that any one does believe this
+as an actual fact--that Ireland was once and to some extent still is, an
+island of Saints and Scholars. I did not obtain any very clear idea of
+what Mrs. Ascher’s blood was diluted with, but there must have been
+several ingredients, for she went on talking for quite a long time. When
+she stopped I made a protest on behalf of my country.
+
+“We’re not so backward as all that,” I said. “We have a Board of
+National Education and quite a large number of technical schools. In the
+convents they teach girls to play the piano.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher shook her head slowly. I gathered that she knew much more
+about Irish education than I did and regarded it as unworthy even of
+serious contempt.
+
+“Dear Ireland!” she said, “splendid Ireland!”
+
+I suppose Gorman must have been talking to her about fairies, the
+dignified, Celtic kind, and the dear dark head of Kathleen ni Houlihan.
+Gorman is capable of anything. However as my country was being admired I
+thought I might as well get a little of the credit for myself.
+
+“I am an Irishman,” I said.
+
+Mrs. Ascher looked at me with withering scorn.
+
+“You,” she said, “you--you--you are----”
+
+She was evidently in difficulties. I helped her out as best I could.
+
+“An Irish gentleman,” I said.
+
+“An alien,” she replied, “a stranger in the land you call your own.”
+
+“That,” I said, “is just what I say, put more forcibly and
+picturesquely.”
+
+Then Gorman came in, without knocking at the door. I was very glad
+to see him. In another minute Mrs. Ascher and I would, perhaps, have
+quarrelled. Gorman saved us from that catastrophe. I do not think I ever
+understood before that moment the secret of Gorman’s charm. He came into
+that studio, a place charged with the smell of damp clay, like a breeze
+from a nice green field. He was in a thoroughly good temper. I suspect
+that he hurt Mrs. Ascher’s hand when he shook it.
+
+“I’ve just been looking at Mrs. Ascher’s statue of your soul,” I said.
+“Splendid muscles in the calves of its legs. You must be enormously
+proud of them.”
+
+Gorman, under pretence of seeking a place in which to put his
+hat, turned his back on Mrs. Ascher for a minute. As he did so he
+deliberately winked at me.
+
+Some day I mean to get Gorman in a private place, “away from
+everywhere,” as Mrs. Ascher would say. When I get him there I shall ask
+him two questions and insist on having an answer. First I shall ask him
+why he devotes himself to Mrs. Ascher. He is not in love with her. We
+Irish have not many virtues, but we can boast that we seldom make love
+to other men’s wives. Besides, Mrs. Ascher is not the kind of woman who
+allows strange men to make love to her. She is, in essentials, far
+less emancipated than she thinks. It is just possible that he finds her
+responsive to his fondness for the more flamboyant kinds of rhetoric.
+Gorman really likes talking about Ireland as an oppressed and desolated
+land. It is easy enough to move large audiences to enthusiasm by
+that kind of oratory. It is not so easy, I imagine, to get single,
+sympathetic listeners in private life. Mrs. Ascher apparently laps up
+patriotic sentiment with loud purrs. That may be why Gorman likes her.
+The next thing I mean to ask him is what he means by patriotism. I
+can understand quite easily what Irish patriotism meant ten years ago.
+Gorman’s friends wanted my land, a definite, tangible thing. I wanted it
+myself. But now they have got the land, and yet Gorman goes on talking
+patriotism. It is not as if he had no sense of humour. Gorman sees the
+absurdity of the things he says just as plainly as I do. The ridiculous
+side of his own enthusiasm is never long absent from his consciousness;
+yet he goes on just the same. I wish I understood how he manages it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Now that my leg has been smashed up hopelessly, by that wretched German
+shell, I shall never ride or shoot again. I have to content myself with
+writing books to occupy my time, a very poor form of amusement compared
+to tramping the fields after partridge. I suppose it is inevitable that
+a man in my position should indulge in regretful memories. My mind
+goes back now and then to certain days in my boyhood and I find myself
+picturing scenes through which I shall not move again.
+
+There are fields stretching back from the demesne which used to be mine.
+In the autumn many of them were stubble fields and among them were gorse
+covered hills. I used to go through them with my gun and dogs in early
+October mornings. There were--no doubt there still are, though I
+shall not see them--very fine threads of gossamer stretching across
+astonishingly wide spaces. The dew hung on them in tiny drops and
+glittered when the sun rose clear of the light mist and shone on them.
+Sometimes the threads floated free in the air, attached to some object
+at one end, the rest borne about by faint breaths of wind, waved to and
+fro, seeking other attachment elsewhere. Some threads reached from tufts
+of grass to little hummocks or to the twigs which form the boles of elm
+trees. Others still, with less ambitious span, went only from one blade
+of grass to another or united the thorns of whin bushes. The lower air,
+near the earth, was full of these threads. They formed an indescribably
+delicate net cast right over the fields and hills. I used to see them
+glistening, rainbow coloured when the sun rays struck them. Oftener I
+was aware of their presence only when my hands had touched and broken
+them or when they clung to my clothes, dragged from their fastenings by
+my passing through them.
+
+I have no idea what place these gossamer threads occupy in the economy
+of nature. I find it difficult to believe that the life of the fields
+and gorsy hills and young plantations would be either better or worse if
+there were no such thing as gossamer. But I am no longer contented with
+my ignorance. I mean to find out all that is known about gossamer, and
+satisfy myself of the truth of the tradition that the threads are spun
+by tiny spiders, though surely with very little hope of snaring flies.
+
+I spent six months making the tour which Ascher planned for me. I
+returned to London in the spring of 1914, full of interest in what I had
+seen and learned. I intend some day to write a book of travels, to give
+an account of my experiences. I shall describe the long strip of the
+world over which I wandered as a landscape on a quiet autumn morning,
+netted over with gossamer. That is the way it strikes me now, looking
+back on it all. Ascher and men like him have spun fine threads, covering
+every civilised land with a web of credit, infinitely complex, so
+delicate that a child’s hand could tear it.
+
+A storm, even a strong breeze comes, and the threads are dragged from
+their holdings and waved in wild confusion through the air. A man,
+brutal as war, goes striding through the land, and, without knowing what
+he does, bursts the filaments and destroys the shimmering beauty which
+was before he came. That, I suppose, is what happens. But the passing of
+a man, however violent he is, is the passing of a man and no more. Even
+if a troop of men marches across the land their marching is over and
+done with soon. They have their day, but afterwards there are other
+days. Nature is infinitely persistent and gossamer is spun again.
+
+I remember meeting, quite by chance, on a coasting steamer on which
+I travelled, a bishop. He was not, judged by strict ecclesiastical
+standards, quite entitled to that rank. He belonged to some American
+religious organisation of which I had no knowledge, but he called
+himself, on the passenger list, Bishop Zacchary Brown. He was apostolic
+in his devotion to the Gospel as he understood it. His particular field
+of work lay in the northern part of South America. He ranged, so I
+understood, through Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. He was full of hope
+for the future of these lands, their spiritual future. I had long talks
+with him and discovered that he regarded education, the American form
+of it, and commerce, the fruit of American enterprise, as the enemies of
+superstition and consequently the handmaids of the Gospel.
+
+He wanted to see schools and colleges scattered over the republic in
+which he was interested. He wanted to see these lands heavily fertilised
+with capital.
+
+“If you have any spare money,” he said, “put it into----”
+
+I think he said fruit farming in Colombia. Whatever the business was--I
+forgot at the time to make a note of the particulars--he promised that
+it would develop enormously when the Panama Canal was opened. The advice
+may have been perfectly sound; but I do not think it was disinterested.
+Bishop Zacchary Brown was not anxious about my future or my fortune. He
+did not care, cannot have cared, whether the Panama Canal made me rich
+or not. Nor did it seem to him an important thing that the fruit trade
+of South America should develop. What he cared for was his conception
+of religion. He saw in the inflow of capital the way of triumph for his
+Gospel, the means of breaking up old careless, lazy creeds, the infusion
+of energy and love of freedom. Ascher, so I conceived the situation,
+was to stretch his threads from Calvary to the grapefruit trees of
+Cartagena.
+
+At Bahia I was introduced to a Brazilian statesman. I met him first at
+the house of one of Ascher’s banker friends. We talked to each other in
+French, and, as we both spoke the language badly, understood each other
+without much difficulty. It is one of the peculiarities of the French
+language that the worse it is spoken the easier it is to understand. A
+real Parisian baffles me completely. My Brazilian statesman was almost
+always intelligible.
+
+He was interested in international politics, the international politics
+of the western hemisphere. I found that he was distrustful of the
+growing power of the United States. He suspected a policy of Empire,
+a far-reaching scheme of influence, if not actual dominion, centred in
+Washington. He regarded the Monroe Doctrine as the root from which such
+an extension of power might grow. It was no business of mine to argue
+with him, though I am convinced that the citizens of the United States
+are of all peoples the least obsessed by the imperial idea. I tried, by
+looking sympathetic, to induce him to develop his theory. In the end I
+gathered that he hoped for security from the imperial peril through the
+increase of wealth and therefore power in the South American republics.
+
+“Our natural resources,” he said, “are enormous, but undeveloped. We
+cannot become strong in a military sense. We cannot possess fleets with
+which to negotiate----”
+
+I should have said “threaten” instead of “negotiate” for that was
+plainly what he meant. But statesmen have to be careful in their use of
+words.
+
+“--Unless we can obtain capital with which to develop our wealth. The
+great money-lending countries, England and France, ought in their own
+interests to pour capital into our republics. The return, in the end,
+would be enormous. But more important still, they would establish
+a balance of power in the western world. Why do not your financiers
+understand?”
+
+Again Ascher. Battleships are to be towed across the ocean, from the
+ship yards of the Clyde to these far-off seas, at the ends of the
+gossamer threads which Ascher spins. The Gospel and international
+politics are caught in the same web. I seemed to see Diocletian the
+Emperor and Saint John, who said, “Love not the world,” doing homage
+together to the power of capital, leading each other by the hand through
+the mazes of the system of credit.
+
+I saw beautiful scenes, wide harbours where stately ships lay anchored,
+through whose shining gates fleets of steamers trudged. I never escaped
+from the knowledge that the gossamer threads stretched from mast to
+mast, a rigging more essential than the ropes of hemp and wire. I
+saw the lines of steel on which trains go, stretched out across vast
+prairies, and knew that they were not in reality lines of steel at all
+but gossamer threads. I saw torrents made the slaves of man, the weight
+of falling water transmuted into light and heat and force to drive cars
+swiftly through city streets; but all the wheels and giant masses of
+forged steel were tied together by these same slender threads which
+Ascher spun in the shrine of that Greek temple of his, Ascher and his
+fellow bankers.
+
+Always the desire was for more capital. There was room for thousands of
+ships instead of hundreds. There were whole territories over which no
+trains ran. There was potentiality of wealth so great that, if it were
+realised, men everywhere would be raised above the fear of want. A whole
+continent was crying out to Ascher that he should fling his web across
+it, join point to point with gossamer, in Amazonian jungles, Peruvian
+mountain heights, Argentine plains and tropical fruit gardens.
+
+I met and talked with many men whose outlook upon life was profoundly
+interesting to me. Those whom I came to know best were Englishmen or
+men of English origin. Some of them had built up flourishing businesses,
+selling the products of English factories. Some acted as the agents
+of steamboat companies, arranging for freights and settling the
+destinations of ships which went voyaging. Some grew wheat or bred
+cattle. Like all Englishmen whose lot is cast in far countries they
+retained their feeling for England as a home and became conscious as
+Englishmen in England seldom are, of love for their own land. Like all
+Englishmen they grumbled ceaselessly at what they loved.
+
+They spoke with contempt of everything English. They abused English
+business methods and complained that Germans were ousting Englishmen
+from the markets of the world. They derided English Government
+and English statesmanship, ignoring party loyalties with a fine
+impartiality. They decried English social customs, contrasting the
+freedom of life in the land of their adoption with the convention-bound
+ways of their home. Yet it always was their home. I felt that, even when
+their contempt expressed itself in the bitterest words.
+
+Whatever their opinions were or their affectations, however widely
+their various activities were separated, these men were all consciously
+dependent on the smooth working of the system of world-wide credit.
+
+They were Ascher’s clients, or if not Ascher’s, the clients of others
+like Ascher. They were in a sense Ascher’s dependents. They were united
+to England, to Europe, to each other, by Ascher’s threads. Whether they
+bred cattle and sold them, whether they grew corn, whether they shipped
+cargoes or imported merchandise, the gossamer net was over them.
+
+I returned to London with these impressions vivid in my mind, perhaps--I
+tried to persuade myself of this--too vivid. I had travelled, so I
+argued, under the shadow of a great banker. I had gone among bankers.
+It was natural, inevitable, that I should see the world through
+bankers’ eyes. Perhaps credit was not after all the life blood of our
+civilisation. I failed to convince myself. The very fact that I could
+go so far under the shadow of a bank proves how large a shadow a bank
+throws. The fact that Ascher’s correspondents brought me into touch with
+every kind of man, goes to show that banking has permeated, leavened
+life, that human society is saturated with finance.
+
+In a very few months, before the end of the summer which followed my
+home-coming, I was to see the whole machine stop working suddenly. The
+war god stalked across the world and brushed aside, broke, tore, tangled
+up, the gossamer threads. Then, long before his march was done, while
+awe-struck men and weeping women still listened to the strident clamour
+of his arms, the spinners of the webs were at work again, patiently
+joining broken threads, flinging fresh filaments across unbridged gulfs,
+refastening to their points of attachment the gossamer which seemed so
+frail, which yet the storm of violence failed to destroy utterly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+I reached home early in May and underwent an experience common, I
+suppose, to all travellers.
+
+The city clerk, returning after a glorious week in Paris, finds that his
+family is still interested in the peculiarities of the housemaid, the
+Maud, or Ethel of the hour. To him, with his heart enlarged by nightly
+visits to the Folies Bergères, it seems at first almost impossible that
+any one can care to talk for hours about the misdeeds of Maud. He knows
+that he himself was once excited over these domestic problems, but it
+seems impossible that he ever can be again. Yet he is. A week passes,
+a week of the old familiar life. The voluptuous joys of Parisian music
+halls fade into dim memories. The realities of life, the things on which
+his mind works, are the new lace curtains for the drawing-room window,
+the ridiculous “swank” of young Jones in the office, and the question of
+the dismissal of Maud the housemaid.
+
+I found London humming with excitement over Irish affairs and for a
+while I wondered how any one could think that Irish affairs mattered in
+the least. Fresh from my wanderings over a huge continent, Ireland seemed
+to me a small place. It took me a week to get my mind into focus again.
+Then I began once more to see the Home Rule question as it should be
+seen. South America and Ascher’s web of international credit sank into
+their proper insignificance.
+
+I met Malcolmson in my club a week after my return. He very nearly
+pulled the buttons off my waistcoat in his eagerness to explain the
+situation to me. Malcolmson has a vile habit of grabbing the clothes
+of any one he particularly wants to speak to. If the subject is only
+moderately interesting he pulls a sleeve or a lappet of a coat. When he
+has something very important to say, he inserts two fingers between
+the buttons of your waistcoat and pulls. I knew I was in for something
+thrilling when he towed me into a quiet corner of the smoking room by my
+two top buttons.
+
+I have known Malcolmson for nearly twenty years. He was adjutant of
+my old regiment when I joined. He was senior Major when I resigned my
+commission. He became colonel a few years later and then retired to his
+place near Belfast, where he has practised political Protestantism
+ever since. I have never met any one more sincere than Malcolmson. He
+believes in civil and religious liberty. He is prepared at any moment
+to do battle for his faith. I do not know that he really deserves much
+credit for this, because he is the sort of man who would do battle for
+the love of it, even if there were no faith to be fought for. Still the
+fact remains that he has a faith--rather a rare possession.
+
+When he had me cornered near the window of the smoking room, he told
+me that the hour of battle had almost come. Ulster was drilled, more
+or less armed, and absolutely united. Rather than endure Home Rule
+Malcolmson and, I think, a hundred thousand other men were going to lay
+down their lives. It took Malcolmson more than an hour to tell me that
+because he kept wandering from the main point in order to abuse the
+Government and the Irish Party. Of the two he seemed to dislike the
+Government more.
+
+Irish politics are of all subjects the most wearisome to me; but I must
+admit that Malcolmson interested me before he stopped talking. I began
+to wish to hear what Gorman had to say about the matter. I could not
+imagine that he and his friends contemplated a siege of Belfast, to rank
+in history alongside of the famous attempt to starve Derry.
+
+There was no difficulty about getting hold of Gorman. In times of
+furious political excitement he is sure to be found at the post of duty,
+that is to say, in the smoking room of the House of Commons. I wrote to
+him and invited him to dine with me in my rooms. It would have been much
+more convenient to give him dinner at one of my clubs. But I was
+afraid to do that. I belonged to two clubs in London and unfortunately
+Malcolmson is a member of both of them. I do not know what would have
+happened if he had found himself in the same room with Gorman. The
+threatened civil war might have begun prematurely, and Malcolmson is
+such a determined warrior that a table fork might easily have become a
+lethal weapon in his hands. I did not want to have Gorman killed before
+I heard his opinion about the Ulster situation and I disliked the
+thought of having to explain the circumstances of his death to the club
+committee afterwards. There is always an uncertainty about the view
+which a club committee will take of any unusual event. I might very
+easily have been asked to resign my membership.
+
+Gorman accepted my invitation, but said he would have to be back in the
+House of Commons at 9 o’clock. I fixed dinner for half past seven, which
+gave me nearly an hour and a half with Gorman, more time than Malcolmson
+had required to state his side of the case.
+
+But Gorman was very much more difficult to deal with. He was not
+inclined to discuss Home Rule or the Ulster situation. He wanted to talk
+about Tim’s cash register, and, later on, about the new way of putting
+cinematograph pictures on the stage.
+
+“I have been wandering about since I saw you last,” I said, “and I’ve
+been in all sorts of strange places. I’ve lost touch with things at
+home. Hardly ever saw an English newspaper. I want you to tell me----”
+
+“Interesting time you must have had,” said Gorman. “Run across the trail
+of our friend Ascher much? I expect you did.”
+
+Gorman very nearly sidetracked me there. I was strongly tempted to tell
+him about the impression which Ascher’s gossamer had made on me.
+
+“The slime of the financier,” said Gorman, “lies pretty thick over the
+world. You’ve seen those large black slugs which come out in summer
+after rain, big juicy fellows which crawl along and leave a shiny track
+on the grass. They’re financiers.”
+
+“Yes,” I said, “quite so. But tell me about Home Rule.”
+
+“It’s all right. Can’t help becoming law. We have it in our pockets.”
+
+“This time next year,” I said, “you’ll be sitting in a Parliament in
+Dublin.”
+
+“There’ll be a Parliament in Dublin all right this time next year; but
+I’m not sure that I’ll be in it. After all, you know, Dublin’s rather a
+one-horse place. I don’t see how I could very well live there. I might
+run over for an important debate now and then, but----. You see I’ve a
+lot of interests in London. I suppose you’ve heard about the new Cash
+Register Company and what Ascher’s done.”
+
+“Not a word. Do I still hold those shares of mine?”
+
+“Unless you’ve sold them you do; but they’ll be very little good to you.
+Ascher has simply thrown away a sure thing. We might have had--well, I
+needn’t mention the sum, but it was a pretty big one. I had the whole
+business arranged. Those fellows would have paid up. But nothing would
+do Ascher except to put in his spoon. I’m blest if I see what his game
+is. He has one of course; but I don’t see it.”
+
+“Perhaps,” I said, “he wants to have your brother’s invention worked for
+what it’s worth.”
+
+“Rot,” said Gorman. “Why should he? I expect he has some dodge for
+squeezing us out and then getting a bigger price all for himself; but
+I’m damned if I see how he means to work it. These financial men are as
+cunning as Satan and they all hang together. We outsiders don’t have a
+chance.”
+
+“What about Ulster?” I said. “I was talking to a man last week who told
+me----”
+
+“All bluff,” said Gorman. “Nothing in it. How can they do anything? What
+Ascher says is that he wants the old company to take up Tim’s invention
+and work it. There’s to be additional capital raised and we’re to come
+in as shareholders. Ascher, Stutz & Co. will underwrite the new issues
+and take three and one-half per cent. That’s what he says. But, of
+course, that’s not the real game. There’s something behind.”
+
+“Doesn’t it occur to you that there may be something behind the Ulster
+movement too?”
+
+“No. What can they do? The Bill will be law before the end of July.”
+
+“They say they’ll fight.”
+
+“Oh,” said Gorman, “we’ve heard all about that till we’re sick of the
+sound of it. There’s nothing in it. The thing’s as plain as anything can
+be. We have a majority in Parliament and the bill will be passed. That’s
+all there is to say. I wish to goodness I saw my way as plainly in the
+cash register affair.”
+
+Gorman’s faith in parliamentary majorities is extremely touching. I
+suppose that only politicians believe that the voting of men who are
+paid to vote really affects things. I doubt whether men of any other
+profession have the same whole-hearted faith in the efficacy of their
+own craft. Doctors are often a little sceptical about the value of
+medicines and operations. No barrister, that I ever met, thinks he
+achieves justice by arguing points of law. But politicians, even quite
+intelligent politicians like Gorman, seem really to hold that human life
+will be altered in some way because they walk round the lobbies of a
+particular building in London and have their heads counted three or four
+times an hour. To me it seemed quite plain that Malcolmson would not
+bate an ounce of his devotion to civil and religious liberty even if
+Gorman’s head were counted every five minutes for ten years and Gorman
+were paid a thousand a year instead of four hundred a year for letting
+out his head for the purpose. Why should Malcolmson care how often
+Gorman is counted? There is in the end only the original Gorman with his
+single head.
+
+“Anyhow,” said Gorman, “I’m keeping in with Mrs. Ascher.”
+
+He winked at me as he said this. I like Gorman’s way of adding
+explanatory winks to his remarks. I should frequently miss the meaning,
+the full meaning of what he says if he did not help out his words with
+these expressive winks. This time he made me understand that he had no
+great affection for Mrs. Ascher, regarded her rather as a joke which
+had worn thin; but hoped to pick up from her some information about her
+husband’s subtle schemes. I knew his hopes were vain. In the first place
+the Aschers do not talk business to each other and she knows nothing of
+what he is doing. In the next place Ascher had no underhand plot with
+regard to the cash register. He was acting in a perfectly open
+and straightforward way. But Gorman cannot believe that any one is
+straightforward. That is one of the drawbacks to the profession of
+politics. The practice of it destroys a man’s faith in human honesty.
+
+“How’s Tim?” I asked. “Last time I saw him he was in great trouble
+because Mrs. Ascher said he was committing blasphemy.”
+
+“Tim’s in England,” said Gorman. “I was rather angry with him myself for
+a while. If he had followed my advice about the cash register----. But
+Tim always was a fool about money, though he has brains of a sort, lots
+of them.”
+
+“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 space,” said Gorman, “a great deal of space 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 association 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 nobler 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 rehearse 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 passed 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. Everyone 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 spaciousness 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
+passed 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 spaces. 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
+passed. 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 appetite 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.”
+
+“I hope,” I said, “that I haven’t lit on an inconvenient evening. Had
+you any other engagement?”
+
+I was eating a very small piece of fish when he spoke to me, and was
+trying to guess what the sauce was flavoured with. It occurred to
+me suddenly that I might have broken in upon some sort of private
+anniversary, a day which Ascher and his wife observed as one of
+abstinence. There was, I could scarcely fail to notice it, a sense of
+subdued melancholy about our proceedings.
+
+“Oh, no,” said Ascher, “but on Wednesdays we always have some music. I
+was inclined to think that you might have preferred to spend the evening
+talking, but my wife----”
+
+He looked at Mrs. Ascher. I should very much have preferred talk to
+music. It was chiefly in order to hear Ascher talk that I had accepted
+the invitation.
+
+“I know,” said Mrs. Ascher, “that Sir James likes music.”
+
+She laid a strong emphasis on the word “know,” and I felt that she was
+paying me a nice compliment. What she said was true enough. I do like
+music, some kinds of music. I had heard for the first time the night
+before a song, then very popular, with a particularly attractive chorus.
+It began to run through my head the moment Ascher mentioned music. “I
+didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it.” I liked that song. I was
+not sure that I should like the Aschers’ music equally well. However, I
+had no intention of contradicting Mrs. Ascher.
+
+“I’m passionately fond of music,” I said.
+
+Ascher is a singularly guileless man. I cannot imagine how any one so
+unsuspicious as he is can ever have succeeded as a financier, unless
+indeed people are far honester about money than they are about anything
+else. I do not think Mrs. Ascher believed that I am passionately fond of
+music. Her husband did. The little shadow of anxiety which had rested on
+his face cleared away. He became almost cheerful.
+
+“To-night,” he said, “we are going to hear some of the work of----”
+
+He said a name, but I utterly failed to catch it. I had never heard it
+before, and it sounded foreign, very foreign indeed, possibly Kurdish.
+
+“------,” said Ascher, “is one of the new Russian composers.”
+
+I heard the name that time, but I can make no attempt, phonetic or
+other, to spell it. I suppose it can be spelled, but the letters must
+be given values quite new to me. The alphabet I am accustomed to is
+incapable of representing that man’s name.
+
+“I daresay you know him,” said Mrs. Ascher.
+
+I strongly suspected that she was trying to entrap me. I have never
+been quite sure of Mrs. Ascher since the day she discovered that I was
+talking nonsense about the statuette of Psyche. Sometimes she appears to
+be the kind of foolish woman to whom anything may be said without fear.
+Sometimes she displays most unexpected intelligence. I looked at her
+before I answered. Her narrow, pale-green eyes expressed nothing but
+innocent inquiry. She might conceivably think that I had already made
+a careful study of the music of the new Russian composer. On the other
+hand, she might be luring me on to say that I knew music which was to be
+played in her house that night for the first time. I made up my mind to
+be safe.
+
+“No,” I said, “I never even heard of him.”
+
+Then Ascher began to talk about the man and his music. He became more
+animated than I had ever seen him. It was evident that Russian music
+interested Ascher far more than finance did--that it was a subject which
+was capable of wakening real enthusiasm in him. I listened, eating from
+time to time the delicate morsels of food offered to me and sipping the
+delicious wine. I did not understand anything Ascher said, and all the
+names he mentioned were new to me; but for a time I was content to sit
+in a kind of half-conscious state, hypnotised by the sound of his voice
+and the feeling that Mrs. Ascher’s eyes were fixed on me.
+
+Not until dinner was nearly over did I make an effort to assert myself.
+
+“I was talking to Gorman the other day,” I said, “about Irish affairs
+and especially about the Ulster situation. I have also been hearing
+Malcolmson’s views. Malcolmson is a colonel and an Ulsterman. You know
+the sort of views an Ulster Colonel would have.”
+
+Ascher smiled faintly. He seemed no more than slightly amused at the
+turn Irish affairs were taking. After all neither international finance
+nor Russian music was likely to be profoundly affected by the Ulster
+rebellion. (Malcolmson will not use the word rebellion, but I must.
+There is no other word to describe the actions he contemplates.) No
+wonder Ascher takes small interest in the matter. On the other hand,
+Mrs. Ascher was profoundly moved by the mention of Ulster. I could see
+genuine passion in her eyes.
+
+“Belfast,” she said, “stands for all that is vilest and most hateful in
+the world. It is worse than Glasgow, worse than Manchester, worse than
+Birmingham.”
+
+Belfast is, no doubt, the main difficulty. If there were no Belfast the
+resistance of the rest of Ulster would be inconsiderable. I admired the
+political instinct which enabled Mrs. Ascher to go straight to the very
+centre of the situation. But, in all probability, Gorman gave her the
+hint. Gorman does not seem to understand how real the Ulster opposition
+is, but he has intelligence enough to grasp the importance of Belfast.
+What puzzled me first was the extreme bitterness with which Mrs. Ascher
+spoke.
+
+“What has Belfast ever given to the world?” she asked.
+
+“Well,” I said, “ships are built there, and of course there’s linen. I
+believe they manufacture tobacco, and----”
+
+“That,” said Ascher, “is not quite what my wife means. The gifts which a
+city or a country give to the world must be of a more permanent kind if
+they are to be of real value. Ships, linen, tobacco, we use them, and in
+using we destroy them. They have their value, but it is not a permanent
+value. Ultimately a city will be judged not by its perishable products,
+but by----”
+
+“Art,” said Mrs. Ascher.
+
+I might have known it. Mrs. Ascher would be sure to judge cities, as she
+judges men, by their achievement in that particular line. I was bound
+to admit that the reputation of Belfast falls some way short of that of
+Athens as a centre of literature and art.
+
+“Or thought,” said Ascher, “or criticism. It is curious that a community
+which is virile and fearless, which is able to look at the world and
+life through its own eyes, which is indifferent to the general consensus
+of opinion----”
+
+“Belfast is all that,” I said. “I never knew any one who cared less what
+other people said and thought than Malcolmson.”
+
+“Yet,” said Ascher, “Belfast has done nothing, thought nothing, seen
+nothing. But perhaps that is all to come. The future may be, indeed I
+think must be, very different.”
+
+Ascher will never be a real leader of men. His habit of seeing two sides
+of every question is an incurable weakness in him. Mrs. Ascher does not
+suffer in that way. She saw no good whatever in Belfast, nor any hope
+for its future.
+
+“Never,” she said, “never. A people who have given themselves over
+to material things, who accept frankly, without even the hypocrite’s
+tribute to virtue, the money standard of value, who ask ‘Does it pay?’
+and ask nothing else---- Have you ever been in Belfast?”
+
+“Yes,” I said, “often. The churches are ugly, decidedly ugly, though
+comfortable.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher shuddered.
+
+“Comfortable!” she said. “Yes. Comfortable! Think of it. Churches,
+comfort! Irredeemable hideousness and the comfort of congregations as a
+set-off to it.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher panted. I could see the front of her dress--she wore a very
+floppy scarlet teagown--rising and falling rapidly in the intensity of
+her passion. I understood more or less what she felt. If God is at all
+what we think He is, sublime, then there is something a little grotesque
+about requiring a cushioned pew, a good system of heating and a nice fat
+footstool as aids to communion with Him. Yet I am not convinced that
+man is incapable of the highest emotion when his body is at ease. Some
+degree of physical comfort seems to be required if the excursions of
+the soul are to be successful. I cannot, for instance, enjoy the finest
+kinds of poetry when I am very thirsty; nor have I ever met any one
+who found real pleasure in a statue when he had toothache. There
+is something to be said for the theory of the sceptical bishop in
+Browning’s poem, that the soul is only free to muse of lofty things
+
+     “When body gets its sop and holds its noise.”
+
+“The whole Irish question,” said Mrs. Ascher, and she spoke with
+the most tremendous vehemence, “is a struggle not between political
+parties--what are political parties?”
+
+“Rotten things,” I said. “I quite agree with you there.”
+
+“Not between conceptions of religion. What is religion but the
+blind gropings of the human soul after some divine perfection vaguely
+guessed?”
+
+That is not what religion is in Ireland. There is nothing either dim
+or vague about it there, and nobody gropes. Everyone, from the infant
+school child to the greatest of our six archbishops, is perfectly clear
+and definite in his religious beliefs and suffers no doubts of any kind.
+That is why Ireland is recognised everywhere as an island of saints. But
+of course Mrs. Ascher could not be expected to know that.
+
+“It is a struggle,” she said, getting back to the Irish question as the
+subject of her sentence, “between a people to whom art is an ideal and
+a people who have accepted materialism and money for their gods, an
+atheist people.”
+
+It has been the great misfortune of my life that I have never been able
+to escape from the Irish question. It was discussed round my cradle by a
+nurse whom my parents selected for her sound Protestant principles. The
+undertaker will give his views of the Irish question to his assistant
+while he drives the nails into the lid of my coffin. I should not have
+supposed that any one could have hit on an aspect of it wholly new to
+me. But Mrs. Ascher did. Never before had I heard the problem stated as
+she stated it.
+
+“That,” I said, “is an extraordinarily interesting way of looking at it.
+The only difficulty I see is----”
+
+“It is true,” said Mrs. Ascher.
+
+That was precisely my difficulty. It was not true. I went back to my
+recollections of old Dan Gorman, a man as intensely interested in the
+struggle as ever any one was. I remembered his great pot belly, his
+flabby skin, his whisky-sodden face. I remembered his grasping meanness,
+his relentless hardness in dealing with those in his power. The most
+thoroughly materialised business man in Belfast has more spirituality
+about him than old Dan Gorman ever had. Nor did I believe that his
+son, Michael Gorman, would have accepted Mrs. Ascher’s account of his
+position. He would have winked, humourously appreciative of an excellent
+joke, if any one had told him that he was a crusader, out to wrest the
+sacred sepulchre of art from the keeping of the Saracens of Ulster.
+
+I did not, of course, attempt to reason with Mrs. Ascher. There is
+nothing in the world more foolish than trying to reason with a woman who
+is possessed by a cause. No good ever comes of it. But Mrs. Ascher is
+quite clever enough to understand a man even if he does not speak. She
+felt that I should have been glad to argue with her if I had not been
+afraid. She entered on a long defence of her position.
+
+She began with the Irish Players, and the moment she mentioned them I
+knew what she was going to say.
+
+“The one instance,” she said, “the single example in the modern world
+of peasant art, from the soil, of the soil, redolent, fragrant of the
+simple life of men and women, in direct touch with the primal forces of
+nature itself. There is nothing else quite like those players and their
+plays. They are the self-revelation of the peasant soul. From the
+whitewashed cabins of the country-side, from the streets of tiny,
+world-forgotten villages, from the islands where the great Atlantic
+thunders ceaselessly, these have come to call us back to the realities
+of life, to express again the external verities of art.”
+
+That is all very well. I agreed with Mrs. Ascher thoroughly about the
+art of Synge’s plays, and Lady Gregory’s and Yeats’, and the art of the
+players. But it is merely silly to talk about the soil and whitewashed
+cottages, and self-revelation of peasant souls. Neither the dramatists
+nor the players are peasants or ever were. They are very clever,
+sometimes more than clever, members of the educated classes, who see the
+peasants from outside just as I see them, as Mrs. Ascher would see them
+if she ever got near enough to what she calls the soil to see a peasant
+at all.
+
+When Mrs. Ascher had finished with the Irish Players she went on,
+still in a white heat of excitement, to the attempt to revive the Irish
+language.
+
+“Where else,” she said, “will you find such devotion to a purely
+spiritual ideal? Here you have a people rising enthusiastically to fight
+for the preservation of the national language. And its language is
+the soul of a nation. These splendid efforts are made in defiance of
+materialism, without the remotest hope of gain, just to keep, to
+save from destruction, a possession felt instinctively to be the most
+precious thing of all, far above gold and rubies in price.”
+
+“The only flaw in that theory,” I said, “is that the people who still
+have this most precious possession don’t want to keep it in the least.
+Nobody ever heard of the Irish-speaking peasants taking the smallest
+interest in their language. The whole revival business is the work of an
+English-speaking middle class, who never stop asking the Government to
+pay them for doing it.”
+
+That was the second occasion on which I came near quarrelling with Mrs.
+Ascher. Yet I am not a man who quarrels easily. Like St. Paul’s friends
+at Corinth, I can suffer fools gladly. But Mrs. Ascher is not a fool.
+She is a clever woman with a twist in her mind. That is why I find
+myself saying nasty things to her now and then. I suppose it was Gorman
+who taught her to be an Irish patriot. If she had been content to follow
+him as an obedient disciple, I should have put up with all she said
+politely. But, once started by Gorman, she thought out Ireland for
+herself and arrived at this amazing theory of hers, her artistic
+children of light in death grips with mercantile and manufacturing
+materialists. No wonder she irritated me.
+
+Ascher saved us from a heated argument. Dinner was over. He had smoked
+his half cigarette. He rose from his chair.
+
+“I expect Mr. Wendall is waiting for us,” he said to Mrs. Ascher.
+
+Her face softened as he spoke. The look of fanatical enthusiasm passed
+out of her eyes. She got up quietly and left the room. Ascher held the
+door open for her and motioned me to follow her. He took my arm as we
+passed together down a long corridor.
+
+“Mr. Wendall,” he said, “is a young musician who comes to play to us
+every week. He is a man with a future before him. I think you will enjoy
+his playing. We are going to the music room.”
+
+We went through a small sitting-room, more fully furnished than any
+other in Ascher’s house. It looked as if it were meant to be inhabited
+by ordinary human beings. It was reserved, so I learned afterwards, for
+the use of Ascher’s guests. We ascended a short flight of stairs and
+entered the music room. Unlike the dining-room it was only partially
+lit. A single lamp stood on a little table near the fireplace, and there
+were two candles on a grand piano in the middle of the room. These made
+small spots of light in a space of gloom. I felt rather than saw
+that the room was a large one. I discerned the shapes of four tall,
+curtainless windows. I saw that except the piano and a few seats near
+the fireplace there was no furniture. As we entered I heard the sound of
+an organ, played very softly, somewhere above me.
+
+“Mr. Wendall is here,” said Ascher.
+
+He led me over to the fireplace and put me in a deep soft chair. He laid
+a box of cigarettes beside me and set a vase of spills at my right hand.
+I gathered that I might smoke, so long as I lit my tobacco noiselessly,
+with spills kindled in the fire; but that I must not make scratchy
+sounds by striking matches. Mrs. Ascher sank down in a corner of a large
+sofa. She lay there with parted lips and half-closed eyes, like some
+feline creature expectant of sensuous delight. The light from the
+lamp behind her and the flickering fire played a strange game of
+shadow-making and shadow-chasing among the folds of her scarlet gown.
+Ascher sat down beside her.
+
+The organ was played very softly. I found out that it was placed in a
+gallery above the door by which we had entered. I saw the pipes, like
+a clump of tall spears, barely discernible in the gloom. There was no
+light in the gallery. Mr. Wendall was no doubt there and was able to
+play without seeing a printed score. I supposed that he was playing the
+music of the new Russian composer. Whatever he played he failed to catch
+my attention, though the sounds were vaguely soothing. I found myself
+thinking that Mrs. Ascher had no right to be furiously angry with the
+people of Belfast for making their churches comfortable. This was her
+form of worship, and never were any devotees more luxuriously placed
+than we were. If her soul can soar to spiritual heights from the depths
+of silken cushions, surely a linen-draper may find it possible to pray
+in a cushioned pew.
+
+I was mistaken about the music I was listening to. Mr. Wendall was only
+soothing his nerves with organ sounds while he waited for us. When he
+discovered our presence he left the gallery and descended to the room
+in which we sat, by a narrow stairway. No greeting of any kind passed
+between him and the Aschers. He went straight to the piano without
+giving any sign that he knew of our presence. I lit a cigarette and
+prepared to endure what was in store for me.
+
+At first the new Russian music struck me as merely noisy. I found
+no sense or rhythm in it. Then I began to feel slightly excited. The
+excitement grew on me in a curious way. I looked at the Aschers. He was
+sitting nearly bolt upright, very rigid, in a corner on the sofa. She
+lay back, as she had lain before, with her hands on her lap. The only
+change that I noted in her attitude was that her fists were clenched
+tightly. Mr. Wendall stopped playing abruptly. There was a short
+interval of silence, through which I seemed to feel the last chord that
+was struck vibrating in my spine.
+
+Then he began to play again. Once more the feeling of excitement came on
+me. I am far from being a Puritan, but I suppose I have inherited
+from generations of sternly Protestant ancestors some kind of moral
+prejudice. I felt, as the excitement grew intenser, that I had
+discovered a new, supremely delightful kind of sin. There came to my
+memory the names of ancient gods and goddesses denounced by the prophets
+of Israel: Peor and Baalim, Milcom, Moloch, Ashtaroth. I knew why the
+people loved to worship them. I remembered that Milton had rejoiced in
+the names of these half-forgotten deities, and that Milton loved music.
+No doubt he, too, understood this way of sinning and, very rightly, he
+placed the gods of it in hell. Wendall, at the piano, stopped and began
+again. He did this many times. His music was loud sometimes,
+sometimes soft, but it did not fail to create the sense of passionate
+deliciousness and, for a time, a longing for more of it.
+
+After a while my senses grew numb, sated I suppose. I looked over at the
+Aschers. She still lay as she had lain at first, but her fists were no
+longer clenched. All her muscles seemed to be relaxed. Ascher had crept
+over close to her. He lay back beside her, and I saw that he held one of
+her hands clasped in his. His eyes were fixed intently on hers, and even
+as I watched I saw her lids droop before his gaze. She gave a long, soft
+sigh of satisfaction.
+
+I realised that Ascher and his wife were lovers still, though they had
+been married for a score or more of years. That strange emotion, which
+touches human life with romance for a year or two and then fades into
+a tolerant companionship, had endured with them. In some way altogether
+unknown to me the music and all the art in which they delighted had the
+power of stimulating afresh or re-creating again and again the passion
+which drew them together. Under the influence of art they enjoyed a
+mystical communion with each other, not wholly spiritual, but like all
+mysticism, a mixture of the physical, the ecstasy of contact, actual or
+imagined, with yearnings and emotions in which the body has no part.
+
+I suppose the music had its effect on me, too, gave me for a few moments
+a power of sympathy not usually mine. I understood Ascher as I had never
+understood him before. I knew that the man I had hitherto seen, austere,
+calm, intellectual, the great financier whom the world sought, was a
+man with a mask before his face; that accident and the excitement of the
+music had enabled me to see the face behind the mask. I understood, or
+supposed I understood, Mrs. Ascher, too. All her foolish fine phrases
+and absurd enthusiasms were like cries in which tortured creatures find
+some kind of relief from pain, or the low, crooning laughter of a young
+mother with her baby at her breast. They were the inevitable, almost
+hysterical gaspings of a spirit wrought upon over highly and over often
+by the passion of romantic love. A mask hid the man’s face. The woman
+was not strong enough to wear it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+It is difficult now, in 1915, to regard the things which happened during
+the first half of last year as events in any proper sense of the word.
+But at the time they excited us all very much, and we felt that the
+whole future of the country, the empire, perhaps of the human race,
+depended on how the Government met the crisis with which it was faced.
+It seems curious that we could have believed such a thing, but we did.
+
+I remember quite distinctly the circumstances under which I first heard
+the news of the protest made by certain cavalry officers against what
+they supposed to be the Government’s policy in Ulster. I am not, thank
+God, called upon to pass a judgment on that very tangled business, or
+to give any opinion about the rights or wrongs of either side. I do not
+even profess to know the facts. Indeed I am inclined to doubt whether
+there were any facts. In affairs conducted mainly by politicians there
+seldom are facts. There are statements, explanations, pledges and
+recriminations in great abundance; but facts are not to be discovered,
+for the sufficient reason that they are not there. What happened or
+seemed to happen was described as a plot, a mare’s nest, an aristocratic
+conspiracy, an assertion of principle, a mutiny, a declaration of
+loyalty, and a newspaper scare, according to the taste of the person who
+was speaking. The safest thing to call it, I think, is an incident.
+
+I went down to the club at twelve o’clock, intending to smoke a cigar
+and look at the picture papers before luncheon. I found Malcolmson
+in the outer hall. His head was bent over the machine which reels off
+strips of paper with the latest news printed on them. The machine was
+ticking vigorously, and I knew by the tense attitude in which Malcolmson
+was standing that something very important must have happened. My first
+impulse was to slip quietly past and get away to the smoking room before
+he saw me. I like Malcolmson, but he is tiresome, particularly tiresome
+when there is important news. I crossed the hall cautiously, keeping an
+eye on him, hoping that he would not look round till I was safe.
+
+Malcolmson has reached that time of life at which a man’s neck begins
+to bulge over his collar at the back, forming a kind of roll of rather
+hairy flesh, along which the starched linen marks a deep line from
+ear to ear. I noticed as I passed that Malcolmson’s neck was far more
+swollen than usual and, that it was rapidly changing colour from its
+ordinary brick red to a deep purple. The sight was so strange and
+startling that I stopped for a minute to see what would happen next.
+I have never heard of a man’s neck bursting under pressure of strong
+excitement, but Malcolmson’s looked as if it must break out in some
+way. While I was watching, the machine suddenly stopped ticking and
+Malcolmson turned round. His face was nearly as purple as his neck. His
+moustache, always bristly, looked as if it was composed of fine wires
+charged with electricity. His eyes were blazing with excitement.
+
+“Come here, Digby,” he said. “Come here and read this.”
+
+He caught up the paper which the machine had disgorged and allowed it to
+hang across his hands in graceful festoons. There seemed to me to be a
+great deal of it.
+
+“I wish you’d tell me about it,” I said. “I hate reading those things.
+The print is so queer.”
+
+I knew that Malcolmson would tell me about it whether I read it for
+myself or not. There was no use getting a double dose of the news
+whatever it was.
+
+“The damned Government’s done for at last,” said Malcolmson
+triumphantly, “and Home Rule’s as dead as a door nail.”
+
+“Good,” I said. “Now we shall all be able to settle down. How did it
+happen? Earthquake in Dublin? But that would hardly do it. Cabinet
+Ministers committed suicide unanimously?”
+
+“The Army,” said Malcolmson, “has refused to fire on us. I knew they
+would and they have.”
+
+“Were they asked to?” I said.
+
+“Asked to!” said Malcolmson. “They were told to, ordered to. We’ve had
+our private information of what was going on. We’ve known all about
+it for a week or more. Belfast was to be bombarded by the Fleet. Two
+brigades of infantry were to cross the Boyne and march on Portadown.
+The cavalry, supported by light artillery, were to take Enniskillen by
+surprise. We were to be mowed down, mowed down and sabred before we had
+time to mobilise. The most infamous plot in modern times. A second
+St. Bartholomew’s massacre. But thank God the Army is loyal. I cross
+to-night to take my place with my men.”
+
+An ill-tempered, captious man might have suggested that Malcolmson
+ought to have taken his place with his men--a regiment of volunteers I
+suppose--a little sooner. According to his own account, the peril had
+been real a week before, but was over before he told me about it. The
+Government which had planned the massacre was dead and damned. The Army
+had refused to carry out the infamous plot. It seemed a mere piece of
+bravado, under the circumstances, to take up arms. But I knew Malcolmson
+better than to suppose that he wanted to swagger when swaggering was
+safe. His mind might be in a muddled state. Judging by the way he talked
+to me, it was very muddled indeed. But his heart was sound, and no risk
+would have daunted him.
+
+“Let’s have a glass of sherry and a biscuit,” I said. “You’ll want
+something to steady your nerves.”
+
+But Malcolmson, for once, for the only time since I have known him, was
+unwilling to sit down and talk. His train, supposing that he took the
+quickest route to Belfast, did not leave Euston till 8 or 9 o’clock at
+night; but he felt that he must be up and doing at once. He fussed out
+of the club, and for some time I saw no more of him.
+
+I waited until the hall porter had cut up the slips of paper which fell
+from the clicking machine and pinned the bits to the notice boards. Then
+I read the news for myself. These machines are singularly unintelligent.
+They mix up the items of news in a very irritating way. Sometimes a
+sheet begins with the assassination of a foreign prime minister, breaks
+off suddenly to announce the name of a winning horse, goes back to the
+prime minister, starts a divorce case abruptly and then gives a few
+Stock Exchange quotations. I hate news which comes to me in this
+disjointed way, and never attempt to learn anything from the machine
+until the hall porter has edited the sheets. He cuts them up, gets all
+the racing news on one board, the Stock Exchange and the Divorce
+Court on another and makes a continuous narrative of political news,
+assassinations, picturesque shipwrecks and such matters on the largest
+and most prominent of the notice boards.
+
+I found when I did read that Malcolmson had built up a lofty structure
+on a very small foundation. Something had evidently happened among
+the soldiers stationed at the Curragh Camp; but the first account
+telegraphed over from Ireland left me in grave doubt. It was a question
+whether the men had actually been told to shoot Malcolmson and refused
+to obey orders; or had been asked, politely, if they would like to shoot
+Malcolmson and said they would rather not. The one thing which emerged
+with any sort of clearness was that Malcolmson would not be shot. This
+made my mind easy. I went into the dining-room and had some luncheon.
+
+Early in the afternoon I collected six evening papers, three belonging
+to each side. I found the Unionist writers unanimous on two points. The
+Army had saved the Empire and the Government would be obliged to resign.
+The Liberal scribes took another view of the situation. According to
+them the Army had been seduced from its loyalty by the intrigues of
+fascinating and fashionable Delilahs, but the will of the people must,
+nevertheless, prevail. Newspaper writers on the Liberal side are far
+more intelligent than their opponents. It was a stupid thing, in the
+early part of 1914, to talk about saving the Empire. No one at that
+time cared anything about the Empire. Very few people believed that it
+existed. It was worse than stupid to suggest that the Government would
+resign. The country was utterly weary of General Elections and was
+planning its summer holiday. Public sympathy was hopelessly alienated by
+that kind of talk. On the other hand, the fashionable Delilah story
+was a brilliant invention. There is nothing dearer to the heart of the
+English middle classes and working men than the belief that every woman
+with a dress allowance of more than £200 a year is a courtesan. The
+suggestion that these immoral Phrynes were bartering their charms for
+power to thwart the will of the people was just the sort of thing to
+raise a tempest of enthusiasm.
+
+Almost anything might have happened if the Government had had the
+courage to follow up its advantage. Fortunately--from Malcolmson’s point
+of view--it did not venture to shut up all women of title, under
+fifty years of age, in houses of correction; a course which would have
+convinced the general public that Home Rule was a sound thing. It spent
+a fortnight or so contradicting everybody who said anything, including
+itself, and then apologised for being misunderstood.
+
+However, that anti-climax was still some way off.
+
+I stuffed the three Liberal papers into my pocket and went to call on
+Lady Kingscourt. She is the only peeress I am intimate with who moves in
+really fashionable circles and is both rich and beautiful. It would have
+been interesting to hear what she said when I pointed out to her that
+she had been seducing subalterns. She was not at home when I reached her
+house. The butler told me that she had gone to a bazaar got up to raise
+funds for the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families’ Association, in itself a
+suspicious circumstance. If I were Lady Kingscourt and my character was
+attacked as hers was, I should keep clear of any charity with the word
+soldier in its name. I was sorry to miss her, though I scarcely expected
+that she would have tried to fascinate me. It is a good many years since
+I resigned my commission.
+
+The next person I thought of seeing was Gorman. It was nearly five
+o’clock, so I went to the House of Commons.
+
+Gorman, when I found him, seemed very much pleased to see me, and was in
+a hospitable mood. He took me to a room, which must have originally been
+meant for a cellar, and gave me tea.
+
+“I’ve been ringing you up on the telephone all day,” he said, “and
+couldn’t get you. Where have you been?”
+
+“Down at the club,” I said, “talking to Malcolmson about the plot--what
+you’d call the situation I suppose. You can hardly be expected to
+admit that there is a plot. Now, do tell me what you think about the
+situation.”
+
+“Damn the situation!” said Gorman.
+
+“That,” I said, “seems the sensible view to take. Is it the one usually
+held? Is that what they’re saying up there?”
+
+I pointed to the ceiling with my thumb. Somewhere above my head, it
+might be supposed, statesmen with furrowed brows were taking anxious
+counsel together for the safety of the nation, retiring now and then
+when utterly exhausted, to damn the situation in private rooms.
+
+“Some of them are a bit fussed,” said Gorman. “Silly asses! But it isn’t
+that wretched business that I wanted to speak to you about.”
+
+“Good gracious! Do you mean to say that you can talk of anything else,
+that you didn’t ring me up to tell me what will happen?”
+
+“Nothing will happen,” said Gorman. “Two or three muddled-headed young
+fools at the Curragh will get court-martialed. That’s all. What I
+wanted to see you about is this new invention of Tim’s. There’s really
+something in it.”
+
+“Gorman,” I said. “You’re fiddling while Rome is burning. How can you
+reconcile it to your conscience to play with cinematographs when a
+horrible conspiracy is threatening life and liberty?”
+
+“Surely,” said Gorman, “you don’t really believe that we plotted, as
+they call it, to murder people in Belfast?”
+
+“I don’t know whether you did or not,” I said. “But that’s not the
+conspiracy I’m alluding to. Look here.”
+
+I pulled out of my pocket the three papers which I had meant for Lady
+Kingscourt and showed Gorman the articles about the fashionable ladies
+seducing soldiers.
+
+“You can’t expect our side,” I said, “to sit down under this kind of
+thing without a struggle. We shall make counter-accusations. I shall do
+it myself if nobody else does. I’m warning you beforehand, Gorman, so
+that you won’t be surprised when you find your character in rags.”
+
+Gorman looked at his watch.
+
+“I know you like talking that sort of nonsense,” he said, “and I don’t
+mind listening, not a bit; but just let me ask you this before you
+start. Will you come down with me this evening and see Tim’s invention?
+If you will I’ll order a motor from Harrod’s or somewhere, and we’ll run
+down after dinner. There’s no use going in broad daylight, for we can’t
+see the thing properly till after dark.”
+
+“I shall be delighted,” I said.
+
+“Very well. Excuse me a moment while I go and get on the ‘phone to
+engage the motor.”
+
+I waited, feeling a little sore. I daresay I do talk nonsense and like
+talking it, but no politician who ever lived has a right to tell me
+so. I intended to greet Gorman when he returned with the proverb about
+living in glass houses and throwing stones. He came back, smiling
+radiantly. My ill-humour passed away at once.
+
+“Now,” he said, “go on with what you were telling me.
+
+“I pointed out to you,” I said, “that duchesses, marchionesses,
+countesses, and other abandoned women of that kind have been flirting
+with military officers in such a way as to interfere with the governing
+of this country in accordance with the principles of democracy.”
+
+“Is that what they say?” said Gorman.
+
+He picked up one of the papers which I had laid on the table and
+satisfied himself that the thing was really in print.
+
+“Well,” he said, “they had to say something. I daresay people will
+believe them. The English are an extraordinarily credulous race, fools
+in fact. That’s why I’m a Home Ruler.”
+
+“You must remember,” I said, “that I’m a Unionist.”
+
+“Are you? Speaking confidentially, now, are you really?”
+
+“My father was,” I said, “and I don’t like to see these things in print
+about the party without making some kind of reply. What I’m thinking of
+doing is writing a sort of circular letter to all the papers on our side
+and saying that to my certain knowledge you and Mrs. Ascher have been
+using undue and unfair influence over each other for the last six
+months. If it’s wrong for a woman to talk politics to a soldier it must
+be much more wrong for one to talk art to a politician.”
+
+“Mrs. Ascher,” said Gorman, “is an extraordinary woman. The more I see
+of her, the less inclined I am to be surprised at anything she says
+or does. She’s tremendously keen just now on Home Rule and Ireland
+generally.”
+
+“That is amazing,” I said.
+
+“It isn’t in itself,” said Gorman, “but the way she gets at it is. I
+mean that theory of hers about----”
+
+“Yes. I know. She will insist on thinking that you and everybody else on
+your side are artists.”
+
+“And yet,” said Gorman, “I can’t persuade her to look at Tim’s new
+invention.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher’s prejudice against cinematographs, improved or unimproved,
+was certainly strong. I found it hard to understand exactly how she
+felt. She found no difficulty in regarding Gorman, a devoted politician,
+as a hero. When she had no objection to the form of entertainment with
+which he provided the public, it was difficult to see why she kicked
+against moving pictures. I should have thought that the performances at
+Westminster were considerably more vulgar, certainly far less original
+and striking, than the things shown on the cinematograph.
+
+Gorman and I dined at Scott’s, chiefly on lobsters, at seven o’clock, an
+uncomfortably early hour. We had a twenty-five-mile drive before us to
+reach the farm, somewhere in the depths of Hertfordshire, where Tim was
+making his experiments. The drive was a very pleasant one. The first
+part of it lay along one of the great artery roads which lead from the
+centre of London to the North. The evening was fine and warm without
+being stuffy, one of those evenings which are the peculiar glory of the
+early English summer. It seemed to me that many thousands of people were
+passing along that road towards the country. Parties of laughing boys
+and girls pedalled northwards on bicycles, swerving in and out through
+the traffic. Stout, middle-aged men, with fat, middle-aged women beside
+them, drove sturdy ponies, or lean, high-stepping horses, in curious
+old-fashioned gigs. Motor cyclists, young men with outstretched chins
+and set faces, sped by us, outstripping our car. Others we passed,
+riders who had side cars attached to their cycles, young men these, too,
+but soberer, weighted with responsibility. They had their wives in the
+side cars, wives who looked little more than girls, though many of them
+held babies in their arms, and one now and then had a well-grown child
+wrapped in rugs at her feet.
+
+“Life!” said Gorman, waving his cigar comprehensively towards the moving
+crowds. “Wonderful thing life! Keeps going on. Don’t know why it should,
+but it does. Nothing seems to make any difference to it.”
+
+“Not even your politics,” I said. “Curious thing, isn’t it, how little
+all that fuss of yours matters? It doesn’t make any difference which
+of your parties is in power. All this goes on just the same. That young
+fellow--there, the one who didn’t quite break his neck at the lamp
+post--would go down to his office to-morrow exactly as he always does,
+if every member of the House of Commons dies in the night. You see that
+girl with the baby--the one on our left--she’d have had that baby just
+the same if the Long Parliament were still sitting. None of your laws
+could have made her have that baby, or stopped her. You are simply
+fussing in an unimportant way, raising silly little clouds of dust which
+will settle down again at once. She’s keeping the world going and she
+probably doesn’t even know the name of the Prime Minister.”
+
+“That’s all very well,” said Gorman, “but we’re seeing that these people
+get their rights, their fair share of what’s going. If it wasn’t for us
+and the laws we pass, the rich would grow richer and richer while these
+men and women would gradually sink into the position of slaves. I’m not
+a socialist. I don’t believe in that theory; but capitalists have had
+things far too much their own way in the past.”
+
+“Ascher!”
+
+“Oh, Ascher! I like Ascher, of course, personally; but speaking of him
+as a typical member of a class, he’s simply a parasite. All financiers
+are. He ought to be abolished, wiped out, done away with. He fulfils no
+useful function.”
+
+Our motor sped along. A cycle with a side car just kept pace with us for
+a while. A nice, clean-shaven, honest-looking young fellow was in the
+saddle. His girl-wife sat beside him in the basket-work slipper which
+he dragged along. It was her baby which I had pointed out to Gorman a
+moment before.
+
+“Perhaps,” I said, “they have had tinned peaches for tea.”
+
+“Very likely,” said Gorman, “just the sort of thing they would have. I
+know that class. Lived among them for years. He comes home at half past
+six. She has put on a clean blouse and tidied her hair so that he’ll
+kiss her, and he does. Then he kisses the baby, probably likes doing
+that, too, as it’s the first. Then he has a wash and she brings in the
+tea. Bread and butter for her with a pot of marmalade, an egg--at this
+time of year certainly an egg--for him.”
+
+“And tinned peaches.”
+
+“Eaten with teaspoons out of saucers,” said Gorman, “and they’ll enjoy
+them far more than you did that lobster salad at Scott’s.”
+
+“I’m sure they will. And that is just where Ascher comes in.”
+
+“I don’t see it,” said Gorman, “unless you mean that they’d be eating
+hothouse peaches if there were no Aschers.”
+
+I did not mean that. I am, indeed, pretty sure that if there were no
+Aschers, if Gorman succeeded in abolishing the class, neither the
+city clerk, nor his pretty wife, nor any one else in England would eat
+hothouse peaches. There would not be any. I am inclined to think that if
+Ascher were done away with there would not even be any tinned peaches.
+Tinned peaches come from California. Somebody grows them there. That man
+must be kept going, fed, clothed sufficiently, housed, while the peach
+trees grow. He must be financed. Somebody else collects the peaches,
+puts them into tins, solders air-tight lids on them, pastes labels round
+them. He works with borrowed money. Somebody packs the tins in huge
+cases, puts them in trains, piles them into ships, despatches them to
+London, getting his power to do these things in some mysterious way from
+Ascher.
+
+“While she washes up the cups and saucers,” said Gorman, “he brings
+round that motor cycle.”
+
+“Paid for,” I said, “in monthly instalments.”
+
+“Probably,” said Gorman, “with a deposit of £25 to start with.”
+
+“It’s Ascher,” I said, “who makes that possible.”
+
+“It’s Ascher,” said Gorman, “who makes that necessary. If it were not
+for Ascher’s rake-off, the tax he levies on every industry, the machine
+could be bought right out for the original £25 and there would be no
+instalments to be paid.”
+
+Possibly. But the tires of the machine were made of rubber. I remembered
+my visit to Para, the broad, steaming Amazon, the great ships crawling
+slowly past walls of forest trees, the pallid white men, the melancholy
+Indians. It may be possible to devise some other means of getting
+the precious gum from the Brazilian forest; but at present the whole
+business is dependent on Ascher.
+
+We left that motor cycle behind us at last and sped faster along a
+stretch of road where the traffic was less dense.
+
+“You notice,” said Gorman, “the way London is swallowing up the country.
+That was once a rural inn.”
+
+I had observed what Gorman pointed out to me. Here and there along the
+road, a mile or so apart from each other, we came on old buildings, a
+group of cottages, a farm house, an inn. These were solidly built after
+the good old fashion. It had seemed wasteful to pull them down. The
+waves of the advancing tide of London reached them, passed them, swept
+beyond them, left them standing.
+
+“Quite a few years ago,” said Gorman, “those houses stood in the middle
+of fields, and the people who lived in them ate the food that grew at
+their doors.”
+
+“No tinned peaches,” I said, “no bicycles.”
+
+“And no Ascher,” said Gorman.
+
+“Well,” I said, “we can’t go back.”
+
+“In Ireland,” he said, “we needn’t go on. If we can only get clear of
+this cursed capitalistic civilisation of England--that’s what I mean by
+being a Home Ruler.”
+
+“You think,” I said, “that we should be too wise to accept the yoke of
+Ascher, to barter our freedom for tinned peaches.”
+
+“We’ll get the tinned peaches, too.”
+
+“No, you won’t. If you have civilisation--and that includes a lot of
+things besides tinned peaches, tobacco for instance, Gorman. If you want
+a cigar you’ll have to put up with Ascher. But I daresay you’d be better
+without it. Only I don’t think I’ll live in your Ireland, Gorman.”
+
+We passed away from London in the end, got out beyond the last tentative
+reachings of the speculative builder, into country lane-ways. There
+were hedges covered with hawthorn, and the scent of it reached us as we
+rushed past. Gorman threw away a half-smoked cigar. Perhaps he wanted to
+enjoy the country smells. Perhaps he was preparing himself for life in
+the new Ireland which he hoped to bring into being.
+
+We reached the barn in which Tim Gorman lived, at about nine o’clock.
+He was waiting for us, dressed in his best clothes. I knew they were his
+best clothes because they were creased all over in wrong places, showing
+that they had been packed away tightly in some receptacle too small to
+hold them. It is only holiday clothes which are treated in this way.
+Besides putting on this suit, Tim had paid us the compliment of washing
+his face and hands for the first time, I imagine, for many days.
+
+He shook hands with me shyly, and greeted his brother with obvious
+nervousness.
+
+“I have everything ready,” he said, “quite ready. But I can’t
+promise---- You may be disappointed---- I’ve had endless
+difficulties---- If you will allow me to explain----”
+
+“Not a bit of good explaining to us,” said Gorman. “All we’re capable of
+judging is the results.”
+
+Tim sighed and led us into the barn.
+
+It was a large, bare room, ventilated--no one could say it was lit--by
+three or four unglazed openings in the wall. These Tim blocked with hay
+so as to exclude the lingering twilight of the summer evening.
+
+At one end of the building was a stage, built, I thought, of fragments
+of packing cases. It was very hard to be sure about anything, for we had
+nothing except the light of two candles to see by, but the stage looked
+exceedingly frail. I should not have cared to walk across it. However,
+as it turned out, that did not matter. The stage was used only by
+ghosts, the phantoms which Tim created, and they weighed nothing. Tim
+himself, when it became necessary for him to adjust some part of his
+apparatus, crept about underneath the stage.
+
+At the other end of the barn was an optical lantern, fitted with the
+usual mechanism for the exhibition of films. Half way down the room was
+a camp bedstead, covered with one brown blanket. Tim invited us to sit
+on it.
+
+“It doesn’t often break down,” he said.
+
+“If it breaks down at all,” said Gorman, “I’ll not risk it. I’d rather
+sit on the floor.”
+
+Gorman is a heavy man. I think he was right to avoid the bed. I sat down
+cautiously on one end of it. The middle part looked more comfortable,
+but I felt more secure with the legs immediately underneath me.
+
+“It’s all right,” said Tim, “quite all right. I fixed it just before you
+came in.”
+
+That bed, a tin basin and two very dirty towels were the only articles
+of household furniture in the place. I suppose Tim had his meals with
+the farmer who owned the barn. No inspired artist, toiling frenziedly
+with a masterpiece in a garret, ever lived a more Spartan life than Tim
+Gorman did in that barn. Whatever money he had was certainly not spent
+on his personal comfort. On the other hand, a good deal of money had
+been spent on tools and material of various kinds. Packing cases stood
+piled together against the walls. The straw in which their contents had
+been wrapped littered the floor. I discerned, as my eyes got used to the
+gloom, a quantity of carpenters’ tools near the stage, and, beside them,
+a confused heap of the mysterious implements of the plumber’s trade.
+
+While I was looking round me and the elder Gorman was wriggling about on
+the floor, Tim worked the lantern behind our backs. The thing, or some
+part of it, hissed in an alarming way. Then it made a whirring noise
+and a bright beam of light shot across the room. A very curious thing
+happened to that light. Instead of splashing against the far wall of the
+barn, exhibiting the cracks and ridges of the masonry, it stopped at
+the stage and spread itself in a kind of irregular globe. We sat in the
+dark. Across the room stretched the shaft of intense light, making the
+dust particles visible. Then, just as when a child blows soap bubbles
+through a tube, the light became globular.
+
+“Put out the candles,” said Tim.
+
+They stood, flaming feebly, on the floor between Gorman and me. I
+extinguished them. Tim’s machine gave a sharp click. Figures appeared
+suddenly in the middle of the globe of light. A man, then two women,
+then a dog. I do not know, and at the time I did not care in the least,
+what the figures were supposed to be saying or doing. It was sufficient
+for me that they were there. I saw them, not as flat, sharply outlined
+silhouettes, but as if they had been solid bodies. I saw them with
+softened outlines, through two eyes instead of a monocle. I saw them
+surrounded by an atmosphere.
+
+“Pretty good, isn’t it?” said Gorman. “Tim, turn on that running girl.
+I want Sir James to see how you get the effect of her going further and
+further away.”
+
+The running girl was the best thing accomplished by the old
+cinematograph. I never witness her race without a certain feeling of
+breathlessness. But Tim’s girl ran far better. She was amazingly real.
+When she had finished her course, Gorman struck a match and lit the
+candles again.
+
+“That’ll do, Tim,” he said. “We’ve seen enough.”
+
+“I’d like to show you the horses,” said Tim. “I think the horses
+galloping are the best thing I’ve got.”
+
+“We’ll take your word for the horses,” said Gorman. “Shut off that light
+of yours and stop the whizzing noise. I want to talk.” He turned to me.
+“Well?”
+
+“It’s marvellous,” I said.
+
+“There’s money in it,” said Gorman. “Piles and piles of money. The only
+question is, Who’s to get it?”
+
+“Tim,” I said, “is the one who deserves it.”
+
+“Tim will get his share whatever happens. The real question is, How are
+we to prevent Ascher grabbing all the rest?”
+
+Tim had finished quieting his machine and came over to us.
+
+“Michael,” he said, “I want £100.”
+
+“What for?”
+
+“I want more mirrors. The ones I’m using aren’t perfect. I must have
+others.”
+
+“The ones you have,” said Gorman, “are good enough for the present.
+When we get a bit further on and see how this business is going to be
+managed, we may get you other mirrors.”
+
+“Very well,” said Tim, “I’ll ask Ascher for the money. He’ll give it to
+me. I’d have asked him a week ago only you made me promise not to take
+any more money from him without telling you.”
+
+“If you take money from Ascher,” said Gorman, “he’ll simply collar your
+whole invention. You’ll find in the end that it will be his, not yours.
+He’ll get every penny that’s made out of it, and then he’ll tell you
+that you owe him more than you can pay. I’ve told you all along that
+that’s what will happen if you go borrowing from Ascher.”
+
+“I don’t care,” said Tim, “so long as I get it perfected I don’t care
+what happens.”
+
+“Damn!” said Gorman.
+
+There was some excuse for him. Tim’s attitude was hopelessly
+unpractical.
+
+“Don’t you see,” said Tim, “that this is a wonderful thing? It’s one of
+the greatest things that any one has done for a long time. It’s a new
+thing.”
+
+The note of weak obstinacy which was in his voice when he first spoke
+had died out of it. He was pleading with his brother as a child might
+beg for something from a grown-up man.
+
+“That’s exactly what I do see,” said Gorman.
+
+“Then why won’t you let me perfect it? It doesn’t matter--sure, you know
+yourself, Michael, that it doesn’t matter what happens if only I get it
+right.”
+
+I thought for a moment that the boy was going to cry. He pulled himself
+together with a sort of choked sob and then suddenly flashed into a
+rage.
+
+“I will ask Ascher for the money,” he said. “I will, I will. Damn you,
+Michael! I’ll give it all to Ascher, everything I have. Everything I
+ever invent. I’ll tell him all I’ve found out. I’ll make it his.”
+
+Then with another swift change of mood the boy turned to me and began to
+plead again.
+
+“Tell him to give me the money,” he said. “Or make him let me ask Ascher
+for it. He’ll do it if you speak to him. I don’t want to quarrel with
+Michael. I don’t want to do anything he says is wrong. But I must have
+that money. Don’t you see I must? I can’t get on without it?”
+
+“Listen to me, Tim,” I said; “if I give you the £100 you want----”
+
+“I could manage with £100,” said Tim. “But it would be much better if I
+had £150.”
+
+“A hundred,” I said, “and no more. If I give it to you, will you promise
+to bring that apparatus of yours up to London and exhibit your results
+to a few friends of mine there?”
+
+“Yes, I will. Of course I will. May I order the new mirrors to-morrow
+and say that you’ll pay for them?”
+
+“You may. But remember----”
+
+“Oh, that will be all right,” said Tim. “As soon as ever it is
+perfected----”
+
+“Perfect or imperfect,” I said, “you’ve promised to show it off when I
+ask you to.”
+
+Gorman and I drove home together. At first he would do nothing except
+grumble about his brother’s childish obstinacy.
+
+“Can’t understand,” he said, “how any man with brains can be such a
+fool.”
+
+Then when he had worked off the fine edge of his irritation he began to
+thank me.
+
+“It was good of you, very,” he said, “to put down the money. I’d have
+done it myself, if I could have laid my hand on the amount he wanted.
+But just at this moment I can’t. All the same I don’t see what good
+that £100 is going to do. The thing’s perfect enough for all practical
+purposes already. I saw nothing wrong with it.”
+
+“Nor did I.”
+
+“Then what the devil does he want to do with it? If the thing works all
+right, what’s the sense of tinkering with it?”
+
+“That’s the artistic soul,” I said, “never satisfied, always reaching
+upwards towards the unattained. It’s the same with Mrs. Ascher.”
+
+“Of all the damned idiocies,” said Gorman, “that artistic soul is the
+damnedest.”
+
+I said nothing more for several minutes. I knew it would take Gorman
+some time to recover from the mention of the artistic soul. When I
+thought he had regained his self-possession I went on speaking.
+
+“My idea,” I said, “is to hire a small hall, and to invite a number of
+well-off people to see Tim’s show. You’ll want money in the end, you
+know.”
+
+“Not much,” said Gorman. “A few thousands will be enough. It isn’t as if
+we had to manufacture anything.”
+
+“If you get what you want,” I said, “in small sums from a number of
+people, you’ll be able to keep control of the thing yourself, and you
+needn’t be afraid of Ascher. Not that I believe Ascher would swindle,
+you. I think Ascher’s an honest man.”
+
+“Ascher’s a financier,” said Gorman. “That’s enough for me.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+I never suspected Malcolmson of the cheap kind of military ardour which
+shows itself in the girding on of swords after the hour of danger is
+past. He is the kind of man who likes taking risks, and I have not
+the slightest doubt that if he had really known beforehand that the
+Government was “plotting” to invade Ulster he would have been found
+entrenched, with a loaded rifle beside him, on the north bank of the
+Boyne. What I did think, when he left London suddenly to place himself
+at the head of his men, was that he had been a little carried away by
+the excitement of the times; that he was moved, as many people are, when
+startling events happen, to do something, without any very distinct
+idea of what is to be done. But even that suspicion wronged Malcolmson.
+Either he or some one else had devised an effective counterplot;
+effective considered as a second act in a comic opera. Perhaps I ought
+not to say comic opera. There is a certain reasonableness in the schemes
+of every comic opera. Our affairs in the early part of 1914 were moving
+through an atmosphere like that of “Alice in Wonderland.” The Government
+was a sort of Duchess, affecting to regard Ulster as the baby which was
+beaten when it sneezed because it could if it chose thoroughly enjoy
+the pepper of Home Rule. The Opposition, on the other hand, with its eye
+also on Ulster, kept saying in tones of awestruck warning, “Beware the
+Jabberwock, my son.” Malcolmson seemed to be a kind of White Knight,
+lovable, simple-minded, chivalrous, but a little out of place in the
+world.
+
+However, Malcolmson and his friends, considered as characters in “Alice
+in Wonderland,” were effective, far more effective than the poor
+White Knight ever was. They bought a lot of guns somewhere, perhaps in
+Hamburg. They hired a ship and loaded her with the guns. They sailed
+her into Larne Harbour and said to the Government, “Now, come on if you
+dare.”
+
+The Government, having previously issued a solemn proclamation
+forbidding the importation of arms into Ireland, took up the attitude of
+Mr. Winkle and said it was just going to begin. It rolled up its
+sleeves and clenched its fists and said for the second time and with
+considerable emphasis that it was just going to begin, Malcolmson danced
+about, coat off, battle light in eye, and kept shouting: “Come on!” The
+Government, taking off its collar and tie, said: “Just you wait till I
+get at you.”
+
+Gorman took a sane, though I think incorrect, view of the situation.
+
+“The English people,” he said, “are hopeless fools. It’s almost
+impossible to deal with them. They are actually beginning to believe
+that Ulster is in earnest.”
+
+“Well,” I said, “that’s only fair. They’ve been believing that you’re in
+earnest for quite a long time now. Ulster ought to have its turn.”
+
+Gorman, though a politician, is essentially a just man. He admitted
+the truth of what I had said. He went further. He admitted that
+Malcolmson’s _coup_ was exceedingly well conceived.
+
+“It’s just the sort of thing,” he said, “which appeals to Englishmen.
+Reason is wasted on them.”
+
+“Don’t be too hard on the English,” I said. “It’s the same everywhere in
+the world. Government through the people, of the people, by, with, from,
+to and for the people, is always unreasonable.”
+
+“It’s the theatrical which pays,” said Gorman. “I didn’t think those
+fellows in Belfast had brains enough to grasp that fact, but apparently
+they have. I must say that this gun-running performance of theirs is
+good. It has the quality which Americans describe as ‘punch.’ It has
+stirred the popular imagination. It has got right across the footlights.
+It has fetched the audience.”
+
+“Awkward situation for you,” I said.
+
+“We’ll have to do something,” said Gorman.
+
+“Arrest the ringleaders? Imprison Malcolmson?”
+
+“Lord, no. We may be fools, but we’re not such fools as that.”
+
+“Still,” I said, “he’s broken the law. After all, a party like yours in
+close alliance with the Government of the country must do something to
+maintain the majesty of the law.”
+
+“Law be damned,” said Gorman. “What the devil does law matter to us or
+the Government either? What we’ve got to consider is popular opinion.”
+
+“And that,” I said, “seems to be setting against you. According to
+the theory of democracy as I understand it, you’re bound to go the way
+popular opinion is blowing you. You can’t, without gross inconsistency,
+start beating to windward against it.”
+
+“Winds sometimes change,” said Gorman.
+
+“They do. This one has. It was all in your favour a fortnight ago.
+Now, what with your ‘plot’ and this really striking little episode in
+Larne----”
+
+“The art of government,” said Gorman, “consists in manipulating the
+wind, making it blow the way it’s wanted to. What we’ve got to do is to
+go one better than the Ulster men.”
+
+“Ah,” I said, “they imported rifles. You might land a shipload of large
+cannons. Is that the idea?”
+
+“They needn’t necessarily be real cannons. I don’t think our funds would
+run to real cannons. Besides, what good would they be when we had
+them? But you’ve got the main idea all right. Our game is to pull off
+something which will startle the blessed British public, impress it with
+the fact that we’re just as desperate as the other fellows.”
+
+“What about the police?” I said. “The police have always had a down on
+your side. It’s a tradition in the force.”
+
+“The police aren’t fools,” said Gorman. “They know jolly well that any
+policemen who attempted to interfere with our _coup_, whatever it may be,
+would simply be dismissed. After all, we’re not doing any harm. We’re
+not going to shoot any one. We’re simply going to influence public
+opinion. Everyone has a right to do that. By the way, did I mention
+that my play is being revived? Talking of public opinion reminded me of
+it. It had quite a success when it was first put on.”
+
+Gorman is charming. He never sticks to one subject long enough to be
+really tiresome.
+
+“I’m delighted to hear it,” I said. “I hope it will do even better this
+time.”
+
+“It ought to,” said Gorman. “We’ve got a capital press agent, and, of
+course, my name is far better known than it was. It isn’t every day the
+public gets a play written by a Member of Parliament.”
+
+“Where is it to be produced?”
+
+“The Parthenon. Good big house.”
+
+The Parthenon is one of the largest of the London Music Halls. Gorman’s
+play was, I suppose, to take its place in the usual way between an
+exhibition of pretty frocks with orchestral accompaniment and an
+imitation of the Russian dancers.
+
+“I shall be there,” I said, “on the first night. You can count on my
+applause.”
+
+It occurred to me after Gorman left me that the revival of his play
+offered me an excellent opportunity of entertaining the Aschers. Ascher
+had been exceedingly kind to me in giving me letters of introduction to
+all the leading bankers in South America. Mrs. Ascher had been steadily
+friendly to me. I owed them something and had some difficulty about the
+best way of paying the debt. I did not care to ask them to dinner in
+my rooms in Clarges Street. My landlord keeps a fairly good cook, and I
+could, I daresay, have bought some wine which Ascher would have drunk.
+But I could not have managed any kind of entertainment afterwards. I did
+not like to give them dinner at a restaurant without taking them on to
+the theatre; and the Aschers are rather superior to most plays. I had
+no way of knowing which they would regard as real drama. The revival of
+Gorman’s play solved my difficulty. I knew that Mrs. Ascher regarded him
+as an artist and that Ascher had the highest respect for his brilliant
+and paradoxical Irish mind. After luncheon I took a taxi and drove
+out to Hampstead. I owed a call at the house in any case and, if Mrs.
+Ascher happened to be at home, I could arrange the whole matter with her
+in the way that would suit her best.
+
+Mrs. Ascher was at home. She was in the studio, a large bare room at the
+back of the house. Gorman was with her.
+
+I saw at once that Mrs. Ascher was in a highly emotional condition. I
+suspected that Gorman had been talking to her about the latest wrong
+that had been done to Ireland, his Ireland, by the other part of Ireland
+which neither he nor Mrs. Ascher considered as Ireland at all. On the
+table in the middle of the room there was a little group on which Mrs.
+Ascher had been at work earlier in the day. A female figure stood with
+its right foot on the neck of a very disagreeable beast, something like
+a pig, but prick-eared and hairy. It had one horn in the middle of its
+forehead. The female figure was rather well conceived. It was appealing,
+with a sort of triumphant confidence, to some power above, heaven
+perhaps. The prick-eared pig looked sulky.
+
+“Emblematic,” said Gorman, “symbolical.”
+
+“The Irish party,” I said, “trampling on Belfast.”
+
+“The spirit of poetry in Ireland,” said Mrs. Ascher, “defying
+materialism.”
+
+“That,” I said, “is a far nicer way of putting it.”
+
+I took another look at the spirit of poetry. Mrs. Ascher was evidently
+beginning to understand Ireland. Instead of being nude, or nearly nude,
+as spirits generally are, this one was draped from head to foot. In
+Ireland we are very particular about decency, and we like everything to
+have on lots of clothes.
+
+“But now,” said Mrs. Ascher, tragically, “the brief dream is over.
+Materialism is triumphant, is armed, is mighty.”
+
+I looked at Gorman for some sort of explanation.
+
+“I’ve just been telling Mrs. Ascher,” he said, “about the gun-running at
+Larne.”
+
+“The mailed fist,” said Mrs. Ascher, “will beat into the dust the tender
+shoots of poesy and all high imaginings; will crush the soul of Ireland,
+and why? Oh, why?”
+
+“Perhaps it won’t,” I said. “My own idea is that Malcolmson doesn’t mean
+to use those guns aggressively. He’ll keep quite quiet unless the soul
+of poetry in Ireland goes for him in some way.”
+
+“We can make no such compromise,” said Mrs. Ascher. “Art must be all or
+nothing, must be utterly triumphant or else perish with uncontaminated
+soul.”
+
+“The exclusion of Ulster from the scope of the Bill,” said Gorman, “is
+the latest proposition; but we won’t agree to it.”
+
+“Well,” I said, “it’s your affair, not mine. I mean to stay in London
+and keep safe; but I warn you that if the spirit of poesy attempts to
+triumph utterly over Malcolmson he’ll shoot at it. I know him and you
+don’t. You think he’s a long-eared pig, but that ought to make you all
+the more careful. Pigs are noted for their obstinacy.”
+
+“What we’ve got to do,” said Gorman, “is devise some way of countering
+this new move. Something picturesque, something that newspapers will
+splash with big headlines.”
+
+I do not think that Mrs. Ascher heard this. She was looking at the upper
+part of the window with a sort of rapt, Joan of Arc expression of face.
+I felt that she was meditating lofty things, probably trying to hit on
+some appropriate form of self-sacrifice.
+
+“I shall go among the people,” she said, “your people, my people, for
+I am spiritually one of them. I shall go from cottage to cottage, from
+village to village, walking barefooted along the mountain roads, dressed
+in a peasant woman’s petticoat. They will take me for one of themselves
+and I shall sing war songs to them, the great inspiring chants of the
+heroes of old. I shall awake them to a sense of their high destiny.
+I shall set the young men’s feet marching, thousands and thousands of
+them. I shall fill the women’s hearts with pride.”
+
+Then, for the first and only time since I have known him, Gorman’s
+patience gave way. I do not blame him. The thought of Mrs. Ascher as an
+Irish peasant, singing street ballads outside public houses, would have
+upset the temper of Job.
+
+“That’s all very well,” he said, “but the other people have the guns.”
+
+“We must have guns, too,” said Mrs. Ascher, “and shining swords and long
+spears tipped with light. Buy guns.”
+
+With a really impressive gesture she dragged the rings from the fingers,
+first of one hand, then of the other, and flung them on the ground at
+Gorman’s feet. Even when working in her studio Mrs. Ascher wears a great
+many rings.
+
+“Buy, buy,” she said.
+
+She unclasped the necklace which she wore and flung it down beside the
+rings. It was a pearl necklace, but not by any means the handsomest
+pearl necklace she owned.
+
+“More,” she said, “you must have more.”
+
+She pranced out of the room, stepping high, like an actress taking a
+part in one of Shakespeare’s plays or a well-bred carriage horse.
+
+“Gorman,” I said, “you’re not going to take her wedding ring, are you?
+I don’t think you ought to. Ascher’s really fond of her and I’m sure he
+wouldn’t like it.”
+
+“I wish to goodness,” said Gorman, “that she wouldn’t behave in this
+wild way. If she wants to subscribe to the party funds why doesn’t she
+write a cheque instead of shying jewellery at me? I should certainly
+be arrested on suspicion if I went to try and pawn those things. Nobody
+would believe that she gave them to me.”
+
+He picked up the rings as he spoke and laid them in a row on the table.
+
+“If we don’t get her stopped,” he said, “she’ll have everybody laughing
+at us.”
+
+“Laughing at you, Gorman, not at me. I’ve nothing to do with the poetic
+soul of Ireland. It’s your property.”
+
+“The English have no real sense of humour,” said Gorman.
+
+“They’ve got quite enough to see this joke,” I said. “An owl would
+giggle if it saw Mrs. Ascher going barefoot about Ireland and you
+following her round carrying a long spear tipped with light in your
+hand.”
+
+“We must stop her,” said Gorman. “Oh, damn! Here she is again.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher came in carrying a large morocco leather covered box, her
+jewel case, I suppose. She was a little calmer than when she left us but
+still very determined.
+
+“Take this,” she said. “Take all there is in it. I give it gladly--to
+Ireland.”
+
+Gorman looked at the jewel case and then pulled himself together with an
+effort.
+
+“Mrs. Ascher,” he said, “your gift is princely, but----”
+
+“I give it freely,” said Mrs. Ascher.
+
+“And I shall receive it,” said Gorman, “receive it as the gift of a
+queen, given with queenly generosity. I shall receive it when the hour
+comes, but the time is not yet.”
+
+Gorman rising to an occasion is a sight which fills me with admiration.
+That promise of a time to come was masterly. I should never have thought
+of it; but of course it came more easily to Gorman than it would to
+me. He is a politician and accustomed to draw cheques on rather distant
+futures.
+
+“Our people,” said Gorman, “are as yet unprepared, not ready to face the
+crisis of their destiny. Keep these.” Gorman laid his hand on the jewel
+box as if giving it a sort of benediction, consecrating its contents to
+the service of Ireland. “Keep these as a sacred trust until the hour is
+upon us.”
+
+I very nearly applauded. Mrs. Ascher seemed a little disappointed.
+
+“Why not now?” she said. “Why should we delay any longer?”
+
+“We must trust our leaders,” said Gorman. “They will tell us when the
+time for action comes.”
+
+That would have been good enough for any ordinary constituency. It
+did not satisfy Mrs. Ascher. I saw her looking a little doubtfully
+at Gorman. She is a curious woman. She uses the very finest kind of
+language herself; but she always gets suspicious when any one else talks
+about sacred trusts and things of that kind. The fact is, I suppose,
+that she means what she says, lives, as well as talks, finely. Gorman
+and I do not--quite.
+
+I felt that Gorman needed and deserved a little help. He had done well
+enough so far, but he scarcely understood how near to the edge of Mrs.
+Ascher’s credulity he had gone.
+
+“What Mr. Gorman means,” I said, “is that you must have men, organised,
+you know, and drilled, before you can give them guns. Just at present
+there are very few volunteers in Mr. Gorman’s part of Ireland. He’s
+going to enroll a lot more. When he has them he’ll ask you for a
+subscription for the gun fund.”
+
+I did not think that Mrs. Ascher was really satisfied. In the light of
+subsequent events I found out that she certainly was not. But she said
+no more at the moment and made no further effort to press her jewel case
+on Gorman. I did not feel that the moment was a good one for giving her
+the invitation I had planned. It is impossible, without something like
+indecency, to invite a woman to dinner in a restaurant while she is
+meditating a barefooted pilgrimage through the wild places of Holy
+Ireland.
+
+Gorman and I left the house together. I hired a taxi to take us home so
+that we could talk comfortably.
+
+“Extraordinary woman,” I said.
+
+“Very, very. But don’t let’s talk about her. That was rather a good idea
+of yours. May be something in it.
+
+“I didn’t know I had an idea,” I said. “Are you sure you’re not mixing
+me up with Mrs. Ascher? She has lots.”
+
+“Not at all,” said Gorman. “It was you who suggested organising the
+National Volunteers.”
+
+There was at that time in Ireland a small number of extreme patriots
+who rather admired Malcolmson because they thought he was going to fight
+against England, and despised Gorman because they knew he was not. These
+men had enrolled themselves in a semi-military organisation and called
+themselves the National Volunteers. Gorman and his friends did their
+best to suppress them and kept all mention of their existence out of the
+English papers as far as possible. It surprised me to hear him speak in
+a casual way of organising these declared enemies of his.
+
+“You can’t do that,” I said. “Those fellows hate you like poison, worse
+than Malcolmson does. They’re--well, I should call them rebels. They
+certainly won’t do what you tell them.”
+
+“Oh, yes, they will, if treated properly. My idea is to flood the
+organisation with reliable men, fellows we can trust. When we’ve got a
+majority of our own people enrolled we’ll tell them to elect their own
+leaders, democratic idea. Army choosing its own officers. Sure to catch
+on.”
+
+“Sure to, and then?”
+
+“Oh, then they’ll elect us. See? Every member of Parliament will be a
+colonel. We needn’t drill or anything; but there’s nothing to prevent
+our saying that we have 200,000 trained men. The Ulster fellows have
+gone no trumps on their 100,000----”
+
+“I should be inclined to say gone No Home Rule.”
+
+Gorman grinned.
+
+“Gone no something,” he said, “and we double them. I expect that will
+set English opinion swinging round again.”
+
+“It ought to,” I said, “but why bother about all these preliminaries?
+Why put everybody in Ireland to the trouble of enrolling themselves in
+a new organisation and electing officers and all that? It’s just as
+easy to say you have 200,000 trained men before being made a colonel as
+afterwards.”
+
+“You don’t understand politics,” said Gorman. “In politics there must
+be a foundation of some sort for every fact. It needn’t be much of a
+foundation, but there must be some.”
+
+“Hard on the Irish people,” I said, “being put to all that trouble and
+bother just to make a foundation.”
+
+“Not at all,” said Gorman. “They’ll like it. But I hope to goodness that
+fanatic woman won’t insist on our buying guns. It would be the devil
+and all if the fellows I’m thinking about got guns in their hands. You
+simply couldn’t tell what they’d do. You’ll have to try and keep Mrs.
+Ascher quiet.”
+
+“I’m going to ask her to dine with me and go to see your play,” I said.
+“That may distract her mind from guns for a while.”
+
+“You use your influence with her,” said Gorman. “I’ve the greatest
+belief in influence.”
+
+He has.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+That evening I wrote my invitation to the Aschers. They immediately
+accepted it, expressing the greatest pleasure at the prospect of seeing
+Gorman’s play again.
+
+I arranged to have dinner at the Berkeley and ordered it with some care,
+avoiding as far as I could the more sumptuous kinds of restaurant food,
+and drawing on my recollection of the things Ascher used to eat when
+Gorman ordered his dinner for him on the Cunard steamer. With the help
+of the head waiter I chose a couple of wines and hoped that Ascher would
+drink them. As it turned out he preferred Perrier water. But that was
+not my fault. No restaurant in London could have supplied the delicate
+Italian white wines which Ascher drinks in his own house.
+
+We dawdled over dinner and I lengthened the business out as well as I
+could by smoking three cigarettes afterwards, very slowly. I did not
+want to reach the Parthenon in time for the musical display of new
+frocks. I could not suppose that Ascher was interested in seeing a
+number of young women parading along a platform through the middle of
+the theatre even though they wore the latest creations of Paris fancy
+in silks and lingerie. I knew that Mrs. Ascher would feel it her duty to
+make some sort of protest against the music of the orchestra.
+
+Gorman had told me the hour at which his play might be expected to
+begin and my object was to hit off the time exactly. Unfortunately I
+miscalculated and got to the theatre too soon. The last of the young
+women was waving a well-formed leg at the audience as we entered the
+box I had engaged. I realised that we should have to sit through a whole
+tune from the orchestra before the curtain went up again for Gorman’s
+play. I expected trouble and was pleasantly surprised when none came.
+Mrs. Ascher had a cold. I daresay that made her slightly deaf and
+mitigated the torture of the music.
+
+She sat forward in the box and looked round at the audience with some
+show of interest. The audience looked at her with very great interest.
+Her clothes that night were more startling than any I have ever seen her
+wear. A young man in the stalls stared at her for some time, and then,
+just when I thought he had fully taken her in, bowed to her. She turned
+to Ascher.
+
+“Who is that?” she said. “The man in the fifth row, three seats from the
+end, yes, there. He has a lady with him.”
+
+I saw the man distinctly, a well-set-up young fellow with a carefully
+waxed, fair moustache. The way his hair was brushed and something about
+the cut of his clothes made me sure that he was not an Englishman. The
+lady with him was, quite obviously, not a lady in the old-fashioned
+sense of the word. She seemed to me the kind of woman who would have
+no scruples about forming a temporary friendship with a man provided he
+would give her dinner, wine, and some sort of entertainment.
+
+Ascher fumbled for his pince-nez, which he carries attached to a black
+silk ribbon. He fixed them on his nose and took a good look at the young
+man.
+
+“Ah,” he said, “my nephew, Albrecht von Richter. You remember him. He
+dined with us two or three times when we were in Berlin in 1912. I did
+not know he was in London.”
+
+I somehow got the impression that Ascher was not particularly pleased
+to see his nephew Albrecht. Ascher was not looking very well. I had not
+seen him for some time, and I noticed even at dinner that his face was
+pale and drawn. In the theatre he seemed worse and I thought that the
+sudden appearance of his nephew had annoyed him. The young man whispered
+something to his companion and left his seat. The orchestra was still
+thrashing its way through its tune and there seemed no immediate
+prospect of the curtain going up.
+
+A few minutes later there was a tap at the door of our box and Von
+Richter came in. Mrs. Ascher held out her hand to him. He bent over it
+and kissed it with very pretty courtesy. He shook hands with Ascher who
+introduced him to me.
+
+“Captain von Richter--Sir James Digby.”
+
+Von Richter bowed profoundly. I nodded.
+
+“Have you been long in London?” said Ascher. “You did not let me know
+that you were here.”
+
+“I arrived here this afternoon,” said Von Richter, “only this afternoon,
+at five o’clock.”
+
+He spoke English remarkably well, with no more than a trace of foreign
+accent.
+
+“I’ve been in Ireland,” he said, “for six weeks.”
+
+“Indeed!” said Ascher. “In Ireland?”
+
+He was looking at his nephew without any expression of surprise,
+apparently without any suggestion of inquiry; but I could not help
+noticing that his fingers were fidgeting with the ribbon of his
+pince-nez. Ascher, as a rule, does not fidget. He has his nerves well
+under control.
+
+Mrs. Ascher was frankly excited when she heard that Von Richter had been
+in Ireland.
+
+“Tell me,” she said, “all about Ireland. About the people, what they are
+saying and thinking.”
+
+“We are all,” I said, “tremendously interested in Irish politics at
+present.”
+
+“Alas!” said Von Richter, “and I can tell you nothing. My business
+was dull. I saw very little. I was in Dublin and Belfast, not in the
+picturesque and beautiful parts of that charming country. I was buying
+horses. Oh, there is no secret about it. I was buying horses for my
+Government.”
+
+It is certainly possible to buy horses in Dublin and Belfast; but I was
+slightly surprised to hear that Von Richter had not been further afield.
+Any one who understood horse-buying in Ireland would have gone west to
+County Galway or south to County Cork.
+
+The band showed signs of getting to the end of its tune. Von Richter
+laid his hand on the door of the box.
+
+“Shall I see you to-morrow?” said Ascher.
+
+“Unfortunately,” said Von Richter, “I leave London early to-morrow
+morning. Back to Berlin and the drill yard.” He kissed Mrs. Ascher’s
+hand again. “We poor soldiers have to work hard.”
+
+“Perhaps,” I said, “you can join us at the Carlton after the play. Mr.
+and Mrs. Ascher have promised to have supper there with me. If you are
+not engaged------?”
+
+I glanced at the lady in the stalls. I was not going to ask her to
+supper.
+
+“I shall be delighted,” said Von Richter. “I have no engagement of any
+importance.”
+
+The lady in the stalls was evidently the sort of lady who could be
+dismissed without trouble.
+
+“Good,” I said, “we leave directly this play is over; but you may want
+to see the rest of the performance. The dancing is good I am told. Join
+us at the Carlton as soon as you’re tired of this entertainment.”
+
+Von Richter slipped away. The curtain went up almost immediately.
+
+Gorman came in to receive our congratulations as soon as his play was
+over. I asked him to join our supper party but he had an engagement of
+his own, a supper at the Savoy. I do not blame him. The lady who acted
+the principal part in his play had been very charming. She deserved any
+supper that Gorman could give her.
+
+We reached the Carlton very early, long before the rush of supper
+parties began. Von Richter joined us as we sat down at the table. He was
+an intelligent, agreeable young man with plenty of tact. He listened
+and was apparently interested while Mrs. Ascher poured out her hopes and
+fears for Ireland’s future. When she came, as she did in the end, to
+her own plan of buying guns for the Nationalist Volunteers Von Richter
+became almost enthusiastic.
+
+“You Americans,” he said. “You are always on the side of the oppressed.
+Alone among the nations of the earth you have a pat for the head of the
+bottom dog.”
+
+Von Richter’s English is not only correct, it is highly idiomatic.
+Mrs. Ascher bridled with pleasure. It pleased her to think that she was
+patting the bottom dog’s head. I did not remind her that in the group
+which she had just modelled the Spirit of Irish Poetry, for whose
+benefit she intended to buy guns, had got its foot firmly planted on the
+pig. That animal--and I still believed it to represent Belfast--was the
+one which a tender-hearted American ought to have patted.
+
+“Perhaps I may be able to assist you,” said Von Richter, “I know
+something of rifles. That is my trade, you know. If I can be of any
+help--there is a firm in Hamburg----”
+
+He was glancing at Ascher as he spoke. He wondered, I suppose, how far
+Ascher was committed to the scheme of arming Gorman’s constituents. But
+Ascher did not appear to be listening to him. He had allowed me to
+pour out some champagne for him and sat fingering the stem of his glass
+without drinking.
+
+No one was eating or drinking much. I proposed that we should leave the
+supper room and have our coffee in the hall outside. I felt slightly
+uncomfortable at the turn the conversation was taking. Mrs. Ascher was
+very much in earnest about Ireland. Von Richter, I suppose, really knew
+where to buy guns. I entirely agreed with Gorman that the distribution
+of firearms in Ireland was a most undesirable thing.
+
+“I always think,” I said, “that one of the things to do in London is
+to watch the people going in and out of the supper room here. There
+is nothing quite like it anywhere in the world. It is the best example
+there is of the pride of life,--_superbia vitae_.’ I forget the Greek
+words at the moment; but a bishop whom I happen to know once told
+me that they mean the exultation of living. You know the sort of
+thing--gems and glitter, colour, scent, beauty, stateliness, strength.
+‘The pride of heraldry, the pomp of power.’”
+
+I made way for Mrs. Ascher and followed her as she moved among the
+tables towards the staircase at the end of the room. Von Richter hooked
+his arm in Ascher’s and spoke a few sentences to him rapidly in German.
+He spoke without making any attempt to lower his voice. He evidently did
+not think it likely that any one within earshot, except Ascher, would
+understand German. We reached the hall and secured comfortable seats,
+from which we could watch the long procession of men and women which was
+already beginning to stream towards the supper room. I ordered coffee,
+brandy and tobacco, cigars for Von Richter and myself, a box of
+cigarettes for Mrs. Ascher. Ascher refused to smoke and did not touch
+his brandy.
+
+Our little party divided itself into halves. I do not know how it
+happened but Von Richter managed to get himself placed beside Mrs.
+Ascher in such a way that his back was partly turned to me. General
+conversation became impossible. Von Richter and Mrs. Ascher talked to
+each other eagerly and somehow seemed to get further away from Ascher
+and me. They were still discussing the landing of guns in Ireland--in
+Connaught, I think. After a while I could no longer hear what they said.
+Ascher began to talk to me.
+
+A party, two young women and one older one with three men behind them,
+passed us and ascended the staircase to the supper room.
+
+“There is something very fine,” said Ascher, “about the insolence
+of well-bred Englishwomen. You see how they walk and how they look,
+straight in front of them. It is not an easy thing to walk well across a
+long brightly lighted space with many eyes watching.”
+
+“I am not sure that I like Ascher’s word ‘insolence.’ I recognise the
+quality which he intended to describe, which is, I think, the peculiar
+possession of English women of a certain class; but I should not call it
+insolence.”
+
+Another party fluttered past us, a man and a woman.
+
+“There,” said Ascher, “is a French woman. She is Madame de Berthier, the
+wife of one of the Ministers in the last Government, a very prominent
+woman in Paris. I know her pretty well, but even if I did not know her
+I should recognise her as French. You see that she is conscious all the
+time that she is a woman and therefore that men’s eyes are on her. She
+does not escape from that consciousness. If a German lady were to pass
+us we should see that she also is sex conscious; but she would be
+aware that she is _only_ a woman, the inferior of the men with her. The
+Englishwoman does not admit, does not feel, that she has any superiors
+and she can walk as if she did not care whether people looked at her and
+admired her or not. Even the American woman cannot or does not do that.
+She wants to please and is always trying to please. The Englishwoman is
+not indifferent to admiration and she tries to please if she thinks it
+worth while. But she has learnt to bear herself as if she does not care;
+as if the world and all that is in it were hers of right.”
+
+Two men--one of them almost forty years of age, the other much
+younger--walked slowly up the hall looking to right and left of them.
+They failed to find the friends whom they sought. The elder spoke a few
+words and they sat down opposite to us, probably to wait until the rest
+of their party should arrive. “The men of your English upper classes,”
+ said Ascher, “are physically very splendid, the sons of the women we
+have been looking at are sure to be that. They possess a curious code of
+honour, very limited, very irrational, but certainly very fine as far as
+it goes. And I think they are probably true to it.”
+
+“I should have said,” I replied, “that the idea of honour had almost
+disappeared, what used to be called the honour of a gentleman.”
+
+“You do not really think that,” said Ascher. “Or perhaps you may. In a
+certain sense honour has disappeared among your upper classes. It is
+no longer displayed. To the outsider it is scarcely noticeable. It is
+covered up by affectation of cynicism, of greed, of selfishness. To pose
+as cynical and selfish is for the moment fashionable. But the sense of
+honour--of that singular arbitrary English honour--is behind the
+pose, is the reality. Look at those two men opposite us. They are
+probably--but perhaps I offend you in talking this way. You yourself
+belong to the same class as those men.”
+
+“You do not offend me in the least,” I said. “I’m not an Englishman for
+one thing. Gorman won’t let me call myself Irish, but I stick to it that
+I’m not English. Please go on with what you were saying.”
+
+“Those men,” said Ascher slowly, “are probably self indulgent. Their
+morality--sex morality--is most likely very low. We may suppose that
+they have many prejudices and very few ideas. They--I do not know those
+two personally; I take them simply as types of their class--they are
+wholly indifferent to, even a little contemptuous of art and literature.
+But if it happened that a duty claimed them, a duty which they
+recognised, they would not fail to obey the call. I can believe for
+instance that they would fight, would suffer the incredible hardships of
+a soldier’s life, would endure pain and would die, without any heroics
+or fuss or shouting. Men of my class and my training could not do those
+things without great effort. Those men would do them simply, naturally.”
+
+“Ascher,” I said, “I have a confession to make to you. I understand
+German. I happen to know the language, learned it as a boy.” Ascher
+looked at me curiously for a moment. I do not think that he was much
+surprised at what I said or that my confession made him uneasy.
+
+“Ah! You are thinking of what my nephew said to me as we left the supper
+room. You heard?”
+
+“Yes,” I said, “I felt like an eavesdropper, but I couldn’t help myself.
+He spoke quite loudly.”
+
+“And you understood?”
+
+As a matter of fact I had not understood at the moment. Von Richter said
+very little, and what little he said concerned Ascher’s business and had
+nothing to do with me. He told Ascher to move very cautiously, to risk
+as little as possible, to keep the money of his firm within reach for
+a few months. That, as well as I can remember, was all he said; but he
+repeated it. “Your money should be realisable at a moment’s notice.”
+
+“You understood?” said Ascher, patiently persistent.
+
+“I don’t understand yet,” I said, “but what you have just said about
+Englishmen being capable of fighting has put thoughts into my mind. Did
+Captain von Richter mean----?”
+
+“He meant to warn me,” said Ascher, “that what I have always looked
+forward to with horror and dread is imminent--a great war. You remember
+a talk we had long ago in New York; the night we were at the circus
+and saw the trapeze swingers. Well, if my nephew is right, the whole
+delicate balance of that performance is going to be upset. There will be
+a crash, inevitably.”
+
+“And you?”
+
+Ascher smiled faintly.
+
+“For me as well as for the others,” he said. “The fact that my affairs
+are greater than those of most men will only make my fall the worse.”
+
+“But you have been warned in time.”
+
+“I scarcely needed the warning. I was aware of the danger. My nephew
+only told me what I knew. His warning, coming from him, an officer who
+stands high in the German military service--it confirms my fears, no
+more.”
+
+“But you can save yourself and your business,” I said. “Knowing what is
+before you, you can--you need not lend money, accept obligations. You
+can gradually draw out of the stream of credit in which your fortune is
+involved, get into a backwater for a while. You have time enough. I am
+expressing myself all wrong; but you know what I mean.”
+
+“I know. And you think I ought to do that?”
+
+“There is no ‘ought’ about it,” I said. “It is the natural thing to do.”
+
+“You were a soldier once. I think you told me so.”
+
+I nodded.
+
+“Suppose,” said Ascher, “that this warning had come to you then, while
+you were still a soldier. Suppose that you had known what your brother
+officers did not know, or the men under you, that war was coming, you
+would have resigned your commission. Is it so?”
+
+“No,” I said, “I shouldn’t.”
+
+“It would have been, from my point of view--for I am a coward--it would
+have been the natural thing to do.”
+
+“It wouldn’t have been natural to me,” I said. “I couldn’t have done it.
+I don’t know why, but I couldn’t. I’m not professing to be particularly
+brave or chivalrous or anything of that sort. But to resign under those
+circumstances!---- Well, one doesn’t do it.”
+
+“Nor do I know why,” said Ascher, “but I cannot do it either. It is, you
+see, the same thing. I must, of course, go on; just as you would have
+felt yourself obliged to go on. The warning makes no difference.”
+
+The idea that a banker feels about his business as a soldier does about
+his profession was new to me. But I understood more or less what Ascher
+meant. If he had that kind of sense of obligation there was clearly no
+more to be said about the point.
+
+“And England?” I said. “Is she to be in it?”
+
+“Who knows? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I hope not. The disaster will be far
+less terrible if England is able to remain at peace.”
+
+“Tell me this,” I said, “or if I am impertinent, say so, and I shall not
+ask again. What was Captain von Richter doing in Ireland?”
+
+“I do not know. I can only guess.”
+
+“Not buying horses?”
+
+“I do not suppose he went there to buy horses though he may have bought
+some. He went to see, to learn, to understand. That is what I guess. I
+do not know.”
+
+“He has probably made up his mind,” I said, “that in the course of the
+next couple of months England will find herself with her hands full,
+so full with Irish affairs that it will be impossible for her to act
+elsewhere. A civil war in Ireland----”
+
+“My nephew,” said Ascher, “is not very clever. He may think that. He is,
+I believe, an excellent soldier. But if he were a banker I should not
+employ him to find out things for me. I should not rely on the reports
+he brought me. He lacks intelligence. Very likely he believes what you
+have said.”
+
+“But you don’t?”
+
+“No. I do not. I do not believe that Irish affairs will be in such a
+state that they will determine England’s action. You see I have the
+privilege of knowing Gorman.”
+
+“You don’t know Malcolmson,” I said, “and he’s a most important factor
+in the problem. He’s like your nephew, an excellent soldier, but lacking
+in intelligence. You don’t realise what Malcolmson is capable of.”
+
+“I do not know Colonel Malcolmson personally,” said Ascher. “I am right,
+am I not, in styling him _Colonel_ Malcolmson?”
+
+“Yes. He retired some years ago as Colonel of my old regiment”
+
+“Does a man retire from his loyalty,” said Ascher, “when he retires from
+his regiment? Will your friend give up his honour because he has given
+up his command? Will he aid the enemies of England?”
+
+“Of course,” I said, “if you put it to Malcolmson in that way---- He’s
+a positive fanatic on the subject of loyalty. But he doesn’t know, he
+doesn’t understand. He hasn’t had the warning that your nephew has just
+given you.”
+
+“You are an Irishman,” said Ascher, “and you ought to know your
+countrymen better than I do. But it will surprise me very much if
+England finds herself hampered by Ireland when the crisis comes.”
+
+It was Von Richter who broke up our party. He pleaded the necessity for
+early rising next morning as his excuse for going away before the hour
+at which the law obliges people to stop eating supper in restaurants.
+I wondered whether he and Mrs. Ascher had made a satisfactory plan
+for running guns into Galway. According to Ascher it did not make much
+difference whether the Irish peasants had rifles in their hands or
+not. It was soothing, though humbling, to feel that, guns or no guns,
+Volunteers or no Volunteers, Ireland would not matter in the least.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Gorman’s play achieved a second success. The Parthenon was crammed every
+night, and it was the play, not the pretty dresses or the dancing, which
+filled the house. Gorman made money, considerable sums of money. I know
+this because he called on me one morning in the middle of July and
+told me so. He did more. He offered me a very substantial and quite
+unanswerable proof that he felt rich.
+
+“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d like to pay you whatever you’ve spent
+on this new invention of Tim’s.”
+
+“I haven’t spent anything,” I said. “I’ve invested a little. I believe
+in Tim’s new cinematograph. I expect to get back every penny I’ve
+advanced to him and more.”
+
+This did not satisfy Gorman. He got out his cheque book and a fountain
+pen.
+
+“There was the hundred pounds you gave him to buy looking glasses,” he
+said. “You didn’t give him more than that, did you?”
+
+“Not so much,” I said. “The bill for those mirrors was only £98-7-6; and
+I made the man knock off the seven and sixpence as discount for cash.
+I’m learning to be a business man by degrees.”
+
+Gorman wrote down £98 on the cover of his cheque book.
+
+“And the hire of the hall?” he said. “What will that come to?”
+
+I had hired a small hall for the exhibition of Tim’s moving picture
+ghosts. I had invited about a hundred people to witness the show. Gorman
+himself, a brother of the inventor, had promised to preside over the
+gathering and to make a few introductory remarks on the progress of
+science or anything else that occurred to him as appropriate to such
+an occasion. But I could not possibly allow him to pay for the
+entertainment.
+
+“My dear Gorman,” I said, “it’s my party. The people are my friends. At
+least some of them are. The invitations have gone out in my name. You
+might just as well propose to pay for the tea I mean to offer them to
+drink as for the hire of the room in which I am going to receive them.”
+
+“Will £150 cover the whole show?” said Gorman.
+
+“If you insist on heaping insults on my head,” I said, “I shall retire
+into a nursing home and cancel all the invitations.”
+
+“You’re an obstinate man,” said Gorman.
+
+“Very. In matters of this kind.”
+
+“All the same,” said Gorman, “I’ll get rid of that money. I don’t
+consider it’s mine. I ought to have paid for Tim, and I would, only that
+I hadn’t a penny at the time.”
+
+“If you like to give £150 to a charity,” I said, “that’s your affair.”
+
+“That,” said Gorman, “would be waste. I rather think I’ll give a party
+myself.”
+
+He slipped his cheque book back into his pocket.
+
+“Invite me to meet the lady who acts in your play,” I said.
+
+“Miss Gibson?” said Gorman. “Right. Who else shall we have?”
+
+“Why have anybody else?”
+
+“There are difficulties,” said Gorman, “about the rest of the party. You
+wouldn’t care to meet my friends.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I would.”
+
+“No, you wouldn’t. I know you. You don’t consider Irish Nationalists fit
+to associate with. We’re not respectable.”
+
+That was putting it too strongly; but it is a fact that I do not know,
+or particularly want to know, any of Gorman’s political associates.
+
+“And your friends,” said Gorman, “wouldn’t know me.”
+
+Again Gorman was guilty of over-statement; but my friends are, for the
+most part, of conservative and slightly military tastes. They would not
+get on well with Gorman.
+
+“I’ll think it over,” said Gorman, “and let you know.”
+
+Two days later I got my invitation. Gorman, in the excitement of sudden
+great possessions, had devised an expensive kind of party. The invited
+guests were Mr. and Mrs. Ascher, Miss Gibson, Tim and myself. We were
+to voyage off from Southampton in a motor yacht, hired by Gorman, to
+see the Naval Review at Spithead. We were to start at ten o’clock from
+Waterloo station in a saloon carriage reserved for our party.
+
+“We have to be back in time for Miss Gibson to go to the theatre,”
+ Gorman wrote, “so we must start early. I believe the show is to be
+worth seeing. British Navy at its best. King there. Royal salutes from
+Dreadnoughts. Rank, fashion and beauty in abundance.”
+
+The week was to be one of exciting festivities. Gorman had fixed his
+party for the day before my exhibition of Tim’s new invention.
+
+I was shaving--shortly after eight o’clock on the morning of Gorman’s
+party--when my servant came into my room.
+
+“I beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but there’s a young man waiting in the
+hall, says that he wants to see you.”
+
+It seemed odd that anyone should want to see me at that hour.
+
+“Who is he?” I said.
+
+“Don’t know, sir. Gives his name as Gorman. But he’s not our Mr.
+Gorman.”
+
+“It may be Tim,” I said. “Does he look as if he had an artistic soul?”
+
+“Couldn’t say, sir. Might have, sir. Artists is very various. Doesn’t
+seem to me, sir, as if his man looked after his clothes proper.”
+
+“Must be Tim,” I said. “Show him in.”
+
+“In here, sir?”
+
+“Yes. And have an extra kidney cooked for breakfast.”
+
+Tim came in very shyly and sat down on a chair near the door. He
+certainly did not look as if his clothes had been properly cared for.
+He was wearing the blue suit which I suspected was the best he owned.
+It was even more crumpled and worse creased than when I saw it down in
+Hertfordshire.
+
+“I hope you don’t mind my coming here,” he said. “I didn’t like to go to
+Mr. Ascher, and I was afraid to go to Michael. He’d have been angry with
+me.”
+
+“Has anything gone wrong with your apparatus? Smashed a mirror?”
+
+Tim brightened up at the mention of his apparatus.
+
+“Oh, no,” he said. “That’s all right. In fact I’ve been able to improve
+it greatly. You remember the trouble I had with the refraction from
+the second prism. The adjustment of the angles---- The way the light
+fell----”
+
+I could not, especially before breakfast, argue about prisms.
+
+“If your machinery’s all right,” I said, “what’s the matter with you?”
+
+“It’s this party of Michael’s,” he said. “I forgot all about it till
+yesterday afternoon.”
+
+“Well, you remembered it then. If you’d forgotten it till this afternoon
+it would have been a much more serious matter.”
+
+“But,” said Tim, “Michael told me to get some new clothes. He said he’d
+pay for them, which was very kind of him. But when I got up to London
+the shops were shut. I hurried as much as I could, but there were one or
+two things I had to do before I started. And now I’m afraid Michael will
+be angry. He said most particularly that I must be well dressed because
+there are ladies coming.”
+
+“Stand up,” I said, “and let me have a look at you.”
+
+Poor Tim stood up, looking as if he expected me to box his ears. There
+was no disguising the fact that his costume fell some way short of the
+standard maintained by Cowes yachtsmen.
+
+Tim surveyed himself with a rueful air. He was certainly aware of the
+condition of his clothes.
+
+“If I could even have got a ready made suit,” he said, “it might have
+fitted. But I couldn’t do that. I didn’t get to London till nearly ten
+o’clock. There was a train at four. I wish now that I’d caught it. It
+was only a few minutes after three when I remembered about the party and
+I might have caught that train. But I didn’t want to leave just then.
+There were some things that I had to do. Perhaps now I’d better not go
+to the party. Michael will be angry if I don’t; but I expect he’ll be
+angrier if I go in these clothes. I think I’d better not go at all.”
+
+He looked at me wistfully. He was hoping, I am sure, that I might decide
+that he was too disreputable to appear.
+
+“No,” I said, “you can’t get out of it that way. You’ll have to come.”
+
+“But can I? You know better than I do. I did brush my trousers a lot
+this morning--really. I brushed them for quite half an hour; but there
+are some marks----”
+
+He held out his right leg and looked at it hopelessly.
+
+“Stains, I suppose,” he said.
+
+“You’d be better,” I said, “if you had a tie.”
+
+Tim put his hand up to his neck and felt about helplessly.
+
+“I must have forgotten to put it on,” he said. “I have one, I know. But
+it’s very hard to remember ties. They are such small things.”
+
+“Take one of mine,” I said, “and put it on before you forget again.”
+
+“Anything else?” said Tim.
+
+“I don’t think,” I said, “that there’s anything else we can do. My
+clothes wouldn’t fit you. I might lend you a pair of boots but I doubt
+if you’d get them on. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll get yours
+cleaned. Take them off.”
+
+I do not think that my servant liked cleaning Tim’s boots. But he did it
+and I daresay it was good for him.
+
+I was a little anxious about the meeting between Mrs. Ascher and Tim.
+When they parted in New York she was deeply vexed with him and I could
+not think it likely that a woman as devout as she is would readily
+forgive a man who had been guilty of blasphemy. On the other hand she
+had very graciously accepted my invitation to be present when the new
+invention was shown off. She might, of course, only wish to hear
+the other Gorman making a speech; but she might have forgotten Tim’s
+offence, or changed her mind about its heinousness. In any case Tim’s
+clothes would make no difference to her. Miss Gibson might think less of
+him for being shabby. But Mrs. Ascher was quite likely to prefer him in
+rags. Many people regard unkemptness as a sign of genius; which is, I
+daresay, the reason why poets seldom wash their necks.
+
+I need not have troubled myself about the matter. Mrs. Ascher took no
+notice of Tim. She was sitting in the saloon carriage when we reached
+the station and was surrounded with newspapers. She greeted me with
+effusion.
+
+“Isn’t it glorious?” she said. “Splendid. We have shown them that we
+too can do daring things, even the sort of things in which they take a
+special pride. The practical things which the world boasts of, which we
+artists are not supposed to be able to do at all.”
+
+“I haven’t seen a paper this morning,” I said. “Has any one assassinated
+the Prime Minister?”
+
+“Look!” she said.
+
+She held out one of the newspapers towards me. I did not have to take it
+in my hand to see the news. I could have read the headlines from the far
+side of the platform.
+
+“Steam yacht lands guns on Galway Coast. National Volunteers muster to
+receive Arms. Coastguards Paralysed. Police Helpless. Crushing Reply to
+Ulster Lawlessness.”
+
+That, of course, was a Liberal paper. There was a Unionist paper open on
+the floor at my feet. Its statement of the facts was almost identical;
+but its interpretation was different Instead of regarding the incident
+as a lesson in loyalty to Malcolmson it said:
+
+“Act of Rebellion in Connaught. Civil War Breaks Out.”
+
+“In the broad light of day,” said Mrs. Ascher, “at noon. Without an
+attempt at concealment. Now, now at last, Ireland has asserted herself,
+has shown that the idealism of the artist is a match for the sordid
+materialism of the worshippers of efficiency.”
+
+I looked round for Gorman. I wanted to see how he was taking the news.
+He was on the platform, talking seriously, I fear sternly, to Tim; no
+doubt about his clothes. Ascher was standing near them; but was not, I
+think, listening to Gorman. He had the air of patient politeness which
+is common with him on pleasure parties and excursions of all kinds.
+
+“I can’t help hoping,” I said, “that they haven’t got any ammunition. It
+sounds an unkind thing to say, but--I’m not much of a patriot, I know,
+but I’ve just enough love of country in me to dislike the idea of
+Irishmen shooting each other.”
+
+“Oh,” said Mrs. Ascher, “there would be no risk of that if--if men like
+you--the natural leaders--would place yourselves at the head of the
+people. Think--think----”
+
+I did think. The more I thought the less inclined I felt to agree with
+Mrs. Ascher. It seemed to me that if I took to paralysing coastguards
+and reducing policemen to helplessness there would be considerably more
+risk of shooting than if I stayed quietly in London. The proper leaders
+of the people--proper though perhaps not natural--are the politicians.
+The only risk of real trouble in Ireland rose from the fact that men
+like Malcolmson--natural leaders--had done what Mrs. Ascher wanted me to
+do, put themselves at the head of the people. If they had been content
+to leave the question of Home Rule to the politicians it could have been
+settled quietly. Gorman, for instance, has an instinct for stopping in
+time. Malcolmson and men like him confuse games with real affairs.
+I might turn out to be just as bad as Malcolmson if I took to placing
+myself at the head of the people. Besides I do not like the people.
+
+Gorman came in with Miss Gibson and I was introduced to her. She seemed
+a nice, quiet little girl, and smiled rather shyly as we shook hands.
+She sat down beside Mrs. Ascher and refused the cigarette which was
+offered her. She did not in the least correspond to my idea of what
+a leading lady in a popular play should be. However I had not much
+opportunity just then of forming an opinion of her. Gorman, having
+settled the two ladies, took Ascher and me to the far end of the
+carriage. The train started.
+
+“That’s a damned silly performance,” said Gorman, “landing those guns in
+Galway.”
+
+“I should have thought,” I said, “that you’d have been pleased. You were
+talking to me the other day about the necessity for pulling off some
+_coup_ of a striking and theatrical kind by way of diverting the sympathy
+of the English people from Ulster.”
+
+“But this,” said Gorman, “is a totally different thing. I happen to
+know what I’m talking about. The fellows who’ve got these guns are wild,
+irresponsible, unpractical fools. They’ve been giving us trouble for
+years, far more trouble than all the Unionist party put together.
+They don’t understand politics in the least. They’ve no sense. They’re
+like--like----” he looked round for some comparison. “In some ways
+they’re rather like Tim.”
+
+“Dreamers,” I said.
+
+“Exactly,” said Gorman. “They ought to be writing poetry.”
+
+“Lofty souls,” I said, “idealists. Just exactly what Mrs. Ascher thinks
+you are.”
+
+“Take the case of Tim,” said Gorman. “You’ll hardly believe it but--just
+look at his clothes, will you?”
+
+Tim was standing by himself in the middle of the carriage. He looked
+forlorn. He was too shy, I imagine, to sit down beside Mrs. Ascher or
+Miss Gibson, and too much afraid of his brother to join our group. We
+had every opportunity of studying his clothes.
+
+“And I told him to buy a new suit,” said Gorman.
+
+“That,” I said, “is just the kind of man that Mrs. Ascher believes in.
+She was saying to me a few minutes ago that there is nothing more sordid
+and detestable than the worship of efficiency in practical matters.”
+
+The mention of Mrs. Ascher’s name recalled Gorman to a sense of his
+duties as a host. The two ladies were not getting on very well together.
+I imagine that Mrs. Ascher was too much excited by her Irish news to
+care for talking about the Naval Review we were going to see, and that
+was a topic which would inevitably suggest itself to Miss Gibson. Miss
+Gibson, though anxious to be polite, was not likely to know or care
+anything about Ireland. Gorman left us and joined them.
+
+“Well,” I said to Ascher, “what do you think of this performance in
+Galway?”
+
+“Have you read the newspapers?” he said.
+
+“The headlines,” I replied. “I couldn’t very well help reading them.”
+
+Ascher stepped across the carriage and picked up one of the papers from
+the floor. It was the one which declared that civil war had broken out
+in Ireland.
+
+“I wish,” he said, “that I knew exactly the measure of my nephew’s
+intelligence.”
+
+“Captain von Richter?” I said.
+
+“Yes. He may--almost anything is possible with a man like him. He may
+believe that.”
+
+Ascher pointed to the words, “Civil War.”
+
+“I don’t think you need worry about that,” I said. “Whatever Malcolmson
+and his lot may do those fellows in Galway won’t fight. Gorman and the
+priests will stop them. You can always count on the politicians and the
+priests. They’ll prevent anything really serious. The Connaught Celt
+will never start a civil war; at least not unless he gives up his
+religion and takes to hanging Members of Parliament. He’s a splendid
+fighting man--none better--but he won’t run the risk of losing his soul
+for the sake of a battle. He must be told he ought to fight by some
+one whose authority he recognises. That’s where we’re safe. All the
+authorities are against violence.”
+
+“I have no doubt you are right,” said Ascher. “No civil war will be
+started in the way these papers suggest. I am not anxious about that. It
+is impossible. But I am anxious lest it should be believed possible by
+men who do not understand. My nephew, for instance. He will not know
+what you know. He may believe--and those over him in Berlin--they will
+not understand. They may think that the men in Ireland who have got
+the guns will use them. They may even have had something to do with
+supplying the guns. That is where the danger lies. A miscalculation--not
+in Ireland--but elsewhere.”
+
+I did not like to ask whether Mrs. Ascher’s enthusiasm for the cause of
+Ireland had led her to finance the Galway gun-running. Nor did I care to
+question Ascher about his suggestion that Von Richter had something to
+do with buying and shipping that cargo or the other which was landed
+at Larne. Ascher seemed disinclined to discuss the matter further. We
+joined Gorman and the two ladies at the far end of the carriage, picking
+up Tim on our way.
+
+Gorman was sitting beside Miss Gibson. He was leaning forward, pointing
+with outstretched hand to the country through which the train was
+passing.
+
+“This is the playground of England,” he said. “Here the rich and idle
+build themselves beautiful houses, plant delightful gardens, live
+surrounded by a parasitic class, servants, ministers to luxury; try to
+shut out, succeed to a great extent in shutting out all sense and memory
+of real things, of that England where the world’s work is done, the
+England which lies in the smoky hinterland.” He waved his hand with a
+comprehensive gesture towards the north. “Far from all the prettinesses
+of glorified villadom.”
+
+“I do think,” said Miss Gibson, “that Surrey and Hampshire are sweetly
+pretty.”
+
+Miss Gibson may be regarded, I suppose, as one of England’s toys. It was
+only natural that she should appreciate the playground. It was, so she
+thought, a district very well suited to the enjoyment of life. She told
+us how she had driven, in the motor of a wealthy member of Parliament,
+through the New Forest. From time to time she had spent week-ends
+at various well-appointed villas in different parts of the South of
+England, and, as a nice-minded young woman should, had enjoyed these
+holidays of hers. She frankly preferred the playground to that other,
+more “real” England which Gorman contrasted with it, the England of the
+midlands, where the toilers dwelt, in an atmosphere thick with smuts.
+
+Mrs. Ascher, of course, took quite a different view. It filled her
+with sadness to think that a small number of people should play amid
+beautiful surroundings while a great number--she dwelt particularly on
+the case of women who made chains--should live hard lives in hideous
+places. Mrs. Ascher is more emotional than intellectual. The necessity
+for consistency in a philosophy of life troubles her very little. As a
+devout worshipper of art she ought to have realised that her goddess can
+only be fitly honoured by people wealthy enough to buy leisure, that the
+toiling millions want bread much more than they want beauty. I have
+no quarrel with the description of the life of Birmingham as more
+“real”--both Gorman and Mrs. Ascher kept using the word--than the life
+of the Isle of Wight. Nor should I want to argue with any one who said
+that beauty and art are the only true realities, and that the struggle
+of the manufacturing classes for wealth is a striving after wind. But I
+felt slightly irritated with Mrs. Ascher for not seeing that she cannot
+have it both ways.
+
+Gorman, of course, was simply trying to be agreeable. I pointed
+out--when I succeeded in seizing a place in the conversation--that if
+Gorman’s theory were applied to Ireland, Belfast would come out as a
+reality while Cork, Limerick, and other places like them would be as
+despicable as Dorsetshire.
+
+“Wicklow,” I said, “is the playground of Ireland, and it returns nothing
+but Nationalist members to Parliament. You ought not to go back on your
+own side, Gorman.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher shuddered at the mention of Belfast and would not admit that
+it could be as “real” as Manchester or Leeds.
+
+Miss Gibson broke in with a reminiscence of her own. She told us that
+she had been in Belfast once with a touring company, and thought it was
+duller on Sunday than any other city in the British Isles.
+
+Gorman, after winking at me, appealed to Ascher on the subject of
+Belfast’s prosperity. In his opinion the apparent wealth of that city is
+built up on an insecure foundation of credit. There is no solidity about
+it. The farmers of the south and west of Ireland, on the other hand,
+have real wealth, actual savings, stored up in the Post Office Banks, or
+placed on deposit, in other banks, or hoarded in stockings.
+
+Ascher was most unwilling to join in the discussion. He noticed, as I
+did, that Miss Gibson’s attention was wandering. In the end, goaded by
+Gorman, he said that someone ought to teach the Irish farmers to invest
+their savings in high class international stocks and bonds. He added
+that £1 notes kept in drawers and desks are not wealth but merely frozen
+potentialities of credit.
+
+After that, conversation, as might be expected, became impossible for
+some time, although Ascher apologised humbly.
+
+Gorman restored us to cheerfulness by opening a parcel and handing
+round two enormous boxes of chocolates. One box was settled on the seat
+between Miss Gibson and Tim. They ate with healthy appetites and obvious
+delight. When we reached Southampton that box was nearly empty and
+neither of them seemed any the worse. The other box lay on Mrs. Ascher’s
+knee. She and I and Gorman did our best, but we did not get through the
+top layer. Ascher only took one small chocolate and, when he thought no
+one was looking, dropped it out of the window.
+
+The motor yacht which Gorman had hired for us turned out to be a swift
+and well-found ship with a small cabin and possibilities of comfort in a
+large cockpit aft. We sped down Southampton Water, one of a whole fleet
+of pleasure vessels large and small. A racing cutter stooped under the
+pressure of a fresh westerly breeze, to leeward of us. We slipped close
+past a little brown-sailed yawl, steered by a man in white flannels.
+Two laughing girls in bright red caps sat on the coach-roof cabin top.
+An arrogant white steam yacht, flying the ensign of the Royal Yacht
+Squadron, sliced her silent way through the water behind us. Shabby
+boats with stained, discoloured sails and chipped paint bore large
+parties seaward. The stiff front of Netley Hospital shone white in the
+sun. The conical buoy at the entrance of Hamley river bent its head
+shorewards as the strong tide swept past it. From the low point beneath
+Calshott Castle a flying-machine rose suddenly, circled round in a wide
+sweep and then sped swiftly eastwards towards Spithead. In the
+roads off Cowes we could discern many yachts at anchor. One of the
+Hamburg-American lines crept cautiously up the Solent. A belated
+cruiser, four-funneled, black and grim, on her way to join the Fleet,
+followed the huge German steamer. The waters of the Solent tumbled
+in irregular white-topped waves, tide and wind opposed to each other,
+struggling for mastery.
+
+Gorman hauled luncheon baskets from the cabin. He set Tim and me to open
+them. The look of a ham which Tim thoughtlessly asked her to hold while
+he unpacked the dish belonging to it, finished Mrs. Ascher. Our boat was
+rolling quite appreciably. She retired to the cabin. Even the glass of
+champagne with which Gorman hurriedly provided her failed to enable her
+to eat. Miss Gibson fortunately was unaffected. She ate everything that
+was offered to her and in the course of the afternoon finished Mrs.
+Ascher’s box of chocolates.
+
+Before we stopped eating we caught our first sight of the Fleet. The
+ships lay in three long, straight lines off Spithead; battleships,
+cruisers, lean destroyers, submarines. A hydroplane raced past us,
+flinging showers of spray and foam high on each side of her. Two naval
+aeroplanes, their canoe-shaped floats plainly visible, hovered and
+circled overhead. Pleasure-boats were everywhere, moving in and out
+among the motionless ironclads. A handsome barque-rigged yacht, some
+very rich man’s summer home, came slowly towards us, her sails furled,
+using auxiliary steam power.
+
+We swiftly approached the Fleet. Already the vast bulk of the battleships
+oppressed our spirits. We looked up from the cockpit of our dancing
+pleasure boat and saw the huge misshapen iron monsters towering over us,
+minatory, terrible. We swept in and out, across the sharp bows, under
+the gloomy sterns of the ships of the first line. Ascher gazed at them.
+His eyes were full of sorrow, sorrow and a patient resignation.
+
+“Your protection,” I said. “Because those ships are there, because
+they are black and strong, stronger than any other ships, because men
+everywhere are afraid of them, because this navy of England’s is great,
+your net of commerce and credit can trawl across the world and gather
+wealth.”
+
+“Protection,” said Ascher. “Protection and menace. This Navy is only one
+of the world’s guarantees of peace, of peace guaranteed by fear. It is
+there as you say, and the German Army is there; that men may fear them
+and peace be thus made sure. But can peace be secured through fear? Will
+not these navies and armies some day fulfil the end of their being, rend
+all our nets as they rush across the seas and desolate the lands? They
+are more menace than protection.”
+
+Gorman was standing with his back to us. His elbows were resting on the
+slide of the roof above the steps which led to the cabin. His chin was
+on his hands and he was staring at the ships. Suddenly he turned.
+
+“The world’s great delusion,” he said. “Hypnotised by the governing
+classes the workers are everywhere bearing intolerable burdens in order
+to provide statesmen and kings with these dangerous toys. Men toil, and
+the fruits of their toil are taken from them to be squandered on vast
+engines whose sole use is to destroy utterly in one awful moment what we
+have spent the painful effort of ages in building up.”
+
+He swept his hand out towards the great ship under whose shadow we were
+passing.
+
+“Was there ever plainer proof,” he said, “that men are mad?”
+
+Miss Gibson sat beside me. While Ascher spoke and while Gorman spoke,
+she held my glasses in her hand and watched the ships through them.
+She neither heard nor heeded the things they said. At last she laid
+the glasses on my knee and began to recite Kipling’s “Recessional.” She
+spoke low at first. Gradually her voice grew stronger, and a note of
+passion, tense and restrained, came into it. She is more than a charming
+woman. She has a great actress’ capacity for emotion.
+
+We moved through waters consecrate, and she expressed for us the spirit
+which hovered over them. Here English guns raked the ships of Spain.
+Here, staggering homewards, shot-riddled, came the frigates and
+privateers of later centuries, their shattered prizes under their lee.
+Through these waters men have sailed away to fight and conquer and rule
+in India and in many distant lands. Back through these waters, some of
+them have come again, generation after generation of them, their duty
+done, their adventuring over, asking no more than to lay their bones at
+last in quiet churchyards, under the shadow of the cross, near the grey
+walls of some English church.
+
+Miss Gibson’s voice, resonant, passionate, devout, lingered on the last
+syllables of the poem.
+
+“The imperial idea,” I said. “After all, Gorman, it has its greatness.”
+
+Then Tim spoke, shyly, eagerly.
+
+“I wonder,” he said, “if they would let us go on board one of the
+submarines. I should like to see--oh, there are a lot of things I
+should like to see in any of those ships. They must be nearly perfect, I
+mean mechanically. The steering gear, for instance----”
+
+His voice trailed off into silence.
+
+“What a pity,” said Miss Gibson, “that the King can’t be here. I suppose
+now there’ll be no royal salutes fired, and we shan’t see his yacht.”
+
+“All Mr. Gorman’s fault,” I said. “If he had not nagged on in the way he
+has about Home Rule, the King would be here with the rest of us. As
+it is, he has to stay in London while politicians abuse each other in
+Buckingham Palace.”
+
+“That conference,” said Gorman, “is an unconstitutional manoeuvre of the
+Tory party.”
+
+“What’s it all about?” said Miss Gibson.
+
+“The dispute at present,” I said, “centres round two parishes in County
+Tyrone, and because of them a public holiday is being spoiled. All Mr.
+Gorman’s fault.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+It must have been the novelty of the thing which brought people
+flocking to the hall I hired for the exhibition of Tim Gorman’s new
+cinematograph. I was aware, in a vague way, that my invitations had been
+very generally accepted; but I made no list of my expected guests, and
+I did not for a moment suppose that half the people who said they were
+coming would actually arrive. I have some experience of social life and
+I have always found that it is far easier to accept invitations than to
+invent plausible excuses for refusing them. I do not consider that I
+am in any way bound by my acceptance in most cases. Dinners are
+exceptional. It is not fair to say that you will dine at a house
+unless you really mean to do it. But the givers of miscellaneous
+entertainments, of dances, receptions, private concerts and such things
+are best dealt with by accepting their invitations and then consulting
+one’s own convenience. That is what I thought people were doing to me.
+
+I had no reason to expect any other treatment. I was not offering food
+or wine in large quantities or of fine kind. I was not a prominent
+figure in London society. My party was of no importance from a political
+or a financial point of view and I could scarcely expect the scientific
+world to take a cinematograph seriously. Yet I found myself the host of
+a number of very distinguished guests, many of whom I did not even know
+by sight.
+
+Three Cabinet Ministers arrived, looking, as men immersed in great
+affairs ought to look, slightly absent-minded and rather surprised to
+find themselves where they were. They were Cabinet Ministers of a minor
+kind, not men in the first flight. I owed their presence to Gorman’s
+exertions in the House of Commons. He told me that he intended to
+interest the Government in Tim’s invention on the ground that it
+promised an opportunity of popularising and improving national
+education. I had a seat kept for Ascher beside the Cabinet Ministers. I
+did not suppose that he would particularly want to talk to them, but I
+was sure that they would like to spend the evening in the company of one
+of our greatest financiers.
+
+No less than five members of the Royal Society came, bringing their
+wives and a numerous flock of daughters. They were men of high
+scientific attainments. One of them was engaged in some experiments with
+pigs, experiments which were supposed to lead to important discoveries
+in the science of eugenics. I cannot even imagine why he came to see
+a cinematograph. Another of them had written a book to expound a new
+theory of crystallisation. I have never studied crystallisation, but I
+believe it is a process by which particles of solid matter, temporarily
+separated by some liquid medium, draw together and coalesce. My
+scientists and their families afforded a good example of the process.
+They arrived at different times, went at first to different parts of the
+hall, got mixed up with all sorts of other people, but long before the
+entertainment began they had drawn together and formed a solid block
+among my guests.
+
+Two Royal Academicians, one of them a well-known portrait painter,
+arrived a little late. They were men whom I knew pretty well and liked.
+They have urbane and pleasant manners, and are refreshingly free from
+affectations and fads. In my opinion they both paint very good pictures.
+I introduced them to Mrs. Ascher; but this, as I should have known if
+I had stopped to think, was a mistake. Mrs. Ascher regards the Royal
+Academy as the home of an artistic Antichrist and Academicians as the
+deadliest foes of art. Not even the suave courtesy of my two friends
+saved them from the unpleasant experience of hearing the truth about
+themselves. Mrs. Ascher was not, of course, bluntly rude to them, and
+did not speak with offensive directness. She poked the truth at them
+edgeways, the truth that is, as she saw it.
+
+The church did not support me very well. I distinctly remember inviting
+six bishops. Only one came and he was Irish. However, he wore silk
+stockings and a violet coat of aggressively ecclesiastical cut, so he
+looked quite as well as if he had had a seat in the House of Lords. I
+introduced him to the eugenic pig breeder, but they did not seem to hit
+it off together. After a few remarks, probably about the weather, they
+separated. The eugenist is rather a shaggy man to look at. That may
+have prejudiced the bishop against him. I imagine that most bishops feel
+shagginess to be embarrassing.
+
+Lady Kingscourt brought a large party, chiefly women in very splendid
+attire. There were, I think, eight of them altogether, and they had only
+one man with them, a subaltern in a Guards regiment. He slipped away
+almost at once, telling me as he passed out, that he wanted to telephone
+to a friend and that he would be back in a few minutes. I do not think
+he came back at all. He probably went to his club. I do not know what
+was said to him the next day by the ladies he deserted. I thanked Lady
+Kingscourt for coming. I really think it was very good of her to come.
+She had fair warning that Gorman was going to make a speech and she knew
+that all Gorman’s political friends, probably Gorman himself, regarded
+her as an abandoned woman who played fast and loose with the morals of
+military officers and undermined their naturally enthusiastic loyalty to
+Liberal Governments. By way of acknowledgment of my quite sincere thanks
+Lady Kingscourt squeezed my hand.
+
+“I always make a point,” she said, “of encouraging any movement for the
+good of the masses. They are such deserving dear things, aren’t they?”
+
+It is impossible to guess at what Lady Kingscourt thought we were doing;
+but her heart was warm and kind. If ever class hatred comes to play
+an important part in English life it will not be the fault of the
+aristocracy. I doubt whether any labourer would sacrifice his evening’s
+leisure to encourage a movement for the good of Lady Kingscourt. Nor
+would the kindliest Socialist speak of women of the upper classes as
+“deserving dear things.” The nicest term used by progressive people to
+describe these ladies is “parasites,” and they often, as we had just
+been learning, call them worse names than that.
+
+Lady Kingscourt and her party represented the highest layer of
+fashionable life. I had, besides her, a large number of women of
+slightly dimmer glory who were yet quite as finely dressed as Lady
+Kingscourt, and were, I am sure, equally eager for the good of the
+masses. My hall, not a very large one, was well filled before nine
+o’clock. I had every reason to congratulate myself on the success of my
+party, so far. It remained to be seen whether Gorman would make a good
+speech and whether Tim’s ghosts would exhibit themselves satisfactorily.
+Between the speech and the ghosts my guests would have an opportunity
+of drinking tea and champagne cup, handed round by twelve nice looking
+girls wearing black and white dresses, hired out to me (both the girls
+and the dresses) for the evening by the firm which had undertaken to
+manage the refreshments.
+
+According to my time table, Gorman ought to have begun his speech at nine
+o’clock. Instead of doing so he came to me and whispered that he would
+give late-comers ten minutes law.
+
+“Nothing more unpleasant for an audience,” he said, “than having their
+toes trodden on by people who come in late, just as they are beginning
+to get interested in what is going on.”
+
+Nothing, I imagine, is more unpleasant for a speaker than to have his
+audience looking round to see who the newcomers are, just as he is
+beginning to warm to his subject. I gathered from his anxiety about the
+audience, that Gorman intended to make a great effort. I looked forward
+to his speech. Gorman, at his best, is really a very fine speaker.
+
+At ten minutes past nine Gorman mounted the platform, the narrow
+strip of platform left for him in front of the pits occupied by Tim’s
+apparatus. The clatter of general conversation ceased, and the Cabinet
+Ministers, sitting in the front row with Ascher, clapped their hands.
+The rest of the audience, realising that applause was desirable, also
+clapped their hands. Gorman bowed and smiled.
+
+Then my elbow was jerked sharply. I looked round and saw Jack Heneage.
+Jack is a nice boy, the son of an old friend of mine. I have known him
+ever since he first went to school. About six months ago his father
+and I between us secured a very nice appointment for the boy, a sort
+of private secretaryship or something of that sort. I understood at the
+time that Jack’s business was to run messages for an important man’s
+wife; and that the appointment would lead on to something good in the
+political world. I was surprised to see him standing beside me for I had
+not asked him to my party and he was not wearing evening clothes. Jack
+would never go anywhere, willingly, unless he were properly dressed.
+
+“Sit down,” I said, “and don’t talk. Mr. Gorman is just going to make a
+speech.”
+
+“Is Ascher here?” said Jack.
+
+“He is; in the front row.”
+
+“Thank God. I’ve been chasing him all over London. Office, club, private
+house, tearing round in a taxi for hours. My Chief wants him.”
+
+“Your chief can’t get him now,” I said. “Not for half an hour, perhaps
+three quarters. Gorman isn’t likely to stop under three quarters. Till
+he does you can’t get Ascher.”
+
+“I must,” said Jack. “I simply must. It’s--it’s frightfully important.”
+
+Gorman began his speech. I did not hear what he said because I was
+trying to restrain Jack Heneage, but the audience laughed, so I suppose
+he began with a joke. Jack shook off my hold on his arm and walked right
+up to the front of the hall. I saw Gorman scowling at him but Jack did
+not seem to mind that in the least. He handed a note to Ascher. Gorman
+said something about the very distinguished audience before him, a
+remark plainly intended to fill in the time while Jack and Ascher were
+finishing their business. Ascher read the note, rose from his seat and
+came towards me. Everybody looked at him and at Jack who was following
+him. Gorman repeated what he had said about the distinguished audience.
+
+“I find,” Ascher said to me, “that I am obliged to leave you. I am very
+sorry.”
+
+“I have a taxi outside,” said Jack, pushing Ascher towards the door.
+
+Ascher lingered, looking at me wistfully. “I may not be able to return,”
+ he said. “If I cannot will you bring my wife home? The car will be here
+and can drive you back to your rooms afterwards.”
+
+I was a little surprised at the request. Mrs. Ascher is, I should think,
+pretty well able to take care of herself.
+
+“I think we ought to start, sir,” said Jack Heneage, taking Ascher by
+the arm.
+
+“Perhaps,” said Ascher to me, “if you are kind enough to see my wife
+home you will wait in my house till I get back. I may have something to
+say to you. It is possible that I shall reach the house before you do,
+but I may be late. I do not know. Will you wait for me?”
+
+“Won’t you come on, sir?” said Jack.
+
+I noticed, then, that Jack was excited and nervous. I do not ever
+remember having seen him excited or nervous before, not even when he
+went in second wicket down in the Eton and Harrow match with seventy
+runs to make and an hour left to play. I held Ascher’s coat for him and
+watched them get into the taxi together.
+
+When I got back to the hall Gorman was well into his speech and had
+captured the attention of his audience. I was able to pick up the thread
+of what he was saying almost at once. He was discoursing on the arts of
+peace, contrasting them with the arts of war. In past ages, so Gorman
+said, the human intellect had occupied itself mainly in devising means
+for destroying life and had been indifferent to the task of preserving
+it. Gunpowder was invented long before the antitoxin for diphtheria was
+discovered. Steel was used for swords ages before any one thought of
+making it into motor cars. These were Gorman’s illustrations. I should
+not have thought that motor cars actually preserve life; but Gorman is a
+good orator and a master in the art of concealing the weak points of
+his argument. His hearers were quite ready to ignore the mortality
+statistics of our new motor traffic. The pig-breeding scientist led a
+round of applause.
+
+Gorman developed his theme. The intellect of the modern world, he said,
+was not only occupied with the problems of preserving life, but was bent
+on making life more convenient and happier, especially the life of the
+toiling masses of our people. The mediaeval world built cathedrals, fine
+castles, Doge’s palaces and such things. We have supplied mankind with
+penny postage stamps. Which, Gorman asked, is the greater achievement:
+to house a Doge or two in a building too big for them or to enable
+countless mothers--sorrowing and lonely women--to communicate by letter
+with the children who had left the maternal home?
+
+After dwelling for some time on the conveniences Gorman passed on to
+speak of the pleasures of modern life. He said that pleasures were more
+important than work, because without pleasures no work could be really
+well done. When he reached that point I began to see how he meant to
+work up to the cinematograph and Tim’s invention. I tried to get a
+glimpse of Mrs. Ascher’s face. I wanted to find out how she was taking
+this glorification of Tim’s blasphemy against art. Unfortunately I could
+only see the back of her head. I moved along the side of the hall as
+much as I dared in the hope of getting a sight of her face from some
+angle. I failed. To this day I do not know whether Mrs. Ascher admired
+Gorman’s art as an orator enough to make her forgive the vile purpose
+for which it was used.
+
+When I began to listen to the speech again Gorman had reached his
+peroration.
+
+The arts of war, he said, were the natural fruits of the human intellect
+in a society organised on an aristocratic basis. The development of the
+arts of peace and pleasure followed the birth of democracy. Tyrants and
+robber barons in old days loved to fight and lived to kill. The common,
+kindly men and women of our time, the now at length sovereign people,
+lived to love and desire peace above all things.
+
+“The spirit of democracy,” said Gorman, “is moving through the world.
+Its coming is like the coming of the spring, gentle, kindly, gradual. We
+see it not, but in the fields and hedgerows of the world, past which
+it moves, we see the green buds bursting into leaf, the myriad-tinted
+flowers opening their petals to the sunlight. We see the lives of humble
+men made glad, and our hearts are established with strong faith; faith
+in the spirit whose beneficence we recognise, the spirit which at last
+is guiding the whole wide world into the way of peace.”
+
+I gathered from these concluding remarks that all danger of war had
+passed from the horizon of humanity since the Liberal Government muzzled
+the House of Lords.
+
+Gorman did not mention this great feat in plain words. He suggested it
+in such a way that the Cabinet Ministers in front of him understood what
+he meant, while Lady Kingscourt and her friends thought he was referring
+to a revolution in China or Portugal or the establishment of some kind
+of representative government in Thibet. Thus everyone was pleased and
+Gorman climbed down from the platform amid a burst of applause.
+
+Lady Kingscourt clapped her pretty hands as loudly as any one. Her
+husband is a territorial magnate. Her brothers are soldiers. But she is
+prepared to welcome democracy and universal peace as warmly as any of
+us. Perhaps what attracted her in Gorman’s programme was the prospect of
+a great increase in the pleasures of life.
+
+We drank tea, ate sandwiches, cheered our hearts with champagne cup,
+chattered loudly, and, the men of the party, stretched our legs for half
+an hour. Then we settled down again to gape at Tim’s moving figures. The
+new mirrors were well worth the money I spent on them. The thing worked
+better, far better, than when I saw it in the barn. I think the audience
+was greatly pleased. Everybody said so to me when the time came for
+escape from the hall.
+
+Mrs. Ascher and I drove back to Hampstead together. I told her how
+Ascher had left the hall and that it might be late before he got home.
+She sat silent beside me and I thought that she was wondering what had
+happened to her husband. Just before we reached the house she spoke, and
+I discovered that she had all the time been thinking of something else,
+not Ascher’s absence.
+
+“I was wrong,” she said, “in condemning the cinematograph and this new
+invention. It is--at present it is vile beyond words, vile as I thought
+it; but I see now that there are possibilities.”
+
+“May I tell Tim that?” I said. “It would cheer him greatly. The poor
+boy has never really got over what you said to him in New York, about
+blasphemy, you know.”
+
+“You may tell him,” said Mrs. Ascher, “that his invention is capable of
+being used for the ends of art; that he has created a mechanical body
+and that _we_, the artists, must breathe into it the breath of life.”
+
+We reached the house.
+
+“I am coming in, if I may,” I said. “Mr. Ascher asked me to see him
+to-night if possible. I promised to wait for him even if he does not get
+home till very late.”
+
+“I shall not sit up with you,” said Mrs. Ascher. “I want to be alone to
+think. I want to discover the way in which art is to take possession of
+mechanics, how it is to inspire all new discoveries, to raise them from
+the level of material things up and up to the mountain tops of beautiful
+emotion.”
+
+“I shall tell Tim that,” I said. “He’ll be awfully pleased.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher held my hand, bidding me an impressive good-night.
+
+“There is a spirit,” she said, “which moves among the multitudinous
+blind gropings of humanity. It moves all unseen and unknown by men,
+guiding their pitiful endeavours to the Great End. That End is Duty.
+That spirit is Art. To recognise it is Faith.”
+
+The Irish bishop who attended my party is a liberal and highly educated
+churchman. He once told me about a Spirit which moves very much as Mrs.
+Ascher’s does. Its aim was goodness and the bishop called it God. His
+definition of faith was, except for the different object, precisely Mrs.
+Ascher’s.
+
+Gorman propounds a somewhat similar philosophy of life, and occasionally
+talks about faith in the same rapt way. I do not suppose that he
+actually holds the faith he preaches, certainly not as Mrs. Ascher and
+the bishop hold theirs. No Irishman is, or ever can be, a Liberal after
+the English fashion; but Gorman does talk about the spirit of democracy
+and says he looks forward to its guiding Humanity to a great end,
+universal peace.
+
+I made my way into Ascher’s study, wondering how long I should have to
+wait for him.
+
+I wondered where he was and what he was doing. Who sent Jack Heneage
+to search for Ascher? I could not remember whose private secretary Jack
+was. Mrs. Ascher was thinking of art and beauty, the bishop, no doubt
+about God and goodness. Gorman was turning over in his mind nice new
+phrases about democracy and peace. What was Ascher doing?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Ascher’s servant followed me into the study. He placed a little table
+beside the chair on which I sat. He set a decanter of whisky, a syphon
+of soda water and a box of cigars at my elbow. He brought a reading
+lamp and put it behind me, switching on the electric current so that the
+light fell brightly over my shoulder. He turned off the other lights in
+the room. He asked me if there were anything else he could do for me.
+Then he left me.
+
+A clock, somewhere behind me, chimed. It was a quarter to twelve. I
+poured out some whisky and lit a cigar. I sat wondering what Ascher was
+doing. The clock chimed again and then it struck. It was twelve o’clock.
+It was a clock with a singularly mellow gong. The sounds it made were
+soft and unaggressive. There was no rude challenge in its assertion
+that time was passing on, but the very gentleness of its warnings, a
+gentleness deeply tinged with melancholy, infected me with a strange
+restlessness. When for the third time its chiming broke the heavy
+silence of the room, I rose from my chair. The gloom which surrounded
+the circle of light in which I sat weighed on my spirits. I touched a
+switch and set the lights above the fireplace shining.
+
+Over the mantelpiece hung a picture, a landscape painting. A flock of
+sheep wandered through a misty valley. There were great mountains in the
+background, their slopes and tops dimly discernible through a haze. The
+haze and the mist wreaths would certainly soon clear away, dispersed
+by a rising sun. The whole scene would be stripped of its mystery. The
+mountain sides, the valley stream and the grazing sheep would be seen
+clear and bare in the merciless light of a summer morning. The painter
+had chosen the moment while the mystery of dawn endured. I felt that he
+feared the passing of it, that he shrank from the inevitable coming of
+the hour when everything would be clear and all the outlines sharp,
+when the searching sun would tear away the compassionate coverings, when
+nature would appear less beautiful than his heart hoped it was. It was
+with this picture, with this and one other, that Ascher chose to live.
+
+I moved round the room, turning on yet other lights. Over Ascher’s
+writing desk hung a full length portrait of a woman, of Mrs. Ascher,
+but painted many years ago. I have no idea who the artist was but he had
+seen his sitter in no common way. The girl, she was no more than a girl
+when the picture was painted, stood facing me from the canvas. She was
+dressed in a long, trailing, pale green robe. Her hands were folded in
+front of her. Her head was a little thrown back, so that her neck was
+visible. Her skin, even then in the early days of her womanhood, was
+almost colourless. The red colour of her hair saved the picture from
+deathly coldness, contrasting sharply with the mass of pale green
+drapery and the pallid skin.
+
+I have never thought of Mrs. Ascher as a beautiful woman or one who at
+any time of her life could have been beautiful. But the artist, whoever
+he was, had seen in her a singular alluring charm. I cannot imagine that
+I could ever have been affected by her even if I had seen her as the
+artist did, as no doubt Ascher did. I like normal people and common
+things. I should have been afraid of the woman in the picture. I am in
+no way like Keats’ “Knight at Arms.” I should simply have run away from
+the “Belle Dame sans merci,” and no amount of fairy songs or manna dew
+would have enabled her to have me in thrall. But I could understand how
+Ascher, who evidently has a taste for that kind of thing, might have
+been fascinated by the morbid beauty of the girl in the picture. I could
+understand how the fascination might become an enduring thing; a great
+love; how Ascher would still be drawn to the woman long after the
+elfishness of girlhood passed away. The soul would still remain gleaming
+out of those narrow eyes.
+
+The clock chimed close beside me. It was a quarter to one. I sat down
+again, poured out more whisky and lit a fresh cigar. I left all the
+lights in the room shining. I was determined to drag myself back to the
+commonplace and to cheerfulness.
+
+I took a book from the table beside me. It was evidently a book which
+Ascher had been reading. A thin ivory blade lay between the pages,
+marking the place he had reached. The book was a prophetic forecast
+of the State of the future, a record of one of those dreams of better,
+calmer times, which haunt the spirits of brave and good men, to which
+cowards turn when they are made faint by the contemplation of present
+evil things. I read a page or two in one part of the book and a page or
+two in another. I read in one place a whole chapter. I discerned in the
+author an underlying faith in the natural goodness of man. He believed,
+his whole argument was based on the belief, that all men, but especially
+common men, the manual workers, would gladly turn away from greed
+and lust and envy, would live in beauty and peace, naturally, without
+effort, if only they were set free from the pressure of want and the
+threat of hunger. The evil which troubles us, so this dreamer seemed
+to hold, is not in ourselves or of our nature. It is the result of the
+conditions in which we live, conditions created by our mistakes, not by
+our vices. I wondered if Ascher, with his wide knowledge of the world,
+believed in such a creed or even cherished a hope that it might be true.
+Do men, in fact, become saints straightway when their bellies are full?
+
+It is strange how childish memories awaken in us suddenly. As I laid
+down Ascher’s book there came to me a picture of a scene in my old home.
+We were at prayers in the dining-room. My father sat at a little table
+with a great heavy Bible before him. Ranged along the wall in front of
+him was the long line of servants, the butler a little apart from
+the others as befitted the chief of the staff. My governess and I
+sat together in a corner near the fire. My father read, in a flat,
+unemotional voice; read words which he absolutely believed to be the
+words of God. “Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of
+God.”
+
+Well, that is a different creed. To me it seems more consonant with the
+facts of life. Man as he is can neither enter into nor create a great
+society nor enjoy peace which comes of love. Hitherto the new birth of
+the Spirit, which bloweth where it listeth, has been for a few in every
+generation. The hour of rebirth for the mass of men still lingers. Will
+it ever come--the time when all the young men see visions and all the
+old men dream dreams?
+
+I stirred uneasily in my chair and looked up. I had not heard him enter
+the room, but Ascher stood beside me.
+
+“I am glad you are here,” he said. “I hoped you would be; but I am very
+late.”
+
+“Yes,” I said, “you are very late. It is long after midnight. Where have
+you been? What have you been doing?”
+
+Ascher sat down opposite to me, and for some time he did not speak. I
+made no attempt to press my questions. If Ascher wanted to talk to me he
+would do so in his own time and in the way he chose. I supposed that he
+did want to talk to me. He had asked me to his house. He had bidden me
+wait for him.
+
+“I have no right,” said Ascher at last, “to trouble you with my
+difficulties. I ought to think them out and fight them out for myself;
+but it will be a help to me if I can put them into words and feel that
+you are listening to me.”
+
+He paused for so long that I felt I must make some reply to him, though
+I did not know what to say.
+
+“I don’t suppose I can be of any use to you,” I said, “but if I can----”
+
+“Perhaps you can,” said Ascher. “You can listen to me at least. Perhaps
+you can do more. It is a large call to make upon your friendship to
+treat you in this manner, but--I am in some ways a lonely man.”
+
+I have always, since the day I first met him, liked and respected
+Ascher. When he spoke about his loneliness I felt a sudden wave of pity
+for him. It seems a strange thing to say, but at that moment I had a
+strong affection for the man.
+
+“What I partly foresaw and greatly dreaded has come,” he said. “I am
+certain now that war is inevitable, a great war, almost perhaps in the
+end quite world-wide.”
+
+“And England?” I said, “is England, too----?”
+
+“Almost inevitably.”
+
+“Germany?” I said.
+
+Ascher nodded.
+
+I was throbbing with excitement. For the moment I felt nothing but a
+sense of exultation, strangely out of harmony with the grave melancholy
+with which Ascher spoke. I suppose the soldier instinct survives in me,
+an inheritance from generations of my forefathers, all of whom have worn
+swords, many of whom have fought. We have done our part in building
+up the British Empire, we Irish gentlemen, fighting, as Virgil’s bees
+worked, ourselves in our own persons, but not for our own gain. There is
+surely not one battlefield of all where the flag of England has flown on
+which we have not led men, willing to fall at the head of them. It seems
+strange now, looking back on it, that such an emotion should have been
+possible; but at the moment I felt an overmastering sense of awful joy
+at Ascher’s news.
+
+“I cannot tell you where I have been to-night,” said Ascher, “nor with
+whom I have been talking. Still less must I repeat what I have heard,
+but this much I think I may say. I was sent for to give my advice on
+certain matters connected with finance, to express an opinion about what
+will happen, what dangers threaten in that world, my world, the world of
+money.”
+
+“There’ll be an infernal flurry on the Stock Exchange,” I said. “Prices
+will come tumbling down about men’s ears. Fellows will go smash in every
+direction.”
+
+“There will be much more than that,” said Ascher. “The declaration of
+war will not simply mean the ruin of a few speculators here and there.
+You know enough about the modern system of credit to realise something
+of what we have to face. There will be a sudden paralysis of the nerves
+and muscles of the whole world-wide body of commercial and industrial
+life. The heart will stop beating for a short time--only for a short
+time I hope--and no blood will go through the veins and arteries.”
+
+Ascher spoke very gravely. Yet, though I had spent months watching the
+workings of his machine, I could not at the moment share his mood. The
+war fever was in my blood.
+
+“I should change my metaphor,” said Ascher. “It is not a case of a body
+where the heart pumps blood into the arteries, but of springs which make
+brooks, brooks which flow into streams, which in their turn feed great
+rivers. Now those springs will be frozen. In a million places, of which
+you and I do not even know the names, credit will be frozen suddenly.
+There will be no water in the brooks and streams. The rivers will run
+dry.”
+
+Ascher had asked for my sympathy. I did my best to give it.
+
+“It’s a tremendous responsibility for you,” I said, “and men like you.
+But you’ll pull through. The whole thing can’t collapse, simply can’t.
+It’s too big.”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Ascher, “perhaps. But it is not that side of the matter
+which I wish to speak to you about. You will forgive me if I say that
+you can hardly understand or appreciate it. What I want to say to you
+is something more personal. I want”--Ascher smiled wanly--“to talk about
+myself.”
+
+“You stand to lose heavily,” I said. “I see that.”
+
+“I do not know,” said Ascher, “whether at the end of a week I shall own
+one single penny in the world. I may very well have lost everything.
+But if that were all I should not trouble much. Merely to lose
+money--but----”
+
+He stopped speaking, and for a long while sat silent The clock behind me
+chimed again. It was half past two.
+
+“I suppose,” said Ascher, “that you have always thought of me as an
+Englishman.”
+
+“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’ve never thought whether you are an
+Englishman or not. I wasn’t interested. I suppose I took it for granted
+that you were English.”
+
+“I am a German,” said Ascher. “I was born in Hamburg, of German parents.
+All my relations are Germans. I came over to England as a young man and
+went into business here. My business--I do not know why--is one to which
+Englishmen do not take readily. There are English bankers of course,
+but not very many English financiers. Yet my particular kind of banking,
+international banking, can best be carried on in England. That is why I
+am here, why my business is centred in London, though I myself am not
+an Englishman. I am a German. Please understand that. My brother is a
+general in the German Army. My sister’s sons are in the German Army and
+Navy. My blood ties are with the people from whom I came.”
+
+I realised that Ascher was stating a case of conscience, was perhaps
+asking my advice. It seemed to me that there was only one thing which
+I could advise, only one possible course for Ascher to take. Whatever
+happened to his business or his private fortune he must be true to his
+own people. I was about to say this when Ascher raised his hand slightly
+and stopped me.
+
+“I want you to understand,” he said, “my blood ties are with the people
+from whom I came; but I am now wholly English in my sympathies. I see
+things from the English point of view, not from the German. I am sure
+that it will be a good thing for the world if England and her Allies
+win, a bad thing if Germany is victorious in the war before us. Yet the
+blood tie remains. Who was the Englishman who said, ‘My country, may she
+always be right, but my country right or wrong’? It seems to me a mean
+thing to desert my country now, even although I have become a stranger
+to her. Is it not a kind of disloyalty to range myself with her
+enemies?”
+
+Again Ascher paused. This time I was less ready to answer him.
+
+“I have also to consider this,” he went on, “and here I get to the very
+heart of my difficulty. I have lived most of my life here, and I have
+built up my business on an English foundation. I have been able to build
+it up because I had ready made for me that foundation of integrity which
+your English merchants have established by centuries of honest dealing.
+Without that--if the world had not believed that my business was
+English, and therefore stable--I could not have built at all or should
+have built with much greater difficulty. My bank is English, though I,
+who control it, am not. If I go back to my own people now, now when it
+seems treachery to desert them, the whole machinery of the vast system
+of credit which I guide will cease to work, will break to fragments. Of
+my own loss I say nothing, indeed I think nothing. But what of the
+other men, thousands of them who are involved with me, whose affairs
+are inextricably mixed with mine, who have trusted not me, but my bank,
+trusted it because it is an English institution? And it is English. Have
+I the right to ruin them and to break up my bank, which belongs to your
+nation, of which in a sense I am no more than a trustee for England? You
+understand, do you not? My bank is just as certainly of English birth as
+I am of German birth. Yet it and I are one. We cannot be divided. What
+am I to do?”
+
+Ascher was asking questions; but I did not think that he was asking them
+of me. I felt that it was my part to listen, not to answer. Besides
+what could I answer? Ascher had given me a glimpse of one of those
+intolerable dilemmas from which there is no way of escape. The choice
+between right and wrong, when the nobler and baser parts of our nature
+are in conflict, is often very difficult and painful. But there are
+times--this was one of them--when two of the nobler, two of the very
+noblest of our instincts, are set against each other. When we can only
+do right by doing wrong at the same time, when to be loyal we must turn
+traitors.
+
+When Ascher spoke again he seemed to have drifted away from the subject
+of the coming war, the financial catastrophe and his own trouble. I did
+not, for some time, guess where his words were leading.
+
+“I have been a very careful observer of English life,” he said, “ever
+since I first came to this country, and no class in your nation has
+interested me more than you minor gentry, the second grade of your
+aristocracy.”
+
+“Often spoken of as the squirearchy,” I said. “It is generally supposed
+to be the most useless and the least intelligent part of the community.
+It is rapidly disappearing, which, I daresay, is a fortunate thing.”
+
+“Your greater nobility,” said Ascher, “is modernised, is necessarily
+more or less cosmopolitan. It has international interests and is
+occupied with great affairs. It has been forced to accept the standard
+of ethics in accordance with which great affairs are managed. Your
+merchants and manufacturers have their own code, by no means a low one,
+and their theory of right and wrong. Between these two classes come the
+men with lesser titles or no titles at all, families which spring from
+roots centuries deep in the soil of England, men of some wealth, but
+not of great riches. They have their own standard, their code, their
+peculiar touchstone for distinguishing fine conduct from its imitation,
+their ethic.”
+
+“Yes,” I said, “I can understand your being interested in that. It is a
+survival of a certain antiquarian value. It is the quaintest standard
+of conduct imaginable, totally unreasonable and inconsistent. But it
+exists. There are some things which a gentleman of that class will not
+do.”
+
+“Exactly. These men--may I say you, for it is you I am thinking of. You
+have your sense of honour.”
+
+I never was more surprised in my life than I was when Ascher said
+that to me. Nothing that I have ever said or done in his company could
+possibly have led him to suppose that I am a victim of that outworn
+superstition known as the honour of a gentleman.
+
+“You have an instinct,” said Ascher, “inherited through many
+generations, a highly specialised sense, now nearly infallible, for
+knowing what is honourable and what is base. I do not know that any
+of my countrymen have that sense. I am sure that the class to which I
+belong has not. We look at things in a different way.”
+
+“A much better way,” I said, “more practical.”
+
+“Yes, more practical. Better perhaps in the sense of being wiser. But I
+have a wish, an odd fancy if you like, to see things your way, to guide
+my conduct according to your standard of honour.”
+
+As well as I could make out Ascher was asking me to decide for him on
+which horn of his infernal dilemma he was to impale himself, and to
+base my decision on a perfectly absurd and arbitrary set of rules for
+conduct, none of which could by any possibility be made to apply to a
+situation like his.
+
+“My dear Ascher,” I said, “I can’t possibly judge for you.”
+
+“You could judge if it were your own case,” he said. “You could
+certainly judge then. Have you ever in your life been in the smallest
+doubt, even for a moment, about the way of honour, which it is?”
+
+“That is all very well,” I said. “I quite admit I do know that. I
+generally do the other thing, but I know what I ought to do according to
+the ridiculous standard of my class. But I don’t know what you ought to
+do. That’s a different thing altogether.”
+
+“Because I am not of your class? not a gentleman?”
+
+“Don’t talk nonsense,” I said. “There aren’t any gentlemen left. The
+species is extinct. The very name of it is vulgarised. You’re as
+near being one as anybody I know. And that has nothing to do with it.
+Gentleman or not, you’ve got to decide for yourself. No man living can do
+it for you.”
+
+“Your class would decide for me if I belonged to it,” said Ascher. “The
+collective wisdom of your class, the class instinct. It would make me
+certain, leave me in no doubt at all, if only I belonged to it, were one
+of you. The choice I have to make----”
+
+Ascher paused.
+
+“It’s a nasty choice to have to make. You’ve got to be disloyal either
+way you go. That’s what it comes to.”
+
+“There is no other way,” said Ascher sadly, “no third way.”
+
+“Not that I can see.”
+
+There was, in fact, a third way, though I did not see it at the time.
+Mrs. Ascher discovered it. I heard of it two days later.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+No one has greater respect and admiration for Ascher than I have.
+I respect his ability. I admire his cool detachment of mind and his
+unfailing feeling for justice. I recognise in him a magnanimity, a
+certain knightliness which is very rare. But it is vain to pretend
+that I can ever regard Ascher as an intimate friend. I am never quite
+comfortable in his company. He lacks something, something essential. He
+lacks a sense of humour.
+
+No one in England--no one I suppose in Europe--wanted to make jokes
+during that critical week which followed my interview with Ascher. The
+most abandoned buffoon shrank from jesting when every morning brought a
+fresh declaration of war by one great power on another. But even under
+such circumstances the sense of the ridiculous survives--a thing to be
+carefully concealed--in those who are fortunate enough to possess it.
+Ascher has no sense of the ridiculous. He sees men and women clad in
+long, stately robes moving through life with grave dignity like Arab
+chiefs or caliphs of Bagdad. He sees their actions conditioned and to
+some extent controlled by the influences of majestic inhuman powers,
+the genii of eastern tales, huge, cloud-girt spirits of oppressive
+solemnity. In reality most people wear motley all day long and the fairy
+powers are leprechauns, tricksy, irresponsible sprites, willing enough
+to make merry with those who can laugh with them; but players of all
+Puck’s tricks on “wisest aunts telling saddest tales.”
+
+I sometimes think that it is Ascher’s chivalry, his fine knightliness,
+which has killed his sense of humour. I cannot suppose that Sir Galahad
+found any delight in the quips of fools. His owl-like eyes, large
+with the wonder of Holy Grails, looked stupidly on faces wrinkled
+with merriment. King Arthur could never have talked as he did to
+Guinevere--Tennyson is my authority for the things he said--if he
+had not had in him the soul of an earnest member of a league for the
+sympathetic study of social problems. Ascher is as chivalrous as any
+member of King Arthur’s fellowship, and humour, if he ever had the sense
+of it, is dead in him. But perhaps he was born without it and is by
+nature hopelessly serious because he is a German. For the Germans never
+seem to be able to appreciate the fact that the grandiose is invariably
+comic, and that nothing in the world is more difficult than to stand
+toes to the line of the high heroic without stepping across it into the
+region of the ridiculous. I think of Wagner’s “Parsifal,” of Nietzsche’s
+“Zarathrusta,” of the Kaiser Wilhelm’s amazing “Weltauffassung,” and
+it seems to me that such things could not be in any nation where one
+single man knew how to laugh.
+
+If Ascher had in him the faintest glimmering of a sense of humour he
+would never have appealed to me, choosing the silent and ghostly middle
+of the night for the performance, to decide his point of honour for him.
+What am I that he should imagine me capable of settling high questions
+of that kind? An expatriated Irishman, a dispossessed landlord, a man
+without one high ambition, a mere mocker of enthusiasm of every kind.
+No one, unless he were absolutely blind to the ridiculous, would have
+consulted me on such a subject as the honour of a gentleman.
+
+Yet, in her total lack of humour, Mrs. Ascher is as bad as her husband
+is. If such a thing were possible I should say that she is worse. There
+is, at all events, less excuse for her. She is not knightly, not very
+knightly, though she did champion the cause of poor, oppressed Ireland.
+She is an American, not a German, and the Americans pay high honour to
+their humourists. Perhaps she has lived too long with Ascher. Perhaps
+she has devoted herself too much to art and her steady contemplation of
+the sublime has killed her sense of the ridiculous. At all events it is
+dead. She has no humour now.
+
+It is almost impossible to imagine that any woman would have been
+capable of calling in Gorman and me as advisers and helpers at a
+critical moment of her life. Yet that is what Mrs. Ascher did.
+
+We obeyed the summons of course, both of us.
+
+Gorman got there first. I found him seated opposite Mrs. Ascher in the
+large drawing-room of the house in Hampstead. Mrs. Ascher is lacking in
+humour, but she has a fine sense of dramatic propriety. Great decisions
+can only be come to fittingly, mighty spiritual tragedies can only be
+satisfactorily enacted, in spacious rooms. And there must be emptiness.
+Knick-knacks and pretty ornaments kill high emotion. The chamber of a
+dainty woman, the room which delicate feminity has made its own, will
+suit a light flirtation, the love-making of a summer afternoon, but deep
+passion is out of place in it.
+
+I walked cautiously across a wide space of slippery floor in order to
+shake hands with Mrs. Ascher. I saw that Gorman was sitting in a huge
+straight-backed chair with heavily carved elbow rests. It was the
+sort of chair which would have suited a bishop--in the chancel of his
+cathedral, not in his private room--and a major excommunication might
+very suitably have been delivered from it.
+
+“I am in great trouble,” said Mrs. Ascher, “and I have asked you two to
+come to me because you are my friends. I was right to call you, was I
+not?”
+
+She looked at Gorman and then at me, evidently expecting us to make a
+confession of friendship for her. Gorman wriggled in a way that made me
+think the carving of the chair must be sticking into him somewhere. But
+he did not fail Mrs. Ascher.
+
+“You were right,” he said with deep feeling, “altogether right.”
+
+I was not going to be outdone by Gorman.
+
+“‘A friend,’” I said, “‘must bear a friend’s infirmities.’”
+
+The quotation was not wholly happy, but Mrs. Ascher seemed to like it.
+She smiled gratefully.
+
+“My husband,” she said.
+
+I knew it must be her husband’s affairs which were troubling her.
+
+“He is in a very difficult position,” I said. “I had a long talk with
+him the other night. It seems to me that he has to choose between----”
+
+Gorman interrupted me.
+
+“He’s in an infernally awkward hole,” he said. “The English people will
+lose their tempers to a certainty, not at first perhaps, but as soon as
+anything goes against them. When they do they’ll make things damnably
+unpleasant for any one who’s suspected of being German or even remotely
+connected with Germany. That’s the sort of people the English are.
+And Ascher is just the man they’ll fasten on at once. They’ll hunt him
+down.”
+
+Mrs. Ascher looked at Gorman while he spoke. Her face expressed a quiet
+dignity.
+
+“That is not the difficulty,” she said. “What people say or think of us
+or do to us does not matter. We live our own lives. We can always live
+them, apart from, above the bitter voices of the crowd.”
+
+“All the same,” said Gorman, “it will be unpleasant. It will be a great
+deal worse than merely unpleasant. If I were Ascher I should get on the
+safe side at once. I should give a thumping big subscription--£50,000
+or something that will attract attention--to some popular fund. I should
+offer to present the War Office with half a dozen aeroplanes to be
+called ‘The Ascher Flying Fleet’; or a first-rate cannon of the largest
+size. A good deal can be done to shut people’s mouths in that sort of
+way.”
+
+“You do not understand,” said Mrs. Ascher.
+
+She turned to me, evidently hoping that I would explain Ascher’s real
+difficulty to Gorman. I hesitated for a moment. It was plain to me that
+though Gorman did not appreciate the reality of the spiritual crisis, he
+did understand something which had escaped me and, so far as I knew,
+had escaped Ascher also. I had a vivid recollection of the unenviable
+position of men suspected of lukewarm patriotism during the Boer War.
+In the struggle we were then entering upon popular passion would be far
+more highly excited. The position of the Aschers in England might become
+impossible.
+
+Gorman with his highly developed faculty for gauging the force and
+direction of popular opinion understood at once and thoroughly the
+difficulties that lay before Ascher. What he did not understand was
+the peculiar difficulty which Ascher felt. I responded to Mrs. Ascher’s
+glance of appeal and tried to explain things to Gorman.
+
+“Ascher,” I said, “is pulled two ways. His country is pulling him.
+That’s the call of patriotism. You ought to understand that, Gorman.
+You’re a tremendous patriot yourself. But if he goes back to his country
+now he absolutely ruins his business. That means a lot more than merely
+losing his money. It means more even than losing other people’s money,
+the money of the men who trusted him. It means that he must be false
+to his commercial honour. You see that, don’t you, Gorman? And there
+doesn’t seem any way out of the dilemma. He has got to go back on his
+patriotism or on his honour. There is no other course.”
+
+I looked at Mrs. Ascher for approval. I had stated her husband’s dilemma
+clearly, I believed fairly. Gorman could hardly fail to understand. I
+thought Mrs. Ascher would have been pleased with me. To my amazement she
+acknowledged my efforts with a burst of indignation.
+
+“Oh,” she cried, “you do not understand, either of you. You do not even
+begin to understand. I suppose you cannot, because you are men and not
+women. You men! All of you, my husband, too, though he is far above the
+rest of you--but even he! You concern yourselves about things which
+are nothing. You argue about phantoms and discuss them as if they
+were realities. And all the time you miss the things which are. You
+think”--she spoke directly to Gorman and her voice expressed the utmost
+scorn--“you think about reputation, the way men babble about each other
+and will babble about us. Why should we care? Even if we were afraid of
+what men say there are places in the world to which the voices of Europe
+cannot reach. There are islands in the sea where the sun shines and palm
+trees grow, to which the talk of men who dwell in cities never comes.”
+
+I recollected the desire which Mrs. Ascher had once expressed to me of
+getting “far, far away from everywhere.” She evidently hoped to be able
+to try that experiment.
+
+She turned from Gorman and faced me.
+
+“You talk,” she said, “about honour and patriotism. What are they?
+Words, just words. It is only you men, slaves of your own conventions,
+who take them for realities. We women know better. You go about life
+imagining that your limbs are bound with fetters. They are bound with
+delusions. We women know. Love and beauty are real. Nothing else is. All
+your fine words are like the flags under which your dupes go out to die;
+fluttering rags to us whose eyes are open. You talk--oh, so finely you
+talk--about the shadows your own imaginings cast, and you end in being
+afraid of them. You talk--you dare to talk to me of money----”
+
+This was a totally unjust accusation. I had not talked about money. I
+had more sense than to mention money to a woman in Mrs. Ascher’s frame
+of mind.
+
+“I have money enough of my own,” she said. “He and I want very little.
+What do we care for except just to love each other and to see beautiful
+things and to escape from all this nightmare of blood and hate and
+horror and hideousness?”
+
+I felt helpless. Mrs. Ascher had undoubtedly hit on a new solution of
+the problem. She proposed that Ascher should impale himself not on one
+or other, but on both horns of the dilemma, be false to every kind of
+honour and loyalty. It was, I suppose, possible for Ascher to pack a bag
+and take to flight, simply to disappear, leaving everything behind
+him. He and she might go to some valley in the Rocky Mountains, to some
+unknown creek on the Californian coast, to some island in the South
+Pacific. If she were right about honour and faithfulness and patriotism,
+if these are, after all, only idols of the tribe, then she and Ascher
+might be very happy. They would have all that either of them required.
+
+I looked at Gorman. He shrugged his shoulders, helpless as I was. Mrs.
+Ascher began to plead with us in a way that was very strange to listen
+to.
+
+“Life is so short,” she said. “Already most of it is gone from us. We
+have only a few years more, he and I. Why should we be miserable? There
+is happiness waiting for us. There is nothing between us and happiness
+except words, honor, patriotism, right, wrong. These are words, only
+words. They are gossamer threads which we break as we go, break without
+feeling them if only we go boldly. Will you not help me? Tell him that
+what I say is true. He will listen to you because you are men; and you
+know in your hearts that I speak what is true, that I have hold upon
+reality.”
+
+There was a moment’s silence after she stopped speaking. Before either
+Gorman or I attempted to make any answer Ascher himself came into the
+room. I certainly did not expect to see him. Mrs. Ascher was, I am sure,
+as much surprised as I was. It was about twelve o’clock and at that hour
+Ascher is always in his office. He crossed the room quietly. He greeted
+Gorman and me without a sign that our presence was unexpected or
+unwelcome. He went to his wife and took her hand in his. She clung to
+him, looking up into his face. She knew at once that he had something
+very important to say to her.
+
+“You have decided?” she said.
+
+Ascher’s eyes met hers. His face seemed to me full of tenderness and
+pity. He held her hand tightly. He bowed his head, a silent “yes” to the
+question she asked.
+
+“To leave it all and come with me?” she said; “away, away.”
+
+Ascher did not speak; but she knew and I knew that his decision was not
+that.
+
+The scene was very painful. I felt that I had no right whatever to
+witness it. Gorman, I am sure, would have been glad to escape. But it was
+very difficult for us to get away. Neither Ascher nor his wife seemed,
+conscious of our presence. We stood helpless a little apart from them.
+Gorman, with that unfailing tact of his, did, or tried to do the only
+thing which could have relieved the intolerable tension. He made an
+effort to get us all back to the commonplace.
+
+“You’re in a devil of an awkward situation, Ascher,” he said. “A good
+deal seems to me to depend on whether you are a naturalised British
+subject or not. If you have been naturalised you ought to be able to
+pull through, though it won’t be pleasant even then.”
+
+“I have not been naturalised,” said Ascher. “I never thought of it.”
+
+“That’s a pity,” said Gorman. “Still--in the case of a man in your
+position I daresay it can be managed even now. I’ll use my influence.
+I know most of the members of the Cabinet pretty well. I can put it to
+them that, from an English point of view, considering the tremendous
+importance of your business, considering the financial collapse which
+would follow--oh, we’ll be able to manage.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Ascher, “but that purely legal aspect of the matter
+does not at the moment strike me as the most important or the most
+pressing. No doubt it is important and your kindness will be helpful.
+But just now I cannot speak about that. There is, you see, my country and
+the loyalty I owe to it. I do not seem to escape from that obligation by
+a process of law. I may legalise, but do I really justify, treachery to
+the claim of patriotism?”
+
+I have always felt,--felt rather than known,--that there is a queer
+strain of mysticism in Gorman. His arid common sense, his politics, his
+rhetoric, his tricky money-making, are the outside, visible things about
+him. Behind them, deep down, seldom seen, is a strange, emotional
+love for his country. When Ascher spoke as he did about the claim of
+patriotism Gorman understood. The innermost part of the man was reached.
+Without hesitating for an instant, without consideration or debate,
+Gorman leaped to a solution of the problem.
+
+“Loyalty to your country comes first,” he said; “it must. Everything
+else goes by the board. I did not know you felt that way about Germany;
+but since you do there is no more to be said. Go back to your own
+country of course. You can’t help yourself.”
+
+I have no doubt that Gorman meant exactly what he said. If he had been
+in Ascher’s position, if once the issue became quite plain to him and
+the tangle of political alliances were swept away, he would have thrown
+all his interests and every other kind of honour to the wind. He would
+have sacrificed his business, would if necessary have parted with his
+wife; he would have been loyal to the land of his birth, entirely
+contemptuous of any other call or any claim.
+
+Mrs. Ascher clung tightly to her husband’s arm. “Words,” she said,
+“words, only words. You must not listen to him.”
+
+Ascher felt for her hands again, grasped them and held them pressed
+close against him. He turned from Gorman to me.
+
+“And you,” he said, “what are you going to do?”
+
+The question took me by surprise. I had no difficult decision to make.
+My course was in clear daylight. Besides, it did not matter to anyone
+what I did.
+
+“You, yourself,” said Ascher again. “What are you going to do?”
+
+“Oh,” I said, “I’m going back to my regiment. I suppose they’ll take me.
+Anyhow I shall offer myself.”
+
+“And fight?” said Ascher.
+
+“Well, yes. I suppose I shall fight. This war won’t be over in a week.
+I’m pretty sure to get my turn. Yes, I shall almost certainly fight.”
+
+“Why?” said Ascher. “What will you fight for?”
+
+It was Gorman who answered the question. He had recovered from his brief
+outburst, and had become the normal Gorman again.
+
+“The war,” he said, “is for the liberation of Europe. It is a vast
+struggle, an Armageddon in which the forces of reaction, absolutism,
+tyranny, a military caste are ranged against democracy. It is their last
+appearance upon the stage of history. Vindicated now, the principles of
+democracy----”
+
+“If you think,” I said, “that I’m going out to fight for the principles
+of democracy, you’re making a big mistake. There’s nothing in the world
+I dislike more than that absurd democracy of yours.”
+
+“Then why?” said Ascher, mildly persistent. “Why are you going to
+fight?”
+
+“Well,” I said, “I don’t want to say anything offensive about your
+people, Ascher. The Germans have a lot of fine qualities, but if
+they were to win this war, if they were to succeed in imposing their
+civilisation and their mentality on us all, if they were to Germanise
+the world, the sense of humour would perish from among men. Nobody
+would any longer be able to laugh. We--we should find ourselves taking
+governments and officials seriously. Just imagine! To live under a
+bureaucracy and not to see that it was funny! Surely it’s worth while
+fighting for the right to laugh.”
+
+“You Irish!” said Ascher. “Even in times like this your love of
+paradox----”
+
+“Don’t say it,” I said. “If you can possibly help it don’t say that. I
+admit that I brought it on myself and deserve it. I apologise. That is
+not my real reason for going back to my regiment. I only gave it to you
+because I don’t know what my real reason is. It’s not patriotism. I
+haven’t got any country to be patriotic about. It’s not any silly belief
+in liberty or democracy. I don’t know why I’m doing it. I just have to.
+That’s all.”
+
+“_Noblesse oblige_,” said Ascher. “Your honour as a gentleman.”
+
+I shuddered. Ascher--there is no other way of putting it--is grossly
+indecent. A woman has a sense of modesty about her body. It would be
+considered an outrage to strip her and leave her stark naked in the
+middle of the room. I cannot see why a man should not be credited with
+some feeling of modesty about his soul. I detest having my last garments
+plucked from me in public. Complete spiritual nudity causes me very
+great embarrassment.
+
+“You can put it that way if you like,” I said. “The plain fact is I
+can’t help myself. I must go back to my regiment. I have no choice.”
+
+“I have come to see,” said Ascher, “that I have no choice either. There
+is such a thing--though perhaps Mr. Gorman will not believe me--there is
+such a thing as the honour of a banker. It compels me.”
+
+He put his arm round his wife’s waist as he spoke. Still holding her
+hands in one of his, he led her from the room. Her head drooped against
+his shoulder as they went out.
+
+“I suppose that means,” said Gorman, “that he’s going to stick it out
+and see the thing through. It will be infernally awkward for him. I
+don’t think he realises how nasty it will be. He hasn’t considered that
+side of it.”
+
+“A man doesn’t consider that side of things,” I said, “when he’s up
+against it as Ascher is.”
+
+“Well, I’ll do my best about the naturalisation papers. That’ll be some
+help.”
+
+“It’s very hard to be sure,” I said, “but I’m inclined to think that
+Ascher is right.”
+
+“He’s utterly wrong,” said Gorman. “A man’s country ought to come
+first always. You don’t understand that because you’re denationalised;
+because, as you say yourself, you have no country. But it’s true,
+whether you understand it or not.”
+
+“When I think of that business of his,” I said, “the immense complexity
+of it, the confidence of thousands of men in each other, all resting at
+last on a faith in the integrity of one man, or rather of a firm--the
+existence of such a business, world-wide, international, entirely
+independent of all ties of race, nationality, language, religion, in a
+certain sense wider than any of these--it’s a great, human affair,
+not English nor German, not the white man’s nor the yellow man’s, not
+Christian nor Buddhist nor Mohammedan, just human. Ascher owes some
+kind of loyalty to a thing like that. It’s a frightfully complicated
+question; but on the whole I think he is right.”
+
+Gorman was not listening to me. He had ceased, for the time, to be
+interested in Ascher’s decision. I tried to regain his attention.
+
+“Ascher says,” I said, “that there is such a thing as the honour of a
+banker, of a financier.”
+
+That ought to have roused Gorman to a contradiction; but it did not.
+
+“Do you think,” he said, “that we could get them to take on Tim in
+any job connected with flying machines? This war will knock all his
+inventions into a cocked hat. He will simply be left, and he has a real
+turn for mechanics. If he got messing about with aeroplanes he might
+do something big, something really valuable. But I don’t know how to go
+about getting that sort of job for him. I’m not in with military people.
+Look here, you’ve a lot of influence with the War Office----”
+
+“No,” I said. “None.”
+
+“Nonsense. You must have. A word from you---- I’ll tell you what we’ll
+do. I’ll work Ascher’s naturalisation papers for him, and you get Tim
+taken on by the Army Flying Corps people.”
+
+“Perhaps,” I said, “you’d like me to get you a Staff appointment while
+I’m at it.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Gorman. “I’m not a soldier, I’m a Member of Parliament.
+My job is----”
+
+Gorman hesitated. For a moment I thought that he was in real doubt, was
+actually wondering what place he ought to take, what work he ought to
+do.
+
+“Yes,” I said. “You. Now, what is your idea for yourself?”
+
+Gorman drew himself up to his full height, squared his shoulders and
+puffed out his chest.
+
+“My place,” he said, “is in the great council of the Empire.”
+
+I gasped.
+
+“Good Lord!” I said. “You don’t really think--you _can’t_ think, that
+your silly old Parliament is going to matter now; that you politicians
+will be allowed to go on talking, that there will be divisions in the
+House, and elections and all that foolishness.”
+
+Gorman, still heroically erect, still enormously swelled in chest,
+winked at me with careful deliberation. I was immensely relieved.
+
+“Thank God,” I said. “For a moment I thought you really meant it--all
+that great-council-of-the-Empire business, you know. It would have been
+a horrible disappointment to me if you had. I’ve come to have a high
+regard for you, Gorman, and I really could not have borne it. But of
+course I ought to have known better. You couldn’t have believed in
+that stuff, simply couldn’t. Nobody with your intelligence could. But
+seriously, now, I should like to know--I’m sure you won’t mind telling
+me--what are you going to do? Your party, I mean. It seems to me
+you’re in rather a hole. The Irish people will expect you to take the
+regular line of backing the enemy.”
+
+“The Irish people be damned,” said Gorman; “our game is to support the
+Government.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+I look back on the time I spent soldiering--soldiering under war
+conditions--as a curious blank in an otherwise interesting and amusing
+life. From the day on which I rejoined my regiment until the day, about
+five months later, when I escaped from the hospital in which I was
+incarcerated, my mind stopped working altogether. I took no interest
+whatever in any of the things which used to excite me, which are now, I
+am thankful to say, beginning to amuse me again. Politicians, I believe,
+pranced about with fascinating agility. I did not care to look at them.
+Newspaper proprietors demanded the immediate execution of one public man
+after another. I do not believe I should have cared if a guillotine
+had been set up in Piccadilly Circus and a regular reign of terror
+established. I lost sight of Gorman. The Aschers faded from my memory.
+
+I spent three months or so in camp with my old regiment. I worked
+exceedingly hard. I ate enormously. I slept profoundly. I attained an
+almost incredible perfection of physical health. I ceased to think about
+anything. My experience of the business of actual fighting was brief.
+I had little more than a month of it altogether. Then they sent me home
+with a shattered leg. I worked harder than ever when I was at the Front.
+I was often very uncomfortable. I remained amazingly healthy. I suffered
+at last a good deal of physical pain. I did not think at all, even about
+the progress of the war.
+
+I date my awakening again to the interests of life from the day when
+Gorman paid me his first visit. I was convalescent and had made myself
+fairly comfortable in a cottage near Guildford. I had got rid of the
+last of a long series of nurses. My leg had ceased to cause me any
+active annoyance, but I was beginning to find myself a good deal bored
+and not a little depressed. When Gorman walked in I was not, just at
+first, particularly glad to see him.
+
+“Let me congratulate you,” he said.
+
+“On being alive? Is that a blessing?”
+
+I had been brooding over the fact that I was lame for life. Gorman’s
+breezy cheerfulness rather jarred me.
+
+“Of course it’s a blessing to be alive,” said Gorman, “but I wasn’t
+thinking of that. What I was congratulating you on was being a hero.
+D.S.O., isn’t it? Tell me all about it, won’t you?”
+
+I have been given the right of appending those three letters to my
+name, so I suppose I must have avoided the worst kinds of blundering and
+incompetence. But I have no recollection of doing anything to deserve
+the honour. I fear I answered Gorman rather ill-temperedly.
+
+“There’s nothing whatever to tell,” I said. “I just crawled about in a
+trench, generally muddy. Everybody else did exactly the same.”
+
+Gorman is still the same man he always was, amazingly tactful and
+sympathetic. He realised at once that I hated talking about the war and
+was in no mood for recounting my own experiences. Instead of pressing me
+with silly questions until he drove me mad, he dropped the subject of my
+D.S.O. and began to babble agreeably about other things.
+
+“Politics,” he said, “have got into a frightful state. In fact there are
+hardly any politics at all. We haven’t had a decent rag since the war
+began. We all sit round cooing at each other like beastly little green
+lovebirds in a cage. It can’t last long, of course. Sooner or later
+somebody’s bound to break out and try to bite; but for the present
+Parliament’s the dullest place in Europe.”
+
+I began to feel slightly interested.
+
+“I remember hearing,” I said, “that you Nationalists promised not to
+cheer for the Germans.”
+
+“We did more than that,” said Gorman. “We rallied to the Empire at the
+very start and have kept on rallying ever since. It felt odd at first,
+but you get used to anything in time, even to being loyal. You’d have
+been surprised if you’d heard me singing, ‘God Save the King’ in Dublin
+last week.”
+
+“Did you really?”
+
+“Twice,” said Gorman, “on two consecutive days.”
+
+A world in which such things could happen might, I began to feel, be
+worth living in after all. I smiled feebly at Gorman. He responded with
+a delicious wink.
+
+“What’s happened to Home Rule?” I said.
+
+“For the present it’s hung up; a case of suspended animation; our idea
+is that if we’re thoroughly loyal now the English people will be so
+grateful to us----”
+
+“But they’ll be just as grateful to the Ulstermen,” I said. “They’re
+loyal, too, I suppose.”
+
+“That’s the difficulty, of course,” said Gorman. “But what else could
+we do? If we’d allowed the Orangemen to make a corner in loyalty at the
+present crisis----”
+
+“Crisis!” I said. “How that word brings it all back to me? Are we still
+going through a crisis? Fancy the word surviving!”
+
+“It’s about the only part of our old political system which does
+survive. The rest’s gone, hopelessly.”
+
+Gorman sighed, and I began to feel depressed again. But Gorman is not
+the man to sorrow long, even over the decay of the British Constitution.
+He dropped the unpleasant subject and started fresh.
+
+“Tim,” he said, “has been rather a disappointment to me. He hasn’t
+invented a single thing since the war began.”
+
+“I should have thought,” I said, “that this would have been his
+opportunity.”
+
+“So it is. The country’s simply crying out for inventions. Aerial
+torpedoes, traps for submarines, wireless methods of exploding the
+enemy’s ammunition, heaps of things of that sort. Tim might scoop up an
+immense fortune and be made a baronet. But instead of inventing--and he
+could if he chose--the young fool is flying about somewhere and dropping
+bombs on German railways. I’m inclined to think it was a mistake putting
+Tim into the Flying Corps at all. I wonder if we could get him out
+again. Do you know any one you could write to about him?”
+
+“No,” I said, “not a soul.”
+
+“Pity,” said Gorman. “A little personal influence helps a lot in things
+of this sort, and a letter from you----”
+
+I thought it time to change the subject.
+
+“The Aschers?” I said. “Ever see them now?”
+
+“I met her in the Park on Sunday. She’s Red Crossing. Had on the most
+elaborate costume you ever saw. Imagine a nurse’s uniform brought up to
+the standard of the highest art, or perhaps I ought to say an artistic
+dress with the red cross for motif. She told me that she expects to go
+to the Front next week.”
+
+“Thank God she didn’t go sooner! She might have nursed me if she’d been
+there in time.”
+
+“She’d have done it all right,” said Gorman. “I hear she’s a splendid
+organiser in spite of her clothes. Always was a remarkable woman, though
+you didn’t care for her. There’s been a lot of trouble about Ascher.”
+
+“Did he go bankrupt?”
+
+“Oh, dear no. Quite the contrary. All that financial part of the
+business was well managed and there wasn’t any serious smash-up. They
+say that Ascher helped a lot, in fact that it was very largely his
+advice which the Government took. All the same a lot of people turned
+on him afterwards, in spite of all I did to get him naturalised. They
+wanted to imprison him; but that was absurd. It’s all very well to round
+up ordinary Germans, barbers, waiters and people of that sort, and put
+them in concentration camps. But you can’t imprison a man who’s worth
+millions. That sort of thing isn’t done in any civilised state.”
+
+“Besides,” I said, “Ascher didn’t deserve it.”
+
+“Of course not. But that wouldn’t have saved him. In fact that has
+nothing whatever to do with the matter. Popular opinion ran very
+strongly against Germans, whether naturalised or not. And things were
+beginning to look very nasty for Ascher. However, we managed all right.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Oh,” said Gorman, “in the usual way. Diverted it.”
+
+“Gorman,” I said, “I’m afraid I’m getting stupid. Fighting must have
+muddled my brain. I don’t quite follow you. What did you divert?”
+
+“Popular opinion,” said Gorman. “We turned it away from Ascher, started
+everybody hunting a fresh hare. It wouldn’t have done to imprison
+Ascher, really wouldn’t, for a lot of reasons; so we all began making
+speeches about beer. Temperance, you know; I made one myself. Then
+everybody forgot about Ascher and things settled down.”
+
+“Politics aren’t as dead as you said they were, Gorman. You
+politicians----”
+
+“It’s all very well sneering at politicians, and I don’t mind your doing
+it, not a bit, especially as you’re wounded. But if it hadn’t been
+for us politicians---- Tell me this now, is there anybody else in the
+country who can divert popular opinion from an awkward subject?”
+
+I do not suppose there is. But I did not care to argue about it.
+
+“Do you think,” I said, “that Ascher ever regretted his decision?”
+
+“What decision? Oh, to stay in England? No. I don’t think he ever has.
+He’s done pretty well for himself in spite of any little trouble there’s
+been. I should say he’s no worse off than he was.”
+
+“I wasn’t thinking of the matter from a business point of view,” I said.
+
+“From every other point of view,” said Gorman, “he was wrong. A man
+ought not to go back on his country under any circumstances whatever.”
+
+“I don’t agree with you,” I said.
+
+“His conscience,” said Gorman, “if financiers have consciences which I
+doubt----”
+
+“Some day,” I said, “when I’m a bit stronger, we’ll argue the whole
+thing out.”
+
+We have argued it out, since then, twenty times at least. We are no
+nearer reaching a conclusion than we were.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gossamer, by George A. Birmingham
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