“Jack’s a formalist,” said Sir Lawrence, as they entered the Coffee House; “you’ll have to mind your p’s and q’s.”
Young Croom smiled.
“You bet. Everything’s simply perfect at his stud farm. Luckily I really am frightfully keen about horses. I didn’t feel at sea with Mr. Muskham. It’s an immense relief to have a chance again; and there’s nothing I’d like better.”
Sir Lawrence smiled—enthusiasm was always pleasant.
“You must know my son,” he said, “he’s an enthusiast too, though he must be thirty-seven by now. You’ll be in his constituency—no, just out of it. You’ll be in Dornford’s, I expect. By the way, you know my niece is acting secretary for him?”
Young Croom nodded.
“I don’t know,” murmured Sir Lawrence, “whether that’ll go on now Corven’s over.” And he watched the young man’s expression.
It had perceptibly darkened. “Oh! it will. She won’t go back to Ceylon.”
It was said with frowning suddenness, and Sir Lawrence thought: ‘This is where I weigh myself.’ Young Croom followed him to the weighing machine, as if he did not know how not to. He was very red.
“What makes you sure of that?” said Sir Lawrence, looking up from the historic chair. Young Croom went even redder.
“One doesn’t come away just to go back.”
“Or one does. If Life were a racehorse it’d be always up before the stewards for running in and out.”
“I happen to know Lady Corven won’t, sir.”
It was clear to Sir Lawrence that he had lighted on a moment when feeling gets the better of discretion. So the young man WAS in love with her! Was this a chance to warn him off the course? Or was it more graceful to take no notice?
“Just eleven stone,” he said; “do you go up or down, Mr. Croom?”
“I keep about ten twelve.”
Sir Lawrence scrutinised his lean figure.
“Well, you look very fit. Extraordinary what a shadow can be cast on life by the abdomen. However, you won’t have to worry till you’re fifty.”
“Surely, sir, you’ve never had any bother there?”
“Not to speak of; but I’ve watched it darken so many doors. And now I must be getting on. Good-night to you!”
“Good-night, sir. I really am awfully grateful.”
“Not at all. My cousin Jack doesn’t bet, and if you take my advice, you won’t either.”
Young Croom said heartily: “I certainly shan’t, sir.”
They shook hands and Sir Lawrence resumed his progress up St. James’s Street.
‘That young man,’ he was thinking, ‘impresses me favourably, and I can’t think why—he appears to be going to be a nuisance. What I ought to have said to him was: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife.” But God so made the world that one doesn’t say what one ought!’ The young were very interesting; one heard of them being disrespectful to Age and all that, but really he couldn’t see it. They seemed to him fully as well-mannered as he himself had been at their age, and easier to talk to. One never knew what they were thinking, of course; but that might be as well. After all, one used to think that the old—and Sir Lawrence winced on the kerbstone of Piccadilly—were only fit to be measured for their coffins. ‘Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis’; but was that true? No more really than the difference in the pronunciation of Latin since one’s youth. Youth would always be Youth and Age would be Age, with the same real divergence and distrust between them, and the same queer hankering by Age to feel as Youth was feeling and think as Youth was thinking; the same pretence that it wouldn’t so feel and think for the world, and, at the back of all, the instinct that, really given the chance, Age wouldn’t have its life over again. Merciful—that! With stealthy quietude Life, as it wore one out, supplied the adjustment of a suitable lethargy. At each stage of existence the zest for living was tailored to what man had before him and no more. That fellow Goethe had attained immortality to the tunes of Gounod by fanning a dying spark into a fullblown flame. ‘Rats!’ thought Sir Lawrence: ‘and very German rats! Would I choose the sighing and the sobbing, the fugitive raptures and the lingering starvations in front of that young man, if I could? I would not! Sufficient unto the old buffer is the bufferism thereof. Is that policeman never going to stop this blamed traffic?’ No, there was no real change! Men drove cars now to the same tick as the old horse-bus and hansom-cab drivers had driven their slipping, sliding, clattering gees. Young men and women experienced the same legal or illegal urge towards each other. The pavements were different, and the lingo in which those youthful hankerings were expressed. But—Lord Almighty!—the rules of the road, the collisions and slips and general miraculous avoidances, the triumphs, mortifications, and fulfilments for better for worse, were all the same as ever. ‘No,’ he thought; ‘the Police may make rules, Divines write to the papers, Judges express themselves as they like, but human nature will find its own way about as it did when I was cutting my wisdom teeth.’
The policeman reversed his sleeves, and Sir Lawrence crossed, pursuing his way to Berkeley Square. Here was change enough! The houses of the great were going fast. Piecemeal, without expressed aim, almost shamefacedly, in true English fashion, London was being rebuilt. The dynastic age was gone, with its appendages, feudalism, and the Church. Even wars would now be fought for peoples and their markets. No more dynastic or religious wars. Well, that was something! ‘We’re getting more like insects daily,’ thought Sir Lawrence. And how interesting! Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place—service—social service—the ants’ creed, the bees’ creed! Communism had formulated it and was whipping it into the people from the top. So characteristic! They were always whipping something into somebody in Russia. The quick way, no doubt, but the sure way? No! The voluntary system remained the best, because when once it got hold it lasted—only it was so darned slow! Yes, and darned ironical! So far the sense of social service was almost the perquisite of the older families, who had somehow got hold of the notion that they must do something useful to pay for their position. Now that they were dying out would the sense of service persist? How were the ‘people’ to pick it up? ‘Well,’ thought Sir Lawrence, ‘after all, there’s the bus conductor; and the fellow in the shop, who’ll take infinite trouble to match the colour of your socks; and the woman who’ll look after her neighbour’s baby, or collect for the waifs and strays; and the motorist who’ll stop and watch you tinkering at your car; and the postman who’s grateful for a tip; and the almost anybody who’ll try and pull you out of a pond if he can really see you’re in it. What’s wanted is the slogan: “Fresh air and exercise for good instincts.” One might have it on all the buses, instead of: “Canon’s Colossal Crime,” or “Strange Sweepstake Swindle.” And that reminds me to ask Dinny what she knows about Clare and that young man.’
So thinking, he paused before his house door, and inserted his key in its latch.
CHAPTER 12
In spite of Sir Gerald Corven’s assurance, the course before a husband wishing to resume the society of his wife is not noticeably simple, especially if he has but a week wherein to encompass his desire. The experience of that evening had made Clare wary. On leaving the Temple at lunch-time the day after, a Saturday, she took train for Condaford, where she carefully refrained from saying that she had sought asylum. On Sunday morning she lay long in bed, with the windows wide open, watching the sky beyond the tall denuded elms. The sun shone in upon her, the air was mild and alive with sounds surprised into life, the twittering once more of birds, the lowing of a cow, the occasional caw of a rook, the continual cooing of the fantails. There was but little poetry in Clare, but for a moment to her easeful stretched-out being came a certain perception of the symphony which is this world. The lacing of the naked boughs and those few leaves against the soft, gold-bright, moving sky; that rook balancing there; the green and fallow upland, the far line of trees; and all those sounds, and the pure unscented air on her face; the twittering quietude and perfect freedom of each separate thing, and yet the long composure of design—all this for a moment drew her out of herself into a glimpse of the universal.