Lord of the World 12
"Not much. Besides, Christ! what do I care? If only this infernal
Eastern affair would end!"
He knew he was feverish and irritable, and made a great effort to drive
it down.
"Oh, my dear!" he went on, flushed a little. "If they would not be such
heavy fools: they don't understand; they don't understand."
"Yes, Oliver?"
"They don't understand what a glorious thing it all is Humanity, Life,
Truth at last, and the death of Folly! But haven't I told them a hundred
times?"
She looked at him with kindling eyes. She loved to see him like this,
his confident, flushed face, the enthusiasm in his blue eyes; and the
knowledge of his pain pricked her feeling with passion. She bent forward
and kissed him suddenly.
"My dear, I am so proud of you. Oh, Oliver!"
He said nothing; but she could see what she loved to see, that response
to her own heart; and so they sat in silence while the sky darkened yet
more, and the click of the writer in the next room told them that the
world was alive and that they had a share in its affairs.
Oliver stirred presently.
"Did you notice anything just now, sweetheart--when I said that about
Jesus Christ?"
"She stopped knitting for a moment," said the girl.
He nodded.
"You saw that too, then.... Mabel, do you think she is falling back?"
"Oh! she is getting old," said the girl lightly. "Of course she looks
back a little."
"But you don't think--it would be too awful!"
She shook her head.
"No, no, my dear; you're excited and tired. It's just a little
sentiment.... Oliver, I don't think I would say that kind of thing
before her."
"But she hears it everywhere now."
"No, she doesn't. Remember she hardly ever goes out. Besides, she hates
it. After all, she was brought up a Catholic."
Oliver nodded, and lay back again, looking dreamily out.
"Isn't it astonishing the way in which suggestion lasts? She can't get
it out of her head, even after fifty years. Well, watch her, won't
you?... By the way ..."
"Yes?"
"There's a little more news from the East. They say Felsenburgh's
running the whole thing now. The Empire is sending him everywhere--
Tobolsk, Benares, Yakutsk--everywhere; and he's been to Australia."
Mabel sat up briskly.
"Isn't that very hopeful?"
"I suppose so. There's no doubt that the Sufis are winning; but for how
long is another question. Besides, the troops don't disperse."
"And Europe?"
"Europe is arming as fast as possible. I hear we are to meet the Powers
next week at Paris. I must go."
"Your arm, my dear?"
"My arm must get well. It will have to go with me, anyhow."
"Tell me some more."
"There is no more. But it is just as certain as it can be that this is
the crisis. If the East can be persuaded to hold its hand now, it will
never be likely to raise it again. It will mean free trade all over the
world, I suppose, and all that kind of thing. But if not---"
"Well?"
"If not, there will be a catastrophe such as never has been even
imagined. The whole human race will be at war, and either East or West
will be simply wiped out. These new Benninschein explosives will make
certain of that."
"But is it absolutely certain that the East has got them?"
"Absolutely. Benninschein sold them simultaneously to East and West;
then he died, luckily for him."
Mabel had heard this kind of talk before, but her imagination simply
refused to grasp it. A duel of East and West under these new conditions
was an unthinkable thing. There had been no European war within living
memory, and the Eastern wars of the last century had been under the old
conditions. Now, if tales were true, entire towns would be destroyed
with a single shell. The new conditions were unimaginable. Military
experts prophesied extravagantly, contradicting one another on vital
points; the whole procedure of war was a matter of theory; there were no
precedents with which to compare it. It was as if archers disputed as to
the results of cordite. Only one thing was certain--that the East had
every modern engine, and, as regards male population, half as much
again as the rest of the world put together; and the conclusion to be
drawn from these premisses was not reassuring to England.
But imagination simply refused to speak. The daily papers had a short,
careful leading article every day, founded upon the scraps of news that
stole out from the conferences on the other side of the world;
Felsenburgh's name appeared more frequently than ever: otherwise there
seemed to be a kind of hush. Nothing suffered very much; trade went on;
European stocks were not appreciably lower than usual; men still built
houses, married wives, begat sons and daughters, did their business and
went to the theatre, for the mere reason that there was no good in
anything else. They could neither save nor precipitate the situation; it
was on too large a scale. Occasionally people went mad--people who had
succeeded in goading their imagination to a height whence a glimpse of
reality could be obtained; and there was a diffused atmosphere of
tenseness. But that was all. Not many speeches were made on the subject;
it had been found inadvisable. After all, there was nothing to do but to
wait.
III
Mabel remembered her husband's advice to watch, and for a few days did
her best. But there was nothing that alarmed her. The old lady was a
little quiet, perhaps, but went about her minute affairs as usual. She
asked the girl to read to her sometimes, and listened unblenching to
whatever was offered her; she attended in the kitchen daily, organised
varieties of food, and appeared interested in all that concerned her
son. She packed his bag with her own hands, set out his furs for the
swift flight to Paris, and waved to him from the window as he went down
the little path towards the junction. He would be gone three days, he
said.
It was on the evening of the second day that she fell ill; and Mabel,
running upstairs, in alarm at the message of the servant, found her
rather flushed and agitated in her chair.
"It is nothing, my dear," said the old lady tremulously; and she added
the description of a symptom or two.
Mabel got her to bed, sent for the doctor, and sat down to wait.
She was sincerely fond of the old lady, and had always found her
presence in the house a quiet sort of delight. The effect of her upon
the mind was as that of an easy-chair upon the body. The old lady was so
tranquil and human, so absorbed in small external matters, so
reminiscent now and then of the days of her youth, so utterly without
resentment or peevishness. It seemed curiously pathetic to the girl to
watch that quiet old spirit approach its extinction, or rather, as Mabel
believed, its loss of personality in the reabsorption into the Spirit of
Life which informed the world. She found less difficulty in
contemplating the end of a vigorous soul, for in that case she imagined
a kind of energetic rush of force back into the origin of things; but in
this peaceful old lady there was so little energy; her whole point, so
to speak, lay in the delicate little fabric of personality, built out of
fragile things into an entity far more significant than the sum of its
component parts: the death of a flower, reflected Mabel, is sadder than
the death of a lion; the breaking of a piece of china more irreparable
than the ruin of a palace.
"It is syncope," said the doctor when he came in. "She may die at any
time; she may live ten years."
"There is no need to telegraph for Mr. Brand?"
He made a little deprecating movement with his hands.
"It is not certain that she will die--it is not imminent?" she asked.
"No, no; she may live ten years, I said."
He added a word or two of advice as to the use of the oxygen injector,
and went away.
* * * * *
The old lady was lying quietly in bed, when the girl went up, and put
out a wrinkled hand.
"Well, my dear?" she asked.
"It is just a little weakness, mother. You must lie quiet and do
nothing. Shall I read to you?"
"No, my dear; I will think a little."
It was no part of Mabel's idea to duty to tell her that she was in
danger, for there was no past to set straight, no Judge to be
confronted. Death was an ending, not a beginning. It was a peaceful
Gospel; at least, it became peaceful as soon as the end had come.
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