"Has old Colney an idea of it?"
"He has been foretelling an eruption of an edifice."
The laugh between them subsided to pensiveness.
Mr. Fenellan"s delay in the delivery of his news was eloquent to reveal the one hateful topic; and this being seen, it waxed to such increase of size with the pa.s.sing seconds, that prudence called for it.
"Come!" said Mr. Radnor.
The appeal was understood.
"Nothing very particular. I came into the City to look at a warehouse they want to mount double guard on. Your idea of the fireman"s night-patrol and wires has done wonders for the office."
"I guarantee the City if all my directions are followed."
Mr. Fenellan"s remark, that he had nothing very particular to tell, reduced it to the mere touch upon a vexatious matter, which one has to endure in the ears at times; but it may be postponed. So Mr. Radnor encouraged him to talk of an Insurance Office Investment. Where it is all bog and mist, as in the City to-day, the maxim is, not to take a step, they agreed. Whether it was attributable to an unconsumed glut of the markets, or apprehension of a panic, had to be considered. Both gentlemen were angry with the Birds on the flags of foreign nations, which would not imitate a sawdust Lion to couch reposefully. Incessantly they scream and sharpen talons.
"They crack the City bubbles and bladders, at all events," Mr. Fenellan said. "But if we let our journals go on making use of them, in the shape of sham hawks overhead, we shall pay for their one good day of the game with our loss of the covey. An unstable London"s no world"s market-place."
"No, no; it"s a n.i.g.g.ardly national purse, not the journals," Mr. Radnor said. "The journals are trading engines. Panics are grist to them; so are wars; but they do their duty in warning the taxpayer and rousing Parliament. Dr. Schlesien"s right: we go on believing that our G.o.d Neptune will do everything for us, and won"t see that Steam has paralyzed his Trident: good! You and Colney are hard on Schlesien--or at him, I should say. He"s right: if we won"t learn that we have become Continentals, we shall be marched over. Laziness, cowardice, he says."
"Oh, be hanged!" interrupted Fenellan. "As much of the former as you like. He "s right about our "individualismus" being another name for selfishness, and showing the usual deficiency in external features; it"s an individualism of all of a pattern, as when a mob cuts its lucky, each fellow his own way. Well, then, conscript them, and they"ll be all of a better pattern. The only thing to do, and the cheapest. By heaven! it"s the only honourable thing to do."
Mr. Radnor disapproved. "No conscription here."
"Not till you"ve got the drop of poison in your blood, in the form of an army landed. That will teach you to catch at the drug."
"No, Fenellan! Besides they"ve got to land. I guarantee a trusty army and navy under a contract, at two-thirds of the present cost. We"ll start a National Defence Insurance Company after the next panic."
"During," said Mr. Fenellan, and there was a flutter of laughter at the un.o.btrusive hint for seizing Dame England in the mood.
Both dropped a sigh.
"But you must try and run down with us to Lakelands to-morrow," Mr.
Radnor resumed on a cheerfuller theme. "You have not yet seen all I "ve done there. And it "s a castle with a drawbridge: no exchangeing of visits, as we did at Craye Farm and at Creckholt; we are there for country air; we don"t court neighbours at all--perhaps the elect; it will depend on Nataly"s wishes. We can accommodate our Concert-set, and about thirty or forty more, for as long as they like. You see, that was my intention--to be independent of neighbouring society. Madame Callet guarantees dinners or hot suppers for eighty--and Armandine is the last person to be recklessly boasting.--When was it I was thinking last of Armandine?" He asked himself that, as he rubbed at the back of his head.
Mr. Fenellan was reading his friend"s character by the light of his remarks and in opposition to them, after the critical fashion of intimates who know as well as hear: but it was amiably and trippingly, on the dance of the wine in his veins.
His look, however, was one that reminded; and Mr. Radnor cried: "Now!
whatever it is!"
"I had an interview: I a.s.sure you," Mr. Fenellan interposed to pacify: "the smallest of trifles, and to be expected: I thought you ought to know it:--an interview with her lawyer; office business, increase of Insurance on one of her City warehouses."
"Speak her name, speak the woman"s name; we"re talking like a pair of conspirators," exclaimed Mr. Radnor.
"He informed me that Mrs. Burman has heard of the new mansion."
"My place at Lakelands?"
Mr. Radnor"s clear-water eyes hardened to stony as their vision ran along the consequences of her having heard it.
"Earlier this time!" he added, thrummed on the table, and thumped with knuckles. "I make my stand at Lakelands for good! Nothing mortal moves me!"
"That butler of hers--"
"Jarniman, you mean: he"s her butler, yes, the scoundrel--h"m-pah!
Heaven forgive me! she"s an honest woman at least; I wouldn"t rob her of her little: fifty-nine or sixty next September, fifteenth of the month!
with the const.i.tution of a broken drug-bottle, poor soul! She hears everything from Jarniman: he catches wind of everything. All foreseen, Fenellan, foreseen. I have made my stand at Lakelands, and there"s my flag till it"s hauled down over Victor Radnor. London kills Nataly as well as Fredi--and me: that is--I can use the words to you--I get back to primal innocence in the country. We all three have the feeling.
You"re a man to understand. My beasts, and the wild flowers, hedge-banks, and stars. Fredi"s poetess will tell you. Quiet waters reflecting. I should feel it in Paris as well, though they have nightingales in their Bois. It"s the rustic I want to bathe me; and I had the feeling at school, biting at Horace. Well, this is my Sabine Farm, rather on a larger scale, for the sake of friends. Come, and pure air, water from the springs, walks and rides in lanes, high sand-lanes; Nataly loves them; Fredi worships the old roots of trees: she calls them the faces of those weedy sandy lanes. And the two dear souls on their own estate, Fenellan! And their poultry, cows, cream. And a certain influence one has in the country socially. I make my stand on a home--not empty punctilio."
Mr. Fenellan repeated, in a pause, "Punctilio," and not emphatically.
"Don"t bawl the word," said Mr. Radnor, at the drum of whose ears it rang and sang. "Here in the City the woman"s harmless; and here," he struck his breast. "But she can shoot and hit another through me. Ah, the witch!--poor wretch! poor soul! Only, she"s malignant. I could swear! But Colney "s right for once in something he says about oaths--"dropping empty buckets," or something."
""Empty buckets to haul up impotent demons, whom we have to pay as heavily as the ready devil himself,"" Mr. Fenellan supplied the phrase.
"Only, the moment old Colney moralizes, he"s what the critics call sententious. We"ve all a parlous lot too much pulpit in us."
"Come, Fenellan, I don"t think..."
"Oh, yes, but it"s true of me too."
"You reserve it for your enemies."
"I "d like to distract it a bit from the biggest of "em." He pointed finger at the region of the heart.
"Here we have Skepsey," said Mr. Radnor, observing the rapid approach of a lean small figure, that in about the time of a straight-aimed javelin"s cast, shot from the doorway to the table.
CHAPTER IV. THE SECOND BOTTLE
This little dart of a man came to a stop at a respectful distance from his master, having the look of an arrested needle in mechanism. His lean slip of face was an illumination of vivacious grey from the quickest of prominent large eyes. He placed his master"s letters legibly on the table, and fell to his posture of attention, alert on stiff legs, the hands like sucking-cubs at play with one another.
Skepsey waited for Mr. Fenellan to notice him.
"How about the Schools for Boxing?" that gentleman said.
Deploring in motion the announcement he had to make, Skepsey replied: "I have a difficulty in getting the plan treated seriously: a person of no station:--it does not appear of national importance. Ladies are against.
They decline their signatures; and ladies have great influence; because of the blood; which we know is very slight, rather healthy than not; and it could be proved for the advantage of the frailer s.e.x. They seem to be unaware of their own interests--ladies. The contention all around us is with ignorance. My plan is written; I have shown it, and signatures of gentlemen, to many of our City notables favourable in most cases: gentlemen of the Stock Exchange highly. The clergy and the medical profession are quite with me."
"The surgical, perhaps you mean?"
"Also, sir. The clergy strongly."
"On the grounds of--what, Skepsey?"
"Morality. I have fully explained to them:--after his work at the desk all day, the young City clerk wants refreshment. He needs it, must have it. I propose to catch him on his way to his music-halls and other places, and take him to one of our establishments. A short term of instruction, and he would find a pleasure in the gloves; it would delight him more than excesses-beer and tobacco. The female in her right place, certainly." Skepsey supplicated honest interpretation of his hearer, and pursued,