"Oh! Dr. Chris! You dear!" she cried, and came forward and flung her arms about him and kissed him.
Her cheeks were flushed, from her black furs her eyes shone at him. Some thought caught him. He knew where he had seen that excited glitter already to-day--Breton at luncheon--
They all talked. Then Christopher said that he must go.
Rachel came with him to the door. In the hall she looked at him defiantly, that flash he knew so well.
"You never come now, Dr. Chris: you"ve given me up."
"I don"t care for you in a crowd very much. There"s always a crowd now----"
"Ask me alone and I"ll come," she said, but still her eyes were defiant.
"No," he said gravely. "I"ll do no asking, Rachel. When you want me I"m there for you at any time--at _any_ time----"
For answer she flung her arms again about him and hugged him. Her heart was beating furiously. Then without another word she left him.
IV
He could not go back to Harley Street yet. The sense of apprehension that had been growing with him all day would give him a melancholy evening, were he to spend it alone. He thought of Brun. Someone had told him that the little man was in London.
He found him in his rooms, reading, with a cynical expression on his face, a French review.
"I came to see--" said Christopher, "whether you happened to be free to-night and would dine with me. I"m a pessimist for once this evening and it doesn"t suit me!"
Brun was very, very sorry, but he was dining with a Russian princess; it was most tiresome that he should have to waste his time with a Russian princess when he"d come over to London on this occasion expressly to study the English people at this interesting crisis of their affairs, but there it was--he"d no idea how he"d let himself in for it, and how much rather would he spend the evening with his friend, Christopher.
Christopher said that he would smoke one cigarette and that then he must go.
"And so you feel pessimistic?" said Brun, looking at Christopher curiously--"It"s the war, _Je crois bien_--How alike you all are!"
"No," said Christopher, "I don"t think the war"s much to do with it. I dare say the war"s a very good thing for all of us."
"Didn"t I tell you--?" said Brun, greatly excited--then pulled himself up--"No, it wasn"t you. It was Arkwright. More than a year ago we were in a picture gallery looking at your d.u.c.h.ess"s picture, and coming home we talked. I said then that something would come, that something _must_ come, and that then everything, _everything_ would crumple up. And behold!" cried Brun, his eyes flashing--"See, it crumples!"
"That"s a little previous of you," said Christopher. "Nothing crumpled yet. We"re disturbed of course----"
"It is most lucky," Brun said, "most lucky. Here we are, you and I, ordinary people enough, with the end of a Period with its death and the way it takes it, all for us to watch. _Most_ lucky...."
"End of Victorian Age ... _Voila!_" and with a little dramatic gesture he waved his hand as though he were flinging the Age and its lumber away, out of the window.
"You know, Christopher," he went on, "I"ve seen things coming over here for so long. All you people, you couldn"t have gone on very much longer so remote from life. And now this--it will finish your d.u.c.h.ess, your Beaminsters, your queen in her bonnet, your Sundays and your religion and your Whigs and Tories, and all your hypocrisies--No names any more taken just because they"ve always been taken, but new names made by men who"re doing things. Nothing taken for granted any more.
"Your Beaminsters will vanish, and then you"ll have your Denisons and Oaks and Ruddards on top. Then you"ll see a time. You"ll all be spinning like a top, dancing, dancing like dervishes. Then while you"re busy dancing up the other people will quietly come--all the real people, the Individualists--Women will have their justice--no man will skunk behind his garden hedge because he doesn"t want to be bothered. No more superst.i.tion, no more inefficiency----"
"You"re a wonderful fellow, Brun," said Christopher, getting up and flinging away the end of his cigarette. "You"ve always got any amount to say--but do you never think of people as people, not as theories or movements or developments----"
"No, thank G.o.d, I don"t. That"s for the sentimentalists like you, Christopher. People are all the same, fools or knaves."
"Well, I"m glad I don"t think so," said Christopher.
"Tell me," Brun put his little hand on the other"s elbow, "your Beaminsters now, how are they?"
"They"re all right."
"The d.u.c.h.ess? I hear she"s not so well----"
"Oh! nonsense--Well as she"s been any time these last thirty years."
"Yes? So--I"m glad. But the other Beaminsters? Ah! I must go quickly and call--To see them burst asunder, that will be most amusing----"
Christopher laughed. "You won"t see the Duke or Richard Beaminster burst," he said--"They"re like you--no personal feeling."
"And the girl?"
"Lady Seddon?"
"Yes. She"ll stir things up. She"s not a Beaminster, or only enough of one to make her hate the family. And she does hate them, _hein_?"
"Oh, my dear Brun, you"ve got an absurdly exaggerated view about everything. You"d twist the Beaminsters into anything to make them fit your theory."
"Oh, they"ll fit it right enough. But I must be in at the death. We"ll meet there together, Christopher. Things will occur before we"re much older, my sentimentalist."
Christopher shook his head. "There"s something sinister about your appearances in the City, Brun. "Where the carcases are, there will....""
Brun nodded. "It"s true enough this time," he said.
CHAPTER IX
THE DARKEST HOUR
"So G.o.d help us! and G.o.d knows what disorders we may fall into.... Home and to bed with a heavy heart."
_Diary of Samuel Pepys._
I
During that terrible December week in 1899, England suffered more defeats to her arms than during any other week of the century.
Magersfontein, Stormberg, Colenso, their names leapt one after another on to the screen.
London was dismayed; London was impatient. Easy enough to declare that the most criminal blunders had been perpetrated, easy enough to explain how one would oneself have conducted this or that, manoeuvred hither or thither some p.a.w.n in the game.
Dismay remained--a wide active alarm at the things that Life, so suddenly real and dominating and destructive, might in the future be preparing.