The Parts Men Play.
by Arthur Beverley Baxter, et al.
FOREWORD.
Mr. Baxter is my countryman, and, as a Canadian, I commend _The Parts Men Play_, not only for its literary vitality, but for the freshness of outlook with which the author handles Anglo-American susceptibilities.
A Canadian lives in a kind of half-way house between Britain and the United States. He understands Canada by right of birth; he can sympathise with the American spirit through the closest knowledge born of contiguity; his history makes him understand Britain and the British Empire. He is, therefore, a national interpreter between the two sundered portions of the race.
It is this role of interpreter that Mr. Baxter is destined to fill, a role for which he is peculiarly suited, not only by temperament, but by reason of his experiences gained from his entrance into the world of London journalism and English literature.
I do not know in what order the chapters of _The Parts Men Play_ were written, but it seems to me that as Mr. Baxter gets to grip with the realities of his theme, he begins to lose a certain looseness of touch which marks his opening pages. If so, he is showing the power of development, and to the artist this power is everything. The writer who is without it is a mere static consciousness weaving words round the creatures of his own imagination. The man who has it possesses a future, because he is open to the teaching of experience. And among the men with a future I number Mr. Baxter.
Throughout the book his pictures of life are certainly arresting--taken impartially both in Great Britain and America. What could be better than some of his descriptions?
The speech of the American diplomat at a private dinner is the truest defence and explanation of America"s delay in coming into the war that I remember to have read. The scene is set in the high light of excitement, and the rhetorical phrasing of the speech would do credit to a famous orator.
But I fear that I may be giving the impression that _The Parts Men Play_ is merely a piece of propagandist fiction--something from which the natural man shrinks back with suspicion. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Mr. Baxter"s strength lies in the rapid flow and sweep of his narrative. His characterisation is clear and firm in outline, but it is never pursued into those quicksands of minute a.n.a.lysis which too often impede the stream of good story-telling.
I am glad that a Canadian novelist should have given us a book which supports the promise shown by the author in _The Blower of Bubbles_, and marks him out for a distinguished future.
If in the course of a novel of action he has something to teach his British readers about the American temperament, and his American public about British mentality, so much the better.
BEAVERBROOK.
THE PARTS MEN PLAY.
CHAPTER I.
LADY DURWENT DECIDES ON A DINNER.
I.
His Majesty"s postmen were delivering mail. Through the gray grime of a November morning that left a taste of rust in the throat, the carriers of letters were bearing their cargo to all the corners of that world which is called London.
There were letters from hospitals asking for funds; there were appeals from sick people seeking admission to hospital. There were long, legal letters and little, scented letters lying wonderingly together in the postman"s bag. There were notes from tailors to gentlemen begging to remind them; and there were answers from gentlemen to their tailors, in envelopes bearing the crests of Pall Mail clubs, hinting of temporary embarra.s.sment, but mentioning certain prospects that would shortly enable them to . . . .
Fat, bulging envelopes, returning ma.n.u.scripts with editors" regrets, were on their way to poor devils of scribblers living in the alt.i.tude of unrecognised genius and a garret. There were cringing, fawning epistles, written with a smirk and sealed with a scowl; some there were couched in a refinement of cruelty that cut like a knife.
But, as unconcerned as tramps plying contraband between South America and Mexico, His Majesty"s postmen were delivering His Majesty"s mail, with never a thought of the play of human emotions lying behind the sealed lips of an envelope. If His Majesty"s subjects insisted upon writing to one another, it was obvious that their letters, in some mysterious way become the property of His Majesty, had to be delivered.
Thus it happened, on a certain November morning in the year 1913, that six dinner invitations, enclosed in small, square envelopes with a n.o.ble crest on the back, and large, unwieldy writing on the front, were being carried through His Majesty"s fog to six addresses in the West End of London.
Lady Durwent had decided to give a dinner.
An ordinary hostess merely writes a carelessly formal note stating that she hopes the recipient will be able to dine with her on a certain evening. The form of her invitations varies as little as the conversation at her table. But Lady Durwent was _unusual_. For years she had endeavoured to impress the fact on London, and by careful attention to detail had at last succeeded in gaining that reputation.
She was that _rara avis_ among the women of to-day--the hostess who knows her guests. She never asked any one to dine at her house without some definite purpose in mind--and, for that matter, her guests never dined with her except on the same terms.
Therefore it came about that Lady Durwent"s dinners were among the pleasantest things in town, and, true to her character of the _unusual_, she always worded her invitations with a nice discrimination dictated by the exact motive that prompted the sending.
II.
H. Stackton Dunckley looked up from his pillow as the man-servant who valeted for the gentlemen of the Jermyn Street Chambers drew aside a gray curtain and displayed the gray blanket of the atmosphere outside.
"Good-morning, Watson," said Mr. Dunckley in a voice which gave the impression that he had smoked too many cigars the previous evening--an impression considerably strengthened by the bilious appearance of his face.
"Good-morning, sir. Will you have the _Times_ or the _Morning Post_?
And here are your letters, sir."
The rec.u.mbent gentleman took the letters and waved them philosophically at the valet. "Leave me to my thoughts," he said thickly, but with considerable dignity. "I am not interested in the squeaky jarring of the world revolving on its rusty axis."
Being an author, he almost invariably tried out his command of language in the morning, as a tenor essays two or three notes on rising, to make sure that his voice has not left him during his slumber.
Mr. Watson bowed and withdrew. H. Stackton Dunckley lit a cigarette, opened the first letter, and read it.
"8 CHELMSFORD GARDENS.
"MY DEAR STACKY,--Next Friday I am giving a little dinner-party--just a few _unusual_ people--to meet an American author who has recently come to England. Do come; but, you brilliant man, don"t be too caustic, will you?
"Isn"t it dreadful the way gossip is connecting our names? Supposing Lord Durwent should hear about it!--Until Friday,
"SYBIL DURWENT.
"P.S.--How is _the_ play coming on? Dinner will be at 8.30."
H. Stackton Dunckley put the letter down and sighed. He was an author who had been writing other men"s ideas all his life, but without sufficient distinction to achieve either a success or a failure. He had gained some notoriety by his wife suing him for divorce; but when the Court granted her separation on the ground of desertion, it cleared him of the charge of infidelity--and of the chance of advertis.e.m.e.nt at the same moment. Later, by being a constant attendant on Lady Durwent, he almost succeeded in creating a scandal; but, to the great disappointment of them both, London flatly refused to believe there was anything wrong. For one thing, she was the daughter of a commoner--and the morality of the middle cla.s.ses is a conviction solidly rooted in English society. And then there were his writings. How could one doubt the character of a man so dull?
Undiscouraged, they still maintained their perfectly innocent friendship, and, like kittens playing with a spool, invested it with all the appearances of an intrigue.
Dismissing his depressing thoughts, H. Stackton Dunckley noticed that his cigarette was out, and closing his eyes, fell asleep once more.
III.
Madame Carlotti, clothed in a kimono of emphatic shade, sat by the fire in her rooms in Knightsbridge and read her mail while sipping coffee.
She was the wife of an Italian diplomat, a sort of wandering plenipotentiary who did business in every part of the world but London, and with every Government but that of Britain. It was the signora"s somewhat incomprehensible complaint that her husband"s duties forced her to live in that fog-bound metropolis, and having thus achieved the pedestal of a martyr, she poured abuse on everything English from climate to customs. Possessed of a certain social dexterity and the ability to make the most ordinary conversation seem to concern a forbidden topic, Madame Carlotti was in great demand as a guest, and abused more English habits and attended more dinner-parties than any other woman in London.
From beneath seven tradesmen"s letters she extracted one from Lady Durwent.