The Defenders of Democracy

U >> Unknown >> The Defenders of Democracy

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

The Millionaire rose to his feet with a yawn.

"He must get an experienced woman-friend to help him with things
like carpets and curtains," he ordained with mellow benevolence.
"When my wife comes back from Wales.... How soon do you have to
turn out, Poet?"

The Poet woke with a start and looked at the clock. The time was
a quarter to two, and he still wanted to go to bed.

"Ten days," he murmured drowsily.

"Jove! You haven't much time," said the Millionaire. "Now, look
here; the one thing NOT to do is to be in a hurry. Any place you
take now will probably have to serve you for several years, and
you'll find moving a lot more expensive than you think. If you can
get some kind of shake-down for a few days,--" he turned expansively
to his friends--"we may be able to give you a few hints."

The Poet became suddenly wakeful and alert.

"Do I understand that you're offering me a bed until you find me
permanent quarters?" he enquired with slow precision.

"Er--yes," said the Millionaire a little blankly.

"Thank you," answered the Poet simply. "I say, d'you men mind if
I turn you out now? It's rather late, and I haven't been sleeping
very well."

II

A week later the Poet walked up Park Lane, followed by an elderly
man trundling two compressed cane trunks on a barrow with a loose
wheel. It was a radiant summer afternoon, and taxis stood idle in
long ranks, when they were not drawing in to the curb with winning
gestures. The Poet, however, wished to make his arrival dramatic,
and it was dramatic enough to make the Millionaire's butler direct
him to the tradesman's entrance, while the Millionaire, remembering
little but suspecting all, hurried away by a side door, leaving
a message that he was out of England for the duration of the war.
The lot fell on the Millionaire's wife to invent such excuses
as would rid the house of the Poet's presence before dinner. The
Millionaire's instincts were entirely hospitable, but that night's
party had been arranged for the entertainment and subsequent
destruction of four men with money to invest and, like the Poet,
"no knowledge of business, investments, all that sort of thing."

"No, we have not met before," explained the Poet coldly and
uncompromisingly, abandoning the rather gentle voice and caressing
manners which caused women to invite him to dinner when they could
think of no one else. "Your husband and one or two of our common
friends have kindly undertaken to find me new quarters, and I have
been invited to stay here until something suitable has been found."

There was silence for a few moments, and the Millionaire's wife looked
apprehensively at the clock, while the Poet laid the foundations
of a malignantly substantial tea.

"H-how far have you got at present?" she asked with an embarrassed
laugh.

"Your husband told me to leave it to him," answered the Poet, "and
I've left it to him. There was a general feeling that I didn't
know what I wanted--house or flat, north or south of the Park, all
the rest of it--; they said there would be a scandal if I employed
a young maid, I couldn't afford two, and an old one would pawn my
clothes to buy gin. I am quoting your husband now; I know nothing
of business. Every one agreed, too, that I must have a drain of
some kind. Would you say it took long to find a bed-sitting room
with use of bath?"

The Millionaire's wife hurriedly pushed back her chair?

"My husband's going abroad for the duration of the war," she said
in loyal explanation, "but it's just possible that he hasn't started
yet."

The Millionaire, returning on tip-toe from the loft over the garage,
had sought asylum in the library, where he was smoking a cigar and
reading the evening paper. As his wife entered he looked up with
welcoming expectancy.

"How did you get rid of him?" he asked.

The Millionaire's wife pressed her hands to her temples.

"My dear! What HAVE you been promising him?" she cried.

The Millionaire swore softly, as the truth sank into his brain.

"Have another place laid for dinner," he ordered; "book two seats
for a music-hall and take him out to supper afterwards. I can't
afford to be disturbed to-night. To-morrow I must get in touch
with the Iron King.... I don't see what more there is to be said."

Four weeks later the Poet drove in a six-cylinder car from Park
Lane to Eaton Square on an indeterminate visit to the Iron King.
He was looking better for the month's good wine and food, in which
the Millionaire's house abounded; but now the Millionaire, who based
his fortune on knowing the right people in every walk of life, was
arranging to have his house taken over by the Red Cross authorities.
In a week's time the house was to be found unsuitable and restored
to him, but henceforth the Iron King was to have the honor of
entertaining the Poet.

"How you ever came to make such a promise!" wailed the Millionaire's
wife for the twentieth time, as they drove to Claridge's. "London's
so full that you might have known it's impossible to get ANYthing."

"I feel that we have exhausted this subject," answered the Millionaire
with the bruskness of a man whose nerves have worn thin; with the
menace, too, of one who, having divorced his first wife, would
divorce the second on small provocation.

The Iron King was not at home when the Poet arrived in Eaton Squire,
but a pretty, young secretary, cultured to the point of transforming
all her final "g's" into "k's" received him with every mark of
welcome. She admired the Iron King romantically and was in the
habit of writing his surname after her own Christian name to see
how the combination looked; and, when he had departed each morning
to contest his latest assessment for excess profits, she would wander
through the house, planning little changes in the arrangement of
the furniture and generally deploring the sober, colorless taste
of the first Iron Queen. So far her employer returned none of her
admiration. He addressed her loosely as "Miss--er" and forgot her
name; he never noticed what clothes she was wearing or the pretty
dimples that she made by holding down the inside flesh of her
cheeks between her eye-teeth; further, he criticized her spelling
spitefully and, on the occasion of the Millionaire's second marriage,
had dictated a savage half sheet beginning, "A young man may marry
once, as he may get drunk once, without the world thinking much
the worse of him; habitual intemperance is, on first principles,
to be deplored...."

The pretty young secretary knew from fiction and the drama that
the Iron King would never appreciate her until he stood in danger
of losing her. She welcomed the Poet as a foil and misquoted his
poetry twice before tea was over; then she invited him to accompany
her to a picture palace, but the Poet, once inside the citadel, was
reluctant to leave it until his position was more firmly established.

Scarcely entrenched at Claridge's, the Millionaire telephoned
derisively to the city, so that the Iron King returned home half an
hour before his usual time, prepared to deal with the Poet as he
dealt with querulous or inquisitive shareholders at General Meetings.
The Poet, however, was long and painfully accustomed to combat
with enraged editors and lost no time in assuming the offensive,
demanding indignantly in a high head-voice, before the Iron King
had crossed his own threshold, why no quarters had been found for
him and how much longer any one imagined that he would put up with
the indignity of being bandied from one wretched house to another.

The flushed cheeks and hysterical manner put the Iron King temporarily
out of countenance.

"My dear fellow!" he interrupted ingratiatingly.

"I'm not a business man," continued the Poet hotly. "You all of
you told me that, and I'm disposed to say: 'Thank God, I'm not.'"

The Iron King put his hat carefully out of reach and forced a smile.

"You mustn't take it like that, old chap," he said soothingly.
"I--we--all of us are doing our best. Now we won't bother about
dressing; let's go straight in and thrash the thing out over a
bottle of wine."

Instructing his butler very audibly to open a bottle of the
1906 Lanson, he slipped his arm through the Poet's and led him,
sullenly murmuring, into the dining-room. With the second bottle
of champagne, his guest ceased to be aggrieved and became quarrelsome;
when the port wine appeared, he had the Iron King cowed and broken
in moral.

"If you find fault with everything, why do you come here, why stay
here?" complained the Iron King with a last flickering effort to
recover his independence.

"Why don't you find me some other place to go to, as you promised?"
the Poet retorted, as he made his way to the morning-room and sat
down to order a month's supply of underclothes from his hosier.

III

The Iron King always boasted that honesty was the best policy
and that he was invariably willing to put his cards on the table.
The Millionaire had once professed himself likely to be satisfied
if the Iron King would only remove the fifth ace from his sleeve,
and a certain coolness between the two men resulted. In general,
however, he had the reputation of a frank, bluff fellow.

On the morrow of the Poet's arrival, he remained in bed and announced in
the quavering pencil-strokes of a sick man, that he was suffering
from anthrax, which, he might add, was not only painful but
infectious. The Poet scrawled across one corner of the note that
anthrax was usually fatal, but that, as he himself had twice had
it, he would risk taking it a third time in order to be with his
friend. Thereupon the Iron King departed to the city, leaving the
Poet to dictate blank verse to the pretty young secretary, who curled
both feet round one leg of her chair, told him that she "loved his
potry more'n anythink she'd ever read" and asked how all the hard
words like "chrysoprase" and "asphdel" were spelt. That night a
telegram arrived shortly before dinner, and the Iron King announced
that the Ministry of Munitions was sending him to America to
stabilize iron prices.

"Why can't you finish one thing before starting another?" demanded
the Poet hectoringly. "You haven't YET found me any quarters, and
you call yourself a business man. I shall of course stay on here
till your return..."

The Iron King shook his head gravely.

"That's impossible," he interrupted. "My young secretary..."

"You must take her with you," answered the Poet obstinately.

The subject was not pursued, but at bed time the Iron King roundly
asked the Poet how much he would take to go away.

"I require a home," answered the Poet frigidly, remembering the
weary day spent by him in discovering the Glebe Place studio and
the weary night spent by the Iron King in recommending Kensington
boarding houses. "I do not want your money."

"We shan't fall out over a pound or two," urged the Iron King with
a meaning motion of the hand towards his breast pocket.

"A thing is either a promise or it is not a promise," replied the
Poet, as he turned on his heel. "I know nothing of business or
what people are pleased to term 'commercial morality.'"

Four weeks later the Poet left Eaton Square for the Private
Secretary's rooms in Bury Street. He looked thin and anemic after
his month of privations, for the Iron King, improving in morale
and recapturing something of the old strike-breaking spirit, had
counter-attacked on the third day of the Poet's visit. The chauffeur,
butler and two footmen, all of military age, had been claimed on
successive appeals as indispensable, but on their last appearance
at the Tribunal the Iron King had unprotestingly presented them
to the Army. This he followed by breakfasting in bed, lunching in
the city, dining at his club and leaving neither instructions nor
money for the maintenance of the household. For a time the Poet
was saved from the greater starvation by the care of the pretty
young secretary, but without an Iron King there was no need for a
foil. Sharp words were exchanged one morning over the propriety
of grounds in coffee; the pretty young secretary declared that she
would "have nothink more to do with him or his old potry"; and in
the afternoon he packed his trunks with his own hands and with his
own hands dragged them downstairs on to the pavement, leaving the
pretty young secretary biting viciously at the corner of a crumpled
handkerchief drenched in "White Rose."

The Private Secretary received him in a manner different from that
adopted by either the Millionaire or the Iron King. The two men
were of nearly the same age, but in a deferential, if mis-spent
life the Private Secretary had learned to be non-committal. Well
he knew that he had but one bedroom; well he knew that, on admitting
it, the Poet would claim it from him.

"A spare bed?" he echoed, when the Poet dragged his trunks into
the middle of a tiny sitting room. "Really, I have no statement
to make."

"At least you will not deny," said the Poet with truculent emphasis,
"that you undertook to find me suitable accommodation and to supply
me with a bed until it was found."

"I must refer you to the reply given to a similar question on the
twenty-third ultimo," answered the Private Secretary loftily. for
a rich reward he could not have said where he had been or what he
had done on the twenty-third ultimo, but to the Poet the reply was
new and disconcerting.

"Where's my flat anyway?" he pursued doggedly.

"I have no statement to make," reiterated the Private Secretary.

After an awkward silence, during which neither yielded an inch
of ground, the Poet dragged his trunks destructively downstairs
and drove to the flat of the Official Receiver. Glowing with the
consciousness of victory, the Private Secretary dressed for dinner
and started out to his club. His good-humor was impaired, when he
observed in his hall a pendant triangle of wall-paper flapping in
the draught of the open door through which the Poet had dragged
his trunks. Further on, the paint was scarred on the stairs, and
the carpet of the main hall was rucked and disordered; there was
also a lingering suggestion of escaping gas, and the Secretary
observed a bracket hanging at a bibulous angle.

"This," he murmured through grimly set teeth, "is sheer frightfulness."

Returning to his rooms, he drawled a friendly warning by telephone
to the Millionaire, who instantly gave orders that no one of any
sex or age was to be admitted. Next he called up the Iron King and
repeated the warning; then the Lexicographer, the Official Receiver
and the Military Attache were similarly placed on their guard, and
there was nothing to do but to proceed to his belated dinner.

The Great War, which had converted staff officers into popular
preachers, novelists into strategical experts and everyone else
into a Minister of the Crown, had left the Poet (in name, at least)
a poet and in nothing else anything at all. He acted precisely
as the Private Secretary had intended him to act, driving first to
the Lexicographer's house, where he was greeted by a suspiciously
new "TO LET" board, and thence to the Official Receiver's flat,
where a typewritten card informed him that this bell was out of
order. Embarrassed but purposeful, he directed his four-wheeler to
Eaton Square, but the blinds were down, and a semblance of mourning
draped the Iron King's house. In Park Lane a twenty-yard expanse
of straw, nine inches thick, prayed silence for the Millionaire's
quick recovery.

"I don't know where to go to next," murmured the Poet dejectedly.

"Well, I'm blest if I do," grumbled the driver. "And it's past my
tea-time. Doncher know where yer live?"

"Years ago I had rooms in Stafford's Inn," began the Poet. "Then
the Cabinet Committee..."

The cabman descended from his box for a heart to heart conversation.

"Now you look 'ere," he said. "I got a boy at 'ome the livin'
image of you..."

"But how nice!" interrupted the Poet, wondering apprehensively
whether an invitation was on its way to him.

The cabman sniffed.

"Not quite righ in 'is 'ead 'e ain't. THEREfore I don't want to
be 'arsh with yer. Jump inside, let me drive yer ter Stafford's
Inn, pay me me legal fare and a bob ter drink yer 'ealth--and
we'll say no more abaht it. If yer don't--" He made a threatening
gesture towards the Poet's precariously strapped trunks--"I'll
throw the blinkin' lot on ter the pivement, and yer can carry 'em
'ome on yer 'ead. See?"

"I couldn't, you know," objected the Poet gently.

"Jump inside," repeated the cabman.

One hope was as forlorn as another, and the Poet was too sick with
hunger to think of resistance. In time the four-wheeler rumbled
its way to think of resistance. In time the four-wheeler rumbled
its way to Stafford's Inn; in time and by force of habit the Poet
was mounting the bare, creaking, wooden stairs; in time he found
himself fitting his unsurrendered latch key into his abandoned
lock.

Beyond an eight week's layer of dust on chairs and table, the
threadbare rooms were little changed. A loaf of bread, green and
furred with mold, lay beside an empty marmalade pot from which a
cloud of flies emerged with angry buzzing; a breakfast cup without
a handle completed the furniture of the table, and in the rickety
armchair was an eight-week-old "Morning Post."

"The Cabinet Committee has neglected its opportunities," grumbled
the Poet, surveying with disfavor the dusty, derelict scene.

Then his eye was caught by a long envelope, thrust half-way under
the door, from the Cabinet Committee itself. An indecipherable
set of initials, later describing itself as his obedient servant,
was directed to inform him on a date two months earlier that it
had been decided not to requisition the offices and chambers of
Stafford's Inn. The formal notice was accordingly to be regarded
as canceled.

The Poet, who knew nothing of business, wrote instructing his
solicitors to claim for two months' disturbance from the Defense
of the Realm Commission on Losses and to include all legal costs
in the claim.

IV

Three weeks later the Private Secretary was strolling across the
Horse Guard's Parade on his way to luncheon, when he caught sight
of the Poet. Since their last altercation his conscience had been
as uneasy as a Private Secretary's conscience can be, and he strove
to avoid the meeting. The Poet, however, was full of sunshine and
smiles.

"I've not seen you for weeks!" he cried welcomingly. "How's everybody
and what's everybody doing? Is the Millionaire all right again?
I understand he's been ill."

The Private Secretary eyed his friend suspiciously.

"He has not left his house for three weeks," he answered.

"And the Iron King."

"He has not either."

The Poet's eyes lit up with dawning comprehension.

"What about the Lexicographer and the Official Receiver?" he asked.
"The same? What an infernal nuisance! I wanted to call round and
see whether they had got me a flat."

The Private Secretary shook his head.

"It's not the least use," he said emphatically. "None of them
has been outside his front door for three weeks, no one knows when
they'll come out again, no one is allowed inside. Last night I
had a box given me for the theater, and I tried to make up a party;
all their telephones were disconnected, and, when I drove round
in person, I couldn't even get the bell answered." He paused and
then enquired carelessly, "By the way, have you got into your new
quarters yet? They would be interested to know."

"I haven't got any new quarters," answered the Poet. "You remember
that you and the others were going to find them for me. I know
nothing of business--and I'm not likely to get new rooms until I
see the Millionaire and the Iron King."

At the steps of his club the Private Secretary paused, as though
wondering whether to say that the Poet was unlikely to see the
Iron King or the Millionaire until he had got his new rooms. This
prolonged voluntary self-internment was a source of inconvenience,
for in the peaceful days before the Cabinet Committee on Accommodation
had stepped in, there were pleasant parties in Eaton Square and
Park Lane. Now the Private Secretary was reduced to paying for
his own dinners more often than was agreeable. He said nothing,
however, for fear of concentrating the Poet's fire on himself.

"It must be simply wrecking their business," said the Poet to himself,
as he walked to Bedford Row to see how the claim for disturbance
was progressing. "It serves them right, though, for talking drains
when I wanted to go to bed."

Stephen McKenna

The Spell of the Kilties

What made the crowds turn out in their applauding thousands in New
York, Boston, Chicago, Brooklyn, and wherever the "Kilties" from
Canada appeared during their visit to the United States of America
on their British Recruiting Mission, during the summer of 1917?

Or why do the inhabitants of Paris single out the kilted regiments
when a March Past of the forces of the Allies is held on a National
Fete Day, and press upon the soldiers with showers of flowers and
tokens of admiration?

Is it simply because the dress worn is somewhat out of the
common, giving a touch of color to these gray times, and bringing
associations of days of old, as the men swing along, with a swish
of their kilts, to the skirl of the Pipes?

Or is there not a deeper meaning in this spontaneous welcome which
comes so evidently from the hearts of the onlookers, and one which
is reflected in the popularity of Colonel Walter Scott's New York
kilted Highlanders, and by the many find bodies of men turned
out--mostly at their own expense--by the Scottish Clan and Highland
Dress Associations, in various cities of the U. S. A.?

The truth is that deep down in the hearts of the majority of the
human race there exists a profound attachment to the ideals of
gallantry and chivalry which were nourished by the stories we loved
in childhood, and by the tales of Scottish prowess, in prose and
poetry, selected for the school-books in use by the children of
the English-speaking peoples.

Scotland has indeed been blessed by the possession of poets
and bards who have preserved her annals and sung the deeds of her
patriot heroes in so alluring a form, that her sons and daughters
are assured of a welcome in any part of the world, and start with
the great asset of being always expected to "make good" in every land
of their adoption. Wherever they may roam, we find them occupying
positions of influence, and still cherishing and promulgating the
traditions and customs of the Land of the Heather, which impel to
high thinking, resolute doing, and the upholding of old standards,
such as build up the lives both of individuals and of nations.

And thus, when the moment of emergency arrives when "to every
man and nation comes the moment to decide" you will find the men
and women of Scottish descent to the forefront in every fight for
liberty and righteousness in every part of the globe.

And in the midst of the clash and din of arms you will catch ever
and anon the sound of the up-lifting cadence of some grand old
Scottish Psalm tune, bringing comfort, and courage, and clam,--and
then the call of the Pipes, inspiring war-worn troops to accomplish
impossible tasks, such as the feats which have made the Gordon
Highlanders and their Pipers immortal--as at Dargai, and have brought
fresh glory to many a Scottish Regiment in this great war--aye,
and to many a regiment of brother Gaels from Ireland also, of whose
exploits we have heard as they rushed into the fray, preceded by
their Irish War-Pipes.

A few weeks ago, a young widow with her two months' old baby in
her arms, was following the remains of her husband to his warrior's
grave "somewhere in France." She was dry-eyed and rebellious in
her youthful despair, as she walked at the head of the sad little
procession of her husband's comrades;--and then the party met
a Highland Pipe Band, whose Pipe-Major, quick to understand the
situation, halted his men, wheeled them round, and gave the signal
to play the lovely Lament: "Lochaber no more!"

At the sound of the familiar strains the founts of sorrow were
unsealed, and weeping, but comforted, the child-wife mother was
able to commit her dead hero's dust to the grave in sure and certain
confidence of a glorious re-union, and turned to face life again
with his little son, with strength and faith renewed.

This is but a little incident, but it illustrates the hold that
the music of the Gael has on the hearts of its children, and of its
power to evoke memories and associations full of inspiration both
in joy and in sorrow.

AND IS NOT THIS THE INTERPERTATION OF THE SPELL OF THE "KILTIES"?

[signed] Lady Aberdeen and Temain

Sherston's Wedding Eve

In the gathering twilight a man stood at the eastern window of a
room which formed the top story of one of the houses in Peter the
Great Terrace--that survival from the early nineteenth century which
forms a kind of recess in the broad thoroughfare linking Waterloo
Bridge with the Strand. The man's name was Shirley Sherston, and
among the happy, prosperous few who are concerned with such things,
he was known for his fine, distinguished work in domestic architecture.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21