When William Came, Saki [red scrolls of magic .txt] 📗

all the time there was one topic that was never touched on.  Of half the families mentioned it was necessary to add the qualifying information that they “used to live” at such and such a place; the countryside knew them no longer.  Their properties were for sale or had already passed into the hands of strangers.  But neither man cared to allude to the grinning shadow that sat at the feast and sent an icy chill now and again through the cheeriest jest and most jovial story.  The brisk run with the hounds that day had stirred and warmed their pulses; it was an evening for comfortable forgetting.  Later that night, in the stillness of his bedroom, with the dwindling noises of a retiring household dropping off one by one into ordered silence, a door shutting here, a fire being raked out there, the thoughts that had been held away came crowding in.  The body was tired, but the brain was not, and Yeovil lay awake with his thoughts for company.  The world grew suddenly wide again, filled with the significance of things that mattered, held by the actions of men that mattered.  Hunting-box and stable and gun-room dwindled to a mere pin-point in the universe, there were other larger, more absorbing things on which the mind dwelt.  There was the grey cold sea outside Dover and Portsmouth and Cork, where the great grey ships of war rocked and swung with the tides, where the sailors sang, in doggerel English, that bitter-sounding adaptation, “Germania rules t’e waves,” where the flag of a World-Power floated for the world to see.  And in oven-like cities of India there were men who looked out at the white sun-glare, the heat-baked dust, the welter of crowded streets, who listened to the unceasing chorus of harsh-throated crows, the strident creaking of cart-wheels, the buzz and drone of insect swarms and the rattle call of the tree lizards; men whose thoughts went hungrily to the cool grey skies and wet turf and moist ploughlands of an English hunting country, men whose memories listened yearningly to the music of a deep-throated hound and the call of a game-bird in the stubble.  Yeovil had secured for himself the enjoyment of the things for which these men hungered; he had known what he wanted in life, slowly and with hesitation, yet nevertheless surely, he had arrived at the achievement of his unconfessed desires.  Here, installed under his own roof-tree, with as good horseflesh in his stable as man could desire, with sport lying almost at his door, with his wife ready to come down and help him to entertain his neighbours, Murrey Yeovil had found the life that he wanted—and was accursed in his own eyes.  He argued with himself, and palliated and explained, but he knew why he had turned his eyes away that evening from the little graveyard under the trees; one cannot explain things to the dead. CHAPTER XIX: THE LITTLE FOXES

“Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines”

On a warm and sunny May afternoon, some ten months since Yeovil’s return from his Siberian wanderings and sickness, Cicely sat at a small table in the open-air restaurant in Hyde Park, finishing her after-luncheon coffee and listening to the meritorious performance of the orchestra.  Opposite her sat Larry Meadowfield, absorbed for the moment in the slow enjoyment of a cigarette, which also was not without its short-lived merits.  Larry was a well-dressed youngster, who was, in Cicely’s opinion, distinctly good to look on—an opinion which the boy himself obviously shared.  He had the healthy, well-cared-for appearance of a country-dweller who has been turned into a town dandy without suffering in the process.  His blue-black hair, growing very low down on a broad forehead, was brushed back in a smoothness that gave his head the appearance of a rain-polished sloe; his eyebrows were two dark smudges and his large violet-grey eyes expressed the restful good temper of an animal whose immediate requirements have been satisfied.  The lunch had been an excellent one, and it was jolly to feed out of doors in the warm spring air—the only drawback to the arrangement being the absence of mirrors.  However, if he could not look at himself a great many people could look at him.

Cicely listened to the orchestra as it jerked and strutted through a fantastic dance measure, and as she listened she looked appreciatively at the boy on the other side of the table, whose soul for the moment seemed to be in his cigarette.  Her scheme of life, knowing just what you wanted and taking good care that you got it, was justifying itself by results.  Ronnie, grown tiresome with success, had not been difficult to replace, and no one in her world had had the satisfaction of being able to condole with her on the undesirable experience of a long interregnum.  To feminine acquaintances with fewer advantages of purse and brains and looks she might figure as “that Yeovil woman,” but never had she given them justification to allude to her as “poor Cicely Yeovil.”  And Murrey, dear old soul, had cooled down, as she had hoped and wished, from his white heat of disgust at the things that she had prepared herself to accept philosophically.  A new chapter of their married life and man-and-woman friendship had opened; many a rare gallop they had had together that winter, many a cheery dinner gathering and long bridge evening in the cosy hunting-lodge.  Though he still hated the new London and held himself aloof from most of her Town set, yet he had not shown himself rigidly intolerant of the sprinkling of Teuton sportsmen who hunted and shot down in his part of the country.

The orchestra finished its clicking and caracoling and was accorded a short clatter of applause.

“The Danse Macabre,” said Cicely to her companion; “one of Saint-Saëns’ best known pieces.”

“Is it?” said Larry indifferently; “I’ll take your word for it.  ’Fraid I don’t know much about music.”

“You dear boy, that’s just what I like in you,” said Cicely; “you’re such a delicious young barbarian.”

“Am I?” said Larry.  “I dare say.  I suppose you know.”

Larry’s father had been a brilliantly clever man who had married a brilliantly handsome woman; the Fates had not had the least intention that Larry should take after both parents.

“The fashion of having one’s lunch in the open air has quite caught on this season,” said Cicely; “one sees everybody here on a fine day.  There is Lady Bailquist over there.  She used to be Lady Shalem you know, before her husband got the earldom—to be more correct, before she got it for him.  I suppose she is all agog to see the great review.”

It was in fact precisely the absorbing topic of the forthcoming Boy-Scout march-past that was engaging the Countess of Bailquist’s earnest attention at the moment.

“It is going to be an historical occasion,” she was saying to Sir Leonard Pitherby (whose services to literature had up to the present received only a half-measure of recognition); “if it miscarries it will be a serious set-back for the fait accompli.  If it is a success it will be the biggest step forward in the path of reconciliation between the two races that has yet been taken.  It will mean that the younger generation is on our side—not all, of course, but some, that is all we can expect at present, and that will be enough to work on.”

“Supposing the Scouts hang back and don’t turn up in any numbers,” said Sir Leonard anxiously.

“That of course is the danger,” said Lady Bailquist quietly; “probably two-thirds of the available strength will hold back, but a third or even a sixth would be enough; it would redeem the parade from the calamity of fiasco, and it would be a nucleus to work on for the future.  That is what we want, a good start, a preliminary rally.  It is the first step that counts, that is why to-day’s event is of such importance.”

“Of course, of course, the first step on the road,” assented Sir Leonard.

“I can assure you,” continued Lady Bailquist, “that nothing has been left undone to rally the Scouts to the new order of things.  Special privileges have been showered on them, alone among all the cadet corps they have been allowed to retain their organisation, a decoration of merit has been instituted for them, a large hostelry and gymnasium has been provided for them in Westminster, His Majesty’s youngest son is to be their Scoutmaster-in-Chief, a great athletic meeting is to be held for them each year, with valuable prizes, three or four hundred of them are to be taken every summer, free of charge, for a holiday in the Bavarian Highlands and the Baltic Seaboard; besides this the parent of every scout who obtains the medal for efficiency is to be exempted from part of the new war taxation that the people are finding so burdensome.”

“One certainly cannot say that they have not had attractions held out to them,” said Sir Leonard.

“It is a special effort,” said Lady Bailquist; “it is worth making an effort for.  They are going to be the Janissaries of the Empire; the younger generation knocking at the doors of progress, and thrusting back the bars and bolts of old racial prejudices.  I tell you, Sir Leonard, it will be an historic moment when the first corps of those little khaki-clad boys swings through the gates of the Park.”

“When do they come?” asked the baronet, catching something of his companion’s zeal.

“The first detachment is due to arrive at three,” said Lady Bailquist, referring to a small time-table of the afternoon’s proceedings; “three, punctually, and the others will follow in rapid succession.  The Emperor and Suite will arrive at two-fifty and take up their positions at the saluting base—over there, where the big flag-staff has been set up.  The boys will come in by Hyde Park Corner, the Marble Arch, and the Albert Gate, according to their districts, and form in one big column over there, where the little flags are pegged out.  Then the young Prince will inspect them and lead them past His Majesty.”

“Who will be with the Imperial party?” asked Sir Leonard.

“Oh, it is to be an important affair; everything will be done to emphasise the significance of the occasion,” said Lady Bailquist, again consulting her programme.  “The King of Würtemberg, and two of the Bavarian royal Princes, an Abyssinian Envoy who is over here—he will lend a touch of picturesque barbarism to the scene—the general commanding the London district and a whole lot of other military bigwigs, and the Austrian, Italian and Roumanian military attachés.”

She reeled off the imposing list of notables with an air of quiet satisfaction.  Sir Leonard made mental notes of personages to whom he might send presentation copies of his new work “Frederick-William, the Great Elector, a Popular Biography,” as a souvenir of to-day’s auspicious event.

“It is nearly a quarter to three now,” he said; “let us get a good position before the crowd gets thicker.”

“Come along to my car, it is just opposite to the saluting base,” said her ladyship; “I have a police pass that will let us through.  We’ll ask Mrs. Yeovil and her young friend to join us.”

Larry excused himself from joining the party; he had a barbarian’s reluctance to assisting at an Imperial triumph.

“I think I’ll push off to the swimming-bath,” he said to Cicely; “see you again about tea-time.”

Cicely walked with Lady Bailquist and the literary baronet towards the crowd of spectators, which was steadily growing in dimensions.  A newsboy ran in front of them displaying a poster with the intelligence “Essex wickets fall rapidly”—a semblance of county cricket still survived under the new order of things.  Near the saluting base some thirty or forty motorcars were drawn up in line, and Cicely and her companions exchanged greetings with many of the occupants.

“A lovely day for the review, isn’t it?” cried the