When William Came

by Saki (H. H. Munro)

  Yeovil stood for a minute or two, taking in every detail of the unfamiliar spectacle.

  “They have certainly accomplished something that we never attempted,” he muttered to himself. Then he turned on his heel and made his way back to the shady walk that ran alongside the Row. At first sight little was changed in the aspect of the well-known exercising ground. One or two riding masters cantered up and down as of yore, with their attendant broods of anxious-faced young girls and awkwardly bumping women pupils, while horsey-looking men put marketable animals through their paces or drew up to the rails for long conversations with horsey-looking friends on foot. Sportingly attired young women, sitting astride of their horses, careered by at intervals as though an extremely game fox were leading hounds a merry chase a short way ahead of them; it all seemed much as usual.

  Presently, from the middle distance a bright patch of colour set in a whirl of dust drew rapidly nearer and resolved itself into a group of cavalry officers extending their chargers in a smart gallop. They were well mounted and sat their horses to perfection, and they made a brave show as they raced past Yeovil with a clink and clatter and rhythmic thud, thud, of hoofs, and became once more a patch of colour in a whirl of dust. An answering glow of colour seemed to have burned itself into the grey face of the young man, who had seen them pass without appearing to look at them, a stinging rush of blood, accompanied by a choking catch in the throat and a hot white blindness across the eyes. The weakness of fever broke down at times the rampart of outward indifference that a man of Yeovil’s temperament builds coldly round his heartstrings.

  The Row and its riders had become suddenly detestable to the wanderer; he would not run the risk of seeing that insolently joyous cavalcade come galloping past again. Beyond a narrow stretch of tree-shaded grass lay the placid sunlit water of the Serpentine, and Yeovil made a short cut across the turf to reach its gravelled bank.

  “Can’t you read either English or German?” asked a policeman who confronted him as he stepped off the turf.

  Yeovil stared at the man and then turned to look at the small neatly-printed notice to which the official was imperiously pointing; in two languages it was made known that it was forbidden and verboten, punishable and straffbar, to walk on the grass.

  “Three shilling fine,” said the policeman, extending his hand for the money.

  “Do I pay you?” asked Yeovil, feeling almost inclined to laugh; “I’m rather a stranger to the new order of things.”

  “You pay me,” said the policeman, “and you receive a quittance for the sum paid,” and he proceeded to tear a counterfoil receipt for a three shilling fine from a small pocket book.

  “May I ask,” said Yeovil, as he handed over the sum demanded and received his quittance, “what the red and white band on your sleeve stands for?”

  “Bi-lingual,” said the constable, with an air of importance. “Preference is given to members of the Force who qualify in both languages. Nearly all the police engaged on Park duty are bi-lingual. About as many foreigners as English use the parks nowadays; in fact, on a fine Sunday afternoon, you’ll find three foreigners to every two English. The park habit is more Continental than British, I take it.”

  “And are there many Germans in the police Force?” asked Yeovil.

  “Well, yes, a good few; there had to be,” said the constable; “there were such a lot of resignations when the change came, and they had to be filled up somehow. Lots of men what used to be in the Force emigrated or found work of some other kind, but everybody couldn’t take that line; wives and children had to be thought of. ’Tisn’t every head of a family that can chuck up a job on the chance of finding another. Starvation’s been the lot of a good many what went out. Those of us that stayed on got better pay than we did before, but then of course the duties are much more multitudinous.”

  “They must be,” said Yeovil, fingering his three shilling State document; “by the way,” he asked, “are all the grass plots in the Park out of bounds for human feet?”

  “Everywhere where you see the notices,” said the policeman, “and that’s about three-fourths of the whole grass space; there’s been a lot of new gravel walks opened up in all directions. People don’t want to walk on the grass when they’ve got clean paths to walk on.”

  And with this parting reproof the bi-lingual constable strode heavily away, his loss of consideration and self-esteem as a unit of a sometime ruling race evidently compensated for to some extent by his enhanced importance as an official.

  “The women and children,” thought Yeovil, as he looked after the retreating figure; “yes, that is one side of the problem. The children that have to be fed and schooled, the women folk that have to be cared for, an old mother, perhaps, in the home that cannot be broken up. The old case of giving hostages.”

  He followed the path alongside the Serpentine, passing under the archway of the bridge and continuing his walk into Kensington Gardens. In another moment he was within view of the Peter Pan statue and at once observed that it had companions. On one side was a group representing a scene from one of the Grimm fairy stories, on the other was Alice in conversation with Gryphon and Mockturtle, the episode looking distressingly stiff and meaningless in its sculptured form. Two other spaces had been cleared in the neighbouring turf, evidently for the reception of further statue groups, which Yeovil mentally assigned to Struwelpeter and Little Lord Fauntleroy.

  “German middle-class taste,” he commented, “but in this matter we certainly gave them a lead. I suppose the idea is that childish fancy is dead and that it is only decent to erect some sort of memorial to it.”

  The day was growing hotter, and the Park had ceased to seem a desirable place to loiter in. Yeovil turned his steps homeward, passing on his way the bandstand with its surrounding acreage of tables. It was now nearly one o’clock, and luncheon parties were beginning to assemble under the awnings of the restaurant. Lighter refreshments, in the shape of sausages and potato salads, were being carried out by scurrying waiters to the drinkers of lager beer at the small tables. A park orchestra, in brilliant trappings, had taken the place of the military band. As Yeovil passed the musicians launched out into the tune which the doctor had truly predicted he would hear to repletion before he had been many days in London; the “National Anthem of the fait accompli.”

  V: L’art D’etre Cousine

  Joan Mardle had reached forty in the leisurely untroubled fashion of a woman who intends to be comely and attractive at fifty. She cultivated a jovial, almost joyous manner, with a top-dressing of hearty good will and good nature which disarmed strangers and recent acquaintances; on getting to know her better they hastily re-armed themselves. Some one had once aptly described her as a hedgehog with the protective mimicry of a puffball. If there was an awkward remark to be made at an inconvenient moment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when the occasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it. She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the habit of travelling on his particular highway. A great-aunt on her mother’s side of the family had married so often that Joan imagined herself justified in claiming cousin-ship with a large circle of disconnected houses, and treating them all on a relationship footing, which theoretical kinship enabled her to exact luncheons and other accommodations under the plea of keeping the lamp of family life aglow.

  “I felt I simply had to come to-day,” she chuckled at Yeovil; “I was just dying to see the returned traveller. Of course, I know perfectly well that neither of you want me, when you haven’t seen each other for so long and must have heaps and heaps to say to one another, but I thought I would risk the odium of being the third person on an occasion when two are company and three are a nuisance. Wasn’t it brave of me?”

  She spoke in full knowledge of the fact that the luncheon party would not in any case have been restricted to Yeovil and his wife, having seen Ron
nie arrive in the hall as she was being shown upstairs.

  “Ronnie Storre is coming, I believe,” said Cicely, “so you’re not breaking into a tête-à-tête.”

  “Ronnie, oh I don’t count him,” said Joan gaily; “he’s just a boy who looks nice and eats asparagus. I hear he’s getting to play the piano really well. Such a pity. He will grow fat; musicians always do, and it will ruin him. I speak feelingly because I’m gravitating towards plumpness myself. The Divine Architect turns us out fearfully and wonderfully built, and the result is charming to the eye, and then He adds another chin and two or three extra inches round the waist, and the effect is ruined. Fortunately you can always find another Ronnie when this one grows fat and uninteresting; the supply of boys who look nice and eat asparagus is unlimited. Hullo, Mr. Storre, we were all talking about you.”

  “Nothing very damaging, I hope?” said Ronnie, who had just entered the room.

  “No, we were merely deciding that, whatever you may do with your life, your chin must remain single. When one’s chin begins to lead a double life one’s own opportunities for depravity are insensibly narrowed. You needn’t tell me that you haven’t any hankerings after depravity; people with your coloured eyes and hair are always depraved.”

  “Let me introduce you to my husband, Ronnie,” said Cicely, “and then let’s go and begin lunch.”

  “You two must almost feel as if you were honeymooning again,” said Joan as they sat down; “you must have quite forgotten each other’s tastes and peculiarities since you last met. Old Emily Fronding was talking about you yesterday, when I mentioned that Murrey was expected home; ‘curious sort of marriage tie,’ she said, in that stupid staring way of hers, ‘when husband and wife spend most of their time in different continents. I don’t call it marriage at all.’ ‘Nonsense,’ I said, ‘it’s the best way of doing things. The Yeovils will be a united and devoted couple long after heaps of their married contemporaries have trundled through the Divorce Court.’ I forgot at the moment that her youngest girl had divorced her husband last year, and that her second girl is rumoured to be contemplating a similar step. One can’t remember everything.”

  Joan Mardle was remarkable for being able to remember the smallest details in the family lives of two or three hundred acquaintances.

  From personal matters she went with a bound to the political small talk of the moment.

  “The Official Declaration as to the House of Lords is out at last,” she said; “I bought a paper just before coming here, but I left it in the Tube. All existing titles are to lapse if three successive holders, including the present ones, fail to take the oath of allegiance.”

  “Have any taken it up to the present?” asked Yeovil.

  “Only about nineteen, so far, and none of them representing very leading families; of course others will come in gradually, as the change of Dynasty becomes more and more an accepted fact, and of course there will be lots of new creations to fill up the gaps. I hear for certain that Pitherby is to get a title of some sort, in recognition of his literary labours. He has written a short history of the House of Hohenzollern, for use in schools you know, and he’s bringing out a popular Life of Frederick the Great—at least he hopes it will be popular.”

  “I didn’t know that writing was much in his line,” said Yeovil, “beyond the occasional editing of a company prospectus.”

  “I understand his historical researches have given every satisfaction in exalted quarters,” said Joan; “something may be lacking in the style, perhaps, but the august approval can make good that defect with the style of Baron. Pitherby has such a kind heart; ‘kind hearts are more than coronets,’ we all know, but the two go quite well together. And the dear man is not content with his services to literature, he’s blossoming forth as a liberal patron of the arts. He’s taken quite a lot of tickets for dear Gorla’s début; half the second row of the dress-circle.”

  “Do you mean Gorla Mustelford?” asked Yeovil, catching at the name; “what on earth is she having a début about?”

  “What?” cried Joan, in loud-voiced amazement; “haven’t you heard? Hasn’t Cicely told you? How funny that you shouldn’t have heard. Why, it’s going to be one of the events of the season. Everybody’s talking about it. She’s going to do suggestion dancing at the Caravansery Theatre.”

  “Good Heavens, what is suggestion dancing?” asked Yeovil.

  “Oh, something quite new,” explained Joan; “at any rate the name is quite new and Gorla is new as far as the public are concerned, and that is enough to establish the novelty of the thing. Among other things she does a dance suggesting the life of a fern; I saw one of the rehearsals, and to me it would have equally well suggested the life of John Wesley. However, that is probably the fault of my imagination—I’ve either got too much or too little. Anyhow it is an understood thing that she is to take London by storm.”

  “When I last saw Gorla Mustelford,” observed Yeovil, “she was a rather serious flapper who thought the world was in urgent need of regeneration and was not certain whether she would regenerate it or take up miniature painting. I forget which she attempted ultimately.”

  “She is quite serious about her art,” put in Cicely; “she’s studied a good deal abroad and worked hard at mastering the technique of her profession. She’s not a mere amateur with a hankering after the footlights. I fancy she will do well.”

  “But what do her people say about it?” asked Yeovil.

  “Oh, they’re simply furious about it,” answered Joan; “the idea of a daughter of the house of Mustelford prancing and twisting about the stage for Prussian officers and Hamburg Jews to gaze at is a dreadful cup of humiliation for them. It’s unfortunate, of course, that they should feel so acutely about it, but still one can understand their point of view.”

  “I don’t see what other point of view they could possibly take,” said Yeovil sharply; “if Gorla thinks that the necessities of art, or her own inclinations, demand that she should dance in public, why can’t she do it in Paris or even Vienna? Anywhere would be better, one would think, than in London under present conditions.”

  He had given Joan the indication that she was looking for as to his attitude towards the fait accompli. Without asking a question she had discovered that husband and wife were divided on the fundamental issue that underlay all others at the present moment. Cicely was weaving social schemes for the future, Yeovil had come home in a frame of mind that threatened the destruction of those schemes, or at any rate a serious hindrance to their execution. The situation presented itself to Joan’s mind with an alluring piquancy.

  “You are giving a grand supper-party for Gorla on the night of her début, aren’t you?” she asked Cicely; “several people spoke to me about it, so I suppose it must be true.”

  Tony Luton and young Storre had taken care to spread the news of the projected supper function, in order to ensure against a change of plans on Cicely’s part.

  “Gorla is a great friend of mine,” said Cicely, trying to talk as if the conversation had taken a perfectly indifferent turn; “also I think she deserves a little encouragement after the hard work she has been through. I thought it would be doing her a kindness to arrange a supper party for her on her first night.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Yeovil said nothing, and Joan understood the value of being occasionally tongue-tied.

  “The whole question is,” continued Cicely, as the silence became oppressive, “whether one is to mope and hold aloof from the national life, or take our share in it; the life has got to go on whether we participate in it or not. It seems to me to be more patriotic to come down into the dust of the marketplace than to withdraw oneself behind walls or beyond the seas.”

  “Of course the industrial life of the country has to go on,” said Yeovil; “no one could criticise Gorla if she interested herself in organising cottage industries or anything of that sort, in which she would be helping her own people. That one could understand, but I don’t think a cosm
opolitan concern like the music-hall business calls for personal sacrifices from young women of good family at a moment like the present.”

  “It is just at a moment like the present that the people want something to interest them and take them out of themselves,” said Cicely argumentatively; “what has happened, has happened, and we can’t undo it or escape the consequences. What we can do, or attempt to do, is to make things less dreary, and make people less unhappy.”

  “In a word, more contented,” said Yeovil; “if I were a German statesman, that is the end I would labour for and encourage others to labour for, to make the people forget that they were discontented. All this work of regalvanising the social side of London life may be summed up in the phrase ‘travailler pour le roi de Prusse.’”

  “I don’t think there is any use in discussing the matter further,” said Cicely.

  “I can see that grand supper-party not coming off,” said Joan provocatively.

  Ronnie looked anxiously at Cicely.

  “You can see it coming on, if you’re gifted with prophetic vision of a reliable kind,” said Cicely; “of course as Murrey doesn’t take kindly to the idea of Gorla’s enterprise I won’t have the party here. I’ll give it at a restaurant, that’s all. I can see Murrey’s point of view, and sympathise with it, but I’m not going to throw Gorla over.”

  There was another pause of uncomfortably protracted duration.

  “I say, this is a top-hole omelette,” said Ronnie.

  It was his only contribution to the conversation, but it was a valuable one.