Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “But how do I know you really feel for me?” she asked, wanting to get a more complete and abject surrender from him. “It is easy to say you are sorry: that costs you nothing.”

  Right at the back of her mind, not vividly presented to it, was the thought of some sables, which even he had refused to buy for her at the price demanded. He had bought her some silver-fox instead, as a means of diplomatic delay. She thought of the sables....

  “The news to-night will cost me enough,” said he, “unless I am very careful and also very quick.”

  “You are thinking only of your money — that is all that concerns you,” she said. “As if it were not easy enough for you to make more money. But you do not feel for me. All my pleasure is taken away, and you hint that I must lose half my friends, too. You do not care for friends: they mean nothing to you, and you cannot understand my misery. You tell me I shall have to say what my sympathies are, and if they are German, I shall lose my English friends, and if they are English, I shall lose my German friends. That’s what you mean, and you think that to me it is only like drawing a card out of a pack. I have no quarrel with anybody: I want to be friends with all. Besides, there is not war yet. You may be wrong about it: you mustn’t think you are always right. And if you are wrong, you have been making me miserable for nothing.”

  It was no use reasoning with the unreasonable, and he wanted to keep the activity of his faculties for something more remunerative than that.

  “Well, then, we will hope I am wrong,” he said, “and then my ownest heart’s-dearest Aline will be happy again. Now, darling, you must go to bed at once. It will be dawn in an hour or two, and if you do not get some sleep, your eyes will be dull to-morrow, and that will never do. Leave me now: I must sit up and think and work for an hour more, and all the time it will be you I am thinking and working for. You know how I make my eyes dull for your brightness, you Joy of mine.”

  She was content enough with that to condescend to be comforted. It pleased her insatiable self-centredness to think that her husband would be working for her while she slept. She rose and kissed him.

  “There!” she said, “I trust you: you are quite, quite forgiven. I know you will make it all right, you will see that my pleasure and happiness are not taken away from me by any stupid quarrels with which I have nothing to do. Work for a little while longer, if you insist on it. And when you come up to bed, will you come ever so quietly? I may be just going off to sleep, and if you disturb me, I shall begin thinking about all those horrid things again, and shall lie awake miserable till morning.”

  “Sleep well,” said he.

  Hermann Gurtner, like most successful men in any walk of life, had a great power of absorbed meditation, that went on unconsciously in his brain, while the more superficial part of it was actively engaged in receiving and examining and noting the information on which his decision would be based. Now, when he was left alone, he spread those sources in front of his brain, and his intelligence darted about, now scrutinizing one, now another, while the subconscious distillation from them soaked into his inmost mind. At other moments he stirred them all up together, and put their stewing-pot back over the fire, with the lid on, letting them simmer and bubble together in the dark and the heat and the steam. For the next hour he did this, occasionally walking up and down his room, but for the most part sitting quite still in his chair, biting his nails.

  He was intensely anxious: the whole situation seemed to him about as menacing as a situation could be; but as a counterweight to this anxiety, he enjoyed the ecstasy that always accompanies the exercise to the utmost of trained and sharpened faculties. He would infinitely have preferred a serene world, unmenaced by war, but since he had not got the ordering of that, he was like a jackal waiting for the result of the battle of the lions. There would be bits to pick up, discarded fragments of provender, even before the imperial beasts proceeded to tear each other, for in that national excitement they would have forgotten about their dinner.... It was but little to them, but it would make an immense store for a jackal.

  Thus it was not only, nor indeed mainly, the possible cataclysm that confronted him: he saw with at least as much lucidity, the possibility of a huge financial coup for himself, possessed as he was of information known probably only to the War Council in Germany, and to his agent in Berlin. The War Council’s policy for the moment was clearly to observe the utmost possible secrecy....

  There were several pictures which he unrolled and spread out before his mind. The first and the largest of all was the cypher message he had received from his agent in Berlin, that throughout the length and breadth of Germany secret mobilization of the armies was going on, under the excuse of “autumn manoeuvres.” He did not doubt what those “autumn manoeuvres” were to be, for earlier in the week he had ascertained that there was tremendous activity in Krupps’ Works at Essen. No doubt the English Cabinet was also aware of this, but the English Cabinet was not “out” to make money. They would talk about it, and consider what it meant, and no doubt make arrangements in view of its meaning what it certainly did mean; but in the interval, he, financier and business man, was free to act while they were considering national defence.

  All his life he had relied entirely on his own judgment, had never had a partner in his business, and from the time that he had sat, an office boy, on the hard stool of a German house in London, with the fire to build, and this difficult English language to learn, he had found no reason for trusting the opinion of others more highly than his own....

  Germany was secretly mobilizing.... Krupps’ works were forging and hammering night and day.... A third ingredient in the boiling-pot was the news which his wife had given him, namely, that the German Ambassador was anxious to know what the feeling in England was with regard to trouble in Ireland. When she told him that, he had drawn no conclusions from it, except that the statement that the Emperor would be heart-broken when he heard of the seriousness of the position, could not possibly be true. There must be something behind that, something that accounted more reasonably for the Emperor’s grief when he should hear that there was a possibility, if not more, of civil war in Ireland. But what could it be? These inquiries and their ludicrous interpretation meant something. It was not the German way to take the trouble to acquire information, unless it was to be of some use. Twice he peered into the stewing-pot, and found that ingredient still unsoftened and uncooked by the boiling it experienced over his hot fire of his brain. It remained still hard and unfit to add sustenance to the stew....

  Then suddenly this intractable material liquefied on the touch of a conjecture. What if Germany wanted to ascertain whether England would be so much immersed in internal troubles, as not to be able to get her head above the troubled sea of European tumult? And, at that conjecture, all his acumen shouted approbation to him, as at the solving of a riddle in Dumb-Crambo.

  In this fresh light he went over again all that he had previously examined. Austria had made unreasonable and preposterous demands on Serbia and Russia had remonstrated. That was all that was officially known. To-night’s private information from Berlin had told him that Germany was preparing for war. From that he had deduced that Germany was arming herself against Russia, and if Russia persisted in her remonstrance, she would find the Central Empires against her. France would necessarily range herself with Russia. And would Great Britain join her European Allies?

  It was that, just exactly that, which Germany wanted to know. Irish troubles might make it impossible for England to do so. And in that case both Russia and France might be already considered as crushed. What chance had they against that huge military machine? It was as if a man with a shot-gun set out to attack an adversary with a repeating rifle. And, apart from that, there was the German fleet. Supposing England was not taking a hand, how the great Deutschland Dreadnoughts would sweep down the Channel, and reduce Calais and Boulogne and Dieppe and Havre to ruins! Deutschland could land its armies where it chose in France, while other armies, sw
eeping through Belgium, drove the French before them. Of course, there was some sort of obsolete document which forbade an invader to set foot on that silly little soil. That mattered nothing. Germany might or might not take the trouble to declare war on Belgium, in order to get at France.

  But if England came in?

  There was no question of “sympathies” now. That topic which had so disturbed his wife had long vanished from his consciousness, and he wanted only to make clear to his mind the interests on which he could with the least possible risk stake his money. For the instinct of making money had been his since he first sat on the office-stool, and it was not for sixteen years after that that he had thought of domestically satisfying his home needs. He had always had a kindly, affectionate heart, and, since he first met Aline, that general affection had been concentrated and consecrated into passion for her. Apart from money, he wanted nothing else but her. But in this moment interest, not affection and sympathy, directed the gnawing of his nails. —

  There was going to be war: of that he made no doubt whatever. And a very little thought convinced him that if there was war, England would somehow have to be in it, whatever the anxieties of the Irish question might be. For if she did not come in now, the day — der Tag itself — was assuredly not far off when France and Russia would be annihilated, and, when once that was done, who could doubt that Germany would turn her victorious arms against the real enemy, the one Power that stood between her and the dominion of the world. Sooner or later England must fight, for Germany had decreed the Armageddon, but was she going to fight now?

  That was precisely what Germany wanted to know, and unless Hermann Gurtner was much mistaken, the German Ambassador’s view was that she was not. Had he shared that belief, he would drain out without delay from his English interests every penny of his millions, for with France and Russia crushed, even the Empire founded upon the seas could not single-handed resist that tremendous war-machine of the Fatherland. At its ease it could march through India and through Egypt, and with its fleet free in the oceans of the world, it could reduce that awful little focus of world-power, confined in two insignificant islands, one of which already reeked with sedition, to a compass commensurate with its acres. Stupid as the English were, they would realize that.

  The more he let this all stew and simmer in his brain, the less capable he felt of believing that England would stand aside. She might or might not consider that her treaty obligations compelled her to intervene, but she would surely see that her only chance of defeating Germany lay in joining and assisting the Entente now and without delay. Otherwise she would have to bear the full weight of the invincible land-empire alone.

  Perfidious she always was, but she had a terribly good notion as to how to take care of herself. And with her perfidiousness, there was strangely mingled some quixotic sort of instinct that would compel her to the sane course. None knew better than he that Germany, having declared war on France, would sweep through Belgium in order to attack her on her vulnerable front. Belgium would quite certainly appeal to England on the violation of her treaty-protected territory, and it was exactly that sort of call that this impossible, selfish and quixotic nation was apt to listen to. For himself he saw no reason for the existence of little Powers; the sooner they were absorbed, one way or the other, in the great States the better, for the time was passed for the existence of such little vineyards of Naboth. England would come in....

  Till this moment it was entirely the consideration of his interests that had absorbed him, but suddenly, like a great tidal wave sweeping in from a calm ocean, his sympathies declared themselves and submerged everything else. “Der Tag” had dawned; faint and dim in the East were the lines of morning that portended the day for which all good Germans had been watching since their consciousness of the greatness of their nation had awoke in them. And before the sun that illumined “Der Tag” declined from the zenith, all the world would have forgotten what war or the strife of nations meant, since they would have basked in the peace and prosperity that had come to the unquiet planet, as soon as Germany fulfilled her destiny, and owned the seas and the continents of the earth. There would be years of trouble first, for selfish and arrogant nations must suffer the penalties of their wilful blindness, and be winnowed like chaff in the great pure wind that should scatter their pretensions, and purge their pride; but he did not doubt that at the end the world would pass into possession of his Fatherland.

  Yes: the day was dawning. The selfish, incompetent mistress of the seas, who proclaimed that the seas were free so long as her navy had complete command of them, must give place to a nobler possessor, under whose rule they would be free because there was none to enslave them, but the master of sea and land alike. The time had come for the cessation of the old civilizations and ownerships warring one against another, and protecting themselves by treaties and their silly signatures. Treaties must be torn up, rules that had applied to the protection of separate States must have no meaning now, since separate States, with their rights and their boundaries, would soon become dead relies of the past. All means, treachery and feigned surrender, Red Cross to protect a battery of guns, slaughter or torture of prisoners, piracy by sea, firing on unarmed vessels — all and every device of the kind was not allowable only but laudable and noble, in order, as swiftly as possible, to secure for the world the æons of serenity and peace that should come with the German domination of the planet. Deutschland über Ailes!

  His sympathies had shot up like a star-shell, and made their signal. Whether or no his wife knew where her sympathies lay, he, in this silent hour before dawn, had made his choice. But that did not stand in the way of his making more millions also, and with a reinvigorated spirit, he put the lid on his sympathies, and turned to his interests.

  England was coming in, and without doubt that would be a severe shock to Germany. German bonds would undoubtedly fall, and though his sympathies were utterly German, there was no reason why he should not make money out of his instinct that Germany was wrong if she thought England would stand aside. He had already given orders that his head clerk should wait up all night in his office in the city, and he rang up the number on the telephone.

  “Gurtner,” he said, when he got through. “Yes; I am Sir Hermann. Sell a million pounds of German threes as soon as the Stock Exchange opens in the morning. Get the best price you can, but sell.”

  He sat for a moment considering. Yes: that was sound. It was quite certain that German shares would go down, as soon as it was known that England was going to take a hand in the war. Then he would buy at the lower price; they would fall not less than ten points.

  England was to be considered next. He was staking, with certainty in his mind, on war. English funds would also go down. And he transacted a similar sale.

  There was yet another side of the question to consider, another group of opportunities to be grasped. War must necessarily cause national funds, consols, and such like to decline, but war had its needs, it had to be supplied with sinews. With England at war, freights would rise, and shipping shares would immediately be in demand; coal would be in demand, steel and ammunition shares would soar. So again using his telephone he sent orders to his office for the purchase of a block of shares in a colliery which even in days of peace would be an attractive investment, and for the purchase of shares in a couple of shipping companies.

  Then as regards steel works and ammunition. There were certain English companies which were doing good business even in days of peace, and once again he took up the telephone to order a purchase of Vickers and Maxim. But for a moment he hesitated: here was he, of German birth, proposing to buy an interest in a company that manufactured guns that should deal death in squirts of lead to his countrymen. Some instinct within him faintly protested, but next moment he had answered its ridiculous misgivings with a silencing reply, for not a German more would be killed if he bought Vickers’ shares than if he did not, and it was mere washy sentimentality that demurred. The only actual r
esult would be that if he bought them, he would certainly make money, which was what he was sent into the world for. That was unanswerable, and by the same reasoning there was no cause for his refraining to buy Krupps’ shares: not an English life the more would be lost because he bought them. These, however, it would be wise to purchase in Berlin, in the name of his agent there: if he wanted to sell at a profit he could no doubt negotiate the sale through Switzerland.

  Yet still he hesitated a little. What would be the effect, if it were known, here in England, that on the eve of war he bought Krupps’? Or what in Germany, if it were known that he had bought Vickers’ and Maxim’? And then, once more he swept such halting counsels of prudence aside. Every investment, at that rate, would raise a question of sympathies, whereas in reality it was merely a question of interests. He must keep the two apart, for it would never do to let sentiment interfere with money-making.

  A faint light began to steal through the chinks between the brocade curtains, and looking out, he saw that the tired light of a morning that seemed unwilling to awake had flooded the sky, and wanly illuminated the empty streets. Aline had deprecated any risk of his waking her, and in any ease he must get up early and go down to the city. It seemed hardly worth while going to bed at all, and he lay down on the sofa to sleep for an hour or two.

  He slept well, for he had done a good night’s work. He was convinced that in a few weeks’ time England and Germany would be at war. His promptitude in acting in that conviction could not finally be worth less than half a million. That made a comfortable pillow.... That would be a decent insurance against war risks....

  Through the chinks of the curtains grew, brighter every moment, the light of “Der Tag.”