The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
statesmen, soldiers and sailors by challenging the French protectorate
of Morocco at Agadir. It is supposed by the middle of August, after Mr.
Lloyd George's speech in the City, and after a succession of "kraches"
in German banking firms, that the Kaiser's Government is hesitating to
go the full length of War: but Germany is growling horribly because she
is realizing that her financial arrangements for a war of great
dimensions are imperfect, and that she is unprepared with aircraft to
cope with the French aeroplanes.
So she is consenting to _pourparlers_ for the purpose of ascertaining
the terms on which she may be bought off, persuaded to leave Agadir, and
withdraw a portion of the army she is crowding into Alsace-Lorraine.
Villette-es-Vosges is well suited for the work of the old diplomacy. It
is, to begin with, a _Ville d'eaux_; and in the eighteenth, nineteenth,
and early twentieth centuries, statesmen who were negotiating treaties
and alliances or resolving problems which threatened war, usually met at
some gay place near their frontiers where they could, under the guise of
"taking the waters," carry on their conversations with one another and
draft protocols of conspiracy or of agreement. Consequently, in late
August and early September, 1911, Villette was unusually thronged: not
only by its accustomed clientele of middle-aged invalids trying to
combat all manner of diseases for which its springs were efficacious,
but also by their _demoiselles-a-marier_, their gawky boys and
bread-and-butter, pigtailed girls, playing tennis, croquet, and crowding
into the cinemas while their parents sip and bathe and undergo _massage
sous l'eau_; by wicked gamblers, obvious adventurers, demure cocottes
(needing a month's repose and a reduction of their figures); and by
European statesmen trying to look like tourists. The German
diplomatists have dressed and hatted themselves to resemble the
Frenchman of caricature; the French ministers and ex-ministers are
out-doing the average English gentleman in bluff "sports" costumes; and
there are Russians and Austrians too quaint for words, _a pouffer de
rire_, as Sibyl says; with such weeping whiskers, such forked beards,
such frock-coats in the early morning and such tall hats as you never
saw, except in pictures of Society in Paris under the Second Empire.
These diplomatists foregather in the theatrically beautiful park with
its swan-pools, its canalized river, its groves and bosquets, pavilions,
tea-houses, summer-houses, chalets, kiosques of newspapers and salacious
novels, open-air orchestras, croquet-lawns, and tennis-courts. Or if
the problem is very grave, and excited speech should not be audible nor
gesticulations visible to prowling journalists, they stroll away to the
race-course, to the golf links.
It is the glorious summer of 1911, when there was little rain between
the beginning of June and the end of September. Nevertheless, if you
should weary of the heat or if there should be a sudden shower you have
a long cool arcade of tempting shops, a Grand Guignol, and the necessary
retreats--on a large scale--for those who are summarily affected by the
cathartic action of the waters, especially that very potent _Source
Salee_, which is never mentioned without respect, except where it is the
foundation of Rabelaisian stories. The medicinal springs are housed in
temples of great architectural beauty. The town of pleasure, with its
eight or nine hotels, rises in terraces that survey the park--not long
ago a forest in which wolves roamed in winter time. New Villette
contains a theatre, a _Club des Etrangers_ with gambling rooms, a _Salle
de lecture_, a Concert Hall, an _Eglise Anglicane_, and a Catholic
church, a post-office, doctors' houses and laboratories, and the
necessary _usines_ and _garages_. A mile away is the real Villette, a
common-place Lorraine town of purely agricultural interests, turning its
back, so to speak, on the adjoining health resort which has made its
name famous.
In the arcade is a large black notice-board, whereon besides local
notices are pinned the _Havas_ telegrams. Hither, during one critical
week, comes a throng of anxious readers. _Is it to be peace or War_?
Will Germany be satisfied with French Congo and give up Morocco? Should
we pack to-night and leave before Mother has completed her cure, _in
case_ mobilization upsets the trains? Will my husband be called up?
_What_ will happen to my boy?
Sibyl, lying on her comfortably-sloped invalid chair in the verandah of
the Pavilion des Dejeuners, opines the Germans must be _perfect beasts_
to upset every one like this, and all over some place on the Sahara
coast where there are just a few verminous Moors. She is not in favour
of anarchism, but she really _does_ wish some one would assassinate the
Kaiser....
Roger looks grave and essays the hopeless task of defending Germany.
"It is all this mania for 'Empires across the Seas.' Germany gets mad
when our Empire, the French Empire, the Russian Empire each year get
bigger, while she is prevented everywhere from expanding----, etc.,
etc."
_Victoria Masham_ hazards the conjecture: "_If only_ the dear Queen were
alive! She would soon...."
_Sibyl_ interrupts: "My dear Vicky, you must look facts in the face.
Queen Victoria would now be 92. She would not be of much use at that age
... See! There is obviously our Foreign Minister ... disguised with
smoked glasses, but you can't mistake his nose. I think he's _so_
good-looking.... And there is young Hawk of the F.O. He's just been
sent to Brussels. I hear the Villierses are expected to-morrow. That
man in the straw hat and the cricketing flannels is Monsieur Viviani,
and the handsome old lion with the grey mane is Leon Bourgeois. The
tight-trousered man you'd take for a 'booky' is Count Palastro--and
there's no mistaking that stuffed figure of the last century, in a
stove-pipe hat, a buttoned-up frock-coat, and pointed whiskers: that's
Polanoff of the Russian Foreign Office. We saw him when we were in
Japan.... 'Whithersoever the carcass is, there are the eagles gathered
together.'"
_Roger_: "I suppose the carcass is the unhappy peoples of Europe?"
_Sibyl_: "I suppose so. Vicky, dear. Go and have breakfast at the
hotel this morning. D'you mind? Maud has taken off the two girls to
some violent sports' competition, and Clithy has motored over to
Domremy." (To Roger): "He is studying local colour for the libretto of
an opera on Joan of Arc. His great _clou_--if he can only bring it
off--is the last scene. Joan of Arc, while bound to the stake and
encircled with flames, sings a scena of the fireworks kind. Clithy says
it would be natural under the circumstances. He thinks if they can
devise some kind of asbestos shift for the prima donna and the usual
chemical flames that don't burn much it could be arranged...." (To
Vicky): "I want Roger all to myself this morning. We are going to have
our breakfast together, here, in case events call him to sterner
duties...." (Vicky acquiesces with a good grace--in her new
transformation to which a _little_ more grey has been added, she looks
surprisingly well, and younger than Sibyl, though she is ten years
older).
A pause. The waiter lays the table between them for Roger's dejeuner a
la fourchette. He is accustomed to preparing Sibyl's special dietary
and arranges for that also. He is a pleasant-faced man, deeply
deploring "le peu de progres que fait M'ame la Baronne...."
_Sibyl_: "What a scene for a dying woman to be looking at!"
_Roger_: "Sibyl! _Don't_ be so lugubrious...."
_Sibyl_: "Why? Do you suppose I don't pretty well know my own
condition? I am dying slowly of cancer, what the doctors call 'un lent
deperissement.' I expect this is what Mother died of later in life.
The doctors would be ready enough to operate again if there was any
chance.... As it is, they know it is more merciful to let me linger out
my few remaining weeks or months than submit me to the shock of an
operation which might kill me at once. I _may_ live to October, Dr.
Perigord thinks. Or he puts it more pleasantly: 'Vers le mois d'Octobre
nous saurons oui ou non, si la guerison de M'ame la Baronne
s'effectuera. Les eaux de Villette operent parfois des miracles:
esperons toujours.' ... And so on.... I don't suffer much pain--as yet.
When it comes on they'll put me under morphia. I shall stay here till
this political crisis is over or the fine weather begins to break. Then
Clithy will motor me to Calais and from Dover to Engledene. Engledene
will be the best place to die at. And, of course, _remember_, I want to
be buried at Aldermaston, near Lucy--and near where you'll be laid some
day--unless you marry again, which I should hardly think you'll do. I
shall have a perfect right to occupy a small space in Aldermaston
churchyard, because I'm a parishioner. I bought the farm that father so
ridiculously mismanaged and that you made so prosperous. I've left it
in my will to my brother Gerry, as some compensation for having taken no
notice of him since I got married.... But, as I said before, _what_ a
scene! Not even your beloved Happy Valley could better those flowers in
the urns and vases and borders and parterres--those scarlet geraniums,
scarlet cannas, scarlet salvias, and scarlety-crimson Lobelia
cardinalis. We grow them at Engledene, but they're nothing like these.
_And_ the heliotrope, and ageratum ... and those blue salvias and orange
calceolarias. I know it's rather vulgar, but the whole effect is
superbly staged; don't you think so?....
"And the women's dresses. Many of them, of course, are mannequins, just
showing off for the Paris shops. And then to see pass by all the
celebrated if over-rated people you've heard so much about, just as
though they were well-made-up supers on the stage. And the music of
those alternate orchestras... and such African sunlight ... and ...
_you_ next to me...."
_Roger_: "Look here, if you talk so much I shan't wonder you get weaker
instead of stronger. Eat up your breakfast and drink your milk."
_Sibyl_: "I will. But I _must_ talk to you. I shall soon be silenced
for ever...."
_Roger_: "So shall _I_, when my time comes. So will every one. You
don't give yourself a chance, talking in this morbid way. The doctors
are often wrong. Remember the case of Lady Waterford?"
_Sibyl_: "Blanchie?"
_Roger_: "Yes.... A good soaking in Villette water may get rid of all
your trouble and some day you may be weeping over me as I lie dying of
Bright's disease."
_Sibyl_ (not paying much attention): "Roger! Do you think there is
going to be War?"
_Roger_: "Not this time. Look there! D'you see those _gardes
champetres_ in that green uniform?"
_Sibyl_: "That nice-looking man, with the blond moustaches?"
_Roger_: "Yes, and that ugly-looking fellow with the red nose. Well: a
week ago they mysteriously vanished, and I asked what had become of
them. I was told they had joined up ... the Reserve, you know. Now
they're back again. _That_ shows the Germans and French have come to
terms. The War is _partie remise_--this year--but it's certain to come,
unless Germany can be squared. Remains to be seen what she wants and
what we can afford to give...."
A pause. Sibyl eats a little food and sips her milk. Roger finishes his
breakfast and lights a cigarette.
_Sibyl_: "Do you think there can be _any_ survival after death?"
_Roger_: "How can _I_ tell? Who knows _anything_ about it? Not even
Edison or Marconi. And they come nearest..."
_Sibyl_: "I mean, of course, our minds, our intelligence, our love. Our
poor diseased bodies simply dissolve and are redistributed and worked up
again. But the _personality_ we have created in our brains?"... (takes