The General Page 9

  If the company, as it appeared reasonable to suppose, had been expecting any juicy bits of scandal, they were doomed to disappointment. In fact, the disappointment on the faces of the Duchess, Lady Constance, and Sir Henry’s wife was almost noticeable even to Curzon, who got as far as feeling that his conversation was not as brilliant as it should have been – a feeling which did not surprise him in the least. It only made him take more notice of Lady Emily, who showed no disappointment at all.

  When the conversation moved from the general to the particular, Curzon was still rather at sea. All his life he had been a regimental officer; these people were far more familiar with individuals on the General Staff than he was – to him they were only surnames, while at this table they were spoken of as ‘Bertie’ and ‘Harry’ and ‘Arthur’. There was only one moment of tense reality, and that was when young Carruthers was mentioned. For a tiny interval Curzon forgot where he was; he forgot the polished table, and the glittering silver, and the exquisite food within him, and the butler brooding over his shoulder like a benevolent deity. It seemed as if he was back at brigade headquarters again, with the tortured screams of Carruthers sounding in his ears. A flood of memories followed – of Major Browning combating the deadly fear which was shaking him like a leaf, of the four headless troopers lying in a huddled heap in one bay of the trench, of the mud and the stench and the sleeplessness.

  It was only for a moment. The extraordinary feeling that these men and women here should be forced somehow to realize that these things were part of the same framework as Arthur’s appointment to the Adjutant-General’s department passed away, killed by its own absurdity, before the others had finished their kind words about Carruthers’ fate and had passed on to the discussion of someone still alive. After all, it would be as bad taste to force these inevitable details of war upon the notice of these women and civilians as it would be to do the same with the details of digestive processes or any other natural occurrence.

  Then the women rose to leave the table and gave Curzon a further opportunity to come back to normal again, as the men closed up round the Duke. The war tended to disappear from the conversation from that moment, while later in the drawing-room where they rejoined the ladies, Lady Constance played the piano very brilliantly indeed so that conversation was not necessary. The music was a little over Curzon’s head, but he had a very good dinner inside him and some excellent port, and he was quite content to sit beside Lady Emily and listen vaguely. It was with a shock that he found himself nodding in his chair – it was typical of Curzon not to realize what enormous demands those eleven days of furious action and eleven nights of little sleep at Ypres had made upon his strength.

  So that it was with relief that he saw Lord George and Lady Constance rise to take their leave, making it possible for him to go immediately afterwards. And Sir Henry’s wife said to him as he said good-bye to her: ‘Perhaps you’ll come and dine with us if you can spare another evening of your leave?’ so that he felt he had not been quite a failure in society.

  Chapter Eight

  The same morning that Curzon’s promotion to the temporary rank of Brigadier-General appeared in the Press, there arrived the invitation to dinner, which enabled Curzon to confirm his suspicion that Sir Henry was really Sir Henry Cross, the barrister and Conservative Member of Parliament; and the other letter which the waiter brought him was a note from the War Office:

  DEAR CURZON,

  Sorry to interrupt your leave, but could you possibly come and see me here in room 231 at your earliest convenience?

  Yours,

  G. MACKENZIE, Major-Gen.

  Curzon puzzled over this note as he ate his kidneys and bacon solitary in the hotel dining-room – his early-rising habit persisted even in a West End hotel, so that he was bound to be the only one having breakfast at that gloomy hour. It was a surprise to him to be addressed as ‘Dear Curzon’ by General Mackenzie. Mackenzie had been one of the eminent officers who had discussed the war with him two days before, but half an hour’s conversation did not seem sufficient reason for the Director-General of Tactical Services to address him without a prefix and to preface with an apology what might just as well have been a simple order. It was possible that now that he was a General himself he was being admitted into the confraternity of Generals who might have their own conventions of behaviour among themselves, but Curzon did not think that very likely.

  He smoked a comfortable cigar while he read The Times – he could not help reading the announcement of his promotion three times over – and then he walked across St James’s Park and the Horse Guards to the War Office. Relays of commissionaires and Boy Scouts led him through the corridors to Room 231. There was only the briefest of delays before he was brought into the office of the Director-General of Tactical Services, and Mackenzie offered him a chair and a cigar and made three remarks about the weather before he began to say what he meant to say.

  ‘I didn’t know you were acquainted with the Budes, Curzon?’ he began.

  ‘I know them slightly,’ replied Curzon cautiously. ‘I dined there a night or two ago.’

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ was the surprising rejoinder. Mackenzie drummed with his fingers, and looked across his desk at Curzon with a hint of embarrassment on his large pink face. His ginger hair was horribly out of harmony with the red tabs on his collar. ‘That fellow Cross was there, too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Curzon.

  ‘You’ve never had anything to do with politicians, Curzon,’ went on Mackenzie. ‘You’ve no idea how gossip spreads.’

  ‘I don’t gossip, sir,’ said Curzon indignantly.

  ‘No,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Of course not.’

  He looked meditatively at his finger-nails before he spoke again.

  ‘Cross has put down a question to ask in the House to-day – the House of Commons, I mean. It’s about Le Cateau.’

  ‘That’s nothing to do with me,’ said Curzon, more indignantly still, as the implication became obvious to him.

  ‘That was all I wanted to know,’ said Mackenzie, simply. His bright eyes, of a pale grey, were scrutinizing Curzon very closely, all the same. Mackenzie could not make up his mind as to whether or not this was yet another example of the plain blunt soldier with secret political affiliations.

  ‘We can put the lid on friend Cross all right,’ he went on. ‘We can always say that it is opposed to public interest to answer his question, if we want to.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ agreed Curzon.

  ‘But the House of Commons is not a very important place just now, thank God,’ said Mackenzie. ‘It isn’t there that things happen.’

  Curzon felt bewildered at that. If Mackenzie was not accusing him of betraying military secrets he could not imagine what he was driving at. He had no conception of the power residing in the casual conversation of about fifty or so luncheon and dinner tables in London. He did not realize that high position in the Army – even the post of Director-General of Tactical Services – was, if not exactly at the mercy of, at any rate profoundly influenced by, whispers which might circulate in a particular stratum of society. More especially was this the case when a rigid censorship left public opinion unable to distribute praise or blame except under the influence of gossip or of prejudice. All these circumstances were aggravated by the fact that England had entered upon the war under a government not at all representative of the class accustomed to the dispensing of military patronage; there were already hints and signs that to prolong its existence the government must allow some of the opposition to enter its ranks, and in that case the foolish ones who had staked their careers on its continuance unchanged in power would be called upon to pay forfeit.

  Mackenzie felt strongly opposed to explaining all this to Curzon. It might be construed as a confession of weakness. Instead, he harked back to the original subject.

  ‘The Bude House set,’ he said, ‘– the women, I mean, not the men – want a finger in every pie.’

  ‘I didn’t know
that,’ said Curzon perfectly truthfully. Of course, throughout his life, he had heard gossip about petticoat influence. But he had not believed – in fact, he still did not believe – that people played at politics as at a game, in which the amount of patronage dispensed acted as a useful measure of the score, so that to have brought about the appointment of one’s own particular nominee to an Under-Secretaryship of State was like bringing off a little slam at bridge.

  Now that the war had become such a prominent feature in the news, and friends and relations were taking commissions or returning from retirement, the value of military appointments as counters in the game was higher than ever before. And at the moment the Army was especially entangled in politics, thanks to the Irish business. When certain people returned to power there would be a good many old scores to pay off. There would be distinctions drawn between the men who had declared their unwillingness to obey orders and the men who had not seen fit to make a similar declaration. Besides, in some strange way the fact that there was a war in progress accentuated the intensity of this hidden strife between the Ins and the Outs, and made it more of a cut-and-thrust business than ever before.

  ‘Well, you know now,’ said Mackenzie grimly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Curzon. He was no fool. He could see that he was in a strong position, even if he could not guess what it was that constituted its strength. ‘I’m due to dine with Cross next week, too.’

  ‘Really?’ said Mackenzie, contriving to give no hint of meaning at all in his intonation, but drumming with his fingers at the same. He was convinced now that if the man he was talking to was not yet a political soldier, he would be quite soon, and one with very valuable connexions. In fact, he did not feel strong enough to nip the development in the bud by commanding Curzon, on pain of losing his promised brigade, to have nothing to do with the Bude House set.

  ‘Cross gives damned good dinners,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why these lawyer sharks should always be able to get the best chefs. More money, I suppose.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ agreed Curzon, and Mackenzie changed the subject.

  ‘By the way, the Foreign Office has just been through to us on the telephone,’ he said. ‘The Belgian Government wants to present decorations to some English officers, and I have to give my opinion about their distribution. Seeing what you did at Ypres it would be appropriate if one came to you, don’t you think? I suppose you wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Curzon.

  ‘Right,’ said Mackenzie, making a note on a memorandum tablet. ‘I expect it will be the Order of Leopold – a nice watered red ribbon. It’ll look well with your C.M.G. and D.S.O.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Curzon.

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ said Mackenzie, with a certain peculiar emphasis in his tone. ‘It’s yourself you have to thank.’

  Curzon came away from that momentous interview with no very clear idea of what had happened. He was delighted, of course, with the offer of the Belgian decoration. Including his two South African medals he would have five ribbons on his breast now; it would not be long before he could start a second row. Ribbons and promotion were the two signs of success in his profession and now he had both. Success was sweet; he swung his walking stick light-heartedly as he strode across the park. He even laughed when a spiteful old lady said to him as he passed: ‘Why aren’t you in the army?’

  That Curzon could perceive the humour of a situation and laugh at it was a remarkable state of affairs in itself. As he walked, he debated with himself as to whether or no he should telephone Cissie Barnes and see if he could spend the afternoon with her – Cissie Barnes was a lady with whom he had often spent afternoons and week-ends before the war began. If Curzon had been given to self-analysis he might have been seriously alarmed at finding that he was not specially anxious to go and see Cissie.

  And then although he was quite sure what he wanted to do he ran through in his mind the other ways open to him of spending the afternoon. He might go round to the Club, and at the Club he might talk or play bridge – the latter, more likely. There would be more than a chance that at the Club he might run across an acquaintance with whom he could share a couple of stalls at a musical comedy or at one of these revues which seemed to have suddenly become fashionable. That might serve very well for the evening. He was not so sure about the afternoon.

  There were a few houses at which he might call – he ran over them in his mind and decided against each one in turn. He could go down into Leicestershire so as to hunt next day; presumably Clayton could be relied upon to produce a hireling, and he could stay at the Somerset Arms. The illustrated papers he had read yesterday had informed him that, of course, hunting was still being carried on in the Shires. He could do that to-morrow, though. This afternoon – he admitted it to himself now, having decided that there was a good reason to put forward against all the other courses – he would call at Bude House. It was growing a little old-fashioned to pay a call two days after dinner, but, damn it, he was content to be old-fashioned. Lady Emily might be there. Once he had formed this decision the hours seemed to drag as he ate his lunch and waited for the earliest possible moment at which he could ring the bell at Bude House.

  ‘Her Grace is not at home, sir,’ said the butler at the door. By a miracle of elocution he managed to drop just enough of each aitch to prove himself a butler without dropping the rest.

  ‘Is Lady Emily at home?’ asked Curzon.

  ‘I will inquire, sir.’

  Lady Emily was glad to see the General. She gave him her hand and a smile. She offered him tea, which he declined, and a whisky and soda, which he accepted.

  Lady Emily had been brought up very strictly, in the way a child should be during the eighties and nineties, especially when she had had the impertinence to be a girl instead of the boy who would inherit the title. Men, she had been taught, were the lords of the universe, under God. With regard to the subjection of women an important exception was to be made in the case of her mother – the Duchess undoubtedly occupied a place between men and God. What with her parents’ ill-concealed disappointment at the accident of her sex, and the prevailing doctrine of the unimportance of women, and her mother’s rapacious personality, and the homeliness of her own looks, there was not much self-assertiveness about Lady Emily. To such a pitch had her conviction of innate sin been raised that she even felt vaguely guilty that Lloyd George’s pestilent budgets from 1911 onwards had weighed so heavily upon the ducal income.

  It was no wonder she had never married. Of course, there were plenty of men who would have been glad of the opportunity of marrying a Duke’s only child, but, being a Duke’s only child, it had been easy to make sure that she never met that kind of man, and suitable matches had never been attracted. It might be said that Curzon was the first adventurer she had ever met – Curzon would have been furious if anyone had called him an adventurer, but such he was to pay his respects to Lady Emily when he had no more than seven hundred a year of private means, however ample might be his prospects of professional eminence.

  Curzon’s motives were hardly susceptible to analysis. There could be no denying that for some very obscure reason he liked Lady Emily very much indeed. When her eyes met his as she drank her tea he felt a warm unusual pleasure inside him – but there is nothing that so defies examination as the mutual attraction of two apparently not very attractive people. He was glad to be near her, in a fashion whose like he could not remember regarding any of his light loves or the wives of brother officers with whom he had exchanged glances.

  Women had never paid much attention to Curzon; it was gratifying to find one who did, and especially gratifying (there is no shirking this point) in that she was the daughter of a Duke. Success was a stimulating thing. He had risen in four months from Major to Brigadier-General. He had always fully intended to marry at forty, and here he was at forty-one with nothing impossible to him – why should a Duke’s daughter be impossible to him? The daring of the thought was part of
the attraction; and that business with Mackenzie this morning added to the feeling of daring.

  He was so much above himself that he was able to talk more readily than he had ever been able to talk to a woman in his life, and Lady Emily listened and nodded and smiled until they both of them felt very much the better for each other’s company. They talked about horses and dogs. Lady Emily had much experience of one kind of sport which Curzon had never sampled – stag-hunting in Somersetshire, where lay the greater part of the Duke’s estates. She actually found herself talking about this with animation, and Curzon, fox-hunting man though he was, found himself listening with something more than toleration. They exchanged reminiscences, and Curzon told his two tall fox-hunting stories (the regimental mess had grown tired of them away back in 1912) with complete success. They found, of course, that they had friends in common in the Shires, and they were talking about them when the Duchess came in with a fragile old gentleman trailing behind her.

  Her Grace was mildly surprised at finding Curzon in her house, and she endeavoured to freeze him by displaying exactly that mildness of surprise which could not be construed as rudeness but which most definitely could not be called overwhelming hospitality. It was all very well to have a successful general to dinner at a time when successful generals were more fashionable than poets or pianists, but that gave him no excuse for presuming on his position – especially when he promised to be of no use at all in her political manoeuvres. But before Curzon had time to take note of the drop in temperature and to take his leave Lady Emily had interposed – unconsciously, perhaps.

  ‘Tea, Mr Anstey?’ she asked.