A Lodge in the Wilderness

Chapter I-2

"I like his face," said Mrs Yorke thoughtfully; "there is a fire somewhere behind his eyes. But then I differ from most of my countrymen in liking Jews. You can do something with them—stir them up to follow some mad ideal, and they are never vulgar at heart. If we must have magnates, I would rather Jews had the money. It doesn't degrade them, and they have the infallible good taste of the East at the back of their heads. No Northerner should be rich, unless he happens to be also a genius."

"Genius, I suppose, means some consuming passion which burns up the vulgarity. We are talking about wealth, Lady Lucy," Hugh said, turning to his other neighbour. "Mrs Yorke will only permit it in the case of the elect. Otherwise it offends her sense of fitness."

The lady cast a glance over the room. "This house, for instance. It is so flawless and therefore so refreshing. And yet, when I think how much it must cost to have such a palace in the wilderness, I grow giddy. I am not sure if we have any right to be so comfortable."

Lord Appin caught the last words, and leaned over the table. "Surely that is an exploded heresy," he said, in the rich and exquisite voice which had made him par excellence the Public Orator of England. "I thought we had long ago given up the idea that austerity of mind depended upon discomfort of body. The Simple Life is the last refuge of complicated and restless souls. For myself I know no such stimulus to action as a good dinner, and to thought as a beautiful room."

"I am not certain," said Hugh. "It may be some tincture of Calvinism in my blood, but I confess I never feel quite happy unless I am a little miserable. When I am doing work I detest there is a glow of satisfaction about me which I miss when I am swimming along in something which is quite congenial. You remember Bagehot's account of Lord Althorp, who gave up hunting after his wife's death, not because he thought it wrong, but because he felt he had no business to be so happy as hunting made him. I am sure that we are happiest when doing something difficult and unpleasant. The cup wants a dash of bitters to make it palatable, for if taken neat it is sickly."

"How true that is," sighed Mrs Yorke. "Happiness lies only in a divine unrest; and if you are lapped in comfort you stagnate and miss it."

"That is the worst piece of fallacious Stoicism I have ever heard," Lord Appin said firmly. "It means nothing but a low vitality. If you are so morbid as to be dominated by your surroundings, then what you say is true enough. But to the philosophic soul environment matters nothing. He is happy alike in camp, court, and cottage. He will even preserve a modest gaiety in the House of Lords."

"That is not my nature," said Lady Amysfort with conviction. "You may be right—as a counsel of perfection. But which of us attains to that austere height?"

"I frankly confess I don't," Lord Appin replied. "I have just been saying how much I owe to a good dinner and a pretty room. But some of us do. Carey does, I think—and of Launceston I am certain. What is your view, Teddy?"

Sir Edward Considine had been explaining to the appreciative Lady Flora the plan of his recent shooting–trip; but both had been drawn by Lord Appin's proximity to listen to him. His soft voice when he spoke was a strange contrast to his hard, weather–worn face.

"It is all a question of that romance which most of us spend our lives looking for. Luxury is nothing in itself, but in its proper setting it can be an inspiration. A week ago I was perfectly happy. Graham and I were living in the most beastly discomfort, but then we were on the move and we had the excitement of sport, and we never thought about it. To–night, also, I am perfectly happy; but if all this had been in London, and I had been having months of it, I should probably have been miserable. You may imagine what it is to jog on all day through the hot bush with the dust of weeks on you, and your clothes in rags, and no food but tinned stuff. And then suddenly this afternoon we came to the gates of this place, and paid off our caravan–boys, from a hundred miles north—and in five minutes exchanged barbarism for civilisation. I wallowed in a bath, and my man was waiting with clean English things, and here I am, like the prodigal son after the husks, clothed and in my right mind. I call that romance, and there is no keener pleasure. But you must have the contrast."

Lady Flora nodded approval, recalling apparently kindred experiences in her short life. But the discussion was put an end to by Carey's voice from the head of the table. He began a little nervously, as if he were proposing a toast and had doubts how it would be honoured. For so massive a figure his voice was singularly high–pitched and small, so that he was the predestined victim of mimics. But there was a force behind it which arrested the ear.

"I think," he began, "that this is the time when I ought to say something about why we are all here. You don't need to be told that your company is in itself a sufficient delight to me. But this is not meant to be an ordinary party. Things have moved very fast lately in politics, and most of us have got our eyes a little dazzled. We want time to collect our wits, and think things out,—not only politics, but our whole scheme of life, our ambitions, the things which at the bottom of our hearts we care most for. We are all agreed, more or less, and we represent different sides of experience, so that we can supplement one another's deficiencies. For the moment the fates are against us, and I thought that, like the Apostle Paul, we should come out into the wilderness and reflect a little. We are only spectators at present, and it is an excellent chance to get our minds clear about what we want while we are looking on at the comedy which others are going to play for us."

Carey paused to sip his wine, and Mr Wakefield, who had a talent for trite quotation, declaimed with gusto the well–known lines of Lucretius:—

"Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem; Non quia vexari quemquamst jucunda voluptas, Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est. Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri Per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli." [1]"Translate, please," Mrs Yorke whispered to Hugh.

"It means that it is great fun to have a good seat in the stalls and watch other people making idiots of themselves on the stage."

"We have seen many strange things in the last months," Carey went on. "Our creed has been dragged in the mire, and by those who professed to reverence it. Every decaying interest which wanted help has been told that in it could be found its peculiar salvation. Every vulgar feeling in the whole treasury of our national vulgarity has been enlisted in its support. Small wonder that England is a little sick of the very name of Empire. The result, of course, is a return to tradition. The lack–lustre creeds of fifty years ago have acquired a kind of splendour in contrast with the dullness of our faith. The old armoury has been ransacked, and the rusty flintlocks have all been burnished up. They make an imposing show on parade, and people have not yet begun to think what will happen in the day of battle. For the moment England is insular again, and the past three centuries have been forgotten."

Lord Appin was in the throes of a quotation. "'Little England, which was our reproach, has become our glory,'" he interrupted,—"'the little England of Shakespeare and Milton and Cromwell has conquered the Greater Britain of Baron Steinberg and Mr Bernstein.' The words, I need scarcely say, are not my own, but those of a bright young Liberal journalist, whose contributions to the daily press afford me much innocent pleasure."

"So be it," said Carey cheerfully. "The phase will pass, that we well know. As a philosopher you realise that, to use your barbarous jargon, Being can only develop through non–Being and the Infinite through the negations of the Finite. We have a living creative faith, and we are not disheartened because the people for the moment blaspheme their deities. But, as I have said, it is the occasion to examine ourselves and find the reason of that faith which is in us."

"We need a definition," said Hugh, who had been studying attentively the sphinx–like face of his host. "I call myself an Imperialist, and so does the noisy fellow at the street corner; but if I am pressed to explain I can give no summary statement of my creed."

"Is not the reason because it is not a creed but a faith?" Lady Lucy's clear voice had a peculiar power of compelling attention. "You cannot carve an epic on a nutshell or expound Christianity in an aphorism. If I could define Imperialism satisfactorily in a sentence I should be very suspicious of its truth."

"No," said Carey, "we don't want a definition. By its fruits ye shall know it. It is a spirit, an attitude of mind, an unconquerable hope. You can phrase it in a thousand ways without exhausting its content. It is a sense of the destiny of England. It is the wider patriotism which conceives our people as a race and not as a chance community. But we might take opinions. Let us each give his or her own description, beginning with Mrs Deloraine."

The lady looked a little confused. "I call it an enlarged sense of the beauty and mystery of the world."

"How true!" said Mrs Yorke. "May I have that for my definition too, Mr Carey?" There seemed a general agreement on this among the women.

Lord Launceston smiled a little sadly. "I don't yet see my way to any summary. It is a spirit moving upon the waters, a dumb faith in the hearts of many simple men up and down the world, who are building better than they know—

'Not till the hours of light return, All we have built do we discern.'"Lord Appin, who was eating grapefruit, looked up quizzically. "I call it, in the language of my hobby, the realisation of the need of a quantitative basis for all qualitative development. It is a hard saying, which I shall expound later."

"For Heaven's sake let us keep out of mysticism," broke in Mr Wakefield, who detested Lord Appin's metaphysics. "I define Imperialism as the closer organic connection under one Crown of a number of autonomous nations of the same blood, who can spare something of their vitality for the administration of vast tracts inhabited by lower races,—a racial aristocracy considered in their relation to the subject peoples, a democracy in their relation to each other."

Mr Astbury nodded. "I take Mr Wakefield's definition for mine."

"And I," said Considine, "call it romance. I have no head for political theories, but I have an eye for a fact. It is the impulse to deeds rather than talk, the ardour of a race which is renewing its youth. It is what made the Elizabethans, and all ages of adventure."