Chapter V: Part 5

‘Wars don’t start nowadays because people want them. We long for peace, and fill our newspapers with conferences about disarmament and arbitration, but there is a radical instability in our whole world-order, and soon we shall all be walking into the jaws of destruction again, protesting our pacific intentions.’

‘Well, you seem to know all about it,’ said Mr Outrage, ‘and I think I should have been told sooner. This will have to mean a coalition with that old wind-bag Brown, I suppose.’

‘Anyhow,’ said Lord Metroland, ‘I don’t see how all that explains why my stepson should drink like a fish and go about everywhere with a negress.’

‘I think they’re connected, you know,’ said Father Rothschild. ‘But it’s all very difficult.’

Then they separated.

Father Rothschild pulled on a pair of overall trousers in the forecourt and, mounting his motor cycle, disappeared into the night, for he had many people to see and much business to transact before he went to bed.

Lord Metroland left the house in some depression. Margot had taken the car, but it was scarcely five minutes’ walk to Hill Street. He took a vast cigar from his case, lit it and sank his chin in the astrakhan collar of his coat, conforming almost exactly to the popular conception of a highly enviable man. But his heart was heavy. What a lot of nonsense Rothschild had talked. At least he hoped it was nonsense.

By ill-fortune he arrived on the doorstep to find Peter Pastmaster fumbling with the lock, and they entered together. Lord Metroland noticed a tall hat on the table by the door. ‘Young Trumpington’s, I suppose,’ he thought. His stepson did not once look at him, but made straight for the stairs, walking unsteadily, his hat on the back of his head, his umbrella still in his hand.

‘Good-night, Peter,’ said Lord Metroland.

‘Oh, go to hell,’ said his stepson thickly, then, turning on the stairs, he added, ‘I’m going abroad to-morrow for a few weeks. Will you tell my mother?’

‘Have a good time,’ said Lord Metroland. ‘You’ll find it just as cold everywhere, I’m afraid. Would you care to take the yacht? No one’s using it.’

‘Oh, go to hell.’

Lord Metroland went into the study to finish his cigar. It would be awkward if he met young Trumpington on the stairs. He sat down in a very comfortable chair. . . . A radical instability, Rothschild had said, radical instability. . . . He looked round his study and saw shelves of books—the _Dictionary of National Biography_, the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ in an early and very bulky edition, _Who’s Who_, Debrett, Burke, Whitaker, several volumes of Hansard, some Blue Books and Atlases—a safe in the corner painted green with a brass handle, his writing table, his secretary’s table, some very comfortable chairs and some very business-like chairs, a tray with decanters and a plate of sandwiches, his evening mail laid out on the table . . . radical instability, indeed. How like poor old Outrage to let himself get taken in by that charlatan of a Jesuit.

He heard the front door open and shut behind Alastair Trumpington.

Then he rose and went quickly upstairs, leaving his cigar smouldering in the ash-tray, filling the study with fragrant smoke.

Quarter of a mile away the Duchess of Stayle went, as she always did, to say good-night to her eldest daughter. She crossed the room and drew up the window a few inches, for it was a cold and raw night. Then she went over to the bed and smoothed the pillow.

‘Good-night, dear child,’ she said, ‘I thought you looked sweet to-night.’

Lady Ursula wore a white cambric night-gown with a little yoke collar and long sleeves. Her hair hung in two plaits.

‘Mama,’ she said. ‘Edward proposed to me to-night.’

‘_Darling._ What a funny girl you are. Why didn’t you tell me before? You weren’t frightened, were you? You know that your father and I are delighted at anything that makes our little girl happy.’

‘Well, I said I wouldn’t marry him . . . I’m sorry.’

‘But, my dear, it’s nothing to be sorry about. Leave it to your old mother. I’ll put it all right for you in the morning.’

‘But, Mama, I don’t want to marry him. I didn’t know until it actually came to the point. I’d always meant to marry him, as you know. But somehow, when he actually asked me . . . I just couldn’t.’

‘There, dear child, you mustn’t worry any more. You know perfectly well, don’t you, that your father and I would not let you do anything you didn’t want. It’s a matter that only you can decide. After all, it’s your life and your happiness at stake, not ours, isn’t it, Ursula . . . but I _think_ you’d better marry Edward.’

‘But, Mama, I don’t want to . . . I couldn’t . . . it would kill me!’

‘Now, now, my pet mustn’t worry her head about it any more. You know your father and I only want _your_ happiness, dear one. No one is going to make my darling girl do anything she doesn’t want to. . . . Papa shall see Edward in the morning and make everything all right . . . dear Lady Anchorage was only saying to-night what a lovely bride you will make.’

‘But, Mama . . .’

‘Not another word, dear child. It’s very late and you’ve got to look your best for Edward to-morrow, haven’t you, love?’

The Duchess closed the door softly and went to her own room. Her husband was in his dressing-room.

‘Andrew.’

‘What is it, dear? I’m saying my prayers.’

‘Edward proposed to Ursula to-night.’

‘Ah!’

‘Aren’t you glad?’

‘I told you, dear, I’m trying to say my prayers.’

‘It’s a real joy to see the dear children so happy.’

_Chapter Nine_

At luncheon time next day Adam rang up Nina.

‘Nina, darling, are you awake?’

‘Well, I wasn’t . . .’

‘Listen, do you really want me to go and see your papa to-day?’

‘Did we say you were going to?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘To say could we be married now I had a job.’

‘I remember . . . yes, go and see him, darling. It would be nice to be married.’

‘But, listen, what about my page?’

‘What page, angel?’

‘My page in the _Excess_ . . . my job, you know.’

‘Oh . . . well, look . . . Ginger and I will write that for you.’

‘Wouldn’t that be a bore?’

‘I think it would be divine. I know just the sort of things you say. . . . I expect Ginger does too by now, the poor angel . . . how he did enjoy himself last night. . . . I’m going to sleep now . . . such a pain . . . good-bye, my sweet.’

Adam had some luncheon. Agatha Runcible was at the next table with Archie Schwert. She said they were all going to some motor races next day. Would Adam and Nina come, too. Adam said yes. Then he went to Aylesbury.

There were two women on the other side of the carriage, and they, too, were talking about the Younger Generation.

‘. . . and it’s a very good position, too, for a boy of that age, and I’ve told him and his father told him. “You ought to think yourself lucky,” I’ve said, “to get a good position like that in these days, particularly when it’s so hard to get a position at all of any kind _or_ sort.” And there’s Mrs Hemingway with her son next door who left school eighteen months ago, and there he is kicking his heels about the house all day and doing nothing, and taking a correspondence course in civil engineering. “It’s a very good position,” I told him, “and, of course, you can’t expect _work_ to be interesting, though no doubt after a time you get used to it just as your father’s done, and would probably miss it if you hadn’t it to do”—you know how Alfred gets on his holidays, doesn’t know what to do with himself half the time, just looks at the sea and says, “Well, this _is_ a change,” and then starts wondering how things are at the office. Well, I told Bob that, but it’s no good, and all he wants to do is to go into the motor business; well, as I said to him, the motor business is all right for them that have influence, but what could Bob hope to do throwing up a good job, too, and with nothing to fall back on supposing things did go wrong. But, no, Bob is all for motors, and, of course, you know it doesn’t really do having him living at home. He and his father don’t get on. You can’t have two men in a house together and both wanting the bath at the same time, and I suppose it’s only natural that Bob should feel he ought to have his own way a bit more now that he’s earning his own money. But, then, what is he to do? He can’t go and live on his own with his present salary, and I shouldn’t be any too pleased to see him doing it even if he could afford it—you know what it is with young people, how easy it is to get into mischief when they’re left to themselves. And there are a great many of Bob’s friends now that I don’t really approve of, not to have in and out of the house, you know the way they do come. He meets them at the hockey club he goes to Saturdays. And they’re most of them earning more money than he is, or, at any rate, they seem to have more to throw about, and it isn’t good for a boy being about with those that have more money than him. It only makes him discontented. And I did think at one time that perhaps Bob was thinking of Betty Rylands, you know Mrs Rylands’ girl at the Laurels, such nice people, and they used to play tennis together and people remarked how much they were about, but now he never seems to pay any attention to her, it’s all his hockey friends, and I said one Saturday, “Wouldn’t you like to ask Betty over to tea?” and he said, “Well, you can if you like,” and she came looking ever so sweet, and, would you believe it, Bob went out and didn’t come in at all until supper time. Well, you can’t expect any girl to put up with that, and now she’s practically engaged to that young Anderson boy who’s in the wireless business.’

‘Well, and there’s our Lily now. You know how she would go in for being a manicurist. Her father didn’t like it, and for a long time he wouldn’t have it at all. He said it was just an excuse for holding hands, but, anyway, I said, “If that’s what the girl wants to do, and if she can make good money doing it, I think you ought to be able to trust your own daughter better than to stand in her way.” I’m a modern, you see. “We’re not living in the Victorian Age,” I told him. Well, she’s in a very nice job. Bond Street—and they treat her very fair, and we’ve no complaints on that score, but now there’s this man she’s met there—he’s old enough to be her father—well, middle-aged anyway—but very smart, you know, neat little grey moustache, absolute gentleman, with a Morris Oxford saloon. And he comes and takes her out for drives Sundays, and sometimes he fetches her after work and takes her to the pictures, and always most polite and well spoken to me and my husband, just as you’d expect, seeing the sort of man he is, and he sent us all tickets for the theatre the other night. Very affable, calls me “Ma”, if you please . . . and, anyway, I _hope_ there’s no harm in it . . .’

‘Now our Bob . . .’

They got out at Berkhamsted, and a man got in who wore a bright brown suit and spent his time doing sums, which never seemed to come right, in a little note-book with a stylographic pen. ‘Has he given all to his daughters?’ thought Adam.

He drove out to Doubting by a bus which took him as far as the village of petrol pumps. From there he walked down the lane to the park gates. To his surprise these stood open, and as he approached he narrowly missed being run down by a large and ramshackle car which swept in at a high speed; he caught a glimpse of two malignant female eyes which glared contemptuously at him from the small window at the back. Still more surprising was a large notice which hung on the central pier of the gates and said: ‘=No Admittance Except on Business=.’ As Adam walked up the drive two lorries thundered past him. Then a man appeared with a red flag.

‘Hi! You can’t go that way. They’re shooting in front. Go round by the stables, whoever you are.’

Wondering vaguely what kind of sport this could be, Adam followed the side path indicated. He listened for sounds of firing, but hearing nothing except distant shouting and what seemed to be a string band, he concluded that the Colonel was having a poor day. It seemed odd, anyway, to go shooting in front of one’s house with a string band, and automatically Adam began making up a paragraph about it:

‘_Colonel Blount, father of the lovely Miss Nina Blount referred to above, rarely comes to London nowadays. He devotes himself instead to shooting on his estate in Buckinghamshire. The coverts, which are among the most richly stocked in the county, lie immediately in front of the house, and many amusing stories are related of visitors who have inadvertently found themselves in the line of fire. . . . Colonel Blount has the curious eccentricity of being unable to shoot his best except to the accompaniment of violin and ’cello._ (_Mr “Ginger” Littlejohn has the similar foible that he can only fish to the sound of the flageolet . . .)_’

He had not gone very far in his detour before he was again stopped, this time by a man dressed in a surplice, episcopal lawn sleeves and scarlet hood and gown; he was smoking a cigar.

‘Here, what in hell do _you_ want?’ said the Bishop.

‘I came to see Colonel Blount.’

‘Well, you can’t, son. They’re just shooting him now.’

‘Good heavens. What for?’

‘Oh, nothing important. He’s just one of the Wesleyans, you know—we’re trying to polish off the whole crowd this afternoon while the weather’s good.’

Adam found himself speechless before this cold-blooded bigotry.

‘What d’you want to see the old geezer about, anyway?’

‘Well, it hardly seems any good now. I came to tell him that I’d got a job on the _Excess_.’

‘The devil you have. Why didn’t you say so before? Always pleased to see gentlemen of the Press. Have a weed?’ A large cigar-case appeared from the recesses of the episcopal bosom. ‘I’m Bishop Philpotts, you know,’ he said, slipping a voluminously clothed arm through Adam’s. ‘I dare say you’d like to come round to the front and see the fun. I should think they’d be just singing their last hymn now. It’s been uphill work,’ he confided as they walked round the side of the house, ‘and there’s been some damned bad management. Why, yesterday, they kept Miss La Touche waiting the whole afternoon, and then the light was so bad when they did shoot her that they made a complete mess of her—we had the machine out and ran over all the bits carefully last night after dinner—you never saw such rotten little scraps—quite unrecognizable half of them. We didn’t dare show them to her husband—he’d be sick to death about it—so we just cut out a few shots to keep and threw away the rest. I say, you’re not feeling queer, are you? You look all green suddenly. Find the weed a bit strong?’

‘Was—was she a Wesleyan too?’

‘My dear boy, she’s playing lead . . . she’s Selina. Countess of Huntingdon. . . . There, now you can see them at work.’

They had rounded the wing and were now in full view of the front of the house, where all was activity and animation. A dozen or so men and women in eighteenth-century costume were standing in a circle singing strongly, while in their centre stood a small man in a long clerical coat and a full white wig, conducting them. A string band was playing not far off and round the singers clustered numerous men in shirt sleeves bearing megaphones, cinematograph cameras, microphones, sheaves of paper and arc lamps. Not far away, waiting their turn to be useful, stood a coach and four, a detachment of soldiers and some scene shifters with the transept of Exeter Cathedral in sections of canvas and matchboarding.

‘The Colonel’s somewhere in that little crowd singing the hymn,’ said the Bishop. ‘He was crazy to be allowed to come on as a super, and as he’s letting us the house dirt cheap Isaacs said he might. I don’t believe he’s ever been so happy in his life.’

As they approached the hymn stopped.

‘All right,’ said one of the men with megaphones. ‘You can beat it. We’ll shoot the duel now. I shall want two supers to carry the body. The rest of you are through for the afternoon.’

A man in a leather apron, worsted stockings and flaxen wig emerged from the retreating worshippers.

‘Oh, please, Mr Isaacs,’ he said, ‘please may _I_ carry the body?’

‘All right, Colonel, if you want to. Run in and tell them in the wardrobe to give you a smock and a pitchfork.’

‘Thank you so much,’ said Colonel Blount, trotting off towards his house. Then he stopped. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘I suppose it wouldn’t be better for me to carry a sword?’

‘No, pitchfork, and hurry up about it or I shan’t let you carry the body at all; some one go and find Miss La Touche.’

The young lady whom Adam had seen in the motor car came down the steps of the house in a feathered hat, riding habit and braided cape. She carried a hunting crop in her hand. Her face was painted very yellow.

‘Do I or do I not have a horse in this scene, Mr Isaacs? I’ve been round to Bertie and he says all the horses are needed for the coach.’

‘I’m sorry, Effie, you do _not_ and it’s no good taking on. We only got four horses and you know that, and you saw what it was like when we tried to move the coach with two. So you’ve just got to face it. You comes across the fields on foot.’

‘Dirty Yid,’ said Effie La Touche.

‘The trouble about this film,’ said the Bishop, ‘is that we haven’t enough capital. It’s heart-breaking. Here we have a first-rate company, first-rate producer, first-rate scene, first-rate story and the whole thing being hung up for want of a few hundred pounds. How can he expect to get the best out of Miss La Touche if they won’t give her a horse? No girl will stand for that sort of treatment. If I were Isaacs I’d scrap the whole coach sooner. It’s no sense getting a star and not treating her right. Isaacs is putting every one’s back up the way he goes on. Wanted to do the whole of my cathedral scene with twenty-five supers. But you’re here to give us a write up, aren’t you? I’ll call Isaacs across and let him give you the dope. . . . _Isaacs!_’

‘Yuh?’

‘_Daily Excess_ here.’

‘Where?’

‘Here.’

‘I’ll be right over.’ He put on his coat, buttoned it tightly at the waist and strode across the lawn, extending a hand of welcome. Adam shook it and felt what seemed to be a handful of rings under his fingers. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mister. Now just you ask me anything you want about this film because I’m just here to answer. Have you got my name? Have a card. That’s the name of the company in the corner. Not the one that’s scratched out. The one written above. _The Wonderfilm Company of Great Britain_. Now this film,’ he said, in what seemed a well-practised little speech, ‘of which you have just witnessed a mere fragment marks a stepping stone in the development of the British Film Industry. It is the most important All-Talkie super-religious film to be produced solely in this country by British artists and management and by British capital. It has been directed throughout regardless of difficulty and expense, and supervised by a staff of expert historians and theologians. Nothing has been omitted that would contribute to the meticulous accuracy of every detail. The life of that great social and religious reformer John Wesley is for the first time portrayed to a British public in all its humanity and tragedy. . . . Look here, I’ve got all this written out. I’ll have them give you a copy before you go. Come and see the duel. . . .

‘That’s Wesley and Whitefield just going to start. Of course, it’s not them really. Two fencing instructors we got over from the gym. at Aylesbury. That’s what I mean when I say we spare no expense to get the details accurate. Ten bob each we’re paying them for the afternoon.’

‘But did Wesley and Whitefield fight a duel?’

‘Well, it’s not actually recorded, but it’s known that they quarrelled and there was only one way of settling quarrels in those days. They’re both in love with Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, you see. She comes to stop them, but arrives too late. Whitefield has escaped in the coach and Wesley is lying wounded. That’s a scene that’ll go over big. Then she takes him back to her home and nurses him back to health. I tell you, this is going to make film history. D’you know what the Wesleyan population of the British Isles is? Well nor do I, but I’ve been told and _you’ld be surprised_. Well every one of those is going to come and see this film and there’s going to be discussions about it in all the chapels. We’re recording extracts from Wesley’s sermons and we’re singing all his own hymns. I’m glad your paper’s interested. You can tell them from me that we’re on a big thing. . . . There’s one thing though,’ said Mr Isaacs, suddenly becoming confidential, ‘which I shouldn’t tell many people. But I think you’ll understand because you’ve seen some of our work here and the sort of scale it’s on, and you can imagine that expenses are pretty heavy. Why, I’m paying Miss La Touche alone over ten pounds a week. And the truth is—I don’t mind telling you—we’re beginning to feel the wind a bit. It’s going to be a big success _when_ and _if_ it’s finished. Now, suppose there was some one—yourself, for instance, or one of your friends—who had a little bit of loose capital he wanted to invest—a thousand pounds, say—well, I wouldn’t mind selling him a half-share. It’s not a gamble, mind—it’s a certain winner. If I cared to go into the open market with it, it would be snapped up before you could say knife. But I don’t want to do that and I’ll tell you why. This is a British company and I don’t want to let any of those foreign speculators in on it, and once you let the shares get into the open market you can’t tell who’s buying them, see. Now why leave money idle bringing in four and a half or five per cent. when you might be doubling it in six months?’

‘I’m afraid it’s no use coming to me for capital,’ said Adam. ‘Do you think I could possibly see Colonel Blount?’

‘One of the things I hate in life,’ said Mr Isaacs, ‘is seeing any one lose an opportunity. Now listen, I’ll make you a fair offer. I can see you’re interested in this film. Now I’ll sell you the whole thing—film we’ve made up to date, artists’ contracts, copyright of scenario, everything for five hundred quid. Then all you have to do is to finish it off and your fortune’s made and I shall be cursing for not having held on longer. How about it?’

‘It’s very good of you, but really I don’t think I can afford it at the moment.’

‘Just as you like,’ said Mr Isaacs airily. ‘There’s many who _can_ who’d jump at the offer, only I thought I’d let you in on it first because I could see you were a smart kid. . . . Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let you have it for four hundred. Can’t say fairer than that, can I? And wouldn’t do it for any one but you.’

‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Isaacs, but I didn’t come to buy your film. I came to see Colonel Blount.’

‘Well, I shouldn’t have thought you were the sort of chap to let an opportunity like that slip through your fingers. Now I’ll give you one more chance and after that mind, the offer is closed. I’ll sell you it for three-fifty. Take it or leave it. That’s my last word. Of course, you’re not in any way obliged to buy,’ said Mr Isaacs rather haughtily, ‘but I assure you that you’ll regret it from the bottom of your heart if you don’t.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Adam, ‘I think it’s a wonderfully generous offer, but the truth is I simply don’t want to buy a film at all.’

‘In that case,’ said Mr Isaacs, ‘I shall return to my business.’

Not till sunset did the Wonderfilm Company of Great Britain rest. Adam watched them from the lawn. He saw the two fencing instructors in long black coats and white neck bands lunging and parrying manfully until one of them fell; then the cameras stopped and his place was taken by the leading actor (who had been obliged through the exigencies of the wardrobe to lend his own coat). Whitefield took the place (and the wig) of the victor and fled to the coach. Effie La Touche appeared from the shrubbery still defiantly carrying her hunting crop. Close-ups followed of Effie and Wesley and Effie and Wesley together. Then Colonel Blount and another super appeared as yokels and carried the wounded preacher back to the house. All this took a long time as the action was frequently held up by minor mishaps and once when the whole scene had been triumphantly enacted the chief cameraman found that he had forgotten to put in a new roll of film (‘Can’t think how I come to make a mistake like that, Mr Isaacs’). Finally the horses were taken out of the coach and mounted by grenadiers and a few shots taken of them plunging despairingly up the main drive.

‘Part of Butcher Cumberland’s army,’ explained Mr Isaacs. ‘It’s always good to work in a little atmosphere like that. Gives more educational value. Besides we hire the horses by the day so we might as well get all we can out of them while they’re here. If we don’t use ’em in Wesley we can fit ’em in somewhere else. A hundred foot or so of galloping horses is always useful.’

When everything was over Adam managed to see Colonel Blount, but it was not a satisfactory interview.

‘I’m afraid I’ve really got very little time to spare,’ he said. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m at work on a scenario of my own. They tell me you come from the _Excess_ and want to write about the film. It’s a glorious film, isn’t it? Of course, you know, I have very little to do with it really. I have let them the house and have acted one or two small parts in the crowd. I don’t have to pay for them though.’

‘No, I should think not.’

‘My dear boy, all the others have to. I knocked a little off the rent of the house, but I don’t actually _pay_. In fact, you might almost say I was a professional already. You see, Mr Isaacs is the principal of the National Academy of Cinematographic Art. He’s got a little office in Edgware Road, just one room, you know, to interview candidates in. Well, if he thinks that they’re promising enough—he doesn’t take any one, mind, only a chosen few—he takes them on as pupils. As Mr Isaacs says, the best kind of training is practical work, so he produces a film straight away and pays the professionals out of the pupils’ fees. It’s really a very simple and sensible plan. All the characters in “John Wesley” are pupils, except Wesley himself and Whitefield and the Bishop and, of course, Miss La Touche—she’s the wife of the man who looks after the Edgware Road office when Mr Isaacs is away. Even the cameramen are only learning. It makes everything so exciting, you know. This is the third film Mr Isaacs has produced. The first went wrong, through Mr Isaacs trusting one of the pupils to develop it. Of course, he made him pay damages—that’s in the contract they all have to sign—but the film was ruined, and Mr Isaacs said it was disheartening—he nearly gave up the cinema altogether. But then a lot more pupils came along, so they produced another, which was _very_ good indeed. Quite a revolution in Film Art, Mr Isaacs said, but that was boycotted through professional jealousy. None of the theatres would show it. But that’s been made all right now. Mr Isaacs has got in with the ring, he says, and this is going to establish Wonderfilms as the leading company in the country. What’s more, he’s offered me a half share in it for five thousand pounds. It’s wonderfully generous, when he might keep it all to himself, but he says that he must have some one who understands _acting_ from the practical side of the board of directors. Funnily enough, my bank manager is very much against my going in for it. In fact, he’s putting every obstacle in my way. . . . But I dare say Mr Isaacs would sooner you didn’t put any of this into your paper.’

‘What I really came about was your daughter, Nina.’

‘Oh, she’s not taking any part in the film at all. To tell you the truth, I very much doubt whether she has any real talent. It’s funny how these things often skip a generation. My father, now, was a very bad actor indeed—though he always used to take a leading part when we had theatricals at Christmas. Upon my soul, he used to make himself look quite ridiculous sometimes. I remember once he did a skit of Henry Irving in _The Bells_. . . .’

‘I’m afraid you’ve forgotten me, sir, but I came here last month to see you about Nina. Well, she wanted me to tell you that I’m Mr Chatterbox now. . . .’

‘Chatterbox . . . no, my boy, I’m afraid I don’t remember you. My memory’s not what it was. . . . There’s a Canon Chatterbox at Worcester I used to know . . . he was up at New College with me . . . unusual name.’

‘Mr Chatterbox on the _Daily Excess_.’

‘No, no, my dear boy, I assure you not. He was ordained just after I went down and was chaplain somewhere abroad—Bermuda, I think. Then he came home and went to Worcester. He was never on the _Daily Excess_ in his life.’

‘No, no, sir, _I’m_ on the _Daily Excess_.’

‘Well, you ought to know your own staff, certainly. He _may_ have left Worcester and taken to journalism. A great many parsons do nowadays. I know. But I must say that he’s the last fellow I should have expected it of. Awful stupid fellow. Besides, he must be at least seventy. . . . Well, well . . . who would have thought it. Good-bye, my boy, I’ve enjoyed our talk.’

‘Oh, sir,’ cried Adam, as Colonel Blount began to walk away. ‘You don’t understand—I want to marry Nina.’

‘Well, it’s no good coming here,’ said the Colonel crossly. ‘I told you, she’s somewhere in London. She’s got nothing to do with the film at all. You’ll have to go and ask her about it. Anyway, I happen to know she’s engaged already. There was a young ass of a chap down here about it the other day . . . the Rector said he was off his head. Laughed the whole time—bad sign that—still, Nina wants to marry him for some reason. So I’m afraid you’re too late, my boy. I’m sorry . . . and, anyway, the Rector’s behaved very badly about this film. Wouldn’t lend his car. I suppose it’s because of the Wesleyanism. Narrow-minded, that. . . . Well, good-bye. So nice of you to come. Remember me to Canon Chatterbox. I must look him up next time I come to London and pull his leg about it. . . . Writing for the papers, indeed, at his age.’

And Colonel Blount retired victorious.

Late that evening Adam and Nina sat in the gallery of the Café de la Paix eating oysters.

‘Well we won’t bother any more about papa,’ she said. ‘We’ll just get married at once.’

‘We shall be terribly poor.’

‘Well, we shan’t be any poorer than we are now. . . . I think it will be divine. . . . Besides, we’ll be terribly economical. Miles says he’s discovered a place near Tottenham Court Road where you can get oysters for three and six a dozen.’

‘Wouldn’t they be rather ill-making?’

‘Well, Miles said the only odd thing about them is that they all taste a little different. . . . I had lunch with Miles to-day. He rang up to find where you were. He wanted to sell Edward Throbbing’s engagement to the _Excess_. But Van offered him five guineas for it, so he gave it to them.’

‘I’m sorry we missed that. The editor will be furious. By the way, how did the gossip page go? Did you manage to fill it all right?’

‘My dear, I think I did rather well. You see Van and Miles didn’t know I was in the trade, so they talked about Edward’s engagement a whole lot, so I went and put it in . . . was that very caddish? . . . and I wrote a lot about Edward and the girl he’s to marry. I used to know her when I came out, and that took up half the page. So I just put in a few imaginary ones like you do, so then it was finished.’

‘What did you say in the imaginary ones?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I said I saw Count Cincinnati going into Espinosa’s in a green bowler . . . things like that.’

‘_You said that?_’

‘Yes, wasn’t it a good thing to say. . . . Angel, is anything wrong?’

‘Oh, God.’

Adam dashed to the telephone.

‘Central ten thousand . . . put me through to the night editor. . . . Look here, I’ve got to make a correction in the Chatterbox page . . . it’s urgent.’

‘Sorry, Symes. Last edition went to bed half an hour ago. Got everything made up early to-night.’

So Adam went back to finish his oysters.

‘Bad tabulation there,’ said Lord Monomark next morning, when he saw the paragraph.

So Miles Malpractice became Mr Chatterbox.

‘Now we can’t be married,’ said Nina.

_Chapter Ten_

Adam and Miss Runcible and Miles and Archie Schwert went up to the motor races in Archie Schwert’s car. It was a long and cold drive. Miss Runcible wore trousers and Miles touched up his eyelashes in the dining-room of the hotel where they stopped for luncheon. So they were asked to leave. At the next hotel they made Miss Runcible stay outside, and brought her cold lamb and pickles in the car. Archie thought it would be nice to have champagne, and worried the wine waiter about dates (a subject which had always been repugnant to him). They spent a long time over luncheon because it was warm there, and they drank Kümmel over the fire until Miss Runcible came in very angrily to fetch them out.

Then Archie said he was too sleepy to drive any more, so Adam changed places with him and lost the way, and they travelled miles in the wrong direction down a limitless bye-pass road.

And then it began to be dark and the rain got worse. They stopped for dinner at another hotel, where every one giggled at Miss Runcible’s trousers in a dining-room hung with copper warming pans.

Presently they came to the town where the race was to be run. They drove to the hotel where the dirt-track racer was staying. It was built in the Gothic style of 1860, large, dark and called the Imperial.

They had wired him to book them rooms, but ‘Bless you,’ said the woman at the counter marked ‘Reception’, ‘all our rooms have been booked for the last six months. I couldn’t fit you in anywhere, not if you was the Speed Kings themselves, I couldn’t. I don’t suppose you’ll find anything in the town to-night. You might try at the Station Hotel. That’s your only chance.’

At the Station Hotel they made Miss Runcible wait outside, but with no better success.

‘I might put one of you on the sofa in the bar parlour, there’s only a married couple in there at present and two little boys, or if you didn’t mind sitting up all night, there’s always the palm lounge.’ As for a bed, that was out of the question. They might try at the ‘Royal George’, but she doubted very much whether they’d _like_ that even if there was room, which she was pretty sure there was not.

Then Miss Runcible thought that she remembered that there were some friends of her father who lived quite near, so she found out their telephone number and rang them up, but they said no, they were sorry, but they had a completely full house and practically no servants, and that as far as they knew they had never heard of Lord Chasm. So that was no good.

Then they went to several more hotels, sinking through the various graduations of Old Established Family and Commercial, plain Commercial, High Class Board Residence pension terms, Working Girls’ Hostel, plain Pub. and Clean Beds: Gentlemen Only. All were full. At last, by the edge of a canal, they came to the ‘Royal George’. The landlady stood at the door and rounded off an argument with an elderly little man in a bowler hat.

‘First ’e takes off ’is boots in the saloon bar,’ she said, enlisting the sympathy of her new audience, ‘which is not the action of a gentleman.’

‘They was wet,’ said the little man, ‘wet as ’ell.’

‘Well, and who wants your wet boots on the counter, I should like to know. Then, if you please, he calls me a conspiring woman because I tells him to stop and put them on before he goes ’ome.’

‘Want to go ’ome,’ said the little man. ‘’Ome to my wife and kids. _Trying to keep a man from ’is wife._’

‘No one wants to keep you from your wife, you old silly. All I says is for Gawd’s sake put on your boots before you go ’ome. What’ll your wife think of you coming ’ome without boots.’

‘She won’t mind ’ow I come ’ome. Why, bless you, I ain’t been ’ome at all for five years. It’s ’ard to be separated from a wife and kids by a conspiring woman trying to make yer put on yer boots.’

‘My dear, she’s quite right, you know,’ said Miss Runcible. ‘You’d far better put on your boots.’

‘There, ’ear what the lady says. Lady says you’ve to put on your boots.’

The little man took his boots from the landlady, looked at Miss Runcible with a searching glance, and threw them into the canal. ‘_Lady_,’ he said with feeling. ‘_Trousers_,’ and then he paddled off in his socks into the darkness.

‘There ain’t no ’arm in ’im really,’ said the landlady, ‘only he do get a bit wild when he’s ’ad the drink. Wasting good boots like that. . . . I expect he’ll spend the night in the lock-up.’

‘Won’t he get back to his wife, poor sweet?’

‘Lor’ bless you, no. She lives in London.’

At this stage Archie Schwert, whose humanitarian interests were narrower than Miss Runcible’s, lost interest in the discussion.

‘The thing we want to know is, can you let us have beds for the night?’

The landlady looked at him suspiciously.

‘Bed or beds?’

‘Beds.’

‘Might do.’ She looked from the car to Miss Runcible’s trousers and back to the car again, weighing them against each other. ‘Cost you a quid each,’ she said at last.

‘Can you find room for us all?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘which of you’s with the young lady?’

‘I’m afraid I’m all alone,’ said Miss Runcible. ‘Isn’t it too shaming?’

‘Never you mind, dearie, luck’ll turn one day. Well, now, how can we all fit in? There’s one room empty. I can sleep with our Sarah, and that leaves a bed for the gentlemen—then if the young lady wouldn’t mind coming in with me and Sarah . . .’

‘If you don’t think it rude, I think I’d sooner have the empty bed,’ said Miss Runcible, rather faintly. ‘You see,’ she added, with tact, ‘I snore so terribly.’

‘Bless you, so does our Sarah. _We_ don’t mind . . . still, if you’d _rather_ . . .’

‘Really, I think I should,’ said Miss Runcible.

‘Well then, I could put Mr Titchcock on the floor, couldn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ said Miles, ‘just you put Mr Titchcock on the floor.’

‘And if the other gentleman don’t mind going on the landing. . . . Well, we’ll manage somehow, see if we don’t.’

So they all drank some gin together in the back parlour and they woke Mr Titchcock up and made him help with the luggage and they gave him some gin, too, and he said it was all the same to him whether he slept on the floor or in bed, and he was very pleased to be of any service to any one and didn’t mind if he did have another drop just as a night-cap, as they might say; and at last they all went to bed, very tired, but fairly contented, and oh, how they were bitten by bugs all that night.

Adam had secured one of the bedrooms. He awoke early to find rain beating on the window. He looked out and saw a grey sky, some kind of factory and the canal from whose shallow waters rose little islands of scrap-iron and bottles; a derelict perambulator lay partially submerged under the opposite bank. In his room stood a chest of drawers full of horrible fragments of stuff, a washhand stand with a highly coloured basin, an empty jug and an old toothbrush. There was also a rotund female bust covered in shiny red material, and chopped off short, as in primitive martyrdoms, at neck, waist and elbows; a thing known as a dressmaker’s ‘dummy’ (there had been one of these in Adam’s home which they used to call ‘Jemima’—one day he stabbed ‘Jemima’ with a chisel and scattered stuffing over the nursery floor and was punished. A more enlightened age would have seen a complex in this action and worried accordingly. Anyway he was made to sweep up all the stuffing himself).

Adam was very thirsty, but there was a light green moss in the bottom of the water bottle that repelled him. He got into bed again and found some one’s handkerchief (presumably Mr Titchcock’s) under the pillow.

He woke again a little later to find Miss Runcible dressed in pyjamas and a fur coat sitting on his bed.

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘there’s no looking-glass in my room and no bath anywhere, and I trod on some one cold and soft asleep in the passage, and I’ve been awake all night killing bugs with drops of face lotion, and everything smells, and I feel so low I could die.’

‘For heaven’s sake let’s go away,’ said Adam.

So they woke Miles and Archie Schwert, and ten minutes later they all stole out of the ‘Royal George’ carrying their suitcases.

‘I wonder, do you think we ought to leave some money?’ asked Adam, but the others all said no.

‘Well, perhaps we ought to pay for the gin,’ said Miss Runcible.

So they left five shillings on the bar and drove away to the ‘Imperial’.

It was still very early, but every one seemed to be awake, running in and out of the lifts carrying crash-helmets and overalls. Miles’ friend, they were told, had been out before dawn, presumably at his garage. Adam met some reporters whom he used to see about the _Excess_ office. They told him that it was any one’s race, and that the place to see the fun was Headlong Corner, where there had been three deaths the year before, and it was worse this year, because they’d been putting down wet tar. It was nothing more or less than a death trap, the reporters said. Then they went away to interview some more drivers. All teams were confident of victory, they said.

Meanwhile Miss Runcible discovered an empty bathroom and came down half-an-hour later all painted up and wearing a skirt and feeling quite herself again and ready for anything. So they went in to breakfast.

The dining-room was very full indeed. There were Speed Kings of all nationalities, unimposing men mostly with small moustaches and apprehensive eyes; they were reading the forecasts in the morning papers and eating what might (and in some cases did) prove to be their last meal on earth. There were a great number of journalists making the best of an ‘out-of-town’ job; there were a troop of nondescript ‘fans’, knowledgeable young men with bright jumpers tucked inside their belted trousers, old public-school ties, check tweeds, loose mouths and scarcely discernible Cockney accents; there were R.A.C. officials and A.A. officials, and the representatives of oil firms and tyre manufacturers. There was one disconsolate family who had come to the town for the christening of a niece. (No one had warned them that there was a motor race on; their hotel bill _was_ a shock.)

‘Very better-making,’ said Miss Runcible with approval as she ate her haddock.

Scraps of highly technical conversation rose on all sides of them.

‘. . . Changed the whole engine over after they’d been scrutineered. Any one else would have been disqualified . . .’

‘. . . just cruising round at fifty . . .’

‘. . . stung by a bee just as he was taking the corner, missed the tree by inches and landed up in the Town Hall. There was a Riley coming up behind, spun round twice, climbed the bank, turned right over and caught fire . . .’

‘. . . local overheating at the valve-heads. It’s no sense putting a supercharger in that engine at all . . .’

‘Headlong Corner’s jam. All you want to do is to brake right down to forty or forty-five at the white cottage, then rev. up opposite the pub. and get straight away in second on the near side of the road. A child could do it. It’s the double bend just after the railway bridge where you’ll get the funny stuff.’

‘. . . kept flagging him down from the pits. I tell you that bunch don’t want him to win.’

‘. . . She wouldn’t tell me her name, but she said she’d meet me at the same place to-night and gave me a sprig of white heather for the car. I lost it, like a fool. She said she’d look out for it too . . .’

‘. . . Only offers a twenty pound bonus this year . . .’

‘. . . lapped at seventy-five . . .’

‘. . . Burst his gasket and blew out his cylinder heads . . .’

‘. . . Broke both arms and cracked his skull in two places . . .’

‘. . . Tailwag . . .’

‘. . . Speed-wobble . . .’

‘. . . Merc . . .’

‘. . . Mag . . .’

‘. . . crash . . .’

When they finished breakfast Miss Runcible and Adam and Archie Schwert and Miles went to the garage to look for their Speed King. They found him hard at work listening to his engine. A corner of the garage had been roped off and the floor strewn with sand as though for a boxing match.

Outside this ring clustered a group of predatory little boys with autograph albums and leaking fountain-pens, and inside, surrounded by attendants, stood the essential parts of a motor car. The engine was running and the whole machine shook with fruitless exertion. Clouds of dark smoke came from it, and a shattering roar which reverberated from concrete floor and corrugated iron roof into every corner of the building so that speech and thought became insupportable and all the senses were numbed. At frequent intervals this high and heart-breaking note was varied by sharp detonations, and it was these apparently which were causing anxiety, for at each report Miles’ friend, who clearly could not have been unduly sensitive to noise, gave a little wince and looked significantly at his head mechanic.

Apart from the obvious imperfection of its sound, the car gave the impression to an uninstructed observer of being singularly unfinished. In fact, it was obviously still under construction. It had only three wheels; the fourth being in the hands of a young man in overalls, who, in the intervals of tossing back from his eyes a curtain of yellow hair, was beating it with a hammer. It also had no seats, and another mechanic was screwing down slabs of lead ballast in the place where one would have expected to find them. It had no bonnet; that was in the hands of a sign painter, who was drawing a black number 13 in a white circle. There was a similar number on the back, and a mechanic was engaged in fixing another number board over one of the headlights. There was a mechanic, too, making a windscreen of wire gauze, and a mechanic lying flat doing something to the back axle with a tin of grate polish and a rag. Two more mechanics were helping Miles’ friend to listen to the bangs. ‘As if we couldn’t have heard them from Berkeley Square,’ said Miss Runcible.

The truth is that motor cars offer a very happy illustration of the metaphysical distinction between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’. Some cars, mere vehicles with no purpose above bare locomotion, mechanical drudges such as Lady Metroland’s Hispano Suiza, or Mrs Mouse’s Rolls Royce, or Lady Circumference’s 1912 Daimler, or the ‘general reader’s’ Austin Seven, these have definite ‘being’ just as much as their occupants. They are bought all screwed up and numbered and painted, and there they stay through various declensions of ownership, brightened now and then with a lick of paint or temporarily rejuvenated by the addition of some minor organ, but still maintaining their essential identity to the scrap heap.

Not so the _real_ cars, that become masters of men; those vital creations of metal who exist solely for their own propulsion through space, for whom their drivers, clinging precariously at the steering wheel, are as important as his stenographer to a stockbroker. These are in perpetual flux; a vortex of combining and disintegrating units; like the confluence of traffic at some spot where many roads meet, streams of mechanism come together, mingle and separate again.

Miles’ friend, even had it been possible in the uproar, seemed indisposed to talk. He waved abstractedly and went on with his listening. Presently he came across and shouted:

‘Sorry I can’t spare a moment, I’ll see you in the pits. I’ve got you some brassards.’

‘My dear, what _can_ that be?’

He handed them each a strip of white linen, terminating in tape.

‘For your arms,’ he shouted. ‘You can’t get into the pits without them.’

‘My dear, what bliss! Fancy their having pits.’

Then they tied on their brassards. Miss Runcible’s said ‘SPARE DRIVER’; Adam’s, ‘DEPOT STAFF’; Miles’ ‘SPARE MECHANIC’ and Archie’s, ‘OWNER’S REPRESENTATIVE.’

Up till now the little boys round the rope had been sceptical of the importance of Miss Runcible and her friends, but as soon as they saw these badges of rank they pressed forward with their autograph books. Archie signed them all with the utmost complaisance, and even drew a slightly unsuitable picture in one of them. Then they drove away in Archie’s car.