4 Books by Coningsby Dawson. Coningsby Dawson

The pointed beard was white; the scanty hair had receded from the calm forehead; the eyes were blue and faded, and red about the rims with over-much study. The top part of the face above the cheek-bones was noble; but the lower part fell away to a mouth and chin which were amiable and undecided. At the hour of Tabs' arrival, he was flinging up his hands and spluttering impotently, an inexpert swimmer in the waters of adversity.

      "My dear Lord Taborley! My dear fellow!" The moment he discovered his guest in the doorway he came darting forward. "My dear boy, this is real friendship. We missed you and wanted you so much.--So you're out of it at last? I mean the khaki."

      The little, wrinkled hand with its stubby fingers reached up timidly in an attempt to pat the big breadth of shoulders.

      "Yes, I'm out of it, Sir Tobias."

      Tabs didn't want to be patted. He was impatient of polite evasions. He foresaw that he was expected to spend the next five minutes in replying to questions which required no answers--all this as a conventional preface to a discussion of the delicate position of Adair and Maisie. But Tabs had his own problem, and one question in particular about a hat on the hall-table that he was burning to ask. They stood staring at each other, the big, fair man and the worn version of Shakespeare, both wondering how long it would be decorous to chatter before they clinched with the vital topic.

      "May as well sit down. There's time for a cigarette. Terry----" Sir Tobias made a short-winded attempt to push a second arm-chair into place beside the fire; Tabs achieved the desired end with one lurch of his body. "Terry brought some one in to tea; he's not gone yet. They never know when to go, these New Army fellows. Good at their job, they tell me, but no polish. I suppose I oughtn't to say that--ungrateful of me! But I'm sick of it all, the invasion of the classes, the women in trousers, the beggars on horseback, the Jazz music. I want the old world back--the womanly women, everybody labeled, and Beethoven."

      He pushed the cigarette-box fretfully across to Tabs, having first selected one for himself.

      "Beethoven," he snorted, "that's what I want, and no bobbed hair and everybody happily married."

      "This New Army chap who's with Terry," Tabs paused to make his voice unanxious and ordinary, "does she see much of him? Is she fond of him?"

      "Fond of him!" The little man jerked round quickly. He was in a mood to see the shadow of terror in the most far-fetched suggestion. "If I thought she was, I should pack her off to Lady Dawn and keep her with her until the fellow was dead or----"

      "What's the matter with him?" Tabs flipped the ash off his cigarette indifferently.

      "The matter with him!" Sir Tobias pulled at the point of his beard, making a mental effort to frame the charge. "If you'd asked me that question five years ago I could have told you; but not now. In 1914 we spoke of a man as belonging to our class and meant that he had our standards of conduct, our code of honor, our sense of public duty, our traditions--that he could be trusted to run true to form. To-day any man's a gentleman, provided he killed enough Germans."

      "But still you do feel that there's something the matter with him."

      "Yes, but I can't tell you for the life of me why I feel it. In many ways he's admirable: I believe he's about the youngest brigadier we have who rose from the ranks. There was no hanky-panky about his promotion either--no petticoat influence; it was all sheer merit and courage. He was a fighting-man from first to last and shared all the chances. But the trouble is that one doesn't know where he came from, and, therefore, one can't be sure where he's going. I know that sounds snobbish. You have the right to tell me that if a man was good enough to be butchered to save an old chap like myself, he ought to be good enough to sit down with me at the same table. But what people don't realize is that men have been wounded in protecting old chaps like myself in coal-mines, and on railroads, and a thousand other places ever since the world started, but until now we never felt it necessary to offer them a bed in our houses. War asked for the simplest gifts from men, physical strength, uncomplaining endurance and courage. The war's ended, and if those same gifts are to continue to secure social advancement, every policeman who captures a burglar ought to be made a bank-president. When I demand that a man shall have traditions to be my friend, I ask no more than when I refuse to buy a dog without a pedigree."

      "But this man, what's he called? If he's as distinguished as you say, I ought to have heard of him."

      Before his host could answer, the door was discreetly opened. "Dinner is being served, Sir Tobias."

      There was a rush of light footsteps and Terry breezed past the butler. "I know you're going to scold me, Daddy. It's all my fault that you were kept waiting. It took me so long to persuade General Braithwaite. By the time he'd consented---- I had to dress like a hurricane. I'm not at all sure that I'm properly hooked up the back. I know I feel draughty." Then, as though she had not remembered that he was expected, "Why, hullo, Tabs! In a dinner-jacket! You do look peaceful and jolly."

      VI

      They had taken their places at the square handsome table, illuminated at each corner by a silver candle-stick, red-shaded and electric-lighted. Tabs and Terry were seated side by side, so that he saw her always in profile, except when she turned to him in conversation. He saw the soft roundness of her shoulder, the satin pallor of her throat and breast, the quivering gold of her childishly wavy hair.

      The General sat isolated, opposite and facing them. Sir Tobias and his wife sat at either end--had they known it, for all the world like judges.

      Lady Beddow was a proud, unbending woman, gracious to her own sort, unquestioningly respectful to those above her, tender in a practical way to those below her and coldly scrutinizing to any one who tapped at her door claiming to be an equal. Being bred to her finger-tips, she was as ill-at-ease as her husband in the jostling democracy of the moment.

      In the hall Sir Tobias rather huffily had introduced his guests. Tabs had relieved the tension by smiling quietly at Braithwaite, "The General and I have met before."

      It was an uncomfortable dinner from the moment they sat down. Sir Tobias, although he had shown no signs of it in the library, seemed to have developed a resentment at having been kept waiting. No reference was made to this resentment, but Terry and the General were obviously the culprits. Sir Tobias was vaguely unhappy and had to blame somebody. Under the tacitly implied criticism Terry's rebellious spirits rose higher, but the General's authoritative assurance began to crumble.

      Sir Tobias was continuing the conversation which had started in the library. He seemed oblivious to the fact that it had then concerned the man who was now present. "You can't make the world afresh with a catastrophe. Men are like water: in a storm they rise above or sink below themselves. When the disturbance is ended, they tend to find their own level. War destroys; it never created anything."

      "That's not true, if you'll excuse me for contradicting you. You're speaking without knowledge." Braithwaite uttered himself bluntly as he would have done in his own Headquarters' mess--this despite the fact that it was Tabs whom his host had been addressing.

      In his astonishment, Sir Tobias nearly gagged himself with the soup that he was on the point of swallowing. He blinked mildly at this confident young man, his breast ablaze with decorations, whom he had not invited. "Then, in your opinion, what has war ever created," he asked with dangerous courtesy; "this war, for instance, that's just ended?"

      "This war that's just ended is the only war of which I have had any experience." Braithwaite glanced across at Terry for encouragement. "I know what it created in me and in thousands like me. It created in us the most valuable of all assets--character. In the bitter test of pain and dirt and despair we _found_ ourselves--found ourselves capable of more nobility than we had ever dreamt possible. We sorted out afresh, in hours that we thought would be our last, all our inherited superstitions and servilities; in so doing we discovered that God and life itself are much kinder than we had been informed. Because of that discovery men who had been timid learnt how to face death gladly, shirkers how to shoulder responsibility,