Lord of the World. Robert Hugh Benson

I do not think I shall be again. I have been afraid sometimes that we were losing all our spirit, and that the old Tories were partly right when they prophesied what Communism would do. But after this—"

      "Well?"

      "Well; we have shown that we can shed our blood too. It is in the nick of time, too, just at the crisis. I don't want to exaggerate; it is only a scratch—but it was so deliberate, and—and so dramatic. The poor devil could not have chosen a worse moment. People won't forget it."

      Mabel's eyes shone with pleasure.

      "You poor dear!" she said. "Are you in pain?"

      "Not much. Besides, Christ! what do I care? If only this infernal

       Eastern affair would end!"

      He knew he was feverish and irritable, and made a great effort to drive it down.

      "Oh, my dear!" he went on, flushed a little. "If they would not be such heavy fools: they don't understand; they don't understand."

      "Yes, Oliver?"

      "They don't understand what a glorious thing it all is Humanity, Life, Truth at last, and the death of Folly! But haven't I told them a hundred times?"

      She looked at him with kindling eyes. She loved to see him like this, his confident, flushed face, the enthusiasm in his blue eyes; and the knowledge of his pain pricked her feeling with passion. She bent forward and kissed him suddenly.

      "My dear, I am so proud of you. Oh, Oliver!"

      He said nothing; but she could see what she loved to see, that response to her own heart; and so they sat in silence while the sky darkened yet more, and the click of the writer in the next room told them that the world was alive and that they had a share in its affairs.

      Oliver stirred presently.

      "Did you notice anything just now, sweetheart—when I said that about

       Jesus Christ?"

      "She stopped knitting for a moment," said the girl.

      He nodded.

      "You saw that too, then. … Mabel, do you think she is falling back?"

      "Oh! she is getting old," said the girl lightly. "Of course she looks back a little."

      "But you don't think—it would be too awful!"

      She shook her head.

      "No, no, my dear; you're excited and tired. It's just a little sentiment. … Oliver, I don't think I would say that kind of thing before her."

      "But she hears it everywhere now."

      "No, she doesn't. Remember she hardly ever goes out. Besides, she hates it. After all, she was brought up a Catholic."

      Oliver nodded, and lay back again, looking dreamily out.

      "Isn't it astonishing the way in which suggestion lasts? She can't get it out of her head, even after fifty years. Well, watch her, won't you? … By the way … "

      "Yes?"

      "There's a little more news from the East. They say Felsenburgh's running the whole thing now. The Empire is sending him everywhere—Tobolsk, Benares, Yakutsk—everywhere; and he's been to Australia."

      Mabel sat up briskly.

      "Isn't that very hopeful?"

      "I suppose so. There's no doubt that the Sufis are winning; but for how long is another question. Besides, the troops don't disperse."

      "And Europe?"

      "Europe is arming as fast as possible. I hear we are to meet the Powers next week at Paris. I must go."

      "Your arm, my dear?"

      "My arm must get well. It will have to go with me, anyhow."

      "Tell me some more."

      "There is no more. But it is just as certain as it can be that this is the crisis. If the East can be persuaded to hold its hand now, it will never be likely to raise it again. It will mean free trade all over the world, I suppose, and all that kind of thing. But if not—"

      "Well?"

      "If not, there will be a catastrophe such as never has been even imagined. The whole human race will be at war, and either East or West will be simply wiped out. These new Benninschein explosives will make certain of that."

      "But is it absolutely certain that the East has got them?"

      "Absolutely. Benninschein sold them simultaneously to East and West; then he died, luckily for him."

      Mabel had heard this kind of talk before, but her imagination simply refused to grasp it. A duel of East and West under these new conditions was an unthinkable thing. There had been no European war within living memory, and the Eastern wars of the last century had been under the old conditions. Now, if tales were true, entire towns would be destroyed with a single shell. The new conditions were unimaginable. Military experts prophesied extravagantly, contradicting one another on vital points; the whole procedure of war was a matter of theory; there were no precedents with which to compare it. It was as if archers disputed as to the results of cordite. Only one thing was certain—that the East had every modern engine, and, as regards male population, half as much again as the rest of the world put together; and the conclusion to be drawn from these premisses was not reassuring to England.

      But imagination simply refused to speak. The daily papers had a short, careful leading article every day, founded upon the scraps of news that stole out from the conferences on the other side of the world; Felsenburgh's name appeared more frequently than ever: otherwise there seemed to be a kind of hush. Nothing suffered very much; trade went on; European stocks were not appreciably lower than usual; men still built houses, married wives, begat sons and daughters, did their business and went to the theatre, for the mere reason that there was no good in anything else. They could neither save nor precipitate the situation; it was on too large a scale. Occasionally people went mad—people who had succeeded in goading their imagination to a height whence a glimpse of reality could be obtained; and there was a diffused atmosphere of tenseness. But that was all. Not many speeches were made on the subject; it had been found inadvisable. After all, there was nothing to do but to wait.

III

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      Mabel remembered her husband's advice to watch, and for a few days did her best. But there was nothing that alarmed her. The old lady was a little quiet, perhaps, but went about her minute affairs as usual. She asked the girl to read to her sometimes, and listened unblenching to whatever was offered her; she attended in the kitchen daily, organised varieties of food, and appeared interested in all that concerned her son. She packed his bag with her own hands, set out his furs for the swift flight to Paris, and waved to him from the window as he went down the little path towards the junction. He would be gone three days, he said.

      It was on the evening of the second day that she fell ill; and Mabel, running upstairs, in alarm at the message of the servant, found her rather flushed and agitated in her chair.

      "It is nothing, my dear," said the old lady tremulously; and she added the description of a symptom or two.

      Mabel got her to bed, sent for the doctor, and sat down to wait.

      She was sincerely fond of the old lady, and had always found her presence in the house a quiet sort of delight. The effect of her upon the mind was as that of an easy-chair upon the body. The old lady was so tranquil and human, so absorbed in small external matters, so reminiscent now and then of the days of her youth, so utterly without resentment or peevishness. It seemed curiously pathetic to the girl to watch that quiet old spirit approach its extinction, or rather, as Mabel believed, its loss of personality in the reabsorption into the Spirit of Life which informed the world. She