Part 52

Sibyl interrupts: "My dear Vicky, you must look facts in the face. Queen Victoria would now be 92. She would not be of much use at that age ... See! There is obviously our Foreign Minister ... disguised with smoked glasses, but you can't mistake his nose. I think he's so good-looking.... And there is young Hawk of the F.O. He's just been sent to Brussels. I hear the Villierses are expected to-morrow. That man in the straw hat and the cricketing flannels is Monsieur Viviani, and the handsome old lion with the grey mane is Leon Bourgeois. The tight-trousered man you'd take for a 'booky' is Count Palastro--and there's no mistaking that stuffed figure of the last century, in a stove-pipe hat, a buttoned-up frock-coat, and pointed whiskers: that's Polanoff of the Russian Foreign Office. We saw him when we were in Japan.... 'Whithersoever the carcass is, there are the eagles gathered together.'"

Roger: "I suppose the carcass is the unhappy peoples of Europe?"

Sibyl: "I suppose so. Vicky, dear. Go and have breakfast at the hotel this morning. D'you mind? Maud has taken off the two girls to some violent sports' competition, and Clithy has motored over to Domremy." (To Roger): "He is studying local colour for the libretto of an opera on Joan of Arc. His great clou--if he can only bring it off--is the last scene. Joan of Arc, while bound to the stake and encircled with flames, sings a scena of the fireworks kind. Clithy says it would be natural under the circumstances. He thinks if they can devise some kind of asbestos shift for the prima donna and the usual chemical flames that don't burn much it could be arranged...." (To Vicky): "I want Roger all to myself this morning. We are going to have our breakfast together, here, in case events call him to sterner duties...." (Vicky acquiesces with a good grace--in her new transformation to which a little more grey has been added, she looks surprisingly well, and younger than Sibyl, though she is ten years older).

A pause. The waiter lays the table between them for Roger's dejeuner a la fourchette. He is accustomed to preparing Sibyl's special dietary and arranges for that also. He is a pleasant-faced man, deeply deploring "le peu de progres que fait M'ame la Baronne...."

Sibyl: "What a scene for a dying woman to be looking at!"

Roger: "Sibyl! Don't be so lugubrious...."

Sibyl: "Why? Do you suppose I don't pretty well know my own condition? I am dying slowly of cancer, what the doctors call 'un lent deperissement.' I expect this is what Mother died of later in life. The doctors would be ready enough to operate again if there was any chance.... As it is, they know it is more merciful to let me linger out my few remaining weeks or months than submit me to the shock of an operation which might kill me at once. I may live to October, Dr. Perigord thinks. Or he puts it more pleasantly: 'Vers le mois d'Octobre nous saurons oui ou non, si la guerison de M'ame la Baronne s'effectuera. Les eaux de Villette operent parfois des miracles: esperons toujours.' ... And so on.... I don't suffer much pain--as yet. When it comes on they'll put me under morphia. I shall stay here till this political crisis is over or the fine weather begins to break. Then Clithy will motor me to Calais and from Dover to Engledene. Engledene will be the best place to die at. And, of course, remember, I want to be buried at Aldermaston, near Lucy--and near where you'll be laid some day--unless you marry again, which I should hardly think you'll do. I shall have a perfect right to occupy a small space in Aldermaston churchyard, because I'm a parishioner. I bought the farm that father so ridiculously mismanaged and that you made so prosperous. I've left it in my will to my brother Gerry, as some compensation for having taken no notice of him since I got married.... But, as I said before, what a scene! Not even your beloved Happy Valley could better those flowers in the urns and vases and borders and parterres--those scarlet geraniums, scarlet cannas, scarlet salvias, and scarlety-crimson Lobelia cardinalis. We grow them at Engledene, but they're nothing like these. And the heliotrope, and ageratum ... and those blue salvias and orange calceolarias. I know it's rather vulgar, but the whole effect is superbly staged; don't you think so?....

"And the women's dresses. Many of them, of course, are mannequins, just showing off for the Paris shops. And then to see pass by all the celebrated if over-rated people you've heard so much about, just as though they were well-made-up supers on the stage. And the music of those alternate orchestras... and such African sunlight ... and ... you next to me...."

Roger: "Look here, if you talk so much I shan't wonder you get weaker instead of stronger. Eat up your breakfast and drink your milk."

Sibyl: "I will. But I must talk to you. I shall soon be silenced for ever...."

Roger: "So shall I, when my time comes. So will every one. You don't give yourself a chance, talking in this morbid way. The doctors are often wrong. Remember the case of Lady Waterford?"

Sibyl: "Blanchie?"

Roger: "Yes.... A good soaking in Villette water may get rid of all your trouble and some day you may be weeping over me as I lie dying of Bright's disease."

Sibyl (not paying much attention): "Roger! Do you think there is going to be War?"

Roger: "Not this time. Look there! D'you see those gardes champetres in that green uniform?"

Sibyl: "That nice-looking man, with the blond moustaches?"

Roger: "Yes, and that ugly-looking fellow with the red nose. Well: a week ago they mysteriously vanished, and I asked what had become of them. I was told they had joined up ... the Reserve, you know. Now they're back again. That shows the Germans and French have come to terms. The War is partie remise--this year--but it's certain to come, unless Germany can be squared. Remains to be seen what she wants and what we can afford to give...."

A pause. Sibyl eats a little food and sips her milk. Roger finishes his breakfast and lights a cigarette.

Sibyl: "Do you think there can be any survival after death?"

Roger: "How can I tell? Who knows anything about it? Not even Edison or Marconi. And they come nearest..."

Sibyl: "I mean, of course, our minds, our intelligence, our love. Our poor diseased bodies simply dissolve and are redistributed and worked up again. But the personality we have created in our brains?"... (takes a cigarette from Roger and smokes it). "Talking of personality, isn't it extraordinary how that can be affected through our stomachs; chemically, so to speak? You saw that woman in the dark green dress, who waved to me just now? Recognize her?" (Roger shakes his head)... "That is Cecilia Bosworth, the Marchioness of Bosworth, quite the proudest woman in the Three kingdoms--enough in herself to provoke a middle-class revolution. Her husband's remote ancestor was a by-blow of the Plantagenets, a natural son of 'false fleeting Clarence.' He went over to that usurper--I've always spoken up for Richard the Third--that usurper, Henry the Seventh, at the battle of Bosworth, and so was created Earl of Bosworth, and afterwards Elizabeth made his grandson a marquis. Well, even you, as an African hermit, must have heard of that woman's insolence in Society? She even mocked at the Royal Family and said her husband--a perfect oaf--was more Plantadge than they were and the rightful king.... She wanted Prince Eddy to marry her daughter and make things come right." (A pause ... smokes)...

"Well, when she came here six weeks ago, nobody was good enough to mix with her; she went round blighting us all. My doctor said it was all due to liver and he'd soon cure her. He put her on to La Source Salee--and a slice of melon afterwards. And, my dear, she went through agonies, I believe. I used to hear her shrieking as she passed along the corridor....

"But it's cured her. See what a pleasant nod she gave me just now? And there she is, talking to those very pretty girls--and their father's only a Leeds manufacturer.

"Well, how do you work that problem out?"

Roger: "Give it up! ... But by the look in your eyes, I should say you've got the beginning of a temperature. Let me wheel you back to the Hotel and call for Sophie. Then if you are good and obedient and get an after-breakfast nap, I will come at three and take you and Vicky out for a very gentle motor drive...."

Sibyl submits. The waiter assists with the chair till it is out of the intricacies of the approach to the Breakfast Pavilion. Roger draws it through the gay throng. The church bells of all denominations are clanging in carillons, either because it is Sunday or because Peace--this time--has been definitely assured by an exchange of signatures. A few people raise their hats or wave hands to Sibyl, though she is semi-disguised in smoked glasses and a diaphanous veil; and numerous men nod to Colonel Brentham: who, panting, draws the wheeled chair up to the perron of the hotel.

Here there is a pause while Sophie is sent for. Then the disentanglement of the sick woman from the chair and from shawls, and her slow walk, supported by Roger and her maid, to the ground floor rooms where a white-capped nurse receives her.

Roger went to Germany at the end of September, when Sibyl was being taken back to England by her son. He spent six weeks lecturing the Germans on the advisability of joining Britain and France in a world-wide understanding. His lectures were politely forbidden on Prussian territory, which made South Germany all the more eager to hear him. And when he left for England at the beginning of November, it was with the assurance that a German representative deputation would come to England in the spring of 1912 to promote an Anglo-German understanding.