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Arthur Beverley Baxter - The Parts Men Play

A >> Arthur Beverley Baxter >> The Parts Men Play



THE PARTS MEN PLAY

by

ARTHUR BEVERLEY BAXTER

Author of "The Blower of Bubbles"

With Foreword by Lord Beaverbrook







McClelland & Stewart
Publishers ======== Toronto
Copyright, Canada, 1920
By McClelland & Stewart, Limited, Toronto





THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER

JAMES BENNETT BAXTER

WHO BELIEVED THOUGHT TO BE MORE IMPORTANT
THAN THINGS, AND WHO WENT THROUGH THIS
WORLD DISPENSING GENIAL PHILOSOPHY
AND KINDLY HUMOUR TO ALL
WHO CAME WITHIN
HIS CIRCLE




FOREWORD.

Mr. Baxter is my countryman, and, as a Canadian, I commend _The Parts
Men Play_, not only for its literary vitality, but for the freshness of
outlook with which the author handles Anglo-American susceptibilities.

A Canadian lives in a kind of half-way house between Britain and the
United States. He understands Canada by right of birth; he can
sympathise with the American spirit through the closest knowledge born
of contiguity; his history makes him understand Britain and the British
Empire. He is, therefore, a national interpreter between the two
sundered portions of the race.

It is this role of interpreter that Mr. Baxter is destined to fill, a
role for which he is peculiarly suited, not only by temperament, but by
reason of his experiences gained from his entrance into the world of
London journalism and English literature.

I do not know in what order the chapters of _The Parts Men Play_ were
written, but it seems to me that as Mr. Baxter gets to grip with the
realities of his theme, he begins to lose a certain looseness of touch
which marks his opening pages. If so, he is showing the power of
development, and to the artist this power is everything. The writer
who is without it is a mere static consciousness weaving words round
the creatures of his own imagination. The man who has it possesses a
future, because he is open to the teaching of experience. And among
the men with a future I number Mr. Baxter.

Throughout the book his pictures of life are certainly arresting--taken
impartially both in Great Britain and America. What could be better
than some of his descriptions?

The speech of the American diplomat at a private dinner is the truest
defence and explanation of America's delay in coming into the war that
I remember to have read. The scene is set in the high light of
excitement, and the rhetorical phrasing of the speech would do credit
to a famous orator.

But I fear that I may be giving the impression that _The Parts Men
Play_ is merely a piece of propagandist fiction--something from which
the natural man shrinks back with suspicion. Nothing could be farther
from the truth. Mr. Baxter's strength lies in the rapid flow and sweep
of his narrative. His characterisation is clear and firm in outline,
but it is never pursued into those quicksands of minute analysis which
too often impede the stream of good story-telling.

I am glad that a Canadian novelist should have given us a book which
supports the promise shown by the author in _The Blower of Bubbles_,
and marks him out for a distinguished future.

If in the course of a novel of action he has something to teach his
British readers about the American temperament, and his American public
about British mentality, so much the better.


BEAVERBROOK.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER

I. LADY DURWENT DECIDES ON A DINNER
II. CONCERNING LADY DURWENT'S FAMILY
III. ABOUT A TOWN HOUSE
IV. PROLOGUE TO A DINNER-PARTY
V. THE OLYMPIANS THUNDER
VI. A MORNING IN NOVEMBER
VII. THE CAFE ROUGE
VIII. INTERMEZZO
IX. A HOUSE-PARTY AT ROSELAWN
X. GATHERING SHADOWS
XI. THE RENDING OF THE VEIL
XII. THE HONOURABLE MALCOLM DURWENT STARTS ON A JOURNEY
XIII. THE MAN OF SOLITUDE
XIV. STRANGE CRAFT
XV. DICK DURWENT
XVI. THE FEMININE TOUCH
XVII. MOONLIGHT
XVIII. ELISE
XIX. EN VOYAGE
XX. THE GREAT NEUTRAL
XXI. A NIGHT IN JANUARY
XXII. THE CHALLENGE
XXIII. THE SMUGGLER BREED
XXIV. THE SENTENCE
XXV. THE FIGHT FOR THE BRIDGE
XXVI. THE END OF THE ROAD
XXVII. A LIGHT ON THE WATER




THE PARTS MEN PLAY.


CHAPTER I.

LADY DURWENT DECIDES ON A DINNER.


I.

His Majesty's postmen were delivering mail. Through the gray grime of
a November morning that left a taste of rust in the throat, the
carriers of letters were bearing their cargo to all the corners of that
world which is called London.

There were letters from hospitals asking for funds; there were appeals
from sick people seeking admission to hospital. There were long, legal
letters and little, scented letters lying wonderingly together in the
postman's bag. There were notes from tailors to gentlemen begging to
remind them; and there were answers from gentlemen to their tailors, in
envelopes bearing the crests of Pall Mail clubs, hinting of temporary
embarrassment, but mentioning certain prospects that would shortly
enable them to . . . .

Fat, bulging envelopes, returning manuscripts with editors' regrets,
were on their way to poor devils of scribblers living in the altitude
of unrecognised genius and a garret. There were cringing, fawning
epistles, written with a smirk and sealed with a scowl; some there were
couched in a refinement of cruelty that cut like a knife.

But, as unconcerned as tramps plying contraband between South America
and Mexico, His Majesty's postmen were delivering His Majesty's mail,
with never a thought of the play of human emotions lying behind the
sealed lips of an envelope. If His Majesty's subjects insisted upon
writing to one another, it was obvious that their letters, in some
mysterious way become the property of His Majesty, had to be delivered.

Thus it happened, on a certain November morning in the year 1913, that
six dinner invitations, enclosed in small, square envelopes with a
noble crest on the back, and large, unwieldy writing on the front, were
being carried through His Majesty's fog to six addresses in the West
End of London.

Lady Durwent had decided to give a dinner.

An ordinary hostess merely writes a carelessly formal note stating that
she hopes the recipient will be able to dine with her on a certain
evening. The form of her invitations varies as little as the
conversation at her table. But Lady Durwent was _unusual_. For years
she had endeavoured to impress the fact on London, and by careful
attention to detail had at last succeeded in gaining that reputation.
She was that _rara avis_ among the women of to-day--the hostess who
knows her guests. She never asked any one to dine at her house without
some definite purpose in mind--and, for that matter, her guests never
dined with her except on the same terms.

Therefore it came about that Lady Durwent's dinners were among the
pleasantest things in town, and, true to her character of the
_unusual_, she always worded her invitations with a nice discrimination
dictated by the exact motive that prompted the sending.


II.

H. Stackton Dunckley looked up from his pillow as the man-servant who
valeted for the gentlemen of the Jermyn Street Chambers drew aside a
gray curtain and displayed the gray blanket of the atmosphere outside.

'Good-morning, Watson,' said Mr. Dunckley in a voice which gave the
impression that he had smoked too many cigars the previous evening--an
impression considerably strengthened by the bilious appearance of his
face.

'Good-morning, sir. Will you have the _Times_ or the _Morning Post_?
And here are your letters, sir.'

The recumbent gentleman took the letters and waved them philosophically
at the valet. 'Leave me to my thoughts,' he said thickly, but with
considerable dignity. 'I am not interested in the squeaky jarring of
the world revolving on its rusty axis.'

Being an author, he almost invariably tried out his command of language
in the morning, as a tenor essays two or three notes on rising, to make
sure that his voice has not left him during his slumber.

Mr. Watson bowed and withdrew. H. Stackton Dunckley lit a cigarette,
opened the first letter, and read it.


'8 CHELMSFORD GARDENS.

'MY DEAR STACKY,--Next Friday I am giving a little dinner-party--just a
few _unusual_ people--to meet an American author who has recently come
to England. Do come; but, you brilliant man, don't be too caustic,
will you?

'Isn't it dreadful the way gossip is connecting our names? Supposing
Lord Durwent should hear about it!--Until Friday,

'SYBIL DURWENT.

'P.S.--How is _the_ play coming on? Dinner will be at 8.30.'


H. Stackton Dunckley put the letter down and sighed. He was an author
who had been writing other men's ideas all his life, but without
sufficient distinction to achieve either a success or a failure. He
had gained some notoriety by his wife suing him for divorce; but when
the Court granted her separation on the ground of desertion, it cleared
him of the charge of infidelity--and of the chance of advertisement at
the same moment. Later, by being a constant attendant on Lady Durwent,
he almost succeeded in creating a scandal; but, to the great
disappointment of them both, London flatly refused to believe there was
anything wrong. For one thing, she was the daughter of a commoner--and
the morality of the middle classes is a conviction solidly rooted in
English society. And then there were his writings. How could one
doubt the character of a man so dull?

Undiscouraged, they still maintained their perfectly innocent
friendship, and, like kittens playing with a spool, invested it with
all the appearances of an intrigue.

Dismissing his depressing thoughts, H. Stackton Dunckley noticed that
his cigarette was out, and closing his eyes, fell asleep once more.


III.

Madame Carlotti, clothed in a kimono of emphatic shade, sat by the fire
in her rooms in Knightsbridge and read her mail while sipping coffee.
She was the wife of an Italian diplomat, a sort of wandering
plenipotentiary who did business in every part of the world but London,
and with every Government but that of Britain. It was the signora's
somewhat incomprehensible complaint that her husband's duties forced
her to live in that fog-bound metropolis, and having thus achieved the
pedestal of a martyr, she poured abuse on everything English from
climate to customs. Possessed of a certain social dexterity and the
ability to make the most ordinary conversation seem to concern a
forbidden topic, Madame Carlotti was in great demand as a guest, and
abused more English habits and attended more dinner-parties than any
other woman in London.

From beneath seven tradesmen's letters she extracted one from Lady
Durwent.


'8 CHELMSFORD GARDENS,

'DEAREST LUCIA,--I am counting on you for next Friday. A young
American author studying England--I suppose like that Count
Something-or-other in _Pickwick Papers_--is coming to dinner. I
understand he drinks very little, so I am relying on you to thaw him.

'Stackton Dunckley _insists_ upon coming, though I tell him that it is
dangerous; and of course people are saying dreadful things, I know. He
is _so_ persistent. There will be just half-a-dozen _unusual_ people
there, my dear, so don't fail me. Dinner will be at 8.30.--So
sincerely, SYBIL DERWENT.

'P.S.--Don't you think you could make Stackton interested in you? Your
husband is away so much.'


Madame Carlotti smiled with her teeth and drank some very strong coffee.

'It ees deefficult,' she said, with that seductive formation of the
lips used by her countrywomen when speaking English, 'for a magnet to
attract putty. Still--there ees the American. At least I shall not be
altogether bored.'


IV.

That noon, in a restaurant of Chelsea, the district of Pensioners and
Bohemians, two young gentlemen, considerably in need of renovation by
both tailor and barber, met at a table and nodded gloomily. One was
Johnston Smyth, an artist, who, finding himself possessed neither of a
technique nor of the industry to acquire one, had evolved a
super-futurist style that had made him famous in a night. He was
spoken of as 'a new force;' it was prophesied that English Art would
date from him. Unfortunately his friends neglected to buy his
paintings, and as his art was a vivid one, consisting of vast
quantities of colour splashed indiscriminately on the canvas, it took
more than his available funds to purchase the accessories of his
calling. He was tall, with expressive arms that were too long for his
sleeves, and a nose that would have done credit to a field-marshal.

The other was Norton Pyford, the modernist composer, who had developed
the study of discord to such a point that his very features seemed to
lack proportion, and when he smiled his face presented a lop-sided
appearance. He had given a recital which set every one who is any one
in London talking. There was but one drawback--they talked so much
that he could persuade no one to listen, and he carried his discords
about with him, like a bad half-crown, unable to rid himself of them.
He was short, with a retreating forehead and an overhanging wealth of
black, thread-like hair, gamely covering the retreat as best it could.

'Hello, Smyth!' drawled the composer, who affected a manner of speech
usually confined to footmen in the best families. 'Hah d' do?'

'Topping, Pyford. How's things?'

'Rotten.'

'Same here.'

'I say, you couldn't'----

'Just what I was going to ask you.'

The composer sighed; the artist echoed the sigh.

'Have you seen Shaw's show?'

'Awful, isn't it?'

'Putrid--but the English don't'----

'Ah! What a race!'

'Just so. I say, are you going to Lady Durwent's on Friday?'

'Yes, rather.'

'Look here, old fellow--don't dress, eh?'

'Right. Let's be natural--what? Just Bohemians.'

'The very thing. By-the-by, you don't know a laundry that gives'----

'No, I can't say I do.'

'Well, so long.'

'Good-bye.'

'See you Friday.'

'Right.'


V.

Mrs. Le Roy Jennings looked up from her task of drafting the new
Resolution to be presented to Parliament by the League of Equal Sex
Rights and Complete Emancipation for Women, as a diminutive,
half-starved servant brought in a letter on a tray.

Mrs. Jennings took the missive, and frowning threateningly at the girl,
who withdrew to the dark recesses of the servants' quarters, opened it
by slitting its throat with a terrific paper-knife.


'8 CHELMSFORD GARDENS.

'DEAR MRS LE ROY JENNINGS,--An American author is coming to dinner next
Friday. There will just be a few _unusual_ people, and I have asked
them for 8.30. I want him to meet one of England's intellectual women,
and I _know_ he will be interested to hear of your ideas on the New
Home.

'My daughter joins with me in wishing you every success.--Until Friday,
dear,

'SYBIL DURWENT.'


Mrs. Jennings, who had made a complete failure of her own home, and
consequently felt qualified to interfere with all others, scribbled a
hasty note of acceptance in a handwriting so forceful that on some
words the pen slid off the paper completely.

Then, with a look of profundity, she resumed the Resolution.


VI.

And so, by the medium of His Majesty's mail, a little group of actors
were warned for a performance at Lady Durwent's house, No. 8 Chelmsford
Gardens.

Through the November fog the endless traffic of the streets was
cautiously feeling its way along the diverging channels of the
Metropolis--a snorting, sliding, impatient fleet of vehicles
perpetually on their way, yet never seeming to get there. Taxi-cabs
hugged the pavements, trying to penetrate the gloom with their meagre
lights; omnibuses fretted and bullied their way, avoiding collision by
inches, but struggling on and on as though their very existence
depended on their reaching some place immediately or being interned for
failure. Hansom-cabs, with ancient, glistening horses driven by
ancient, glistening cabbies, felt for elbow-space in the throng of
motor-vehicles. And on all sides the badinage of the streets, the
eternal wordy conflict of London's mariners of traffic, rose in
cheerful, insulting abundance.

On the pavements pedestrians jostled each other--men with hands in
their pockets and arms tight to their sides, women with piqued noses
and hurrying steps; while sulky lamps offered half-hearted resistance
to the conquering fog that settled over palaces, parks, and motley
streets until it hugged the very Thames itself in unholy glee.

And through the impenetrable mist of circumstance, the millions of
souls that make up the great city pursued their millions of destinies,
undeterred by biting cold and grisly fog. For it was a day in the life
of England's capital; and every day there is a great human drama that
must be played--a drama mingling tragedy and humour with no regard to
values or proportion; a drama that does not end with death, but renews
its plot with the breaking of every dawn; a drama knowing neither
intermezzo nor respite: and the name of it is--LONDON.




CHAPTER II

CONCERNING LADY DURWENT'S FAMILY.


I.

Lady Durwent was rather a large woman, of middle age, with a high
forehead unruffled by thought, and a clear skin unmarred by wrinkles.
She had a cheerfulness that obtruded itself, like a creditor, at
unpropitious moments; and her voice, though not displeasing, gave the
impression that it might become volcanic at any moment. She also
possessed a considerable theatrical instinct, with which she would
frequently manoeuvre to the centre of the stage, to find, as often as
not, that she had neglected the trifling matter of learning any lines.

She was the daughter of an ironmonger in the north of England, whose
father had been one of the last and most famous of a long line of
smugglers. It was perhaps the inherited love of adventure that
prompted the ironmonger, against his wife's violent protest, to invest
the savings of a lifetime in an obscure Canadian silver-mine. To the
surprise of every one (including its promoters), the mine produced
high-grade ore in such abundance that the ironmonger became a man of
means. Thereupon, at the instigation of his wife, they moved from
their little town into the city of York, where he purchased a large,
stuffily furnished house, sat on Boards, became a councillor, wore
evening-dress for dinner, and died a death of absolute respectability.

Before the final event he had the satisfaction of seeing his only child
Sybil married to Arthur, Lord Durwent. (The evening-clothes for dinner
were a direct result.) Lord Durwent was a well-behaved young man of
unimpeachable character and family, and he was sincerely attracted by
the agreeable expanse of lively femininity found in the fair Sybil.
After a wedding that left her mother a triumphant wreck and appreciably
hastened her father's demise, she was duly installed as the mistress of
Roselawn, the Durwent family seat, and its tributary farms. The
tenants gave her an address of welcome; her husband's mother gracefully
retired to a villa in Sussex; the rector called and expressed
gratification; the county families left their cards and inquired after
her father, the ironmonger.

Unfortunately the new Lady Durwent had the temperament neither of a
poet nor of a lady of the aristocracy. She failed to hear the tongues
in trees, and her dramatic sense was not satisfied with the little
stage of curtsying tenantry and of gentlefolk who abhorred the very
thought of anything theatrical in life.

On the other hand, her husband was a man who was unhappy except on his
estate. He thought along orthodox lines, and read with caution. He
loved his lawns, his gardens, his horses, and his habits. He was a
pillar of the church, and always read a portion of Scripture from the
reading-desk on Sunday mornings. His wife he treated with simple
courtesy as the woman who would give him an heir. If his mind had been
a little more sensitive, Lord Durwent would have realised that he was
asking a hurricane to be satisfied with the task of a zephyr.

They had a son.

The tenants presented him with a silver bowl; Lord Durwent presented
them with a garden fete; and the parents presented the boy with the
name of Malcolm.

Two years later there came a daughter.

The tenants gave her a silver plate; Lord Durwent gave them a garden
fete; and he and his wife gave the girl the name of Elise.

Three years later a second son appeared.

There was a presentation, followed by a garden fete and a christening.
The name was Richard.

In course of time the elder son grew to that mental stature when the
English parent feels the time is ripe to send him away to school. The
ironmonger's daughter had the idea that Malcolm, being her son, was
hers to mould.

'My dear,' said Lord Durwent, exerting his authority almost for the
first time, 'the boy is eight years of age, and no time must be lost in
preparing him for Eton and inculcating into him those qualities which
mark'----

'But,' cried his wife with theatrical unrestraint, 'why send him to
Eton? Why not wait until you see what he wants to be in the world?'

Lord Durwent's face bore a look of unperturbed calm. 'When he is old
enough, he must go to Eton, my dear, and acquire the qualities which
will enable him to take over Roselawn at my death'----

At this point Lady Durwent interrupted him with a tirade which, in
common with a good many domestic unpleasantries, was born of much that
was irrelevant, springing from sources not readily apparent. She
abused the public-school system of England, and sneered at the county
families which blessed the neighbourhood with their presence. She
reviled Lord Durwent's habits, principally because they _were_ habits,
and thought it was high time some Durwent grew up who wasn't just a
'sticky, stuffy, starched, and bored porpoise--yes, PORPOISE!' (shaking
her head as if to establish the metaphor against the whole of the
English aristocracy). In short, it was the spirit of the Ironmonger
castigating the Peerage, and at its conclusion Lady Durwent felt much
abused, and quite pleased with her own rhetoric.

Lord Durwent glanced for courage at an ancestor who looked
magnificently down at him over a ruffle. He adjusted his own cravat
and spoke in nicely modulated accents: 'Sybil, nothing can change me on
this point. In spite of what you say, it is my intention to keep to
the tradition of the Durwents, and that is that the occupant of
Roselawn'----

'What! am not I his mother?' cried the good woman, her hysteria having
much the same effect on Lord Durwent's smoothly developing monologue as
a heavy pail dropped by a stage-hand during Hamlet's soliloquy.

'Sybil,' said Lord Durwent sternly, 'it was arranged at Malcolm's birth
that he should go to Eton. I shall take him next Tuesday to a
preparatory school, and you must excuse me if I refuse to discuss the
matter further.'

Lady Durwent rushed from the room and clasped her eldest child in her
arms. That young gentleman, not knowing what had caused his mother's
grief, sympathetically opened his throat and bellowed lustily, thereby
shedding tears for positively the last time in his life.

When he returned for the holidays a few months later, he was an
excellent example of that precocity, the English schoolboy, who cloaks
a juvenile mind with the pose of sophistication, and by twelve years of
age achieves a code of thought and conduct that usually lasts him for
the rest of his life. In vain the mother strove for her place in the
sun; the rule of the masculine at Roselawn became adamant.

Life in the Durwent _menage_ developed into a thing of laws and customs
dictated by the youthful despot, aided and abetted by his father. The
sacred rites of 'what isn't done' were established, and the mother
gradually found herself in the position of an outsider--a privileged
outsider, it is true, yet little more than the breeder of a
thoroughbred, admitted to the paddock to watch his horse run by its new
owner.

She vented her feelings in two or three tearful scenes, but she felt
that they lacked spontaneity, and didn't really put her heart into them.

During these struggles for her place in a Society that was probably
more completely masculine in domination than any in the world (with the
possible exception of that of the Turk), Lady Durwent was only dimly
aware that her daughter was developing a personality which presented a
much greater problem than that of the easily grooved Malcolm.

The girl's hair was like burnished copper, and her cheeks were lit by
two bits of scarlet that could be seen at a distance before her
features were discernible. Her eyes were of a gray-blue that changed
in shade with her swiftly varying moods. Her lower lip was full and
red, the upper one firm and repressed with the dull crimson of a fading
rose-petal. Her shapely arms and legs were restless, seemingly
impatient to break into some quickly moving dance. She was
extraordinarily alive. Vitality flashed from her with every gesture,
and her mind, a thing of caprice and whim, knew no boundaries but those
of imagination itself.

Puzzled and entirely unable to understand anything so instinctive, Lady
Durwent engaged a governess who was personally recommended by Lady
Chisworth, whose friend the Countess of Oxeter had told her that the
three daughters of the Duchess of Dulworth had all been entrusted to
her care.

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