The fourth member of the Committee at the previous meeting muttered: “I don’t like paying attention to The Daily Phase.”
“We can’t help his having chosen that particular rag,” said Jack Muskham.
“Very distasteful,” continued the fourth member, “diving into matters of conscience. Are we all prepared to say we wouldn’t have done the same?”
There was a sound as of feet shuffling, and a wrinkled expert on the early civilisations of Ceylon murmured: “To my mind, Desert is on the carpet—not for apostasy, but for the song he’s made about it. Decency should have kept him quiet. Advertising his book! It’s in a third edition, and everybody reading it. Making money out of it seems to me the limit.”
“I don’t suppose,” said the fourth member, “that he thought of that. It’s the accident of the sensation.”
“He could have withdrawn the book.”
“Depends on his contract. Besides, that would look like running from the storm he’s roused. As a matter of fact, I think it’s rather fine to have made an open confession.”
“Theatrical!” murmured the K.C.
“If this,” said Jack Muskham, “were one of the Service Clubs, they wouldn’t think twice about it.”
An author of Mexico Revisited said drily:
“But it is not.”
“I don’t know if you can judge poets like other people,” mused the fifth member.
“In matters of ordinary conduct,” said the expert on the civilisation of Ceylon, “why not?”
A little man at the end of the table opposite the Chairman remarked, “The D-d-daily Ph–Phase,” as if releasing a small spasm of wind.
“Everybody’s talking about the thing,” said the K.C.
“My young people,” put in a man who had not yet spoken, “scoff. They say: ‘What does it matter what he did?’ They talk about hypocrisy, laugh at Lyall’s poem, and say it’s good for the Empire to have some wind let out of it.”
“Exactly!” said Jack Muskham: “That’s the modern jargon. All standards gone by the board. Are we going to stand for that?”
“Anybody here know young Desert?” asked the fifth member.
“To nod to,” replied Jack Muskham.
Nobody else acknowledged acquaintanceship.
A very dark man with deep lively eyes said suddenly:
“All I can say is I trust the story has not got about in Afghanistan; I’m going there next month.”
“Why?” said the fourth member.
“Merely because it will add to the contempt with which I shall be regarded, anyway.”
Coming from a well-known traveller, this remark made more impression than anything said so far. Two members, who, with the Chairman, had not yet spoken, said simultaneously: “Quite!”
“I don’t like condemning a man unheard,” said the K.C.
“What about that, ‘Squire’?” asked the fourth member.
The Chairman, who was smoking a pipe, took it from his mouth.
“Anybody anything more to say?”
“Yes,” said the author of Mexico Revisited, “let’s put it on his conduct in publishing that poem.”
“You can’t,” growled Jack Muskham; “the whole thing’s of a piece. The point is simply: Is he fit to be a member here or not? I ask the Chairman to put that to the meeting.”
But the ‘Squire’ continued to smoke his pipe. His experience of Committees told him that the time was not yet. Separate or ‘knot’ discussions would now set in. They led nowhere, of course, but ministered to a general sense that the subject was having justice done to it.
Jack Muskham sat silent, his long face impassive and his long legs stretched out. The discussion continued.
“Well?” said the member who had revisited Mexico, at last.
The ‘Squire’ tapped out his pipe.
“I think,” he said, “that Mr. Desert should be asked to give us his reasons for publishing that poem.”
“Hear, hear!” said the K.C.
“Quite!” said the two members who had said it before.
“I agree,” said the authority on Ceylon.
“Anybody against that?” said the ‘Squire.’
“I don’t see the use of it,” muttered Jack Muskham. “He ratted, and he’s confessed it.”
No one else objecting, the ‘Squire’ continued:
“The Secretary will ask him to see us and explain. There’s no other business, gentlemen.”
In spite of the general understanding that the matter was sub judice, these proceedings were confided to Sir Lawrence before the day was out by three members of the Committee, including Jack Muskham. He took the knowledge out with him to dinner at South Street.
Since the publication of the poems and Compson Grice’s letter, Michael and Fleur had talked of little else, forced to by the comments and questionings of practically every acquaintance. They differed radically. Michael, originally averse to publication of the poem, now that it was out, stoutly defended the honesty and courage of Wilfrid’s avowal. Fleur could not forgive what she called the ‘stupidity of the whole thing.’ If he had only kept quiet and not indulged his conscience or his pride, the matter would have blown over, leaving practically no mark. It was, she said, unfair to Dinny, and unnecessary so far as Wilfrid himself was concerned; but of course he had always been like that. She had not forgotten the uncompromising way in which eight years ago he had asked her to become his mistress, and the still more uncompromising way in which he had fled from her when she had not complied. When Sir Lawrence told them of the meeting at Burton’s, she said simply:
“Well, what could he expect?”
Michael muttered:
“Why is Jack Muskham so bitter?”
“Some dogs attack each other at sight. Others come to it more meditatively. This appears to be a case of both. I should say Dinny is the bone.”
Fleur laughed.
“Jack Muskham and Dinny!”
“Sub-consciously, my dear. The workings of a misogynist’s mind are not for us to pry into, except in Vienna. They can tell you everything there; even to the origin of hiccoughs.”
“I doubt if Wilfrid will go before the Committee,” said Michael, gloomily. Fleur confirmed him.
“Of course he won’t, Michael.”
“Then what will happen?”
“Almost certainly he’ll be expelled under rule whatever it is.”
Michael shrugged. “He won’t care. What’s a Club more or less?”
“No,” said Fleur; “but at present the thing is in flux—people just talk about it; but expulsion from his Club will be definite condemnation. It’s just what’s wanted to make opinion line up against him.”
“And FOR him.”
“Oh! for him, yes; but we know what that amounts to—the disgruntled.”
“That’s all beside the point,” said Michael gruffly. “I know what he’s feeling: his first instinct was to defy that Arab, and he bitterly regrets that he went back on it.”
Sir Lawrence nodded.
“Dinny asked me if there was anything he could do to show publicly that he wasn’t a coward. You’d think there might be, but it’s not easy. People object to be put into positions of extreme danger in order that their rescuers may get into the papers. Van horses seldom run away in Piccadilly. He might throw someone off Westminster Bridge, and jump in after him; but that would merely be murder and suicide. Curious that, with all the heroism there is about, it should be so difficult to be deliberately heroic.”
“He ought to face the Committee,” said Michael; “and I hope he will. There’s something he told me. It sounds silly; but, knowing Wilfrid, one can see it made all the difference.”
Fleur had planted her elbows on the polished table and her chin on her hands. So, leaning forward, she looked like the girl contemplating a china image in her father’s picture by Alfred Stevens.
“Well?” she said. “What is it?”
“He said he felt sorry for his executioner.”
Neither his wife nor his father moved, except for a slight raising of the eyebrows. He went on defiantly:
“Of course, it sounds absurd, but he said the fellow begged him not to make him shoot—he was under a vow to convert the infidel.”
“To mention that to the Committee,” Sir Lawrence said slowly, “would certainly be telling it to the marines.”