CHAPTER XXIV.
Gathering Clouds.
It was a fine morning, and the Russians walked into Herat, Quetta, Candahar, and Cabul. It was done in the most gentlemanly way, so as to give the least possible shock to anyone’s susceptibilities. A circular had been despatched a few days before to all the great Powers, to the effect that in view of possibly unsettled relations, it behoved every nation to take guarantees for the preservation of peace. In particular, an Envoy Extraordinary to England had instructions to concede and promise everything without stint.
The Russian guarantee came about in this way. The Ameer of Afghanistan, Lamplighterawshat Khan, had just waited to trouser his annual British subsidy at the regular time, and had then ceded the above-named places to the Czar, for a handsome consideration. It was very mean and ungrateful, this conduct on the part of Lamplighterawshat. He had been petted, patted, stroked, feasted, festooned by the British Government; he had reviewed Indian forces; yet no sooner did he get an opening, than he sold his benefactors to the highest bidder, for Russia bid him higher than the tribute paid to him by our Bungling Coalition in return for his countenance and support. The Indian Executive was paralysed, and did not see how to stir in the matter; the Home Government was at once applied to, and despatched peremptory orders to resist the encroachment by force; but a few hours afterwards equally peremptory orders were telegraphed to do nothing without having first received a satisfactory explanation.
On the Sunday morning which concludes the previous chapter, our party were sitting down to breakfast, when Lesbia opened the Observer, which she had got from a newsman at the street corner.
‘Here’s a shindy, all the fat’s in the fire! the Russian bear is on the rampage again, the Eastern Question is up in full dance, India’s threatened, and they’ve called a Cabinet Council for this afternoon.’
‘On Sunday!’ said her uncle; ‘very unusual; they must think it a serious crisis. Very awkward, isn’t it, with this new African embroglio in prospect, and the United States taking an unfriendly tone. I suppose because the wild boar out of the wood is worrying them into it.’
‘Yes, those Irish are at the bottom of every mischief. What’s to be the end of it?’
‘I suppose we shall have to fight somebody,’ said her uncle. ‘It’ll depress the money markets to-morrow.’
‘Fight!’ repeated Lesbia,
Singing]
We'll show our heels, we'll show our pace,
We'll show our beauty too:
We've run away before, and so we shall again,
Shoulder to shoulder with the brave Egyptian.’
Really, Lesbia,’ said Mrs Bristley, ‘I wonder you don’t apply for an engagement in a music-hall.’
‘Well, Aunt Kate, if nothing better turns up, I shall try for that.’
‘A nice kettle of fish indeed,’ said Mr Bristley, pursuing his own thoughts. ‘I’m afraid it is the little cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand.’
‘I must say,’ remarked his niece, in a more serious vein, ‘that much as I dote on sweet Friga, I do wish someone else than her excellent father were at the head of affairs. He’s too pliable to steer a Bungling Coalition. They say, too, that he leaves foreign policy entirely to his relative the Foreign Secretary, who, in turn, leaves it to the Under Secretary, that Irishman Fitzgorin.’
‘Well, what then, Lesbie?’ asked her uncle.
‘Why,’ she replied, ‘you know that—
While twisting one twist, three twists he must twist;
But if while twisting, one twist should untwist,
The twist untwisting untwists the twist.
Through him or through others, I am afraid our twist will be undone.’
‘My belief has always been,’ said Mr Bristley, ‘that the better plan would be to cut Ireland adrift. Leaving them to shift for themselves would, in practice, draw them closer to us: such is human nature. “You shall,” is always answered by “We won't;” but “Do as you please,” often leads to calm reconsideration.’
‘I believe so too, Uncle Spines,’ answered Lesbia; ‘but the Irish difficulty is only one among the many bad signs of the times. Does it not strike you that the social as well as the political atmosphere is lurid and gathering? A bubble is biggest before it bursts, and the society of the day gives me the idea of an inflated bubble. Bedridden superstitions seem to be regaining their hold; the ruling classes are lapsing into that condition where they learn nothing and forget nothing. Advances in the direction of pure taste unsullied by vulgarity cannot be made, even in such matters as female attire—not to any appreciable extent. There is little real initiative anywhere, and what there is, is soon snuffed out by smug, self-sufficient common-place; the ball of civilisation is refusing to be pushed further up hill, and gives signs of rolling back upon its supporters. I see all this as I did not see it before I came to town and had the benefit of conversation about London life with Friga, who has been accustomed, much against her will, to the throng of it. Altogether, I have a sense of being stifled by the moral atmosphere, and a presentiment that the present state of things cannot last long. We shall have an explosion—not dynamite—but revolution.’
‘It may not suit your wild originality, Lesbie dear,’ said her mother, ‘that society should be coming to its senses, and that there should be a reaction in favour of womanliness of the old sort; but that is the light in which the circumstances which displease you appear to old fogies like your aunt and me.’
‘Pray, mamma,’ asked Lesbia, in a cold, hard tone, ‘do you remember the Dream?’
The young girl put this unwonted question to her mother in a moment of uncontrollable irritation; and no sooner were the words out of her mouth than she regretted them. Mrs Newman turned deadly pale, and the newspaper, which she had taken up to glance at, fell on the carpet, as she rested both her hands on the table and gazed out of window.
‘Ah, yes, indeed I do, Lesbie,’ she said at last sadly. ‘God knows in what shape the catastrophe is to come, but it cannot be for nothing that I listened in my trance to the tremendous thunder rolling and rattling, and saw that dreadful hillside spattered with blood. And to think that you should have seen a place in Ireland which answers to it exactly! I’m sure we may well pray, ‘From battle, murder, and sudden death, good Lord, deliver us.’’
‘Yes; well, it can’t be helped,’ said Mr Bristley, rising, with a grave face; ‘there’s no use in crying over spilt milk, or spil—let’s have a constitutional down the Hammersmith Road before service; what d’you say, ladies all? I don’t see why I should have stagnation in my legs, whatever may happen in the body politic.’