Chapter 3

The beauty of the dull bored him very
soon; Henry had his eccentricities. He did not think that Miss
Wembley was going to be amusing, but still, he intended to cultivate
her acquaintance.

Henry looked at his watch. It was twelve forty-five. "Can't the rest
wait?" he said.

"I'm just on done. It's a re-type I'm doing. I spelt parliament with a
small p, and Mr. Wilbraham said he couldn't send it, not even if I
rubbed it out with the eraser. He said it would show, and it was to
the F.O., who are very particular."

"My God," Henry ejaculated, in a low yet violent tone, and gave a
bitter laugh. His eyes gleamed fiercely. "I can imagine," he said,
with restraint, "that Mr. Wilbraham might be particular. He _looks_
particular."

"Well, he is, rather. But he's quite right, I suppose. Messy letters
look too awful. Some men will sign simply anything. I don't like
that.... There, now I've done."

"Come along then," said Henry rapidly.

12

The Assembly met again at four o'clock, and proceeded under the
Deputy President with the order of the day. But it was a half-hearted
business. No one was really interested in anything except the fate of
Dr. Svensen, who, it had transpired from inquiry among the
boat-keepers, had not taken a boat on the lake last night.

"Foul play," said the journalist Grattan, hopefully. "Obviously foul
play."

"Ask the Bolshevist refugees," the _Times_ correspondent said with a
shrug. For he had no opinion of these people, and believed them to
be engaged in a continuous plot against the peace of the world, in
combination with the Germans. The _Morning Post_ was inclined to
agree, but held that O'Shane, the delegate from the Irish Free State,
was in it too. Whenever any unpleasant incident occurred, at home or
abroad (such as murders, robberies, bank failures, higher income tax,
Balkan wars, strikes, troubles in Ireland, or cocaine orgies), the
_Times_ said, "Ask the Bolshevists and the Germans," and the _Morning
Post_ said, "Ask the Bolshevists and the Germans by all means,
but more particularly ask Sinn Fein," just as the _Daily Herald_
said, "Ask the capitalists and Scotland Yard," and some eminent
_littérateurs_, "Ask the Jews." We must all have our whipping-boys,
our criminal suspects; without them sin and disaster would be too
tragically diffused for our comfort. Henry Beechtree's suspect was
Charles Wilbraham. He knew that he suspected Charles Wilbraham too
readily; Wilbraham could not conceivably have committed all the sins
of which Henry was fain to believe him guilty. Henry knew this, and
kept a guard on his own over-readiness, lest it should betray him
into rash accusation. Information; evidence; that was what he had to
collect.

The question was, as an intelligent member of the Secretariat pointed
out, who stood to benefit by the disappearance of Svensen from the
scenes? Find the motive for a deed, and very shortly you will find the
doer. Had Svensen a private enemy? No one knew. Many persons
disapproved of the line he was apt to take in public affairs: he
wanted to waste money on feeding hungry Russians ("No one is sorrier
than my tender-hearted nation for starving persons," the other
delegates would say, "but we have no money to send them, and are not
Russians always hungry?") and was in an indecent hurry about
disarmament, which should be a slow and patient process. ("No one is
more anxious than my humane nation for peace," said the delegates,
"but there is a dignified caution to be observed.") Yes; many persons
disagreed with Svensen as to the management of the affairs of the
world; but surely no one would make away with him on that account.
Far more likely did it seem that he had inadvertently stumbled into
the lake, after dining well. What an end to so great and good a man!

13

Lord Burnley, the senior British delegate, that distinguished,
notable, and engaging figure in the League, had, as has been said
earlier, a strange addiction to walking. This afternoon, having parted
from his friends outside the Assembly Hall, he started, as was a
favourite pastime of his, to walk through the older and more
picturesque streets of the city, for which he had a great taste.

As he strolled in his leisurely manner up the Rue de la Cité, stopping
now and then to look at its antique and curious shops, he came to a
book shop, whose outside shelf was stocked with miscellaneous
literature. Lord Burnley, who could seldom pass an old bookshop
without pausing, stopped to glance at the row of paper-backs, and
was caught by a familiar large bound book among them. Familiar
indeed, for was it not one of his own works? He put on his glasses and
looked closer. Yes: the volume was inscribed _Scepticism as a Basis
for Faith_, by George Burnley. And printed on a paper label below the
title, was the inscription, "Special Edition, recently annotated by
the Author."

Strange! Lord Burnley was puzzled. For neither recently nor at any
other time was he conscious of having issued a special annotated
edition of this work.

For a minute or two he pondered, standing on the pavement. Then,
deciding to inquire further into this thing, he stooped his head and
shoulders and passed under the low lintel into the little dark shop.

14

Henry, having left the Assembly, sent off his message to his newspaper
(it was entirely about the disappearance of Dr. Svensen), glanced into
his pigeon-hole on his way out, and found there, among various
superfluous documents, a note addressed to him by the ex-cardinal
Franchi, suggesting that, if he should not find himself better
employed, he should give the writer his company at dinner at eight
o'clock that evening, at his villa at Monet, two miles up the lake. He
would find a small electric launch waiting for him at seven-thirty at
the Eaux-Vives jetty, in which would be Dr. Franchi's niece, who had
been attending the Assembly that afternoon.

"Excellent," thought Henry. "I will go." For he was greatly attracted
by Dr. Franchi, and liked also to dine out, and to have a trip up to
Monet in a motor launch.

He went back to his indigent rooms in the Allée Petit Chat, and washed
and dressed. (Fortunately, he had at no time a heavy beard, so did not
have to shave in the evenings.) Well-dressed he was not, even in his
evening clothes, which were a cast-off of his brother's, and not, as
evening clothes should be, faultless; but still they passed, and Henry
always looked rather nice.

"Not a bad face," he reflected, surveying it in the dusty speckled
glass. "A trifle weak perhaps. I _am_ a trifle weak; that is so. But,
on the whole, the face of a gentleman and a decent fellow. And not
devoid of intelligence.... Interesting, to see one's own face.
Especially in this odd glass. Now I must be off. Hat, stick, overcoat,
scarf--that is everything."

He walked down to the Eaux-Vives jetty, where a smart electric launch
did indeed await him, and in it a young lady of handsome appearance,
who regarded him with friendly interest and said, in pronounced
American with an Italian accent, "I'm real pleased to meet you, Mr.
Beechtree. Step right in. We'll start at once."

Henry stepped right in, and sat down by this prepossessing girl.

"I must introduce myself," she said. "My name is Gina Longfellow, and
I'm Dr. Franchi's niece."

"What excellent English you talk," said Henry politely.

"American," she corrected him. "My father was a native of Joliet, Ill.
Are you acquainted with the Middle West?"

"I've travelled there," said Henry, and repressed a shudder, for he
had found the Middle West deplorable. He preferred South America.

"I am related to the poet," said Miss Longfellow. "That great poet who
wrote _Hiawatha_, _Evangeline_, and _The Psalm of Life_. Possibly you
came across him out in the States?"

"No," said Henry. "I fancy he was even then dead. You are a descendant
of his?"

"A descendant--yes. I remember now; he died, poor nonno.... The lake
pleases you, Mr. Beechtree?"

"Indeed, yes. It is very beautiful."

Miss Longfellow's fine dark eyes had a momentary flicker of
resentment. Most young men looked at her, but Mr. Beechtree at the
lake, with his melancholy brooding eyes. Henry liked handsome young
women well enough, but he admired scenery more. The smooth shimmer of
the twilight waters, still holding the flash of sunset, the twinkling
city of lights they were swiftly leaving behind them at the lake's
head, the smaller constellations of the lakeside villages on either
hand--these made on Henry, whose æsthetic nerve was sensitive, an
unsteadying impression.

Miss Longfellow recalled his attention.

"Do you think the League will last?" she inquired sharply. "Do you
like Geneva? Do you think the League will be moved somewhere else?
Isn't it a real pity the French are so obstructionist? Will the
Americans come in?"

Henry adjusted his monocle and looked at her in some surprise.

"Well," she said impatiently, "I guess you're used to those questions
by now."

"But you've left out the latest," Henry said. "What do you think can
have happened to Svensen?"

"Ah, there you have us all guessing," she amiably returned. "Poor
Svensen. Who'd have thought it of him?"

"Thought what?"

"Why, this. He always seemed such a white man. My, isn't it queer what
people will do?"

Henry, who had been brought up on Dr. Svensen's narrations of his
Arctic explorations, and greatly revered him, said, "But I don't
believe he's done anything."

"Not done a get-away, you mean? Well now, why should he, after all?
Perhaps he fell right into this deep lake after dining, and couldn't
get out, poveretto. Yet he was a real fine swimmer they say."

"Most improbable," said Henry, who had dismissed that hypothesis
already. He leant forward and spoke discreetly. "I fancy, Miss
Longfellow, there are those in Geneva who could throw some light on
this affair if they chose."

"You don't say! Dio mio! Now isn't that quite a notion!" Miss
Longfellow was interested. "Why, Mr. Beechtree, you don't suspect foul
play, do you?"

Henry nodded.

"I suppose I rather easily suspect foul play," he candidly admitted.
"It's more interesting, and I'm a journalist. But in this case there
are reasons----"

"Now isn't this too terribly exciting! Reasons! Just you tell me all
you know, Mr. Beechtree, if it's not indiscreet. Non son'
giornalista, io!"

"I don't _know_ anything. Except that there are people who might be
glad to get Svensen out of the way."

"But who are they? I thought every one respected him ever so!"

"Respect is akin to fear," said Henry.

On that dictum, the launch took a swift turn to the right, and dashed
towards a jetty which bore on a board above it the words, "Château
Léman. Defense."

"A private jetty," said Henry.

"Yes. The village jetty is beyond. This is my uncle's. That path only
leads up to the Château."

They disembarked, and climbed up a steep path which led through a
wrought iron gate into a walled garden that ran down to the lake's
edge. Henry, who was romantic, said, "How very delightful. How old is
the Château?"

"Chi sa? Real old, I can tell you. Ask Uncle Silvio. He's great on
history. He's for ever writing historical books. History and
heresy--Dio mio! That is why they turned him out of the Church, you
know."

"So I heard.... Are you a Catholic, Miss Longfellow?"

She gave a little shrug.

"I was brought up Catholic. Women believe what they are taught, as a
rule, don't they?"

"I hadn't observed it," Henry said, "particularly. Are women so unlike
men then?"

"That's quite a question, isn't it. What do you think?"

"I can't think in large sections and masses of people," Henry replied.
"Women are so different one from another. So are men. That's all I can
see, when people talk of the sexes."

"_Macchè!_ You don't say!" said Miss Longfellow, looking at him
inquiringly. "Most people always think in large masses of people. They
find it easier, more convenient, more picturesque."

"It is indeed so," Henry admitted. "But less accurate. Accuracy--do
you agree with me?--is of an importance very greatly underestimated by
the majority of persons."

"I guess," said Miss Longfellow, not interested, "you're quite a
clever young man."

Henry replied truthfully, "Indeed, no," and at this point they turned
a bend in the path and the château was before them in the evening
light; an arcaded, balconied, white-washed building, vine-covered and
red-roofed, with queer outside staircases and green-shuttered windows,
many of which were lit. Certainly old, though restored. A little way
from it was a small belfried chapel.

"Charming," said Henry, removing his eyeglass the better to look.
"Amazingly charming."

A big door stood open and through this they passed into a hall lit by
large hanging lamps and full of dogs, or so it seemed to Henry, for on
all sides they rose to stare at him, to sniff at his ankles, for the
most part with the air of distaste commonly adopted towards Henry by
these friends of man.

"You're not a dog lover?" Miss Longfellow suggested, and Henry again
replied that he could not like or dislike his fellows in large
sections; some dogs he liked, others not, as with men, women, and
children.

"But I guess they don't like you very much," she returned, shrewdly
observing their manners to him. "Now isn't that cute, how they take to
some people and not to others. They all love Uncle Silvio on sight.
Stray dogs follow him in the road and won't leave him. Half these are
strays.... They know he likes them, that's what it is. Dogs always
know, they say, don't they."

"Know what?" asked Henry, suspicious that she meant that dogs know a
good character from a bad, which was what "they" ("they" meaning the
great collection of noodles who constitute the public) do actually
say. The things "they" say! They even say that children too (the most
foolish of God's creatures) have this intuitive knowledge; they say
that to drink hot tea makes you cooler, that it is more tiring going
down-hill than up, that honesty is the best policy, that love makes
the world go round, that "literally" bears the same meaning as
"metaphorically" ("she was literally a mother to him," they will say),
that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, that those who say least
feel most, that one must live. There is truly no limit to what "they,"
in their folly, will say. So Henry, wincing among the suspicious dogs,
moodily, and not for the first time, reflected.

Miss Longfellow did not answer his inquiry, but stood in the hall and
cried, "Zio!" in a voice like a May cuckoo's.

A door opened, and in a moment Dr. Franchi, small and frail and
charming, came forward with a sweet smile and hand outstretched,
through a throng of fawning, grinning dogs.

"A pleasure indeed, Mr. Beechtree."

"He is like Leo XIII.," was Henry's thought. "Strange, that he should
be a heretic!"

15

They sat at dinner on a terrace, under hanging lamps, looking out at
the lake through vine-festooned arches. The moon rose, like the
segment of an orange, sending a softly glowing path to them across
black water. Here and there the prow lanterns of boats rosily gleamed.
The rest was violet shadow.

How Henry, after his recent experiences of cheap cafés, again enjoyed
eating a meal fit for a gentleman. Radiant silver, napery like snow
(for, in the old fashion still in use on the continent, Dr. Franchi
had a fair linen cloth spread over his dinner-table; there is no doubt
but that this extravagant habit gives an old-world charm to a meal),
food and wines of the most agreeable, conversation to the liking of
all three talkers (which is, after all, the most that can be said of
any conversation), one of the loveliest views in Europe, and gentle
night air--Henry was indeed fortunate. How kind, he reflected, was
this ex-cardinal, who, having met him but once, asked him to such a
pleasant entertainment. Why was it? He must try to be worthy of it, to
seem cultivated and agreeable and intelligent. But Henry knew that he
was none of these things; continually he had to be playing a part,
trying to hide his folly under a pretence of being like other people,
sensible and informed and amusing, whereas really he was more like an
animal, interested in the foolish and fleeting impressions of the
moment. He was not fit for a gentleman's dinner-table.

The conversation was of all manner of things. They spoke, of course,
of the League.

"It has a great future," said Dr. Franchi, "by saying which I by no
means wish to underrate its present."

"Rather capitalist in tendency, perhaps?" the correspondent of the
_British Bolshevist_ suggested. "A little too much in the hands of the
major states?" But he did not really care.

"You misjudge it," Dr. Franchi said. "It is a very fair association
of equal states. A true democracy: little brothers and great, hand
in hand. Oh, it will do great things; is, indeed, doing great things
now. One cannot afford to be cynical about such an attempt. Anything
which encourages the nations to take an interest in one another's
concerns----"

"There has surely," said Henry, still rather apathetically voicing his
paper, "always been too much of that already. Hence wars. Nations
should keep themselves to themselves. International impertinence ...
it's a great evil. Live and let live."

"You don't then agree that we should attempt a world-cosmogony? That
the nations should be as brothers, and concern themselves with one
another's famines, one another's revolutions, one another's frontiers?
But why this curious insistence on the nation as a unit? Why select
nationality, rather than the ego, the family, the township, the
province, the continent, the hemisphere, the planet, the solar system,
or even the universe? Isn't it just a little arbitrary, this stress we
lay on nationalism, patriotism, love of one particular country, of the
territories united fortuitously under one particular government? What
is a government, that we should regard it as a connecting link? What
is a race, that queer, far-flung thing whose boundaries march with
those of no nation? And when we say we love a country, do we mean its
soil, the people under its government, or the scattered peoples
everywhere sharing some of the same blood and talking approximately
the same tongue? What, in fact, is this _patriotism_, this love of
country, that we all feel, and that we nearly all exalt as if it were
a virtue? We don't praise egoism, or pride of family, or love of a
particular town or province, in the same way. What magic is there in
the ring that embraces a country, that we admire it as precious metal
and call the other rings foolish or base? You will admit that it is a
queer convention."

"All conventions are queer, I think," Henry said indifferently. "But
there they are. One accepts them. It is less trouble."

"It makes more trouble in the end, my young friend.... I will tell you
one thing from my heart. If the League of Nations should fail, should
go to pieces, it will be from excess of this patriotism. Every country
out for its own hand. That has always been the trouble with the world,
since we were hordes of savages grouped in tribes one against the
other--as, indeed, we still are."

"Well, zio mio," said Miss Longfellow breezily, "if you don't look out
for number one, no one else will, you may be dead sure. And _then_
where are you? In the soup, sure thing. Nel zuppo!" She gave a gay,
chiming, cuckooish laugh. A cheerful girl, thought Henry.

"Viva the League of Nations!" she cried, and drank brightly of her
marsala.

Dr. Franchi, with an indulgent smile for youthful exuberance, drank
too.

"The hope for the world," he said. "You don't drink this toast, Mr.
Beechtree?"

"My paper," said Henry, "believes that such hope for the world as
there may be lies elsewhere."

"Ah, your paper. And you yourself?"

"I? I see no hope for the world. No hope, that is to say, that it will
ever be an appreciably better world than it is at present. Before that
occurs, I imagine that it will have broken its string, as it were, and
dashed off into space, and so an end."

"And my hopes for it are two--an extension of country-love into
world-love, and a purified version of the Christian faith."

"Purified...." Henry recollected that Dr. Franchi was a modernist and
a heretic. "A queer word," he mused. "I am not sure that I know what
it means."

"Ah. You are orthodox Catholic, no doubt. You admit no possible
impurities in the faith."

"I have never thought about it. I do not even know what an impurity
is. One thing does not seem to me much more pure than another, and not
much more odd. For my part, I accept the teaching of the Church
wholesale. It seems simpler."

"Until you come to think about it," said the ex-cardinal. "Then it
ceases to be simple, and becomes difficult and elaborate to a high
degree. Too difficult for a simple soul like myself. For my part, I
have been expelled from the bosom of my mother the Church, and am now,
having completed immense replies to the decree Lamentabili Sane and to
the encyclical Pascendi Gregis, writing a History of the Doctrine of
Transubstantiation. Does the topic interest you?"

"I am no theologian," said Henry. "And I have been told that if one
inquires too closely into these mysteries, faith wilts. I should not
like that. So I do not inquire. It is better so. I should not wish to
be an atheist. I have known an atheist whom I have very greatly
disliked."

The thought of this person shadowed his brow faintly with a scowl, not
unobserved by his host and hostess. "But," he added, "he became a
worse thing; he is now an atheist turned Catholic...."

"There I am with you," the ex-cardinal agreed. "About the Catholic
convert there is often a quite peculiar lack of distinction.... But we
will not talk about these."

16

They were now eating fruit. Melon, apricots, pears, walnuts, figs, and
fat purple grapes. The night ever deepened into a greater loveliness.
In the steep, sweet garden below the terrace nightingales sang.

"On such a night as this," said Dr. Franchi, cracking a walnut, "it is
difficult to be an atheist."

"Why so?" asked Henry dreamily, biting a ripe black fig, and wishing
that the ex-cardinal had not thought it necessary to give so lovely
and familiar an opening phrase so tedious an end.

"Don't tell me," he added quickly, repenting his thoughtless question.
"What nightingales! What figs! And what apricocks!" (for so he always
called this fruit). He hated to talk about atheists, and about how God
had fashioned so beautiful a world. It might be so, but the world, on
such a night, was enough in itself.

Dr. Franchi's keen, gentle eyes, the eyes of a shrewd weigher of men,
observed him and his distastes.

"An æsthete," he judged. "God has given him intuition rather than
reason. And not very much even of that. He might easily be misled,
this youth."

Aloud he said, "All I meant was that

"'Holy joy about the earth is shed,
And Holiness upon the deep,'

as one of your Edwardian poets has sung. That was a gifted generation:
may it rest in peace. For I think it mostly perished in that
calamitous war we had.... But your Georgians--they too are a gifted
generation, is it not so?"

"You mean by Georgians those persons who are now flourishing under
the sovereignty of King George the Fifth of England? Such as myself?
I do not really know. How could it be that gifts go in generations?
A generation, surely, is merely chronological. Gifts are sporadic.
No, I find no generation, as such, gifted. Except, of course, with
the gifts common to all humanity.... People speak of the Victorians,
and endow them with special qualities, evil or good. They were
all black recently; now they are being white-washed--or rather
enamelled. I think they had no qualities, as a generation (or rather
as several generations, which, of course, they were); men and women
then were, in the main, the same as men and women to-day, I see
nothing but individuals. The rest is all the fantasy of the foolish,
who love to generalise, till they cannot see the trees for the wood.
Generalisations make me dizzy. I see nothing but the separate trees.
There _is_ nothing else...."

Dreamily Henry wandered on, happy and fluent with wine and figs. A
ripe black fig, gaping to show its scarlet maw--what could be more
lovely, and more luscious to the palate?

As to Miss Longfellow, she was eating her dessert so rapidly and with
such relish that she had no time for conversation. All she contributed
to it was, between bites, a cheerful nod now and then at Henry to show
that she agreed with him.

"Yours," said Dr. Franchi, "is not, perhaps, the most natural view of
life. It is more natural to see people in large groups, with definite
characteristic markings, according to period, age, nationality, sex,
or what not. Also, such a view has its truth, though, like all truths,
it may be over-stressed.... But here comes our coffee. After we have
drunk it, Gina will leave us perhaps and you and I will smoke our
cigars and have a little talk on political questions, and matters
outside a woman's interests. Our Italian women do not take the same
interest in affairs which your English women do."

"No," Miss Longfellow readily agreed. "We don't like the New Woman
over here. Perhaps Mr. Beechtree admires her though."

"The New Woman?" Henry doubtfully queried. "Is there a new woman? I
don't know the phrase, except from old Victorian _Punch_ Pictures....
Thank you, yes; a little cherry brandy."

"Ah, is the woman question, then, over in your country--died out?
Fought to a finish, perhaps, with honours to the victorious sex?"

"The woman question, sir? What woman question? I know no more of woman
questions than of man questions, I am afraid. There is an infinity of
questions you may ask about all human beings. People ask them all the
time. Personally, I don't; it is less trouble not to. There people
are; you can take them or leave them, for what they're worth. Why ask
questions about them? There is never a satisfactory answer."

"A rather difficult youth to talk to," the ex-cardinal reflected. "He
fails to follow up, or, apparently, even to understand, any of the
usual conversational gambits. Is he very ignorant, or merely
perverse?"

As to Miss Longfellow, she gave Henry up as being not quite all there,
and anyhow a bloodless kind of creature, who took very little notice
of her. So she went indoors and played the piano.

"I am failing," thought Henry. "She does not like me. I am not being
intelligent. They will talk of things above my head, things I cannot
understand."

Apathy held him, drinking cherry brandy under the moon, and he could
not care. Woman question? Man question? What was all this prating?

17

"And now," said Dr. Franchi, as he enjoyed a cigar and Henry a
cigarette and both their liqueurs, "let us talk of this mysterious
business of poor Svensen."

"Yes, do let's," said Henry, for this was much more in his line.

"I may misjudge you, Mr. Beechtree, but I have made a guess that you
entertain certain suspicions in this matter. Is that the case? Ah, I
see I am right. No, tell me nothing you do not wish. In fact, tell me
nothing at all. It would be, at this point, indiscreet. Instead, let
us go through all the possible alternatives." He paused, and puffed at
his cigar for a while in thoughtful silence.

"First of all," he presently resumed, "poor Svensen may have met with
an accident. He may have fallen into the lake and have been drowned.
But this we will set aside as improbable. Geneva is seldom quite
deserted at night, and he would have attracted attention. Besides
which, I have heard that he is an excellent swimmer. No; an improbable
contingency. What remains? Foul play. Some person or persons have
attacked him in a deserted spot and either murdered or kidnapped him.
But who? And for what purpose? Robbery? Personal enmity? Revenge? Or
an impersonal motive, such as a desire, for some reason, to damage and
retard the doings of the Assembly? It might be any of these.... Let us
for a moment take the hypothesis that it is the last. To whom, then,
might such a desire be attributed? Unfortunately, my dear Mr.
Beechtree, to many different persons."

"But more to some than to others," Henry brightly pointed out.

"Certainly more to some than to others. More to the Poles than to the
Lithuanians, for instance, for is it not to the Polish interest to
hold up the proceedings of the Assembly while the present violation of
the Lithuanian frontier by Polish hordes continues? Well they know
that any inquiry into that matter set on foot by the League would end
in their discomfiture. Every day that they can retard the appointment
of a committee of inquiry is to the good, from their point of view.

"Again, take Russia. The question of the persecution of the Bolsheviks
is to be brought up in the Assembly early. Naturally the Russian
delegation are not anxious for the exposure of their governmental
methods which would accompany this.