An Officer and a Lady (7 page)

“What the devil,” he thought, as he boarded a downtown car, “is the world coming to? Or rather, what
has
the world come to? I don’t believe I’m going to have such a good time after all”; and he sighed for the day when a close decision meant tears and threats unsurpassed even in Hell.

He began to long for someone to talk to—loneliness assailed him. A baby in the arms of a woman opposite him began to cry, and on a signal from the conductor the woman arose and left the car at the next corner. The man seated next to him—an awkward-looking man with a beard—was engaged in conversation with his neighbor on the other side. “The English,” he was saying, “are a wonderful people.”

“The Americans,” replied the other, “are a very wonderful people.”

“The English,” said the bearded man, “are great artists.”

“The Americans are a race of geniuses.”

“The British Empire is indissoluble.”

“America is the Land of Freedom.”

“England is the greatest country in the world.”

“Rule 142,” said the American, calmly. “No comparisons allowed in an argument.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the Englishman.

But Pamfret was already on his feet. He had always hated the English. “Argument!” he shouted. “Argument! Do you call that an argument? Tell him he lies!”

“Rules 207, 216, and 349,” said the Englishman and American in unison. “No contradictions, no personalities, and no loud talking.”

The conductor touched Pamfret on the arm and signalled him to leave the car. Pamfret’s first impulse was to throw him through a window; this continual restraint was becoming irksome. But he thought better of it, and besides, they had reached Sixty-sixth Street. He alighted at the next corner, and started south on Central Park West.

At Sixty-fifth Street was a restaurant, and he stopped for dinner. The room was crowded; but finally Pamfret found a table over against the wall, sat down and called a waiter, who seemed a little worried as he caught sight of him.

“Table d’hote?” asked Pamfret.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Make the selection yourself,” and the waiter hurried away, still with the worried look on his face.

A man and woman entered the restaurant and walked straight to the table where Pamfret was sitting. They seemed surprised on seeing him seated there, looked around in a disconcerted manner, and finally sat down on a small divan placed against the wall. Pamfret thought he understood. He got up from his chair and bowed to the man.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but is this your table?”

The man nodded. “Yes—that is, we—we had it reserved,” he answered.

“Well, then,” said Pamfret, “I wouldn’t think of appropriating it. The waiter should have told me. Of course you will take it?”

“But surely you know that would be against the law,” exclaimed the other, horrified. “We couldn’t.”

“But that is exactly what I do not know,” said Pamfret. “At least,” he added, “I trust you will allow me to share it with you?”

The man looked at the woman inquiringly. She nodded. Pamfret found another chair, and all three sat down at the table together. The waiter appeared with a plate of soup, and seeming relieved to find the couple seated, took their order.

“I am surprised—” began the man.

“Of course you are,” interrupted Pamfret. “But I really don’t know the first thing about these beastly—these laws. The truth is—I have lived nearly all my life in China, where everything is different.”

“But I thought the peace laws were universal.”

“They are, they are,” Pamfret replied hastily. “But I was alone most of the time—er—scientific explorations, you know. Besides they do this sort of thing better in China. There is no—”

“Rule 142. No comparisons,” interrupted the woman.

There was silence for a while. Finally Pamfret tried again.

“Those broiled mushrooms were delicious,” he declared. “Don’t you think so?”

“I beg your pardon, but I’m afraid I can’t answer you,” replied the man. “Rule 207, you know. No contradictions.”

Pamfret was becoming desperate. He had given his head so many bumps against this immovable wall of Peace that he was unable even to think. Silence, he decided, was his only refuge.

As the dessert came on he heaved a sigh of relief, and foolishly ventured a question.

“You know,” he said, “I have been out of the world for a number of years, and I hope you won’t mind if I ask you a question. How long has this peace thing been in power?”

“Really,” answered the man, “you amaze me. Discussion of history is strictly forbidden.”

Pamfret could stand it no longer. He threw a bill on the table; took up his hat and stick and rushed wildly out of the restaurant.

A car was passing the door. Pamfret ran to the next corner ahead of it and waved his cane at the motorman. The car went by without stopping, and as it passed the conductor tossed a card out of the window. It fell on the pavement at Pamfret’s feet. He picked it up and read:

INTERNATIONAL PEACE CONGRESS.

COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION.

Rule 96. The motorman or engineer of a public vehicle shall ignore signals to stop for passengers, if such signals are boisterous or agitated, or made in any but a thoroughly peaceful manner.

Pamfret tore the card in a dozen pieces. “Well, of all the—” he began, then he was silent. He was afraid to talk even to himself where there was a chance of being overheard. He wanted to be alone, to have time to consider this strange, this impossible world to which he had been so eager to return. He started to walk downtown, intending to get a room in the first hotel he saw.

At Sixty-first Street he noticed a magnificent white marble building set back some fifty feet from the street, facing Central Park. It was flanked by four minarets, each one bearing at the top a marble group representing a winged angel destroying a warrior’s sword. Over the entrance, in heavy raised letters, was the inscription HALL OF PEACE.

“So this is where they do it,” thought Pamfret, as he gazed at the inscription. “I’d like to blow the d—d thing up.” Then he noticed that the main doors were open, and passing over the outer flagstones with an odd feeling of fear, he went inside.

The interior was very similar to that of a cathedral, with the exception that there were no stained glass windows. Immense columns of marble rose on every side, while the vaulted roof seemed to reach to the skies. At the farther end was an altar, on which was set the figure of the winged angel destroying the warrior’s sword. The group was of ebony. Below, on the pedestal, were inscribed the words of the Poet:

“And therefore, to our weaker view,

O’erlaid with black, staid Wisdom’s hue,”

Around the altar rail below the figures men and women were kneeling. Pamfret, as he gazed, felt a feeling of mingled disgust and awe sweep over him. “Of course,” he said to himself, “it is really very funny. But somehow it impresses one.” And he turned to leave.

A half-hour later found him seated in his room at the Hotel Pax, reading a book. He had found it lying on the table when he entered the room. It was covered in black leather and lettered in gold with the title, “Book of Peace.” “By all the Gods!” exclaimed Pamfret. “Here’s their bible!”

It was little more than a book of rules, with photographs and biographies of the founders of the great Congress and a short exposition of the philosophy of the new World Religion. Everything, it seemed, was under the domination of this all-powerful Congress.

Pamfret, mentally disturbed as he was, found a great deal of amusement in the rules of the Committee on Courtship, while he found that the Committee on Domesticity had made the family a farce and the home a tomb. The Committee on Sleep—but Pamfret could go no further. He was completely exhausted. His head fell forward till his chin rested on his breast. Awakening with a start, he undressed and went to bed.

He dreamed of Peace, Peace with the body of an angel and a horrible grinning skull for a head. Through rivers and valleys, over steep hills and deep bogs and marshes this frightful thing pursued him, until at last he saw before him in the middle of a desert, the beautiful Hall of Peace. With a final burst of strength he reached the portal, and entering the marble vault, approached the altar and knelt before it. The ebony angel on the pedestal put together the pieces of the broken sword of the warrior, and raised it to strike. Pamfret raised his arm to ward off the blow; and just as the sword was descending with the speed of lightning, he awoke.

Someone was knocking on the door of his room. Pamfret, still shaking with the fear of his dream, called out, “Who is it?”

“In the name of the International Peace Congress and the Committee on Sleep, I ask that this door be opened,” came a voice.

“What the devil have I done now?” thought Pamfret. “Disturbed the peace of my bedcovers, I suppose.”

“In the name of the International Peace—” began the voice again.

“Oh, shut up!” said Pamfret under his breath, and crossed to the door and opened it. “What do you want?” he demanded.

The intruder eyed Pamfret serenely. He was dressed in white from head to foot, with a silver shield bearing the symbol of the angel and warrior on his breast. On his cap in gold letters was the word “Peace.”

“What do you want?” Pamfret repeated.

“You were talking in your sleep,” answered the Man in White. “Violation of Rule 34. Come.”

“Come where?” asked Pamfret.

“You are pretending.” But noting the blank look on Pamfret’s face, he added, “To the Hospital for Talkers and Snorers.”

“My God!” exclaimed Pamfret, and burst out laughing. “You don’t mean to say that—”

“Ignorance is no excuse,” the Man in White interrupted.

“But I have to dress.”

“Well, I’ll wait outside. You have five minutes.”

Pamfret walked over to the chair by the window and sat down. He would have liked to have had time to think it all over, this grotesque, mad world that seemed to have lost its senses since he had left it sixty years before. As the scenes and events of the day passed through his mind he knew not whether to laugh or cry. Of course it was all very ludicrous, but—

“Time is up,” called the Man in White through the door.

Pamfret crossed over to the closet where his coat was hanging and took from the inside pocket a small vial filled with a green liquid. Then he lay down on the bed and drank the liquid to the last drop. “Satan knew what he was about, after all,” he murmured, and closed his eyes.

When the Man in White entered, the room was empty.

A
RTHUR
C
HURCHILL-
B
ROWN, ATTACHÉ
at the British Legation in Rome, leaned back in his chair till it rested against the rim of his desk, and squinted disagreeably at an open letter which he held in his hand. This attitude of Arthur’s toward his desk was nothing unusual. According to his unformed but practical philosophy, desks were made exactly for that purpose. He found a mild but never failing interest in the almost constant stream of visitors who passed down the narrow hall at the rear; and he thoroughly abhorred the necessity of giving any attention whatever to the papers and documents which were occasionally laid behind him on his desk by the silent-footed attendant, whose back, as he noiselessly returned to the inner rooms of the secretary and the ambassador, seemed to Arthur to suggest an almost intolerable insolence. Someday, he felt sure, he would throw something at it.

On this particular morning the expression of bored annoyance which had come to be Arthur’s official countenance had deepened to one of positive displeasure. “What the deuce do they all come here for, anyway?” he growled. “Good Lord! And they all go the same route. It’s enough to kill a man.” He felt behind him on the desk for a packet of cigarettes, lit one and, puffing furiously, reread the offending letter. It ran as follows:

My Dear Son:

I have time for only a line, but I must get this off at once. Miss Carlisle, a
very
wealthy American lady, and her companion are leaving tonight for Rome. I met her last month at Strathmore, and she has been staying with me for a day or two in town. I have promised for you to open some doors for her in Rome, and she will probably call very shortly after you get this. Don’t haul her out to Udini’s or any of the other places across the river.

Hastily,

Your loving Mother.

P.S.—I’ll send you a check on the twentieth.

M. C. B.

Arthur sighed, wheeled his chair around and began to wade through the pile of papers that had accumulated during his absence the day before. “She knows very well,” he grumbled, “that I’m too busy to run all over the blooming town like a footman.” Which was very true. Since his promotion—he regarded the term as pure sarcasm—to the Home Desk, he had been forced to spend at least an hour of each day in real work. To a young diplomat who had spent a full year in learning the delicate and subtle methods by which one may remain comfortably balanced between the Black and the White, this was indeed irksome. It necessitated a complete readjustment. More than once the picturesque inventions of a stranded beachcomber, sent down from Naples by an overworked but still credulous consul, had violently disturbed the nice balance of Arthur’s social position in the Eternal City, where the most alluring and entrancing eyes have a disconcerting way of looking in two directions at once.

“Miss Carlisle,” continued Arthur, still speaking aloud, and emphasizing the title. “Of course, she’s an old maid. Probably forty, possibly fifty, and certainly plain. She’ll want to do the whole blooming round. If anybody had asked me but—”

He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant, who approached his desk and stood waiting for him to speak.

“Well?” said Arthur, without looking up.

“A lady, sir.”

Arthur’s worst fears were confirmed. As he advanced to meet Miss Carlisle he swore, under his breath. Just in the height of the season, to waste a week on this! She could not be described better than in Arthur’s own words: probably forty, possibly fifty, and certainly plain. Lanky, angular, and yet somehow graceful, she advanced to meet the young diplomat with outstretched hand and a somewhat pleasing smile. Arthur extended his own hand, then stood still, staring with rude frankness over Miss Carlisle’s left shoulder.