The College of St Cecilia, in Hatton in the county of Kent, was the creation of an English king whose life had otherwise been remarkably free from sentimentality. It was founded by Richard III in honour of his mother, and the original establishment consisted of a provost, fourteen priests, four clerks, six choristers, a schoolmaster, ten poor scholars, and a like number of bedesmen. Becoming wholly secular after the Reformation, the College had rapidly grown in size, and its endowment was doubled by the Elizabethan Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hat-ton, presumably by command of his royal mistress, for his nature when unprompted was parsimonious. His compulsory beneficence was unexpectedly rewarded, for there began a popular tendency to identify the College – situated as it was in a townlet of his name – with its newest patron rather than the holy person to whom it had been dedicated; and by the late seventeenth century, and always thereafter, it was universally briefly known as Hatton College. As such it increased from year to year in glory and good report.
From the Restoration its supremacy in the scholastic life and public esteem of England was unchallenged, and for nearly a century it had been pretty generally accepted as the most famous school in the world. The Prime Minister of Great Britain – unless he happened to have been born in poverty or Scotland – was always educated at Hatton, and so were most of his Cabinet. The eldest sons of European monarchs were sent there, with the favourite offspring of Oriental despots; and though many of its pupils had of course no such authoritarian background, the majority soon acquired the air and manner of it. The College set its mark on them, a sigil of authority, so that a great number on leaving immediately took to ruling over negroes, Asiatics, or – what was easiest – their fellow-countrymen.
That the public ceremonies of the College, and in particular the Annual Dinner of the Old Hattonian Society, should become occasions of national, or even international interest, was inevitable. Membership of the Society, restricted as it was to the most eminent of Old Hattonians, was one of the most coveted of all distinctions, and the elder statesman who was invited to speak at the Annual Dinner regularly found it an opportunity to make some announcement of policy or opinion that would capture the attention of a much wider audience than the one he was addressing, and promote in them a favourable impression of his prescience or wise humanity.
In this year of far-spread war the Dinner was smaller than usual, and robbed of a little splendour by the absence of European monarchs and Oriental potentates; but its importance was enhanced by the circumstances of the time, and there was a general feeling that those present were truly the inspiration and the leaders of Britain in arms: the acknowledged and legitimate patres conscripti of their people.
Because the seat of Government was in Edinburgh, the Dinner also was held there, under the dignified roof of the New Club, whose members had been proud to lend it for such a purpose. It was the first of July. The war had now been going on for nearly a year, and the end of it, after twelve months of fighting, seemed more improbable and remote than ever. But the Old Hattonian patres showed no sign of perturbation or distress. They were on the contrary, the image of calm assurance, the pattern of untroubled dignity, the unshaken though slightly withered flower of English civilization.
More than half of them were quite old. Their heads were smoothly, pinkly bald, or thatched with a tenuous bright silver and their colour was either pale – a legal pallor of new parchment, a yellowish Indian hue – or red with good living and the air of many autumns spent in pursuit of the fox or awaiting the pheasant. The minority of young men there were all making a name for themselves in the Foreign Office, or rising politicians who looked more like members of the Guards Club than of the House of Commons, and among those of middle life were several distinguished soldiers. Many of the soldiers were of handsome appearance – their small heads, cavalry moustaches, and well-drilled shoulders contributed to the effect, but regular features also appeared to be characteristic of the military temperament – and many of the oldest men had an appearance of great benignity that was somewhat invalidated by the stony look of their eyes.
But all the many differences, of complexion and the curve of a nostril, were slight in comparison with the strange obvious alikeness – the almost massive similarity – that bound together these notable two hundred Old Hattonians. The lawyers, it might be, had a more ascetic look than the bishops; the bishops, perhaps, had less noble noses than the soldiers; the soldiers, within the limits of correctitude, were better dressed than the representatives of the Foreign Office: and the young Conservative politicians were clearly twice as clever as the Elder Statesmen: these, it is true, were differences, and worthy to be noted. But this, on the other hand, was their alikeness: that all were marked with the knowledge of their authority and responsibility, the sigil of their school. They were the rulers of the land, the almost-hereditary senate, and had some hidden observer – sensitive, intelligent, and not of their class – been present to see them, he must have felt not only natural awe, but something of fear because on this night Great Britain was so vulnerable; for here, in one room together, were all its leaders, its principal and irreparable eggs – so to speak – in a single basket.
The observer, had he turned eavesdropper as well, would soon have discovered that no one in this gathering of the great was talking of the war; but over their whitebait and their vol-au-vent, their savoury aspic and their saddle of mutton, they calmly discussed the minor and agreeable topics that had occupied their tables before the war, and again would hold their attention when the war was over. They chose, in their wisdom, not huge ephemerals, but matters of small and eternal interest.
Lord Lomond, for example, who was a little deaf and in the fashion of deaf people spoke more loudly than was necessary, turned abruptly to his right-hand neighbour, who happened to be Sir Joseph Rumble, and politely shouted: ’Have you got heather-beetle still?’
The unwitting truculence of his query drew a look of mild surprise from the Bishop of Brighton and Hove, who was discussing with Lord Osselburt, one of the Lords of Appeal, the vexed question of the migration of butterflies, in particular of Red Admirals and Painted Ladies; and for a moment distracted the attention of Mr Pelham-Blair and Mr Denis Mowbray, two rising young Conservatives, who were listening with polite attention to old Lord Laffery on the revival of interest in the harness-horse, which was one of the few real benefits brought by the war and the prohibited use of motor-cars. ‘A horse in leather must go high all round,’ he was saying in the solemn tone of one dealing with fundamentals.
Nearer the Chairman was a little learned argument on wine, and a few places distant from the Prime Minister – the octogenarian Lord Pippin – grew some light and leisurely talk of politics: not politics of the day, but of fifty years before, when Mr Gladstone and Lord Salisbury had led their parties to the ballot-box and the assault. The talk was all of things, material subjects, and actual events; not of ideas and generalities, and less than usual of people, since people in large numbers were being killed, and talk of them might become talk of the war, and otherwise be embarrassing. They debated, safely and with commendable knowledge, of agriculture – the effect of a wet spring on root-crops – and of the breeding and diseases of fox-hounds and gun-dogs; they spoke of racing, so sadly diminished by the war – it had been a strange June without Ascot – and of bloodstock, and gardener’s topics: aquilegias, eschscholtzia, and the neglected fruits of England. The Prime Minister, with great enjoyment, was discussing the merits of Jane Austen and the sound character of Mr John Knightley; while General Scrymgeour, a little moodily, listened to Mr Justice Bilbow’s description of a Roman pavement that had recently been uncovered by workmen who were somewhere excavating a suburban swimming-pool.
Scrymgeour, though nominally on leave, had actually come home to give evidence before a Commission that was inquiring into recent losses on the western front. That casualites continued to be heavy was undeniable, but every soldier above the rank of colonel hotly disputed the allegation that they were excessive; and it was generally felt that old Pippin had been badly at fault in listening to the clamour of the Socialists and the popular press – an unholy alliance – and agreeing to the inquiry they demanded. It was intolerable that a General on active service should be questioned about his profits and losses, as though he were a bankrupt tradesman; and looking along the table Scrymgeour could almost persuade himself that the Prime Minister’s cheerfulness was a sign of senility. But that was poor comfort, and Scrymgeour, much troubled in spirit, found it increasingly difficult to pay proper attention to Bilbow and his Roman tiles. As though unhappiness had made his senses more acute, he heard scraps of conversation from near and far, and more and more oblivious of Bilbow, took a melancholy pleasure in their strange irrelevant pattern.
‘... at any rate it’s quite certain that Painted Ladies get more numerous in the south as winter approaches ... Sainfoin: yes, she’s nicely made... cut-and-laid... but she ought to be a dog not a bitch... saepes etiam – how does it go? – et pecus omne tenendum... yes I know... the Romans show... when a farmer lets his fences go... Clos ... in front he’s got to show the knee and behind he’s got to go... but the virtues of Clos Vougeot are the virtues not of burgundy but of claret... the Romans... off his hocks... had said their Local Government Act of 1894 would make life more interesting... my boy’s last half... it’s laminitis .. and the only novelist to have realized that the majority of men must inevitably marry silly women and thought it a very tolerable state of affairs... and Roman stairs... your boy’s last half... then tell your keeper to worm them every six months... the Romans... and June she said... Lord Salisbury replied ... no Riche-bourg... like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark ... if the Liberals really wanted to amuse the villagers he would rather recommend a circus... the medlar the quince... for unentered bitches... the medlar the bullace and barberry ... George Wyndham said ... he goes a good pace and quarters well... at Peterborough Peterborough? Peterborough... and the feeling of life and bustle when Mr Elton’s marriage follows so closely... but Wyndham was the best that Ireland ever had... and there were Red Admirals round the lamp at midnight ... and the Romans said... PRAY SILENCE FOR YOUR CHAIRMAN!’
But into the sudden silence, the waiting seconds during which everyone composed his mind and features to a proper solemnity, there broke, like a murderer through the arras, the rudest inconcinnity. To the deaf ears of Lord Lomond the toastmaster’s voice had seemed no louder than the surrounding conversation, and while all the company but he were fingering their port-glasses in reverent anticipation, he turned to his left-hand neighbour, and addressed him in the jovial imperative voice of one shouting to a distant yokel to open a gate, ‘Rumble says he’s badly bothered with heather-beetle,’ he bellowed.
But the interruption was ignored – Lord Lomond himself was nowise disconcerted – and the loyal toast was drunk, cigar-smoke coloured the air, and Mr Pelham-Blair, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for India, rose to commend the Pious Memory of their Founder.
‘Your Royal Highness, my Lord Archbishop, my Lords and gentlemen,’ he began...
It was a tradition that one of the junior Ministers should propose this toast, and custom allowed him to lighten it with a little humour, an occasional discreet and cheerful witticism. A year ago, thought Scrymgeour, they had asked Eliot Greene to do it, and he had offended a lot of people by poking fun at their motto, Be Loyal. He had gone too far, definitely too far, that night. Well, there wasn’t much left of him now, poor devil. He hadn’t been a shirker, though he had talked a lot of subversive nonsense. And in his position he could have stayed at home with a clear conscience. As Pelham-Blair was doing. There was a clever fellow, with more balance than poor Eliot. He wasn’t the sort to offend anyone for the sake of cracking a joke. He’d probably do well for himself. He had done well already, if it came to that. He looked a shade too sleek and well-fed, perhaps, but he played a lot of real tennis, and that must keep him reasonably fit.
Scrymgeour’s mind, in half-idle speculation, stared like a wavering beam – a searchlight fumbling in clouds – at Pelham-Blair speaking with such smooth assurance; at old Laffery and young Mowbray, at Bilbow and Saint – a soldier like himself – and the Bishop of Brighton and Hove. Some had lived out the greater part of their lives, others still nursed ambition. And how many counted, or would count their lives successful? How many here had felt the deep wound of public hatred? Or worse, had seen dismay on the faces of their own officers? – Yet in any major operation he had never failed, and in his own mind he knew that he had done well. In his mind he knew it, if not in his heart. They lived in his heart, those swift-marching regiments he had sent to their death – and he could bear the burden. He was a soldier, dedicate in all his being. Without complaint his body had suffered discomfort and wounds and now his heart in the same service would bear its burden. His mind approved what he had done. His mind rejected the whimpering and the angry clatter of the politicians and the weathercock newspapers that censured him. They didn’t know what they were talking about. None of them had the smallest elementary knowledge of strategy and the constitution of modern war. But though his mind could despise them and refute their silly arguments, it could not quite armour him against their hatred.
He heard none of the earlier speeches; but when silence was requested for Lord Pippin, he made an effort to hush the tiresome voices of his own brain, and listen to the old man. He might be the victim of senile decay, as for years past his enemies had declared, but he could still make a better speech than any one else in the country. Or so it seemed while he was delivering it. In print, on the following morning, it might have a thinnish look, but while the words were still in the air they had the strong sweet sound of honey-bees in a walled garden; and a bit of sound, ordinary, English common sense, as he spoke it in his powerful voice, was better than the proudest rhetoric.
But before the Prime Minister had risen to his feet, while he was still making his leisurely preparations – he unhooked a thin gold watch and laid it on the table, he drank slowly a third of a glass of port – an untoward incident occurred; or rather a small but disturbing series of incidents.
Through a half-opened door could be seen a young officer in excited contention with a person who looked like a policeman in plain clothes. Then the door was closed again; but in a few seconds was re-opened, and an elderly Club servant, walking with unavailing delicacy in creaking boots, came carrying a silver tray on which were two letters that he delivered, with a low-spoken explanation, to the Prime Minister.
With an expression of elderly annoyance Lord Pippin opened first one and then the other. The second was a single sheet of typewritten foolscap in a long buff envelope. The Prime Minister read it with incredulity, anger, and impatience. He showed it to the Chairman, and looking along the table caught the eye of Mr Pelham-Blair, to whom he beckoned. The Prime Minister, the Chairman, and Mr Pelham-Blair then re-read the letter, discussed it with obvious distaste, and settled the matter by sending Mr Pelham-Blair to conduct a personal investigation. As the door opened for him, the excited young officer was again for half a second visible.
The Prime Minister slowly and deliberately drank the remainder of his port, and rose to speak. His theme was the English character. He said much in praise of it, especially as it showed itself in times of peril or difficulty, and in his own manner he revealed many of the ripe qualities that he found so laudable in his fellow-countrymen. It was an admirable speech; better than ever, thought some who had heard it several times in the past twenty years.
Lord Pippin was just coming to his peroration when Mr Pelham-Blair rather noisily re-entered the room. The temper of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for India was clearly ruffled, as indeed was his smooth black hair. He came hotly in, impatient of ceremony or restraint, and immediately claimed the Prime Minister’s attention; who, having marshalled several dependent clauses to their place in a long sentence and brought it majestically to its appointed close, turned to him and asked, ‘Well, what news?’
‘It’s perfectly true,’ said Mr Pelham-Blair. ‘They’ve seized the Castle.’
‘How very provoking, especially for poor Comyn Curle,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘Is anything the matter with your eye?’
‘It was punched. It will soon be black, if it isn’t black already.’ Mr Pelham-Blair was very angry indeed about his injured eye.
‘Then you had better go and bathe it, while I finish my speech.’
His peroration was shorter than usual, but he showed no sign of being worried by what he had heard. His voice was calm and strong; he induced the comforting feeling – as he so often did – that common sense might be the most profound of all philosophies; and he quoted with deep feeling:
‘Friends, call me what you will; no jot care I;
I that shall stand for England till I die!’
Rightly inferring that here was the end of the speech, and being pleasantly moved by it, the Old Hattonians began vigorously to applaud; but the Prime Minister remained standing, the applause died away, and he continued: ‘You are right in thinking that I have concluded my speech, but too hasty in your assumption that I have no more to say. I have some news that you are entitled to hear. I do not overrate its importance, but as it is likely to cause some excitement, and thus give rise to many undesirable rumours, you will probably be glad to have an authoritative account of what has happened. A little while ago, as some of you may have noticed, I received a certain communication. Or, to be accurate, two communications; but the one did no more than introduce the other, which I shall read to you.’
Taking the typewritten sheet of foolscap from its long buff envelope, Lord Pippin slowly unfolded it.
‘It is somewhat oddly addressed. “To the Prime Minister and all whom it may concern”,’ he said. ‘And it reads as follows:
We, the women of Great Britain, have resolved that as the war is bringing nothing but misery to the world, it shall be stopped. We cannot afford to wait for victory, because victory can only be bought with the lives of our husbands, our lovers, and our sons. Victory therefore would come too late for them to hear about it, or for us to enjoy it. It is peace that we want, and in order to get it with a minimum of delay, we have decided to call a General Love-strike. We hereby declare in consequence our firm intention to abstain as far as possible from any contact with men, and we utterly renounce, repudiate, and abandon all marital relations; extra-marital association of a like of comparable nature; and casual intimacy whether for affection or hire, until such time as peace has been re-established. We have, moreover, in order to facilitate our task and to show the solidarity of women all over the country, taken possession in various towns of several strongholds or key-positions, and established garrisons in them. In Edinburgh we have occupied the Castle, which we shall continue to hold until you have stopped the war.
Signed: Lysistrata Scrymgeour
Camilla Oriole
Delia Curle.
The effect of this announcement was profound rather than spectacular. The Old Hattonians, though deeply shocked, retained on the whole a decent composure. Some natural incredulity that showed at first was dispelled when the Prime Minister explained that the proclamation had been brought him by an officer of the Royal Horse Guards, who with his men, the squadron on duty at the Castle, had been turned out of the Guardhouse by an overwhelming force of women, and that Mr Pelham-Blair, who had kindly offered to seek further information, now confirmed the officer’s report and on his own person showed signs of the violent temper of the insurgents.
A darker red suffused the features of many present, and the politicians with difficulty restrained their instinct to jump up and ask a supplementary question. The mutter of two hundred voices had an angry note in it, and drumming in many ears were the ugly words Mutiny, Bolshevism, and Sex. With growing restlessness the diners began to divide and gather again in smaller groups, like peewits preparing for their flight to Africa. It was only the presence of Royalty that prevented an immediate migration.
General Scrymgeour and Mr Comyn Curle, the Secretary for War, had left their seats to examine the document which their wives had signed. Both were speechless with shame, bewilderment, and wrath. Mr Curle made without stopping a small chattering noise, rather like a wheatear, and Scrymgeour betrayed the state of his mind by the extraordinary tension of his skin, which was stretched so tightly that the bridge of his nose, his cheekbones and. knuckles had the dead look of ivory.
‘I need not ask whether either of you had any inkling of what was about to happen?’ inquired the Prime Minister. ‘No, I thought not. A husband is so often the last to hear what his wife is doing. And now I must tell the Duke that he would be well advised to go home – it would be helpful if he got the Archbishop to go too – and then we shall drive to the Castle and see for ourselves what is going on.’
On the other side of Princes Street, on the cab-rank by the Royal Academy, stood some twenty or more aged victorias, broughams, landaus, and hansoms which had been resurrected since the dearth of petrol banished motor-cars from the streets.
Suddenly on the steps of the New Club appeared the hall-porter who whistled shrilly, again and again. One after another the bottle-nosed fumbling old cabbies climbed stiffly to their boxes, touched-up their shabby rack-ribbed old horses, wheeled into line ahead, and drove gingerly, jerkily, with a jingle and a slow clip-clop, across the street.
Out came the Old Hattonians, and the aged and most famous of them got heavily into the mousy old growlers, while the younger, keeping abreast of them on either pavement with dignity walked alongside. Slowly, like a belated funeral in the ebb of the long northern twilight, the procession of dark vehicles climbed the Mound. With an air of tall indifference and a cold anger in their hearts, the patres conscripti were marching against the rebel women. – They advanced with tranquil deliberation, without passion. There was an heroic quality in their dark unbannered cavalcade with its tophatted, tail-coated infantry. The slow clip-clop of the old horses’ hooves struck from the stones an epic tune, and the Prime Minister reciting to General Scrymgeour and Mr Comyn Curle – who shared his cab – a favourite passage from Pride and Prejudice, was as much a figure of unshaken fortitude as Spartans titivating in their valiance on the sea-wet rock.
To their right, crowning the huge island that rose so abruptly in the midst of the city, was the Castle. It loomed enormous, and because the base of the crag was already lost in upward-creeping darkness, it appeared to be preternaturally high in a torn dove’s-feather sky. Its great walls were nearly the same shadow-colour as the clouds, but the farthest battlement and little outflung turret had caught a yellowish gleam from the afterglow that still lighted the north-west. There was a light westerly breeze, and presently the Old Hattonians heard the confused vibrating hubbub of an angry crowd.
The cavalcade turned into the Lawnmarket, where its progress was hindered by an excited multitude, and forty yards short of the Castle Esplanade a solid mass of people brought it to a halt altogether. The news of rebellion had travelled fast, and from all parts of the town were coming curious, indignant, startled, or sympathetic citizens.
‘What an excitable people are the Scotch,’ said the Prime Minister, looking about him with mild interest. ‘I am always amazed at their exuberance. There’s Pelham-Blair trying to reason with them – I feel sure he will get another black eye.’
Half a dozen mounted police arrived. A mixed force of regular and special constables had already been making themselves impartially useful, having rescued a group of soldiers from a company of angry women, and a troop of impudent girls from an irate gathering of men; and now they secured a passage for the more eminent of the Old Hattonians and brought them safely to an empty space, from which with difficulty they had cleared the crowd, in front of the drawbridge and Main Gate of the Castle. The cabmen with their aged vehicles were herded into a corner, and the newcomers looked about them with guarded interest.
The great iron-bolted Main Gate under the archway was closed, and on the drawbridge in front of the statues of Bruce and Wallace stood a pair of raw-boned, six-foot-high young women who carried each, for a weapon, a steel-shafted heavy niblick. Some ragged cheering broke from the crowd – pressed heavily against the restraining arc of policemen – when Lord Pippin and the Cabinet ministers were recognized. There was also counter-cheering, with catcalls, groans, and other noises.
‘Where is the Secretary of State for War?’ asked the Prime Minister cheerfully. ‘Ah, there you are, Curle! Now this is your pigeon; how do you propose to carve it?’
With the transference of Government to Edinburgh, the Castle had become the War Office, and Mr Curle had hitherto been very proud that his Ministry was so magnificently situated; but now he would gladly have handed it over to the Minister of Transport, or the President of the Board of Education, or anyone at all. He was a smallish, rather ill-tempered man with heavy eyelids and a long thin nose, which gave him the expression of someone who would be very clever if he were only fully awake. He was, to be fair, a most able administrator, but rather inarticulate unless he had been given plenty of time to order his thoughts and consider his phrasing of them.
Now, with manifest and tetchy unwillingness, he approached the Amazonian young women on the drawbridge, and said shortly, ‘I want my wife.’
‘What, already?’ said the one on the left, whose name was Miss McNulty.
‘You’ve got no self-control at all,’ said the other, who was a Miss McNab.
‘I am the Secretary of State for War,’ cried Mr. Curle, ‘and I insist on seeing my wife!’
‘Do you think there’s any truth in that?’ asked Miss McNulty.
‘Of course there isn’t,’ said Miss McNab. ‘A man like that would tell any sort of lie to get what he wanted. You can see how passionate he is by the way he’s stamping on the ground.’
‘I expect you’re right,’ said Miss McNulty. ‘And if we did let him see his wife, there’s all those other old boys who’d make up a story of some kind and come bothering us to let them in.’
‘My identity,’ said Mr Curle in a choking voice, ‘can be established by any of these gentlemen here.’
‘So you’re all in the game together, are you?’ said Miss McNulty.
‘I can just hear that fat one saying he’s the Prime Minister, and please can he speak to his sister,’ observed Miss McNab.
‘You are partly right,’ said Lord Pippin, ‘for I am the Prime Minister...’
‘I told you so!’ exclaimed Miss McNab triumphantly. ‘...and I must ask you to inform Lady Lysistrata Scrymgeour, Lady Oriole, and Mrs Curle of my presence here; and to say that I very much hope to confer with any one or all of them.’
‘You’re too ambitious, grandpa.’
‘He’s just showing off,’ said Miss McNulty.
‘Enough of this nonsense!’ shouted Mr Curle. ‘I repeat that I am the Secretary of State...’
‘Well, keep your distance,’ said Miss McNab. ‘I’m pretty good with a niblick, and if you come any nearer, I’ll chip your appendix out.’
‘I say,’ said Miss McNulty tentatively.
‘Now don’t weaken,’ said Miss McNab.
‘I shan’t. But I think the fat one does look like the Prime Minister. I saw a photograph of him once. Perhaps we ought to tell Lady Lysistrata.’
‘Well, if you really think so...’
‘You go, and I’ll stay here.’
‘No, you go, but hurry up. I can keep ’em out so long as there isn’t a rush.’
Miss McNulty was more cautious, however. Kicking open a wicket in the great door, she shouted to the guard within, and three or four strapping girls, armed with golf-clubs and hockey-sticks, came to take her place while she hurried with her message to Lady Lysistrata.
During her absence there was a new and concerted movement in the crowd, and presently a body of soldiers, about three hundred strong, pushed their way to the front and assumed a semi-military formation. They were a mixture of many regiments, and conspicuous among the majority khaki were half-a-dozen glittering troopers of the Blues, whose white-scarred boots and dinted breastplates showed what rough treatment they had got in the recent battle for the Guardhouse. The commander of this irregular company was Julian Brown, now a temporary Lieutenant-Colonel whose tunic was ennobled by the ribbons of the Distinguished Service Order, the Military Cross, and a German medal. He was pale from a recent wound – he had newly left hospital – and in a state of considerable agitation. With obvious relief, however, he recognized General Scrymgeour, and approaching him in a very military fashion, he saluted with fierce precision.
Many of the Old Hattonians were now unhappily lost in the crowd, but those whom the police had shepherded to the front were either congregated about the Prime Minister; or conversing in small groups; or walking briskly to and fro after the fashion of people on board ship. Their manner varied from the apparent easiness of race-goers meeting in the paddock, to the icy calm of first-class passengers on a sinking liner; and some portrayed now one and now another of these styles. But Scrymgeour had no disguise. He walked alone, for he was in a state of tragic bewilderment that he could not conceal and would not willingly let others see.
He stopped reluctantly when Julian saluted. ‘Well?’ he asked dully.
‘I’ve collected about three hundred men, sir. I think that ought to be plenty.’
‘Plenty for what?’
‘To arrest these women, sir.’
‘Oh. How many women are there?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘But you want to put them under arrest?’
‘It’s the obvious thing to do, sir, isn’t it?’
‘Perhaps it is.’
Julian could hardly contain the rage of impatience that he felt. To hear Scrymgeour talking like this – the most resolute and percipient of soldiers – was infuriating. The situation was clear as the tropic sun and more intolerable. Rose was in the Castle, Rose had deserted him, and he must get her back. He had spent two days of his leave with her, and then, without warning or preparation, with no more explanation than a letter could give, she had packed her clothes and left him to join these lunatic women.... His voice grew hoarse with emotion. ‘We can’t let them defy us!’ he exclaimed.
‘No, not indefinitely. But I’m not in command here. Half the Cabinet is over there, and politicians have their own way of looking at things. You feel strongly about what has happened, do you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you know anyone among the mutineers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, come along and I’ll tell the Prime Minister what you suggest. He may think it’s a good idea.’
At that moment, however, the Castle gates were thrown open, and the crowd surging forward in renewed excitement, they were cut off from the Old Hattonian politicians by a great wedge of sweating turbulent humanity. The women were coming out. Over the drawbridge, under the lamps that spread a tent of yellow light, a column marched, wheeled left, halted, and faced its front. Another column formed the right flank. Then Lysistrata, Mrs Curle, and Lady Oriole appeared, and behind them came a solid mass of stalwart and high-tempered young women.
The near sight of his wife threw Mr Curle into a very violent unhappy temper. She looked charming. She was dressed in a tailored white flannel costume that accorded well with her type of beauty – she was a light blonde with rather protuberant blue eyes and a very short upper lip – and made her more conspicuously feminine than Lysistrata, who wore a workmanlike suit of green corduroy; or Lady Oriole, who, rather oddly, wore hunting costume. But Mr Curle’s passion did not give him words to express it. He could say no more than, ‘Delia! What the devil! What the devil are you doing there!’ And Mrs Curle found little difficulty in resisting his appeal.
Then the Prime Minister began to speak. He was much more eloquent. He said that he was always ready to consider the views, however widely they might differ from his own, of any reasonable and responsible body of citizens. He had never been tempted to believe that wisdom was born with him alone, or would die with him. In a free democracy everyone was entitled to an opinion, and enjoyed the right to express it. But there was a right way and a wrong way of expressing it. No one, in a free democracy, could be allowed to make an ultimatum of his opinion. No one could be allowed to hold a pistol to the head of the community at large. Given good will and an open mind, he did not doubt the possibility of their coming to an agreement. They would find a formula. But there could be no discussion, of course, until the ladies had evacuated the Castle and called-off their – ah! their... The Prime Minister sought in vain for a euphemism.
‘Our love-strike,’ said Lysistrata firmly.
An expression of marmoreal impersonality appeared to indurate the features of the Old Hattonians, and guarded successfully their wounded verecundity.
‘Your love-strike,’ repeated the Prime Minister with manifest distaste.
‘No surrender!’ cried Mrs Curle, and stared with the prettiest and most provocative defiance at her unhappy husband.
‘Stop the war,’ said Lysistrata, ‘and we shall call off the strike.’
‘The war was not of our choosing,’ observed the Prime Minister.
‘Then let there be no doubt that peace is our choice.’
‘We must face facts,’ said the Prime Minister mechanically.
The three ladies laughed most scornfully. ‘Why don’t you?’ they cried.
‘War is the stupidest thing on earth, and there’s a fact,’ cried Mrs Curle indignantly.
‘It’s an evil thing, and does evil to all concerned in it; and there’s another,’ said Lysistrata.
‘And it’s killing off the best of our breeding-stock, and there’s a third,’ exclaimed Lady Oriole at the top of her voice. She had to shout, because the noise of the crowd was now increased by a terrible clamour of bells.
A fire-engine was coming up Castle Hill. Policemen blew their whistles and bustled about; the multitude divided and shrank away, pressing so tightly against their neighbours that no one had any breath to cheer; and into the road they had left came with a rising hullabaloo a huge scarlet engine.
It was now nearly dark, but not too dark to see that it was only lightly manned. Its crew consisted of two Naval officers and one elderly, bespectacled, and ponderously built gentleman in evening-dress. The Naval officers were the celebrated Commander Lawless, V.C., and the Captain McCombie – now Lieutenant McCombie, R.N.R. – who had contributed to the outbreak of war by ramming a French destroyer in the harbour of Toulon. They had newly come ashore at Rosyth, and McCombie had fallen into a passion because his wife was not there to meet him. Then, hearing garbled rumours of the love-strike, both he and Lawless had been filled with consternation, and commandeering a fire-engine – because fire-engines were among the few motor vehicles still in use – they had driven to Edinburgh without loss of time.
Calling at the New Club for a drink, they encountered Sir Joseph Rumble, and learnt from him that the Castle was now occupied by insurgent women. He, poor man, had stayed behind, after the departure of the Hattonians, to telephone to his wife. But after patiently ringing-up his own house and several friends, he had been unable to trace her, and had come to the conclusion that she must be among the rebels; a redundant figure in the mutiny, perhaps, considering her sixty-five years, her domestic temperament, and maternal figure. But she had often, he remembered, spoken with admiration of romantic heroines, and hazarded the opinion that she herself might have done something in that line had the opportunity occurred. – Sir Joseph was excessively worried, and gladly accepted Lawless’s offer to drive him to the Castle. They remounted the fire-engine, and roaring up the Mound, drove through the yielding crowd to the very edge of the ever-diminishing arena where Lord Pippin and Lysistrata stood in momentous debate.
For half a minute, while Ministers and mutineers and the silent multitude all stared at them, Sir Joseph and the two Naval officers stood on their lofty vehicle, and through the thickened twilight peered at the crowded scene below. Sir Joseph screwed up his eyes and saw little, but Lawless and McCombie had keener sight, and suddenly Lawless shouted like a trumpet from the battlements: ‘Delia, my heart!’
He leapt from the fire-engine, a tall swift figure, and breaking through the several ranks of astonished Old Hattonians, pushed Mr Comyn Curle out of the way, and catching the palpitating Mrs Curle under the arms, lifted her up – she was small and slim – and held her high in an attitude of extravagant adoration. Then, bringing her down to his own level, he kissed her warmly, set her on her feet, and stooping now – he was well over six feet, and she but five feet two – enfolded her in his long arms and kissed her again.
Mr Comyn Curle, who had never suspected that Lawless was his wife’s lover, nor indeed that she had a lover at all, uttered a cry of indescribable anguish, and ran furiously to her rescue. But Miss McNulty was too quick for him. Miss McNulty was ever watchful against any assault on Lysistrata, and she did not mean to let Mr Curle come too near. So with a neat little movement of her niblick, as if she were trying the balance of a new club, she tapped his ankle and brought him to the ground.
Almost at the same moment Lysistrata beckoned to the equally alert and faithful Miss McNab. When Lawless snatched his love aloft, a cry of rage had risen from the eight hundred armed women who guarded the entrance to the Castle; but when he kissed her, their voices grew like the howling of wolves in winter; and when he kissed her again, there came from them all a lickerish and dreadful sigh. The situation was dangerous, and danger threatened from both sides. Lysistrata beckoned and signed to Miss McNab, who with her heavy club struck the impetuous officer a blow of just sufficient strength behind his right ear. His Delia tried, but could not support him, and he fell senseless to the ground.
‘Take him inside,’ Lysistrata commanded; and four big rosy-cheeked girls in short blue tunics laid him across their hockey-sticks and carried him over the drawbridge.
Meanwhile Lieutenant McCombie, a thick-chested red-faced man of great strength and hardihood, had remained on the high driver’s seat of the fire-engine to view the spectacle and see if he could find his wife among so many women. But when he perceived how cruelly they were treating Lawless, he forgot everything but friendship and anger; and shouting in a Western Ocean voice, ‘Rescue! a rescue!’ he jumped quickly down and drove his way through all who opposed him to what became, as soon as he got there, the front of battle.
Eloquently and with force he appealed to the Old Hattonians: ‘Come on, boys! Engage the enemy more closely – that’s the order. Tumble the bitches!’
Without waiting to see the effect of this hortation, he charged alone at Miss McNulty, evaded her deadly niblick, and grappled her round the waist. Two only of the Old Hattonians followed him. The rest of them, to their undying shame, continued to wear a look of cold distaste for all that was happening – or quickly assumed such a look if they had been taken unawares – and pretended not to have heard him. Most of them gathered more closely about the Prime Minister, and many urged him to come away, for the situation was clearly getting out of hand and might soon be embarrassing to all of them.
The pair of Hattonians who followed McCombie were Sir Joseph Rumble and Mr Pelham-Blair. The former had recognized Delia Curle when Lawless raised her aloft into the light of the drawbridge lamps; and immediately his doting mind decided that if the wife of the Secretary of State for War was in the rebel lines, then Lady Rumble must be there also. And puffing at the mere thought of exertion, but dauntless as well as breathless, he had joined the attack. After the briefest hesitation, Pelham-Blair had followed in a vain attempt to look after him. Pelham-Blair was most truly devoted to the welfare of all Cabinet Ministers and peers above the rank of Viscount. Already he had got a black eye for his zeal that night. But he was to suffer worse things for Sir Joseph than his bruises for the Prime Minister.
Neither Rumble nor Pelham-Blair, nor even McCombie, made any impression on the sturdy and numerous enemy. It was Julian Brown who saved the reputation of his sex and made a fight for it at least. He, when he heard McCombie shouting for a rescue, turned to his company of volunteers, and by voice and gesture and example lifted their hearts to battle-height and led them straightaway into action. He had waited long enough for orders, and no orders came. Scrymgeour had lost his nerve, the politicians had never had any. Then he, Julian Brown, sometime a teacher of literature in Brixton, now a lieutenant-colonel and a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order, would take command and beat the rebels home. He was full of righteous anger and a great desire to smack Rose Armour’s pretty bottom. He led his three hundred into battle with a rare spirit and stern determination.
They were in three divisions, and for a little way they advanced in line of companies. But when they had room they deployed and halted to dress their ranks, facing the enemy in line. The women were disposed in a deep crescent. Their centre lay in front of the drawbridge, where they were massed eight or ten deep. To their right and left their flanks were thrown forward in front of the low wall that guarded the empty moat. It was Julian’s plan to push their forward-reaching wings back upon their main division, causing confusion where they were already badly crowded, and so drive them all before him. He himself commanded his centre company. His right was under a Canadian captain, scarred and lean, a soldier of fortune who had served in many wars, in Spain and Mexico and the mountains of Szechuan; while the left wing obeyed a gallant but headstrong young Scot, the Master of Ballantyne.
The mutinous women already outnumbered him by three to one, and they had reserves of unknown strength. But their discipline was poor, their strength unequally disposed. Lysistrata and Mrs Curle had been persuaded to seek safety in the Castle, and the defending army was under the command of Lady Oriole. She was a striking figure – booted, top-hatted, and veiled – as she reviewed her troops, and, where they were needed, uttered soldierly words of encouragement. She carried as her only weapon a hunting-crop with which, at intervals, she smacked her riding-skirt in a boisterous and defiant fashion.
Apart from the disparity of numbers and the difference of sex, the most noticeable inequality between the two forces was that whereas the men had no weapons but their natural strength, the women were all armed. For the most part they carried golf-clubs, hockey-sticks, or various domestic utensils; but a few had implements more dangerous, both to themselves and others, which they had found among the trophies in the Banqueting Hall of the Castle; such things as broadswords, halberds, and long Lochaber axes. Their temper, too, was more obviously hostile. They kept up a chorus of shrill defiance, now breaking into song that was soon abandoned because so few could agree as to what song should be sung; now shrieking the most scathing of insults; and now like howler monkeys in the jungles of India, yelling for the mere pleasure of listening to the savage reverberation of their own voices.
In contrast to this unruly behaviour, Julian was pleased to observe the calm demeanour of his men. Their mood was a grim humour. As they removed their tunics and rolled up their sleeves, they commented without rancour on the appearance and conduct of their enemy, and were seemingly without fear of the issue. Despite the odds against them, Julian felt sure that their quiet confidence was justified, and his assurance was equally shared by his two lieutenants.
When all were ready he gave orders to a saturnine tall piper, who had been one of the first to volunteer, to play The Cock o’ the North. A cheer broke from his men, deep-throated and spontaneous, that drowned the shrill clamour of the women.
‘Stand fast, the centre!’ he commanded, and signalled to his lieutenants. Their voices rose together, the nasal tone of the Canadian captain, the warlike yell of the Master of Ballan-tyne: ‘By your right, quick march! Double march! Cha-arge!’
Their feet thundered on the stony ground. They cheered once more, at the very moment of coming to grips with the enemy, and then for a long time nothing was heard but the multifarious clamour of close and savage conflict. The hoarse breathing of antagonists well-matched in strength; the small dull thud of a mashie meeting bone or muscle; the larger noise of a descending hockey-club; the cheerful exclamation of a hard hand smacking plump cheeks; the protesting scream of a girl whose Lochaber axe had drawn blood; the despairing cry of a soldier whom some gigantic Amazon had hurled into the moat; and the music, growing fainter, that the saturnine tall piper played – here was the noise of battle that rose in the darkness under the ramparts that had known so many battles, yet none as strange as this.
Julian watched keenly, and with growing anxiety, the fortune of his two companies. On the right, for a little while, the men seemed to have the advantage. The smacking of faces and the cries of female pain were uppermost in the din. But then the soldiers, pressing home their advantage, began to go too far, and many were surrounded by women, and their strength was nullified by the close pressure of ponderous foe-men. Here and there in the battle rose the head of some tall trooper or great Guardsman, towering above their adversaries, and there rose and fell again the huge fist and mighty arm – pale in the dusk – of a stalwart shoeing-smith who fought alone among his enemies; but they sank from sight, and were seen no more. Slowly the weight of numbers told. The attack had failed, and the survivors, still fighting stubbornly, began their sullen retreat.
On the left, where the women were more loosely ordered, the impetuous Master of Ballantyne had at the first shock led his company into the very thick of them. But the women, though yielding in all directions, had nowhere fled. If at one minute they gave ground, at the next they encircled it. Where they drew back, they lured forward, and when they fell they did not fall alone. Surrounded on all sides, the hundred soldiers of the left wing struggled vainly like explorers: lost among the clinging vines and too luxuriant foliage of a tropical forest. A steam of mingled perfumes rose above the fray, and so great was the heat of conflict that men felt their strength fail them, and their spirit swoon. They were pulled down by innumerable writhing arms, and disappeared beneath a billowing mass of uncounted bosoms. Here the battle was all but lost. Only some dramatic reversal of their fortune could save the men from utter defeat.
Julian took a gambler’s chance, and resolved to throw his remaining division against the enormous strength of Lady Oriole’s centre. It was his only hope. ‘Allons! faites donner la garde!’ he muttered, and with a desperate valiance ordered his remnant to the attack.
He heard the staccato cheering of his soldiers and the answering cries of the defenders. He was gathered into the torrent of the charge, and flung against the solid mass of women. He saw faces flushed and wild, teeth gleaming, and fierce lovely eyes. A poker prodded him in the ribs, he gasped, and was flattened against a gigantic bosom. The breath went out of him, and his sight darkened. He caught feebly at some loose garment as he fell, but the fabric tore, and he was down among frantic feet, and silk-clad ankles. He seized a shapely leg, and saw the knees above him bend, and down came a great hockey-player. But in her fall she stunned him, and as she lay she stifled him, and he knew no more.
In the meantime the ever-diligent police had slowly driven the great mass of onlookers away from the Castle, and doggedly prevented them from joining the battle. The battle was apparently a political affair, and therefore the police kept out of it themselves, and exerted all their strength to keep excited spectators out of it. Having escorted the Prime Minister and his party to a place of safety, they drew their batons and drove the obstreperous multitude to the lower end of the Esplanade, and kept them there. With admirable self-control the police kept their heads, and cracked no more than forty or so belonging to the populace. But all the outward channels from the Esplanade were hopelessly blocked. The narrow ways of Castle Hill and Ramsay Lane and the steps into Johnstone Terrace were swarming with people, and even the police could not drive the crowd home.
Over the dark uneasy mass of humankind – still struggling, tight-packed as herring in a drifter’s hold – rose a gibbous moon. It climbed slowly above the tall black houses behind them, and grew brighter as it rose. The sky cleared, and the great lop-sided lantern lighted equally the heavens and the earth, and shone upon the Castle walls.
The battle was over. In a corner of the Esplanade there stood, or lay wearily on the ground, the survivors of Julian’s little army. They were bruised and listless. Many were bleeding from deep scratches, and two or three had received a trifling wound from halberds or the broad blade of a Lochaber axe. More than half had been taken prisoner. Julian, who had recovered consciousness when the battle ebbed away from him, was stiff and sore, and his heart was bitter. But weary though he was, he was counting casualties and taking, so far as he could, the names of the missing.
One of his men spoke sullenly: ‘What are they randies gaun tae do next?’
He pointed to the Castle, and looking up they saw a dozen misshapen bundles being lowered over the parapet of the Half-Moon Battery, the high round wall a hundred feet above the main gate. The bundles swayed gently to and fro. The bright moon lighted them. From the closely penned crowd at the lower end of the Esplanade there rose a confused harsh noise of exclamation and inquiry. Curiosity gave them strength, and like a bursting dam they broke through the cordon of police, and charged towards the Castle. When they came nearer they saw clearly what the bundles were.
They began to laugh. – Feather-brained, weathercock-witted as always, they forgot that women were now their enemies, and seized upon a joke, no matter who had made it. – Their laughter came at first from little groups and individuals. The crowd grew rapidly larger and denser as more and more people rushed on to the Esplanade from the streets and lanes that led to it. The newcomers had first to see, distinguish, understand, and swallow their astonishment. Then they also began to laugh. The laughter spread. It swept like a wind across the crowd. It grew louder and louder, till it roared like a forest fire. It broke in waves upon the Castle walls, and reverberated with the thunder of an Atlantic tide. Men laughed until their bodies weakened, and when strength returned they wiped their flowing eyes and laughed again.
The bundles that hung from the Half-Moon Battery were some twenty of the captives that Lysistrata’s mutineers had taken. In the very centre was Sir Joseph Rumble, and on either side of him Commander Lawless and Mr Pelham-Blair. Lieutenant McCombie was also there, and the impetuous Master of Ballantyne. They had been stuffed – not wholly, but as much of them as would go – into those large wire receptacles that are used, in parks and public places, for the collection of waste paper and other debris; and in these strong baskets they swung gently in the moonlight, the evidence of victory.
The women had won their initial trial, and the moon that had so many times betrayed them, now in their honour silvered the fruits of their first battle.