“What’s all this peace talk mean?” Julian Orden asked, fingering the stem of his wineglass.
“Who knows?” Furley grunted. “The newspapers must have their daily sensation.”
“I have a theory that it is being engineered.”
“Bolo business, eh?”
Julian Orden moved in his place a little uneasily. His long, nervous fingers played with the stick which stood always by the side of his chair.
“You don’t believe in it, do you?” he asked quietly.
Furley looked straight ahead of him. His eyes seemed caught by the glitter of the lamplight upon the cut-glass decanter.
“You know my opinion of war, Julian,” he said. “It’s a filthy, intolerable heritage from generations of autocratic government. No democracy ever wanted war. Every democracy needs and desires peace.”
“One moment,” Julian interrupted. “You must remember that a democracy seldom possesses the imperialistic spirit, and a great empire can scarcely survive without it.”
“Arrant nonsense!” was the vigorous reply. “A great empire, from hemisphere to hemisphere, can be kept together a good deal better by democratic control. Force is always the arriere pensee of the individual and the autocrat.”
“These are generalities,” Julian declared. “I want to know your opinion about a peace at the present moment.”
“Not having any, thanks. You’re a dilettante journalist by your own confession, Julian, and I am not going to be drawn.”
“There is something in it, then?”
“Maybe,” was the careless admission. “You’re a visitor worth having, Julian. ‘70 port and homegrown walnuts! A nice little addition to my simple fare! Must you go back to-morrow?”
Julian nodded.
“We’ve another batch of visitors coming,—Stenson amongst them, by the bye.”
Furley nodded. His eyes narrowed, and little lines appeared at their corners.
“I can’t imagine,” he confessed. “What brings Stenson down to Maltenby. I should have thought that your governor and he could scarcely spend ten minutes together without quarrelling!”
“They never do spend ten minutes together alone,” Julian replied drily. “I see to that. Then my mother, you know, has the knack of getting interesting people together. The Bishop is coming, amongst others. And, Furley, I wanted to ask you—do you know anything of a young woman—she is half Russian, I believe—who calls herself Miss Catherine Abbeway?”
“Yes, I know her,” was the brief rejoinder.
“She lived in Russia for some years, it seems,” Julian continued. “Her mother was Russian—a great writer on social subjects.”
Furley nodded.
“Miss Abbeway is rather that way herself,” he remarked. “I’ve heard her lecture in the East End. She has got hold of the woman’s side of the Labour question as well as any one I ever came across.”
“She is a most remarkably attractive young person,” Julian declared pensively.
“Yes, she’s good-looking. A countess in her own right, they tell me, but she keeps her title secret for fear of losing influence with the working classes. She did a lot of good down Poplar way. Shouldn’t have thought she’d have been your sort, Julian.”
“Why?”
“Too serious.”
Julian smiled—rather a peculiar, introspective smile.
“I, too, can, be serious sometimes,” he said.
His friend thrust his hands into his trousers pocket and, leaning back in his chair, looked steadfastly at his guest.
“I believe you can, Julian,” he admitted. “Sometimes I am not quite sure that I understand you. That’s the worst of a man with the gift for silence.”
“You’re not a great talker yourself,” the younger man reminded his host.
“When you get me going on my own subject,” Furley remarked, “I find it hard to stop, and you are a wonderful listener. Have you got any views of your own? I never hear them.”
Julian drew the box of cigarettes towards him.
“Oh, yes, I’ve views of my own,” he confessed. “Some day, perhaps, you shall know what they are.”
“A man of mystery!” his friend jeered good-naturedly.
Julian lit his cigarette and watched the smoke curl upward.
“Let’s talk about the duck,” he suggested.
The two men sat in silence for some minutes. Outside, the storm seemed to have increased in violence. Furley rose, threw a log on to the fire and resumed his place.
“Geese flew high,” he remarked.
“Too high for me,” Julian confessed.
“You got one more than I did.”
“Sheer luck. The outside bird dipped down to me.”
Furley filled his guest’s glass and then his own.
“What on earth have you kept your shooting kit on for?” the latter asked, with lazy curiosity.
Furley glanced down at his incongruous attire and seemed for a moment ill at ease.
“I’ve got to go out presently,” he announced.
Julian raised his eyebrows.
“Got to go out?” he repeated. “On a night like this? Why, my dear fellow—”
He paused abruptly. He was a man of quick perceptions, and he realised his host’s embarrassment. Nevertheless, there was an awkward pause in the conversation. Furley rose to his feet and frowned. He fetched a jar of tobacco from a shelf and filled his pouch deliberately:
“Sorry to seem mysterious, old chap,” he said. “I’ve just a bit of a job to do. It doesn’t amount to anything, but—well, it’s the sort of affair we don’t talk about much.”
“Well, you’re welcome to all the amusement you’ll get out of it, a night like this.”
Furley laid down his pipe, ready-filled, and drank off his port.
“There isn’t much amusement left in the world, is there, just now?” he remarked gravely.
“Very little indeed. It’s three years since I handled a shotgun before to-night.”
“You’ve really chucked the censoring?”
“Last week. I’ve had a solid year at it.”
“Fed up?”
“Not exactly that. My own work accumulated so.”
“Briefs coming along, eh?”
“I’m a sort of hack journalist as well, as you reminded me just now,” Julian explained a little evasively.
“I wonder you stuck at the censoring so long. Isn’t it terribly tedious?”
“Sometimes. Now and then we come across interesting