WORLD'S END

Sir Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson was a middle-aged gentleman, tall and slender, with handsome dark mustaches turning gray, sharp features, a hawk's nose, and keen dark eyes. He had a Spanish mother, and maybe a trace of Jewish blood, as Rick had said. He was a lover of all the arts and friend of all the artists. He knew many rich people, and acted as a sort of go-between for the bohemian world; telling the "swells" what was what in art and helping the struggling geniuses to find patrons. An impecunious playwright would bring him a blank-verse tragedy, and Sir Alfred would decide that it was a masterpiece, and would design a group of magnificent sets for it; then he would set out to find a backer, and when he failed he would declare that England was going to the dogs. He had very high standards, and would relieve his disappointments by composing sharp epigrams.

It was a free and easy world which he had made for himself within his castle. The most extreme opinions were freely voiced, and it was everybody's pride not to be shocked. But at the same time it would be better not to commit any lapse of table etiquette, and when you took off your bathing suit you put on the right sort of clothes. This made an odd mixture of convention and scorn for convention, and a boy with American parents had now and then to ask his friend for guidance. Rick would give it with an apology. "The older people try to be mod'n, but they really aren't quite up to it."

Kurt Meissner found even greater difficulties, because he was stiff and serious and couldn't get used to the idea of saying things that you didn't entirely mean. "In a Pickwickian sense," was the English phrase, and what was a youth from a province of Prussia to make of it? Kurt was puzzled by their habit of running down their own country; what they said about the state of England was what Kurt himself believed, but he couldn't get used to the idea of Englishmen saying it. They would even discuss the desirability of getting rid of their royal family. "The Prince of Wales is going to turn out to be another dancing boy," Sir Alfred would remark blandly; "a ladies' man like his grandfather."

And then the suffragettes! The son of the comptroller-general of Castle Stubendorf had read in the newspapers about maniacal creatures who were pouring acids into letter boxes and chaining themselves to the railings of the House of Commons in order to prove their fitness to have the vote; but never in his wildest moment had it occurred to him that he might be called upon to sit at dinner table with one of these creatures, and to take her punting upon the Thames! But here was Mildred Noggyns, nineteen years old, the daughter of a former undersecretary in the government; pretty, but pale and rather grim, only three weeks out of Holloway gaol after having chopped a hole in the painted face of the Velasquez Venus, most highly prized treasure of the National Gallery. And talking quite calmly about it, discussing the "cat-and-mouse act," by which the authorities were combating hunger strikes; they let you out of jail when they thought you were near dying, and took you back again as soon as you had picked up a bit.

Rick's sister, Jocelyn, abetted her; and of course these saucy ladies soon found out what was in the haughty soul of the Junker from Silesia, and it became their delight to tease him beyond endurance. They wouldn't let him help them into a punt. "No, thank you, all that nonsense is over, chivalry, and bowing and scraping before women; we're quite able to get into punts by ourselves, and we'll do our share of handling the pole, if you please. And what do you mean when you Say that man is gregarious, and that man is a spiritual being, and so on? Do you refer to lordly males like yourself, or do you deign to include the females? And if you include us, why don't you say so? Of course, we know it's just a way of speaking, but it's a benighted way devised by men, and we object to it."

"Yes, Miss Noggyns," Kurt would reply, "but unfortunately I have not learned any word in your language which expresses the concept 'man and woman.'" When the feminist lady proposed that they should create such a word, Kurt replied, gravely: "I have found it hard enough to learn the English language as it exists, without presuming to add anything to it."

II

The three boys discussed the matter among themselves. Kurt thought that the revolt of women meant the breakdown of English society; it was like the "war of the members" in one of the fables of Aesop. Lanny hoped that, if women got the vote, society might be kinder and there wouldn't be so much talk about war. Rick said: "It won't make much difference, one way or the other; the women'll divide about as the men do, and there'll be more votes to count." Generally when these three argued they had different opinions - and when they finished, they still had them.