All you mean is to savour the thrill of defiance without any actual risk. Let me know when you've had enough of your game. You place me in a most uncomfortable posture.'
Good observation but bad policy, thought the priest, and said, with as much fervour as he could summon, short of sounding ridiculous, 'This is no game, Master Anvil.'
Tobias raised his eyebrows. 'Bravely spoken, Father Lyall.
Well, I must be about my business. When you're not praying or meditating or consulting my wife, I ask you to bear in mind who it is that employs you.'
A more than usually smart express, its walnut panels stained a dark crimson and its front and rear trimmed with placcas that bore the initials CD (Corpus Diplomaticum), was twisting its way along King Stephen II Street in Coverley through the horse-drawn traffic. Its only passenger was Hubert Anvil. He wore chapel dress with the permitted addition-since he was on extramural precept for the afternoon—of a coloured scarf, and was sitting well forward with the window down in order to see and be seen. The foot-passengers, the other vehicles, the great shops and grand public buildings were all a delight to somebody who lived most of his life within the same stone walls, but Hubert also wanted to be the subject of questioning glances, signs that it was being said or thought of him, 'Who's that young boy in the handsome express? How can he be of so much mark? What high mission of Church or State is he upon?'
Nothing of the sort showed itself. There was little to be seen of the gentry, and that only for moments at a time: the tall old man in the vermilion jacket and pink breeches entering a teahouse, the two ladies with bright bonnets and sashes halted at a jeweller's window-none could have reason to spare him a glance. As for the people, they strolled along by the thousand in their greyish or brownish tunics and trews, their glances moving over him with the same indifference they showed towards everything and everybody, even one another. They betrayed no envy of the attire or adornments of their betters, nor any resentment of the expensive inns and ristorantes they passed and would never enter or of the displays of fine goods they would never own or consume. Well, after all, they were the people, resigned to their God-appointed lot, too coarse of soul and sense to want what their betters enjoyed as a right: offer any one of them a bottle of first-harvest Chichester, say, instead of his usual mug of swipes, and he would not thank you. That, at any rate, was Hubert's father's view. Hubert himself was less sure that that was an end of the matter; and if it was not, he reflected now, there was something unworthy in his presenting himself as though for admiration, something close to a sin of pride. He sat back against the cushions of the express.
After a little, the vehicle turned off, sounding its bell and causing a drably-clad group to scatter out of its path; Hubert forgot his pieties and chuckled at the sight. This was Hadrian VII Street, where some of the most magnificent houses in the city were to be found, and it was into the paved courtyard of one of them that he was shortly driven. There were stone pillars with a blue-painted pediment, an ornamental astrolabe on a bronze pedestal, a great many flowers and some clumps of strange tall grass. The driver helped Hubert down. He was strange too, tall and muscular in trim red-and-blue livery, but narrow-eyed and dark-complexioned; his straight black hair had a blue sheen on it. He said in a strange accent, 'Please to mount the steps, young master, and to use the knocker on the door.'
'Thank you.'
'It's nothing, young master.'
The man who opened the door, though older and not so strong-looking, might have been the driver's brother, but Hubert had little time to consider him, because Cornelius van den Haag, hand outstretched, was striding across the lofty hall.
'Welcome, Hubert! So they let you out, eh? Wonderful! Let me bring forward my wife, who says she must see for herself the person I talk of so incessantly—and my daughter Hilda.'
The New Englander had managed to indicate that formal bows were not called for, so Hubert just shook hands with Dame van den Haag, a pretty, dark-haired, smiling lady in a sober but rich-looking gown, and with Hilda, who was almost exactly as beautiful as he had hoped and almost persuaded himself not to expect. She had blue eyes like her father's, a curved mouth and a very straight nose, and her hand was warm without being moist. Rather to his disappointment, she wore a green short frock cut high at the throat and made from something that could not be deerskin. But of course he was excited and happy, struck by the foreign way the New Englander family had come out into the hall to greet him instead of waiting while he was fetched in to them by a servant. It must be a result of being brought up in log cabins, and was very kind and undignified of them.
'Does this contain what I hope it contains?' asked van den Haag, taking the leather satchel that Hubert carried. 'Good. But that will come later. We have a few minutes before the other guests arrive, so we can all become acquainted. Well, Hubert, this is our home. Do you like it?'
Hubert was not used to being asked if he liked things like homes, and had had no time to notice more about the room in which they now sat than that it was cool and dark after the sunlight and that it had italian windows opening on to a garden. He looked hastily round in search of some object to praise, but saw only a painting of a bald man with eyeglasses and a thick mustach who was evidently Joseph Rudyard Kipling, First Citizen 1914-18. He murmured a few words that depended more on their sound than on their sense before curiosity, all the stronger for being pent up, had its way.
'Those men, sir, the one who drove me here and the one who let me in—what are they?'
Van den Haag said at once, 'They're Indians, Hubert. Descended from the folk who lived in the Americas before the white man came.'
'I thought they rode horses and hunted buffaloes and lived in tents.'
'They did at one time, or some of them did, but no longer. Now they work in the mills, in the fields, in the mines, in the fishing-fleet, and some as servants, like Samuel and Domingo whom you saw.'
'Domingo—isn't that an Italian name?'
'Spanish, or Mexican more truly. Yes, they come to us from all over the continent and further, from Louisiana, Cuba, Florida, even from South America and New Muscovy.'
'Why do they come from so far?'
'For the good life we offer them, Hubert, so much better than they've known. And we pay their journey costs. It makes the other countries angry-they say we steal their best folk. Only last month, the Viceroy of Brazil issued a decree forbidding any further—'
'My dear Cornelius,' broke in Dame van den Haag, 'you imagine that this is the House of Commissioners. Hubert is here to be entertained, not instructed.'
