After half an hour that was sheer content to Theodore she broke off from her playing to sit on the arm of her father’s chair and ruffle his grey hair caressingly.
“Old man, does my noise on the piano prevent you from reading your paper?”
Whereat Rathbone laughed and returned the caress; and Phillida explained, for the visitor’s benefit, that the poor dear didn’t know one tune from another and must have been bored beyond measure—by piano noises since they came upstairs and nothing but music-talk at dinner.
“I believe we’ve driven him to the Montagu divorce case,” she announced, looking over his shoulder. “ ‘Housemaid cross-examined—the Colonel’s visits.’ Daddy, have you fallen to that?”
“No, minx,” he rebuked her, “I haven’t. I’m not troubling to wade through the housemaid’s evidence for the very good reason that it’s quite unnecessary. I shall hear all about it from you.”
“That’s a nasty one,” Phillida commented, rubbing her cheek against her father’s. She turned the paper idly, reading out the headlines. “ ‘American elections—Surprises at Newmarket—Bank Rate’—There doesn’t seem much news except the housemaid and the colonel, does there?”
Rathbone laughed as he pinched her cheek and pointed—to a headline here and a headline there, to a cloud that was not yet the size of a man’s hand.
“It depends on what you call news. It seems to have escaped you that we’ve just had a Budget. That matters to those of us who keep expensive daughters. And, little as the subject may interest you, I gather from the size of his type, that the editor attaches some importance to the fact that the Court of Arbitration has decided against the Karthanian claim. That, of course, compared to a housemaid in the witness-box is—”
“Ponderous,” she finished and laughed across at Theodore. “Important, no doubt, but ponderous—the Court of Arbitration always is. That’s why I skipped it.” … Then, carelessly interested, and running her eye down the columns of the newspaper, she supposed the decision was final and those noisy little Karthanians would have to be quiet at last. Rathbone shrugged his shoulders and hoped so.
“But they’ll have to, won’t they?” said Phillida. “Give me a match, Daddy—There’s no higher authority than the Court of Arbitration, is there?”
“If,” Rathbone suggested as he held a light to her cigarette, “if your newspaper reading were not limited to scandals and chiffons, you might have noticed that your noisy little friends in the East have declared with their customary vehemence that in no circumstances whatever will they accept an adverse verdict—not even from the Court of Arbitration.”
“But they’ll have to, won’t they?” Phillida repeated placidly. “I mean—they can’t go against everybody else. Against the League.”
She tried to blow a smoke-ring with conspicuous ill-success, and Theodore, watching her from his corner of the sofa—intent on her profile against the light—heard Rathbone explaining that “against everybody else” was hardly the way to put it, since the Federal Council was not a happy family at present. There was very little doubt that Karthania was being encouraged to make trouble—and none at all that there would be difference of opinion on the subject of punitive action. … Phillida, with an arm round her father’s neck, was divided between international politics and an endeavour to make the perfect ring—now throwing in a question anent the constitution and dissensions of the League, now rounding her mouth for a failure—while Theodore, on the sofa, leaned his head upon his hand that he might shade his eyes and watch her without seeming to watch. … He listened to Rathbone—and did not listen; and that, as he realized later, had been so far his attitude to interests in the mass. The realities of his life were immediate and personal—with, in the background, dim interests in the mass that were vaguely distasteful as politics. A collective game played with noisy idealism and flaring abuse, which served as copy to the makers of newspapers and gave rise at intervals to excited conversation and argument. …
What was real, and only real while Rathbone talked, was the delicate poise of Phillida’s head, the decorative line of Phillida’s body, his pleasure in the sight of her, his comfort in a well-ordered room; these things were realities, tangible or aesthetic, in whose company a man, if he were so inclined, might discuss academically an Eastern imbroglio and the growing tendency to revolt against the centralized authority of the League. Between life, as he grasped it, and public affairs there was no visible, essential connection. The Karthanian imbroglio, as he strolled to his chambers, was an item in the makeup of a newspaper, the subject of a recent conversation; it was the rhythm of Phillida’s music that danced in his brain as a living and insistent reality. That, and not the stirrings of uneasy nations, kept him wakeful till long after midnight.
II
While Theodore Savage paid his court to Phillida Rathbone, the Karthanian decision was the subject of more than conversation; diplomatists and statesmen were busy while he drifted into love and dreamed through the sudden rumours that excited his fellows at the office. In London, for the most part, journalism was guarded and reticent, the threat of secession at first hardly mentioned; but in nations and languages that favoured secession the press was voicing the popular cry
