After dinner our four tourists sat late and talked in a corner of the smoking-room. The two ladies had vanished hastily at the first dinner gong and reappeared at the second, mysteriously and pleasantly changed from tweedy pedestrians to indoor company. They were quietly but definitely dressed, pretty alterations had happened to their coiffure, a silver band and deep red stones lit the dusk of Miss Grammont's hair and a necklace of the same colourings kept the peace between her jolly sun-burnt cheek and her soft untanned neck. It was evident her recent uniform had included a collar of great severity. Miss Seyffert had revealed a plump forearm and proclaimed it with a clash of bangles. Dr. Martineau thought her evening throat much too confidential.
The conversation drifted from topic to topic. It had none of the steady continuity of Sir Richmond's duologue with Miss Grammont. Miss Seyffert's methods were too discursive and exclamatory. She broke every thread that appeared. The Old George at Salisbury is really old; it shows it, and Miss Seyffert laced the entire evening with her recognition of the fact. "Just look at that old beam!" she would cry suddenly. " To think it was exactly where it is before there was a Cabot in America!"
Miss Grammont let her companion pull the talk about as she chose. After the animation of the afternoon a sort of lazy contentment had taken possession of the younger lady. She sat deep in a basket chair and spoke now and then. Miss Seyffert gave her impressions of France and Italy. She talked of the cabmen of Naples and the beggars of Amalfi.
Apropos of beggars, Miss Grammont from the depths of her chair threw out the statement that Italy was frightfully overpopulated. "In some parts of Italy it is like mites on a cheese. Nobody seems to be living. Everyone is too busy keeping alive."
"Poor old women carrying loads big enough for mules," said Miss Seyffert.
"Little children working like slaves," said Miss Grammont.
"And everybody begging. Even the people at work by the roadside. Who ought to be getting wages--sufficient. . . ."
"Begging--from foreigners--is just a sport in Italy," said Sir Richmond. "It doesn't imply want. But I agree that a large part of Italy is frightfully overpopulated. The whole world is. Don't you think so, Martineau?"
"Well--yes--for its present social organization. "
"For any social organization," said Sir Richmond.
"I've no doubt of it," said Miss Seyffert, and added amazingly: "I'm out for Birth Control all the time."
A brief but active pause ensued. Dr. Martineau in a state of sudden distress attempted to drink out of a cold and empty coffee cup.
"The world swarms with cramped and undeveloped lives," said Sir Richmond. "Which amount to nothing. Which do not even represent happiness. And which help to use up the resources, the fuel and surplus energy of the world."
"I suppose they have a sort of liking for their lives," Miss Grammont reflected.
"Does that matter? They do nothing to carry life on. They are just vain repetitions--imperfect dreary, blurred repetitions of one common life. All that they feel has been felt, all that they do has been done better before. Because they are crowded and hurried and underfed and undereducated. And as for liking their lives, they need never have had the chance."
"How many people are there in the world?" she asked abruptly.
"I don't know. Twelve hundred, fifteen hundred millions perhaps."
"And in your world?"
"I'd have two hundred and fifty millions, let us say. At most. It would be quite enough for this little planet, for a time, at any rate. Don't you think so, doctor?"
"I don't know," said Dr. Martineau. "Oddly enough, I have never thought about that question before. At least, not from this angle."
"But could you pick out two hundred and fifty million aristocrats?" began Miss Grammont. "My native instinctive democracy--"
"Need not be outraged," said Sir Richmond. "Any two hundred and fifty million would do, They'd be able to develop fully, all of them. As things are, only a minority can do that. The rest never get a chance."
"That's what I always say," said Miss Seyffert.
"A New Age," said Dr. Martineau; "a New World. We may be coming to such a stage, when population, as much as fuel, will be under a world control. If one thing, why not the other? I admit that the movement of thought is away from haphazard towards control--"
"I'm for control all the time," Miss Seyffert injected, following up her previous success.
"I admit", the doctor began his broken sentence again with marked patience, "that the movement of thought is away from haphazard towards control--in things generally. But is the movement of events?"
"The eternal problem of man," said Sir Richmond. "Can our wills prevail?"
There came a little pause.
Miss Grammont smiled an enquiry at Miss Seyffert. "If YOU are," said Belinda.
"I wish I could imagine your world," said Miss Grammont, rising, "of two hundred and fifty millions of fully developed human beings with room to live and breathe in and no need for wars. Will they live in palaces? Will they all be healthy? . . . Machines will wait on them. No! I can't imagine it. Perhaps I shall dream of it. My dreaming self may be cleverer."
She held out her hand to Sir Richmond. Just for a moment they stood hand in hand, appreciatively. . . .
"Well!" said Dr. Martineau, as the door closed behind the two Americans, "This is a curious encounter."
"That young woman has brains," said Sir Richmond, standing before the fireplace. There was no doubt whatever which young woman he meant. But Dr. Martineau grunted.
"I don't like the American type," the doctor pronounced judicially.
"I do," Sir Richmond countered.
The doctor thought for a moment or so. "You are committed to the project of visiting Avebury?" he said.
"They ought to see Avebury, " said Sir Richmond.
"H'm," said the doctor, ostentatiously amused by his thoughts and staring at the fire. "Birth Control! I NEVER did."
Sir Richmond smiled down on the top of the doctor's head and said nothing.
"I think" said the doctor and paused. "I shall leave this Avebury expedition to you."
"We can be back in the early afternoon," said Sir Richmond. "To give them a chance of seeing the cathedral. The chapter house here is not one to miss . . . . "
"And then I suppose we shall go on?
"As you please," said Sir Richmond insincerely.
"I must confess that four people make the car at any rate seem tremendously overpopulated. And to tell the truth, I do not find this encounter so amusing as you seem to do. . . . I shall not be sorry when we have waved good-bye to those young ladies, and resume our interrupted conversation."
Sir Richmond considered something mulish in the doctor's averted face.
"I find Miss Grammont an extremely interesting--and stimulating human being.
"Evidently."
The doctor sighed, stood up and found himself delivering one of the sentences he had engendered during his solitary meditations in his room before dinner. He surprised himself by the plainness of his speech. "Let me be frank," he said, regarding Sir Richmond squarely. "Considering the general situation of things and your position, I do not care very greatly for the part of an accessory to what may easily develop, as you know very well, into a very serious flirtation. An absurd, mischievous, irrelevant flirtation. You may not like the word. You may pretend it is a conversation, an ordinary intellectual conversation. That is not the word. Simply that is not the word. You people eye one another. . . . Flirtation. I give the affair its proper name. That is all. Merely that. When I think--But we will not discuss it now. . . . Good night. . . . Forgive me if I put before you, rather bluntly, my particular point of view."
Sir Richmond found himself alone. With his eyebrows raised.