The Gap in the Curtain

As I took my place at the dinner-table I realised that I was not
the only tired mortal in Lady Flambard's Whitsuntide party. Mayot,
who sat opposite me, had dark pouches under his eyes and that
unwholesome high complexion which in a certain type of physique
means that the arteries are working badly. I knew that he had been
having a heavy time in the House of Commons over the Committee
stage of his Factory Bill. Charles Ottery, who generally keeps
himself fit with fives and tennis, and has still the figure of an
athletic schoolboy, seemed nervous and out of sorts, and scarcely
listened to his companion's chatter. Our hostess had her midseason
look; her small delicate features were as sharp as a pin, and her
blue eyes were drained of colour. But it was Arnold Tavanger
farther down the table who held my attention. His heavy, sagacious
face was a dead mask of exhaustion. He looked done to the world,
and likely to fall asleep over his soup.

It was a comfort to me to see others in the same case, for I was
feeling pretty near the end of my tether. Ever since Easter I had
been overworked out of all reason. There was a batch of important
Dominion appeals before the Judicial Committee, in every one of
which I was engaged, and I had some heavy cases in the Commercial
Court. Of the two juniors who did most of my "devilling" one had a
big patent-law action of his own, and the other was in a nursing-
home with appendicitis. To make matters worse, I was chairman of a
Royal Commission which was about to issue its findings, and had had
to rewrite most of the report with my own hand, and I had been
sitting as a one-man Commission in a troublesome dispute in the
shipbuilding trade. Also I was expected to be pretty regularly in
the House of Commons to deal with the legal side of Mayot's
precious Bill, and the sittings had often stretched far into the
next morning.

There is something about a barrister's spells of overwork which
makes them different in kind from those of other callings. His
duties are specific as to time and place. He must be in court at a
certain hour. He must be ready to put, or to reply to, an argument
when he is called upon; he can postpone or rearrange his work only
within the narrowest limits. He is a cog in an inexorable machine,
and must revolve with the rest of it. For myself I usually enter
upon a period of extreme busyness with a certain lift of spirit,
for there is a sporting interest in not being able to see your way
through your work. But presently this goes, and I get into a mood
of nervous irritation. It is easy enough to be a carthorse, and it
is easy enough to be a racehorse, but it is difficult to be a
carthorse which is constantly being asked to take Grand National
fences. One has to rise to hazards, but with each the take-off
gets worse and the energy feebler. So at the close of such a spell
I am in a wretched condition of soul and body--weary, but without
power to rest, and with a mind so stale that it sees no light or
colour in anything. Even the end of the drudgery brings no
stimulus. I feel that my form has been getting steadily poorer,
and that virtue has gone out of me which I may never recapture.

I had been in two minds about accepting Sally Flambard's
invitation. She is my very good friend, but her parties are rather
like a table d'hôte. Her interests are multitudinous, and all are
reflected in her hospitality, so that a procession goes through her
house which looks like a rehearsal for the Judgement Day.
Politics, religion, philanthropy, letters, science, art and the
most brainless fashion--she takes them all to her capacious heart.
She is an innocent lion-hunter, too, and any man or woman who
figures for the moment in the Press will be a guest at Flambard.
And she drives her team, for all are put through their paces.
Sally makes her guests work for their entertainment. In her own
way she is a kind of genius, and what Americans call a wonderful
"mixer." Everyone has got to testify, and I have seen her make a
bishop discourse on Church union, and a mathematician on hyper-
space to an audience which heard of the topics for the first time.
The talk is apt to be a little like a magazine page in a popular
newspaper--very good fun, if you are feeling up to it, but not
quite the thing for a rest-cure.