The Impregnable Women by Eric Linklater

Author:Eric Linklater
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1938-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The Love Siege

I

Showing a pretty taste in architecture, the Government had taken possession of the greater part of Charlotte Square, the north side of which housed in reasonable comfort the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Government Whips. Lord Pippin, who greatly admired the work of the Adam brothers, was delighted with his new residence, and often at some Cabinet meeting forgot the topic of discussion in more agreeable contemplation of mantelpiece, fanlight, or ceiling. The houses, too, reminded him of Bath, and rarely had he read the novels of Jane Austen in surroundings so congenial to himself and them. In a room which he called his arcana curia he had, indeed, recently taken to morning reading – an hour or so between eleven and twelve with Emma or Mansfield Park – a form of intemperance from which he derived intense though guilty pleasure.

It was three days after the battle for the Castle, and he had recently begun Emma for the twentieth time, when contrary to all orders he was interrupted – his arcana curia invaded – by Sir Joseph Rumble, Mr Comyn Curle, and General Puffin-Lumkyn. The last was a tall stout man with large pink cheeks, a small red mouth, a Socratic nose, and rather colourless eyes, one of which looked at the world in pale astonishment through a single eye-glass.

They came in without being announced, with no more ceremony than a loud knock at the door, and Lord Pippin had barely time to stuff Emma between the cushion and the arm of his chair before they confronted him with the determined aspect of honest men who were about to make themselves thoroughly unpleasant.

‘This state of affairs, Pippin, can’t continue,’ said Sir Joseph, and selecting a chair, sat ponderously down.

‘It must be stopped,’ said Mr Curle.

‘Before things have gone too far,’ added the General.

‘From all over the country,’ declared Sir Joseph, ‘reports are coming in of new disorder. This mutinous idea of a regimented continence is gaining ground.’

‘It’s spreading like wildfire,’ said Mr Curle.

‘It’s playing the devil,’ said the General. ‘I never heard of such a thing. And it isn’t only in public that these women are going in for chastity. They’re practising it in their own homes, a lot of them.’

‘The situation is quite intolerable.’

‘And it must be stopped,’ repeated Mr Curle.

Ruffled by their unmannerly intrusion, the Prime Minister permitted himself to show a little anger.

‘Then why,’ he asked, ‘have you done nothing to mend it? – It would be supererogation, my dear Curle, to stop a situation. – But you are clearly too excited to appreciate such a nicety of language; and to be frank with you, I think your excitement is natural, since you must realize how much to blame you are for our present difficulties. The Castle was your War Office, and you failed to take proper care of it. Were you a soldier, like General Puffin-Lumkyn, you would certainly be court-martialled for losing Government property. And

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