The Flying Inn | Page 6

uniform of the Navy of
Ithaca (invented by himself); a big bull of a man, monstrously young
for his size, with a bull neck and two blue bull's eyes for eyes, and red
hair rising so steadily off his scalp that it looked as if his head had
caught fire: as some said it had.
The most dominant person present was the great Oman Pasha himself,
with his strong face starved by the asceticism of war, his hair and
mustache seeming rather blasted with lightning than blanched with age;
a red fez on his head, and between the red fez and mustache, a scar at

which the King of Ithaca did not look. His eyes had an awful lack of
expression.
Lord Ivywood, the English Minister, was probably the handsomest man
in England, save that he was almost colourless both in hair and
complexion. Against that blue marble sea he might almost have been
one of its old marble statues that are faultless in line but show nothing
but shades of grey or white. It seemed a mere matter of the luck of
lighting whether his hair looked dull silver or pale brown; and his
splendid mask never changed in colour or expression. He was one of
the last of the old Parliamentary orators; and yet he was probably a
comparatively young man; he could make anything he had to mention
blossom into verbal beauty; yet his face remained dead while his lips
were alive. He had little old-fashioned ways, as out of old Parliaments;
for instance, he would always stand up, as in a Senate, to speak to those
three other men, alone on a rock in the ocean.
In all this he perhaps appeared more personal in contrast to the man
sitting next to him, who never spoke at all but whose face seemed to
speak for him. He was Dr. Gluck, the German Minister, whose face had
nothing German about it; neither the German vision nor the German
sleep. His face was as vivid as a highly coloured photograph and
altered like a cinema: but his scarlet lips never moved in speech. His
almond eyes seemed to shine with all the shifting fires of the opal; his
small, curled black mustache seemed sometimes almost to hoist itself
afresh, like a live, black snake; but there came from him no sound. He
put a paper in front of Lord Ivywood. Lord Ivywood took a pair of
eyeglasses to read it, and looked ten years older by the act.
It was merely a statement of agenda; of the few last things to be settled
at this last conference. The first item ran:
"The Ithacan Ambassador asks that the girls taken to harems after the
capture of Pylos be restored to their families. This cannot be granted."
Lord Ivywood rose. The mere beauty of his voice startled everyone
who had not heard it before.
"Your Excellencies and gentlemen," he said, "a statement to whose

policy I by no means assent, but to whose historic status I could not
conceivably aspire, has familiarised you with a phrase about peace with
honour. But when we have to celebrate a peace between such historic
soldiers as Oman Pasha and His Majesty the King of Ithaca, I think we
may say that it is peace with glory."
He paused for half an instant; yet even the silence of sea and rock
seemed full of multitudinous applause, so perfectly had the words been
spoken.
"I think there is but one thought among us, whatever our many just
objections through these long and harassing months of negotiations--I
think there is but one thought now. That the peace may be as full as the
war--that the peace may be as fearless as the war."
Once more he paused an instant; and felt a phantom clapping, as it were,
not from the hands but the heads of the men. He went on.
"If we are to leave off fighting, we may surely leave off haggling. A
statute of limitations or, if you will, an amnesty, is surely proper when
so sublime a peace seals so sublime a struggle. And if there be anything
in which an old diplomatist may advise you, I would most strongly say
this: that there should be no new disturbance of whatever amicable or
domestic ties have been formed during this disturbed time. I will admit
I am sufficiently old-fashioned to think any interference with the
interior life of the family a precedent of no little peril. Nor will I be so
illiberal as not to extend to the ancient customs of Islam what I would
extend to the ancient customs of Christianity. A suggestion has been
brought before us that we should enter into a renewed war of
recrimination as to whether certain women have