Con’s visits were like those of the angels, unexpected, generally
unannounced, and always very welcome. The one curious thing about them
was, as the Colonel had said, that, as often as not, they coincided in
most extraordinary fashion with the whirling home-calls of Alma Luard.
And whenever it happened so, the Colonel chuckled himself nearly into
a fit in private, and in public preserved his innocent unconsciousness
with difficulty.
Mrs Dare went off to superintend the operations of her charlady, whose
attention to corners and little details in general was subject to
lapses unless the eye of the mistress was within easy range. And as Mrs
Skirrow worked best under a sense of personal injury Mrs Dare became of
necessity the recipient of all her conjugal woes and endless stories of
filial ingratitude.
She had a husband,--an old soldier in every sense of the word,--who
was cursed with a constitutional objection to authority and work of
any kind, and two sons who took after their father. One or the other
stumbled into a place now and again and lost it immediately, and Mrs
Skirrow slaved night and day to keep them from any deeper depths than
half-a-crown a day and her food was able to save them from.
“Is ut true, mum, that we’ll mebbe be having another war?” asked Mrs
Skirrow as she flopped and scrubbed.
“I hope not, Mrs Skirrow, but there’s said to be the possibility of it.
We must hope we’ll be able to keep out of it. War is very terrible.”
“’Tes that, mum, but there’s a good side to ut too. Mebbe ut’d give
chance o’ someth’n to do to some as don’t do much otherwise. If ut
took my three off and made men of ’em or dead uns ut’d be a change
anyway.”
“You’d find you’d miss them.”
“I would that,” said Mrs Skirrow emphatically, and added presently,
“And be glad to.... I done my best to stir ’em up, but ut’s in their
bones. Mebbe if they was in th’ army they’d manage to put some ginger
into ’em.”
“It might do them good, as you say. But you might never see them again,
you know.”
“I seen enough of ’em this last two years to last me. ’Taint reasonable
for one woman to have to work herself to the bone for three grown men
that can’t get work ’cause they don’t want to.”
“It is not. I think it absolutely shameful of them.”
“Not that they quarrel at all,” said Mrs Skirrow, instantly resentful
of anyone blaming her inepts but herself. “I’m bound to say that for
’em. They’re good-tempered about it, but that don’t keep ’em in clo’es,
to say noth’n of boots. I suppose, mum, you ain’t got an old pair of
...” and Mrs Skirrow’s lamentations resolved themselves into the usual
formula.
It was close upon tea-time when Con came striding up the path, with a
searching eye on the next-door grounds.
“And what do you think of the war, mother?” he asked briskly, with
his face all alight, as soon as their greetings were over, and he had
satisfied himself as to the welfare of the rest of the family, and
expressed his entire satisfaction with the news about Lois and Ray.
“You mean this Austrian business? It’s very disturbing but I hope we
won’t be drawn into it, my boy.”
“I expect we shall, you know. Pretty certain, it seems to me. And if we
are I’m pretty sure to get the call....”
“I had not thought of that, Con,” and her hands dropped into her lap
for a moment and she sat gazing at him. “That brings it close home. I
pray it may not come to that.”
“Well, you see, I’ve had the cash, and the goods have got to be
delivered----”
“Of course. But----”
“And if it comes to a scrap they’ll need every medical they can get.
What does Rhenius say about it all?”
“He’s away,--in Italy, I think.”
“I remember. He wrote me he was hoping to get off, if he could find a
locum who wouldn’t poison you all in his absence. Well, anyway, I’m
getting my kit packed----”
“That’s business, my boy,” pealed the Colonel’s hearty voice, as he
came in with a telegram in his hand. “I saw you turn in and I’d already
been invited to drink a cup of tea with you. Alma can’t get off,”--he
said, in a matter-of-fact way, showing the telegram.
“Oh?--did you expect her, sir?” with an assumption of surprise to cover
his disappointment.
“I did, my boy, when I heard from your mother that she thought you
might come to-day. Did you?”
“Medicals and nurses are not their own masters,” said Con
non-committally. “Do you really think we’ll be into it, sir?”
“I do, Con. I don’t see how we can possibly keep out. It’s a most
da--yes, damnably inevitable sequence, it seems to me. Austria goes
for Servia. Russia won’t stand it. In that case Germany is bound to
help Austria. France will help Russia. Exactly how we stand pledged
to help France and Russia no one knows, I imagine, except the Foreign
Secretary. But everyone knows that the German war-plan contemplates
getting at France through Belgium. And if they try that, the fat’s in
the fire and we’ve got to stop them or go under.”
“That’s exactly how they’re looking at it at our place, and all the
R.A.M.C. men are getting their things together in readiness for the
call.”
“It’ll be a tough business,” said the Colonel weightily, but with the
light of battle in his eye. “But we’ve got to go through with it ...
right to the bitter end.”
“Have you any doubts about the end, sir?”
“None, my lad. But the end is a mighty long way off and it’ll be a hot
red road that leads to it, unless I’m very much mistaken. They’ve been
preparing for this for years, you see. It had to come, and some of us
saw it. Da-asht pity we didn’t all see it! We’d have been readier for
it than we are. Lord Roberts was right. Every man in Great Britain and
Ireland ought to have been in training for it.”
“Conscription again, Colonel!” said Mrs Dare. “And you still think
England would stand it?”
“Not conscription, my dear madam,--Universal Service,--a very different
thing and not liable to the defects of conscription. France broke down
through her faulty conscription in 1870. Germany won on her universal
service. And, da-ash it! we ought to have had it here ever since. But
you others thought we were all screaming Jingoes and mad on military
matters because that was our profession. Now, maybe, it’s too late.”
“Still, you say you don’t believe they can beat us, sir?” said Con
earnestly.
“Not in the long run. No, I don’t, my boy. But can you begin to imagine
what a long run will mean in these times? I’ve seen war and I know what
it meant up to twenty years ago. But--if I know anything about it--that
was child’s-play to what this will be. Those--da-asht Germans are so
infernally clever--and you must remember they’ve been working for
this and nothing but this for the last twenty years, while we’ve been
playing football and cricket, and squabbling over the House of Lords
and Home Rule. Da-ash it! If our side had kept in I believe we’d have
been readier.”
“I doubt it, sir,” said Con, with the laugh in the corners of his
eyes. “You’d have been fighting for your lives all the time, whereas
we at all events have done something--Old Age Pensions, and National
Insurance, and so on,” at which the Colonel snorted like a war-horse
scenting battle.
“And how is the work going, Con?” asked Mrs Dare, as a lead to less
bellicose subjects.
“Oh, all right. About same as usual. We got a new old chap in the other
day and he’s taken a curious fancy to my grin. He stops me every time
we meet, and says, ‘Doctor, do smile for me!’ and he’s such an old
comic that I just roar, and then he roars too, and we’re as happy as
can be.”
“He’s no fool,” said the Colonel. For Con’s grin was very contagious.
The corners of his eyes had a way of wrinkling up when the humorous
aspect of things appealed to him, his eyes almost disappeared, and then
his face creased up all over and the laugh broke out. And as a rule it
made one laugh just to watch him.
“But we had two rather nasty things, last week,” he said, sobering up.
“Two of the old chaps were set to clean up an out-house, and one of
them came out after a bit and sat down in the sun with his back against
the wall, humming the ‘Old Hundredth,’ they say. One of the attendants
asked him what he was doing there, and he said old Jim was tired and
was lying down inside. And when they went in they found old Jim lying
down with his head beaten in and as dead as a door-nail.”
“Good Lord!” said the Colonel. “And what did you do to the other?”
“What could we do? He was quite unconscious of having done anything
wrong. He’ll be kept under observation of course. But the other matter
was worse still, in one way. A table-knife disappeared one day from the
scullery and couldn’t be found anywhere. And for a week we all went
with our heads over both shoulders at once, and the feel of that knife
slicing in between our shoulder-blades at any moment. I tell you, that
was jolly uncomfortable.”
“And did you find it?” asked Mrs Dare anxiously.
“Yes, we hunted and hunted till we discovered it inside the back of a
picture frame, and we were mighty glad to get it, I can tell you.”
“Gad!” said the Colonel, with extreme energy. “I’d sooner be at the
front any day. It’s a safer job than yours, my boy.”
“I suppose there are possibilities of getting hurt even there, sir,”
and Con’s creases wrinkled up.
“Oh, you can get hurt all right enough, but it’s not knives between
your shoulder-blades.”
“Assegais,” suggested Mrs Dare, who knew his record.
“Assegais are deucedly uncomfortable, but that was fair fighting----”
Then Mr Dare walked in, very much later than usual for a Saturday. And,
though he greeted them cheerfully, his face was very grave, to his
wife’s anxious eyes.
“I waited a bit to see if any further news came along,” he said quietly.
“And how are they feeling about things?” asked the Colonel.
“Nervous. In fact, gloomy. Everybody admits that it seems incredible,
but there’s a general fear that we may be drawn in, in spite of all Sir
Edward Grey’s efforts.”
“We shall,” said the Colonel emphatically. “I feel it in my bones.
Germany is very wide awake. She’s been crouching for a spring any time
this several years, and here are England, France, and Russia tied up
with internal troubles. It’s her day without a doubt. Take my advice
and make your preparations, my friend. When it comes it’ll come all in
a heap. I only wish we were readier for it, and I wish to God they’d
have the common-sense to put Kitchener in charge of the Army. He’s the
man for the job, and what earthly use is he in Egypt when Germany may
be at our throats any day? Asquith can’t be expected to understand all
the ins and outs of the machine.”
“Yes, it’s too much to expect of him. And as to Kitchener, I quite
agree. He’s the right man for the job.”
“Exchange upset? Money tight?”
“Slump all round. Consols down one and a half. Bank rate three still,
but expected to jump any day. In fact things are about as sick as they
can be.”
“We’re in for a very bad time, I’m afraid,” said the Colonel gravely.
And the shadow of the future lay upon them all.
When, presently, the Colonel got up to go, Mrs Dare and Con went with
him to the front door, and Con went on down the path with him.
“May I speak to you about Alma, Colonel?” Con began, before they
reached the gate.
“Yes, my boy, you may. But I know what you want to say.”
“You’ve seen it, sir? You know how we feel then. And you don’t object?”
“On the contrary, my boy. I’m very glad you have both chosen so wisely.”
“That’s mighty good of you, sir. I would have spoken to you before but
I wanted to see my way a little more clearly. And now I can. Sir James
Jamieson of Harley Street,--he’s the biggest man we have in mental
diseases, you know,--well, he saw some scraps of mine in the ‘Lancet’
and asked me to call on him. He’s a fine man, and he wants me to go to
him as soon as my courses are finished,--Munich and Paris and the rest.
He’s getting on in years, you see, and he was good enough to say that,
from what he had heard of me, he believed I was the man to carry on his
work when his time came to go. It’s immense, you know.”
“Capital! I always knew you’d go far, Con. My only fear was lest
the--er--atmosphere of your special line should in time affect your own
mind and spirits. But so far it seems to have had no ill effect. Your
spirits are above par, and I’ve just had an excellent proof of your
judgment,”--at which Con laughed joyously.
“When you’re really keen on a thing it doesn’t upset you, no matter
how unpleasant it may be. And this work is anything but unpleasant to
me. It’s packed with interest. There’s so much we don’t know yet. And
there’s heaps of quaint humour in it, if you look out for it.”
“Well, keep yourself fit, my boy, and I don’t think your brain will
suffer. _Mens sana_, you know.”
“I see to that. I get a couple of hours on the links every day and I
never play with a medical,--get quite outside it all, you know. Then I
may speak to Alma, Colonel? She knows, of course, but we’ve never said
very much.”
“Yes, my lad,--whenever you can catch her. She’s an elusive creature
these days.”
“I’ll catch her all right,” said Con, all abeam.
The other young people had just returned from their tournament and were
discussing points over the tea-cups.
“Hello! Here’s old Con,” shouted Noel, and they all jumped up and gave
him merry welcome. Vic inquired earnestly after the state of his brain;
and satisfied on that head, they poured out their own latest news.
“Vic and I won,” chortled Honor. “6-5, 6-4, against No and Gregor
McLean.”
“Oh well,” explained Noel. “If you’d been round the links in the
morning you wouldn’t have been half so nimble on your pins.”
“Bit heavy, I suppose?” said the Colonel.
“Heavy wasn’t the word for it, sir, and a beastly gusty wind that upset
all one’s calculations. However, I licked old Greg into a cocked hat
and he’s no end of a nib with the sticks; so that’s one to me. Pick up
any lunch scores as you came along, Con?”
“Sorry, old man! I didn’t. I was thinking of other things,” and the
Colonel nodded weightily, and said,
“In a week from now we’ll all have other things to think about, I’m
afraid.”
V
Ray Luard’s quest was one in which the soul of any man might well
rejoice. He was flying, like a knight of old,--though as to ways and
means in very much better case,--to the rescue of his lady-love from
possibilities of trouble. More than that he did not look for, and
possible difficulties and delays weighed little with him.
He reached Flushing about seven in the evening after a gusty passage
which did not trouble him, and was at Cologne in the early hours of the
morning. But after that his progress was slow and subject to constant,
exasperating, and inexplicable delays.
He had secured a berth in the sleeper and took fullest advantage of it.
But all night long, as he slept the troubled sleep of the sleeping-car,
he was dully conscious of long intervals when the metronomic nimble of
the wheels died away, and the unusual silence was broken only by the
creaking complaints of the carriage-fittings and the long-drawn snores
and sharper snorts and grunts of his companions in travel.
The train was crowded and every bunk was occupied. The occupant of the
one above him was so violently stertorous that Ray feared he was in
for a fit, and did his best to save him from it by energetic thumps
from below. But the only result was a momentary pause of surprise in
the strangling solo up above and the immediate resumption of it with
renewed vigour, and Ray gave it up, and drew the bed clothes over his
ears, and left him to his fate.
In the morning the noisy one turned out to be an immensely fat German
who rolled about the car as if it and the world outside belonged to
him,--the repulsively over-bearing kind of person whose very look
seemed to intimate that no one but himself and his like had any right
to cumber the earth. And just the kind of person that Ray Luard loathed
and abominated beyond words.
Ray’s disgust of him, and all his kind and all their doings, showed
unmistakably in his face, and the fat one became aware of it and took
offence. He dropped ponderously into the seat alongside Ray so that
he filled three-quarters of it, and proceeded to stare at him in most
offensive fashion. His little yellow pig-like eyes, almost lost in the
greasy fat rolls of his face, travelled suspiciously over his neighbour
from head to foot as though searching for something to settle on.
Ray knew the look and its meaning. Had he been back at Heidelberg he
would forthwith have demanded of the starer when and where it was his
pleasure they should meet to fight it out. But this mountain of fat was
long past his Mensur days, and Ray was doubtful how to tackle him.
He did perhaps the best thing under the circumstances,--turned his back
on him and looked out of the window.
But the fat one was not satisfied to let matters rest so. He loosed a
wheezy laugh and said, “Ach, zo! Ein Engländer!” with another wheezy
little laugh of extremest scorn.
“And what of that, Fat-Pig?” rapped out Ray, in German equal to his
own, and the shot took the fat one in the wind.
“Fat-Pig! Fat-Pig! Gott im Himmel, you call me Fat-Pig?”
He rose, bellowing with fury, and was about to drop himself bodily on
Ray, when others who had watched the proceedings--a Bavarian whose
foot he had trampled on without apology ten minutes before, and a
Saxon upon whose newspapers he had also plumped down and pulped into
illegibility--jumped up and laid hands on him and dragged him back.
“So you are! So you are!” they shouted. “The Englishman has doubtless
paid his fare and is entitled to the whole of a seat without insult or
annoyance.”
“They ought to charge you double and then carry you in the
baggage-van,” said the Saxon.
“You should try to remember you’re not yet in Prussia--you!” growled
the Bavarian, jerking the mountainous one down into an empty seat.
“Ja!--Mein Gott, if I had you all in Prussia I’d show you who’s who,”
and he wagged his dewlaps at them with menacing malevolence.
“A damned English spy, if I have any eyes,” he wheezed.
“No more a spy than you’re a gentleman,” retorted Ray.
“Enough! Enough, mein Herr! Let him be! He’s just a Prussian and
they’re all like that,--blown out with their own conceit till they’ve
no decent manners left,” said the Bavarian.
“That is so,” said the Saxon, and they removed themselves with Ray out
of sight and sound of the swollen one.
The other two were quite friendly, and through their smoke endeavoured
to arrive at an understanding of Ray,--how he came to speak German so
well,--what his business in life was,--where he was going, and why?
And, as he had nothing to conceal and felt resentful still of the fat
man’s insinuations, he told them frankly what he was there for.
Their reserve and soberness over the political outlook impressed him
greatly. He felt more than justified in the decision he had taken as to
Lois.
He did his best, without being too intrusive, to get at their view of
the future, and they at his. But it was all too pregnant with awful
possibilities, and too obscure and critically in the balance, for very
free speech. From their manner, however, he gathered that, while they
personally desired no interruption of the present prosperous state of
affairs, they doubted if the dispute between Austria and Servia could
be localised, and feared that if Russia supported Servia the fat would
be in the fire.
“For me, I do not like Prussia and her insolent ways,” said the
Bavarian. “Yon stout one is typical of her. But if she goes, we have to
follow--unfortunately, whether we approve or not. We are all bound up
together, you see, and there you are.”
And all their discursive chats throughout the day went very little
deeper than that.
It was a very wearisome journey. Time after time they were shunted into
sidings while long and heavy trains rolled past. And when Ray commented
on it with a surprised,
“Well!--for a quick through train this is about as poor a specimen as
I’ve ever tumbled on,”--their only comment, as they gazed gloomily out
of the window, was, “The traffic is disorganised for the moment.”
The stations they passed through were packed with people, and the
military element seemed more in evidence even than usual.
It was close on five o’clock in the afternoon before they arrived in
Leipsic. The Bavarian had left them at Cassel. The Saxon, as he bade
Ray adieu, said quietly,
“You may find things more difficult still if you try to return this
way, Herr. If you take my advice you will strike down South into Tirol
and Switzerland, and meanwhile say as little as possible to anyone,”
and with a meaning nod he was gone.
Ray went along to the Hauffe, secured a room, had a much-needed
bath and dinner, and then set off at once for Frau Helse’s house in
Sebastian Bach Strasse.
The plump Saxon maid informed him that Fräulein Dare was out, that Frau
Helse was out, that Fräulein Luise was out;--they were in fact all at a
concert at the Conservatorium; and the Herr Lieutenant, he was with his
regiment. So Ray left his card with the name of his hotel scribbled on
it, and Mrs Dare’s letter, and promised to return in the morning.
Then, after a stroll about the unusually thronged streets, he returned
to his hotel and looked up trains for Switzerland.