Julian had spent thirty-two years--his mother included his first--in
seeing what he wanted to do and doing it. He had never consulted anybody
else, because he had always seen his way clearly, but he had made from
time to time reports to his mother. He had been hostile to his father,
who had opposed him weakly and sometimes unfairly till he died. Julian
never felt disheartened or found any opposition in himself to what he
wanted to do. Opposition in others he liked and overcame. Nothing in him
warned him that love demands participation and resents exclusion.
On landing, he hurried to London, and went at once to see an old friend
of his in the War Office.
"Look here, Burton," he said, "you remember 1911, don't you?"
Burton drew on the blotting-paper with a pencil; he was almost
overwhelmingly cautious. If he had not been, many more serious things
than caution would have been overwhelmed.
"I think," he said, "if I remember right, you went abroad."
Julian chuckled.
"I was a German navvy for six months," he said. "I ate like a German, I
drank thirty bottles of beer at one sitting for a bet, and I lost my
head and my temper in German. It seems as if the best thing I can do
just now is to repeat the experiment."
"You did it at your own risk," Burton reminded him. "It was certainly
serviceable, but we limited our communications with you as much as
possible. If it should enter into your mind to do such a thing again, we
should of course have no communication with you whatever. Also, you
would need German papers--birth certificates, registrations. I really do
not know at a time like this what you might not find necessary. The
work, if you came back, would be invaluable."
Julian nodded.
"Don't you bother yourself about papers," he said. "I've been in a
German consular office, and I've got a German birth-certificate. It's
one of the things I do particularly well. As long as they're not
suspicious they won't ram the papers home, and I don't propose to let
them get suspicious. I shall be Cæsar's wife. Three years of Heidelberg
have oiled my throat to it. My mother tells me I often speak English in
a hearty German voice. My idea is to go out as soon as possible, through
Belgium. They'll strike there, I feel pretty sure, and I'll come back
the same way--October to November, if I can. You can put about that I 'm
off to the Arctic Ocean. If I'm not back by Christmas, don't expect me.
I shall have no communication with any one until my return."
Burton smiled.
"My dear Julian," he said, "one moment. I have not yet congratulated you
upon your engagement. I do so with all my heart. But do you intend to
tell Miss Young? She may not like the Arctic Ocean or she may expect you
to fight. She will also, no doubt, look for some communication from you;
and, as you very rightly assert, there can be no communication whatever
with anybody until you return."
Julian hunched up his shoulders and whistled.
"She's the pick of women," he said softly. "Leave her to me."
"It's all going to be left to you," said Burton, gravely. "If you live,
you'll get no apparent acknowledgment; if you die, no one will ever know
how. I do not say this to dissuade you,--there are too many things we
want to know,--but when I saw the announcement of your engagement in the
paper, I said, 'Well, we've lost him.'"
Julian rose, and walked to the window. Until that moment he had not
given Marian a thought. He was full of a lover's images of her, but he
had not connected them with what he was going to do. He remembered what
Marian's inconspicuous-looking little friend had said to her, "honest as
crystal, equable, strong."
Then he turned back to his friend.
"You haven't lost me," he said steadily. "After all, if we're up against
anything at all, Burton, we're up against a pretty big thing. I must do
exactly what is most useful. Of course I'd rather fight. One likes
one's name to go down and all that, and I'd like to please Marian; but
the point, both for her and for me, will be the job."
"Ah," said Burton. "Then if you'll just come with me, I'll take you to a
fellow who will let you know what we want particularly just now to find
out. You're quite right as far as we are concerned; but it's not fair to
rush a man into our kind of fight. It's not like any other kind. It's
risks without prizes."
"What you get out of a risk," said Julian, with a certain gravity, "is a
prize."
Burton looked at him curiously; he rested his hand for a moment on his
friend's shoulder.
"That's a jolly good phrase, Julian," he said quietly, "and I think it's
true; but it's not necessarily a personal prize. You pay the piper, and
he plays the tune; but you mightn't be there to listen to the tune."
"Don't be a croaking, weather-beaten, moth-eaten old Scotch raven!"
laughed Julian. "Take my word for it; you get what you want out of life
if you put all you've got into it. That's just at this moment what I
propose to put."
"And that," said Burton, without returning his smile, "is what we
propose to take, Julian."