THE FIVE DAYS
"Now, this had proved the dry-rot of the race
He ruled o'er, that, i' the old day, when was need
They fought for their own liberty and life,
Well did they fight, none better: whence, such love
Of fighting somehow still for fighting's sake
Against no matter whose the liberty
And life, so long as self-conceit should crow
And clap the wing, while justice sheathed her claw,--
That what had been the glory of the world
When thereby came the world's good, grew its plague
Now that the champion-armour, donned to dare
The dragon once, was clattered up and down
Highway and by-path of the world at peace
Merely to mask marauding, or for sake
O' the shine and rattle that apprized the fields
Hohenstiel-Schwangau was a fighter yet....
... Then must the world give us leave
To strike right, left, and exercise our arm
Torpid of late through overmuch repose,
And show its strength is still superlative
At somebody's expense in life or limb: ...
Such devil's doctrine so was judged God's law...."
"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society."
ROBERT BROWNING.
I
The first five-and-thirty years of my life were singularly unemotional.
My father died when I was too young to appreciate the loss, and I had
never seen death at close quarters nor known the breathless thrill of a
great triumph or the bitterness of a great disappointment. There was
nothing to change the tolerant scale of values, to bring about an
intenser way of life or a harsher manner of speech. My world was
comfortably free from extremes, and it hardly occurred to me that the
architects of civilization would attack their own handiwork, or that a
man's smooth, hairless fingers would ever revert to the likeness of a
gorilla's paw.
The "Five Days" changed all that. On the thirty-first of July I left
London for Chepstow with no greater troubles than a sense of uneasiness
at the breakdown of the Buckingham Palace Conference on the Irish
deadlock. My uncle Bertrand, a pedantic Constitutionalist, drove me to
Paddington, and from his speech I could see he was undecided whether to
lament the failure of the negotiations or rejoice that a constitutional
innovation had proved ineffective. With many others he felt the
situation in Ireland must be very grave to allow of the Sovereign
summoning the party leaders to his Palace; equally, so drastic a course
could in the eyes of ordinary men only be justified by success.
And it had failed. And the next news might well be that shots were being
exchanged on the borders of Ulster.
Such a possibility brought little embarrassment to the holiday makers
who thronged the station. Fighting my way through the Bank-holiday
crowd, I found the nucleus of our party sitting patiently on suitcases
and awaiting a train that was indefinitely delayed by the extra traffic
and a minor strike of dining-car attendants. As the time went by and the
crowd increased, Summertown, Mayhew and O'Rane built the luggage into a
circle and sat contentedly talking, while I, who was responsible to
Loring for the full complement, wandered about, list in hand, ticking
off the names of the new arrivals.
"Adsum!" called out Mayhew, when I reached him. "Aren't you glad you
didn't take my bet about the Archduke, George?"
"I nearly did," I said. "I thought we'd left that sort of thing behind
with the Borgias."
"It was a wonderful opportunity," he observed, with the air of a
connoisseur in political crime. "You've seen the Austrian ultimatum?
Well, Servia's going to be mopped up like Bosnia and Herzegovina."
He nodded omnisciently and raised his eyebrows interrogatively at
O'Rane, who was seated on the next suitcase with his chin on his hands,
lost in thought.
"They told me at the Club that Russia was mobilizing," I said.
"She'll climb down all right," Mayhew assured me. "You remember the
'Shining Armour' speech? It's no joke taking on Austria and Germany,
especially if you can't mobilize under about two months. It might be
different if France came in, but she's unprepared. They've been having
quite a pretty dust-up in the Senate the last few days over army
equipment."
Summertown scrambled down from his suit-case and strutted importantly
across to us.
"I don't mind telling you fellows there's been a run on the Bank
to-day," he said. "I don't know what a run on the Bank is, but there's
been one. So now you know."
"There'll be a run on a number of banks if Austria declares war," Mayhew
predicted. "And such a financial smash as the world has never seen. Our
system of credit, you know.... I put it to a big banker last night, and
he said, 'My dear Mayhew, I entirely agree with you----'"
"All big bankers talk to Mayhew like that," Summertown interrupted.
Mayhew sighed resignedly.
"Thank the Lord, here's the train," he said. "I'm wasted on Guardee
subalterns. Come be useful with the luggage, Raney."
O'Rane had not spoken a word since we shook hands an hour before; the
sound of his name roused him, however, and he jumped up with the words:
"If you're thanking the Lord about anything, you might thank Him that
we're an island."
"Have you got anything up your sleeve, Raney?" I asked.
"Oh, a number of things. For one, the Fleet sailed from Portsmouth two
days ago with coal piled up like haystacks on deck."
"What the deuce for?" I asked.
"Fresh air and exercise, I suppose," he answered. "If you want to try
your hand again at war correspondence, I make no doubt you'll have the
chance."
"This is devilish serious," I said. Experience had taught me that news
from O'Rane was not to be lightly set aside.
"As serious as you like," he agreed. "Don't pull too long a face,
though, or you'll spoil Jim's party."
And with that word his manner changed. Loring Castle lies between
Chepstow and Tintern on a high ridge of hills overlooking the Severn. In
normal times I have lunched in town, taken tea on the train and reached
my destination after a run of four or five hours. On this occasion the
strike and holiday traffic caused us to stop at countless wayside
stations; it was after eight when we reached Chepstow, but, thanks to
O'Rane, the journey was the most hilarious I have ever undertaken. Panic
and disorder indeed descended upon us when at last the train steamed in
and our two reserved coaches yielded up their sixteen men, twelve girls
and nine maids; to this day I cannot explain how I fitted the party and
its luggage into the different cars and delivered all at the Castle
without loss or mishap, but, when Loring entered my room as I was
dressing, he informed me that not so much as a jewel-case had gone
astray.
"Any news in town?" he asked, and I gave him the gossip of Mayhew and
O'Rane. "I meant about Ireland," he went on. "This Austrian business
won't come to anything, but there's trouble brewing in your sweet
island. We're all rather depressed down here."
O'Rane, who had scrambled along the balcony, appeared at the open window
in time to catch the last words.
"The only man who has the right to be depressed," he said, "is the
luckless devil who's put his money into Austrian oil."
Loring turned to him swiftly.
"Are you hit, Raney?"
"Well, of course, as a Member I get four hundred a year less
income-tax," he answered cheerfully.
"Talk seriously, you idiot."
O'Rane tossed a silver-topped bottle into the air and caught it again.
"I can't take myself seriously just now, Jim," he said. "We haven't
earned a penny since Austria mobilized and our men were called up----"
"You save your wage-bill," I put in.
"We've got contracts, old man, and we've got penalties. Morris spent his
morning raising every last penny he could lay hands on; we've been
buying in the open market with the price soaring against us--and we
shall just be able to supply the Ubique Motor and Cab Company to the end
of our term. We were rather pleased to get that contract, too," he
added, with a laugh. "As for the others----"
"What others?"
"Half a dozen more. Just enough to break us very comfortably."
"Rot, Raney!"
"So be it! We've sold the spare furniture in Gray's Inn,--Morris has
developed wonderfully the last few years--and, unless Austria
demobilizes within a week, I don't see us paying twenty shillings in the
pound. Still, he's thirty and I'm only thirty-one...."
He strolled to the door, but Loring caught one shoulder and I the other.
"Look here, Raney----" we began together.
"Dear souls! save your breath!" he laughed. "I wasn't touting. I've been
in warmer corners than this in my mis-spent youth, and while I'm
frightfully grateful----" He paused and dropped his voice as though he
were talking to himself: "Why, my God! if I can't keep afloat at
one-and-thirty with all my faculties.... Hi, let me go! There's Amy, and
I want to tell her how ripping she looks!"
He strained forward, but we kept our grip on his arms.
"Little man!" said Loring. "D'you remember the first time I thrashed you
at Melton?"
"You brute, you nearly cut me in two!"
"I was rather uncomfortable about it," Loring admitted. "I wasn't sure
that you were accountable for your actions. Now I know you're not."
With a sudden jerk he broke away and bounded to the hall, three stairs
at a time, for all the world like a child at its first party.
Half-way through dinner Amy turned to me in perplexity, holding in her
hand a worn gold watch with a half-obliterated L. K. worked into an
intricate monogram.
"Is David _quite_ mad?" she inquired. "I've been given this to keep
until he asks for it back."
"It belonged to Kossuth," I explained. "He gave it to Raney's father,
and I fancy Raney values it rather more than his own soul."
"But why----?" she began.
"He's afraid of losing it, I suppose."
"But if he's kept it all these years----"
"You'll be doing him a favour, Amy," I said, and without another word
she slipped the watch into her waistband. It was true that the watch and
its owner had faced some severe trials in different continents, but
O'Rane had never up to that time undergone the humiliation of bankruptcy
proceedings with the last indignity of being compelled to empty his
pockets in court.
When dinner was over Loring gave him the alternative of sitting still or
being turned out of the dining-room. I have never seen a man so
indecently elated by the consciousness of his insolvency. The port had
hardly begun to circulate before he jumped up and ran to the window in
hopes that the guests were arriving and while we smoked and talked he
was shifting restlessly from chair to chair, inquiring the time at
two-minute intervals.
"But for your strictly sober habits----" I began.
"There's lightning in the air!" he exclaimed, his black eyes shining
with excitement. "All these years I've been waiting--I never forget,
George--waiting.... I won't be smashed! By God, I won't be smashed!"
"I'm glad I'm not one of your creditors," I said.
"Bah! They're all right. It's my beloved Austrians. I don't trust you a
yard, old man, but unless I tell somebody I shall burst. If Austria
makes war, she'll find a Foreign Legion fighting with the Servians; I've
fixed the preliminaries, and a wire from town.... Ye gods! why don't
they start the music? I want to dance with Violet, and the next time we
meet I may not have any legs!" A chord several times repeated sounded
from a distant piano--violins, followed by the deep note of a 'cello,
began to tune up and along the drive below our open windows came the
beat of throbbing engines, a sudden scrunch of tyres slowing down on
gravel, a slamming of doors and a hum of voices. "At last!" cried
O'Rane, springing to the door and running headlong into the ballroom.
We threw away our cigars, drew on our gloves and walked into the hall.
Lady Loring and Amy stood at the stairhead and were joined a moment
later by Violet and Jim, who took up their position a pace behind to one
side. It was a small party, but for twenty minutes a procession of
slight girls and smooth-haired, clean-shaven men ascended the
stairs--curiously and characteristically English from the easy movements
of the girls and the whiteness of their slender shoulders to the sit of
the men's coats and the trained condition of their bodies. Good living,
hard exercise and fresh air seemed written on every face; there was a
wonderful cleanliness of outline and clarity of eye and skin; the last
ounce of flabbiness had been worked away. And, like any consciously
self-isolated section of society, they were magnificently at ease and
unembarrassed with one another; sixty per cent. were related in some
degree, and all appeared to answer to diminutives or nicknames.
"There's nothing to touch them in any country _I_ know," murmured
Mayhew, unconsciously giving expression to my thoughts. "Shall we go
up?"
"In a moment," I said.
For a while longer I watched them arriving, the girls pattering up the
steps with their skirts held high over thin ankles and small feet; their
eyes showed suddenly dark and mysterious in the soft light of the great
electric lamps, and eternal youth seemed written in their pliant,
immature lines and lithe movements. Outside, the sky was like a tent of
blue velvet spangled with diamonds. The Severn far down the valley side
swirled and eddied in its race to open sea, and the moon reflected in
the jostling waters shivered and forked like silver lightning. A scent
of summer flowers still warm with the afternoon sun and gemmed with
falling dew rose like a mist and enfolded the crumbling yellow stone and
blazing windows behind me.
When the last car had panted away into the night, I heard a light step
on the flagstones of the terrace, and Amy Loring slipped her arm through
mine; the far-off hum of voices for a moment was still, and there
followed an instant of such silence as I have only known in the African
desert.
"There is an Angel of Peace," she whispered, "breathing his blessing
over the house."
Then the band broke into the opening bars of a waltz.
We walked back and found Violet and Loring at the door of the hall,
standing arm in arm and gazing silently, as I had done, on the tumbling
waters of the Severn. We smiled, and on a common impulse he and I shook
hands. Violet nodded as though she understood something that neither of
us had put into words, and as we entered the hall Amy turned aside to
kiss her brother's cheek.
"They're very happy," said Lady Loring when I met her at the stairhead.
"You mean Jim and Violet?"
"Everybody, bless them!" she answered, pointing with her fan through
the door of the ballroom.
In an alcove looking on to the terrace Valentine Arden was smoking a
cigarette and idly watching the pageant. There was a ghostly,
'end-of-season' look about his white face and the dark rings round his
eyes.
"One was wondering if you brought any news from town?" he drawled. "You
came to-day?"
"I suppose so," I said. It seemed more than eight hours since we held
our council of war on the rampart of suitcases.
"One assumes there will be no actual fighting," he went on.
"I shouldn't assume anything," I said.
A shadow of annoyance settled on his weary young face.
"One intended bringing out another book this autumn," he observed.
"Oh, that'll be all right," I said. "_We_ shan't be dragged in."
I danced till supper-time and met him again by appointment for a small
cigar on the terrace. We had been seated there for some ten minutes when
a white touring car, driven by an elderly man in a frieze overcoat and
soft hat, drew up opposite our chairs. As he came into the triangle of
light by the open doors I recognized him as Colonel Farwell, the younger
brother of Lord Marlyn and a frequent guest of my uncle in Princes
Gardens.
"I wonder whether you gentlemen can tell me where Lord Loring's to be
found?" he began. "Hallo, Oakleigh! I didn't see it was you. This is
providential. You needn't bother Loring, but I should be greatly obliged
if you could lay hands on my young nephew."
"I'll find him for you," I said. "I hope there's nothing wrong."
"There's no fresh news, if that's what you mean, but things are looking
pretty serious. I hear that Germany has declared herself in a state of
war."
"The Fleet's been ordered to take up war stations," I told him.
"You've heard that too? Well, the Army will be the next thing, and I
should rather like to get Jack back to London. I can't come in with
these clothes, but if you'd take him a message---- Don't make a fuss to
frighten the women, of course."
I found Summertown finishing a bachelor supper with Charles Framlingham
of the Rifle Brigade. Farwell's message seemed equally applicable to
both and was received by both with equal disfavour.
"To declare war in the middle of supper is not the act of a gentleman,"
Framlingham pronounced.
He came out on to the terrace, notwithstanding, while I ran upstairs to
warn Loring what was afoot. When we returned, it was to find six dutiful
but protesting young officers pulling coats and rugs over their evening
dress and struggling for corner seats in the car.
"I'm dreadfully sorry to break up your party, Loring," Farwell called
out as they glided away amidst a subdued chorus of apologies and adieux.
Loring turned to me interrogatively.
"The Duchess of Richmond's Waterloo Ball," I remarked.
"We must keep things going upstairs," he said, turning back into the
house. "On my soul, I can't see what it's all about. What's it got to do
with us? If Servia and Austria _want_ to fight, and we aren't strong
enough to stop them, why! good heavens! let's keep out of it like
gentlemen! Why the deuce are we being so officious with our Fleet?"
It was one o'clock when we re-entered the ballroom, and so successfully
did we keep things going that we supped for the last time in broad
daylight, and our guests left at five.
O'Rane insisted on a march-past in honour of Loring and Violet, and we
ran down a line of sixteen cars with a tray of glasses and five bottles
of champagne. As each car passed the door, there was a burst of cheering
and the glasses flashed to the toast; from Loring on the top step,
standing arm in arm with Violet, came an acknowledging cheer, and the
cars swept forward to the turn of the drive, where O'Rane and I were
posted. A shower of champagne glasses poured from the windows, to
describe a dazzling arc in the morning sunlight and fall with greater or
less precision into our hands or on to the flower-beds behind us. Above
the cheering and the throb of the engines came the sound of a piano and
Valentine Arden's voice:
"Dixie! all abo-o-oard forr Dixie,
Dixie! Tak you-rr tickuts heere forr Dixie!"...
II
I went to bed at six with the syncopated rhythm of the song jerking and
jigging along every nerve of body and head.
When I awoke at noon on the Saturday, the papers were brought me with my
tea, and I struggled sleepily to read reason into the day's record of
diplomatic wrangling. Eminently moderate proposals were met by
statements of irreducible minima, and in the ensuing deadlock our
ambassadors surged forward like a Greek Chorus with ineffectual pleas
for patience and the avoidance of irretrievable steps. Any cynic among
the combatants must have laughed himself feeble at our resourceful
accommodations and fertile readjustments. There was no power we were not
prepared to placate, no ruffled plumage we did not hold ourselves
competent to smooth. And so far as I could then see, it was an affair of
ruffled plumage, no more and no less.
A tired restlessness settled on our shrunken numbers at luncheon, and in
the afternoon I asked Bertrand by wire to take pity on a man five miles
from a station and to send me news as it was made public. We were
sitting at tea under the elm trees at the back of the house when a
footman appeared with a salver in his hand. O'Rane leapt to his
feet--and subsided with a mutter of disappointment when the telegram was
brought to me.
"Read it aloud!" they all cried, as I tore open the envelope.
"'Germany reported to have declared war on Russia,'" I said and saw
Violet cover her face with her hands.
Mayhew put down his cup and lit a cigarette.
"I was wrong yesterday," he admitted. "I thought Russia'd climb down.
Jim, I must ask you to excuse me. I shall have to get back to Budapest."
O'Rane walked to my chair and took the telegram from my hands.
"Germany--reported--to--have--declared--war--on--Russia," he repeated.
"Germany the aggressor, in other words. That means France will come in."
Amy jumped to her feet and then sat down again.
"I--I don't understand it!" she exclaimed. "It's all so inconceivably
wicked. Just because a wretched little country like Servia...."
She broke off and sat interlacing her fingers and frowning perplexedly.
"Don't be too hard on Servia, Lady Amy," Mayhew said and told her his
version of the Serajevo murders.
"And don't be too hard on even Austria," added O'Rane softly when the
story was done. "I'm none so sure it was Austria that baited the trap.
When you see how keen Germany is to keep the quarrel fanned----"
"And bring France in at one door and Russia at the other?" Loring
interrupted sceptically. "The one combination Bismarck schemed to
avoid?"
"Bismarck's dead," O'Rane flung back. "And Russia won't be mobilized for
weeks. If once they break through, the Germans can march to Paris and
back again while she's getting ready. It's a gamble, but she had to
gamble sooner or later. No country on earth could stand her rate of
preparations. _If_ they can break through.... Where's a map, Jim? I want
to see the length of line from Belgium to Switzerland. Of course, if the
French can hold them for a month----"
"France hasn't _declared_ war yet," I called out as they hurried away.
Neither checked his pace at my words. Heaven knows! I paid little enough
attention to them myself. At best it was an exercise in whistling to
keep up courage.
When they had gone, Mayhew slipped quietly away, and in half an hour a
car was at the door, and we went round to the front of the house to bid
him good-bye. Lady Loring, who had spent the afternoon in her room, came
down for a moment, and I saw that her eyes were red and her placid,
pretty face haggard with distress.
"Why must it be, George?" she whispered, pointing over the valley to the
blue haze of the Gloucestershire hills. "It's all so peaceful here....
And there must be thousands of places like this all over Europe--with
men coming home through the fields in the cool of evening.... Why must
they start blowing each other to pieces when none of them knows what
it's all about? Who can be wicked enough to take the responsibility?"
"We appear to have done our best to stop it," I said. "It seems as
though there's something of the mad dog in every man."
Lady Loring smiled wistfully.
"Not in my husband, George. Were you too young to remember him? It's not
quite fifteen years since he was killed, and I often wonder what good
his death did. What _would_ have happened if there'd been no South
African War?"
"A great many fine lives would have been spared," I said. "And what good
will it do to slaughter the manhood of Russia, France, Germany ...? It's
the _size_ of the modern army that appals me, Lady Loring."
"Thank God we aren't called on to swell the slaughter," she replied.
By Sunday morning our further reduced party was in the profoundest
depression. While Violet and the Lorings were at Mass, I motored to
Chepstow with O'Rane and Val Arden in search of papers. We returned with
moist, ill-printed sensational weeklies that the others had never before
seen and with heads pressed close together we studied the sinister type,
repeating the headlines under our breath and gradually chanting them in
a falling dirge. Bertrand's tentative announcement was confirmed, and on
the assumption that France would come to the assistance of her ally,
German troops were massing in stupendous numbers on the Rhine frontier.
"Some of them actually on French soil!" Loring exclaimed and read on.
"Pouring into Luxembourg.... Isn't Luxembourg a neutral, Raney?"
"_A la guerre comme à la guerre_," murmured O'Rane. "So's Belgium, if
you come to that; but they're asking leave to march through and, if
leave's refused, they'll dam' well take it." He dropped the paper and
walked up and down the room with his hands in his pockets. "The war'll
be over in a fortnight if they advance simultaneously from north and
east; it'll be another Sedan. _We_ can't allow that."
"For God's sake don't drag us in!" Loring exclaimed.
O'Rane faced him with amazement in his black eyes.
"But we can't see the whole of northern France in German hands, plus,
say, a five hundred million indemnity for the trouble. How long d'you
suppose it would be before _our_ turn came? You can build the hell of a
lot of ships with five hundred millions."
Loring was silent. We were all silent as the new possibilities floated
gigantically within our vision. Eight-and-forty hours before we had
discussed a pair of political assassinations in an outlying province of
the Austrian Empire; we were now to consider the prospect of Europe's
greatest military power establishing naval bases from Cherbourg to
Dunkirk. So a man, straying too near an unfenced engine, might watch in
fascination as wheel bit into wheel and the cogs engaged inexorably for
his destruction.
"And Mayhew told us Russia wasn't ready," murmured O'Rane.
"Oh, well," I said, "I've spent six years telling people that democracy
wouldn't fight democracy."
"If once we have to start eating our words----" Loring began, and ended
with a shrug of the shoulders.
I never recall a longer morning. We sat in the garden after breakfast,
reviving the memories of the dance and making plans for Violet and Jim;
without warning our feverish voices would stammer and stop, as with the
gag of unskilled players while the stage waits. After a moment's
restless silence we would break into pairs in answer to a common tacit
summons, and Amy and I rounding the corner of the terrace would meet Jim
and Violet, long-faced and distraught.
"You know this is simply appalling!" one of us would say. We had all
said it by luncheon-time.
The afternoon brought variety and a deputation of three from the
Neutrality League--the shortest lived and not least pathetic body with
which I have been associated. It was introduced by Dillworth, the
red-bearded, uncompromising Socialist at whom I had gazed more in pity
than anger during my first session--Rayston, the Quaker chemical
manufacturer, spoke second, and the third of the party was Braddell, who
rose from journalistic obscurity by demonstrating the economic
impossibility of war. They had coopted a considerable committee of
recalcitrant Radicals, pacificist divines, two professors from
provincial universities and the usual unclassified residue that is
flattered to be asked for its signature to a memorial. Their journey
from London by a stopping train was to be explained by my association
with "Peace" and by the perfidy of my uncle, who saw them from his
dining-room window and locked himself in his room with an internal
chill. The chill, he gave them to understand from the lips of Filson,
the butler, would outlast them, but they were always at liberty to
interview me if they cared to visit Loring Castle, Chepstow.
A difficult meeting was not made the easier by the fact that I
entertained a certain admiration for Dillworth. He was transparently
honest, and we had on more than one occasion worked amicably in the
interests of "Peace." I had no idea what line Bertrand proposed to take
with our paper but, presuming that he left me a free hand, I spoke my
thoughts as they were beginning to crystallize--and proved guilty of
that inconsistency which is the unforgivable sin in the eyes of such
doctrinaries as made up my deputation.
Their speeches invited my collaboration in a manifesto declaring our
detachment from the European quarrel. We were to silence the
increasingly aggressive tone of our diplomatic correspondence, to warn
the Government of France that it must look for no assistance in a wholly
unnecessary war, to detach Russia and eventually leave Servia to pay
the penalty of her crimes.
"_Her_ crimes?" I echoed, for my mind was full of Mayhew's grim story of
the murders.
"Surely," answered Dillworth. "I'm a Socialist, Mr. Oakleigh, and I'm a
Republican, but I flatter myself I've got some little imagination. If
you'd seen years of sedition in Afghanistan, if you were told that
Afghans had murdered the Prince of Wales as he toured the North-West
Frontier Provinces--it's no good shaking your head, sir--you'd call for
securities no whit less sweeping than those that Austria is demanding.
I've attacked Russia more than once for tyranny, but I never thought I
should attack her for supporting political assassination."
I tried to waive causes and concentrate his mind on results.
"Will you acquiesce in the German occupation of Paris and Cherbourg?" I
asked.
Rayston plunged his hand into the capacious pocket of his overcoat,
produced a sheaf of cuttings and read me extracts from my own articles
on Germany as a land of peace and potential friendliness.
"Is that true or is it not?" he demanded.
"I believed it true when I wrote it," I said.
"Has the whole nation changed in a week?" he demanded, flinging out his
arms.
"I've changed my opinion of the nation."
"In seven days--after holding it as many years? It doesn't take much to
shake your faith."
"It takes a good deal," I answered. "Unfortunately a good deal was
forthcoming. In respect of your manifesto, I don't want war; I hate the
idea of it; we must do all in our power to keep out of it. But I don't
know the limits of our power or the obligations of the Entente. If our
hands were free, I'm disposed to let France fight her own battles; if
we're bound by treaty, there's no more to be said. Of course, if the
Germans try to get through Switzerland or Belgium, that introduces a new
factor, and we look only at the question of policy. I submit that it is
not good policy to have another Sedan, and I think manifestos and
counter-manifestos may well be postponed till the Government has given a
lead."
Dillworth picked up his hat and buttoned his coat deliberately.
"We counted on you, Mr. Oakleigh," he said.
"I am sorry to disappoint you," I said.
That night we tried to keep away from the state of Europe, but all paths
in conversation led back to the same point. The international position
of Luxembourg carried us to the library: histories called for atlases,
the armies at Sedan sent us to the "Statesman's Year Book," and we ended
with strategic railways, the population of Russia and our Expeditionary
Force.
"I wonder what these devils in Ireland are going to do?" Loring demanded
suddenly.
"And in India?" O'Rane added.
On Monday the German declaration of war on Russia was confirmed in the
papers, and we read that the unconditional neutrality of Belgium was
under discussion and that the Foreign Secretary would speak in the House
on the Bank Holiday afternoon. The momentary stimulus of news died away
like the ebbing strength of a cocaine injection. We revived on learning
that the German Embassy in London was endeavouring to localize the
conflict, but in the quick reaction I went to Loring and told him I
could no longer bear to be away from London.
"Stick it out till to-morrow," he implored me. "We'll all go up
together."
"Then for God's sake let's do something!" I cried impatiently. "Have a
car out.... Go somewhere.... You know, our nerves are going to pieces."
We drove out through Tintern to Monmouth and returned by way of Raglan,
Usk and Newport. It was a run of sixty or seventy miles through varying
scenery, yet every town and village presented the same appearance of
suspended animation. The holiday-makers stood about in irresolute knots
or walked up and down the desolate streets; carriages half filled with
women in white dresses halted at the corners of the roads, while the men
grouped themselves round the driver and argued fretfully where to go and
whether it was worth going anywhere at all. I thought suddenly of the
first time I saw Pompeii: I had always wondered how the inhabitants
looked when the first hot rain of ashes began to fall.
As we entered Chepstow on our way home, Loring halted the car and went
in search of news. Exploiting the freemasonry of the Press, I scribbled
my Bouverie Street address on a card and won admittance to the offices
of the "Chepstow Argus." The Foreign Secretary was delivering his
pronouncement, and the speech was being circulated in sections over the
wires. We walked through a warehouse filled with clamorous, quarrelling
newsboys, up a rickety staircase and into the composing-room, where we
read the introductory passages in manuscript over the compositors'
shoulders. Then we returned to the Editor's room and were handed sheet
after sheet as it was taken off the private wire. There was one with a
blue-pencilled line in the margin, and I read the passage aloud:
"'For many years we have had a long-standing friendship with France ...
how far that friendship entails ... an obligation, let every man look
into his own heart, and his own feelings, and construe the extent of the
obligation for himself.'"
"Have we or have we not pledged ourselves to help France if she's
attacked?" Loring demanded in perplexity.
"We have," I said.
"Then why doesn't he say so?"
"It's left as a point of honour," I suggested. "That rules out
discussion how the Government made virtual promises and never took the
country into its confidence. We needn't keep the others waiting any
longer. Our position's defined, and Germany goes forward at her own
risk."
We hurried out of the office and carried our news to the car at the
street corner.
"And what now?" asked Arden.
"Now nothing but the end of the world will keep us out of war," Loring
returned.
As we drove away, a woman's voice--I could not distinguish whose it
was--murmured:
"My God! Oh, my God!..."
III
"I'm afraid you've all had a sickening time," said Loring apologetically
after dinner that night, when he had suggested the break-up of the party
next day. Lady Loring had not left her room, and Amy's parting
instructions to us were not to hurry over our cigars as she and Violet
were going to bed.
"Let's hope it'll all be over when next we meet here," said Arden
conventionally.
"If we ever do," Loring murmured, half to himself, as he lit a cigar.
"Hang it all, we aren't at war yet," I said.
Loring shrugged his shoulders.
"Does it affect my point?" he asked. "If we fight, there'll be a bill of
hundreds, thousands of millions; and if we keep out of it, we shall
spend not much less preparing for our turn. I seem to see a quadrupled
Navy and universal service and a general arming to the teeth; and that
means an end of your big houses and cars and men-servants. A good thing
too, eh, Raney?"
"A very good thing." It was Val Arden who spoke. "You can afford it,
Jim, but I can't; and, honestly, if war comes and we're brought face to
face with reality, if we can give up pretending.... God knows, there's
nothing beautiful in war, and in my way I've tried to find beauty; the
destructiveness of war to a man who tries to create, even on the
smallest scale.... I don't say I haven't had a good time; up to a point
I've succeeded.... That's to say, for a man who was never at a public
school or university, and lived on four hundred and fifty a year paid
him by Arden, Lawrence & Younger, Wholesale Bootmakers, Northampton,
I've been taken pretty well at my own valuation--by being rather more
precious than the most precious people I met anywhere in society----"
"You're in a chastened mood to-night, Val," commented Loring. There was
something rather embarrassing in this sudden, uninvited avowal from the
enigmatic Arden.
"Aren't we all?" he asked.
"It comes a bit unexpectedly from you."
Arden drew meditatively at his cigar.
"I'm tired of it all, Jim," he said, with a weary sigh. "The whole
damned hothouse existence. On my honour, I almost wish I were a soldier
so that I could feel I had done man's work for one day of my life.... It
takes a time like this to show you how useless and untrained our class
is." He broke off to laugh at himself. "_Our_ class, indeed! Raney, you
know everything; is it possible for a man like me to get into the Army
nowadays?"
"Before a year's out, there'll be hardly a hale man _not_ in the Army,"
O'Rane answered.
"A _year_?" I echoed.
He turned to me quietly.
"Don't imagine this is going to be another seven weeks' war," he said.
"It's two empires, two civilizations, two ideals in conflict. There'll
be no truce till one or other has been annihilated. I've lived in
Germany and I know something of the German ideal; I've lived here and
watched the life that we all love--and revile; and I see the form of
future civilization balancing midway between the two as it balanced
before between Greek and Persian or Roman and Goth. Whatever any one of
us values most in life he'll have to risk--and it's long odds, very long
odds, he will lose it."
Loring studied his face attentively and then strolled to the window,
where he pulled aside the curtains and gazed out into the night. He
looked tired and worried, and, when he turned again to the room, it was
with the suggestion that we should go to bed.
"If the worst comes to the worst, I suppose we can only die once,
Raney," he said, putting his hand on the other's shoulder.
"I shan't be killed," answered O'Rane. "I've got too much to do first."
He bent forward and began blowing out the candles on the table until
only two remained alight, while the rest of us watched him as though he
were performing a rite. "If I'd been meant to be killed it would have
happened long ago. The fact that I'm still alive.... You fellows think
it's superstition, but it serves my purpose, and we needn't quarrel over
terms.... Good night, Jim; good night, Val.... George, I shall take you
for a breath of fresh air in the garden before we turn in."
It was eleven o'clock when we stepped on to the terrace, one before we
came in to bed, and for the first hour and three-quarters we walked arm
in arm without exchanging a dozen sentences. His phrase, 'the life we
all love and revile,' and the sudden sobering of Arden, had set me
thinking of my own life, and as a thing for which a man might die, it
seemed a mean and paltry ideal. At Melton and Oxford there had been at
least generous illusions, but my dreams had left me in London. The
pettiness and personal ambitions of the House, the artificiality and
extravagance of society, the lifelessness, the want of purpose, the
absence of enthusiasm, seemed to argue a dying civilization.
I thought of Loring and his dozen wasted years, but he at least was
marrying and in the upbringing of a family could look to find an object
and an interest. If the war-cloud passed, I should presumably drift on
as I had done before, dancing a little less, shooting a little more as
the years went by, and gossiping in Fleet Street to give me an excuse
for gossiping at the Club. Had I died that night, my record for a man of
education would not have been a proud one. My social groove, as I hinted
to O'Rane years before at Lake House, held me fast.
"I'm depressed, Raney," I said. "Our civilization as I see it would
never be missed. In place of religion we have controversies over ritual
or endowments or the Kikuyu decision; for art we have cubism, for music
a revue, for literature a sex novel. Sport and spending money and being
invited to the right houses are the only things we care about."
We walked on in silence for a few moments; then he said:
"Think again, old man."
"I've thought, Raney. Politics, society, journalism----" The thought of
Erckmann and the 'Ruban Bleu,' the memory of Sir John Woburn and the
Press Combine, choked me.
"There's a world outside London, old man," he said. "It's a large thing
you're condemning--the order of an empire where there's more personal
liberty, freedom of speech and thought and even-handed justice than
anywhere in creation. A race of degenerates seldom rules for long, and,
if it's the virtues of individuality that make our rule possible, you
must expect the vices of individuality to appear and drop their pebbles
into the wheels of the machine."
Again we walked on until the stable clock struck one. O'Rane looked at
his watch in surprise.
"I'd had no idea it was so late," he said. "I've been thinking--like
you."
"Or Jim, or Val Arden," I put in.
"Yes, and--like you--I'm depressed. Things move so slowly, George. I've
been so busy with my own affairs that I've hardly been near the House
since I was elected, and now there's likely to be war, and when that's
over I shall have to start again at the bottom. And there was a lot I
was in a hurry to do," he added regretfully.
"What _can_ you do with our social and political machine?" I demanded.
"It's made up of human parts," he answered, with a smile, "and every
human being has ears and a heart. In time I can make people listen to me
and, when they listen, I can do what I like with them."
"_I_ thought that before I made my first speech. You've not been broken
by the House of Commons yet, Raney."
"And I doubt if I shall ever have the chance. I didn't go up there
to-day because I doubted if I should ever be able to sit there again.
After all, that's only one platform, and Wesley, Newman, Tolstoi got on
without it. If the fire's inside you----"
"And how do you start?" I interrupted.
"On the simplest things. I've got a commonplace mind, George, with no
subtlety or cleverness, but it's frightfully hard to shake. From
experience I know that hunger and physical pain and disease and
indignity are terrible things--the whole world knows it--and we must put
an end to them. I've only learned two lessons in life, and they came to
me on the same day--I've told you about it before--when I fainted from
want of food, and a prostitute, dying of consumption, fed me. I don't
aim higher than that, old man--to put an end to human suffering. There's
little a man can't do by example and teaching, if he knows how to touch
primitive imagination.... I'm quite commonplace; I've got the
temperament of a Salvation Army man--and like him I can make people
shout, or laugh, or tremble, or cry."
Once again I put a question that I had asked him years before in
Ireland.
"What can you do with me, Raney, or a hundred thousand other low-flying,
unimaginative, class-conscious souls, steeped in materialism and taught
from childhood to repress emotion? To get rid of selfishness and muddle,
to make us alert and sympathetic, you must change human nature--set the
world in the path of one of Wells' comets----"
"And can't you see the comet approaching?" He stood still, with hands
outstretched, appealing, and in his eye shone the light of a visionary.
"We shall fight to preserve an ideal, side by side, with disregard of
class-consciousness. We shall fight to maintain our toleration and
justice, and so that no man may ever have to fight again. Do you think
we can come back with the scream of a shell in our ears to take up the
old narrowness and futility? Shall we re-establish a social barrier
between men who've undertaken the same charge? Shall we save this
country from invasion so that sweated labour may be perpetuated?" His
voice had grown quicker and quicker until he stopped suddenly, panting
for breath. "George, you don't know the soul of a people."
"I knew it before the comet."
"You don't know its capabilities."
"I hope you will prove me wrong, Raney."
On the following morning Arden, O'Rane, Loring and I returned to town.
That Tuesday was the last of the Five Days since Germany declared
herself in a state of war, the twelfth--only the twelfth--since the
Austrian ultimatum. We all of us felt that we should at least get our
news some hours earlier than at Chepstow, and for my own part I had to
see what policy Bertrand proposed to adopt with "Peace." Also, I had
wired at length to the Whips' Office, telling young Jellaby to take a
note of my name in case any overworked Minister came in search of
volunteers for his department.
On our way up we read the full text of the previous day's speeches. They
added little to our knowledge, but the sensationalism of all Fleet
Street could hardly smear the bold outline of the Commons' scene. As
well as if I had been there, I could visualize the haggard faces on the
Treasury Bench as the Foreign Secretary expounded a situation that
momentarily changed and acquired new complexity. I could almost see him
phrasing his speech as he hurried to the House and discarding sentence
after sentence as an eleventh-hour dispatch was handed him to read on
the way. The speech itself breathed an air of fever, like the news of
the Indian floods in 1903, when at one end of the line I read scraps of
a message transmitted from a station that was swept away before the end.
I knew something, too, of my House of Commons and its glorious
uncertainty; to some extent I could guess at the feelings of a man who
called for its decision in an unexpected war.
On reaching Paddington I sent my luggage to Princes Gardens and drove to
the Club for luncheon. The extended Bank Holiday gave the streets an
unfamiliar aspect, like an industrial town at the beginning of a
lock-out. My driver took me round through Cockspur Street, and I found
the White Star offices thronged with Americans newly mindful of the
Monroe Doctrine. They pressed forward in a vociferous queue and, as the
first arrivals fought their way back into the street, they could have
sold their passage tickets ten times over at their own price.
In a block by the Crimean Monument I heard my name called, and
Summertown passed with a hurried wave of the hand. I had seen him in
mess uniform a dozen times when dining with the King's Guard; this was
the first occasion on which I had met him dressed for active service. It
was also the last time I saw him alive. All the way down Pall Mall I saw
unfamiliar khaki on men I had never regarded as soldiers, and, as I
mounted the steps of the Club, Tom Dainton ran down and engaged my
vacant taxi, only pausing to murmur in his deep voice:
"Bore about this war, isn't it? I'd arranged to take my wife to
Scotland."
The Club itself was reconciled to the inevitable, and the members
forestalled the Government by some hours in issuing their ultimatum. I
heard such names as 'Wilhelmshaven,' 'The Sound' and 'Kiel' being flung
about with age-long familiarity by some, while others turned furtively
to an atlas or inquired angrily why no geography was taught in the
public schools. A group of barristers, flannel-suited for the Long
Vacation, stood in one corner prophesying a shortage of food; and before
long Crabtree, whom I had not seen half a dozen times in as many years,
detached himself and cashed a cheque in the dining-room to the limit set
by the Club rules. More than one father of a family, following his
example, wrote unpractical grocery orders or dispatched tinned tongues
to helpless dependents in the country. From food shortage to bread riots
was a short step, and I overheard a circle of Civil Servants discussing
the early enrolment of special constables.
The long 'Parliamentary' table in the dining-room was in a condition of
crowded excitement, and each new-comer brought a fresh list of the
Ministers who had resigned and the reasons for which they had wobbled
back into the fold. Nowhere did I hear it suggested that war was
avoidable, hardly anywhere that it should be avoided, though two Radical
members who had consistently voted against the increased naval estimates
in 1909 declaimed against the dispatch of land forces and asserted that
all must be left to a happily invincible Fleet.
In the first year of the war I often marvelled at the uncritical
credulity of educated men who believed and handed on every rumour or
theory of the moment--from the execution of Admirals in the Tower to the
certain arrival of Cossacks in Berlin by Christmas. I lay no claim to
superior wisdom, as for six months I myself believed all such stories as
simply as I afterwards rejected true with false. From the day of the
ultimatum there was a ready disposition to canvass opinions without
considering their worth, and before the end of luncheon I was ladling
out second-hand judgements on the French cavalry or on reputed defects
of meeting recoil as observed in the practice of German field artillery.
Had I not been absent from the Club for nearly a week? Must I not be
presumed to have new information or fresh points of view?
As I paid my bill, Jellaby hurried up with the suggestion that I should
report next day at the Admiralty.
"Is war quite certain?" I asked.
"As certain as anything in an uncertain world," he answered.
In the smoking-room I retired to a corner to read the latest telegrams
and drink my coffee in solitude. One was as impossible as the other, and
lest I be thought to exaggerate I will not say how many men pursued me
to find out what I had been discussing with Jellaby. I should be sorry
even to guess at the number of unknown men who entered into
conversation, but I cannot forget the omnipresence of Sir Adolf
Erckmann. In less worthy moments I suspect him of deliberately
displaying what he conceived to be sufficiently flamboyant patriotism to
obscure the unhappy circumstance of his name. Certainly he edged from
one end of the room to the other, unsparingly subjecting man after man
to an unvarying monologue.
"These Chermans wand a lezzon," he grunted into his beard. "And we'll
give id 'em, hein? They thought Bridain wouldn't gom in. We gan dell a
differend story, hein?"
His scarlet face and head, bronzed with the wind and sun of his recent
tour on the Continent, was moist with exertion by the time he penned me
in my corner.
"How long is it going to last, Erckmann?" I asked--with some idea of
testing the resources of his English.
"How long?" he repeated, pulling truculently at his tangled beard. "A
month, hein? Doo months ad the oudside. I'm a bangker, my boy. I know,
hein? If they doan'd ged to Baris in a vordnide, they're done, zmashed,
pancrupd. You ead your Grizmas dinner in Berlin, hein?"
I resisted the obvious retort and made an excuse to get home to my
uncle.
IV
The first news I received on reaching Princes Gardens was that my uncle
was unwell and wished to see me at once.
"No, sir, I can't tell you no more than that," said Filson tearfully,
and I judged that to serve Bertrand had been a task of difficulty during
the past five days.
I found my uncle seated in his bedroom with a rug over his knees,
conspicuously doing nothing. Little threads of blood discoloured the
whites of his eyes, and he seemed curiously shrunken and old. He looked
at me in silence for a few moments after I had shut the door, then
remarked carelessly:
"I thought it would last my time, George."
"If we live to the end of it we shall have seen the last war," I
answered.
He snorted derisively.
"Till next time! As long as you let children point loaded pistols...."
He broke off and sat staring before him.
"Filson told me you'd been seedy," I said.
"Oh, if you talk to a fool like Filson!" my uncle exclaimed. "I went
down to the House yesterday...." He paused and murmured to himself, as
though unconscious of my presence. "We couldn't help ourselves, you
know. I don't see what else we could have done.... I was down there,
George, and walked home thinking it all over and, when I got in, I
tumbled down in the hall. Good God! if a man mayn't fall about in his
own hall ...! Filson was rather surprised, but I'm perfectly all right."
He kicked away the rug and drew himself shakily erect. "Seventy-nine,
George, but I must live a bit longer--till the Kaiser's been strangled
in the bowels of the Crown Prince.... By all that's holy, if I were
fifty years younger!"
There was something pathetically terrible in his disillusionment and
anger with all things created. As he stood with clenched fists trembling
above his head, I saw his body sway and sprang forward to catch him.
"You must take things a bit easy, Bertrand," I said.
"When you're my age ..." he began. "Bah, you never will be, your lot
dies off like so many flies. Another five years will see you out, and on
my soul I think you're to be envied. I've lived long enough to see
everything I cared for shattered. We've got war at our doors, and,
before it's been going on six weeks, mark my words! personal liberty
will be at an end, you'll be under a military despotism, the freedom of
the Press.... By the way, I sent some neutrality lunatics to see you on
Sunday."
"I'm afraid I didn't give them much satisfaction," I said. "Look here,
Bertrand, about this paper----"
"What paper?"
"'Peace.'"
"There's no such paper. Don't stare, George; you look as if you were
only half awake. 'Peace,' indeed ...! Why, my God! I've at least
outgrown _that_ phase. I telephoned to M'Clellan to bring me the
electros for the headings and I went through the damned mocking things
with a hammer!" He paused to breathe heavily, with one hand pressed to
his side. "I think I'd rather be alone for the present, old boy," he
went on, with sudden gentleness. "You go off and amuse yourself at the
Club, you're too young to be in the same room as my thoughts. If you've
got your securities pass-book, you might do worse than jot down what you
think your income's likely to be the next few years. Don't be too
optimistic about it, you can run a pencil through three-quarters of your
investments abroad. I've given everybody notice here, to be on the safe
side; and you'll be well advised to overhaul your expenditure."
I was half-way through my dressing when Mayhew telephoned to invite me
to dinner at the Penmen's Club. He had lived night and day at the
"Wicked World" office since leaving Chepstow, quarrelling, arguing and
bribing to get leave to go abroad.
"And now I'm at a loose end," he told me, as we stood in the hall
waiting for O'Rane and Loring. "The Press Combine is going to work all
it knows to get Kitchener put into the War Office, and from what I
remember of Omdurman and South Africa, war correspondents aren't at a
premium with him. It's so hard to get out of this damned country at
present, or I should be half-way to St. Petersburg by now."
I told him of my uncle's decision to discontinue "Peace," and he
whistled regretfully.
"Poor old Fleet Street!" he exclaimed. "There's a bad time coming for
the parasites. The 'Wicked World' has sacked half its men, including me,
and the chief proposes to write the paper himself."
"That's a bit stiff," I said.
"And it's not as though I were a new-comer," he continued aggrievedly,
"or hadn't brought off one or two fair-sized scoops in the last few
years. Hallo, here's Raney!"
Loring arrived a few moments later, and we went into dinner. I had to
remind myself that three out of the four of us had travelled up from
Chepstow the same morning and that, for all the transitions of the day,
war had not yet been declared and Germany had till midnight to frame a
reply to our ultimatum.
"Never let it be said that the British race is not adaptable," Loring
remarked, when I told him of my intended descent on the Admiralty. "I've
spent my afternoon trying to get a commission."
"Any luck?"
"They said I was too old, so I'm to have a staff appointment. Raney and
Val Arden will shortly be seen swanking about as Second Lieutenants of
the Coldstream Guards. Youth will be served! What the devil does a staff
captain have to do?"
"Or a Civil Servant?" I asked.
"Oh, you're all right; you just turn up at twelve and go out to lunch
till three. I've been really busy to-day. I've offered House of Steynes
and the places at Chepstow and Market Harborough to the War Office as
hospitals. Mamma will run one, Amy another and Violet the third----"
"Hospitals?" I murmured.
In the South African War the wounded had died or been nursed back to
life thousands of miles from England. It required an effort of
imagination to visualize men like Tom Dainton or Summertown, whole and
hale one day, under fire forty-eight hours later and perhaps back in
England by the end of the week, crawling north from Southampton or
Portsmouth by hospital train, broken and maimed for life. Perhaps all
our imaginations were working on the same lines, for after a pause
Loring changed the subject by asking where O'Rane had spent his time.
"City," was the short answer.
"Things pretty bad?" I asked.
"Neither a borrower nor a lender be," he replied. "I'm fairly sorry for
my own firm, but Heaven help anyone with much money out that he wants to
get back quickly. They talk of closing the Stock Exchange and declaring
a moratorium."
"The Club was a sad sight at lunch-time," I said. "Everybody talking
about moving into a smaller house or giving up his car----"
Mayhew threw back his head and laughed.
"The one good thing I've heard to-day!" he cried. "Do you men know an
objectionable fat youth named Webster? He came to the 'Wicked World'
office this morning and tried to stick us with a long, tearful account
of his escape from Germany. Apparently he had no end of a time getting
away, and the Germans commandeered a brand new Rolls-Royce and kicked
him over the frontier on foot."
"And I had half-made up my mind to take a cure at Nauheim," I said
reflectively.
"You're well out of it," said Mayhew. "We had a curious story in the
office to-day from Switzerland--rather a sinister business if it's true.
A party of Americans--father, mother and two daughters--were motoring
through Germany when the state of war was declared. They were held up,
arrested and deprived of their car. A few hours later the parents were
released and sent under escort to the frontier in a carriage with the
blinds down. The girls have never been seen again."
It was the first of many similar stories, and I have no idea how much
truth it contained. None of us yet appreciated the lengths to which
'civilized warfare' could be carried, but one of the things that change
little throughout the centuries is the position of women in the midst of
armed troops.
The active life of the Penmen's Club was from six till eight and again
from one till three in the morning. By the time we had finished dinner
the coffee-room was deserted, and I suggested an adjournment to the
Eclectic to await midnight and the answer of the German Government. Time
was no object, and we walked slowly down Fleet Street and the Strand.
Opposite Romano's a piano organ was grinding out its appointed six
tunes, and a ring of urchins held hands and danced up and down the
gutter singing:
"Dixie! All abo-o-oard for Dixie!"
"Damn that song!" Loring exclaimed irritably.
By Charing Cross we halted to let the traffic pour out of the station
yard, and I felt myself touched on the shoulder.
"Surely George Oakleigh? You don't remember me?"
I looked at a shabby, thin man with bearded face and restless eyes.
Then we shook hands, and I whispered to Loring over my shoulder to take
the others on to the Club and await me.
"That was Jim Loring, wasn't it?" asked the shabby man eagerly.
"Yes, and the other two were Mayhew and O'Rane; they were some years
junior to us, of course. Quite like the old days in Matheson's,
Draycott?"
He nodded and glanced bemusedly at the glaring lights of the Strand and
the thundering stream of traffic.
"I've not seen you since I cut you in the Luxembourg Gardens a dozen
years ago," he said.
"I doubt if I've been in Paris six times since then," I answered.
"And I've not been in England at all. I'm--I'm liable to arrest, you
know, but they made a clearance of us from Boulogne. We were a sorry
crew, Oakleigh."
"What are you going to do now?" I asked. "I'll see you through as far as
I can."
My hand was moving to my pocket, but he stopped me with a gesture.
"I don't want money, old chap."
"You look as if you wanted a square meal, Draycott."
He laughed with a bitterness in which there was little pride.
"And a bath. And some new clothes. I shall get 'em all in a few days."
"What are you going to do?" I repeated. "If I may advise you, you've
been out of this country long enough for Scotland Yard to regard you
leniently. If you go to them frankly----"
He shook his head decisively.
"I've no doubt they'd let me stay here if I behaved myself, but it's no
good. I can't get back to my old position, there are too many people who
remember me. I should never have stopped Jim Loring as I stopped you.
No, I'm going vaguely into the Midlands, to some recruiting office----"
"They won't take you," I interrupted. "You're my age, you're
thirty-five."
"I'm twenty-nine for the purposes of the Army," he answered. "And, if
that's too old, I'm twenty-seven. I shall take this beard off, of
course. But, look here, I'm keeping you----"
"I want to see you again, Draycott," I said, as we shook hands.
"Better not. And don't tell those other men. It was just a--a whim. We
were always rather pals at Melton, you know...."
Nearly a year later Corporal Draycott of the Midland Light Infantry was
recommended for a Distinguished Conduct Medal, but before the dispatch
reached England he was dead of dysentery in the plague pit of Gallipoli.
When I reached the Club it was to find the same new spirit of
gregariousness that I had noticed at luncheon, but in an intensified
degree. The old antipathies were forgotten, and from the crowded hall to
the echoing gallery stretched a living chain of eager, garrulous men. I
passed from one to another under a hail of questions, as my own
great-grandfather may have done a century before when 'the town'
gathered beneath that same roof to await news of Leipzig.
Loring had taken refuge in the deserted card-room, and we had been
sitting there raking over the old possibilities for half an hour when
the door opened and Sir Roger Dainton entered in uniform.
"I've been looking for you all the evening, George," he exclaimed.
"I--look here, I want your uncle to do me a favour. I've been to his
house, but they told me he was seedy. I _can't_ get any news of Sonia."
O'Rane sat upright in his chair, scattering a cloud of flaky cigar-ash
over his trousers. His face was hidden as he leant forward to brush it
away, but I wondered whether he was recalling with me Mayhew's story of
the missing American girls.
"But I thought she was home," I said. "Webster's back, and I was talking
to Erckmann here after lunch."
"She stayed behind," Dainton told me. "It's a long rigmarole, and I'll
go into it later. I've been to the Foreign Office and simply couldn't
get past the door. I was thinking that as your uncle rather had the ear
of the Ministry.... You see, I'm mobilized, so I can't do much myself.
Sonia's been wiring all over the place--Bayreuth, Munich, Heaven knows
where, giving a different address each time. Where she is at present, I
haven't the faintest idea."
I knew that neither Bertrand nor I could help him, but for very civility
I had to offer him the chance of seeing my uncle. O'Rane followed me
downstairs and helped me into my coat, observing dispassionately:
"This is a fool's errand, George."
"I don't need to be told that, Raney," I answered.
"I'm staying the night with Jim," he went on. "You might come and report
progress on your way to the Admiralty. As early as you like. We've no
time to lose."
"What do you propose to do?" I inquired, as we hurried into the hall.
He laughed at the question.
"Well, we can't very well leave Sonia in Germany, can we?" he asked. "At
least, _I_ can't. _Early_ to-morrow, mind. Good night, old man."