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!"...