London itself, however, seemed little changed; even that much-discussed night-darkness hardly noticeable. Driving in the daytime we instinctively counted, with frowning glance, the number of stalwart young men out of uniform, and wondered how any girl could walk with them, much less smile upon them. And our eyes followed the soldiers with pride as they marched by, singing popular catches to inspire themselves in default of the band which the stern necessities of this war forbid. What fine fellows they are—so well set up, looking out with such steady vision upon the future which they have chosen! And the lilt of the merry tune, with what a deep note of pathos it strikes upon the ear!
Of course there are a great many soldiers about London, yet no more than in Jubilee time, and there is no greater excitement among them, and a good deal less among those who watch them pass, than in the days when it was all pomp and circumstance, and no warfare.
London does not carry the stamp of war about her, but we carry it each one of us in our hearts. That is why we sicken from the music-hall posters; why wrath and grief mingle in our minds at the sight of that bold-eyed community with its whitened face, its vulgar exaggeration of attire, and its unchecked and unashamed hunting of its prey; a prey sometimes visibly unwilling, sometimes pathetically, innocently flattered!
The Zeppelin menace has created no sense of apprehension in the town. The first night of our arrival we conscientiously prepared amateur respirators for ourselves and such of the famiglia as accompanied us. Pads of cotton-wool, soaked in a strong solution of soda, were placed within easy reach of the bedside. The next night we said “Bother!” and the third night we forgot all about it. Though the Signora, lying awake, had occasionally a half-amused speculation whether the throbbing passage of some more than usually loud traction-engine, or the distant back-firing of a belated taxicab, might not be the bark of the real wolf at last!
Our little white-haired housemaid, generally left alone to mind the London house, possesses this philosophic indifference. She made herself a respirator. We doubt whether she ever thinks of placing it handy. We believe she shares the view of the old nurse of a friend of ours into whose garden a bomb really and truly did drop during the recent raid on Southend.
“Frightened, miss? Lord bless you, no! I knew it was only them Germans!”
Nevertheless, though London is neither alarmed nor depressed, we set our faces towards the Villino again with a sense of relief. These days it is better to be in one’s own place; and in London we feel only visitors now. Yet, strangely, the country is far more full of the war than the town.
Beginning at Wimbledon, we meet motorcars filled to overflowing with bandaged, bronze-faced young men, who smile and wave their hands as we whizz by. Dear lads! Some from that greater England beyond the sea, more closely our brothers now than ever before, with ties cemented by the shedding of blood. Blut-Bruderschaft, indeed, you have pledged with us: a Teutonic rite put into practice after a fashion our enemies thought out of the range of possibility.
And presently we come to the camps. Here, where the pine-woods solitary marched, where the heather was wont to spread, crimsoning and purpling to the line of blue distance—a wonderful vision of wild scenery—here is a brown waste, peopled with a new town. Rows and rows of wooden huts run in parallel lines. Where the trees stood you cannot even guess; but once and again there is the smell of the raw wood, and you see a giant lying lopped of his branches. And the whole place swarms in activity. We pass hundreds of ammunition and gun carriages—the two-wheeled carts for the new howitzers—some already with the guns in place; long sheds where half a dozen smiths are busy shoeing, with groups of patient horses, shoulder by shoulder, waiting outside; we hear the clank of iron upon iron from within; we catch the vision of red fire upon the sleek flank and the brawny arms wielding the hammer. Horses everywhere, it seems—lines of them, picketed; horsemen coming and going: detachments riding up and down among the thickest dust that you have ever imagined; and waggons lumbering, some charged with fodder, some, as we pass, with loaves fresh from the baking. And now a traction-engine, filling the air with noise and smoke, driven by two grimy Tommies who shout at each other as they throb and bumble along, has to be dodged and left behind.