"Every little helps," he said. "A whisper'll start an avalanche, as any mountaineer could tell you."
He took up the Nation of August 1st and began to read the editor's impassioned appeal to the country to stand out. The Colonel read the article twice over. There could be no question of the white-hot sincerity of the writer, and none that he voiced the sentiments of an immense and honest section of the country.
He put the paper down and walked home.
"If we don't go in," he said calmly to his wife at luncheon, "all I can say is, that I shall turn my back on England for ever and go and hide my head for the rest of my days on the borders of Thibet."
In those last days of peace good men and true agonised in their various ways. Few suffered more than the Colonel; none but his wife knew the agony of his doubt.
Then Mr. Trupp telephoned to say that Germany had sent an ultimatum to Russia, and that France was mobilising. Mr. Cambon had interviewed the King. The Government was still wavering.
The Colonel's course was evident. The little organisation for which he was responsible must express itself, if only in the shrill sharp voice of a mosquito. A meeting of the League must be convened. Tingling with hope, doubt, fear, shame, he set off in the evening to interview Alfred Caspar. Swiftly he crossed the golf-links and turned into Saffrons Croft. There he paused.
It was one of those unforgettable evenings magnificently calm, which marked with triumphant irony the end of the world. The green park with its cluster of elms presented its usual appearance on a Saturday afternoon. The honest thump of the ball upon the bat, so dear to English hearts, resounded on every side: the following cry—Run it out! the groups of youths sprawling about the scorers, the lounging spectators. Not a rumour of the coming storm had touched those serene hearts. Close to him a bevy of women and children were playing a kind of rounders. The batter was a big young woman whom he recognised at once as Ruth.
One of the the fielders was little Alice scudding about the surface of green on thin black legs like a water-beetle on a pond. Then Ernie saw him and came sauntering towards him, a child clinging solemnly to one finger of each hand. There was an air of strain about the old Hammer-man, as of one waiting on the alert for a call, that distinguished him, so the Colonel thought, from the gay throng.
"What about it, sir?" he asked gravely.