His heart pounded with excitement. Vague sympathies, eager yearnings, and impatient impulses moved by turns in his breast. That which the newspapers had suspected had become fact. How could these people continue to dance in the face of such catastrophic news? He could not dance. He could only think and think, and wonder why, in the unexplorable depths of his heart, he was glad that war was come.
CHAPTER V.
A Visit to Lockwood.
“A military gent I see”—Thackeray, “The Newcomes.”
Four weeks of the European fury had become history, but as yet the district around Beulah preserved its accustomed indifference to outside influences. In staid self-sufficiency farmers garnered their harvest, for, if the war ever entered their heads, it was soon dismissed as a far-away happening which could never have relation to themselves. Great Britain had conducted campaigns before, when, as now, a veteran here or there might heed the alarm and be off to his favorite sport, but it was never dreamed that the inviolate aloofness of Lantern Marsh, for instance, could ever be affected.
Farm lands continued, as usual, to be bought and sold. Bard, after much careful barter, procured the valuable estate of William Henry McBratney for a sum which he might have been ashamed to confess, save for personal vanity over his own close bargaining. The purchase, however, ended in a disappointment, for, on offering it to his elder son as a proposed wedding endowment, he discovered that William was averse to marrying, and the newly acquired property had therefore to lie idle. Hired help was not to be had, since already the excitement of war was drawing floaters to the cities and Bard had to content himself with the thought that the war would soon be ended and that William might by then have discovered a woman whom he would be willing to marry.
Mauney found in the war the first successful antidote to his long existing boredom, for, except when he was working, he was reading the Merlton Globe and following events with keenest interest. One day at noon, a large, green motor-car drove suddenly up the lane, and two uniformed officers enquired of Bard if he had any horses to sell. It was to be an army purchase, and Bard, after sending them away empty, bethought himself seriously, with an air of brewing plans.
“Bill,” he said, “if this here war goes on, I’d like to own a few horses. But then,” he added, “’tain’t goin’ to last!”
Meanwhile, Mauney had heard that men were enlisting in Lockwood. Like a flash, he imagined the possibilities of offering himself as a recruit. It was the first time that he had connected the war in any way with himself, and it was mostly his long-cherished craving to leave home that made him do so. The first real breath of the actual war entered the Bard household one evening at supper when Mauney said to his father: