So little did Julian recognize this, he was asking if anybody seriously thought inconvenience was avoidable in the vast upheaval of war? He only wished that inconvenience was the worst that any of them might have to complain of. A second time he tripped up those "Foreign Office facts" of Gavan's. Julian knew about those "facts." "And I know certain others. They relate to ill-treatment too. Facts more easily examined. No trouble about subjecting those facts to every sort of test! Why? Because they were nearer home. Yet I doubt if the Foreign Office makes any note of them. I have—in haphazard way. But enough to sober any man." He produced two or three. Instances of harsh dismissal at a time when fresh employment was known to be impossible. Instances of boycott, of petty persecution, all because of a foreign name. It was the kind of attempt at sober balancing still possible even under the roof of a British official. A willingness as yet unshackled to see and to criticize these spots on the national sun, was accounted an attitude of mind peculiarly, proudly, British. If this particular circle was readier than most to admit these minor blames, it was largely because of sympathy with the particular German who was in their midst. A form of hospitality.
To Nan Ellis, Julian's espousal of the cause of the stranger within the gate was as music in the ear and as honey in the mouth. Good! good! She applauded him with hands and lips and eyes.
On leaving the dining-room, everybody began to put on hats and wraps.
"Oh, yes, hadn't you heard, Mr. Julian? Fearful excitement! A mine has been washed up on the coast. And you, Madge," urged her father, who needed no urging whatever, "you've got to come and look at it, too."
They all went down to the beach, and walked in the moonlight, by the incoming tide, a quarter of a mile north of the pier.
Miss Greta carried her coat on her arm at first. Would Mr. Napier be so kind? He stopped to help her into the voluminous white canvas ulster. "It isn't true, is it," she said in a low, earnest voice, "that you've joined an O. T. C. and go drilling in the park after working hours?"
"Plenty of men do that," he said, struggling to enable Miss Greta to find the armhole.
"Not men like you!" she whispered. "And when you aren't working with Sir William, you go route marching, or trench digging for a holiday!"
Napier had been one of the first of his world who refused to accept the fact of not being bred a soldier as an excuse for not becoming one. But that Miss Greta should be one of the few to know the fact did not please him. "Oh, the sleeve's wrong side out," he said; "that's why."
The ulster had to come off again. "Surely,"—she turned the sleeve with deliberation—"surely you know that before you are nearly ready for a commission, peace will be declared."