By some whimsical freak of the brain, he suddenly asked himself whether he should not go to Greece instead of Holland, and enlist as a volunteer in the war against the Turks. He became on the instant immersed in adventurous military speculations. He had not fallen into the English habit of following the daily papers with regularity, and he was conscious of no responsibility whatever toward the events of the world at large, as Reuter and the correspondents chronicled them. Something of this new war in Thessaly, however, he had perforce read and heard. Of the circumstances and politics surrounding this latest eruption of the Eastern Question he knew little more than would any of the young Frenchmen of education among whom he had spent his youth. But in an obscure way, he comprehended that good people in Western Europe always sympathized with the Christian as against the Moslem. It seemed that some generous-minded young Englishmen were already translating this sympathy into action; somewhere he had seen an account of a party of volunteers leaving London for Athens, and being cheered by their friends at the station. Now that he thought of it, the paper in which he had read the report had ridiculed the affair as an undesirable kind of a joke—but the impulse of the volunteers seemed fine to him, none the less.
There ought to be some martial blood in his veins; the soldier-figure of his father rose before him in affirmation of the idea.
But no—what nonsense it was! If ever there had been a youth bred and narrowed to the walks of peace, he was that young person. He who had never struck another human being in his life, that he could remember—what would such a tame sheep be doing in the open field, against the unknown, ferocious Osmanli Turk? The gross absurdity of the picture flared upon him, momentarily—and then the whole notion of armed adventure had vanished from his mind.
His attention reverted to the letters—and now it seemed quite a matter of course that he should open them. The first three were of no importance. The fourth he regarded with wide-open eyes, after he had grasped the identity of the writer. He read it over slowly, more than once:
“27A Ashley Gardens, S. W., Monday.
“My Dear Mr. Christian Tower: I have taken this little place in town for the time being, and I shall be glad to see you when you are this way. To-morrow, Tuesday, is a day when I shall not be at home to other people—if you have nothing better to do.
“Yours very sincerely,
“Edith Cressage.”
Nothing better to do? Christian’s thoughts lingered rather blankly upon the phrase—until all at once he perceived that there could not possibly be anything better to do. He rose with decision, hurriedly gulped what remained of his second pot of beer, paid his bill and marched out with the air of a man with a mission.
In the hansom, he read the letter still again, and leaned backward to see as much as possible of himself in the little mirror at the side. His chin could not be described as closely shaven, and his garments were certainly not those of the afternoon caller. The resource of stopping at Duke Street occurred to him—but no! that would be too foolish. The whole significance of the day would be abolished, wiped out, by such a fatuous step. And he repeated to himself that it was a day of supreme significance. By comparison with the proceedings and experiences of this long and crowded day, the rest of his life seemed colorless indeed. And what was of most importance in it, he declared to himself, was not its external happenings, but the fine and novel posture of his liberated mind toward them. He was for the first time actually a free man. His enfranchisement had not been thrown at him by outsiders; it proceeded from within him—the product of his own individuality.