It sometimes seemed to Stella as if Chaliapine had brought on the war. Those last long golden summer days were filled with his music, and then suddenly out of them flashed the tents in the park, the processions of soldiers and bands, the grim stir that swept over London like a squall striking the surface of a summer sea.
The town hall did not collapse, but it shook. It was a place where, as a rule, the usual things took place, and even unusual things happened usually; but there were several weeks at the beginning of the war when all day long strange things happened strangely. Offices were changed, the routine of years was swept up like dust into a dust-pan, and a new routine, subject to further waves of change, took its place. Workers voluntarily offered to do work that they were unaccustomed to do. The council hall became a recruiting office. No. 8, the peculiar sanctum of the sanitary inspector, was given up to an army surveyor. Tramps asked the cashier questions. It was like the first act of "Boris Goudonoff." Even food was carried about on trays, and as for proclamations, somebody or other was proclaiming something all day long.
There was no religion and no dancing, but there was the same sense of brooding, implacable fate; it took the place of music, and seemed, without hurry and without pause, to be carrying them all along in a secret rhythm of its own toward an unseen goal.
Mr. Leslie Travers ruled most of the town hall committees, and he required innumerable statistics to be compiled and ready to be launched intimidatingly at the first sign of any opposition to his ruling.
Stella, to whom the work of compiling fell, had very little time to consider the war.
When she got home she usually went to sleep. From time to time she heard Mrs. Waring announcing that there was no such thing as war and Eurydice reciting battle-odes to Belgium.
For the first time in her life Eurydice shared a common cause. She was inclined to believe that England was fighting for liberty. She knew that France was, partly because France was on the other side of the channel and partly because of the French Revolution. The destruction of Louvain settled the question of Belgium. To Eurydice, whatever was destroyed was holy. Later on she became a violent pacifist because Mr. Bolt said that we ourselves were Prussian; but for the moment nobody, not even Mr. Bolt, had traced this evasive parallel.
Professor Waring wrote several letters to the papers, asking what precautions the Belgians were taking about Sanskrit manuscript. He had a feeling that King Albert, though doubtless an estimable young man and useful in the trenches, might, like most kings, have been insufficiently educated to appreciate the importance of Sanskrit. That men should die in large numbers to protect their country was an unfortunate incident frequent in history, but that a Sanskrit manuscript should be destroyed was a national calamity, for the manuscript could never be replaced.
He made an abortive effort to reach Belgium and see about it himself, but at the Foreign Office he was stopped by a young man with a single eyeglass, from whom the professor had demanded a passport. The exact expression used by this ignorant young person was, "I'm awfully sorry, sir, but I'm afraid just at present Sanskrit manuscript will have to rip."
Professor Waring promptly addressed letters of remonstrance and advice to several German professors upon the subject. They were returned to him after three weeks, with a brief intimation that he was not to communicate with the enemy. Professor Waring had considered German professors to be his natural enemies all his life; this had been his chief reason for communicating with them. He was fitted, as few officials in the Foreign Office can ever have been fitted, to point out to the German professors the joints in their armor.