"You're worse even than I thought you!" Patrine said calmly to Patrine, "but now you know what he meant by what he said, you're not going to trust to Chance and Luck. You're going—for Uncle Owen's sake, and Aunt Lynette's, and Bawne's—and Mother's and Irma's and your own—don't pretend you're a victim!—to marry Sherbrand, the Flying Man!"
Not a notion of any possible or eventual wrong or injury to Sherbrand troubled her conscience. She had yet to develop on the side of moral sensitiveness. Responsibility towards God, and duty towards her neighbour—the sense of these two obligations that are the foundation and cornerstone of Christianity—had not as yet awakened in Patrine.
She liked Sherbrand. It troubled her more that he had not the cachet of one of the great public Schools, than to know him poor, with his four hundred per annum—as the proverbial church-mouse. But she herself was not altogether penniless. There would be a hundred and fifty pounds a year for Patrine when she married; derived from moneys bequeathed to his daughter's children by Grandpapa Lee Hailey, strictly tied up and protected by various legal provisos, from depredations on the part of the unknown possessive male.
Five hundred and fifty between them. Anyhow, she told herself, that was better than a jab in the eye with a burnt stick. How soon might the marriage be brought off? One must bend one's energies to the solving of that question. How many sleepless nights—they were horribly unbecoming!—lay between Patrine and Security? The Fear that lurked in her dried her palate at the question. She felt like the runner of a Marathon fainting in sight of the goal.
CHAPTER XLV
FLOTSAM FROM THE NORTH SEA
On Monday morning, July 20th, under a flying double-column of Naval Goody Two Shoes and aëroplanes, the King led forth his Fleets for tactical exercises in the Channel. There were pictures on the screens at the music-halls that night and for many nights after, that evoked from huge audiences tremendous outbursts of patriotic clapping. Hence first blood in the Great War scores to Lil, belonging to the most ancient of all professions—who had accepted the invitation proffered by a Teutonic stranger to join the familiar crowd on the Empire Promenade.
The German paid for drinks. A friend joined him. There were more drinks, and the two men began to talk, discussing the ultimatum expected from Austria-Hungary, and the inevitable refusal of Belgrade to eat Vienna humble-pie. War with Russia must ensue. They were cheering in Berlin that night for Krieg mit Russland.
"It must come sometime," said Lil's patron in an undertone to his crony. "Why then should it not happen now?"
"War with Russia means war with France!" the other returned in the same key.