"But no more bitter than my lot. Please go now. Human endurance has its limits. If you force me to mine I shall fling all to the four winds of heaven, and accept the fate marked out for me by the merciless tyrants who prevail at Berlin."
CHAPTER XXVI
RUXTON WINS A TRICK
It was the close of a long and busy day for both of them, and father and son, in the interim preceding dinner, under a bright moon, paced together the broad stone paths of the formal terrace gardens of Dorby Towers. For Ruxton the confined spaces of the house were suffocating. His nerves were on edge. His father, with the calm philosophy of his years, merely sought the fresh air which the work in his office denied him, even though it possessed the damp chill of an English autumn night.
"Anybody else besides Caistor coming for the week-end?" Sir Andrew's sidelong glance was penetrating.
"Lordburgh and Reginald Steele. There will be others—whom they may choose to bring."
His father's scrutiny was lost upon Ruxton, who seemed to have little inclination to talk. His interest in the week-end gathering seemed of the slightest.
"Well, Caistor and Steele will find plenty to interest them," Sir Andrew went on. "Lordburgh will probably content himself with the golf links."
"Lordburgh will spend his time at the yards," Ruxton said. Then he displayed an increased interest. "He's a Foreign Secretary who sees further than mere international policies. He's a man who believes that an adequate foreign policy can only be built on the foundations of a sound internal economic basis. Caistor and Steele are armament men of diverging opinions. Caistor pins his faith to weight of metal in surface craft, while Steele places the submarine before the heaviest guns. Both have sound enough reasoning, but, as I said, they are armament men. They cannot conceive that a non-military defence can ever offer sound possibilities. Both have been shaken up by the mercantile submersible project. But I think Lordburgh is the more impressed by it."