Mr. Harland, a colleague of Walter’s who lived in Hampstead too, used to come in and talk to Walter. He kept a chart with coloured maps as well.
Then came dismay at the retreat from Mons; suddenly one day as he was tracing out the line of ‘position in the rear,’ Walter stood still, and they stared at each other.
‘By Jove!’ said Mr. Harland.
And Walter said, ‘Good Lord!’
‘Will they get to Paris?’
‘Will they break through?’
I sat and watched them, and the new consternation was as unreal to me as the War itself had been at first.
Life went on for me, in a way, unbroken by the catastrophic events all round. My own life seemed to reassert itself from the general earthquake; my baby was as adorable, as absorbing as ever, and I enjoyed being back in my own home.
I remembered the South African War; it had been very sad, very terrible; my uncle Everard had been killed in it, he had been a soldier, but it was always remote; I could not believe Walter and Mr. Harland when they talked of an invasion of England, bombardment by air, cutting off of the food supplies.
I wondered often during those first weeks what Guy and Hugo were thinking of it all. They were at Yearsly, I believed, and George and Mollie; they had been going down there too. Ralph had been right, after all, that evening at Grandmother’s, and we had all laughed at him. It seemed odd already, that we had not understood what that Archduke’s murder would bring.