"Bah! They're all right. It's my beloved Austrians. I don't trust you a yard, old man, but unless I tell somebody I shall burst. If Austria makes war, she'll find a Foreign Legion fighting with the Servians; I've fixed the preliminaries, and a wire from town.... Ye gods! why don't they start the music? I want to dance with Violet, and the next time we meet I may not have any legs!" A chord several times repeated sounded from a distant piano—violins, followed by the deep note of a 'cello, began to tune up and along the drive below our open windows came the beat of throbbing engines, a sudden scrunch of tyres slowing down on gravel, a slamming of doors and a hum of voices. "At last!" cried O'Rane, springing to the door and running headlong into the ballroom.
We threw away our cigars, drew on our gloves and walked into the hall. Lady Loring and Amy stood at the stairhead and were joined a moment later by Violet and Jim, who took up their position a pace behind to one side. It was a small party, but for twenty minutes a procession of slight girls and smooth-haired, clean-shaven men ascended the stairs—curiously and characteristically English from the easy movements of the girls and the whiteness of their slender shoulders to the sit of the men's coats and the trained condition of their bodies. Good living, hard exercise and fresh air seemed written on every face; there was a wonderful cleanliness of outline and clarity of eye and skin; the last ounce of flabbiness had been worked away. And, like any consciously self-isolated section of society, they were magnificently at ease and unembarrassed with one another; sixty per cent. were related in some degree, and all appeared to answer to diminutives or nicknames.
"There's nothing to touch them in any country I know," murmured Mayhew, unconsciously giving expression to my thoughts. "Shall we go up?"
"In a moment," I said.
For a while longer I watched them arriving, the girls pattering up the steps with their skirts held high over thin ankles and small feet; their eyes showed suddenly dark and mysterious in the soft light of the great electric lamps, and eternal youth seemed written in their pliant, immature lines and lithe movements. Outside, the sky was like a tent of blue velvet spangled with diamonds. The Severn far down the valley side swirled and eddied in its race to open sea, and the moon reflected in the jostling waters shivered and forked like silver lightning. A scent of summer flowers still warm with the afternoon sun and gemmed with falling dew rose like a mist and enfolded the crumbling yellow stone and blazing windows behind me.
When the last car had panted away into the night, I heard a light step on the flagstones of the terrace, and Amy Loring slipped her arm through mine; the far-off hum of voices for a moment was still, and there followed an instant of such silence as I have only known in the African desert.
"There is an Angel of Peace," she whispered, "breathing his blessing over the house."
Then the band broke into the opening bars of a waltz.
We walked back and found Violet and Loring at the door of the hall, standing arm in arm and gazing silently, as I had done, on the tumbling waters of the Severn. We smiled, and on a common impulse he and I shook hands. Violet nodded as though she understood something that neither of us had put into words, and as we entered the hall Amy turned aside to kiss her brother's cheek.
"They're very happy," said Lady Loring when I met her at the stairhead.