I went to bed at six with the syncopated rhythm of the song jerking and jigging along every nerve of body and head.
When I awoke at noon on the Saturday, the papers were brought me with my tea, and I struggled sleepily to read reason into the day's record of diplomatic wrangling. Eminently moderate proposals were met by statements of irreducible minima, and in the ensuing deadlock our ambassadors surged forward like a Greek Chorus with ineffectual pleas for patience and the avoidance of irretrievable steps. Any cynic among the combatants must have laughed himself feeble at our resourceful accommodations and fertile readjustments. There was no power we were not prepared to placate, no ruffled plumage we did not hold ourselves competent to smooth. And so far as I could then see, it was an affair of ruffled plumage, no more and no less.
A tired restlessness settled on our shrunken numbers at luncheon, and in the afternoon I asked Bertrand by wire to take pity on a man five miles from a station and to send me news as it was made public. We were sitting at tea under the elm trees at the back of the house when a footman appeared with a salver in his hand. O'Rane leapt to his feet—and subsided with a mutter of disappointment when the telegram was brought to me.
"Read it aloud!" they all cried, as I tore open the envelope.
"'Germany reported to have declared war on Russia,'" I said and saw Violet cover her face with her hands.
Mayhew put down his cup and lit a cigarette.
"I was wrong yesterday," he admitted. "I thought Russia'd climb down. Jim, I must ask you to excuse me. I shall have to get back to Budapest."
O'Rane walked to my chair and took the telegram from my hands.
"Germany—reported—to—have—declared—war—on—Russia," he repeated. "Germany the aggressor, in other words. That means France will come in."