"Does it affect my point?" he asked. "If we fight, there'll be a bill of hundreds, thousands of millions; and if we keep out of it, we shall spend not much less preparing for our turn. I seem to see a quadrupled Navy and universal service and a general arming to the teeth; and that means an end of your big houses and cars and men-servants. A good thing too, eh, Raney?"
"A very good thing." It was Val Arden who spoke. "You can afford it, Jim, but I can't; and, honestly, if war comes and we're brought face to face with reality, if we can give up pretending.... God knows, there's nothing beautiful in war, and in my way I've tried to find beauty; the destructiveness of war to a man who tries to create, even on the smallest scale.... I don't say I haven't had a good time; up to a point I've succeeded.... That's to say, for a man who was never at a public school or university, and lived on four hundred and fifty a year paid him by Arden, Lawrence & Younger, Wholesale Bootmakers, Northampton, I've been taken pretty well at my own valuation—by being rather more precious than the most precious people I met anywhere in society——"
"You're in a chastened mood to-night, Val," commented Loring. There was something rather embarrassing in this sudden, uninvited avowal from the enigmatic Arden.
"Aren't we all?" he asked.
"It comes a bit unexpectedly from you."
Arden drew meditatively at his cigar.
"I'm tired of it all, Jim," he said, with a weary sigh. "The whole damned hothouse existence. On my honour, I almost wish I were a soldier so that I could feel I had done man's work for one day of my life.... It takes a time like this to show you how useless and untrained our class is." He broke off to laugh at himself. "Our class, indeed! Raney, you know everything; is it possible for a man like me to get into the Army nowadays?"
"Before a year's out, there'll be hardly a hale man not in the Army," O'Rane answered.
"A year?" I echoed.
He turned to me quietly.