"Don't imagine this is going to be another seven weeks' war," he said. "It's two empires, two civilizations, two ideals in conflict. There'll be no truce till one or other has been annihilated. I've lived in Germany and I know something of the German ideal; I've lived here and watched the life that we all love—and revile; and I see the form of future civilization balancing midway between the two as it balanced before between Greek and Persian or Roman and Goth. Whatever any one of us values most in life he'll have to risk—and it's long odds, very long odds, he will lose it."
Loring studied his face attentively and then strolled to the window, where he pulled aside the curtains and gazed out into the night. He looked tired and worried, and, when he turned again to the room, it was with the suggestion that we should go to bed.
"If the worst comes to the worst, I suppose we can only die once, Raney," he said, putting his hand on the other's shoulder.
"I shan't be killed," answered O'Rane. "I've got too much to do first."
He bent forward and began blowing out the candles on the table until only two remained alight, while the rest of us watched him as though he were performing a rite. "If I'd been meant to be killed it would have happened long ago. The fact that I'm still alive.... You fellows think it's superstition, but it serves my purpose, and we needn't quarrel over terms.... Good night, Jim; good night, Val.... George, I shall take you for a breath of fresh air in the garden before we turn in."
It was eleven o'clock when we stepped on to the terrace, one before we came in to bed, and for the first hour and three-quarters we walked arm in arm without exchanging a dozen sentences. His phrase, 'the life we all love and revile,' and the sudden sobering of Arden, had set me thinking of my own life, and as a thing for which a man might die, it seemed a mean and paltry ideal. At Melton and Oxford there had been at least generous illusions, but my dreams had left me in London. The pettiness and personal ambitions of the House, the artificiality and extravagance of society, the lifelessness, the want of purpose, the absence of enthusiasm, seemed to argue a dying civilization.
I thought of Loring and his dozen wasted years, but he at least was marrying and in the upbringing of a family could look to find an object and an interest. If the war-cloud passed, I should presumably drift on as I had done before, dancing a little less, shooting a little more as the years went by, and gossiping in Fleet Street to give me an excuse for gossiping at the Club. Had I died that night, my record for a man of education would not have been a proud one. My social groove, as I hinted to O'Rane years before at Lake House, held me fast.
"I'm depressed, Raney," I said. "Our civilization as I see it would never be missed. In place of religion we have controversies over ritual or endowments or the Kikuyu decision; for art we have cubism, for music a revue, for literature a sex novel. Sport and spending money and being invited to the right houses are the only things we care about."
We walked on in silence for a few moments; then he said: