From time to time I regaled my cousin with the expert opinions I had gleaned at fourth hand. At one moment Lloyd's were said to be taking a premium of £85 to insure against the risk of the war going on after the thirty-first of March. I invited Greville, appropriately enough, to dine with me in honour of Peace on 1st April. At another time Sir Adolf Erckmann was quoted as telling a committee of bankers that German credit would collapse on 15th November. And once a week a new date was fixed for the entry of Italy and the Balkan States into the war. The definite, circumstantial character of the stories was the one feature more amazing than their infinite variety.
It was long before the financial scare of the early days evaporated. Everyone seemed to reduce his establishment, cut down his expenses and perhaps live in only three or four rooms of his house. There was also a deliberate, if rather sentimental, attempt to live more simply out of consideration for the hardships of men at the Front. The gourmets of the Eclectic Club ceased to drink champagne for a while, and the grumblers gave committee and secretary a rest. There was no entertaining for the first three months of the war, and when I started dining out again towards the end of the year I found much talk of "War meals" and "what we used to do before the war." You would also hear arrangements being made for the purchase of clothes "on the day peace is signed"—as though the pangs of asceticism were being quickly felt.
The personal notes in my letters make melancholy reading in retrospect. Again and again I find such words as, "Have you seen that Summertown has just been killed?" "Sinclair is home wounded." And, though many pages were taken up with the names of friends who had taken commissions in one or other regiment, the list of those who went out never to return grew longer with every letter. My cousin outlasted all our common acquaintances with the exception of Loring, Tom Dainton and O'Rane—and of these three Dainton only survived him nine days.
After reading the last letter in the bundle and reminding myself of our methods of making war, I could not help wondering what was to be made of our strange national character. Our pose of indifference and triviality deceived half Europe into thinking we were too demoralized to fight—and the history of war has shown no endurance to equal the retreat from Mons. Girls who had never stained their fingers with anything less commonplace than ink, found themselves, after a few weeks' training, established in base hospitals, piecing together the fragments of what had once been men. The least military race in the world called an army of millions into existence; and, while the Germans were being flung back from the Marne, our women had to make shirts for the new troops, and our colonels advertised in "The Times" for field-glasses to serve out to their subalterns. As I sat up for the dawn the old problem which Loring and I had discussed in the window-seat of 93D High Street still presented itself for solution. Liberty and discipline were not yet reconciled.
It was towards the end of November that Loring told me, in the course of luncheon at the Club, that he stood in need of my services to help him get married.
"There's no point in waiting," he explained. "Vi and I have only got ourselves to consider; it'll be quite private. If our date suits you, we'll consider it fixed."
"Is the War Office giving leaves these times?" I asked.
"A week—between jobs. I'm chucking the Staff and joining Val in the Guards. It's all rot, you know," he went on defensively, as though I were trying to dissuade him. "I'm as fit to spend my day in a water-logged trench as anyone out there; and anybody with the brain of a louse could do my present work. Talking of Valentine, I'm coming to the conclusion that he's one of the bravest men I've ever met."
"What's he been doing?" I asked.
"Lying awake at night with the thought of having to go out," Loring answered. "You daren't talk war-talk with him; he's going through hell at the prospect. But he sticks to it. And he'll probably break down before he's been out three days—like any number of other fellows. Poor old Val! I thought it might cheer him up if I got into his battalion." He sat silent for a moment, drumming with his fingers on the table. "I say, let's cut all the usual trimmings—if I get killed, I want you to look after Vi. You'll be her trustee under the settlement, if you'll be so kind; and, if there are any kids, I should like you to be guardian. Will you do it? Thanks! Now let's come and get some coffee."