As the last boy clattered into the Cloisters, O'Rane felt for a box of cigarettes and asked me how I had got on in America.
"George told me you were back," he said. "Have you been round to our place?"
"I went round there almost immediately," I told him. "I say, O'Rane——"
Perhaps he guessed what was coming, for I was not allowed to finish my sentence.
"Was Beresford there?" he asked.
I hesitated for what I should have thought was an imperceptible moment; and O'Rane repeated his question.
"As a matter of fact he was," I said.
"Ah! I wish I'd known that before.... Oh, now I see why you hesitated!" He gave a buoyant laugh. "I can assure you that Beresford doesn't make me in the least jealous or in the least apprehensive. I'd trust him pretty well as far as I'd trust Sonia; our outlook's so similar, we've got so much in common. Well, the authorities have got their eyes on him, and he'll find himself arrested again, if he isn't careful. And he's only alienating possible sympathisers with the stuff he's writing now. Did you read him on the typhus outbreak at Wittenburg?"
He jumped up and brought me a copy of "The Watchman" from his writing-table. Beresford's article made me very angry. A few days earlier my nephew Felix, dining with me at the Hyde Park Hotel, where I had now taken up my residence, had given me a sickening account of the epidemic in the prisoners' camp; a fuller and yet more sickening account had appeared in the Press, and from end to end of the country there burst a storm of indignation stronger than anything since the outcry against the atrocities in Belgium. At this moment and from this text Beresford, who saw red at the news of the mildest cruelty to man or animal, preached a cynical, superior sermon to prove that, if misguided fools went to war, this was the kind of thing they must expect. The object of war was to kill, and the only reason why the Germans did not massacre their prisoners was that on balance their own losses might be greater. But in scientific warfare it was unjustifiable to expect German doctors and nurses to risk their lives for the sake of preserving the enemy's. The English might; the English habitually boasted of picking up survivors after a naval engagement, but it was not war.
"God knows I'm not in love with war," said O'Rane, as I flung the paper away, "but an article like that infuriates just the decent-minded people he's appealing to. Well, bad taste is not an indictable offence, but I had a hint dropped this week-end that made me think that Beresford had better go warily. We had a man dining in Common Room on Sunday whose job in life is to advise on people like him and the stuff they turn out. We got on to the Wittenburg article, and it came out that I knew the author. Well, there was nothing much the matter with that branch of Intelligence Service; they knew all about Beresford, but they didn't want to give him a free advertisement and make a martyr of him, so they tried to get hold of him under the Military Service Act and stop his mouth that way. He was ordered to join up on a certain day, so he wrote a polite letter to say that he disapproved of war and did not propose to fight. When the day came, he was well and duly put in charge of a guard and marched off to the recruiting office to be presented to the army and turned into a soldier. Before that could be done, though, the doctors had their say. To cut it short, he was rejected rather more completely than anyone's ever been rejected before—heart, lungs, knee.... One doctor told him that if he didn't live in the open air and blow himself out with milk, he'd be dead in six months. That was a week ago. The army's been cheated of its prey, and my friend of Sunday night must find another means of stopping Beresford's mouth. What the fellow must understand is that they intend to catch him this time; their temper's none the better for the little rebuff at the recruiting office. I was meaning to come up and talk to him at the next Leave-Out, but I'm afraid he may put his head in the trap before I can get at him. That's why I asked you to come and see me; I want you to take him in hand."