"It's going to be a big business, George, and a long business," was all that I would say.
"We're in sight of doing it," he asserted. "The moment we get within range of Constantinople, Turkey goes out of the war; she's on her last legs now. Then with Russia bursting in on the southeast and Italy pressing up from the south, Austria will be the next to go. People who know tell me she's on the verge of starvation. Then next spring we shall be bringing off a big offensive on the west. We're so frightfully handicapped now by lack of shells." He paused and looked at his watch. "By Jove, I must fly!" he exclaimed. "When shall I see you again? I'm dining with the Maurice Maitlands to-night and I happen to know that the Manistys are going to be there. Why don't you invite yourself? You're a lion, you know; and Connie Maitland will never forgive you, if anyone else catches hold of you first."
Leaving him to hurry into the Admiralty, I went slowly on foot to Pont Street. England was an armed camp and munition factory, London a gigantic General Headquarters. And George, with his rimless eye-glasses enthusiastically askew and a normally pale face ecstatically flushed, was throwing corps here and divisions there, dividing the map of the world by the test of nationality.... I felt giddy.
There was no one at home, when I reached Pont Street, and I explored the havoc of war as it had invaded the house of a man to whom personal comfort means much. My butler, footman and chauffeur had enlisted, my car was wearing itself out in the service of an elderly general; the ground-floor gave office-room to a railway canteen organisation administered by my niece, and the rest of the house, when not allocated to herself or her husband, provided temporary accommodation for derelict officers and nurses. Never have I felt less wanted.
"But, darling uncle, there's so little that we can do!" Yolande exclaimed, trying to combine apology and self-defence. "I feel that if we don't pinch and scrape and slave.... And everyone's in the same boat.... I bought one black frock when Archie was killed, and I'm not going to buy another stitch till the war's over. I don't dine out once a month; and then I don't usually have time to dress."
She was looking a little thin and white-faced; for some reason the auburn hair which I loved had been cropped short, but she was undaunted and self-reliant, one of a hundred thousand women to whom the war was bringing that opportunity for service for which they had so long pined.
The emergence of my nephew Felix from a War Office car completed the sense of revolution and unreality. That least military of archaeologists was now arrayed in a staff captain's uniform, which accorded ill with his glasses and bald head, for duty behind a string of letters and a telephone extension at the War Office.
"You'll get used to it in time," Yolande laughed, as we set out on foot for Eaton Place.
My sense of not being wanted certainly evaporated in the warmth of Lady Maitland's greeting. One of her sons was home on leave from the Front, and the familiar, red-lacquer drawing-room was filling with a party of twenty-four, each of whom was acclaimed at a distance, introduced, epitomised and enlisted for charity or intrigue before he had fairly crossed the threshold.