I

The first five-and-thirty years of my life were singularly unemotional. My father died when I was too young to appreciate the loss, and I had never seen death at close quarters nor known the breathless thrill of a great triumph or the bitterness of a great disappointment. There was nothing to change the tolerant scale of values, to bring about an intenser way of life or a harsher manner of speech. My world was comfortably free from extremes, and it hardly occurred to me that the architects of civilization would attack their own handiwork, or that a man's smooth, hairless fingers would ever revert to the likeness of a gorilla's paw.

The "Five Days" changed all that. On the thirty-first of July I left London for Chepstow with no greater troubles than a sense of uneasiness at the breakdown of the Buckingham Palace Conference on the Irish deadlock. My uncle Bertrand, a pedantic Constitutionalist, drove me to Paddington, and from his speech I could see he was undecided whether to lament the failure of the negotiations or rejoice that a constitutional innovation had proved ineffective. With many others he felt the situation in Ireland must be very grave to allow of the Sovereign summoning the party leaders to his Palace; equally, so drastic a course could in the eyes of ordinary men only be justified by success.

And it had failed. And the next news might well be that shots were being exchanged on the borders of Ulster.

Such a possibility brought little embarrassment to the holiday makers who thronged the station. Fighting my way through the Bank-holiday crowd, I found the nucleus of our party sitting patiently on suitcases and awaiting a train that was indefinitely delayed by the extra traffic and a minor strike of dining-car attendants. As the time went by and the crowd increased, Summertown, Mayhew and O'Rane built the luggage into a circle and sat contentedly talking, while I, who was responsible to Loring for the full complement, wandered about, list in hand, ticking off the names of the new arrivals.

"Adsum!" called out Mayhew, when I reached him. "Aren't you glad you didn't take my bet about the Archduke, George?"

"I nearly did," I said. "I thought we'd left that sort of thing behind with the Borgias."

"It was a wonderful opportunity," he observed, with the air of a connoisseur in political crime. "You've seen the Austrian ultimatum? Well, Servia's going to be mopped up like Bosnia and Herzegovina."

He nodded omnisciently and raised his eyebrows interrogatively at O'Rane, who was seated on the next suitcase with his chin on his hands, lost in thought.

"They told me at the Club that Russia was mobilizing," I said.

"She'll climb down all right," Mayhew assured me. "You remember the 'Shining Armour' speech? It's no joke taking on Austria and Germany, especially if you can't mobilize under about two months. It might be different if France came in, but she's unprepared. They've been having quite a pretty dust-up in the Senate the last few days over army equipment."

Summertown scrambled down from his suit-case and strutted importantly across to us.

"I don't mind telling you fellows there's been a run on the Bank to-day," he said. "I don't know what a run on the Bank is, but there's been one. So now you know."

"There'll be a run on a number of banks if Austria declares war," Mayhew predicted. "And such a financial smash as the world has never seen. Our system of credit, you know.... I put it to a big banker last night, and he said, 'My dear Mayhew, I entirely agree with you——'"

"All big bankers talk to Mayhew like that," Summertown interrupted.

Mayhew sighed resignedly.

"Thank the Lord, here's the train," he said. "I'm wasted on Guardee subalterns. Come be useful with the luggage, Raney."

O'Rane had not spoken a word since we shook hands an hour before; the sound of his name roused him, however, and he jumped up with the words:

"If you're thanking the Lord about anything, you might thank Him that we're an island."

"Have you got anything up your sleeve, Raney?" I asked.

"Oh, a number of things. For one, the Fleet sailed from Portsmouth two days ago with coal piled up like haystacks on deck."

"What the deuce for?" I asked.

"Fresh air and exercise, I suppose," he answered. "If you want to try your hand again at war correspondence, I make no doubt you'll have the chance."

"This is devilish serious," I said. Experience had taught me that news from O'Rane was not to be lightly set aside.

"As serious as you like," he agreed. "Don't pull too long a face, though, or you'll spoil Jim's party."

And with that word his manner changed. Loring Castle lies between Chepstow and Tintern on a high ridge of hills overlooking the Severn. In normal times I have lunched in town, taken tea on the train and reached my destination after a run of four or five hours. On this occasion the strike and holiday traffic caused us to stop at countless wayside stations; it was after eight when we reached Chepstow, but, thanks to O'Rane, the journey was the most hilarious I have ever undertaken. Panic and disorder indeed descended upon us when at last the train steamed in and our two reserved coaches yielded up their sixteen men, twelve girls and nine maids; to this day I cannot explain how I fitted the party and its luggage into the different cars and delivered all at the Castle without loss or mishap, but, when Loring entered my room as I was dressing, he informed me that not so much as a jewel-case had gone astray.

"Any news in town?" he asked, and I gave him the gossip of Mayhew and O'Rane. "I meant about Ireland," he went on. "This Austrian business won't come to anything, but there's trouble brewing in your sweet island. We're all rather depressed down here."

O'Rane, who had scrambled along the balcony, appeared at the open window in time to catch the last words.

"The only man who has the right to be depressed," he said, "is the luckless devil who's put his money into Austrian oil."

Loring turned to him swiftly.

"Are you hit, Raney?"

"Well, of course, as a Member I get four hundred a year less income-tax," he answered cheerfully.

"Talk seriously, you idiot."

O'Rane tossed a silver-topped bottle into the air and caught it again.

"I can't take myself seriously just now, Jim," he said. "We haven't earned a penny since Austria mobilized and our men were called up——"

"You save your wage-bill," I put in.

"We've got contracts, old man, and we've got penalties. Morris spent his morning raising every last penny he could lay hands on; we've been buying in the open market with the price soaring against us—and we shall just be able to supply the Ubique Motor and Cab Company to the end of our term. We were rather pleased to get that contract, too," he added, with a laugh. "As for the others——"

"What others?"

"Half a dozen more. Just enough to break us very comfortably."

"Rot, Raney!"

"So be it! We've sold the spare furniture in Gray's Inn,—Morris has developed wonderfully the last few years—and, unless Austria demobilizes within a week, I don't see us paying twenty shillings in the pound. Still, he's thirty and I'm only thirty-one...."

He strolled to the door, but Loring caught one shoulder and I the other.

"Look here, Raney——" we began together.

"Dear souls! save your breath!" he laughed. "I wasn't touting. I've been in warmer corners than this in my mis-spent youth, and while I'm frightfully grateful——" He paused and dropped his voice as though he were talking to himself: "Why, my God! if I can't keep afloat at one-and-thirty with all my faculties.... Hi, let me go! There's Amy, and I want to tell her how ripping she looks!"

He strained forward, but we kept our grip on his arms.

"Little man!" said Loring. "D'you remember the first time I thrashed you at Melton?"

"You brute, you nearly cut me in two!"

"I was rather uncomfortable about it," Loring admitted. "I wasn't sure that you were accountable for your actions. Now I know you're not."

With a sudden jerk he broke away and bounded to the hall, three stairs at a time, for all the world like a child at its first party.

Half-way through dinner Amy turned to me in perplexity, holding in her hand a worn gold watch with a half-obliterated L. K. worked into an intricate monogram.

"Is David quite mad?" she inquired. "I've been given this to keep until he asks for it back."

"It belonged to Kossuth," I explained. "He gave it to Raney's father, and I fancy Raney values it rather more than his own soul."

"But why——?" she began.

"He's afraid of losing it, I suppose."

"But if he's kept it all these years——"

"You'll be doing him a favour, Amy," I said, and without another word she slipped the watch into her waistband. It was true that the watch and its owner had faced some severe trials in different continents, but O'Rane had never up to that time undergone the humiliation of bankruptcy proceedings with the last indignity of being compelled to empty his pockets in court.

When dinner was over Loring gave him the alternative of sitting still or being turned out of the dining-room. I have never seen a man so indecently elated by the consciousness of his insolvency. The port had hardly begun to circulate before he jumped up and ran to the window in hopes that the guests were arriving and while we smoked and talked he was shifting restlessly from chair to chair, inquiring the time at two-minute intervals.

"But for your strictly sober habits——" I began.

"There's lightning in the air!" he exclaimed, his black eyes shining with excitement. "All these years I've been waiting—I never forget, George—waiting.... I won't be smashed! By God, I won't be smashed!"

"I'm glad I'm not one of your creditors," I said.

"Bah! They're all right. It's my beloved Austrians. I don't trust you a yard, old man, but unless I tell somebody I shall burst. If Austria makes war, she'll find a Foreign Legion fighting with the Servians; I've fixed the preliminaries, and a wire from town.... Ye gods! why don't they start the music? I want to dance with Violet, and the next time we meet I may not have any legs!" A chord several times repeated sounded from a distant piano—violins, followed by the deep note of a 'cello, began to tune up and along the drive below our open windows came the beat of throbbing engines, a sudden scrunch of tyres slowing down on gravel, a slamming of doors and a hum of voices. "At last!" cried O'Rane, springing to the door and running headlong into the ballroom.

We threw away our cigars, drew on our gloves and walked into the hall. Lady Loring and Amy stood at the stairhead and were joined a moment later by Violet and Jim, who took up their position a pace behind to one side. It was a small party, but for twenty minutes a procession of slight girls and smooth-haired, clean-shaven men ascended the stairs—curiously and characteristically English from the easy movements of the girls and the whiteness of their slender shoulders to the sit of the men's coats and the trained condition of their bodies. Good living, hard exercise and fresh air seemed written on every face; there was a wonderful cleanliness of outline and clarity of eye and skin; the last ounce of flabbiness had been worked away. And, like any consciously self-isolated section of society, they were magnificently at ease and unembarrassed with one another; sixty per cent. were related in some degree, and all appeared to answer to diminutives or nicknames.

"There's nothing to touch them in any country I know," murmured Mayhew, unconsciously giving expression to my thoughts. "Shall we go up?"

"In a moment," I said.

For a while longer I watched them arriving, the girls pattering up the steps with their skirts held high over thin ankles and small feet; their eyes showed suddenly dark and mysterious in the soft light of the great electric lamps, and eternal youth seemed written in their pliant, immature lines and lithe movements. Outside, the sky was like a tent of blue velvet spangled with diamonds. The Severn far down the valley side swirled and eddied in its race to open sea, and the moon reflected in the jostling waters shivered and forked like silver lightning. A scent of summer flowers still warm with the afternoon sun and gemmed with falling dew rose like a mist and enfolded the crumbling yellow stone and blazing windows behind me.

When the last car had panted away into the night, I heard a light step on the flagstones of the terrace, and Amy Loring slipped her arm through mine; the far-off hum of voices for a moment was still, and there followed an instant of such silence as I have only known in the African desert.

"There is an Angel of Peace," she whispered, "breathing his blessing over the house."

Then the band broke into the opening bars of a waltz.

We walked back and found Violet and Loring at the door of the hall, standing arm in arm and gazing silently, as I had done, on the tumbling waters of the Severn. We smiled, and on a common impulse he and I shook hands. Violet nodded as though she understood something that neither of us had put into words, and as we entered the hall Amy turned aside to kiss her brother's cheek.

"They're very happy," said Lady Loring when I met her at the stairhead.

"You mean Jim and Violet?"

"Everybody, bless them!" she answered, pointing with her fan through the door of the ballroom.

In an alcove looking on to the terrace Valentine Arden was smoking a cigarette and idly watching the pageant. There was a ghostly, 'end-of-season' look about his white face and the dark rings round his eyes.

"One was wondering if you brought any news from town?" he drawled. "You came to-day?"

"I suppose so," I said. It seemed more than eight hours since we held our council of war on the rampart of suitcases.

"One assumes there will be no actual fighting," he went on.

"I shouldn't assume anything," I said.

A shadow of annoyance settled on his weary young face.

"One intended bringing out another book this autumn," he observed.

"Oh, that'll be all right," I said. "We shan't be dragged in."

I danced till supper-time and met him again by appointment for a small cigar on the terrace. We had been seated there for some ten minutes when a white touring car, driven by an elderly man in a frieze overcoat and soft hat, drew up opposite our chairs. As he came into the triangle of light by the open doors I recognized him as Colonel Farwell, the younger brother of Lord Marlyn and a frequent guest of my uncle in Princes Gardens.

"I wonder whether you gentlemen can tell me where Lord Loring's to be found?" he began. "Hallo, Oakleigh! I didn't see it was you. This is providential. You needn't bother Loring, but I should be greatly obliged if you could lay hands on my young nephew."

"I'll find him for you," I said. "I hope there's nothing wrong."

"There's no fresh news, if that's what you mean, but things are looking pretty serious. I hear that Germany has declared herself in a state of war."

"The Fleet's been ordered to take up war stations," I told him.

"You've heard that too? Well, the Army will be the next thing, and I should rather like to get Jack back to London. I can't come in with these clothes, but if you'd take him a message—— Don't make a fuss to frighten the women, of course."

I found Summertown finishing a bachelor supper with Charles Framlingham of the Rifle Brigade. Farwell's message seemed equally applicable to both and was received by both with equal disfavour.

"To declare war in the middle of supper is not the act of a gentleman," Framlingham pronounced.

He came out on to the terrace, notwithstanding, while I ran upstairs to warn Loring what was afoot. When we returned, it was to find six dutiful but protesting young officers pulling coats and rugs over their evening dress and struggling for corner seats in the car.

"I'm dreadfully sorry to break up your party, Loring," Farwell called out as they glided away amidst a subdued chorus of apologies and adieux.

Loring turned to me interrogatively.

"The Duchess of Richmond's Waterloo Ball," I remarked.

"We must keep things going upstairs," he said, turning back into the house. "On my soul, I can't see what it's all about. What's it got to do with us? If Servia and Austria want to fight, and we aren't strong enough to stop them, why! good heavens! let's keep out of it like gentlemen! Why the deuce are we being so officious with our Fleet?"

It was one o'clock when we re-entered the ballroom, and so successfully did we keep things going that we supped for the last time in broad daylight, and our guests left at five.

O'Rane insisted on a march-past in honour of Loring and Violet, and we ran down a line of sixteen cars with a tray of glasses and five bottles of champagne. As each car passed the door, there was a burst of cheering and the glasses flashed to the toast; from Loring on the top step, standing arm in arm with Violet, came an acknowledging cheer, and the cars swept forward to the turn of the drive, where O'Rane and I were posted. A shower of champagne glasses poured from the windows, to describe a dazzling arc in the morning sunlight and fall with greater or less precision into our hands or on to the flower-beds behind us. Above the cheering and the throb of the engines came the sound of a piano and Valentine Arden's voice:

I went to bed at six with the syncopated rhythm of the song jerking and jigging along every nerve of body and head.

When I awoke at noon on the Saturday, the papers were brought me with my tea, and I struggled sleepily to read reason into the day's record of diplomatic wrangling. Eminently moderate proposals were met by statements of irreducible minima, and in the ensuing deadlock our ambassadors surged forward like a Greek Chorus with ineffectual pleas for patience and the avoidance of irretrievable steps. Any cynic among the combatants must have laughed himself feeble at our resourceful accommodations and fertile readjustments. There was no power we were not prepared to placate, no ruffled plumage we did not hold ourselves competent to smooth. And so far as I could then see, it was an affair of ruffled plumage, no more and no less.

A tired restlessness settled on our shrunken numbers at luncheon, and in the afternoon I asked Bertrand by wire to take pity on a man five miles from a station and to send me news as it was made public. We were sitting at tea under the elm trees at the back of the house when a footman appeared with a salver in his hand. O'Rane leapt to his feet—and subsided with a mutter of disappointment when the telegram was brought to me.

"Read it aloud!" they all cried, as I tore open the envelope.

"'Germany reported to have declared war on Russia,'" I said and saw Violet cover her face with her hands.

Mayhew put down his cup and lit a cigarette.

"I was wrong yesterday," he admitted. "I thought Russia'd climb down. Jim, I must ask you to excuse me. I shall have to get back to Budapest."

O'Rane walked to my chair and took the telegram from my hands.

"Germany—reported—to—have—declared—war—on—Russia," he repeated. "Germany the aggressor, in other words. That means France will come in."

Amy jumped to her feet and then sat down again.

"I—I don't understand it!" she exclaimed. "It's all so inconceivably wicked. Just because a wretched little country like Servia...."

She broke off and sat interlacing her fingers and frowning perplexedly.

"Don't be too hard on Servia, Lady Amy," Mayhew said and told her his version of the Serajevo murders.

"And don't be too hard on even Austria," added O'Rane softly when the story was done. "I'm none so sure it was Austria that baited the trap. When you see how keen Germany is to keep the quarrel fanned——"

"And bring France in at one door and Russia at the other?" Loring interrupted sceptically. "The one combination Bismarck schemed to avoid?"

"Bismarck's dead," O'Rane flung back. "And Russia won't be mobilized for weeks. If once they break through, the Germans can march to Paris and back again while she's getting ready. It's a gamble, but she had to gamble sooner or later. No country on earth could stand her rate of preparations. If they can break through.... Where's a map, Jim? I want to see the length of line from Belgium to Switzerland. Of course, if the French can hold them for a month——"

"France hasn't declared war yet," I called out as they hurried away. Neither checked his pace at my words. Heaven knows! I paid little enough attention to them myself. At best it was an exercise in whistling to keep up courage.

When they had gone, Mayhew slipped quietly away, and in half an hour a car was at the door, and we went round to the front of the house to bid him good-bye. Lady Loring, who had spent the afternoon in her room, came down for a moment, and I saw that her eyes were red and her placid, pretty face haggard with distress.

"Why must it be, George?" she whispered, pointing over the valley to the blue haze of the Gloucestershire hills. "It's all so peaceful here.... And there must be thousands of places like this all over Europe—with men coming home through the fields in the cool of evening.... Why must they start blowing each other to pieces when none of them knows what it's all about? Who can be wicked enough to take the responsibility?"

"We appear to have done our best to stop it," I said. "It seems as though there's something of the mad dog in every man."

Lady Loring smiled wistfully.

"Not in my husband, George. Were you too young to remember him? It's not quite fifteen years since he was killed, and I often wonder what good his death did. What would have happened if there'd been no South African War?"

"A great many fine lives would have been spared," I said. "And what good will it do to slaughter the manhood of Russia, France, Germany ...? It's the size of the modern army that appals me, Lady Loring."

"Thank God we aren't called on to swell the slaughter," she replied.

By Sunday morning our further reduced party was in the profoundest depression. While Violet and the Lorings were at Mass, I motored to Chepstow with O'Rane and Val Arden in search of papers. We returned with moist, ill-printed sensational weeklies that the others had never before seen and with heads pressed close together we studied the sinister type, repeating the headlines under our breath and gradually chanting them in a falling dirge. Bertrand's tentative announcement was confirmed, and on the assumption that France would come to the assistance of her ally, German troops were massing in stupendous numbers on the Rhine frontier.

"Some of them actually on French soil!" Loring exclaimed and read on. "Pouring into Luxembourg.... Isn't Luxembourg a neutral, Raney?"

"A la guerre comme À la guerre," murmured O'Rane. "So's Belgium, if you come to that; but they're asking leave to march through and, if leave's refused, they'll dam' well take it." He dropped the paper and walked up and down the room with his hands in his pockets. "The war'll be over in a fortnight if they advance simultaneously from north and east; it'll be another Sedan. We can't allow that."

"For God's sake don't drag us in!" Loring exclaimed.

O'Rane faced him with amazement in his black eyes.

"But we can't see the whole of northern France in German hands, plus, say, a five hundred million indemnity for the trouble. How long d'you suppose it would be before our turn came? You can build the hell of a lot of ships with five hundred millions."

Loring was silent. We were all silent as the new possibilities floated gigantically within our vision. Eight-and-forty hours before we had discussed a pair of political assassinations in an outlying province of the Austrian Empire; we were now to consider the prospect of Europe's greatest military power establishing naval bases from Cherbourg to Dunkirk. So a man, straying too near an unfenced engine, might watch in fascination as wheel bit into wheel and the cogs engaged inexorably for his destruction.

"And Mayhew told us Russia wasn't ready," murmured O'Rane.

"Oh, well," I said, "I've spent six years telling people that democracy wouldn't fight democracy."

"If once we have to start eating our words——" Loring began, and ended with a shrug of the shoulders.

I never recall a longer morning. We sat in the garden after breakfast, reviving the memories of the dance and making plans for Violet and Jim; without warning our feverish voices would stammer and stop, as with the gag of unskilled players while the stage waits. After a moment's restless silence we would break into pairs in answer to a common tacit summons, and Amy and I rounding the corner of the terrace would meet Jim and Violet, long-faced and distraught.

"You know this is simply appalling!" one of us would say. We had all said it by luncheon-time.

The afternoon brought variety and a deputation of three from the Neutrality League—the shortest lived and not least pathetic body with which I have been associated. It was introduced by Dillworth, the red-bearded, uncompromising Socialist at whom I had gazed more in pity than anger during my first session—Rayston, the Quaker chemical manufacturer, spoke second, and the third of the party was Braddell, who rose from journalistic obscurity by demonstrating the economic impossibility of war. They had coopted a considerable committee of recalcitrant Radicals, pacificist divines, two professors from provincial universities and the usual unclassified residue that is flattered to be asked for its signature to a memorial. Their journey from London by a stopping train was to be explained by my association with "Peace" and by the perfidy of my uncle, who saw them from his dining-room window and locked himself in his room with an internal chill. The chill, he gave them to understand from the lips of Filson, the butler, would outlast them, but they were always at liberty to interview me if they cared to visit Loring Castle, Chepstow.

A difficult meeting was not made the easier by the fact that I entertained a certain admiration for Dillworth. He was transparently honest, and we had on more than one occasion worked amicably in the interests of "Peace." I had no idea what line Bertrand proposed to take with our paper but, presuming that he left me a free hand, I spoke my thoughts as they were beginning to crystallize—and proved guilty of that inconsistency which is the unforgivable sin in the eyes of such doctrinaries as made up my deputation.

Their speeches invited my collaboration in a manifesto declaring our detachment from the European quarrel. We were to silence the increasingly aggressive tone of our diplomatic correspondence, to warn the Government of France that it must look for no assistance in a wholly unnecessary war, to detach Russia and eventually leave Servia to pay the penalty of her crimes.

"Her crimes?" I echoed, for my mind was full of Mayhew's grim story of the murders.

"Surely," answered Dillworth. "I'm a Socialist, Mr. Oakleigh, and I'm a Republican, but I flatter myself I've got some little imagination. If you'd seen years of sedition in Afghanistan, if you were told that Afghans had murdered the Prince of Wales as he toured the North-West Frontier Provinces—it's no good shaking your head, sir—you'd call for securities no whit less sweeping than those that Austria is demanding. I've attacked Russia more than once for tyranny, but I never thought I should attack her for supporting political assassination."

I tried to waive causes and concentrate his mind on results.

"Will you acquiesce in the German occupation of Paris and Cherbourg?" I asked.

Rayston plunged his hand into the capacious pocket of his overcoat, produced a sheaf of cuttings and read me extracts from my own articles on Germany as a land of peace and potential friendliness.

"Is that true or is it not?" he demanded.

"I believed it true when I wrote it," I said.

"Has the whole nation changed in a week?" he demanded, flinging out his arms.

"I've changed my opinion of the nation."

"In seven days—after holding it as many years? It doesn't take much to shake your faith."

"It takes a good deal," I answered. "Unfortunately a good deal was forthcoming. In respect of your manifesto, I don't want war; I hate the idea of it; we must do all in our power to keep out of it. But I don't know the limits of our power or the obligations of the Entente. If our hands were free, I'm disposed to let France fight her own battles; if we're bound by treaty, there's no more to be said. Of course, if the Germans try to get through Switzerland or Belgium, that introduces a new factor, and we look only at the question of policy. I submit that it is not good policy to have another Sedan, and I think manifestos and counter-manifestos may well be postponed till the Government has given a lead."

Dillworth picked up his hat and buttoned his coat deliberately.

"We counted on you, Mr. Oakleigh," he said.

"I am sorry to disappoint you," I said.

That night we tried to keep away from the state of Europe, but all paths in conversation led back to the same point. The international position of Luxembourg carried us to the library: histories called for atlases, the armies at Sedan sent us to the "Statesman's Year Book," and we ended with strategic railways, the population of Russia and our Expeditionary Force.

"I wonder what these devils in Ireland are going to do?" Loring demanded suddenly.

"And in India?" O'Rane added.

On Monday the German declaration of war on Russia was confirmed in the papers, and we read that the unconditional neutrality of Belgium was under discussion and that the Foreign Secretary would speak in the House on the Bank Holiday afternoon. The momentary stimulus of news died away like the ebbing strength of a cocaine injection. We revived on learning that the German Embassy in London was endeavouring to localize the conflict, but in the quick reaction I went to Loring and told him I could no longer bear to be away from London.

"Stick it out till to-morrow," he implored me. "We'll all go up together."

"Then for God's sake let's do something!" I cried impatiently. "Have a car out.... Go somewhere.... You know, our nerves are going to pieces."

We drove out through Tintern to Monmouth and returned by way of Raglan, Usk and Newport. It was a run of sixty or seventy miles through varying scenery, yet every town and village presented the same appearance of suspended animation. The holiday-makers stood about in irresolute knots or walked up and down the desolate streets; carriages half filled with women in white dresses halted at the corners of the roads, while the men grouped themselves round the driver and argued fretfully where to go and whether it was worth going anywhere at all. I thought suddenly of the first time I saw Pompeii: I had always wondered how the inhabitants looked when the first hot rain of ashes began to fall.

As we entered Chepstow on our way home, Loring halted the car and went in search of news. Exploiting the freemasonry of the Press, I scribbled my Bouverie Street address on a card and won admittance to the offices of the "Chepstow Argus." The Foreign Secretary was delivering his pronouncement, and the speech was being circulated in sections over the wires. We walked through a warehouse filled with clamorous, quarrelling newsboys, up a rickety staircase and into the composing-room, where we read the introductory passages in manuscript over the compositors' shoulders. Then we returned to the Editor's room and were handed sheet after sheet as it was taken off the private wire. There was one with a blue-pencilled line in the margin, and I read the passage aloud:

"'For many years we have had a long-standing friendship with France ... how far that friendship entails ... an obligation, let every man look into his own heart, and his own feelings, and construe the extent of the obligation for himself.'"

"Have we or have we not pledged ourselves to help France if she's attacked?" Loring demanded in perplexity.

"We have," I said.

"Then why doesn't he say so?"

"It's left as a point of honour," I suggested. "That rules out discussion how the Government made virtual promises and never took the country into its confidence. We needn't keep the others waiting any longer. Our position's defined, and Germany goes forward at her own risk."

We hurried out of the office and carried our news to the car at the street corner.

"And what now?" asked Arden.

"Now nothing but the end of the world will keep us out of war," Loring returned.

As we drove away, a woman's voice—I could not distinguish whose it was—murmured:

"My God! Oh, my God!..."

III

"I'm afraid you've all had a sickening time," said Loring apologetically after dinner that night, when he had suggested the break-up of the party next day. Lady Loring had not left her room, and Amy's parting instructions to us were not to hurry over our cigars as she and Violet were going to bed.

"Let's hope it'll all be over when next we meet here," said Arden conventionally.

"If we ever do," Loring murmured, half to himself, as he lit a cigar.

"Hang it all, we aren't at war yet," I said.

Loring shrugged his shoulders.

"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.

"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:

"Think again, old man."

"I've thought, Raney. Politics, society, journalism——" The thought of Erckmann and the 'Ruban Bleu,' the memory of Sir John Woburn and the Press Combine, choked me.

"There's a world outside London, old man," he said. "It's a large thing you're condemning—the order of an empire where there's more personal liberty, freedom of speech and thought and even-handed justice than anywhere in creation. A race of degenerates seldom rules for long, and, if it's the virtues of individuality that make our rule possible, you must expect the vices of individuality to appear and drop their pebbles into the wheels of the machine."

Again we walked on until the stable clock struck one. O'Rane looked at his watch in surprise.

"I'd had no idea it was so late," he said. "I've been thinking—like you."

"Or Jim, or Val Arden," I put in.

"Yes, and—like you—I'm depressed. Things move so slowly, George. I've been so busy with my own affairs that I've hardly been near the House since I was elected, and now there's likely to be war, and when that's over I shall have to start again at the bottom. And there was a lot I was in a hurry to do," he added regretfully.

"What can you do with our social and political machine?" I demanded.

"It's made up of human parts," he answered, with a smile, "and every human being has ears and a heart. In time I can make people listen to me and, when they listen, I can do what I like with them."

"I thought that before I made my first speech. You've not been broken by the House of Commons yet, Raney."

"And I doubt if I shall ever have the chance. I didn't go up there to-day because I doubted if I should ever be able to sit there again. After all, that's only one platform, and Wesley, Newman, Tolstoi got on without it. If the fire's inside you——"

"And how do you start?" I interrupted.

"On the simplest things. I've got a commonplace mind, George, with no subtlety or cleverness, but it's frightfully hard to shake. From experience I know that hunger and physical pain and disease and indignity are terrible things—the whole world knows it—and we must put an end to them. I've only learned two lessons in life, and they came to me on the same day—I've told you about it before—when I fainted from want of food, and a prostitute, dying of consumption, fed me. I don't aim higher than that, old man—to put an end to human suffering. There's little a man can't do by example and teaching, if he knows how to touch primitive imagination.... I'm quite commonplace; I've got the temperament of a Salvation Army man—and like him I can make people shout, or laugh, or tremble, or cry."

Once again I put a question that I had asked him years before in Ireland.

"What can you do with me, Raney, or a hundred thousand other low-flying, unimaginative, class-conscious souls, steeped in materialism and taught from childhood to repress emotion? To get rid of selfishness and muddle, to make us alert and sympathetic, you must change human nature—set the world in the path of one of Wells' comets——"

"And can't you see the comet approaching?" He stood still, with hands outstretched, appealing, and in his eye shone the light of a visionary. "We shall fight to preserve an ideal, side by side, with disregard of class-consciousness. We shall fight to maintain our toleration and justice, and so that no man may ever have to fight again. Do you think we can come back with the scream of a shell in our ears to take up the old narrowness and futility? Shall we re-establish a social barrier between men who've undertaken the same charge? Shall we save this country from invasion so that sweated labour may be perpetuated?" His voice had grown quicker and quicker until he stopped suddenly, panting for breath. "George, you don't know the soul of a people."

"I knew it before the comet."

"You don't know its capabilities."

"I hope you will prove me wrong, Raney."

On the following morning Arden, O'Rane, Loring and I returned to town. That Tuesday was the last of the Five Days since Germany declared herself in a state of war, the twelfth—only the twelfth—since the Austrian ultimatum. We all of us felt that we should at least get our news some hours earlier than at Chepstow, and for my own part I had to see what policy Bertrand proposed to adopt with "Peace." Also, I had wired at length to the Whips' Office, telling young Jellaby to take a note of my name in case any overworked Minister came in search of volunteers for his department.

On our way up we read the full text of the previous day's speeches. They added little to our knowledge, but the sensationalism of all Fleet Street could hardly smear the bold outline of the Commons' scene. As well as if I had been there, I could visualize the haggard faces on the Treasury Bench as the Foreign Secretary expounded a situation that momentarily changed and acquired new complexity. I could almost see him phrasing his speech as he hurried to the House and discarding sentence after sentence as an eleventh-hour dispatch was handed him to read on the way. The speech itself breathed an air of fever, like the news of the Indian floods in 1903, when at one end of the line I read scraps of a message transmitted from a station that was swept away before the end. I knew something, too, of my House of Commons and its glorious uncertainty; to some extent I could guess at the feelings of a man who called for its decision in an unexpected war.

On reaching Paddington I sent my luggage to Princes Gardens and drove to the Club for luncheon. The extended Bank Holiday gave the streets an unfamiliar aspect, like an industrial town at the beginning of a lock-out. My driver took me round through Cockspur Street, and I found the White Star offices thronged with Americans newly mindful of the Monroe Doctrine. They pressed forward in a vociferous queue and, as the first arrivals fought their way back into the street, they could have sold their passage tickets ten times over at their own price.

In a block by the Crimean Monument I heard my name called, and Summertown passed with a hurried wave of the hand. I had seen him in mess uniform a dozen times when dining with the King's Guard; this was the first occasion on which I had met him dressed for active service. It was also the last time I saw him alive. All the way down Pall Mall I saw unfamiliar khaki on men I had never regarded as soldiers, and, as I mounted the steps of the Club, Tom Dainton ran down and engaged my vacant taxi, only pausing to murmur in his deep voice:

"Bore about this war, isn't it? I'd arranged to take my wife to Scotland."

The Club itself was reconciled to the inevitable, and the members forestalled the Government by some hours in issuing their ultimatum. I heard such names as 'Wilhelmshaven,' 'The Sound' and 'Kiel' being flung about with age-long familiarity by some, while others turned furtively to an atlas or inquired angrily why no geography was taught in the public schools. A group of barristers, flannel-suited for the Long Vacation, stood in one corner prophesying a shortage of food; and before long Crabtree, whom I had not seen half a dozen times in as many years, detached himself and cashed a cheque in the dining-room to the limit set by the Club rules. More than one father of a family, following his example, wrote unpractical grocery orders or dispatched tinned tongues to helpless dependents in the country. From food shortage to bread riots was a short step, and I overheard a circle of Civil Servants discussing the early enrolment of special constables.

The long 'Parliamentary' table in the dining-room was in a condition of crowded excitement, and each new-comer brought a fresh list of the Ministers who had resigned and the reasons for which they had wobbled back into the fold. Nowhere did I hear it suggested that war was avoidable, hardly anywhere that it should be avoided, though two Radical members who had consistently voted against the increased naval estimates in 1909 declaimed against the dispatch of land forces and asserted that all must be left to a happily invincible Fleet.

In the first year of the war I often marvelled at the uncritical credulity of educated men who believed and handed on every rumour or theory of the moment—from the execution of Admirals in the Tower to the certain arrival of Cossacks in Berlin by Christmas. I lay no claim to superior wisdom, as for six months I myself believed all such stories as simply as I afterwards rejected true with false. From the day of the ultimatum there was a ready disposition to canvass opinions without considering their worth, and before the end of luncheon I was ladling out second-hand judgements on the French cavalry or on reputed defects of meeting recoil as observed in the practice of German field artillery. Had I not been absent from the Club for nearly a week? Must I not be presumed to have new information or fresh points of view?

As I paid my bill, Jellaby hurried up with the suggestion that I should report next day at the Admiralty.

"Is war quite certain?" I asked.

"As certain as anything in an uncertain world," he answered.

In the smoking-room I retired to a corner to read the latest telegrams and drink my coffee in solitude. One was as impossible as the other, and lest I be thought to exaggerate I will not say how many men pursued me to find out what I had been discussing with Jellaby. I should be sorry even to guess at the number of unknown men who entered into conversation, but I cannot forget the omnipresence of Sir Adolf Erckmann. In less worthy moments I suspect him of deliberately displaying what he conceived to be sufficiently flamboyant patriotism to obscure the unhappy circumstance of his name. Certainly he edged from one end of the room to the other, unsparingly subjecting man after man to an unvarying monologue.

"These Chermans wand a lezzon," he grunted into his beard. "And we'll give id 'em, hein? They thought Bridain wouldn't gom in. We gan dell a differend story, hein?"

His scarlet face and head, bronzed with the wind and sun of his recent tour on the Continent, was moist with exertion by the time he penned me in my corner.

"How long is it going to last, Erckmann?" I asked—with some idea of testing the resources of his English.

"How long?" he repeated, pulling truculently at his tangled beard. "A month, hein? Doo months ad the oudside. I'm a bangker, my boy. I know, hein? If they doan'd ged to Baris in a vordnide, they're done, zmashed, pancrupd. You ead your Grizmas dinner in Berlin, hein?"

I resisted the obvious retort and made an excuse to get home to my uncle.

IV

The first news I received on reaching Princes Gardens was that my uncle was unwell and wished to see me at once.

"No, sir, I can't tell you no more than that," said Filson tearfully, and I judged that to serve Bertrand had been a task of difficulty during the past five days.

I found my uncle seated in his bedroom with a rug over his knees, conspicuously doing nothing. Little threads of blood discoloured the whites of his eyes, and he seemed curiously shrunken and old. He looked at me in silence for a few moments after I had shut the door, then remarked carelessly:

"I thought it would last my time, George."

"If we live to the end of it we shall have seen the last war," I answered.

He snorted derisively.

"Till next time! As long as you let children point loaded pistols...."

He broke off and sat staring before him.

"Filson told me you'd been seedy," I said.

"Oh, if you talk to a fool like Filson!" my uncle exclaimed. "I went down to the House yesterday...." He paused and murmured to himself, as though unconscious of my presence. "We couldn't help ourselves, you know. I don't see what else we could have done.... I was down there, George, and walked home thinking it all over and, when I got in, I tumbled down in the hall. Good God! if a man mayn't fall about in his own hall ...! Filson was rather surprised, but I'm perfectly all right." He kicked away the rug and drew himself shakily erect. "Seventy-nine, George, but I must live a bit longer—till the Kaiser's been strangled in the bowels of the Crown Prince.... By all that's holy, if I were fifty years younger!"

There was something pathetically terrible in his disillusionment and anger with all things created. As he stood with clenched fists trembling above his head, I saw his body sway and sprang forward to catch him.

"You must take things a bit easy, Bertrand," I said.

"When you're my age ..." he began. "Bah, you never will be, your lot dies off like so many flies. Another five years will see you out, and on my soul I think you're to be envied. I've lived long enough to see everything I cared for shattered. We've got war at our doors, and, before it's been going on six weeks, mark my words! personal liberty will be at an end, you'll be under a military despotism, the freedom of the Press.... By the way, I sent some neutrality lunatics to see you on Sunday."

"I'm afraid I didn't give them much satisfaction," I said. "Look here, Bertrand, about this paper——"

"What paper?"

"'Peace.'"

"There's no such paper. Don't stare, George; you look as if you were only half awake. 'Peace,' indeed ...! Why, my God! I've at least outgrown that phase. I telephoned to M'Clellan to bring me the electros for the headings and I went through the damned mocking things with a hammer!" He paused to breathe heavily, with one hand pressed to his side. "I think I'd rather be alone for the present, old boy," he went on, with sudden gentleness. "You go off and amuse yourself at the Club, you're too young to be in the same room as my thoughts. If you've got your securities pass-book, you might do worse than jot down what you think your income's likely to be the next few years. Don't be too optimistic about it, you can run a pencil through three-quarters of your investments abroad. I've given everybody notice here, to be on the safe side; and you'll be well advised to overhaul your expenditure."

I was half-way through my dressing when Mayhew telephoned to invite me to dinner at the Penmen's Club. He had lived night and day at the "Wicked World" office since leaving Chepstow, quarrelling, arguing and bribing to get leave to go abroad.

"And now I'm at a loose end," he told me, as we stood in the hall waiting for O'Rane and Loring. "The Press Combine is going to work all it knows to get Kitchener put into the War Office, and from what I remember of Omdurman and South Africa, war correspondents aren't at a premium with him. It's so hard to get out of this damned country at present, or I should be half-way to St. Petersburg by now."

I told him of my uncle's decision to discontinue "Peace," and he whistled regretfully.

"Poor old Fleet Street!" he exclaimed. "There's a bad time coming for the parasites. The 'Wicked World' has sacked half its men, including me, and the chief proposes to write the paper himself."

"That's a bit stiff," I said.

"And it's not as though I were a new-comer," he continued aggrievedly, "or hadn't brought off one or two fair-sized scoops in the last few years. Hallo, here's Raney!"

Loring arrived a few moments later, and we went into dinner. I had to remind myself that three out of the four of us had travelled up from Chepstow the same morning and that, for all the transitions of the day, war had not yet been declared and Germany had till midnight to frame a reply to our ultimatum.

"Never let it be said that the British race is not adaptable," Loring remarked, when I told him of my intended descent on the Admiralty. "I've spent my afternoon trying to get a commission."

"Any luck?"

"They said I was too old, so I'm to have a staff appointment. Raney and Val Arden will shortly be seen swanking about as Second Lieutenants of the Coldstream Guards. Youth will be served! What the devil does a staff captain have to do?"

"Or a Civil Servant?" I asked.

"Oh, you're all right; you just turn up at twelve and go out to lunch till three. I've been really busy to-day. I've offered House of Steynes and the places at Chepstow and Market Harborough to the War Office as hospitals. Mamma will run one, Amy another and Violet the third——"

"Hospitals?" I murmured.

In the South African War the wounded had died or been nursed back to life thousands of miles from England. It required an effort of imagination to visualize men like Tom Dainton or Summertown, whole and hale one day, under fire forty-eight hours later and perhaps back in England by the end of the week, crawling north from Southampton or Portsmouth by hospital train, broken and maimed for life. Perhaps all our imaginations were working on the same lines, for after a pause Loring changed the subject by asking where O'Rane had spent his time.

"City," was the short answer.

"Things pretty bad?" I asked.

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be," he replied. "I'm fairly sorry for my own firm, but Heaven help anyone with much money out that he wants to get back quickly. They talk of closing the Stock Exchange and declaring a moratorium."

"The Club was a sad sight at lunch-time," I said. "Everybody talking about moving into a smaller house or giving up his car——"

Mayhew threw back his head and laughed.

"The one good thing I've heard to-day!" he cried. "Do you men know an objectionable fat youth named Webster? He came to the 'Wicked World' office this morning and tried to stick us with a long, tearful account of his escape from Germany. Apparently he had no end of a time getting away, and the Germans commandeered a brand new Rolls-Royce and kicked him over the frontier on foot."

"And I had half-made up my mind to take a cure at Nauheim," I said reflectively.

"You're well out of it," said Mayhew. "We had a curious story in the office to-day from Switzerland—rather a sinister business if it's true. A party of Americans—father, mother and two daughters—were motoring through Germany when the state of war was declared. They were held up, arrested and deprived of their car. A few hours later the parents were released and sent under escort to the frontier in a carriage with the blinds down. The girls have never been seen again."

It was the first of many similar stories, and I have no idea how much truth it contained. None of us yet appreciated the lengths to which 'civilized warfare' could be carried, but one of the things that change little throughout the centuries is the position of women in the midst of armed troops.

The active life of the Penmen's Club was from six till eight and again from one till three in the morning. By the time we had finished dinner the coffee-room was deserted, and I suggested an adjournment to the Eclectic to await midnight and the answer of the German Government. Time was no object, and we walked slowly down Fleet Street and the Strand. Opposite Romano's a piano organ was grinding out its appointed six tunes, and a ring of urchins held hands and danced up and down the gutter singing:

"Damn that song!" Loring exclaimed irritably.

By Charing Cross we halted to let the traffic pour out of the station yard, and I felt myself touched on the shoulder.

"Surely George Oakleigh? You don't remember me?"

I looked at a shabby, thin man with bearded face and restless eyes. Then we shook hands, and I whispered to Loring over my shoulder to take the others on to the Club and await me.

"That was Jim Loring, wasn't it?" asked the shabby man eagerly.

"Yes, and the other two were Mayhew and O'Rane; they were some years junior to us, of course. Quite like the old days in Matheson's, Draycott?"

He nodded and glanced bemusedly at the glaring lights of the Strand and the thundering stream of traffic.

"I've not seen you since I cut you in the Luxembourg Gardens a dozen years ago," he said.

"I doubt if I've been in Paris six times since then," I answered.

"And I've not been in England at all. I'm—I'm liable to arrest, you know, but they made a clearance of us from Boulogne. We were a sorry crew, Oakleigh."

"What are you going to do now?" I asked. "I'll see you through as far as I can."

My hand was moving to my pocket, but he stopped me with a gesture.

"I don't want money, old chap."

"You look as if you wanted a square meal, Draycott."

He laughed with a bitterness in which there was little pride.

"And a bath. And some new clothes. I shall get 'em all in a few days."

"What are you going to do?" I repeated. "If I may advise you, you've been out of this country long enough for Scotland Yard to regard you leniently. If you go to them frankly——"

He shook his head decisively.

"I've no doubt they'd let me stay here if I behaved myself, but it's no good. I can't get back to my old position, there are too many people who remember me. I should never have stopped Jim Loring as I stopped you. No, I'm going vaguely into the Midlands, to some recruiting office——"

"They won't take you," I interrupted. "You're my age, you're thirty-five."

"I'm twenty-nine for the purposes of the Army," he answered. "And, if that's too old, I'm twenty-seven. I shall take this beard off, of course. But, look here, I'm keeping you——"

"I want to see you again, Draycott," I said, as we shook hands.

"Better not. And don't tell those other men. It was just a—a whim. We were always rather pals at Melton, you know...."

Nearly a year later Corporal Draycott of the Midland Light Infantry was recommended for a Distinguished Conduct Medal, but before the dispatch reached England he was dead of dysentery in the plague pit of Gallipoli.

When I reached the Club it was to find the same new spirit of gregariousness that I had noticed at luncheon, but in an intensified degree. The old antipathies were forgotten, and from the crowded hall to the echoing gallery stretched a living chain of eager, garrulous men. I passed from one to another under a hail of questions, as my own great-grandfather may have done a century before when 'the town' gathered beneath that same roof to await news of Leipzig.

Loring had taken refuge in the deserted card-room, and we had been sitting there raking over the old possibilities for half an hour when the door opened and Sir Roger Dainton entered in uniform.

"I've been looking for you all the evening, George," he exclaimed. "I—look here, I want your uncle to do me a favour. I've been to his house, but they told me he was seedy. I can't get any news of Sonia."

O'Rane sat upright in his chair, scattering a cloud of flaky cigar-ash over his trousers. His face was hidden as he leant forward to brush it away, but I wondered whether he was recalling with me Mayhew's story of the missing American girls.

"But I thought she was home," I said. "Webster's back, and I was talking to Erckmann here after lunch."

"She stayed behind," Dainton told me. "It's a long rigmarole, and I'll go into it later. I've been to the Foreign Office and simply couldn't get past the door. I was thinking that as your uncle rather had the ear of the Ministry.... You see, I'm mobilized, so I can't do much myself. Sonia's been wiring all over the place—Bayreuth, Munich, Heaven knows where, giving a different address each time. Where she is at present, I haven't the faintest idea."

I knew that neither Bertrand nor I could help him, but for very civility I had to offer him the chance of seeing my uncle. O'Rane followed me downstairs and helped me into my coat, observing dispassionately:

"This is a fool's errand, George."

"I don't need to be told that, Raney," I answered.

"I'm staying the night with Jim," he went on. "You might come and report progress on your way to the Admiralty. As early as you like. We've no time to lose."

"What do you propose to do?" I inquired, as we hurried into the hall.

He laughed at the question.

"Well, we can't very well leave Sonia in Germany, can we?" he asked. "At least, I can't. Early to-morrow, mind. Good night, old man."