"Well," said the American moodily, "you may get your chance."
"Thank "ee, sir. I hope so, sir."
"Good-night, Mathews."
"Good-night, sir. Thank "ee, sir."
Selwyn moved off into the network of shadows. Looking back once, he saw the weather-beaten groom with hands on his hips, tilting himself to and fro in benicotined enjoyment of some odd strain of philosophy. Good heavens! was that the way men went to war,--as if it were a hunt with an equal chance of being the hound or the hare? "Sausage-eaters"--what a phrase to describe those eagle-helmeted supermen of Prussia"s cavalry!
And this little island of pipe-smoking, country-side philosophers and pampered, sport-loving youth--this was the country, heart of a crumbling empire, that had ordered the gray torrent of Germany to alter its course and flow back to its own confines. It was absurd. It was grotesque. It was a sporting thing to do, but would it mean the collapse of the sprawling, disjointed British Empire, linked together by a flimsy tradition of loyalty to the Crown?
Scotland would be faithful, not so much to England as to her own instincts. Even if England were the heart of things, Scotland was the brain, and more than any other part supplied the driving-power for the wheels of empire. But what of rebellious Ireland and the distant Dominions isolated by the seas? Would they seize this moment of Britain"s mad impetuosity and declare for their own independence? It was the history of nations--and did not history repeat itself?
Canada, of course, would be governed in her actions by the mighty neighbouring Republic. That was inevitable when the young Dominion"s life was so dominated by that of the United States. But what of the others? . . .
Thus for half-an-hour queried the man from America. He was about to turn into the house, when he glanced once more in the direction of the stables. It was too dark to distinguish anything, but there was the glow from Mathews"s pipe as it faintly lit the surrounding darkness.
II.
Eleven o"clock.
"Austin."
He had been sitting in the library talking to Lord Durwent, but the latter had just left the room to answer a phone-call from London. Elise, who had been playing the gramophone in the music-room, shut the instrument off and hurried to the American"s side.
"Yes, Elise?" He tried to rise, but she pressed him back and sat on the arm of the huge chair, looking down at him with a face that was glowing with excitement. Her eyes were like jewels of fate lit from within by some magic flame, and a mutinous lock of hair fell on the side of her face, almost touching the crimson lips. There was so much magnetism in her beauty, such a heaven in the unconquered warmth of her impetuous being, that Selwyn gripped the arms of his chair to help to restrain the mad impulse to grasp her in his arms and smother those lips and the flushed, satin cheeks in a tempest of kisses.
"Yes, Elise?" he repeated, clearing his throat.
"Listen, Austin. I can"t stay inside any longer. I think my blood is on fire. Will you come with me to the village?"
"At eleven o"clock?"
"Yes. The news from London will reach the village first, and I want to be there when it comes. We shall have to hurry if we are to make it in time."
"I"m at your service, Elise."
"Right-o. I"ll let the mater know. I"ll just run upstairs and put something easy on, and I"ll meet you at the front of the house. You had better change too."
A few minutes later she joined him on the lawn. They had just reached the road which led to the porter"s lodge, when, without a word of warning, she grasped his hand, and, half-running, half-dancing, pulled him forward at a rapid pace. With a laugh he joined in her mood, and, running side by side, they sped along the drive, while startled rabbits leaped across their path, and melancholy owls hooted disapprobation. As if the fumes of madness had mounted even to the skies, dark flecks of cloud raced headlong across the starry heavens.
They were mad. The world was mad. He wondered whether his brain might be playing some prank, and this absurd thing of two young people laughing and running to discover whether or not a nation was at war would prove a pointless jest of unsound imagination.
"Come along," she cried. "You"re dragging."
Then it wasn"t a dream. The sound of her voice whipped the wandering fantasies of his brain into coherency. With a shout he jumped forward, and ran as he had not done since that one great game when, as a "scrub,"
he had his chance against Yale.
"Oh-oh-oh," she laughed, "I"m--winded."
He caught her up in his arms as if her weight were no more than a child"s, and carried her forward a hundred paces. His strength was limitless. He felt as if his body would never again know the la.s.situde of fatigue.
His pulses were throbbing with double fever: that of the world and his own hot love for her. Yes, it was love. What a fool he had been ever to doubt it! His last thoughts at night were of her; the last word whispered was her name; the last picture shrouded by the approaching mists of sleep was of her face. What was morning but a sunlit moment that meant Elise? What was the day, what were the years, what was life, but one great moment to be lived for Elise--Elise?
"Put me down, Austin. There! you"ll be tired."
"Tired!"
But her feet had touched the ground, and she was away again by herself, like a tantalising sprite of the woods. The errant lock had been joined in its mutiny by a wealth of dark-hued, auburn hair, blowing free in the reckless summer breeze.
Out of the estate and along the highway, shadowed by tall bushes; past cottages hiding in snug retreat of vines and flowers; past the cross-roads, with their sign-post standing like a gibbet waiting its prize; past the inn on the outskirts of the village, with its creaking sign, and its neighing horses in the stable; past the church on the rise of the hill, with its graveyard and its ivy-covered steeple--and then the village.
Gathered in the square they could see a group of people listening to a man who was reading something aloud.
"It"s the rector," said Elise. "Let us wait a minute. Can you hear what he is saying?"
The voice had stopped, and the crowd broke into a cheer that echoed strangely on the night-air. It had hardly died away when a quavering, high-pitched voice started "G.o.d Save the King," and with a st.u.r.dy indifference to pitch the rest followed, the octogenarian who had begun it sounding clear above the others as he half-whistled and half-sang the anthem through his two remaining teeth.
"That"s old Hills!" cried Elise, laughing hysterically. "He was at Sebastopol."
The crowd was coming away.
Some were boisterous, others silent. A girl was laughing, but there was a strange look in her eyes. Bounding ahead in high appreciation of the village"s nocturnal behaviour, a nondescript hound was preceding an elderly widow who was weeping quietly as with faltering step she clung to the arm of her son, who was carrying himself with a new erectness.
Behind them walked Mathews the groom, corn-cob pipe and all, shaking his head argumentatively and squaring his shoulders.
An Empire had declared war.
III.
Elise entered the post-office to telephone the news to Roselawn, and Selwyn was left alone. It was only for a few minutes, but in that brief s.p.a.ce of time his whole being underwent a vital crisis, which was not only to change the course of his own life, but was to affect thousands who would never meet him.
The creative mind is ever elusive and unexpected in its workings. In it the masculine and feminine temperaments are fused. It leaps to conclusions--erroneous maybe, but sustained by the feminine conviction that what is instinctive must be true. Selwyn"s was essentially a creative mind, p.r.o.ne to emotionalism and to inspiration. With men of his type logic is largely retrogressive: the conclusion is reached first; the reasons follow.
A few days before his imagination had been strangely stirred by the swiftness of thought which at twilight in England could visualise New York at noon. Simple though the scientific explanation might be, it had left him with a sense of detachment, almost as if he were on Olympus and the world spread out below for him to gaze upon.
That feeling now returned with redoubled force.
The group of villagers had parted into many human fragments. He could hear the hearty invitation of the innkeeper for all boon spirits to join him, free of expense--and regardless of the liquor laws--in a pint of bitter, to drink confusion to the enemy. But to Selwyn they seemed creatures of another planet--or, rather, that he was the visitor in a world of strange inhabitants.
All the resentfulness of an idealist whose ancestry was steeped in liberty of action rose to a fury at this unwarrantable interference of war with the lives of men--a fury maddened by his feeling of utter impotence. Was it possible, he argued, that a group of men drunk with pomp and l.u.s.t of conquest could wreck the whole fabric of civilisation?
What of science and education? Had they risen only to be the playthings of madmen? What kind of a world was it that allowed such things?
Was it possible, however, that this war was different from any other?
Granted that Austria had willed the crushing of Servia, and that Germany was instigator of the crime--had not the rest of the world proved false to their creeds by allowing the war-hunger of the Central Powers to achieve its aim? Supposing France, Britain, America, and Italy had joined in an immediate warning to Germany and Austria that if they did not desist from their malpractices the area of their countries would be declared a plague-spot, commercial intercourse with the outside world would be brought to an end, and their citizens treated as lepers. If that had been done, men could have gone on leading the lives to which they had been called, and by sheer c.u.mulative effect could have exerted a moral pressure on the war-l.u.s.t of Germany that would have been irresistible.
Yet, like a bull that sees red, the nations had rushed madly at each other, thirsting to gore each other"s vitals with their horns. Men of peaceful vocations were at that very moment slaughtering their brother-men. It was wrong--hideously wrong!