If Winter Comes Part 32

III

When he went down into Tidborough in the morning it was to know at once that this to-morrow gave no lie to its precedent day. It intensified it.

The previous day foreshadowed war. The new day presented it.

The papers, as it happened, did not arrive before he left, and Mabel had more to say of her annoyance with the insufferable Jones than of what his withheld wares might contain. Her att.i.tude towards the international position was--up to this point of its development--precisely this: she had been following the crisis day by day with appreciation of its sensational headlines while these were in the paper before her, but without further interest when the paper was read. She folded up the thrones, the chancelleries, the councils, the armies and the peoples and put them away in the bra.s.s newspaper rack in the morning room and proceeded about her duties and her engagements. But she liked unfolding them and she was thoroughly annoyed with the insufferable Jones for preventing her from unfolding them. She said she would come down into Tidborough and speak to Jones herself.

"Yes, do," said Sabre. "There'll be things to see."

There were things to see. As he rode into the town people were standing about in little groups, excitedly talking; every one seemed to have a newspaper. In a row, as he approached the news agent's, were hugely printed contents bills, all with the news, in one form or another, "War Declared."

It _was_ war. Yesterday no dream. He could not stop to rest his bicycle against the curb. He leant it over and dropped it on the pavement with a crash and hurried into the shop and bought and read.

War.... He looked out into the street through the open doorway. All those knots of people standing talking. War.... A mounted orderly pa.s.sed down the street at a brisk trot, his dispatch bag swaying and b.u.mping across his back. Every one turned and stared after him, stepped out into the roadway and stared after him. War.... He bought all the morning papers and went on to the office. Outside a bank a small crowd of people waited about the doors. They were waiting to draw out their money. Lloyd George had announced the closing of the banks for three days; but they didn't believe it was real. Was it real? He pa.s.sed Hanbury's, the big grocer's. It seemed to be crammed. People outside waiting to get in.

They were buying up food. A woman struggled her way out with three tins of fruit, a pot of jam and a bag of flour. She seemed thoroughly well pleased with herself. He heard her say to some one, "Well, I've got mine, anyway." He actually had a sense of rea.s.surance from her grotesque provisioning. He thought, "You see, every one knows it can't last long."

IV

No one in the office was pretending to do any work. As in the street, all were in groups eagerly talking. The clerks' room resounded with excited discussion. Everybody wanted to talk to somebody. He went into Mr. Fortune's room. Mr. Fortune and Twyning and Harold were gathered round a map cut from a newspaper, all talking; even young Harold giving views and being attentively listened to. They looked up and greeted him cordially. Everybody was cordial and communicative to everybody. "Come along in, Sabre." He joined them and he found their conversation extraordinarily rea.s.suring, like the woman who had sufficiently provisioned with three tins of fruit, a pot of jam and a bag of flour.

They knew a tremendous lot about it and had evidently been reading military articles for days past. They all showed what was going to be done, ill.u.s.trating it on the map. And the map itself was extraordinarily rea.s.suring: as Twyning showed--his fingers covering the whole of the belligerent countries--while the Germans were delivering all their power down _here_, in Belgium, the Russians simply nipped in _here_ and would be threatening Berlin before those fools knew where they were!

He thought, "By Jove, yes."

"And granted," said Mr. Fortune--Mr. Fortune was granting propositions right and left with an amiability out of all keeping with his normal stubbornness--"and granted that Germany can put into the field the enormous numbers you mention, Twyning, what use are they to her? None.

No use whatever. I was talking last night to Sir James Boulder. His son has been foreign correspondent to one of the London papers for years.

He's attended the army manoeuvres in Germany, France, Austria everywhere. He knows modern military conditions through and through, as you may say. Well, he says--and it's obvious when you think of it--that Germany can't possibly use her enormous ma.s.ses. No room for them. Only the merest fraction can ever get into action. Where they're coming in is like crowding into the neck of a bottle. Two thirds of them uselessly jammed up behind. A mere handful can hold them up--"

Harold put in, "Yes, and those terrific fortresses, sir."

"Precisely. Precisely. Liege, Namur, Antwerp--absolutely impregnable, all the military correspondents say so. Impregnable. Well, then. There you are. It's like sending a thousand men to fight in a street. Look here--" He went vigorously to the window. They all went to the window; Sabre with them, profoundly impressed. Mr. Fortune pointed into the street. "There. That's what it is. Here comes your German army down this way from the cathedral. Choked. Blocked. Immovable mob. How many do you suppose could hold them up? Thirty, twenty, a dozen. Hold them up and throw them into hopeless and utter disorder. Pah! Simple, isn't it? I don't suppose the thing will last a month. What do you say, Sabre?"

Sabre was feeling considerably more at ease. He felt that the first shock of the thing had made him take an exaggerated view. "I don't see how it can," he said, "now I'm hearing a bit more about it. I was thinking just now what a dramatic thing it would be if it lasted--of course it can't--but if it lasted till next June and the decisive battle was fought in June, 1915, just a hundred years after Waterloo.

That would be dramatic, eh?"

They all laughed, and Sabre, realising the preposterousness of such a notion, laughed with them. Twyning said, "Next June! Imagine it! At the very outside it will be well over by Christmas."

And they all agreed, "Oh, rather!"

V

It was all immensely rea.s.suring, and Sabre gathered up his bundle of papers and went into his room, feeling on the whole rather pleasurably excited than otherwise. But as he read, column after column and paper after paper, measures that had been taken by the Government, orders to Army and Naval reservists, the impending call for men, the scenes in the streets of London, and with these the deeply grave tone of the leading articles, the tremendous statistics and the huge foreshadowing of certain of the military correspondents, the breathless news already from the seats of war,--as his mind thus received there returned to it its earlier sense of enormous oppression and tremendous conjecture. War....

England.... The first sentence of his history, now greatly advanced, came tremendously into his mind: "This England you live in is _yours_...." And now at war--challenged--threatened--

It surged enormously within him. He got up. He must go out into the streets and see what was happening.

The day wore on. He felt extraordinarily shy and self-conscious about the performance of a matter that had entered his mind with that surging uplift of his feelings. It was four o'clock in the afternoon before he took himself to it and then, leaving its place, he unexpectedly encountered Mabel. She was just going into the station. She had come in, as she had proposed, and she told him what she had said to Jones and what Jones had said to her. "Abominably rude man."

Then she asked him, "Was that Doctor Anderson's gate you came out of just now?"

"Yes."

"Whatever had you been to see him about?"

He flushed. He never could invent an excuse when he wanted one. "I'd been asking him to have a look at me."

"Whatever for?"

"Oh, nothing particular."

"You couldn't have been to see him for nothing."

"Well, practically nothing. You remember when I increased my life insurance some time ago they said my heart was a bit groggy and made a bit of a fuss? Well, I thought I'd just see again so as to get out of paying that higher premium."

"Oh, that. What nonsense it was. What did he say?"

"Said I had a murmur or some rot. I say, if you're going back now, don't wait dinner for me to-night. I'll get something here. The _Evening Times_ is bringing out a special edition at nine o'clock. I'd like to wait for it."

She a.s.sented, "Yes, bring home the paper."

He went into the office. The afternoon post had brought letters to his desk. He turned them over without interest, then caught up one,--from Nona.

Marko, this frightful war! I have thanked G.o.d on my knees for you that last week you prevented me. If I had done it with this! Tony has rejoined the Guards, he was in the Reserve of Officers. And you see that whatever has been, and is, dear, he's my man to stand by in this. Marko, it would have been too awful if I couldn't, and I thank G.o.d for you, again and again and again. Nona.

Twyning appeared. "Hullo, old man, heard the latest? I say, you look as if you're ready to take on the whole world."

CHAPTER V

I

The enormous and imponderable world awfully unbalanced. Upside down.

Extraordinarily unreal. Furiously real.

Life, which had been a thing of the clock and of the calendar, became a thing of events in which there was no time,--only events.

Things began one day very shortly after the declaration of war when, pa.s.sing the barracks on his way home, Sabre was accosted and taken into the Mess by Cottar, a subaltern of the Pinks.

"You must come along in and have a cup of tea," young Cottar urged.

"We've got a h.e.l.l of a jamborino on. At least we shall have to-night.

We're just working up for it. I can't tell you why. You can guess."

Sabre felt a sudden catch at his emotions. "Is the regiment going?"

They were at the door of the anteroom. Cottar swung it open. The room was full of men and tobacco smoke and noise. A very tall youth, one Sikes, was standing on the table, a gla.s.s in his hand. "Hullo, Sabre!