CHAPTER XXVIII

OLD TOWN

Next day was Sunday.

The Colonel waited on the cliff for his paper, which brought the expected news. The die was cast. Germany had proclaimed martial law: she was already at war with Russia; France had mobilised.

"She's in it by now," he said to himself, as he walked across the golf-links towards Old Town.

The threat of danger was arousing in every individual a passionate need for communication, for re-assurance, for the warmth and comfort of the crowd. The herd, about to be attacked, was drawing together. Its out-posts were coming back at the trot, heads high, ears alert, snorting the alarm. Even the rogue and outcast were seeking re-admission and finding it amid acclamation. The main body were packing in a square, heads to the danger, nostrils quivering, antlers ready. An enemy was a-foot just beyond the sky-line. He has not declared himself as yet. But the wind betrayed his presence; and the secret stir of the disturbed and fearful wilderness was evidence enough that the Flesh-eater was abroad.

The turf sprang deliciously beneath the Colonel's feet. His youth seemed to have returned to him. He felt curiously braced and high of heart. Once he paused to look about him. Beyond the huge smooth bowl of the links with its neat greens and the little boxes of sand, its pleasant club-house, its evidence of a smooth and leisurely civilisation, Paradise rippled at the touch of a light-foot breeze. The Downs shimmered radiantly, their blemishes hidden in the mists of morning. On his right, beyond the ha-ha, the Duke's Lodge stood back in quiet dignity amid its beeches, typical of the England that was about to fade away like a cinema picture at a touch.

A lark sang. The Colonel lifted his face to the speck poised and thrilling in the blue.

What a day to go to war on! was his thought.

At the deserted club-house he dropped down into Lovers' Lane and climbed up towards Old Town between high flint walls, ivy-covered.

As he emerged into Rectory Walk the Archdeacon was coming out of his gate. He was in his glory. His faded eyes glittered like those of an old duellist about to engage, and confident of his victim.

"I've been waiting this day for forty-five yeahs," he announced.

The Colonel was aware of the legend that in 1870 the Archdeacon, then a lad at Cambridge, had only been restrained from fighting for his hero, the Emperor of the French, by a brutal father.

"It certainly looks as if you might get back a bit of your own," he said wearily. The other's dreadful exaltation served only to depress him. "Russia going at em one side and France the other."

"And England!" cried the Archdeacon.

"You think we shall go in?"

To the Colonel's horror, the Archdeacon took him by the arm.

"Can you doubt it?" he cried, rolling his eyes to see the impression he was making on the grocer in the door of the little corner-shop. "Are we rotten to the heart?"

They were walking down Church Street now, arm-in-arm, in the middle of the road.

"The pity of it is," he cried in his staccato voice, "we've no Emperah to lead us to-day. Ah! there was a man!" He made a dramatic halt in mid-street. "_Thank Gahd for Carson--what!_" he whispered.

"And Smith," said the Colonel meekly. "Let us give thanks for Smith too--

_Great in counsel, great in war, Foremost Captain of our time, Rich in saving common sense, And, as the greatest only are, In his simplicity sublime._"

They had reached the door of the parish-church.

The Archdeacon entered; and the Colonel turned with relief to greet Bobby Chislehurst. The lad's open face was unusually grave.

"There are sure to be pacifist demonstrations in London to-morrow," he began, blurting out his confidences like a a school-boy. "It's my day off. I shall go."

"Don't," said the Colonel.

"I must," the other replied. "It's all I can do."

"Bobby," said the Colonel grimly. "This is my advice. If you go up to London at all wire to Billy to come and meet you. He may be able to get an hour off, though I expect they're pretty busy at Aldershot." Billy was Bobby's twin-brother and in the Service.

Bobby winced.

"Yes," he said, "if Billy goes, Billy won't come back. I know Billy."

A few yards down the street the Colonel met Alf Caspar in the stream of ascending church-goers.

The little sidesman was dapper as usual: he wore a fawn coloured waist-coat, his moustache was waxed, his hair well-oiled; but his face was almost comically a-wry. He looked like the villain in a picture play about to burst into tears. Directly he saw the Colonel he roused to new and hectic life, crossing to him, entirely forgetful of their meeting on the previous evening.

"Is it war, sir?" he asked feverishly and with flickering eyes.

"If we are ever to hold up our heads and look the world in the face again," the Colonel answered.

"But what's it got to do with us?" Alf almost screamed. "Let em fight it out among themselves if they want to, I says. Stand aside--that's our part. That's the manly part. And then when it's all over slip in--"

"And collar the loot," suggested the Colonel.

"And arbitrate atween em. If we don't there'll be nobody to do it, only us. I don't say it'll be easy to make the sacrifice o standing aside when you want to help your friends, of course you do. But I say we ought to do it, and let em say what they like--if it's right and it is right. Take up the cross and face the shame--that's what I says. Where's the good o being Christians else, if you're going to throw it all overboard first time you're put to the test? We won't be the first, I says. What about the martyrs and them? Didn't they go through it? Not to talk o the expense! Can we afford it? Course we can't. Who could? Income tax at a shilling in the pound, and my petrol costing me another six-pence the can. And then ask us to sit down to a great war!"

He poured out his arguments as a volcano in eruption pours out lava.

The Colonel listened.

"You'd better give your views to your Rector, I think," he remarked.

Alf's face turned ugly.

"One thing," he said, with an ominously vicious nod, "if there is war I resign my position in the League--that's straight."

"O dear!" said the Colonel, and he turned into the Manor-house.

Bess opened to him herself.

"Joe come?" he asked, knowing she was expecting her brother for the week-end.

"No. A post-card instead. We don't quite know where he is."

The Colonel nodded.

"Leave stopped. Sure to be."

Then Mrs. Trupp came down the stairs. About her was the purged and hallowed air of one who faces death without fear and yet without self-deception as to the price that must be paid. The Colonel felt he was standing upon holy ground.

Mrs. Trupp handed him a post-card. The postmark was Dover. It ran:

_All well. Very busy._

"I think it'll be all right, don't you?" said Mrs. Trupp, raising wistful eyes to his. The mother in her longed for him to say _No_: the patriot _Yes_.

"It must be," replied Bess, ferociously. "If it isn't Joe will chuck the Service. They all will. The pacifists can defend their own rotten country!"

The Colonel moved into the consulting-room, where Mr. Trupp was burrowing short-sightedly into his Sunday paper.

The old surgeon at least had no doubts.

"We shall fight all right," he said comfortably. "We must. And Must's the only man who matters in real life."

The Colonel felt immensely comforted.

"But what a position my poor old party'd have been in now if our leaders hadn't queered the pitch!" he remarked. "_We told you so_! _We told you so_! How we _could_ have rubbed it in."

"Thank God you can't," replied the other grimly. "No party's got the chuckle over another. So there's some hope that we may act as a country for once."

Outside the Manor-house the Colonel met Mr. Pigott in his frock-coat on the way to chapel. The two men had never spoken for years past except to spar. Now in the presence of the common fear they stopped, and then shook hands.

Mr. Pigott was a brave man, but there was no doubt he was shaken to the roots.

"My God, Colonel!" he muttered. "It's _awful_."

"It don't look too pleasant," the old soldier admitted.

"But we can't go in!" cried the old Nonconformist. "It's no affair of ours. Who _are_ the Serbs?"

"It's go in or go under, I'm afraid," the other answered. "That's the alternative."

He dropped down Borough Lane past the _Star_.

On the hill Edward Caspar ambling rapidly along with flying coat-tails caught him up.

"Well, Mr. Caspar, what do _you_ think about it?" asked the Colonel.

The old man emerged from his brown study and looked up with scared eyes through his gold spectacles. He did not recognise the questioner: he never did--but he answered eagerly, and with wonderful firmness.

"It's Love. It can't be anything else."

"I don't know. War seems to me a funny sort of Love," the Colonel muttered.

"What's that?" asked the other.

"War," replied the Colonel. "There's a great European war on."

The old man, blind, puzzled, seeking, stopped dead.

"War?" he said. "What war's that?"

The Colonel explained.

"Austria's gone to war with Serbia. Russia's chimed in. Germany's having a go at Russia. And France is rushing to the rescue of her ally. Europe's ablaze from the Bay of Biscay to the Caucasus."

Edward Caspar blinked at the road as he absorbed the news. Then he gathered himself and went droning down the hill at increased speed with the erratic purposefulness of a great bumble-bee. There was something lofty, almost majestic about his bearing. In a moment he had increased in spiritual stature; and he was trying to straighten his rounded shoulders.

"It must work itself out," he said emphatically. "It's only an incident on the march. We mustn't lose our sense of proportion. We shall get there all the quicker in the end because of it."

"We shall if we go this pace," muttered the Colonel, pretending to pant as they turned into the Moot.

The Quaker meeting-house lay just in front of them, a group of staid figures at the door. On their left was a row of cottages at the foot of the Church-crowned Kneb. The door of one of them was open, and in it stood Ernie in his shirt-sleeves, towel in hand, scrubbing his head. A word passed between father and son; then the old man shuffled on his way.

Ernie turned in a flash to the Colonel, who saw at once that here the miracle of sudden conversion had been at work. This man who for months past had been growing always graver and more pre-occupied was suddenly gay. A spring had been released; and a spirit had been tossed into the air. He seemed on the bubble, like an eager horse tugging at its bridle.

Now he held up a warning finger and moved down the road till he was out of ear-shot of his own cottage.

"Have you worked it, sir?" he asked. His question had reference to his conversation with the Colonel in Saffrons Croft the evening before, and in his keenness he was oblivious of the fact that nothing could have been achieved in the few brief hours that had elapsed since their last meeting.

"I've written," replied the Colonel. "You'll be wanted. Every man who can stand on his hind-legs will. That's what I came about: If you have to join up it'll punish your feet much less if you've done a bit of regular route-marching first. Now I'm game to come along every evening and march with you. Begin to-night. Five to ten miles steady'd soon tell. What about it?"

"I'm at it, sir!" cried Ernie. "Thank you kindly all the same. Started last night after we'd read the news. There's a little bunch of us in Old Town--old sweats. Marched to Friston, we did. One hour's marching; ten minutes halt. Auston to-night. We'll soon work into it."

"That's the style," said the Colonel. "Are the other men keen?"

Ernie grinned.

"Oh, they're for it, if it's got to be," he said.

"And Burt?--seen him?"

"No sir, not yet. But he's all right at heart, Joe is. I'm expectin him round every minute."

At the moment a thick-set man came swishing round the corner of Borough Lane on a bicycle. His shoulders were hunched, and he was pedalling furiously. The sweat shone on his face, which was red and set. It was clear that he had come far and fast. Seeing the two men in the road he flung off his bicycle and drew up beside them at a little pattering run.

Out here under the beat of the sun the Colonel hardly recognised in this solid fellow, dark with purpose, the wavering lover of the cliff last night. Was the change wrought in this man as by magic typical of a like change in the heart of the country? The thought flashed into the Colonel's mind and brought him relief.

The engineer, who was heaving, came straight to his point without a word, without a greeting.

"Philip Blackburn's coomin down on the rush to address a great Stop-the-war meeting at the Salvation Army Citadel this afternoon," he panted. "We must counter it. A'm racin round to warn the boys to roll up. You must be there, Colonel, and you, Ern, and all of you. It's all out this time, and no mistake."

The door behind the Colonel opened. He turned to find Ruth standing in the door, drying her hands.

Joe paid no heed, already sprawling over his bicycle as he pushed it off.

"What time?" she called after him.

"Two-thirty," he answered back, and was gone round the corner.

"Right," she yodled. "I'll be there."