CHAPTER XXXI

THE COLONEL

That night Sir Edward Grey made the historic speech, which swung the nation into line like one man, and launched Great Britain on the supreme adventure of her history.

_The one bright spot in the situation is Ireland._

Redmond had followed in a speech which filled the Colonel's eyes with tears and his heart with gladness as he read it next morning, so generous it was, so chivalrous.

_I say to the Government they may withdraw every one of their troops from Ireland. Ireland will be defended by her armed sons from invasion, and for that purpose Catholics in the South will join the Protestants in the North._

The Colonel paced to and fro on his lawns, the paper flapping in his hand.

Not even the spectacle of Carson, sulking in his tent, and answering never a word to his opponent's magnanimous appeal, could mar that vision splendid.

All day long the Colonel never left his garden, hovering round the telephone. Anything might happen at any moment.

Then news came through.

The Government had sent Germany an ultimatum. If she failed to give us an assurance before 11 p.m. that she would not violate the neutrality of Belgium, England would go to war.

The Colonel sighed his thankfulness.

All day he quarter-decked up and down the loggia, Zeiss glasses in hand. His telescope he arranged on the tripod on the lawn, and with it swept earth and sky and sea. Towards evening he marked a bevy of men swing round the shoulder of the hill from Meads into the coombe. They were in mufti, and not in military formation; but they marched, he noted, and kept some sort of order, moving rhythmically, restrained as a pack of hounds on the way to the meet, and yet with riot in their hearts. He turned the telescope full on them, marked Ernie among them, and knew them forthwith for the Reservists from Old Town training for _IT_. A wave of emotion surged through him. He went down to the fence and stood there with folded arms, and high head, his sparse locks grey in the evening light, watching them go by. Then he saluted.

They saw the old soldier standing bare-headed at the fence, recognised him, and shouted a greeting.

"Good-evening, sir."

"That's the style!" he cried gruffly. "Getting down to it."

Then Ernie broke away and came across the grass to him at the double, grinning broadly, and gay as a boy.

"Yes, sir. Old Town Troop we call ourselves. Long march to-night. Through Birling Gap to the Haven and home over Windhover about midnight. What I stepped across to say, sir, was I'm thinkin Ruth'd better stay where she is for the time being--if it's all the same to you, sir; and not move to the garage."

"As you like," replied the Colonel. "Undercliff's the most exposed house in Beachbourne--that's certain. If there's trouble from the sea we shall catch it; or if their Zeppelins bomb the signalling station on the Head some of it may come our way."

Ernie looked shy.

"That little turn-up with Alf in the road yesterday, sir," he said confidentially. "I was glad you was there." He came forward stealthily. "See, I know what you thought, sir. It's not Joe after her. It's Alf--always has been; from before we married. Joe's all right."

The Colonel stared grimly over the sea.

"I think you're wrong," he said.

"Then I know I'm not, sir," Ernie flashed.

The Colonel returned to his watch.

That night he did not go to bed. Instead he sat up in his pyjamas in the corner-room that looked out over the sea, and on to Beau-nez. If we went in the news would be flashed at once to the coastguard on the Head; and the petty officer on duty up there had promised to signal it down to the house in the coombe beneath.

The Colonel watched and waited.

The window was open. It was a still and brilliant night. He could hear the fall, and swish, and drone of the sea, rhythmical and recurrent, at the foot of the cliff. From the crest of the hill behind the house came the occasional tinkle of the canister-bell of some old wether of the flock.

Then the silence was disturbed by a growing tumult in the darkness.

A squadron of destroyers was thrashing furiously round the Head, not a light showing, close inshore, too, only an occasional smudge of white in the darkness revealing their position and the feather of foam they bore along like a plume before them.

Out of the darkness they came at a speed incredible, and into the darkness they were gone once more like a flash.

The Colonel breathed again.

At least the Navy was ready, thanks to Churchill.

Was the Army?

He recalled a remark reported to him as having been made at a P.S.A. in the East-end some weeks since: that the Army no longer trusted its officers, and the country no longer trusted its Army. Could it be true?

His thoughts turned with passionate sympathy to Gough and the simple regimental officers who had been lured by politicians into the dreadful business of the Army Conspiracy. But that other feller!--that yappin chap at the War Office, who ought to have known better! ...

Away on the crest of Beau-nez, humping a huge black back against the brilliant darkness, someone was swinging a lantern--once, twice.

The Colonel flashed his electric torch in answer.

The gaunt figure at the window turned.

"Rachel," he said low, to the woman in the bed beneath him.

"Jocko," came the answering voice, quiet as his own.

"We're going in."

"Thank God."

In the darkness she reached up arms, white and trembling as a bride's, and drew him to her.

He kissed her eyelids and found them wet.

"I can't help it, Jocko," she sobbed. "Jock!"

Her boy was in India with the second battalion; but she knew very well that now the crash had come every battalion in the Service would be flung into the furnace.

The Colonel went back to the window and she came to his side. His arm crept about her, and she trembled in the curve of it. A mild but ghastly beam, as of the moon, fell on them standing at the window. A battleship was playing its searchlight full on them. The cold wan beam roamed along the hill-side callous and impersonal, exposing every bush and scar. It fell on the white bluff of Beau-nez and came creeping, like the fingers of a leper, along the cliff. Just opposite the hostel, at the spot where the path ran down to the beach, it stayed, pointing as it were, at a little pillar of solid blackness erect on the cliff edge.

The Colonel caught his breath with a gasp.

"Don't look!" he cried sharply and snatched his wife away. As he did so the pillar broke up in two component parts, as though dissolved by the white encircling flood of light.

A woman's stifled scream came through the open window.

"Joe!"

Then there was a slither of chalk as the pair stampeded down the path out of sight, and crashed into the beach beneath. The Colonel let down the blind with a rattle.