The mothers of the boys going off to the war out there; young chaps—conscripts—Russia and Austria, Germany and France—and not one knowing or caring a dump about it. A pretty how-de-do! There’d be a lot of volunteering here—if—if—! Only he didn’t know, he couldn’t tell what use England could be except at sea.
He got out of the punt and walked slowly up past the house to his front gate. Heat was over, light paling, stars peering through, the air smelled a little of dust. Soames stood like some pelican awaiting it knew not what. A motor-cycle came sputtering from the direction of Reading. The rider, in dusty overalls, flung words at him:
“Pawlyment! We’re goin’ in!” and sputtered past. Soames stretched out a hand. So might a blind man have moved.
Going in? With little food inside and the stars above him, all the imaginative power, which as a rule he starved, turned active, clutched and groped. Scattered, scuttling images of war came flying across the screen of his consciousness like so many wild geese over the sand, over the sea, out of the darkness into the darkness of a layman’s mind; a layman who had thought in terms of peace all his days, and his days many. What a thing to happen to one at sixty! They might have waited till he was like old Timothy. Anxiety! That was it, anxiety. Kitchener was over from Egypt, they said. That was something. A grim-looking chap, with his eyes fixed beyond you like a lion’s at the Zoo; but he’d always come through. Soames remembered, suddenly, his sensations during the black week of the Boer war—potty little affair, compared with this. And there was old Roberts—too old, he supposed.
‘But perhaps,’ he thought, ‘we shan’t have to fight on land.’ Besides, who knew? The Germans might come to their senses yet, when they heard England was going in. There was Russia, she had more millions than all the rest put together—Steam-roller, they called her; but had she the steam? Japan had beaten her.
‘Well!’ and the thought gave him the queerest feeling, proud and miserable: ‘If we begin, we shall hold on.’ There was something at once terrible to him and deeply satisfying about that instinctive knowledge. They’d be singing “Rule Britannia” everywhere to-night—he shouldn’t wonder. People didn’t THINK—a little-headed lot!
The stars burned through a sky growing blue-dark. All over Europe men and guns moving—all over the seas ships tearing along. And this silence—this hush before the storm. That couldn’t last. No; there they were already—singing back there along the road—drunk, he should say. Tune—words—he didn’t know them—vulgar stuff:
What had that to do with it—he should like to know? They were cheering now. Some beanfeast or other had got the news—common people! But—common or not, tonight all was England, England! Well, he must go indoors.
Silence, as of one stricken by decision, come to instinctively rather than by will, weighed on Soames that night and all next day. He read ‘that chap Grey’s’ speech and, in conspiracy with his country, waited for what he felt would never come: an answer to the ultimatum sent. The Germans had tasted of force, and would never go back on their invasion of Belgium.
In the afternoon he could neither bear his own gloom nor the excitement of Annette, and, walking to the station, he took a train to Town. The streets seemed full and to get fuller every minute. He sat down late, at the Connoisseurs’ Club, to dine. When he had finished a meal which seemed to stick in his gizzard, he went downstairs. From his seat in the window he could see St. James’ Street, and the people eddying down it towards the centre of the country’s life. He sat there practically alone. At eleven—they said—the ultimatum would expire. In this quiet room, where the furniture and wall-decorations had been accumulated for men of taste throughout a century of peace, was the reality of life as he had known it, the reality of Victorian and Edwardian England. The Boer wars, and all those other little wars, Ashanti, Afghan, Soudan, expeditionary adventures, professional affairs far away, had hardly ruffled the minds of Connoisseurs. One had walked and talked upon one’s normal way, just conscious of their disagreeable necessity, and their stimulation at breakfast time, like a pinch of Glauber’s salts. But this great thing—why, it had united even the politicians, so he had read in the paper that morning. And there came into his mind Lewis Carroll’s rhyme:
He got up and moved, restless, into the hall. All there was of connoisseur in the club was gathered round the tape—some half-dozen members, none of whom he knew. Soames stood a little apart. Somebody turned and spoke to him. A shrinking from his fellows, accentuated in Soames’ emotional moments, sent a shiver down his spine. He couldn’t stay here and have chaps babbling. Answering curtly, he got his hat and went out. In the crowd he’d be alone, and he moved with it down Pall Mall towards Whitehall. Thicker every moment, it was a curious blend of stillness and excitement. Down Cockspur Street into Whitehall he was slowly swept, till at the mouth of Downing Street the crowd became solidity itself, and there was no moving. Ten minutes to the hour! Impervious by nature and by training to mob-emotion, Soames yet was emotionalised. Here was something that was not mere mob-sensation—something made up of individual feelings stronger than mere impulse; something to which noise was but embroidery. There was plenty of noise, rumorous, and strident now and again, but it didn’t seem to belong to the faces—didn’t seem to suit them any more than it suited the stars that winked and waited. All sorts and conditions of men and women, and he cheek by jowl with them—like sardines in a box—and he didn’t mind. Civilians, they were, peaceful folk—not a soldier or a sailor in the lot! They had begun to sing ‘God save the King!’ His own lips moved; he could not hear himself, and that consoled him. He fixed his eyes on Big Ben. The hands of the bright clock, halfway to the stars, crept with incredible slowness. Two minutes more and the thing would begin—the Thing! What would come of it? He couldn’t tell, he didn’t know. A bad business, a mad business—once in, you couldn’t get out—you had to hold on—to the death—to the death! The faces were all turned one way now under the street lights, white faces, from whose open mouths still came that song; and then—Boom! The clock had struck, and cheering rose. Queer thing to cheer for! “Hoora-a-ay!” The Thing had started!…
Soames walked away. Had he cheered? He did not seem to know. A little ashamed he walked. Why couldn’t he have waited down there on the river, instead of rushing up into the crowd like one of these young clerks or shop fellows? He was glad nobody would know where he had been. As if it did any good for him to get excited; as if it did any good for him to do or get anything at his age. Sixty! He was glad he hadn’t got a son. Bad enough to have three nephews. Still, Val was in South Africa and his leg wasn’t sound; but Winifred’s second son, Benedict—what age was he—thirty? Then there was Cicely’s boy—just gone up to Cambridge. All these boys! Some of them would be rushing off to get themselves killed. A bad sad business! And all because—! Exactly! Because of what?