“And such a lot of guns,” said Manning.
“Then you think it will be a long war, Mr. Britling?” said Lady Meade.
“Long or short, it will end in the downfall of Germany. But I do not believe it will be long. I do not agree with Manning. Even now I cannot believe that a whole great people can be possessed by war madness. I think the war is the work of the German armaments party and of the Court party. They have forced this war on Germany. Well—they must win and go on winning. So long as they win, Germany will hold together, so long as their armies are not clearly defeated nor their navy destroyed. But once check them and stay them and beat them, then I believe that suddenly the spirit of Germany will change even as it changed after Jena. …”
“Willie Nixon,” said one of the visitors, “who came back from Hamburg yesterday, says they are convinced they will have taken Paris and St. Petersburg and one or two other little places and practically settled everything for us by about Christmas.”
“And London?”
“I forgot if he said London. But I suppose a London more or less hardly matters. They don’t think we shall dare come in, but if we do they will zeppelin the fleet and walk through our army—if you can call it an army.”
Manning nodded confirmation.
“They do not understand,” said Mr. Britling.
“Sir George Padish told me the same sort of thing,” said Lady Homartyn. “He was in Berlin in June.”
“Of course the efficiency of their preparations is almost incredible,” said another of Lady Meade’s party.
“They have thought out and got ready for everything—literally everything.”
§ 13
Mr. Britling had been a little surprised by the speech he had made. He hadn’t realised before he began to talk how angry and scornful he was at this final coming into action of the Teutonic militarism that had so long menaced his world. He had always said it would never really fight—and here it was fighting! He was furious with the indignation of an apologist betrayed. He had only realised the strength and passion of his own belligerent opinions as he had heard them, and as he walked back with his wife through the village to the Dower House, he was still in the swirl of this self-discovery; he was darkly silent, devising fiercely denunciatory phrases against Krupp and Kaiser. “Krupp and Kaiser,” he grasped that obvious, convenient alliteration. “It is all that is bad in medievalism allied to all that is bad in modernity,” he told himself.
“The world,” he said, startling Mrs. Britling with his sudden speech, “will be intolerable to live in, it will be unendurable for a decent human being, unless we win this war.
“We must smash or be smashed. …”
His brain was so busy with such stuff that for a time he stared at Mrs. Harrowdean’s belated telegram without grasping the meaning of a word of it. He realised slowly that it was incumbent upon him to go over to her, but he postponed his departure very readily in order to play hockey. Besides which it would be a full moon, and he felt that summer moonlight was far better than sunset and dinner time for the declarations he was expected to make. And then he went on phrase-making again about Germany until he had actually bullied off at hockey.
Suddenly in the midst of the game he had an amazing thought. It came to him like a physical twinge.
“What the devil are we doing at this hockey?” he asked abruptly of Teddy, who was coming up to bully after a goal. “We ought to be drilling or shooting against those infernal Germans.”
Teddy looked at him questioningly.
“Oh, come on!” said Mr. Britling with a gust of impatience, and snapped the sticks together.
§ 14
Mr. Britling started for his moonlight ride about half-past nine that night. He announced that he could neither rest nor work, the war had thrown him into a fever; the driving of the automobile was just the distraction he needed; he might not, he added casually, return for a day or so. When he felt he could work again he would come back. He filled up his petrol tank by the light of an electric torch, and sat in his car in the garage and studied his map of the district. His thoughts wandered from the road to Pyecrafts to the coast, and to the possible route of a raider. Suppose the enemy anticipated a declaration of war! Here he might come, and here. …
He roused himself from these speculations to the business in hand.
The evening seemed as light as day, a cool moonshine filled the world. The road was silver that flushed to pink at the approach of Mr. Britling’s headlight, the dark turf at the wayside and the bushes on the bank became for a moment an acid green as the glare passed. The full moon was climbing up the sky, and so bright that scarcely a star was visible in the blue grey of the heavens. Houses gleamed white a mile away, and ever and again a moth would flutter and hang in the light of the lamps, and then vanish again in the night.
Gladys was in excellent condition for a run, and so was Mr. Britling. He went neither fast nor slow, and with a quite unfamiliar confidence. Life, which had seemed all day a congested confusion darkened by threats, became cool, mysterious and aloof and with a quality of dignified reassurance.
He steered along the narrow road by the black dog-rose hedge, and so into the high road towards the village. The village was alight at several windows but almost deserted. Out beyond, a coruscation of lights burnt like a group of topaz and rubies set in the silver shield of the night. The festivities of the Flower Show were still in full progress, and the reduction of the entrance fee
