Eight candles burning for Rosalind. Why, it was nineteen years ago.
Don-Don was a baby then, and Michael and Nicky were only little boys.
And look at them now!

She fed her arrogance by gazing on the tall, firmly knit, slender bodies
of her sons, in white flannels, playing furiously and well.

"Dorothy is looking very handsome," Mrs. Jervis said. Yes, certainly
Dorothy was looking handsome; but Frances loved before all things the
male beauty of her sons. In Michael and Nicholas it had reached
perfection, the clean, hard perfection that would last, as Anthony's
had lasted.

She thought of their beauty that had passed from her, dying many deaths,
each death hurting her; the tender mortal beauty of babyhood, of
childhood, of boyhood; but this invulnerable beauty of their young
manhood would be with her for a long time. John would have it. John was
only a fairer Nicholas; but as yet his beauty had not hardened; his
boyhood lingered in the fine tissues of his mouth, and in his eyelids
and the soft corners of his eyes; so that in John she could still see
what Nicky had been.

She had adored Anthony's body, as if she had foreseen that it would give
her such sons as these; and in her children she had adored the small
bodies through whose clean, firm beauty she foresaw the beauty of their
manhood. These were the same bodies, the same faces that she had loved
in them as children; nothing was blurred or twisted or overlaid.

Michael at six-and-twenty was beautiful and serious as she had foreseen
him. Frances knew that Michael had genius, and at other moments she was
proud of his genius; but at this particular moment, sitting beside her
friend and conscious of her jealousy, she was chiefly aware of his body.

Michael's body was quiescent; its beauty gave her a proud, but austere
and tranquil satisfaction. It was when she looked at her second son that
something caught at her breath and held it. She saw him as the lover
and bridegroom of Veronica. Her sense of his virility was terrible to
her and delightful.

Perhaps they were engaged already.

And Frances was sorry for Mrs. Jervis, who had borne no sons, who had
only borne one unattractive and unsatisfactory daughter. She used to be
sorry for her because Rosalind was pink and fat and fluffy; she was
sorry for her now because Rosalind was unsatisfactory. She was sorry for
Mrs. Norris because her boy could never grow up like Michael or Nicholas
or John. She was sorry for Mrs. Vereker because George, though he looked
all right when he was by himself, became clumsy and common at once
beside Michael and Nicholas and John. George was also in white flannels;
he played furiously and well; he played too furiously and too
consciously well; he was too damp and too excited; his hair became damp
and excited as he played; his cries had a Cockney tang.

Her arrogance nourished itself on these contrasts.

Mrs. Jervis looked wistfully at the young men as they played. She looked
still more wistfully at Dorothy.

"What do you do," she said, "to keep your children with you?"

"I do nothing," Frances said. "I don't try to keep them. I've never
appealed to their feelings for my own purposes, or taken advantage of
their affection, that's all.

"They know that if they want to walk out of the house to-morrow, and
stay out, they can. Nobody'll stop them."

There was a challenging, reminiscent glint in Mr. Jervis's eyes, and his
wife was significantly silent. Frances knew what they were thinking.

"Nicky," she said, "walked out; but he came back again as soon as he
was in trouble. Michael walks out and goes abroad every year; but he
comes back again. Dorothy walks out, but she's never dreamed of not
coming back again."

"Of course, if you aren't afraid of taking risks," said Mr. Jervis.

"I am afraid. But I've never shown it."

"It's very strange that Dorothy hasn't married." Mrs. Jervis spoke. She
derived comfort from the thought that Dorothy was eight-and-twenty and
not married.

"Dorothy," said Frances, "could marry to-morrow if she wanted to; but
she doesn't want."

She was sorry for her friend, but she really could not allow her that
consolation.

"Veronica is growing up very good-looking," said Mrs. Jervis then.

But it was no use. Frances was aware that Veronica was grown up, and
that she was good-looking, and that Nicky loved her; but Mrs. Jervis's
shafts fell wide of all her vulnerable places. Frances was no
longer afraid.

"Veronica," she said, "is growing up very good." It was not the word she
would have chosen, yet it was the only one she could think of as likely
to convey to Mrs. Jervis what she wanted her to know, though it left her
obtuseness without any sense of Veronica's mysterious quality.

She herself had never tried to think of a word for it before; she was
only driven to it now because she detected in her friend's tone a
challenge and a warning. It was as if Rosalind's mother had said,
extensively and with pointed reference to the facts: "Veronica is
dangerous. Her mother has had adventures. She is grown-up and she is
good-looking, and Nicky is susceptible to that sort of thing. If you
don't look out he will be caught again. The only difference between
Phyllis Desmond and Veronica is in their skins."

So when Frances said Veronica was good, she meant that Mrs. Jervis
should understand, once for all, that she was not in the least like her
mother or like Phyllis Desmond.

That was enough for Mrs. Jervis. But it was not enough for Frances, who
found her mind wandering off from Rosalind's mother and looking for the
word of words that would express her own meaning to her own
satisfaction.

Her thoughts went on deep down under the stream of conversation that
flowed through her from Mrs. Jervis on her right hand to Mrs. Vereker
and Mrs. Norris on her left.

Veronica was good. But she was not wrapped up in other people's lives as
Frances was wrapped up. She was wrapped up, not in herself, but in some
life of her own that, as Frances made it out, had nothing in the world
to do with anybody else's.

And yet Veronica knew what you were feeling and what you were thinking,
and what you were going to do, and what was happening to you. (She had
really known, in Dresden, what was happening to Nicky when Desmond made
him marry her.) It was as if in her the walls that divide every soul
from every other soul were made of some thin and porous stuff that let
things through. And in this life of yours, for the moments that she
shared it, she lived intensely, with uncanny delight and pain that were
her own and not her own.

And Frances wanted some hard, tight theory that would reconcile these
extremes of penetration and detachment.

She remembered that Ferdinand Cameron had been like that. He saw things.
He was a creature of queer, sudden sympathies and insights. She supposed
it was the Highland blood in both of them.

Mrs. Vereker on her right expressed the hope that Mr. Bartholomew was
better. Frances said he never would be better till chemists were
forbidden to advertise and the _British Medical Journal_ and _The
Lancet_ were suppressed. Bartie would read them; and they supplied him
with all sorts of extraordinary diseases.

She thought: Seeing things had not made poor Ferdie happy; and Veronica
in her innermost life was happy. She had been happy when she came back
from Germany, before she could have known that Nicky cared for her,
before Nicky knew it himself.

Supposing she had known it all the time? But that, Frances said to
herself, was nonsense. If she had known as much as all that, why should
she have suffered so horribly that she had nearly died of it?
Unless--supposing--it had been his suffering that she had nearly
died of?

Mrs. Norris on her left was saying that she was sorry to see Mr. Maurice
looking so sadly; and Frances heard herself replying that Morrie hadn't
been fit for anything since he was in South Africa.

Between two pop-gun batteries of conversation the serious theme
sustained itself. She thought: Then, Nicky had suffered. And Veronica
was the only one who knew. She knew more about Nicky than Nicky's
mother. This thought was disagreeable to Frances.

It was all nonsense. She didn't really believe that these things
happened. Yet, why not? Michael said they happened. Even Dorothy, who
didn't believe in God and immortality or anything, believed that.

She gave it up; it was beyond her; it bothered her.

"Yes. Seventy-nine her last birthday."

Mrs. Norris had said that Mrs. Fleming was wonderful.

Frances thought: "It's wonderful what Veronica does to them."

       *       *       *       *       *

The sets had changed. Nicholas and a girl friend of Veronica's played
against George Vereker and Miss Lathom; John, with Mr. Jervis for his
handicap, played against Anthony and Mr. Norris. The very young Norris
fielded. All afternoon he had hoped to distinguish himself by catching
some ball in full flight as it went "out." It was a pure and high
ambition, for he knew he was so young and unimportant that only the eyes
of God and of his mother watched him.

Michael had dropped out of it. He sat beside Dorothy under the tree of
Heaven and watched Veronica.

"Veronica's wonderful," he said. "Did you see that?"

Dorothy had seen.

Veronica had kept Aunt Emmeline quiet all afternoon. She bad made Bartie
eat an ice under the impression that it would be good for him. And now
she had gone with Morrie to the table where the drinks were, and had
taken his third glass of champagne cup from him and made him drink
lemonade instead.

"How does she do it?" said Michael.

"I don't know. She doesn't know herself. I used to think I could manage
people, but I'm not in it with Ronny. She ought to be a wardress in a
lunatic asylum."

"Now look at that!"

Veronica had returned to the group formed by Grannie and the Aunties and
some strangers. The eyes of the four Fleming women had looked after her
as she went from them; they looked towards her now as if some great
need, some great longing were appeased by her return.

Grannie made a place by her side for the young girl; she took her arm,
the young white arm, bare from the elbow in its short sleeve, and made
it lie across her knees. From time to time Grannie's yellow, withered
hand stroked the smooth, warm white arm, or held it. Emmeline and Edith
squatted on the grass at Veronica's feet; their worn faces and the worn
face of Louie looked at her. They hung on her, fascinated, curiously
tranquillized, as if they drank from her youth.

"It's funny," Dorothy said, "when you think how they used to hate her."

"It's horrible," said Michael.

He got up and took Veronica away.

He was lying at her feet now on the grass in the far corner of the lawn
under the terrace.

"Why do you go to them?" he said.

"Because they want me."

"You mustn't go when they want you. You mustn't let them get hold of
you."

"They don't get hold of me--nothing gets hold of me. I want to help
them. They say it does them good to have me with them."

"I should think it did do them good! They feed on you, Ronny. I can see
it by the way they look at you. You'll die of them if you don't give
it up."

"Give what up?"

"Your game of keeping them going. That is your game, isn't it?
Everybody's saying how wonderful Grannie is. They mean she ought to have
been dead years ago.

"They were all old, horribly old and done for, ages ago. I can remember
them. But they know that if they can get a young virgin sacrificed to
them they'll go on. You're the young virgin. You're making them go on."

"If I could--it wouldn't hurt me. Nothing hurts you, Michael, when
you're happy. It's awful to think how they've lived without being happy,
without loving.

"They used to hate me because I'm Vera's daughter. They don't hate me
now."

"You don't hate what you feed on. You love it. They're vampires. They'll
suck your life out of you. I wonder you're not afraid of them.

"I'm afraid of them. I always was afraid of them; when I was a kid and
Mother used to send me with messages to that beastly spooky house they
live in. I used to think it was poor old Grandpapa's ghost I funked. But
I know now it wasn't. It was those four terrible women. They're ghosts.
I thought you were afraid of ghosts."

"I'm much more afraid of you, when you're cruel. Can't you see how awful
it must be for them to be ghosts? Ghosts among living people. Everybody
afraid of them--not wanting them."

"Michael--it would be better to be dead!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Towards the end of the afternoon Frances's Day changed its appearance
and its character. In the tennis courts Michael's friends played singles
with an incomparable fury, frankly rejecting the partners offered them
and disdaining inferior antagonists; they played, Ellis against Mitchell
and Monier-Owen against Nicholas.

They had arrived late with Vera and Lawrence Stephen.

It had come to that. Anthony and Frances found that they could not go on
for ever refusing the acquaintance of the man who had done so much for
Michael. Stephen's enthusiastic eulogy of Michael's Poems had made an
end of that old animosity a year ago. Practically, they had had to
choose between Bartie and Lawrence Stephen as the turning point of
honour. Michael had made them see that it was possible to overvalue
Bartie; also that it was possible to pay too high a price for a
consecrated moral attitude. In all his life the wretched Bartie had
never done a thing for any of them, whereas he, Michael, owed his rather
extraordinary success absolutely to Lawrence Stephen. If the strike made
his father bankrupt he would owe his very means of livelihood to
Lawrence Stephen.

Besides, he liked Stephen, and it complicated things most frightfully to
go on living in the same house with people who disliked him.

If, Michael said, they chose to dissociate themselves altogether from
their eldest son and his career, very well. They could go on ignoring
and tacitly insulting Mr. Stephen. He could understand their taking a
consistently wrong-headed line like that; but so long as they had any
regard, either for him or his career, he didn't see how they could very
well keep it up any longer. He was sorry, of course, that his career had
let them in for Stephen if they didn't like him; but there it was.

And beyond a doubt it was there.

"You might vindicate Bartie gloriously," Michael said, "by turning me
out of the house and disinheriting me. But would it be worth while? I'm
not asking you to condone Stephen's conduct--if you can't condone it;
I'm asking you either to acknowledge _or_ repudiate your son's debts.

"After all, if _he_ can condone your beastly treatment of him--I
wouldn't like him if he was the swine you think him."

And Anthony had appealed to Michael's mother.

To his "Well, Frances, what do you think? Ought we or oughtn't we?" she
had replied: "I think we ought to stand solid behind Michael."

It was Michael's life that counted, for it was going on into a great
future. Bartie would pass and Michael would remain.

Their nervous advances had ended in a complete surrender to Stephen's
charm.

Vera and Stephen seemed to think that the way to show the sincerity and
sweetness of their reconciliation was to turn up as often as possible on
Frances's Day. They arrived always at the same hour, a little late; they
came by the road and the front door, so that when Bartie saw them
coming he could retreat through the garden door and the lane. The
Flemings and the Jervises retreated with him; and presently, when it had
had a good look at the celebrities, the rest of the party followed.

This Saturday Frances's Day dwindled and melted away and closed, after
its manner; only Vera and Stephen lingered. They stayed on talking to
Michael long after everybody else had gone.

Stephen said he had come to say good-bye to Michael's people and to make
a proposal to Michael himself. He was going to Ireland.

Vera interrupted him with passion.

"He isn't. He hasn't any proposal to make. He hasn't come to say
good-bye."

Her restless, unhappy eyes turned to him incessantly, as if, more than
ever, she was afraid that he would escape her, that he would go off God
knew where.

God knew where he was going, but Vera did not believe that he was going
to Ireland. He had talked about going to Ireland for years, and he had
never gone.

Stephen looked as if he did not see her; as if he did not even see
Michael very distinctly.

"I'm going," he said, "to Ireland on Monday week, the third of August. I
mayn't come back for long enough. I may not come back at all."

"That's the sort of thing he keeps on saying."

"I may not come back _at all_. So I want you to take over the _Review_
for me. Ellis and my secretary will show you how it stands. You'll know
what to do. I can trust you not to let it down."

"He doesn't mean what he says, Michael. He's only saying it to frighten
me. He's been holding it over me for years.

"_Say_ you'll have nothing to do with it. _Say_ you won't touch his old
_Review_."

"Could I go to Ireland for you?"

"You couldn't."

"Why not? What do you think you're going to do there?"

"I'm going to pull the Nationalists together, so that if there's civil
war in Ireland, the Irish will have a chance to win. Thank God for
Carson! He's given us the opportunity we wanted."

"Tell him he's not to go, Michael. He won't listen to me, but he'll mind
what you say."

"I want to go instead of him."

"You can't go instead of me. Nobody can go instead of me."

"I can go with you."

"You can't."

"Larry, if you take Michael to Ireland, Anthony and Frances will never
forgive you. _I_'ll never forgive you."

"I'm not taking Michael to Ireland, I'm telling you. There's no reason
why Michael should go to Ireland at all. It isn't _his_ country."

"You needn't rub _that_ in," said Michael.

"It isn't _yours_," said Vera. "Ireland doesn't want you. The
Nationalists don't want you. You said yourself they've turned you out of
Ireland. When you've lived in England all these years why should you go
back to a place that doesn't want you?"

"Because if Carson gets a free hand I see some chance of Ireland being a
free country."

Vera wailed and entreated. She said it showed how much he cared for her.
It showed that he was tired of her. Why couldn't he say so and have
done with it?

"It's not," she said, "as if you could really do anything. You're a
dreamer. Ireland has had enough of dreamers." And Stephen's eyes looked
over her head, into the high branches of the tree of Heaven, as if he
saw his dream shining clear through them like a moon.

The opportunist could see nothing but his sublime opportunity.

Michael went back with him to dine and talk it over. There was to be
civil war in Ireland then?

He thought: If only Lawrence would let him go with him. He wanted to go
to Ireland. To join the Nationalists and fight for Ireland, fight for
the freedom he was always dreaming about--_that_ would be a fine thing.
It would be a finer thing than writing poems about Ireland.

Lawrence Stephen went soberly and steadily through the affair of the
_Review_, explaining things to Michael. He wanted this done, and this.
And over and over again Michael's voice broke through his instructions.
Why couldn't he go to Ireland instead of Lawrence? Or, if Lawrence
wouldn't let him go instead of him, he might at least take him with him.
He didn't want to stay at home editing the _Review_. Ellis or Mitchell
or Monier-Owen would edit it better than he could. Even the wretched
Wadham would edit it just as well. He wanted to go to Ireland and fight.

But Lawrence wouldn't let him go. He wasn't going to have the boy's
blood on his hands. His genius and his youth were too precious.

Besides, Ireland was not his country.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was past ten o'clock. Frances was alone in the drawing-room. She sat
by the open window and waited and watched.

The quiet garden lay open to her sight. Only the inner end of the
farther terrace, under the orchard wall, was hidden by a high screen
of privet.

It seemed hours to Frances since she had seen Nicky and Veronica go down
the lawn on to the terrace.

And then Anthony had gone out too. She was vexed with Anthony. She could
see him sitting under his ash-tree, her tree of heaven; his white
shirt-front gave out an oblong gleam like phosphorous in the darkness
under the tree. She was watching to see that he didn't get up and go on
to the terrace. Anthony had no business in the garden at all. He was
catching cold in it. He had sneezed twice. She wanted Nicholas and
Veronica to have the garden to themselves to-night, and the perfect
stillness of the twilight to themselves, every tree and every little
leaf and flower keeping quiet for them; and there was Anthony sneezing.

She was restless and impatient, as if she carried the burden of their
passion in her own heart.

Presently she could bear it no longer. She got up and called to Anthony
to come in. He came obediently. "What are you thinking of," she said,
"planting yourself out there and sneezing? I could see your shirt-front
a mile off. It's indecent of you."

"Why indecent?"

"Because Nicky and Veronica are out there."

"I don't see them."

"Do you suppose they want you to see them?"

She turned the electric light on full, to make darkness of their
twilight out there.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nicky and Veronica talked together in the twilight, sitting on the seat
under the orchard well behind the privet screen. They did not see
Anthony sitting under the ash-tree, they did not hear him, they did not
hear Frances calling to him to come in. They were utterly unaware of
Frances and Anthony.

"Ronny," he said, "did Michael say anything to you?"

"When?"

"This afternoon, when he made you come with him here?"

"How do you mean, 'say anything'?"

"You know what I mean."

"_Mick_?"

"Yes. Did he ask you to marry him?"

"No. He said a lot of funny things, but he didn't say that. He
wouldn't."

"Why wouldn't he?"

"Because--he just wouldn't."

"Well, he says he understands you."

"Then," said Veronica conclusively, "of course he wouldn't."

"Yes; but he says _I_ don't."

"Dear Nicky, you understand me when nobody else does. You always did."

"Yes, when we were kids. But supposing _now_ I ever didn't, would it
matter? You see, I'm stupid, and caring--caring awfully--might make me
stupider. _Have_ people got to understand each other?"

To that she replied astonishingly, "Are you quite sure you understand
about Ferdie?"

"Ferdie?"

"Yes." She turned her face full to him. "I don't know whether you know
about it. _I_ didn't till Mother told me the other day. I'm
Ferdie's daughter.

"Did you know?"

"Oh, Lord, yes. I've known it for--oh, simply ever so long."

"Who told you?"

"Dorothy, I think. But I guessed it because of something he said once
about seeing ghosts."

"I wonder if you know how I feel about it? I want you to understand
that. I'm not a bit ashamed of it. I'm proud. I'm _glad_ I'm Ferdie's
daughter, not Bartie's.... I'd take his name, so that everybody should
know I was his daughter, only that I like Uncle Anthony's name best. I'm
glad Mother loved him."

"So am I, Ronny. I know I shouldn't have liked Bartie's daughter.
Bartie's daughter wouldn't have been you."

He took her in his arms and held her face against his face. And it was
as if Desmond had never been.

A little while ago he had hated Desmond because she had come before
Veronica; she had taken what belonged to Veronica, the first tremor of
his passion, the irrecoverable delight and surprise. And now he knew
that, because he had not loved her, she had taken nothing.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Do you love me?"

"Do you love _me_?"

"You know I love you."

"You know. You know."

What they said was new and wonderful to them as if nobody before them
had ever thought of it.

Yet that night, all over the Heath, in hollows under the birch-trees,
and on beds of trampled grass, young lovers lay in each other's arms and
said the same thing in the same words: "Do you love me?" "You know I
love you!" over and over, in voices drowsy and thick with love.

       *       *       *       *       *

"There's one thing I haven't thought of," said Nicky. "And that's that
damned strike. If it hits Daddy badly we may have to wait goodness knows
how long. Ages we may have to."

"I'd wait all my life if I could have you in the last five seconds of
it. And if I couldn't, I'd still wait."

And presently Veronica remembered Michael.

"Why did you ask me whether Mick had said anything?"

"Because I thought you ought to know about it before you--Besides, if he
_had_, we should have had to wait a bit before we told him."

It seemed that there was nothing to prevent them marrying to-morrow if
they liked. The strike, Anthony said, couldn't hit him as badly as
all that.

He and Frances sat up till long past midnight, talking about their
plans, and the children's plans. It was all settled. The first week in
August they would go down to Morfe for the shooting. They would stay
there till the first week in September. Nicky and Veronica would be
married the first week in October. And they would go to France and
Belgium and Germany for their honeymoon.



XIX

They did not go down to Morfe the first week in August for the shooting.

Neither did Lawrence Stephen go to Ireland on Monday, the third. At the
moment when he should have been receiving the congratulations of the
Dublin Nationalists after his impassioned appeal for militant
consolidation, Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward Carson were shaking hands
dramatically in the House of Commons. Stephen's sublime opportunity, the
civil war, had been snatched from him by the unforeseen.

And there was no chance of Nicky and Veronica going to Belgium and
France and Germany for their honeymoon.

For within nine days of Frances's Day Germany had declared war on France
and Russia, and was marching over the Belgian frontier on her way
to Paris.

Frances, aroused at last to realization of the affairs of nations,
asked, like several million women, "What does it mean?"

And Anthony, like several million men, answered, "It means Armageddon."
Like several million people, they both thought he was saying something
as original as it was impressive, something clear and final and
descriptive. "Armageddon!" Stolid, unimaginative people went about
saying it to each other. The sound of the word thrilled them,
intoxicated them, gave them an awful feeling that was at the same time,
in some odd way, agreeable; it stirred them with a solemn and sombre
passion. They said "Armageddon. It means Armageddon." Yet nobody knew
and nobody asked or thought of asking what Armageddon meant.

"Shall We come into it?" said Frances. She was thinking of the Royal
Navy turning out to the last destroyer to save England from invasion; of
the British Army most superfluously prepared to defend England from the
invader, who, after all, could not invade; of Indian troops pouring into
England if the worst came to the worst. She had the healthy British mind
that refuses and always has refused to acknowledge the possibility of
disaster. Yet she asked continually, "Would England be drawn in?" She
was thankful that none of her sons had gone into the Army or the Navy.
Whoever else was in, they would be out of it.

At first Anthony said, "No. Of course England wouldn't be drawn in."

Then, on the morning of England's ultimatum, the closing of the Stock
Exchange and the Banks made him thoughtful, and he admitted that it
looked as if England might be drawn in after all. The long day, without
any business for him and Nicholas, disturbed him. There was a nasty,
hovering smell of ruin in the air. But there was no panic. The closing
of the Banks was only a wise precaution against panic. And by evening,
as the tremendous significance of the ultimatum sank into him, he said
definitively that England would not be drawn in.

Then Drayton, whom they had not seen for months (since he had had his
promotion) telephoned to Dorothy to come and dine with him at his club
in Dover Street. Anthony missed altogether the significance of _that_.

He had actually made for himself an after-dinner peace in which coffee
could be drunk and cigarettes smoked as if nothing were happening
to Europe.

"England," he said, "will not be drawn in, because her ultimatum will
stop the War. There won't be any Armageddon."

"Oh, won't there!" said Michael. "And I can tell you there won't be much
left of us after it's over."

He had been in Germany and he knew. He carried himself with a sort of
stern haughtiness, as one who knew better than any of them. And yet his
words conveyed no picture to his brain, no definite image of anything
at all.

But in Nicholas's brain images gathered fast, one after another; they
thickened; clear, vivid images with hard outlines. They came slowly but
with order and precision. While the others talked he had been silent and
very grave.

"_Some_ of us'll be left," he said. "But it'll take us all our time."

Anthony looked thoughtfully at Nicholas. A sudden wave of realization
beat up against his consciousness and receded.

"Well," he said, "we shall know at midnight."

       *       *       *       *       *

An immense restlessness came over them.

At a quarter-past eight Dorothy telephoned from her club in Grafton
street. Frank had had to leave her suddenly. Somebody had sent for him.
And if they wanted to see the sight of their lives they were to come
into town at once. St. James's was packed with people from Whitehall to
Buckingham Palace. It was like nothing on earth, and they mustn't miss
it. She'd wait for them in Grafton Street till a quarter to nine, but
not a minute later.

Nicky got out his big four-seater Morss car. They packed themselves into
it, all six of them somehow, and he drove them into London. They had a
sense of doing something strange and memorable and historic. Dorothy,
picked up at her club, showed nothing but a pleasurable excitement. She
gave no further information about Frank. He had had to go off and see
somebody. What did he think? He thought what he had always thought; only
he wouldn't talk about it.

Dorothy was not inclined to talk about it either. The Morss was caught
in a line blocked at the bottom of Albemarle Street by two streams of
cars, mixed with two streams of foot passengers, that poured steadily
from Piccadilly into St. James's Street.

Michael and Dorothy got out and walked. Nicholas gave up his place to
Anthony and followed with Veronica.

Their restlessness had been a part of the immense restlessness of the
crowd. They were drawn, as the crowd was drawn; they went as the crowd
went, up and down, restlessly, from Trafalgar Square and Whitehall to
Buckingham Palace; from Buckingham Palace to Whitehall and Trafalgar
Square. They drifted down Parliament Street to Westminster and back
again. An hour ago the drifting, nebulous crowd had split, torn asunder
between two attractions; its two masses had wheeled away, one to the
east and the other to the west; they had gathered themselves together,
one at each pole of the space it now traversed. The great meeting in
Trafalgar Square balanced the multitude that had gravitated towards
Buckingham Palace, to see the King and Queen come out on their balcony
and show themselves to their people.

And as the edges of the two masses gave way, each broke and scattered,
and was mixed again with the other. Like a flood, confined and shaken,
it surged and was driven back and surged again from Whitehall to
Buckingham Palace, from Buckingham Palace to Whitehall. It looked for an
outlet in the narrow channels of the side-streets, or spread itself over
the flats of the Green Park, only to return restlessly upon itself,
sucked back by the main current in the Mall.

It was as if half London had met there for Bank Holiday. Part of this
crowd was drunk; it was orgiastic; it made strange, fierce noises, like
the noises of one enormous, mystically excited beast; here and there,
men and women, with inflamed and drunken faces, reeled in each other's
arms; they wore pink paper feathers in their hats. Some, only half
intoxicated, flicked at each other with long streamers of pink and white
paper, carried like scourges on small sticks. These were the inspired.

But the great body of the crowd was sober. It went decorously in a long
procession, young men with their sweethearts, friends, brothers and
sisters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers with their children;
none, or very few, went alone that night.

It was an endless procession of faces; grave and thoughtful faces;
uninterested, respectable faces; faces of unmoved integrity; excited
faces; dreaming, wondering, bewildered faces; faces merely curious, or
curiously exalted, slightly ecstatic, open-mouthed, fascinated by each
other and by the movements and the lights; laughing, frivolous faces,
and faces utterly vacant and unseeing.

On every other breast there was a small Union Jack pinned; every other
hand held and waggled a Union Jack. The Union Jack flew from the engine
of every other automobile. In twelve hours, out of nowhere, thousands
and thousands of flags sprang magically into being; as if for years
London had been preparing for this day.

And in and out of this crowd the train of automobiles with their flags
dashed up and down the Mall for hours, appearing and disappearing.
Intoxicated youths with inflamed faces, in full evening dress, squatted
on the roofs of taxi-cabs or rode astride on the engines of their cars,
waving flags.

All this movement, drunken, orgiastic, somnambulistic, mysteriously
restless, streamed up and down between two solemn and processional lines
of lights, two solemn and processional lines of trees, lines that
stretched straight from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace in a recurrent
pattern of trees and lamps, dark trees, twilit trees, a lamp and a tree
shining with a metallic unnatural green; and, at the end of the avenue,
gilded gates and a golden-white façade.

The crowd was drifting now towards the Palace. Michael and Dorothea,
Nicholas and Veronica, went with it. In this eternal perambulation they
met people that they knew; Stephen and Vera; Mitchell, Monier-Owen;
Uncle Morrie and his sisters. Anthony, looking rather solemn, drove
past them in his car. It was like impossible, grotesque encounters in
a dream.

Outside the Palace the crowd moved up and down without rest; it drifted
and returned; it circled round and round the fountain. In the open
spaces the intoxicated motor-cars and taxi-cabs darted and tore with the
folly of moths and the fury of destroyers. They stung the air with their
hooting. Flags, intoxicated flags, still hung from their engines. They
came flying drunkenly out of the dark, like a trumpeting swarm of
enormous insects, irresistibly, incessantly drawn to the lights of the
Palace, hypnotized by the golden-white façade.

Suddenly, Michael's soul revolted.

"If this demented herd of swine is a great people going into a great
war, God help us! Beasts--it's not as if _their_ bloated skins were
likely to be punctured."

He called back over his shoulders to the others.

"Let's get out of this. If we don't I shall be sick."

He took Dorothy by her arm and shouldered his way out.

The water had ceased playing in the fountain.

Nicholas and Veronica stood by the fountain. The water in the basin was
green like foul sea-water. The jetsam of the crowd floated there. A
small child leaned over the edge of the basin and fished for Union Jacks
in the filthy pool. Its young mother held it safe by the tilted edge of
its petticoats. She looked up at them and smiled. They smiled back again
and turned away.

It was quiet on the south side by the Barracks. Small, sober groups of
twos and threes strolled there, or stood with their faces pressed close
against the railings, peering into the barrack yard. Motionless,
earnest and attentive, they stared at the men in khaki moving about on
the other side of the railings. They were silent, fascinated by the men
in khaki. Standing safe behind the railing, they stared at them with an
awful, sombre curiosity. And the men in khaki stared back, proud,
self-conscious, as men who know that the hour is great and that it is
their hour.

"Nicky," Veronica said, "I wish Michael wouldn't say things like that."

"He's dead right, Ronny. That isn't the way to take it, getting drunk
and excited, and rushing about making silly asses of themselves. They
_are_ rather swine, you know."

"Yes; but they're pathetic. Can't you see how pathetic they are? Nicky,
I believe I love the swine--even the poor drunken ones with the pink
paper feathers--just because they're English; because awful things are
going to happen to them, and they don't know it. They're English."

"You think God's made us all like that? He _hasn't_."

They found Anthony in the Mall, driving up and down, looking for them.
He had picked up Dorothy and Aunt Emmeline and Uncle Morrie.

"We're going down to the Mansion House," he said, "to hear the
Proclamation. Will you come?"

But Veronica and Nicholas were tired of crowds, even of historic crowds.
Anthony drove off with his car-load, and they went home.

"I never saw Daddy so excited," Nicky said.

But Anthony was not excited. He had never felt calmer or cooler in his
life.

He returned some time after midnight. By that time it had sunk into him.
Germany _had_ defied the ultimatum and England _had_ declared war
on Germany.

He said it was only what was to be foreseen. He had known all the time
that it would happen--really.

The tension of the day of the ultimatum had this peculiar psychological
effect that all over England people who had declared up to the last
minute that there would be no War were saying the same thing as Anthony
and believing it.

Michael was disgusted with the event that had put an end to the Irish
Revolution. It was in this form that he conceived his first grudge
against the War.

This emotion of his was like some empty space of horror opened up
between him and Nicholas; Nicky being the only one of his family who was
as yet aware of its existence.

For the next three days, Nicholas, very serious and earnest, shut
himself up in his workshop at the bottom of the orchard and laboured
there, putting the last touches to the final, perfect, authoritative
form of the Moving Fortress, the joint creation of his brain and
Drayton's, the only experiment that had survived the repeated onslaughts
of the Major's criticism. The new model was three times the size of the
lost original; it was less like a battleship and more like a racing-car
and a destroyer. It was his and Drayton's last word on the subject of
armaments.

It was going to the War Office, this time, addressed to the right
person, and accompanied by all sorts of protective introductions, and
Drayton blasting its way before it with his new explosive.

In those three days Nick found an immense distraction in his Moving
Fortress. It also served to blind his family to his real intentions. He
knew that his real intentions could not be kept from them very long.
Meanwhile the idea that he was working on something made them happy.
When Frances saw him in his overalls she smiled and said: "Nicky's got
_his_ job, anyhow." John came and looked at him through the window of
the workshop and laughed.

"Good old Nicky," he said. "Doing his bit!"

In those three days John went about with an air of agreeable excitement.
Or you came upon him sitting in solitary places like the dining-room,
lost in happy thought. Michael said of him that he was unctuous. He
exuded a secret joy and satisfaction. John had acquired a sudden
remarkable maturity. He shone on each member of his family with
benevolence and affection, as if he were its protector and consoler, and
about to confer on it some tremendous benefit.

"Look at Don-Don," Michael said. "The bloodthirsty little brute. He's
positively enjoying the War."

"You might leave me alone," said Don-Don. "I shan't have it to enjoy for
long."

He was one of those who believed that the War would be over in four
months.

Michael, pledged to secrecy, came and looked at the Moving Fortress. He
was interested and intelligent; he admired that efficiency of Nicky's
that was so unlike his own.

Yet, he wondered, after all, was it so unlike? He, too, was aiming at an
art as clean and hard and powerful as Nicky's, as naked of all blazonry
and decoration, an art which would attain its objective by the simplest,
most perfect adjustment of means to ends.

And Anthony was proud of that hidden wonder locked behind the door of
the workshop in the orchard. He realized that his son Nicholas had taken
part in a great and important thing. He was prouder of Nicholas than he
had been of Michael.

And Michael knew it.

Nicky's brains could be used for the service of his country.

But Michael's? Anthony said to himself that there wasn't any sense--any
sense that he could endure to contemplate--in which Michael's brains
could be of any use to his country. When Anthony thought of the
mobilization of his family for national service, Michael and Michael's
brains were a problem that he put behind him for the present and refused
to contemplate. There would be time enough for Michael later.

Anthony was perfectly well aware of his own one talent, the talent which
had made "Harrison and Harrison" the biggest timber-importing firm in
England. If there was one thing he understood it was organization. If
there was one thing he could not tolerate it was waste of good material,
the folly of forcing men and women into places they were not fit for. He
had let his eldest son slip out of the business without a pang, or with
hardly any pang. He had only taken Nicholas into it as an experiment.
It was on John that he relied to inherit it and carry it farther.

As a man of business he approved of the advertised formula: "Business as
Usual." He understood it to mean that the duty which England expected
every man to do was to stay in the place he was most fitted for and to
go where he was most wanted. Nothing but muddle and disaster could
follow any departure from this rule.

It was fitting that Frances and Veronica should do Red Cross work. It
was fitting that Dorothy should help to organize the relief of the
Belgium refugees. It was fitting that John should stay at home and carry
on the business, and that he, Anthony, should enlist when he had settled
John into his place. It was, above all, fitting that Nicky should devote
himself to the invention and manufacture of armaments. He could not
conceive anything more wantonly and scandalously wasteful than a system
that could make any other use of Nicky's brains. He thanked goodness
that, with a European War upon us, such a system, if it existed, would
not be allowed to live a day.

As for Michael, it might be fitting later--very much later--perhaps. If
Michael wanted to volunteer for the Army then, and if it were necessary,
he would have no right to stop him. But it would not be necessary.
England was going to win this War on the sea and not on land. Michael
was practically safe.

And behind Frances's smile, and John's laughter, and Michael's
admiration, and Anthony's pride there was the thought: "Whatever
happens, Nicky will he safe."

And the model of the Moving Fortress was packed up--Veronica and Nicky
packed it--and it was sent under high protection to the War Office. And
Nicky unlocked the door of his workshop and rested restlessly from
his labour.

And there was a call for recruits, and for still more recruits.

Westminster Bridge became a highway for regiments marching to battle.
The streets were parade-grounds for squad after squad of volunteers in
civilian clothes, self-conscious and abashed under the eyes of the
men in khaki.

And Michael said: "This is the end of all the arts. Artists will not be
allowed to exist except as agents for the recruiting sergeant.
We're dished."

That was the second grudge he had against the War. It killed the arts in
the very hour of their renaissance. "Eccentricities" by Morton Ellis,
with illustrations by Austin Mitchell, and the "New Poems" of Michael
Harrison, with illustrations by Austin Mitchell, were to have come out
in September. But it was not conceivable that they should come out.

At the first rumour of the ultimatum Michael and Ellis had given
themselves up for lost.

LiГ©ge fell and Namur was falling.

And the call went on for recruits, and for still more recruits. And
Nicky in five seconds had destroyed his mother's illusions and the whole
fabric of his father's plans.

It was one evening when they were in the drawing-room, sitting up after
Veronica had gone to bed.

"I hope you won't mind, Father," he said; "but I'm going to enlist
to-morrow."

He did not look at his father's face. He looked at his mother's. She was
sitting opposite him on the couch beside Dorothy. John balanced himself
on the head of the couch with his arm round his mother's shoulder. Every
now and then he stooped down and rubbed his cheek thoughtfully
against her hair.

A slight tremor shook her sensitive, betraying upper lip; then she
looked back at Nicholas and smiled.

Dorothy set her mouth hard, unsmiling.

Anthony had said nothing. He stared before him at Michael's foot, thrust
out and tilted by the crossing of his knees. Michael's foot, with its
long, arched instep, fascinated Anthony. He seemed to be thinking: "If I
look at it long enough I may forget what Nicky has said."

"I hope you won't mind, Father; but I'm enlisting too."

John's voice was a light, high echo of Nicky's.

With a great effort Anthony roused himself from his contemplation of
Michael's foot.

"I--can't--see--that my minding--or not minding--has anything--to
do--with it."

He brought his words out slowly and with separate efforts, as if they
weighed heavily on his tongue. "We've got to consider what's best for
the country all round, and I doubt if either of you is called upon
to go."

"Some of us have got to go," said Nicky.

"Quite so. But I don't think it ought to be you, Nicky; or John,
either."

"I suppose," said Michael, "you mean it ought to be me."

"I don't mean anything of the sort. One out of four's enough."

"One out of four? Well then--"

"That only leaves me to fight," said Dorothy.

"I wasn't thinking of you, Michael. Or of Dorothy."

They all looked at him where he sat, upright and noble, in his chair,
and most absurdly young.

Dorothy said under her breath: "Oh, you darling Daddy."

"_You_ won't be allowed to go, anyhow," said John to his father. "You
needn't think it."

"Why not?"

"Well--." He hadn't the heart to say: "Because you're too old."

"Nicky's brains will be more use to the country than my old carcass."

Nicky thought: "You're the very last of us that can be spared." But he
couldn't say it. The thing was so obvious. All he said was: "It's out of
the question, your going."

"Old Nicky's out of the question, if you like," said John. "He's going
to be married. He ought to be thinking of his wife and children."

"Of course he ought," said Anthony. "Whoever goes first, it isn't
Nicky."

"You ought to think of Mummy, Daddy ducky; and you ought to think of
_us_," said Dorothy.

"I," said John, "haven't got anybody to think of. I'm not going to be
married, and I haven't any children."

"I haven't got a wife and children yet," said Nicky.

"You've got Veronica. You ought to think of her."

"I am thinking of her. You don't suppose Veronica'd stop me if I wanted
to go? Why, she wouldn't look at me if I didn't want to go."

Suddenly he remembered Michael.

"I mean," he said, "after my _saying_ that I was going."

Their eyes met. Michael's flickered. He knew that Nicky was thinking of
him.

"Then Ronny knows?" said Frances.

"Of course she knows. _You_ aren't going to try to stop me, Mother?"

"No," she said. "I'm not going to try to stop you--this time."

She thought: "If I hadn't stopped him seven years ago, he would be safe
now, with the Army in India."

One by one they got up and said "Good night" to each other.

But Nicholas came to Michael in his room.

He said to him: "I say, Mick, don't you worry about not enlisting. At
any rate, _not yet_. Don't worry about Don and Daddy. They won't take
Don because he's got a mitral murmur in his heart that he doesn't know
about. He's going to be jolly well sold, poor chap. And they won't take
the guv'nor because he's too old; though the dear old thing thinks he
can bluff them into it because he doesn't look it.

"And look here--don't worry about me. As far as I'm concerned, the War's
a blessing in disguise. I always wanted to go into the Army. You know
how I loathed it when they went and stopped me. Now I'm going in and
nobody--not even mother--really wants to keep me out. Soon they'll all
be as pleased as Punch about it.

"And I sort of know how you feel about the War. You don't want to stick
bayonets into German tummies, just _because_ they're so large and oodgy.
You'd think of that first and all the time and afterwards. And I shan't
think of it at all.

"Besides, you disapprove of the War for all sorts of reasons that I
can't get hold of. But it's like this--you couldn't respect yourself if
you went into it; and I couldn't respect myself if I stayed out."

"I wonder," Michael said, "if you really see it."

"Of course I see it. That's the worst of you clever writing chaps. You
seem to think nobody can ever see anything except yourselves."

When he had left him Michael thought: "I wonder if he really does see?
Or if he made it all up?"

They had not said to each other all that they had really meant. Of
Nicky's many words there were only two that he remembered vividly,
"Not yet."

Again he felt the horror of the great empty space opened up between him
and Nicky, deep and still and soundless, but for the two words:
"Not yet."



XX

It was as Nicholas had said. Anthony and John were rejected; Anthony on
account of his age, John because of the mitral murmur that he didn't
know about.