Joe Burt's rhetoric might not affect the Colonel greatly; but the impressions of Mr. Geddes, conveyed to him quietly a few days later in friendly conversation, were a different matter.
The Presbyterian minister was a scholar, broad-minded, open, honest. He had moreover finished his education at Berlin University, and had, as the Colonel knew, ever since his student days maintained touch with his German friends. Mr. Geddes had come home convinced that Germany was not seeking a quarrel.
"Hamburg stands to lose by war," he told the Colonel, "And Hamburg knows it."
"What about Berlin?" the other asked.
"Berlin's militarist," the other admitted. "And Berlin's watching Ulster as a cat watches a mouse--you find that everywhere; professors, soldiers, men in the street, even my old host, Papa Schumacher, the carpenter, was agog about it.--Was Ulster in Shetland?--Was the Ulster Army black?--Would it attack England?--Well, our War Office must know all about the stir there. And that makes me increasingly confident that something's happened to eliminate whatever German menace there may ever have been."
"Exactly what Trupp was saying the other day," the Colonel commented. "Something's happened. You and I don't know what. You and I never do. Bonar Law and the rest of em wouldn't be working up a Civil War on this scale unless they were certain Germany was muzzled; and what's more the Government wouldn't let em. The politicians may be fools, but they aren't lunatics."
A few evenings after this talk as the Colonel sat after supper in the loggia with his wife, overlooking the sea wandering white beneath the moon, he ruminated between puffs upon the political situation, domestic and international, with a growing sense of confidence at his heart. Indeed there was much to confirm his hopes.
The year had started with Lloyd George's famous pronouncement that the relations between Germany and England had never been brighter. Then again there was the point Trupp had made: the astonishing attitude of the Unionist leaders, and the still more astonishing tolerance of the Government. Lastly, and far more significant from the old soldier's point of view, there was the action of Mr. Geddes's mystery-man who was no mystery-man at all. Everybody on the outermost edge of affairs knew the name of the General in question. Every porter at the military clubs could tell you who he was. Asquith had never made any bones about it. Redmond and Dillon had named him to Mr. Geddes. Yet if anybody could gauge the military situation on the Continent it was surely the man who, as Mr. Geddes had truly pointed out, had specialized in co-ordinating our Expeditionary Force with the Armies of France in the case of an attack by Germany. There he was sitting at the War Office, as he had sat for years past, in touch with the English Cabinet, lié with the French General Staff, his ear at the telephone listening to every rumour in every camp in Europe, and primed by a Secret Service so able that it had doped the public at home and every chancellery abroad to believe that it was the last word in official stupidity. This was the man who had thrown in his lot with the gang of speculating politicians who had embarked upon the campaign that had so undermined discipline in the commissioned ranks of the Army that for the first time in history a British Government could no longer trust its officers to do their duty without question.
Now no one could say this man was hot-headed; nobody could say he was a fool. Moreover he was a distinguished soldier and to call his patriotism in question was simply ridiculous, as even Geddes admitted.
The Colonel had throughout steadfastly refused to discuss with friend or foe the ethics of this officer's attitude, and its effect on the reputation of the Army. But of one thing he was certain. No man in that officer's position of trust and responsibility would gamble with the destinies of his country--a gamble that might involve hundreds and thousands of innocent lives. His action might be reprehensible--many people did not hesitate to describe it in plainer terms; but he would never have taken it in view of its inevitable reaction on military and political opinion on the Continent unless he had been certain that the German attack, which he of all men had preached for so long as inevitable, would not mature or would not mature as yet.
What then was the only possible inference?
"Something had happened."
The words his mind had been repeating uttered themselves aloud.
"What's that, my Jocko?" asked Mrs. Lewknor.
The Colonel stretched his long legs, took his pipe out of his mouth, and sighed.
"If nothing has happened by Christmas 1915 I shall resign the secretaryship of the League and return with joy to the garden and the history of the regiment." He rose in the brilliant dusk like a spectre. "Come on, my lass!" he said. "I would a plan unfold."
She took his arm and they strolled across the lawn past the hostel towards the solid darkness of the Downs which enfolded them.
The long white house stood still and solitary in the great coombe that brimmed with darkness and was crowned with multitudinous stars. Washed by the moon, and warm with a suggestion of human busyness, the hostel seemed to be stirring in a happy sleep, as though conscious of the good work it was doing.
Mrs. Lewknor paused to look at it, a sense of comfort at her heart.
The children's beds out on the balcony could be seen; and the nurses moving in the rooms behind. Groups of parents, down from London for the week-end, strolled the lawn. A few older patients still lounged in deck-chairs on the terrace, while from within the house came the sound of laughter and someone playing rag-time. The little lady regarded the work of her hands not without a just sense of satisfaction. The hostel was booming. It was well-established now and had long justified itself. She was doing good work and earning honest money. This year she would not only pay for the grandson's schooling, but she hoped at Christmas to make a start in reducing the mortgage.
"Well," she said, "what about it now, doubting Thomas?"
"Not so bad for a beginning," admitted the Colonel.
"Who's going to send Toby to Eton?" asked the lady, cruelly triumphant. "And how?"
"Why, I am," replied the Colonel brightly--"out of my pension of five bob a week minus income tax."
Hugging each other's arms, they climbed the bank to the vegetable garden, which six years before had been turned up by the plough from the turf which may have known the tread of Caesar's legionaries. The raw oblong which had then patched the green with a lovely mauve was already peopled with trees and bushes, and rank with green stuff. The Colonel paused and sniffed.
"Mrs. Simpkins coming on ... I long to be back among my cabbages ... I bet if I took these Orange Pippins in hand myself I'd win first prize at the East Sussex Show.... That duffer, old Lingfield--He's no good."
They turned off into the yard where Mrs. Lewknor was erecting a garage, now nearly finished. The Colonel paused and stared up at it.
"My dear," he said, "I've got an idea. We'll dig the Caspars out of that hole in Old Town and put them in the rooms above the garage. I'll take him on as gardener and odd-job man. He's a first-rate rough gardener. He was showing me and Bobby his allotment only the other day. And as you know, the solitary ambition of my old age has been to have an old Hammer-man about me."
"And mine for you, my Jocko," mused Mrs. Lewknor, far more wary than her impulsive husband. "There are only three rooms though, and she's got four children already and is still only thirty or so."
The Colonel rattled on, undismayed.
"He'll be half a mile from the nearest pub here," he said.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Lewknor--"and further from the clutches of that Burt man, who's twice as bad as any pub."
"Ha, ha!" jeered the Colonel. "So you're coming round to my way of thinking at last, are you?"
Next evening, the Colonel, eager always as a youth to consummate his purpose, bicycled with his wife through Paradise to Old Town.
At the corner opposite the Rectory they met Alf Caspar, who was clearly in high feather. The Colonel dismounted for a word with the convener of the League.
"Well, Caspar," he said. "So you've got your licence from the Watch Committee, I hear."
Alf purred.
"Yes, sir. All O.K.--down to the men that'll blow the horn to give em a bit o music."
"When do you start?"
"Bank Holiday, sir. I was just coming up to tell mother we were through. Last char-a-banc came this afternoon--smart as paint."
The Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor walked on towards Church Street. At Billing's Corner, waiting for the bus, was Edward Caspar. He was peering at a huge placard advertising expeditions by Caspar's Road-touring Syndicate, to start on August 3rd.
The Colonel, mischievous as a child, must cross the road to his old Trinity compeer.
"Your boy's getting on, Mr. Caspar," he observed quietly.
The old man made a clucking like a disturbed hen.
"Dreadful," he said. "Dreadful."
Mrs. Lewknor laid two fingers on his arm.
"Mr. Caspar," she said.
He glanced down at her like a startled elephant. Then he seemed to thrill as though a wind of the spirit was blowing through him. The roses of a forgotten youth bloomed for a moment in his mottled cheeks. An incredible delicacy and tenderness inspired the face of this flabby old man.
"Miss Solomons!" he said, and lifting her little hand kissed it.
The Colonel withdrew discreetly; and in a moment his wife joined him, the lights dancing in her eyes.
"Pretty stiff!" grinned the Colonel--"in the public street and all."
They turned down Borough Lane by the Star and knocked Ruth up.
She was ironing and did not seem best pleased to see the visitors. Neither did Joe Burt, who was sitting by the fire with little Alice on his knees.
The little lady ignored the engineer.
"Where are the other children?" she asked Ruth pleasantly.
"Where they oughrer be," Joe answered--"in bed."
The Colonel came to the rescue.
"Is Caspar anywhere about?" he asked.
"He's on his allotment, I reck'n," Ruth answered coldly. "Mr. Burt joins him there most in general every evening."
"Yes," said Joe, "and was on the road now when A was interfered with." He kissed little Alice, put her down, and rose. "Good evening, Colonel." And he went out sullenly.
Mrs. Lewknor, aware that negotiations had not opened auspiciously, now broached her project. Ruth, steadily ironing, never lifted her eyes. She was clearly on the defensive, suspicious in her questions, evasive and noncommittal in her replies. The Colonel became impatient.
"Mrs. Caspar might accept our offer--to oblige," he said at last.
Ruth deliberately laid down her iron, and challenged him: she said nothing.
Mrs. Lewknor felt the tension.
"Well, think it over, will you?" she said to Ruth. "There's no hurry."
She went out and the Colonel followed.
"That man's the biggest humbug unhung even for a Labour man," snapped the little lady viciously. "Preaching the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and then this!"
"I'm not sure," replied the Colonel, "not sure. I think he's much the same as most of us--an honest man who's run off the rails."
They were bicycling slowly along Victoria Drive. On the far side of the allotments right under the wall of the Downs, blue in the evening, a solitary figure was digging.
"The out-cast," said the Colonel.
Mrs. Lewknor dismounted from her bicycle and began wheeling it along the unfenced earthen path between the gardens, towards the digger. Ernie barely looked up, barely answered her salutation, wiping the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand as he continued his labour. The lady retired along the way she had come.
"There's something Christ-like about the feller," said the Colonel quietly as they reached the road.
"Yes," the little lady answered. "Only he's brought his troubles on his own head."
The Colonel drew up in haste.
"Hullo," he said, and began to read a newspaper placard, for which class of literature he had a consuming passion.
