In this domesticated and almost comfortable fashion did the greatest tragedy the human race has known since the beginning of the world gradually prepare its first scenes and reveal glimpses of itself, as the curtain of Time was, during that June, slowly raised by the hand of Fate.

This is not what is known as a "war story." It is not even a story of the War, but a relation of incidents occurring amidst and resulting from the strenuousness of a period to which "the War" was a background so colossal that it dwarfed all events, except in the minds of those for whom such events personally shook and darkened or brightened the world.

Nothing can dwarf personal anguish at its moment of highest power; to the last agony and despairing terror of the heart-wrung the cataclysm of earthquake, tornado, shipwreck is but the awesome back drop of the scene.

Also--incidentally--the story is one of the transitions in, and convulsive changes of, points of view produced by the convulsion itself which flung into new perspective the whole surface of the earth and the races existing upon it.

The Head of the House of Coombe had, as he said, been born at once too early and too late to admit of any fixed establishment of tastes and ideals. His existence had been pa.s.sed in the transition from one era to another--the Early Victorian, under whose disappearing influences he had spent his youth; the Late Victorian and Edwardian, in whose more rapidly changing atmosphere he had ripened to maturity. He had, during this transition, seen from afar the slow rising of the tidal wave of the Second Deluge; and in the summer days of 1914 he heard the first low roaring of its torrential swell, and visualised all that the overwhelming power of its bursting flood might sweep before it and bury forever beneath its weight.

He made seemingly casual crossings of the Channel and journeys which were made up of the surmounting of obstacles, and when he returned, brought with him a knowledge of things which it would have been unwise to reveal carelessly to the general public. The mind of the general public had its parallel, at the moment, in the temperature of a patient in the early stages of, as yet, undiagnosed typhoid or any other fever.

Restless excitement and spasmodic heats and discomforts prompted and ruled it. Its tendency was to nervous discontent and suspicious fearfulness of approaching, vaguely formulated, evils. These risings of temperature were to be seen in the very streets and shops. People were talking--talking--talking. Ordinary people, common people, all kinds of cla.s.ses. The majority of them did not know what they were talking about; most of them talked either uneducated, frightened or bl.u.s.tering nonsense, but everybody talked more or less. Enormous numbers of newspapers were bought and flourished about, or pored over anxiously.

Numbers of young Germans were silently disappearing from their places in shops, factories and warehouses. That was how Germany showed her readiness for any military happening. Her army was already trained and could be called from any country and walk in life. A mysterious unheard command called it and it was obliged to obey. The entire male population of England had not been trained from birth to regard itself as an immense military machine, ready at any moment for action. The James Simpson type of Englishman indulged in much discussion of the pros and cons of enforced military training of youth. Germany's well known contempt of the size and power of the British Army took on an aspect which filled the James Simpsons with rage. They had not previously thought of themselves as martial, because middle-cla.s.s England was satisfied with her belief in her strength and entire safety. Of course she was safe. She always had been. Britannia Rules the Waves and the James Simpsons were sure that incidentally she ruled everything else.

But as there stole up behind the mature Simpsons the haunting realization that, if England was "drawn in" to a war, it would be the young Simpsons who must gird their loins and go forth to meet Goliath in his armour, with only the sling and stone of untrained youth and valour as their weapon, there were many who began to feel that even inconvenient drilling and discipline might have been good things.

"There is something quite thrilling in going about now," said Feather to Coombe, after coming in from a shopping round, made in her new electric brougham. "One doesn't know what it is, but it's in the air. You see it in people's faces. Actually shop girls give one the impression of just having stopped whispering together when you go into a place and ask for something. A girl who was trying on some gloves for me--she was a thin girl with prominent watery eyes--had such a frightened look, that I said to her, just to see what she would say--'I wonder what would happen to the shops if England got into war?' She turned quite white and answered, 'Oh, Madam, I can't bear to think of it. My favourite brother's a soldier. He's such a nice big fellow and we're so fond of him. And he's always talking about it. He says Germany's not going to let England keep out. We're so frightened--mother and me.' She almost dropped a big tear on my glove. It _would_ be quite exciting if England did go in."

"It would," Coombe answered.

"London would be crowded with officers. All sorts of things would have to be given for them--b.a.l.l.s and things."

"Cannon b.a.l.l.s among other things," said Coombe.

"But we should have nothing to do with the cannon b.a.l.l.s, thank goodness," exhilaration sweeping her past unpleasant aspects. "One would be sorry for the Tommies, of course, if the worst came to the worst. But I must say army and navy men are more interesting than most civilians.

It's the constant change in their lives, and their having to meet so many kinds of people."

"In actual war, men who are not merely 'Tommies' actually take part,"

Coombe suggested. "I was looking at a ball-room full of them the night after the news came from Sarajevo. Fine, well-set-up youngsters dancing with pretty girls. I could not help asking myself what would have happened to them before the German army crossed the Channel--if they were not able to prevent the crossing. And what would happen to the girls after its crossing, when it poured over London and the rest of England in the unbridled rage of drunken victory."

He so spoke because beneath his outward coldness he himself felt a secret rage against this lightness which, as he saw things, had its parallel in another order of trivial unawareness in more important places and larger brains. Feather started and drew somewhat nearer to him.

"How hideous! What do you mean! Where was the party?" she asked.

"It was a small dance given by the d.u.c.h.ess, very kindly, for Robin," he answered.

"For Robin!" with open eyes whose incredulity held irritation. "The old d.u.c.h.ess giving parties to her 'useful companion' girl! What nonsense!

Who was there?" sharply.

"The young fellows who would be first called on if there was war. And the girls who are their relatives. Halwyn was there--and young Dormer and Layton--they are all in the army. The cannon b.a.l.l.s would be for them as well as for the Tommies of their regiments. They are spirited lads who wouldn't slink behind. They'd face things."

Feather had already forgotten her moment's shock in another thought.

"And they were invited to meet Robin! Did they dance with her? Did she dance much? Or did she sit and stare and say nothing? What did she wear?"

"She looked like a very young white rose. She danced continually. There was always a little mob about her when the music stopped. I do not think she sat at all, and it was the young men who stared. The only dance she missed--Kathryn told her grandmother--was the one she sat out in the conservatory with Donal Muir."

At this Feather's high, thin little laugh broke forth.

"He turned up there? Donal Muir!" She struck her hands lightly together.

"It's too good to be true!"

"Why is it too good to be true?" he inquired without enthusiasm.

"Oh, don't you see? After all his mother's airs and graces and running away with him when they were a pair of babies--as if Robin had the plague. I was the plague--and so were you. And here the old d.u.c.h.ess throws them headlong at each other--in all their full bloom--into each other's arms. I did not do it. You didn't. It was the stuffiest old female grandee in London, who wouldn't let _me_ sweep her front door-steps for her--because I'm an impropriety."

She asked a dozen questions, was quite humorous over the picture she drew of Mrs. Muir's consternation at the peril her one ewe lamb had been led into by her highly revered friend.

"A frightfully good-looking, spoiled boy like that always plunges headlong into any adventure that attracts him. Women have always made love to him and Robin will make great eyes, and blush and look at him from under her lashes as if she were going to cry with joy--like Alice in the Ben Bolt song. She'll 'weep with delight when he gives her a smile and tremble with fear at his frown.' His mother can't stop it, however furious she may be. Nothing can stop that sort of thing when it once begins."

"If England declares war Donal Muir will have more serious things to do than pursue adventures," was Coombe's comment. He looked serious himself as he said the words, because they brought before him the bodily strength and beauty of the lad. He seemed suddenly to see him again as he had looked when he was dancing. And almost at the same moment he saw other scenes than ball-rooms and heard sounds other than those drawn forth by musicians screened with palms. He liked the boy. He was not his son, but he liked him. If he had been his son, he thought--! He had been through the monster munition works at Essen several times and he had heard technical talks of inventions, the sole reason for whose presence in the world was that they had the power to blow human beings into unrecognisable, ensanguined shreds and to tear off limbs and catapult them into the air. He had heard these powers talked of with a sense of natural pride in achievement, in fact with honest and cheerful self gratulation.

He had known Count Zeppelin well and heard his interesting explanation of what would happen to a thickly populated city on to which bombs were dropped.

But Feather's view was lighter and included only such things as she found entertaining.

"If there's a war the heirs of great families won't be s.n.a.t.c.hed at first," she quite rattled on. "There'll be a sort of economising in that sort of thing. Besides he's very young and he isn't in the Army. He'd have to go through some sort of training. Oh, he'll have time! And there'll be so much emotion and excitement and talk about parting forever and 'This may be the last time we ever meet' sort of thing that every boy will have adventure--and not only boys. When I warned Robin, the night before she went away, I did not count on war or I could have said more--"

"What did you warn her of?"

"Of making mistakes about the men who would make love to her. I warned her against imagining she was as safe as she would be if she were a daughter of the house she lived in. I knew what I was talking about."

"Did she?" was Coombe's concise question.

"Of course she did--though of course she pretended not to. Girls always pretend. But I did my duty as a parent. And I told her that if she got herself into any mess she mustn't come to me."

Lord Coombe regarded her in silence for a moment or so. It was one of the looks which always made her furious in her small way.

"Good morning," he said and turned his back and walked out of the room.

Almost immediately after he had descended the stairs she heard the front door close after him.

It was the kind of thing which made her feel her utter helplessness against him and which enraged all the little cat in her being. She actually ground her small teeth.

"I was quite right," she said. "It's her affair to take care of herself.

Would he want her to come to _him_ in any silly fix? I should like to see her try it."

CHAPTER III

Robin sat at the desk in her private room and looked at a key she held in her hand. She had just come upon it among some papers. She had put it into a narrow lacquered box when she arranged her belongings, after she left the house in which her mother continued to live. It was the key which gave entrance to the Gardens. Each householder possessed one. She alone knew why she rather timidly asked her mother's permission to keep this one.

"One of the first things I seem to remember is watching the gardeners planting flowers," Robin had said. "They had rows of tiny pots with geraniums and lobelia in them. I have been happy there. I should like to be able to go in sometimes and sit under the trees. If you do not mind--"

Feather did not mind. She herself was not in the least likely to be seized with a desire to sit under trees in an atmosphere heavy with nursemaids and children.

So Robin had been allowed to keep the key and until to-day she had not opened the lacquer box. Was it quite by accident that she had found it?

She was not quite sure it was and she was asking herself questions, as she sat looking at it as it lay in her palm.