"I don't think I shall do that," Hebblethwaite said, "but honestly, Wyatt, I can't follow you in your war talk. We got over the Agadir trouble. We've got over a much worse one--the Balkan crisis. There isn't a single contentious question before us just now. The sky is almost clear."

"Believe me," Wyatt insisted earnestly, "that's just the time to look for the thunderbolt. Can't you see that when Germany goes to war, it will be a war of conquest, the war which she has planned for all these years?

She'll choose her own time, and she'll make a _casus belli_, right enough, when the time comes. Of course, she'd have taken advantage of the position last year, but she simply wasn't ready. If you ask me, I believe she thinks herself now able to lick the whole of Europe. I am not at all sure, thanks to Busby and our last fifteen years' military administration, that she wouldn't have a good chance of doing it. Any way, I am not going to have my fleet cut down."

"The country is prosperous," Hebblethwaite acknowledged. "We can afford the ships."

"Then look here, old chap," Wyatt begged, "I am not pleading for my own sake, but the country's. Keep your mouth shut. See what the next month or two brings. If there's trouble--well, I don't suppose I shall be jumped on then. If there isn't, and you want a victim, here I am. I disobeyed orders flagrantly. My resignation is in my desk at any moment."

Hebblethwaite glanced at the clock.

"I am very hungry," he said, "and I have a long way to go for dinner.

We'll let it go at that, Wyatt. I'll try and keep things quiet for you.

If it comes out, well, you know the risk you run."

"I know the bigger risk we are all running," Wyatt declared, as he took a cigarette from an open box on the table by his side and turned towards the door. "I'll manage the turtle soup now, with luck. You're a good fellow, Hebblethwaite. I know it goes against the grain with you, but, by Jove, you may be thankful for this some time!"

The Right Honourable John William Hebblethwaite took the hat from his footman, stepped into his car, and was driven rapidly away. He leaned back among the cushions, more thoughtful than usual. There was a yellow moon in the sky, pale as yet. The streets were a tangled vortex of motorcars and taxies, all filled with men and women in evening dress. It was the height of a wonderful season. Everywhere was dominant the note of prosperity, gaiety, even splendour. The houses in Park Lane, flower-decked, displayed through their wide-flung windows a constant panorama of brilliantly-lit rooms. Every one was entertaining. In the Park on the other side were the usual crowd of earnest, hard-faced men and women, gathered in little groups around the orator of the moment.

Hebblethwaite felt a queer premonition that evening. A man of sanguine temperament, thoroughly contented with himself and his position, he seemed almost for the first time in his life, to have doubts, to look into the future, to feel the rumblings of an earthquake, the great dramatic cry of a nation in the throes of suffering. Had they been wise, all these years, to have legislated as though the old dangers by land and sea had pa.s.sed?--to have striven to make the people fat and prosperous, to have turned a deaf ear to every note of warning? Supposing the other thing were true! Supposing Norgate and Spencer Wyatt had found the truth!

What would history have to say then of this Government of which he was so proud? Would it be possible that they had brought the country to a great prosperity by destroying the very bulwarks of its security?

The car drew up with a jerk, and Hebblethwaite came back to earth.

Nevertheless, he promised himself, as he hastened across the pavement, that on the morrow he would pay a long-delayed visit to the War Office.

CHAPTER XXIII

Anna was seated, a few days later, with her dearest friend, the Princess of Thurm, in a corner of the royal enclosure at Ascot. For the first time since their arrival they found themselves alone. From underneath her parasol the Princess looked at her friend curiously.

"Anna," she said, "something has happened to you."

"Perhaps, but explain yourself," Anna replied composedly.

"It is so simple. There you sit in a Doucet gown, perfection as ever, from the aigrette in your hat to those delicately pointed shoes. You have been positively hunted by all the nicest men--once or twice, indeed, I felt myself neglected--and not a smile have I seen upon your lips. You go about, looking just a little beyond everything. What did you see, child, over the tops of the trees in the paddock, when Lord Wilton was trying so hard to entertain you?"

"An affair of moods, I imagine," Anna declared. "Somehow I don't feel quite in the humour for Ascot to-day. To be quite frank," she went on, turning her head slowly, "I rather wonder that you do, Mildred."

The Princess raised her eyebrows.

"Why not? Everything, so far as I am concerned, is _couleur de rose_.

Madame Blanche declared yesterday that my complexion would last for twenty years. I found a dozen of the most adorable hats in Paris. The artist who designs my frocks was positively inspired the last time I sat to him. I am going to see Maurice in a few weeks, and meanwhile I have several new flirtations which interest me amazingly. As for you, my child, one would imagine that you had lost your taste for all frivolity.

You are as cold as granite. Be careful, dear. The men of to-day, in this country, at any rate, are spoilt. Sometimes they are even uncourtier-like enough to accept a woman's refusal."

"Well," Anna observed, smiling faintly, "even a lifetime at Court has not taught me to dissimulate. I am heavy-hearted, Mildred. You wondered what I was looking at when I gazed over those green trees under which all those happy people were walking. I was looking out across the North Sea.

I was looking through Belgium to Paris. I saw a vast curtain roll up, and everything beyond it was a blood-stained panorama."

A shade rested for a moment on her companion's fair face. She shrugged her shoulders.

"We've known for a long time, dear, that it must come."

"But all the same, in these last moments it is terrible," Anna insisted.

"Seriously, Mildred, I wonder that I should feel it more than you. You are absolutely English. Your father is English, your mother is English.

It is only your husband that is Austrian. You have lived in Austria only for seven years. Has that been sufficient to destroy all your patriotism, all your love for your own country?"

The Princess made a little grimace.

"My dear Anna," she said, "I am not so serious a person as you are. I am profoundly, incomprehensibly selfish. The only human being in the whole world for whom I have had a spark of real affection is Maurice, and I adore him. What he has told me to do, I have done. What makes him happy makes me happy. For his sake, even, I have forgotten and shall always forget that I was born an Englishwoman. Circ.u.mstances, too," she went on thoughtfully, "have made it so easy. England is such a changed country.

When I was a child, I could read of the times when our kings really ruled, of our battles for dominion, of our fight for colonies, of our building up a great empire, and I could feel just a little thrill. I can't now. We have gone ahead of Napoleon. From a nation of shop-keepers we have become a nation of general dealers--a fat, over-confident, bourgeois people. Socialism has its hand upon the throat of the cla.s.ses.

Park Lane, where our aristocracy lived, is filled with the mansions of South African Jews, whom one must meet here or keep out of society altogether. Our country houses have gone the same way. Our Court set is dowdy, dull to a degree, and common in a different fashion. You are right. I have lost my love for England, partly because of my marriage, partly because of those things which have come to England herself."

For the first time there was a little flush of colour in Anna's exquisitely pale cheeks. There was even animation in her tone as she turned towards her friend.

"Mildred," she exclaimed, "it is splendid to hear you say what is really in your mind! I am so glad you have spoken to me like this. I feel these things, too. Now I am not nearly so English as you. My mother was English and my father Austrian. Therefore, only half of me should be English.

Yet, although I am so much further removed from England than you are, I have suddenly felt a return of all my old affection for her."

"You are going to tell me why?" her companion begged.

"Of course! It is because I believe--it is too ridiculous--but I believe that I am in your position with the circ.u.mstances reversed. I am beginning to care in the most foolish way for an unmistakable Englishman."

"If we had missed this little chance of conversation," the Princess declared, "I should have been miserable for the rest of my life! There is the Duke hanging about behind. For heaven's sake, don't turn. Thank goodness he has gone away! Now go on, dear. Tell me about him at once. I can't imagine who it may be. I have watched you with so many men, and I know quite well, so long as that little curl is at the corner of your lips, that they none of them count. Do I know him?"

"I do not think so," Anna replied. "He is not a very important person."

"It isn't the man you were dining with in the Cafe de Berlin when Prince Karl came in?"

"Yes, it is he!"

The Princess made a little grimace.

"But how unsuitable, my dear," she exclaimed, "if you are really in earnest! What is the use of your thinking of an Englishman? He is quite nice, I know. His mother and my mother were friends, and we met once or twice. He was very kind to me in Paris, too. But for a serious affair--"

"Well, it may not come to that," Anna interrupted, "but there it is. I suppose that it is partly for his sake that I feel this depression."

"I should have thought that he himself would have been a little out of sympathy with his country just now," the Princess remarked. "They tell me that the Foreign Office ate humble pie with the Kaiser for that affair shockingly. They not only removed him from the Emba.s.sy, but they are going to give him nothing in Europe. I heard for a fact that the Kaiser requested that he should not be attached to any Court with which Germany had diplomatic relations."

Anna nodded. "I believe that it is true," she admitted, "but I am not sure that he realises it himself. Even if he does, well, you know the type. He is English to the backbone."

"But there are Englishmen," the Princess insisted earnestly, "who are amenable to common sense. There are Englishmen who are sorrowing over the decline of their own country and who would not be _so_ greatly distressed if she were punished a little."

"I am afraid Mr. Norgate is not like that," Anna observed drily.

"However, one cannot be sure. Bother! I thought people were very kind to leave us so long in peace. Dear Prince, how clever of you to find out our retreat!"

The Amba.s.sador stood bareheaded before them.

"Dear ladies," he declared, "you are the lode-stones which would draw one even through these gossamer walls of lace and chiffons, of draperies as light as the sunshine and perfumes as sweet as Heine's poetry."