Two days afterwards George Mucklow followed the parson's son into the ranks.

CHAPTER VII

SECOND IMPRESSIONS

August--with its stupefying surprises, disappointments, and acrimonies--drew to a close. The black Sunday, at the end of the month, will never be forgotten by those who happened to be in London at the time. For a few terrible hours it was said that our Expeditionary Force had been annihilated. In the evening an official contradiction lifted the town out of a pea-soup fog of despair.

Day by day, the Hun hordes advanced. Sir Geoffrey devoured his morning papers, talked over the immeasurable possibilities with his wife and Fishpingle, and finally determined to tap fresh information at its source. He went up to London, spent three days at his clubs, and returned to Nether-Applewhite an angry and disillusioned man. Having many friends in high places, some of them old schoolfellows and kinsmen, who had become pale and anxious Cabinet Ministers, he b.u.t.tonholed them all, demanding the truth in his jovial, autocratic fashion.

"A d.a.m.ned lot of Mandarins," he told his wife, "nodding their confounded heads and saying nothing. At the club, by Jove! I felt as if I were in a submarine with the periscope shot away. Every other fellow I met was 'credibly informed' about something or t'other, and I could have made a pot of money, my dear, laying odds against their precious bits of information. The Government is scared stiff, at the mercy of the Labourites. Out of the welter of talk and twaddle I collared this conviction: the England we love has vanished never to return. Kitchener says that we shall be bled white, and the best will be the first to go."

Lady Pomfret smiled faintly.

"George Mucklow has gone."

"Has he? I shall give Uncle a sovereign. Now, Mary, sick as I feel about the incompetence and cra.s.s stupidity of the people who have got us into this mess, I shall carry a stiff tail in the village."

"I am sure you will, dear."

"Yes. I asked 'em at the War Office what I could do. Get recruits, they told me. I shall mug up a lecture, dealing with military terminology. My people don't know the difference between a brigade and an army-corps.

Coming down in the train, I thought out some useful diagrams. And, Mary, unless a miracle happens, the slaughter will be appalling. We must turn our dear old house into a Red Cross Hospital."

"I had thought of that, Geoffrey. We are quite ready."

"Get your staff together, a competent, professional nurse, and the pick of the women in the village."

"Susan Yellam has promised to help."

"None better! The sooner we get to work and stop jawing and fuddling our wits over newspapers, the less miserable we shall be."

"Yes, yes."

After dinner, the autocrat of Nether-Applewhite felt less unhappy.

Upon the following morning, bright and early, Squire and Parson put their heads together at the Vicarage. Since the marriage of Hamlin's daughter to Lionel Pomfret, the somewhat strained relations between the two fathers had pleasantly relaxed. Hamlin had this advantage over the Squire. He could see and understand the autocrat's lordly point of view.

The Squire was, and always would be, incapable of standing in the Parson's shoes. Possibly, the war had modified their extreme opinions.

The Squire read and approved the leading articles in _The Morning Post_; the Parson read omnivorously papers and reviews, but he would have admitted candidly that _The Westminster Gazette_ embodied most accurately his ideas and judgments.

Both men were uncomfortably conscious that grave blunders had been perpetrated by Authority.

When they had lit their after-breakfast pipes, Sir Geoffrey laid before Hamlin a synopsis of what he had gleaned in London, and his impressions thereon, but he spoke temperately, perceiving whimsical gleams in his Parson's eyes.

"A lot of fools believe that Russians are pouring through this country.

An old pal and myself tried to investigate on our own. We went to Euston. By Jove! we dropped on to a porter who swore that he'd seen thousands of 'em pa.s.sing through Willesden, big bearded men in queer uniforms, at dead o' night. To show the ignorance of these fellows, Hamlin, I'll repeat to you what was said in answer to my questions. The porter affirmed positively that he had seen six hundred thousand of 'em!

_Six hundred thousand!_ I asked him, then, if he knew how many soldiers could be packed into one train. He scratched his head at that. Finally, he admitted that he could swear to three trains full of these bearded warriors. When I told him, as an old soldier, that three trains might carry three thousand troops he absquatulated. A man at the War Office, whose name I can't mention, told me, next day, that no Russians from Russia were pa.s.sing through England. A few, coming from America to Russia, have aroused this ridiculous gossip."

Hamlin nodded.

"I told my wife last night that knowledge is simply unachievable, because the biggest men don't know yet the temper of the country. n.o.body knows. But I'll tell you this: the Government is afraid of the Industrials, terrified of strikes, terrified of Ireland, terrified, of course, of being kicked out. A sort of mental palsy has 'em by the throat. They are putting out feelers, tentatively approaching everybody.

It's a sorry business. The bright spot is the response from our Colonies; India is behaving well. That must be a rare sell for the Kayser. Well, well; I've let off a little steam. Let's consider ourselves and what we can do. Men must be got. In this village your dear boy has set a glorious example."

"George Mucklow enlisted three days ago."

"So my wife tells me. I propose to give a lecture in the school-house on elementary military dispositions, so that our people will be able to read their papers with some sort of intelligence."

"They don't read papers--much."

"I want you to fill the school-house for me."

"With pleasure."

"We shall open a Red Cross Hospital as soon as may be, at the Court."

Hamlin promised cordial co-operation. He had never doubted the Squire's willingness or capacity to "do his bit." And very mournfully he told himself that, making due allowance for Sir Geoffrey's reactionary sentiments and hatred of politicians the indictment brought by him against the Mandarins was in the main justified. He said quietly:

"Most of my considered judgments are in the melting-pot."

"Bless my soul! I never expected to hear you say that. So are mine. The main question for all of us is this: will the country rise to this stupendous emergency? I suppose the mere mention of conscription gives you a fit?"

"I carry an open mind about it."

"You amaze me, Hamlin. We were both 'blue-water school' men."

"Yes. You use the past tense. I am humbly sensible that what I have felt and acted upon, principles and theories essentially rooted in peace and for peace, is of the past. I shall leave them there. The needs of the present are obsessing." He paused a moment; when he spoke again his voice held conviction: "Out of the darkness, I see light."

Sir Geoffrey asked eagerly:

"What light?"

"The light of a happier civilisation, of a broader and more sympathetic internationalism. The ashes of this conflagration may fertilise anew the whole earth. It must be so."

He had surprised Sir Geoffrey a moment back; it was the Squire's turn to surprise him. Hamlin expected a wail from the many-acred lord of the manor, a Jeremiad personal and embittered. Inevitably the men of large estates, with little outside their domains to support them, must suffer cruelly. It was difficult, indeed, to envisage the Squire of Nether-Applewhite without his shooting and hunting, with a much-reduced establishment, constrained to cheese-paring, entertaining wounded Tommies instead of county magnates. Sir Geoffrey answered as humbly as the Parson:

"G.o.d send it may be so, Hamlin. This is a war between autocracy and democracy; and I don't believe in democracies, as you know."

Hamlin remained silent. The Squire continued, more vehemently:

"Can you mention one country that is a democracy? Is America a democracy?"

"We shall know soon."

"Is it a democracy to-day? Uncle Sam says so. But isn't America governed by the few and for the few? Do you call France a democracy after the revelations of this Caillaux trial? Are we a democracy, in the true sense? Perhaps Switzerland comes nearer the standard mark, but I know nothing about Switzerland. I have always distrusted profoundly the mob."

"That may be at the root of the trouble. Distrust breeds distrust. If this war should open all eyes, if men should learn to see each other as they are--much alike in the ma.s.s--and not, not, as they blindly believe, essentially different, why, then this war will not have been waged in vain."