One impression of those first golden hours that stayed with him always was the certainty with which they had dwelt on the details of their common future; he could see Phillida with her hands on his shoulders explaining earnestly that they must live very near to the Dad—the dear old boy had no one but herself and they mustn’t let him miss her too much. And when Theodore asked, “You don’t think he’ll object to me?” Rathbone’s disapproval was the only possible cloud—which lifted at Phillida’s amused assurance that the old dear wasn’t as blind as all that and, having objections, would have voiced them before it was too late.
“You don’t suppose he hasn’t noticed—just because he hasn’t said anything!”... Whereupon Theodore caught at her hands and demanded how long she had noticed?—and they fell to a happy retracing of this step and that in their courtship.
When they heard Rathbone enter she ran down alone, telling Theodore to stay where he was till she called him; returning in five minutes or so, half-tearful and half-smiling, to say the dear old thing was waiting in the library. Then Theodore, in his turn, went down to the library where, red to the ears and stammering platitudes, he shook hands with his future father-in-law—proceeding eventually to details of his financial position and the hope that Rathbone would not insist upon too lengthy an engagement?... The answer was so slow in coming that he repeated his question nervously.
“No,” said Rathbone at last, “I don’t know that I”—(he laid stress on the pronoun)—“I don’t know that I should insist upon a very lengthy engagement. Only....”
Again he paused so long that Theodore repeated “Only?”
“Only—there may be obstacles—not of my making or Phillida’s. Connected with the office—your work ... I dare say you’ve been too busy with your own affairs to give very much attention to the affairs of the world in general; still I conclude the papers haven’t allowed you to forget that the Federal Council was to vote to-day on the resolution to take punitive action? Result is just through—half an hour ago. Resolution carried, by a majority of one only.”
“Was it?” said Theodore—and remembered a vague impulse of resentment, a difficulty in bringing down his thoughts from Phillida to the earthiness of politics. It took him an effort and a moment to add: “Close thing—but they’ve pulled it off.”
“They have,” said Rathbone. “Just pulled it off—but it remains to be seen if that’s matter for congratulation.... The vote commits us to action—definitely—and the minority have entered a protest against punitive action.... It seems unlikely that the protest is only formal.”
He was dry and curiously deliberate—leaning back in his chair, speaking quietly, with fingers pressed together.... To the end Theodore remembered him like that; a square-jawed man, leaning back in his chair, speaking slowly, unemotionally—the harbinger of infinite misfortune.... And himself, the listener, a young man engrossed by his own new happiness; irritated, at first, by the intrusion of that which did not concern it; then (as once before in Vallance’s rooms) uneasy and conscious of a threat.
He heard himself asking, “You think it’s—serious?” and saw Rathbone’s mouth twist into the odd semblance of a smile.
“I think so. One way or other we shall know within a week.”
“You can’t mean—war?” Theodore asked again—remembering Holt and his “Impossible!”
“It doesn’t seem unlikely,” said Rathbone.
He had risen, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and begun to pace backwards and forwards. “Something may happen at the last minute—but it’s difficult to see how they can draw back. They have gone too far. They’re committed, just as we are—committed to a principle.... If we yield the Council abdicates its authority once for all; it’s an end of the League—a plain break, and the Lord knows what next. And the other side daren’t stop at verbal protest. They will have to push their challenge; there’s too much clamour behind them....”
“There was Transylvania,” Theodore reminded him.
“I know—and nothing came of it. But that wasn’t pushed quite so far.... They threatened, but never definitely—they left themselves a possibility of retreat. Now ... as I said, something may happen ... and, meanwhile, to go back to what I meant about you, personally, how this might affect you....”
He dropped into swift explanation. “Considerable rearrangement in the work of the Department—if it should be necessary to place it on a war-footing.” Theodore’s duties—if the worst should happen—would certainly take him out of London and therefore part him from Phillida. “I can tell you that definitely—now.”
Perhaps he realized that the announcement, on a day of betrothal, was brutal; for he checked himself suddenly in his walk to and fro, clapped the young man good-naturedly on the shoulder, repeated that “Something might happen” and supposed he would not be sorry to hear that a member of the Government required his presence—“So you and Phillida can dine without superfluous parents.”... And he said no word of war or parting to Phillida—who came down with Theodore to watch her father off, standing arm-in-arm upon the doorstep in the pride of her new relationship.
The threat lightened as they dined alone deliciously, as a foretaste of housekeeping in common; Phillida left him no thoughts to stray and only once, while the evening lasted, did they look from their private Paradise upon the world of common humanity. Phillida, as the clock neared ten, wondered vaguely what Henderson had wanted with her father? Was there anything particular, did Theodore know, any news about the Federal Council?... He hesitated for a moment, then told her the bare facts only—the vote and the minority protest.
“A protest,” she repeated. “That’s what they’ve all been afraid of.... It looks bad, doesn’t it?”
He agreed it looked bad; thinking less, it may be, of the threat of red ruin and disaster than of Rathbone’s warning that his duties would part him from Phillida.
“I hope it doesn’t mean war,” she said.
At the time her voice struck him as serious, even anxious; later it amazed him that she had spoken so quietly, that there was no trembling of the slim white fingers that played with her chain of heavy beads.
“Do you think it does?” she asked him.
Because he remembered the threat of parting and had need of her daily presence, he was stubborn in declaring that it did not, and could not, mean war; quoting Holt that modern war was impossible, that statesmen and soldiers knew it, and insisting that this was the Transylvanian business over again and would be settled as that was settled. She shook her head thoughtfully, having heard other views from her father; but her voice (he knew later) was thoughtful only—not a quiver, not a hint of real fear in it.
“It’ll have to come sometime—now or in a year or two. At least, that’s what everybody says. I wonder if it’s true.”
“No,” he said, “it isn’t—unless we make it true. This sort of thing—it’s a kind of common nightmare we have now and then. Every few years—and when it’s over we turn round and wake up and wonder what the devil we were frightened about.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “when you come to think of it, it is rather like that. I don’t remember in the least what the fuss was all about last time—but I know the papers were full of Transylvania and the poor old Dad was worked off his head for a week or two.... And then it was over and we forgot all about it.”
And at that they turned and went back to their golden solitude, shutting out, for the rest of the evening, a world that made protests and sent ominous telegrams. Before Theodore left her, to walk home restless with delight, they had decided on the fashion of Phillida’s ring and planned the acquisition of a Georgian house—with powder-closet.
It was his restless delight that made sleep impossible—and he sat at his window and smoked till the east was red.... While Henderson and Rathbone, a mile or two away, planned Distribution on a war-footing.
Events in the next few days moved rapidly in an atmosphere of tense and rising life; races and peoples were suddenly and acutely conscious of their life collective, and the neighbourly quarrel and bitterness of yesterday was forgotten in the new comradeship born of common hatred and common passion for self-sacrifice. There was talk at first, with diplomatists and leader-writers, of a possibility of localizing the conflict; but within forty-eight hours of the issue of the minority protest it was clear that the League would be rent. On one side, as on the other, statesmen were popular only when known to be unyielding in the face of impossible demands; crowds gathered when ministers met to take counsel and greeted them with cries to stand fast. Behind vulgar effervescence and music-hall thunder was faith in a righteous cause; and, as ever, man believed in himself and his cause with a hand on the hilt of his sword. Freedom and justice were suddenly real and attainable swiftly—through violence wrought on their enemies.... Humanity, once more, was inspired by ideals that justified the shedding of blood and looked death in the face without fear.
As always, there were currents and crosscurrents, and those who were not seized by the common, splendid passion denounced it. Some meanly, by distortion of motive—crying down faith as cupidity and the impulse to self-sacrifice as arrogance; and others, more worthy of hearing, who realized that the impulse to self-sacrifice is passing and the idealism of to-day the bestial cunning of to-morrow.... On one side and the other there was an attempt on the part of those who foresaw something, at least, of the inevitable, to pit fear against the impulse to self-sacrifice and make clear to a people to whom war was a legend only the extent of disaster ahead. The attempt was defeated, almost as begun, by the sudden launching of an ultimatum with twenty-four hours for reply.
At the news young men surged to the recruiting-stations, awaiting their turn for admission in long shouting, jesting lines; the best blood and honour of a generation that had not yet sated its inborn lust of combat. Women stood to watch them as their ranks moved slowly to the goal—some proud to tears, others giggling a foolish approval. Great shifting crowds—men and women who could not rest—gathered in public places and awaited the inevitable news. In the last few hours—all protest being useless—even the loudest of the voices that clamoured against war had died down; and in the life collective was the strange, sudden peace which comes with the cessation of internal feud and the focusing of hatred on those who dwell beyond a nation’s borders.
Theodore Savage, in the days that followed his betrothal, was kept with his nose to the Distributive grindstone, working long hours of overtime in an atmosphere transformed out of knowledge. The languid and formal routine of departments was succeeded by a fever of hurried innovation; gone were the lazy, semi-occupied hours when he had been wont to play with his thoughts of Phillida and the long free evenings that were hers as a matter of course. In the beginning he felt himself curiously removed from the strong, heady atmosphere that affected others like wine. Absorption in Phillida counted for something in his aloofness, but even without it his temperament was essentially averse from the crowd-life; he was stirred by the common desire to be of service, but was conscious of no mounting of energy restless and unsatisfied.... Having little conviction or bias in politics, he accepted without question the general version of the origins of conflict and resented, in orthodox fashion, the gross breach of faith and agreement which betrayed long established design. “It had got to be” and “They’ve been getting ready for years” were phrases on the general lip which he saw no reason to discredit; and, with acceptance of the inevitability of conflict, he ceased to find conflict “unthinkable.” In daily intercourse with those to whom it was thinkable, practical, a certainty—to some, in the end, a desirable certainty—Holt’s phrase lost its meaning and became a symbolic extravagance.... So far he was caught in the swirl of the crowd-life; but he was never one with it and remained conscious of it always as something that flowed by him, something apart from himself.
Above all he knew it as something apart when he saw how it had seized and mastered Phillida. She was curiously alive to its sweep and emotion, and beneath her outward daintiness lay the power of fervid partisanship. “If it weren’t for you,” she told him once, “I should break my heart because I’m only a woman”; and he saw that she pitied him, that she was even resentful for his sake, when she learned from her father that there was no question of allowing the clerks of the Distribution Office to volunteer for military service.
“He says the Department will need all its trained men and that modern war is won by organization even more than by fighting. I’m glad you won’t have to go, my dear—I’m glad—” and, saying it, she clung to him as to one who stood in need of consolation.
He felt the implied consolation and sympathy—with a twinge of conscience, not entirely sure of deserving it. But for the rigid departmental order, he knew he should have thought it his duty to volunteer and take his share of the danger that others were clamouring to face; but he had not cursed vehemently, like his junior, Cassidy, when Holles, equally blasphemous, burst into the room with the news that enlistment was barred. He thought of Cassidy’s angry blue eyes as he swore that, by hook or by crook, he would find his way into the air-service.... Phillida would have sympathized with Cassidy and the flash of her eyes answered his; she too, for the moment, was one with the crowd-life, and there were moments when he felt it was sweeping her away from his hold.
He felt it most on their last evening, on the night the ultimatum expired; when he came from the office, after hours of overtime, uncertain whether he should find her, wondering whether her excited restlessness had driven her out into the crowds that surged round Whitehall. As he ran up the stairs the sound of a piano drifted from the room above; no definite melody but a vague, irregular striking of chords that came to an end as he entered the room and Phillida looked up, expectant.
“At last,” she said as she ran to him. “You don’t know how I have wanted you. I can’t be alone—if you hadn’t turned up I should have had to find someone to talk to.”
“Anyone—didn’t matter who?” he suggested.
She laughed, caught his hand and rubbed her cheek against it. “Yes, anyone—you know what I mean. It’s just—when you think of what’s happening, how can you keep still?... As for father, I never see him nowadays. I suppose there isn’t any news?”
“There can’t be,” he answered. “Not till twelve.”
“No—and even at twelve it won’t really be news. Just no answer—and the time will be up.... We’re at peace now—till midnight.... What’s the time?”
He longed to be alone with her—alone with her in thought as well as in outward seeming—but her talk slipped restlessly away from his leading and she moved uncertainly about the room, returning at last to her vague striking of the piano—sharp, isolated notes, and then suddenly a masterful chord.
“Play to me,” he asked, “play properly.”
She shook her head and declared it was impossible.
“Anything connected is beyond me; I can only strum and make noises.” She crashed in the bass, rushed a swift arpeggio to the treble, then turned to him, her eyes wide and glowing. “If you hold your breath, can’t you feel them all waiting?—thousands on thousands—all through the world?... Waiting till midnight ... can’t you feel it?”
“You make me feel it,” he answered. “Tell me—you want war?”
The last words came out involuntarily, and it was only the startled, sudden change in her face that brought home to him what he had said.
“I want war,” she echoed.... “I want men to be killed.... Theodore, what makes you say that?”
He fumbled for words, not sure of his own meaning—sure only that her eyes would change and lose their fervour if, at the last moment and by God-sent miracle, the sword were returned to its sheath.
“Not that, of course—not the actual fighting. I didn’t mean that.... But isn’t there something in you—in you and in everyone—that’s too strong to be arrested? Too swift?... If nothing happened—if we drew back—you couldn’t be still now; you couldn’t endure it....”
She looked at him thoughtfully, puzzled, half-assenting; then protested again: “I don’t want it—but we can’t be still and endure evil.”
“No,” he said, “we can’t—but isn’t there a gladness in the thought that we can’t?”
“Because we’re right,” she flashed. “It’s not selfish—you know it isn’t selfish. We see what is right and, whatever it costs us, we stand for it. The greatest gladness of all is the gladness of giving—everything, even life.... That’s what makes me wish I were a man!”
“The passion for self-sacrifice,” he said, quoting Markham. “I was told the other day it was one of the causes of war.... Don’t look at me so reproachfully—I’m not a pacifist. Give me a kiss and believe me.”
She laughed and gave him the kiss he asked for, and for a minute or two he drew her out of the crowd-life and they were alone together as they had been on the night of their betrothal. Then the spirit of restlessness took hold of her again and she rose suddenly, declaring they must find out what was happening—they must go out and see for themselves.
“It’s only just past ten,” he argued. “What can be happening for another two hours? There’ll only be a crowd—walking up and down and waiting.”
It was just the crowd and its going to and fro that she needed, and she set to work to coax him out of his reluctance. There would never be another night like this one—they must see it together and remember it as long as they lived.... Perhaps, her point gained, she was remorseful, for she rewarded his assent with a caress and a coaxing apology.
“We shall have so many evenings to ourselves,” she told him—“and to-night—to-night we don’t only belong to ourselves.”
He could feel her arm tremble and thrill on his own as they came in sight of the Clock Tower and the swarm of expectant humanity that moved and murmured round Westminster. On him the first impression was of seething insignificance that the Clock Tower dwarfed and the dignity of night reproved; on her, as he knew by the trembling of her fingers, a quickening of life and sensation....
They were still at the shifting edges of the crowd when a man’s voice called “Phillida!” and one of her undergraduate cousins linked himself on to their company. For nearly an hour the three moved backwards and forwards—through the hum and mutter of voices, the ceaseless turning of eyes to Big Ben and the shuffling of innumerable feet.... When the quarters chimed, there was always a hush; when eleven throbbed solemnly, no man stirred till the last beat died.... With silence and arrested movement the massed humanity at the base of the Clock Tower was no longer a seething insignificance; without speech, without motion, it was suddenly dignified—life faced with its destiny and intent upon a Moving Finger....
“Only one more hour,” whispered Phillida as the silence broke; and the Rathbone boy, to show he was not moved, wondered if it was worth their while to stay pottering about for an hour?... No one answered his question, since it needed no answer; and, the dignity of silence over, they drifted again with the crowd.