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 ta............