There it was! And she had nothing to say. She could only sit and look at him—at his beautiful youth all alight with the sudden flame of that which can set a young world on fire and sweep on its way either carrying devastation or clearing a path to Paradise.
His own natural light unconsciousness was amazing. He only knew that he was in delightful high spirits. The dancing, the music, the early morning were, he thought, accountable for it.
She bent forward to kiss his cheek and she patted his hand.
"My dear! My dear!" she said. "How you have enjoyed your evening!"
"There never was anything more perfect," with the light laugh again. "Everything was delightful—the rooms, the music, the girls in their pretty frocks like a lot of flowers tossed about. She danced like a bit of thistledown. I didn't know a girl could be so light. The back of her slim little neck looks as fine and white and soft as a baby's. I am so glad you were awake. Are you sure you don't want to go to sleep again?" suddenly.
"Not in the least. Look at the sun beginning to touch the tips of the little white clouds with rose. That stir among the leaves of the plane trees is the first delicious breath of the morning. Go on and tell me all about the party."
"It's a perfect time to talk," he laughed.
And there he sat and made gay pictures for her of what he had seen and done. He thought he was giving her mere detail of the old Duchess' dance. He did not know that when he spoke of new tangos, of flowers, of music and young nymphs like tossed blossoms, he never allowed her for a moment to lose sight of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' girl. She was the light floating over his vision of the happy youth of the assembly—she was the centre—the beginning and the ending of it all.
CHAPTER II
If some uncomplex minded and even moderately articulate man or woman, living in some small, ordinary respectable London house and going about his or her work in the customary way, had been prompted by chance upon June 29th, 1914, to begin to keep on that date a day-by-day diary of his or her ordinary life, the effects of huge historic events, as revealed by the every-day incidents to be noted in the streets, to be heard in his neighbours' houses as well as among his fellow workers, to be read in the penny or half-penny newspapers, would have resulted—if the record had been kept faithfully and without any self-conscious sense of audience—between 1914 and 1918 in the gradual compiling of a human document of immense historical value. Compared with it, the diaries of Defoe and Pepys would pale and be flavourless. But it must have been begun in June, 1914, and have been written with the casualness of that commonplace realism which is the most convincing realism of all. It is true that the expression of the uncomplex mind is infrequently articulate, but the record which would bring home the clearest truth would be the one unpremeditatedly depicting the effect produced upon the wholly unprepared and undramatic personality by the monstrous drama, as the Second Deluge rose for its apparent overwhelming, carrying upon its flood old civilisations broken from anchor and half submerged as they tossed on the rising and raging waves. Such a priceless treasure as this might have been the quite unliterary and unromantic diary of any—say, Mr. James Simpson of any house number in any respectable side street in Regents Park, or St. Johns Wood or Hampstead. One can easily imagine him, sitting in his small, comfortable parlour and bending over his blotting-pad in unilluminated cheerful absorption after his day's work. It can also without any special intellectual effort be imagined that the record might have begun with some such seemingly unprophetic entry as follows:—
"June 29th, 1914. I made up my mind when I was at the office to-day that I would begin to keep a diary. I have thought several times that I would, and Harriet thinks it would be a good thing because we should have it to refer to when there was any little dispute about dates and things that have happened. To-night seemed a good time because there is something to begin the first entry with. Harriet and I spent part of the evening in reading the newspaper accounts of the assassination of the Austrian Archduke and his wife. There seems to be a good deal of excitement about it because he was the next heir to the Austrian throne. The assassination occurred in Bosnia at a place called Sarajevo. Crawshaw, whose desk is next to mine in the office, believes it will make a nice mess for the Bosnians and Servians because they have been rather troublesome about wanting to be united into one country instead of two, and called Greater Serbia. That seems a silly sort of reason for throwing bombs and killing people. But foreigners have a way of thinking bombs settle everything. Harriet brought out her old school geography and we looked up Sarajevo on the map of Austria-Hungary. It was hard to find because the print was small and it was spelt Saraievo—without any j in it. It was just on the line between Bosnia and Servia and the geography said it was the chief city in Bosnia. Harriet said it was a queer thing how these places on maps never seemed like real places when you looked them up and just read their names and yet probably the people in them were as real to themselves as we were, and there were streets in them as real as Lupton Street where we were sitting, finding them on the map on the sitting-room table. I said that bombs were pretty real things and the sound of this one when it exploded seemed to have reached a long way to judge from the newspapers and the talk in London. Harriet said my putting it like that gave her a queer feeling—almost as if she had heard it and it had made her jump. Somehow it seemed something like it to me. At any rate we sat still a minute or two, thinking it over. Then Harriet got up and went into the kitchen and made some nice toasted cheese for our supper before we went to bed."
Men of the James Simpson type were among the many who daily passed Coombe House on their way to and from their office work. Some of them no doubt caught sight of Lord Coombe himself as he walked or drove through the entrance gates. Their knowledge of him was founded upon rumoured stories, repeated rather privately among themselves. He was a great swell and there weren't many shady things he hadn't done and didn't know the ins and outs of, but his remoteness from their own lives rendered these accepted legends scarcely prejudicial. The perfection of his clothes, and his unusual preservation of physical condition and good looks, also his habit of the so-called "week-end" continental journeys, were the points chiefly recalled by the incidental mention of his name.
If James Simpson, on his way home to Lupton Street with his friend Crawshaw, chanced to see his lordship's car standing before his door a few days after the bomb throwing in Sarajevo, he might incidentally have referred to him somewhat in this wise:—
"As we passed by Coombe House the Marquis of Coombe came out and got into his car. There were smart leather valises and travelling things in it and a rug or so, as if he was going on some journey. He is a fine looking man for one that's lived the life he has and reached his age. I don't see how he's done it, myself. When I said to Crawshaw that it looked as if he was going away for the week end, Crawshaw said that perhaps he was taking Saturday to Monday off to run over to talk to the Kaiser and old Franz Josef about the Sarajevo business, and he might telephone to the Czar about it because he's intimate with them all, and the whole lot seem to be getting mixed up in the thing and writing letters and sending secret telegrams. It seems to be turning out, as Crawshaw said it would, into a nice mess for Servia. Austria is making it out that the assassination really was committed to stir up trouble, and says it wasn't done just by a crazy anarchist, but by a secret society working for its own ends. Crawshaw came in to supper and we talked it all over. Harriet gave us cold beef and pickled onions and beer, and we looked at the maps in the old geography again. We got quite interested in finding places. Bosnia and Servia (it's often spelled Serbia) are close up against Austria-Hungary, and Germany and Russia are close against the other side. They can get into each other's countries without much travelling. I heard to-day that Russia will have to help Servia if she has a row with Austria. Crawshaw says that will give Germany the chance she's been waiting for and that she will try to get through Belgium to England. He says she hates England. Harriet began to look pale as she studied the map and saw how