Changing Winds Part 81

"By Jove!" they said, "it's ... it's true!"

"I told you it was true. You wouldn't believe me when I told you. You know, it's a Bit Thick, that's what it is. I've been a Liberal all my life, same as my father ... and then this goes and happens! What _is_ a chap to do?..."

He wailed away, filling the air with prophecies of doom and disaster.

They could hear him, as he rushed about the hotel telling the news, taking people into corners and informing them that it was a Bit Thick.

There was something pitiful about him ... he had climbed to a comfortable competence from a hard beginning ... and something comical, too, something that made them all wish to laugh. The veneer of manners which he had acquired with so much trouble had worn off in a moment, and the careful speech, the rigid insistence on aspirates, to speak, took to its heels. He appeared to them suddenly, carrying an atlas.

"Where the 'ell is Serbia anyway?" he demanded. "I can't find the d.a.m.n place on the map!"

2

They stood about, gaping at each other, unable to realise what had happened to them. One of the windows of the drawing-room was open, and the subdued buzz of women's voices came through it to the terrace.

Monotonously, exasperatingly, one querulous voice sent a fretful question through the bewildered speeches of the women ... "But what's it about? That's what I want to know. I've asked everybody, but n.o.body seems to know!" Some one made an inaudible reply to the querulous voice, and then it went on: "Serbia! That's what some one else said, but we aren't Serbia. We're England, and I don't see what we've got to do with it. If they want to go and fight, let them. That's what I say!..."

Gilbert and Henry sat in the middle of the group on the terrace, listening to what was being said about them. They had thrown the newspapers aside ... there was hysteria in the headlines ... and were sitting in a sort of stupor, wondering what would happen next. The buzzing voice, demanding to be told what the war was about, still droned through the window, irritating them vaguely until the man who had first brought the news got up from his seat, and went to the window and shut it noisily.

"d.a.m.n 'er," he said, as he came back to his seat. "'Oo cares whether she knows what it's about or not! What's it got to do with 'er any'ow. She won't 'ave to do none of the fightin'!"

Fighting!

Henry sat up and looked at the man. Why, of course, there would be fighting ... and perhaps England would be drawn into the war, and then!...

A girl came out of the hotel, with towels under her arm, and called to them. "Coming to bathe?" she said.

They looked at her vacantly. "Bathe!" said Henry.

"Yes. It's a ripping morning!"

They stood up, and looked towards the sea that was white with suns.h.i.+ne ... and then turned away again. It seemed to Henry as if, down there by the rocks, in a splash of sunlight, a corpse were lying ...

festering.... He sat down again, mechanically picking up a newspaper and reading once more the telegrams he had already read many times.

"Come along," the girl said. "You might just as well bathe!"

Gilbert looked up at her and smiled. "I was just wondering," he said, "what one ought to do!"

3

The banks had closed, and there was an alarm about money and a deeper alarm about food.... Panic suddenly came upon them, and in a short while, visitors began to pack their trunks in their eagerness to get home. The women felt that they would be safer at home ... they wanted to be in familiar places. "I really ought to be at home to look after my house," a man said to Henry. "They're a rough lot in our town, and if there's any shortage of food ... they'll loot, of course! I don't like breaking my holiday, but!..."

He did not complete his sentence ... no one ever completed a sentence then ... but went indoors....

And telegrams came incessantly, telegrams calling people home, telegrams announcing that others were not coming, telegrams containing information of the war....

"I suppose," said Gilbert, "if anything comes of this, well have to do something!..."

"Do something?" Henry murmured.

"Yes, I suppose so...."

Perkins came to him, Perkins who had an agency in Manchester.

"You know," he said, "I don't call this place safe. It's right on the coast ... slap-up against the sea ... and you know, if a German cruiser was to drop a sh.e.l.l right in the middle of us, we'd look d.a.m.n silly, I can tell you!"

"We have a navy too," said Gilbert.

"Yes, I know all about that, but that wouldn't be much consolation to me if I was to get blown up, would it? You know, I do think they ought to draw the blinds down at night so's the light won't show out at sea. I mean to say, there's no sense in running risks, is there?"

"No ... no, of course not!"

"I think I'll go and suggest that to the proprietor. I've just been up to Manchester to see how things are going on there. Bit excited, of course. n.o.body seems to know what to do, so they just sit down and cancel everything. Silly, I call it. I went to my office to get my letters, and every blessed one was cancelling an order. I mean to say, that's no way to go on ... losing their heads like that. And you know they'll need my stuff later on ... if we go in!"

"Your stuff?" Henry said.

"Yes. I deal in black!..."

"Christ!" said Gilbert, getting up and walking away.

"Your friend seems a bit upset, doesn't he?" Mr. Perkins murmured to Henry.

4

They went into Holyhead, and wandered aimlessly about the station.

Marvellously, men in uniform appeared everywhere. The reservists, naval and military, had been called up, and while Gilbert and Henry stood in the station, a large number of them went away, leaving tearful, puzzled women on the platform. That morning the boots at the hotel had been called up to join his Territorial regiment. He had been carrying a trunk on his back, when the call came to him, and, chuckling, he dropped the trunk, and skipped off to get ready. "I'm wanted," he said ... and then he went off.

And still people went about, bemused and frightened, demanding what it was about....

"Well have to go in," some one said in the station. "I can't see how we can stay out!..."

"I can't see that at all," his neighbour replied. "We've got nothing to do with it!"

"If the Germans won't leave the Belgians alone!..."

Perkins interrupted again. "We've got a Belgian cook in our hotel," he said. "It ... it sort of brings it all home to you, that!"

There were rumours that the working-people were resolute against the war....

"And so are the employers," said Perkins. "I can tell you that. I've not met anybody yet who wants a war!"

And as the rumours flew about, they grew. One could see a rumour begin and swell and change and increase.

"I tell you what," said Perkins. "These Germans have been d.a.m.n well asking for it, and I hope they'll d.a.m.n well get it. I know a few Germans ... Manchester's full of 'em ... and I don't like 'em. As a nation, I don't like 'em. They ... they get on my nerves, that's what they do!"

There was talk about German organisation, German efficiency, German militarism....

"They don't think anything of a civilian in Germany. The soldier's everything. And women ... oh, my G.o.d, the way they treat women! I've seen German officers ... I've seen 'em myself ... chaps that are supposed to be gentlemen ... going along the street, and shoving women off the pavement!..."