Brighton had always interested him in the old time, but he found it insupportably dull during this brief and almost penitential vacation. His club, one of the "brainiest" in the country, as he used to boast elsewhere, was filled by earnest men who could discuss nothing but the passing of the frost and the danger which the country had escaped almost miraculously. Standing upon the breezy front, where a warm south wind rattled the windows of the old houses, it seemed impossible to believe that a man might have picked ice from that very shore but a few short weeks ago. Now Brighton was as ever a compound of stones and stucco; of square lawns and of wide windows as methodical; of a tumbling sea, and elderly gentlemen in weird waistcoats to gaze upon it.
All these had plans for their country's salvation, and few of them did not mention the name of John Faber at some time or other. Harry would sit in the corner with the old priest, Father Healy, and listen contemptuously to the talk of one who, as he said, had earned immortality by cornering the wheat market and then giving away a few sacks for the sake of making a splash! When the kindly old priest would say, "Come, come! he has done very much more than that," the good sportsman admitted that perhaps he had; but he would invariably round it off by saying, "Well, he's gone now, anyway!" and would ask upon that: "What are we going to do to help ourselves; that's what I want to know?"
It opened fine possibilities of debate in which many joined. The militant section had but one panacea: "We must prepare for war!" Civilians, equally confident, harped upon a system of national granaries, and asked what imbecility of the national intellect had prevented us building them before? "Provisions against a siege," they said.
The priest was almost alone in desiring that a siege should be made impossible.
"Build granaries of goodwill, as John Faber has advised you," he said. "Let the builders be your best intellects. There is no other surety!"
Harry liked the doctrine, but had not the wit to support it with success. He was constantly depressed, and even the cheery spirits in the billiard-room could do little for him. The futility of his flight and the cowardice of it became apparent as the days rolled by. Why had he left London and what was he doing in this place? Was not Maryska alone, and was she the one to be left safely to her own devices? He began to be afraid for her, and to say that he must return. His courage shrank from the ordeal, but his desire would face it.