Mrs. Trupp handed him a post-card. The postmark was Dover. It ran:
"I think it'll be all right, don't you?" said Mrs. Trupp, raising wistful eyes to his. The mother in her longed for him to say _No_: the patriot _Yes_.
"It must be," replied Bess, ferociously. "If it isn't Joe will chuck the Service. They all will. The pacifists can defend their own rotten country!"
The Colonel moved into the consulting-room, where Mr. Trupp was burrowing short-sightedly into his Sunday paper.
"We shall fight all right," he said comfortably. "We must. And Must's the only man who matters in real life."
"But what a position my poor old party'd have been in now if our leaders hadn't queered the pitch!" he remarked. "_We told you so_! _We told you so_! How we _could_ have rubbed it in."
"Thank God you can't," replied the other grimly. "No party's got the chuckle over another. So there's some hope that we may act as a country for once."
Outside the Manor-house the Colonel met Mr. Pigott in his frock-coat on the way to chapel. The two men had never spoken for years past except to spar. Now in the presence of the common fear they stopped, and then shook hands.
Mr. Pigott was a brave man, but there was no doubt he was shaken to the roots.
"My God, Colonel!" he muttered. "It's _awful_."
"It don't look too pleasant," the old soldier admitted.
"But we can't go in!" cried the old Nonconformist. "It's no affair of ours. Who _are_ the Serbs?"
"It's go in or go under, I'm afraid," the other answered. "That's the alternative."
He dropped down Borough Lane past the _Star_.
On the hill Edward Caspar ambling rapidly along with flying coat-tails caught him up.
"Well, Mr. Caspar, what do _you_ think about it?" asked the Colonel.
The old man emerged from his brown study and looked up with scared eyes through his gold spectacles. He did not recognise the questioner: he never did--but he answered eagerly, and with wonderful firmness.
"I don't know. War seems to me a funny sort of Love," the Colonel muttered.
"War," replied the Colonel. "There's a great European war on."
The old man, blind, puzzled, seeking, stopped dead.
"Austria's gone to war with Serbia. Russia's chimed in. Germany's having a go at Russia. And France is rushing to the rescue of her ally. Europe's ablaze from the Bay of Biscay to the Caucasus."