A lark sang. The Colonel lifted his face to the speck poised and thrilling in the blue.
What a day to go to war on! was his thought.
At the deserted club-house he dropped down into Lovers' Lane and climbed up towards Old Town between high flint walls, ivy-covered.
As he emerged into Rectory Walk the Archdeacon was coming out of his gate. He was in his glory. His faded eyes glittered like those of an old duellist about to engage, and confident of his victim.
"I've been waiting this day for forty-five yeahs," he announced.
The Colonel was aware of the legend that in 1870 the Archdeacon, then a lad at Cambridge, had only been restrained from fighting for his hero, the Emperor of the French, by a brutal father.
"It certainly looks as if you might get back a bit of your own," he said wearily. The other's dreadful exaltation served only to depress him. "Russia going at em one side and France the other."
To the Colonel's horror, the Archdeacon took him by the arm.
"Can you doubt it?" he cried, rolling his eyes to see the impression he was making on the grocer in the door of the little corner-shop. "Are we rotten to the heart?"
They were walking down Church Street now, arm-in-arm, in the middle of the road.
"The pity of it is," he cried in his staccato voice, "we've no Emperah to lead us to-day. Ah! there was a man!" He made a dramatic halt in mid-street. "_Thank Gahd for Carson--what!_" he whispered.
"And Smith," said the Colonel meekly. "Let us give thanks for Smith too--
_Great in counsel, great in war, Foremost Captain of our time, Rich in saving common sense, And, as the greatest only are, In his simplicity sublime._"
They had reached the door of the parish-church.
The Archdeacon entered; and the Colonel turned with relief to greet Bobby Chislehurst. The lad's open face was unusually grave.
"There are sure to be pacifist demonstrations in London to-morrow," he began, blurting out his confidences like a a school-boy. "It's my day off. I shall go."
"I must," the other replied. "It's all I can do."
"Bobby," said the Colonel grimly. "This is my advice. If you go up to London at all wire to Billy to come and meet you. He may be able to get an hour off, though I expect they're pretty busy at Aldershot." Billy was Bobby's twin-brother and in the Service.