Part 45 (1/2)

”Yes; but they're pathetic. Can't you see how pathetic they are? Nicky, I believe I love the swine--even the poor drunken ones with the pink paper feathers--just because they're English; because awful things are going to happen to them, and they don't know it. They're English.”

”You think G.o.d's made us all like that? He _hasn't_.”

They found Anthony in the Mall, driving up and down, looking for them.

He had picked up Dorothy and Aunt Emmeline and Uncle Morrie.

”We're going down to the Mansion House,” he said, ”to hear the Proclamation. Will you come?”

But Veronica and Nicholas were tired of crowds, even of historic crowds.

Anthony drove off with his car-load, and they went home.

”I never saw Daddy so excited,” Nicky said.

But Anthony was not excited. He had never felt calmer or cooler in his life.

He returned some time after midnight. By that time it had sunk into him.

Germany _had_ defied the ultimatum and England _had_ declared war on Germany.

He said it was only what was to be foreseen. He had known all the time that it would happen--really.

The tension of the day of the ultimatum had this peculiar psychological effect that all over England people who had declared up to the last minute that there would be no War were saying the same thing as Anthony and believing it.

Michael was disgusted with the event that had put an end to the Irish Revolution. It was in this form that he conceived his first grudge against the War.

This emotion of his was like some empty s.p.a.ce of horror opened up between him and Nicholas; Nicky being the only one of his family who was as yet aware of its existence.

For the next three days, Nicholas, very serious and earnest, shut himself up in his workshop at the bottom of the orchard and laboured there, putting the last touches to the final, perfect, authoritative form of the Moving Fortress, the joint creation of his brain and Drayton's, the only experiment that had survived the repeated onslaughts of the Major's criticism. The new model was three times the size of the lost original; it was less like a battles.h.i.+p and more like a racing-car and a destroyer. It was his and Drayton's last word on the subject of armaments.

It was going to the War Office, this time, addressed to the right person, and accompanied by all sorts of protective introductions, and Drayton blasting its way before it with his new explosive.

In those three days Nick found an immense distraction in his Moving Fortress. It also served to blind his family to his real intentions. He knew that his real intentions could not be kept from them very long.

Meanwhile the idea that he was working on something made them happy.

When Frances saw him in his overalls she smiled and said: ”Nicky's got _his_ job, anyhow.” John came and looked at him through the window of the workshop and laughed.

”Good old Nicky,” he said. ”Doing his bit!”

In those three days John went about with an air of agreeable excitement.

Or you came upon him sitting in solitary places like the dining-room, lost in happy thought. Michael said of him that he was unctuous. He exuded a secret joy and satisfaction. John had acquired a sudden remarkable maturity. He shone on each member of his family with benevolence and affection, as if he were its protector and consoler, and about to confer on it some tremendous benefit.

”Look at Don-Don,” Michael said. ”The bloodthirsty little brute. He's positively enjoying the War.”

”You might leave me alone,” said Don-Don. ”I shan't have it to enjoy for long.”

He was one of those who believed that the War would be over in four months.

Michael, pledged to secrecy, came and looked at the Moving Fortress. He was interested and intelligent; he admired that efficiency of Nicky's that was so unlike his own.

Yet, he wondered, after all, was it so unlike? He, too, was aiming at an art as clean and hard and powerful as Nicky's, as naked of all blazonry and decoration, an art which would attain its objective by the simplest, most perfect adjustment of means to ends.