XIX

They did not go down to Morfe the first week in August for the shooting.

Neither did Lawrence Stephen go to Ireland on Monday, the third.  At the moment when he should have been receiving the congratulations of the Dublin Nationalists after his impassioned appeal for militant consolidation, Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward Carson were shaking hands dramatically in the House of Commons.  Stephen’s sublime opportunity, the civil war, had been snatched from him by the unforeseen.

And there was no chance of Nicky and Veronica going to Belgium and France and Germany for their honeymoon.

For within nine days of Frances’s Day Germany had declared war on France and Russia, and was marching over the Belgian frontier on her way to Paris.

Frances, aroused at last to realization of the affairs of nations, asked, like several million women, “What does it mean?”

And Anthony, like several million men, answered, “It means Armageddon.”  Like several million people, they both thought he was saying something as original as it was impressive, something clear and final and descriptive.  “Armageddon!” Stolid, unimaginative people went about saying it to each other.  The sound of the word thrilled them, intoxicated them, gave them an awful feeling that was at the same time, in some odd way, agreeable; it stirred them with a solemn and sombre passion.  They said “Armageddon.  It means Armageddon.”  Yet nobody knew and nobody asked or thought of asking what Armageddon meant.

“Shall We come into it?” said Frances.  She was thinking of the Royal Navy turning out to the last destroyer to save England from invasion; of the British Army most superfluously prepared to defend England from the invader, who, after all, could not invade; of Indian troops pouring into England if the worst came to the worst.  She had the healthy British mind that refuses and always has refused to acknowledge the possibility of disaster.  Yet she asked continually, “Would England be drawn in?” She was thankful that none of her sons had gone into the Army or the Navy.  Whoever else was in, they would be out of it.

At first Anthony said, “No.  Of course England wouldn’t be drawn in.”

Then, on the morning of England’s ultimatum, the closing of the Stock Exchange and the Banks made him thoughtful, and he admitted that it looked as if England might be drawn in after all.  The long day, without any business for him and Nicholas, disturbed him.  There was a nasty, hovering smell of ruin in the air.  But there was no panic.  The closing of the Banks was only a wise precaution against panic.  And by evening, as the tremendous significance of the ultimatum sank into him, he said definitively that England would not be drawn in.

Then Drayton, whom they had not seen for months (since he had had his promotion) telephoned to Dorothy to come and dine with him at his club in Dover Street.  Anthony missed altogether the significance of that.