And as he saw me still incredulous he told me how he’d managed it.  He had gone every day for three weeks to the Belgian Legation and worried the Belgian Minister into a state of nervous prostration.  And when the Minister was at his worst and was obliged to leave things a bit to his secretaries, he’d gone to the secretaries and worried them till the First Secretary had given him his passport and a letter of introduction to the President of the Belgian Red Cross Society at Ghent.  And he had gone to Ghent—­went there last week—­and he had seen the President and talked to him.  He had talked for ten minutes before his services had been accepted by the Belgian Red Cross.

And he was going out to-morrow.

“It’s just taken me six weeks to do it.  I gave myself six weeks.”

Of course I congratulated him.  But I couldn’t realize it.  The whole thing seemed incredible.  Jevons in his khaki was incredible.  The transformed motor-car was incredible, as a thing that Jevons was concerned with.  Above all, it was incredible that he should have sacrificed his god.

I couldn’t believe it until Kendal, the chauffeur, turned up, also in khaki and with a Red Cross brassard on his right arm.  Kendal was credible enough; he looked as if he had been going to the war all his life.  It was evident that he was keen on the adventure.  It was also evident that he adored Jevons more than ever.  By watching Kendal in the act of adoration and keeping my eyes fixed on him I was able to take it in, and to assent to the statement that Jevons was going to the war.

He was of course if Kendal said so.

Kendal was asking me what I thought of the car.

“She’s not the beauty she was, sir,” said Kendal.  “I don’t suppose Mr.
Jevons will care much how he knocks her about now.  And they do say the
Belgium roads is fair destruction to cars.”

I said they were.  I’d motored on them.  Kendal looked at me as he might have looked at the survivor of a shattering experience.  Then he looked at his car.  He seemed to be seeing all the roads in Belgium in a hideous vision.

Then he spoke.  “Well, they may be bad roads, but Mr. Jevons isn’t going to be done.  He’ll take out ten cars before ’e turns back.  Ten cars, he will.”

Yes, yes, I might have known it.  Was there ever anything Jevons had made up his mind to do and didn’t?  Had I ever known him turn back from any adventure that he had set out on?  If he said he was going to the war, why couldn’t I have known that he would go?  The more incredible the thing was, the more likely he was to do it.

When I said so he shook his head and said it wasn’t really as likely as it looked.

We were sitting together after dinner in his garden.  Though it was the third week in September the nights were still warm.  Without Viola, the stillness of the place was strange to me, almost uncanny, as if Viola were dead and had come back and was listening to us somewhere.  I had just told him it was splendid of him going out like this, and he had smiled back at me and asked, “Like what?” And then I had said I might have known it; it was the sort of thing he would do.