The London theatres are full, the “movies” crowded, and you have to wait your turn for a seat at a restaurant.  Bond Street and Piccadilly are doing a thriving business—­never so thriving, you are told, and presently you are willing to believe it.  The vendor beggars, so familiar a sight a few years ago, have all but disappeared, and you may walk from Waterloo Station to the Haymarket without so much as meeting a needy soul anxious to carry your bag.  Taxicabs are in great demand.  And one odd result of the scarcity of what the English are pleased to call “petrol,” by which they mean gasoline, is the reappearance of that respectable, but almost obsolete animal, the family carriage-horse; of that equally obsolete vehicle, the victoria.  The men on the box are invariably in black.  In spite of taxes to make the hair of an American turn grey, in spite of lavish charities, the wealthy classes still seem wealthy—­if the expression may be allowed.  That they are not so wealthy as they were goes without saying.  In the country houses of the old aristocracy the most rigid economy prevails.  There are new fortunes, undoubtedly, munitions and war fortunes made before certain measures were taken to control profits; and some establishments, including a few supported by American accumulations, still exhibit the number of men servants and amount of gold plate formerly thought adequate.  But in most of these great houses maids have replaced the butlers and footmen; mansions have been given over for hospitals; gardeners are fighting in the trenches, and courts and drives of country places are often overgrown with grass and weeds.

“Yes, we do dine in public quite often,” said a very great lady.  “It’s cheaper than keeping servants.”

Two of her three sons had been killed in France, but she did not mention this.  The English do not advertise their sorrows.  Still another explanation when husbands and sons and brothers come back across the Channel for a few days’ leave after long months in the trenches, nothing is too good for them.  And when these days have flown, there is always the possibility that there may never be another leave.  Not long ago I read a heart-rending article about the tragedies of the goodbyes in the stations and the terminal hotels—­tragedies hidden by silence and a smile.  “Well, so long,” says an officer “bring back a V. C.,” cries his sister from the group on the platform, and he waves his hand in deprecation as the train pulls out, lights his pipe, and pretends to be reading the Sphere.

Some evening, perchance, you happen to be in the dark street outside of Charing Cross station.  An occasional hooded lamp throws a precarious gleam on a long line of men carrying—­so gently—­stretchers on which lie the silent forms of rich and poor alike.

CHAPTER II