Or, on the other hand, there might be some amazing, prompt success on our part. Our army and navy people were narrow, but in their narrow way he believed they were extraordinarily good....
What would the Irish do?...
His thoughts were no more than a thorny jungle of unanswerable questions through which he struggled in un-progressive circles.
He got out of bed and dressed in a slow, distraught manner. When he reached his braces he discontinued dressing for a time; he opened the atlas at Northern France, and stood musing over the Belgian border. Then he turned to Whitaker's Almanack to browse upon the statistics of the great European armies. He was roused from this by the breakfast gong.
At breakfast there was no talk of anything but war. Hugh was as excited as a cat in thundery weather, and the small boys wanted information about flags. The Russian and the Serbian flag were in dispute, and the flag page of Webster's Dictionary had to be consulted. Newspapers and letters were both abnormally late, and Mr. Britling, tiring of supplying trivial information to his offspring, smoked cigarettes in the garden. He had an idea of intercepting the postman. His eyes and ears informed him of the approach of Mrs. Faber's automobile. It was an old, resolute-looking machine painted red, and driven by a trusted gardener; there was no mistaking it.
Mrs. Faber was in it, and she stopped it outside the gate and made signals. Mrs. Britling, attracted by the catastrophic sounds of Mrs. Faber's vehicle, came out by the front door, and she and her husband both converged upon the caller.
§ 2
"I won't come in," cried Mrs. Faber, "but I thought I'd tell you. I've been getting food."
"Food?"
"Provisions. There's going to be a run on provisions. Look at my flitch of bacon!"
"But——"
"Faber says we have to lay in what we can. This war—it's going to stop everything. We can't tell what will happen. I've got the children to consider, so here I am. I was at Hickson's before nine...."
The little lady was very flushed and bright-eyed. Her fair hair was disordered, her hat a trifle askew. She had an air of enjoying unwonted excitements. "All the gold's being hoarded too," she said, with a crow of delight in her voice. "Faber says that probably our cheques won't be worth that in a few days. He rushed off to London to get gold at his clubs—while he can. I had to insist on Hickson taking a cheque. 'Never,' I said, 'will I deal with you again—never—unless you do....' Even then he looked at me almost as if he thought he wouldn't.
"It's Famine!" she said, turning to Mr. Britling. "I've laid hands on all I can. I've got the children to consider."
"But why is it famine?" asked Mr. Britling.
"Oh! it is!" she said.
"But why?"
"Faber understands," she said. "Of course it's Famine...."
"And would you believe me," she went on, going back to Mrs. Britling, "that man Hickson stood behind his counter—where I've dealt with him for years, and refused absolutely to let me have more than a dozen tins of sardines. Refused! Point blank!
"I was there before nine, and even then Hickson's shop was crowded—crowded, my dear!"
"What have you got?" said Mr. Britling with an inquiring movement towards the automobile.
She had got quite a lot. She had two sides of bacon, a case of sugar, bags of rice, eggs, a lot of flour.
"What are all these little packets?" said Mr. Britling.
Mrs. Faber looked slightly abashed.
"Cerebos salt," she said. "One gets carried away a little. I just got hold of it and carried it out to the car. I thought we might have to salt things later."
"And the jars are pickles?" said Mr. Britling.
"Yes. But look at all my flour! That's what will go first...."
The lady was a little flurried by Mr. Britling's too detailed examination of her haul. "What good is blacking?" he asked. She would not hear him. She felt he was trying to spoil her morning. She declared she must get on back to her home. "Don't say I didn't warn you," she said. "I've got no end of things to do. There's peas! I want to show cook how to bottle our peas. For this year—it's lucky, we've got no end of peas. I came by here just for the sake of telling you." And with that she presently departed—obviously ruffled by Mrs. Britling's lethargy and Mr. Britling's scepticism.
Mr. Britling watched her go off with a slowly rising indignation.
"And that," he said, "is how England is going to war! Scrambling for food—at the very beginning."
"I suppose she is anxious for the children," said Mrs. Britling.
"Blacking!"
"After all," said Mr. Britling, "if other people are doing that sort of thing—"
"That's the idea of all panics. We've got not to do it.... The country hasn't even declared war yet! Hallo, here we are! Better late than never."
The head of the postman, bearing newspapers and letters, appeared gliding along the top of the hedge as he cycled down the road towards the Dower House corner.
§ 3
England was not yet at war, but all the stars were marching to that end. It was as if an event so vast must needs take its time to happen. No doubt was left upon Mr. Britling's mind, though a whole-page advertisement in the Daily News, in enormous type and of mysterious origin, implored Great Britain not to play into the hands of Russia, Russia the Terrible, that bugbear of the sentimental Radicals. The news was wide and sweeping, and rather inaccurate. The Germans were said to be in Belgium and Holland, and they had seized English ships in the Kiel Canal. A moratorium had been proclaimed, and the reports of a food panic showed Mrs. Faber to be merely one example of a large class of excitable people.
Mr. Britling found the food panic disconcerting. It did not harmonise with his leading motif of the free people of the world rising against the intolerable burthen of militarism. It spoilt his picture....
Mrs. Britling shared the paper with Mr. Britling, they stood by the bed of begonias near the cedar tree and read, and the air was full of the cheerful activities of the lawn-mower that was being drawn by a carefully booted horse across the hockey field.
Presently Hugh came flitting out of the house to hear what had happened. "One can't work somehow, with all these big things going on," he apologised. He secured the Daily News while his father and mother read The Times. The voices of the younger boys came from the shade of the trees; they had brought all their toy soldiers out of doors, and were making entrenched camps in the garden.
"The financial situation is an extraordinary one," said Mr. Britling, concentrating his attention.... "All sorts of staggering things may happen. In a social and economic system that has grown just anyhow.... Never been planned.... In a world full of Mrs. Fabers...."
"Moratorium?" said Hugh over his Daily News. "In relation to debts and so on? Modern side you sent me to, Daddy. I live at hand to mouth in etymology. Mors and crematorium—do we burn our bills instead of paying them?"
"Moratorium," reflected Mr. Britling; "Moratorium. What nonsense you talk! It's something that delays, of course. Nothing to do with death. Just a temporary stoppage of payments.... Of course there's bound to be a tremendous change in values...."