Читать книгу Nilda - Edwin Doidge - Страница 4

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"Where is Ester?"

"Reading, Ma."

"Always reading—tiresome girl! Where is Glad?"

"Playing in the garden—or was a few minutes ago."

"Tom, you will have to run to the store and get a dozen of matches; quite forgot them in the order to-day, and your father will 'perform' if there are no matches."

Tom took his hat, and, with some sort of muttered complaint that he had passed the age for running messages, went out into the garden to look for Gladys, intent upon transferring the order.

"Glad, you've got to run down to Pridham's for a box of matches."

"Who said?"

"Mater."

Tom had acquired quite recently certain big-boy forms of expressing himself; he had not long since attained to long pants, and was actually in service in a bank. Hence the indisposition to run messages.

"I don't believe it. Mother sent you. You've got your hat on."

"You can go without your hat, and the sooner the better. Cut now."

"I'm busy. I was put to weed this bed, and it isn't half done yet."

A few weeds on the gravelled path attested the fact that some half-hearted attempt had been made to rid a bed of mixed flowers of the everlasting curse that fell upon the earth some time after Adam was a boy, and about the time Eve spoiled the unparalleled beauties of Eden.

"And it won't be half-done in a week,—you wouldn't earn your salt at it."

"They are so hard to pull up."

"Go on, Gladdy, and I'll weed till you come back."

"I don't want to go."

"I'll give you a copper if you do," and Master Tom jingled some coins in his trouser pocket, as befitted the big brother, dealing with a junior sister.

"Now, I know you were told to go, and you can go, so there."

Grumblingly Tom proceeded on his errand, carelessly whistling, hands in pocket. Crossing a vacant corner allotment, he encountered Dick Conton. "Hullo, Dick, who won the match?"

"Oh, the Pads, easy. Our boys weren't in it. Too light by hundred-weights."

"I ought to have been in it."

"Go on, you're a 9-stoner, and they wouldn't see yer. 'Sides, you can't run."

"Give you a spin to the corner of Pridham's—bet you a tanner I lick you."

The contest did not ensue, nor the rest of the journey to Pridham's. Just at that moment came the startling cry of the newsboy, and more than a dozen papers were already unfurled and being read in the open further down the street.

"War declared between England and Germany! Seizure by Germany of New Guinea and other Highlands of the Pacific! Australia to be taken. The British Harmy—'ere yer are, sir, latest 'Star!' Full particulars!"

Tom Horton jumped for the paper boy, and parted with the copper he had just proffered Gladys, and became possessed of the extra special 3.45 p.m. edition. Glancing at the heavily-headed cables, there it was in black and white.

"War Declared by Germany Against England! "Consternation in Every Capital of Europe. "A Sudden and Unexpected Rupture in Diplomatic Relations. "The Peace Party in England Outwitted. "Heavy Falls of Stock on all the Continental Bourses. "The German Embassy in London Closed, and Ambassador Recalled. "Diplomatic intercourse of last 10 weeks between London and Berlin, which were confidently believed to be about to end satisfactorily to both parties, were suddenly terminated last evening, when, acting on a message from the Emperor of Germany, the Reichstag resolved to terminate further parleys with the British Government, and recall its ambassador from London. Any moment it is expected that the formal declaration of war will be made. There is unprecedented consternation in every capital of Europe. Both in England and the Continent it was generally believed that the German claim in the Pacific would be satisfactorily arranged. The immediate cause of failure in negotiations has not transpired; but it is believed that England would not go beyond the terms offered, which were considered generous by every nation outside Germany and Austria, and which were only secured in the British Parliament as the last concession to the Peace Party."

"Great scott, here's news for Dad!" broke from Tom as he hastened his steps up the street, folding the paper the better to increase his speed.

"Hullo, Tom," broke from a boy-mate across the street, "what's your hurry? How'd the match come off to-day?"

"Blow the match—there's a mighty big match on for Australia and the Empire. See this?" holding up the paper.

"What's up?"

But Tom, not now thinking it undignified to run in the street, did not longer stop to explain, and was round the corner in no time.

"Has Dad come home?" he enquired of Gladys.

"You'll get Dad if you slam that gate off its hinges like that—you know it's against the rules, Tom."

"Rules be hanged—there's going to be war!"

"War, Tom! What war?" But Tom, realising the importance of his message, must break the burden of it to a more important audience, and quickly ran up the steps of the house.

"Mother, listen to this," and Tom, breathless from running, as from the unparalleled importance of the message, gasped out its contents. By which time the whole household were assembled around him and the half-laid tea-table; Mrs. Horton subsided into the nearest chair; Ester, who was next in the order of the family to Gladys, listened open-mouthed and wondering, to the message of long words, and, to her, difficult terminology.

"Germany declared war against England!" came gaspingly from Mrs. Horton, as she sank back to take in the dreadful news. "But what for? What's it all about, Tom?"

"What's every war all about," frowned Tom, to cover any shortcoming as to his knowledge of the situation. But wiser heads than his were asking that same question, or, like him, failing to answer it. "Haven't you been reading the papers? Something to do with New Guinea, I believe."

"Where's New Guinea?" came in a piping, scared voice from Ester.

"Where's your geography?" came snappingly from Tom. "What do you learn at school, any way, if you don't know the names of the big islands lying round?"

Albert, the youngster of this family group chipped in with a merry remark. "We'll get another holiday when their big ships come to the harbour."

"Little idiot," cried Tom, scathingly, "you are more likely to be blown into the harbour in little bits by one of the shells."

"What's a shell—I ain't afraid of shells!"

"Oh, Tom, this is dreadful news, really," Mrs. Horton collected her wits to say. "There may be some mistake. Those newspapers are so fond of making sensations."

"This is not a sensation they are making—not at this end of the world, anyway," came sagely from Master Tom. "I wonder what is keeping your father?"

"Perhaps this scare news," Tom suggested.

Reginald Horton was employed in the city of Sydney—"something in connection with the Exchange," people said, and at that we will in the meantime let it go. He was a man who had plodded his way through many winding paths of colonial life. At one time he had been a banker, and quitted that for something promising more lucrative returns; and ultimately became "something on the Stock Exchange." As something on the Stock Exchange, he was in touch, and had some degree of intimacy, with the causes of those fluctuations which occasionally cause panic in the great Stock Exchanges of the world.

It was the sudden news from Europe which had detained Mr. Horton later than usual in and about his office, and also on the way home. For now in every man's mouth was the word of war between the two great Powers of Europe, whose friendliness had never seriously been disturbed in all the long course of European history.

In many cases there were flippant remarks as to what would happen the Germans when they faced the British Bulldogs in their—the Britons'—own pet province, the rolling waters, on which supremacy had so long been conceded to them. But in wiser and more prudent minds, there was wide regret—nay, profound sorrow—that so mad a thing, so gigantic a misfortune, had occurred. Among these, certainly, was Reginald Horton. Eminently a man of peace, and schooled in its arts, educated in the arena where the pulses of great financial houses were felt beating with national and international undertakings, and where Credit was the giant, who lifted his little finger and pressed a button that had greater power than any archimedian lever, while Peace held sway, among the great nations of the world.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye as it were, the intricate and delicate clock-work of a mighty mechanism which had been built up between millions of people here, and millions of people there, under the egis of the Angel of Peace and the beneficent Reign of Security, could break and tumble into fragments in a thousand different centres where the tentacles of the Goddess Commerce had reached out as life-wires of a mighty living organism that worked in a myriad wheels and wheels within wheels. Only war, the blind, insensate, unreasoning Brute, had but to sound his first Tocsin note, and this sublime machine, reared with such infinite pains, built up by many patient hands and master minds, trembles and breaks.

Reginald Horton knew himself to be no more than a very small cog in one of the minor wheels of the Chariot of Commerce, but he knew already that the jarring note had come—had come in that dread cable, and was even at that moment affecting, nay shaking, every great financial centre in the world; for the British nation was, in relation to the finances of the world, almost in the position of the keystone of the arch built to withstand every shock of a normal nature, but not a world-cataclysm. . . . No device or structure of man could withstand Messianic violence in eruption; no triumph of Peace and long-established security could stand, and withstand, the collision of two such mighty forces as the British and German Powers.

Hence it was that fear and anxiety sat upon the brow of Reginald Horton as he returned to his home that evening.

He was met with a fire of questions, in which there was no marked note of anxiety save in that of Mrs. Horton.

"Is it true, do you think, Dad?" was Tom's first enquiry.

"I fear it is too true."

"Did any one expect anything of the sort?" asked his wife.

"Not immediately. It is the suddenness of it that makes one jump. But I'm afraid that is characteristic of Germany. You will remember they were pretty sudden when they jumped at France, when few people supposed them ready."