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The Invasion Of England
by
The assistant laughed good-naturedly.
“It did give me quite a turn,” he said. “It’s this talk of invasion, I fancy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast Guard, and you came along the beach dressed like that, I’d take a shot at you, just on the chance, anyway.”
“And, quite right, too!” said Ford.
He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would stick at his post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play truant and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the words of Mr. Clarkson’s assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later young Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew, young Herbert, who was only five years younger than his uncle, and Herbert’s friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in their third term at the university. After five years’ service in India, Bellew had spent the last “Eights” week at Oxford, and was complaining bitterly that since his day the undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found him serious, given to study, far too well behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he read Galsworthy; instead of “wines” he found pleasure in debating clubs where he discussed socialism. Ragging, practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes, that once were wont to set England in a roar, were a lost art. His undergraduate guests combated these charges fiercely. His criticisms they declared unjust and without intelligence.
“You’re talking rot!” said his dutiful nephew. “Take Phil here, for example. I’ve roomed with him three years and I can testify that he has never opened a book. He never heard of Galsworthy until you spoke of him. And you can see for yourself his table manners are quite as bad as yours!”
“Worse!” assented Birrell loyally.
“And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours; as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat through a temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a man from Balliol?”
“And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!” cried Herbert. “What price that? When the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and gave him seventeen guns. That was an Oxford rag, and carried through by Oxford men. The country hasn’t stopped laughing yet. You give us a rag!” challenged Herbert. “Make it as hard as you like; something risky, something that will make the country sit up, something that will send us all to jail, and Phil and I will put it through whether it takes one man or a dozen. Go on,” he persisted, “And I bet we can get fifty volunteers right here in town and all of them undergraduates.”
“Give you the idea, yes!” mocked Bellew, trying to gain time. “That’s just what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You lack initiative. It’s the idea that counts. Anybody can do the acting. That’s just amateur theatricals!”
“Is it!” snorted Herbert. “If you want to know what stage fright is, just go on board a British battle-ship with your face covered with burnt cork and insist on being treated like an ambassador. You’ll find it’s a little different from a first night with the Simla Thespians!”
Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking comfortably and with well-timed nods, impartially encouraging each disputant. But now he suddenly laid his cigar upon his plate, and, after glancing quickly about him, leaned eagerly forward. They were at the corner table of the terrace, and, as it was now past nine o’clock, the other diners had departed to the theatres and they were quite alone. Below them, outside the open windows, were the trees of the embankment, and beyond, the Thames, blocked to the west by the great shadows of the Houses of Parliament, lit only by the flame in the tower that showed the Lower House was still sitting.