"There will be many a house left without its head--houses great
and small. And if the peril of it were more generally foreseen at
this date it would be less perilous than it is."
"Lads like that!" said the old Duchess bitterly. "Lads in their
strength and joy and bloom! It is hideous."
"In all their young virility and promise for a next generation--the
strong young fathers of forever unborn millions! It's damnable!
And it will be so not only in England, but all over a blood drenched
world."
It was in this way they talked to each other of the black tragedy
for which they believed the world's stage already being set in
secret, and though there were here and there others who felt the
ominous inevitability of the raising of the curtain, the rest of
the world looked on in careless indifference to the significance of
the open training of its actors and even the resounding hammerings
of its stage carpenters and builders. In these days the two
discussed the matter more frequently and even in the tone of those
who waited for the approach of a thing drawing nearer every day.
Each time the Head of the House of Coombe made one of his so-called
"week end" visits to the parts an Englishman can reach only by
crossing the Channel, he returned with new knowledge of the special
direction in which the wind veered in the blowing of those straws
he had so long observed with absorbed interest.
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