"Payper! Special! Ultimatium by Krooger! Declaration of war!" Soames
bought the paper. There it was in the stop press...! His first thought
was: 'The Boers are committing suicide.' His second: 'Is there anything
still I ought to sell?' If so he had missed the chance--there would
certainly be a slump in the city to-morrow. He swallowed this thought
with a nod of defiance. That ultimatum was insolent--sooner than let it
pass he was prepared to lose money. They wanted a lesson, and they would
get it; but it would take three months at least to bring them to heel.
There weren't the troops out there; always behind time, the Government!
Confound those newspaper rats! What was the use of waking everybody up?
Breakfast to-morrow was quite soon enough. And he thought with alarm of
his father. They would cry it down Park Lane. Hailing a hansom, he got
in and told the man to drive there.
James and Emily had just gone up to bed, and after communicating the
news to Warmson, Soames prepared to follow. He paused by after-thought
to say:
"What do you think of it, Warmson?"
The butler ceased passing a hat brush over the silk hat Soames had taken
off, and, inclining his face a little forward, said in a low voice:
"Well, sir, they 'aven't a chance, of course; but I'm told they're very
good shots. I've got a son in the Inniskillings."
"You, Warmson? Why, I didn't know you were married."
"No, sir. I don't talk of it. I expect he'll be going out."
The slighter shock Soames had felt on discovering that he knew so little
of one whom he thought he knew so well was lost in the slight shock of
discovering that the war might touch one personally. Born in the year
of the Crimean War, he had only come to consciousness by the time the
Indian Mutiny was over; since then the many little wars of the British
Empire had been entirely professional, quite unconnected with the
Forsytes and all they stood for in the body politic. This war would
surely be no exception. But his mind ran hastily over his family. Two of
the Haymans, he had heard, were in some Yeomanry or other--it had always
been a pleasant thought, there was a certain distinction about the
Yeomanry; they wore, or used to wear, a blue uniform with silver about
it, and rode horses. And Archibald, he remembered, had once on a time
joined the Militia, but had given it up because his father, Nicholas,
had made such a fuss about his 'wasting his time peacocking about in a
uniform.' Recently he had heard somewhere that young Nicholas' eldest,
very young Nicholas, had become a Volunteer. 'No,' thought Soames,
mounting the stairs slowly, 'there's nothing in that!'