God knows what disorders we may fall
into.... Home and to bed with a heavy heart."

_Diary of Samuel Pepys._

I

During that terrible December week in 1899, England suffered more
defeats to her arms than during any other week of the century.
Magersfontein, Stormberg, Colenso, their names leapt one after another
on to the screen.

London was dismayed; London was impatient. Easy enough to declare that
the most criminal blunders had been perpetrated, easy enough to explain
how one would oneself have conducted this or that, manoeuvred hither
or thither some pawn in the game.

Dismay remained--a wide active alarm at the things that Life, so
suddenly real and dominating and destructive, might in the future be
preparing.

To Lord John this terrible week was simply the climax to a succession of
disturbing revelations of reality. All his days had he been denying
Life, wrapping it up in one covering after another, calling it finally a
box of chocolates or a racing card, a good cigar or a pretty woman,
knowing, at his heart, that somewhere in the dark forest the wild beast
was waiting for him, hoping that he might survive to the end without
facing it.

Now it was before him and its glittering eyes were upon him.

He had gone on the Friday of this week, to pay a week-end visit at a
country house near Newmarket. Many jolly, happy week-ends he had spent
at this same house on other occasions, now, from first to last, it was
nightmare.

On the Monday morning at breakfast a sudden conviction of the impossible
horror of this world struck at his heart. It came as a revelation, life
was for him never to be the same again. His hostess, a large-bosomed
white-haired lady, planted at the end of the table like an enormous
artificial toy in the middle of whose back some key must be turned if
the affair is to amuse the crowd, suddenly horrified him; the women of
the party, their noses a little blue, their cheeks a touch too white,
their voices hard and sharp, the men, red and brown, boisterously hearty
about the animals they hoped to kill before the day was done, the cold
food in a glazed and greedy row, the hot food--kidneys, fish, bacon,
sausages, sizzling and scenting the air--: the table itself with its
racks of toast and marmalade and silver and fruit: the conversation that
sounded as though the speakers were afraid that the food would all
disappear were they spontaneous or natural--all these things suddenly
appeared