But all the efforts of the exoteric town-crier were of no avail against the esoteric sacramental services. The most unsettling condition lovers can have imposed upon them--that of being left entirely to their own devices, and never stimulated by so much as a hint of a _chaperon_--failed to bring about a coolness. And when within a year after his accident Jack Calverley was ordered away with his Company to South Africa, where war had all but broken out, the sacramental service the picture--or someone--had witnessed, just by the glass case with the big fish in it, was the farewell of a couple of heartbreaks, kept under by the upspring of Hope in youth, that clings to the creed that the stricken classes, the mourning classes, are Other People, and that to them pity shall be given from within our pale of well-fenced security. It was a wrench to part, certainly, but Jack would come back, and be a great soldier and wear medals. And the Other People would die for their country. And then came the war, and the many unpleasant discoveries that always come with a war, the most unpleasant of all being the discovery of the strength of the enemy. The usual recognitions of the obvious, too late; and the usual denunciations of everybody else for not having foreseen it all the time. The usual rush to the money-chest of unexhausted Credit, to make good with pounds deficiencies shillings spent in time would have supplied; the usual storms of indignation against the incompetence in high places that never spent, in time, the shillings we refused to provide. The usual war-whoops from sheltered corners, safe out of gunshot; and the usual deaths by scores of men on both sides who never felt a pang of ill-feeling to each other, or knew the cause of quarrel--yes, a many of whom, had they known a quarrel was pending, would have given their lives to avert it! The usual bearing, on both sides, of the brunt of the whirlwind by those who never sowed a wind-seed, and the usual reaping of a golden harvest by the Judicious Investor, he who buys and sells, but makes and meddles not with what he sells or buys, measuring its value alone by what he can get and must give for it. And a very respectable person he is, too.