The Agony Column, page 39 by Earl Derr Biggers
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t is nearly midnight. I shall mail this letter to you--post it, I should say, since I am in London--and then I shall wait in my dim rooms for the dawn. And as I wait I shall be thinking not always of the captain, or his brother, or Hughes, or Limehouse and Enwright, but often--oh, very often--of you.
In my last letter I scoffed at the idea of a great war. But when we came back from Limehouse to-night the papers told us that the Kaiser had signed the order to mobilize. Austria in; Serbia in; Germany, Russia and France in. Hughes tells me that England is shortly to follow, and I suppose there is no doubt of it. It is a frightful thing--this future that looms before us; and I pray that for you at least it may hold only happiness.
For, my lady, when I write good night, I speak it aloud as I write; and there is in my voice more than I dare tell you of now.
THE AGONY COLUMN MAN.
Not unwelcome to the violet eyes of the girl from Texas were the last words of this letter, read in her room that Sunday morning. But the lines predicting England's early entrance into the war recalled to her mind a most undesirable contingency. On the previous night, when the war extras came out confirming the forecast of his favorite bootblack, her usually calm father had shown signs of panic. He was not a man slow to act. And she knew that, putty though he was in her hands in matters which he did not regard as important, he could also be firm where he thought firmness necessary. America looked even better to him than usual, and he had made up his mind to go there immediately. There was no use in arguing with him.
At this point came a knock at her door and her father entered. One look at his face--red, perspiring and decidedly unhappy--served to cheer his daughter.
"Been down to the steamship offices," he panted, mopping his bald head. "They're open to-day, just like it was a week day--but they might as well be closed. There's nothing doing. Every boat's booked up to the rails; we can't get out of her