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CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE FIRST YEARS OF THE WAR
Looking back on the years between 1907 and 19 14 it seems to me now that they passed with amazing swiftness. My engagement book was full up with British and American bookings. Life, so far as I was concerned, was a perpetual scamper over the chief towns of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and then off again to the States for another long tour. It is quite true that my bank-book was swelling in corresponding ratio to my engagement-book but while this fact gave me intense pleasure I was often oppressed with a feeling of horror when I realized that every week of my life for years ahead was irrevocably fixed and ordained. I had no time for holidays. If I got an occasional week-end at Laudervale in Dunoon, or at Glen Branter on the shores of Loch Eck, Argyllshire — the Highland estate I now owned but seldom saw — it was as much as I could fit in. Of course the ocean trips to and from America were as good as vacations but I did miss that fine feeling that comes to most men and women once or twice a year — the exhilarating thought that now, for a week or a fortnight, they can cast care to the winds and thoroughly enjoy their holidays. More than once I tried hard to get released from dates on both sides of the Atlantic, but it was no good — managers' plans are made a long way ahead ; I was a slave for whom there was never a respite.
Sometimes I fell to hating my life with a fierce hatred. What had I done that I should thus be kept at the grindstone, driven and dragooned, at home and abroad, week after week, month after month, year after year? For more than ten years I had had no home life worth speaking of.
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