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Title: The Cornhill Magazine, (vol. xli, no. 243 new series, September 1916)
Author: Various
Release date: August 11, 2023 [eBook #71391]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Smith, Elder and Co, 1860
Credits: Carol Brown, hekula03 and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE, (VOL. XLI, NO. 243 NEW SERIES, SEPTEMBER 1916) ***
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THE
CORNHILL MAGAZINE.
SEPTEMBER 1916.
_THE KAISER AS HIS FRIENDS KNEW HIM._
BY A NEUTRAL DIPLOMAT.
Among the high German officials whose opinion of William the Second’s
foreign policies I quoted in my previous article, I do not recall a
single one whose loyalty or sense of propriety did not prevent his
offering any personal criticisms of the Emperor to whose service his
best efforts were being devoted. An apprehensiveness, bordering on
positive dread in many instances, of the ultimate consequences of the
Kaiser’s impetuosities was often apparent in the observations of their
franker moments, but personal aspersions were never cast. This was,
of course, no more than could have been expected from the well-bred
men-of-the-world that they were. And in this connection it may be
in point to add that not even among the rather gay and not always
discreetly reserved officers of the Crown Prince’s suite (with whom I
was thrown not a little during their visit to India in 1911) was loose
criticism of the Emperor ever heard, either by myself or by others
who enjoyed still fuller opportunities than I had for meeting them on
intimate and confidential terms.
Frederick William himself was, I regret to record, far less discreet
than those about him in his references to his imperial progenitor, and
I recall very clearly that quick-tongued youth’s sarcastic allusions
to certain rulings of the Kaiser in the matter of the treatment of the
natives of some of the islands of German Melanesia. The Crown Prince,
I should explain, I had found consumed with interest concerning the
progress his people were making in several of their Pacific island
colonies I had recently visited, and it was to his very palpable desire
to ‘pump me dry’ of any information I might have picked up regarding
these incipient ‘places in the sun’ that I owed a number of hours of
conversation with him the edification of which would hardly otherwise
have fallen to my lot.
The outburst I had in mind was led up to by my royal inquisitor’s
asking me for my views concerning the comparative progress of the
three political divisions of the island of New Guinea, and by my
replying that, if the criterion of judgment was to be the contentment,
physical well-being, and economic usefulness of the native, I should
rate British New Guinea first, Dutch New Guinea an indifferent
second, and German New Guinea a very poor third. It was anything but
a courtier-like speech on my part, but I was not meeting Frederick
William in my official capacity, and, moreover, he had made a point of
asking that I should give him perfectly frank answers to his questions.
(‘None of the “bull con’,” as the Yankees say,’ was the way he put it;
‘give me the “straight goods.”’ Both expressions, as he confessed with
a grin, he had picked up from a ‘neat little filly from Kentucky’ he
had ‘seen a bit of’ at Ostend the previous summer.)
The Crown Prince, in spite of his undeniable personal courage, of which
I saw several striking instances in the course of his Indian visit, is
far from being what the Anglo-Saxons call a ‘good sport,’ and on this
occasion he made no pretence of hiding his annoyance. Because, however,
as transpired later, there were several other matters which he had in
mind ‘pumping’ me on, he evidently thought it best not to vent his
spleen for the moment on one whose usefulness was not quite exhausted.
This befell subsequently, I may add, though under circumstances which
have no especial bearing on my present subject.
Tapping his boot with his riding-whip--he had been playing polo--the
Prince sat in a sort of spoiled-child pout of petulance for a minute or
two, before bursting out with: ‘Doubtless you’re right. I’ve had hints
of the same thing myself from private reports. It’s all due to the
pater’s unwarranted interference in something he knows nothing about.
Old X----’ (mentioning the previous Governor of German New Guinea by
name) ‘has forgotten more about handling Papuans than the pater ever
knew. The pater has put his foot in it every time he has moved in our
Pacific colonies.’ (It may be in order to explain that not only does
the Crown Prince speak excellent English, but that on this Indian visit
he made a point of resorting to English idioms, colloquialisms, and
slang to an extent which at times became positively ridiculous. I have
quoted here almost his exact language.)
Frederick William went on to give me a spirited and approving account
of the manner in which a German colonist near Herbertshöhe had put an
end to raids on his yam patch by planting on each corner-post of the
enclosure the ‘frizzly’ head of a Papuan who had been shot in the act
of making off with the succulent tubers, concluding with the dogmatic
assertion that the only way to handle the black man was to ‘bleed him
white.’
I had the temerity to reply that, from what I had seen, the more ‘old
X----’ continued to forget of what he thought he knew about handling
Papuans, the better it would be for German colonial prospects in New
Guinea, and as a consequence threw my royal interrogator into another
fit of sulks. It is only fair to say that the ‘interference’ of which
the Crown Prince waxed so unfilially censorious really consisted of
measures calculated slightly--but only slightly--to mitigate the brutal
repressiveness toward the natives which had characterised the German
administration of New Guinea from the outset. The one bright spot in
the brief but bloody annals of German overseas colonisation was the six
or eight years’ régime of the broad-minded and humane Dr. Solf--the
present Colonial Secretary--in Samoa. This tiny and comparatively
unimportant Pacific outpost was the single Teutonic colony in which I
found the natives treated with anything approaching the humanitarian
consideration extended to them so universally by the English and the
French. Dr. Solf may well be, as has been occasionally hinted from
Holland, the hope of those conservative and intelligent Germans who
are known to be silently working for a reborn and ‘de-Prussified’
Fatherland after the war.
As I have said, the Crown Prince was the only highly placed German
whom I ever heard speak slightingly in a personal way of the Kaiser,
and that impetuous youth was--as he still is--a law unto himself. Such
loyalty and discretion, however, did not characterize all prominent
Germans in private life, and it is to several of these I am indebted
for the illuminating sidelights their observations and anecdotes threw
on the human side of William II. Of such, I fancy the Baron Y----, who
voyaged on the same steamer with me from Zanzibar to Port Said several
years ago, had enjoyed perhaps the most intimate opportunities for an
intelligent appraisal of his Emperor.
The Baron was a scion of one of the oldest and wealthiest of Bavarian
noble families, a graduate of the École des Beaux Arts as well as
Heidelberg, and to the fact that several years of his boyhood were
spent at Harrow owed an English accent in speaking that language which
betrayed no trace of Teutonic gutturality. He was returning from an
extended hunting trip in British and German East Africa at the time I
made his acquaintance, and was nursing a light grievance against his
own Government from the fact that he had been rather better treated
in the former than the latter. His attitude toward the Kaiser was
somewhat different from that of any other German I have ever met, this,
doubtless, being due to his own great wealth and assured position.
There was little of the ‘loyal and devoted subject’ in this attitude,
to which no better comparison suggests itself to me than that of a very
heavy stock-holder in a corporation toward a general manager who is in
no respect his social superior.
‘The Kaiser’s most pronounced characteristic,’ said Baron Y---- one
evening as we paced the promenade, ‘is his overweening vanity. His
“ego” dwarfs his every other attribute, natural or acquired, and it
is idle to try to understand what he is, what he does, what he stands
for--and, incidentally, what the German people, in quite another sense,
have to stand for--without taking that fact into consideration. It is
the obsession of his own importance--I might even say his belief in
his own omnipotence--that is responsible for his taking the so-called
Divine Right of the Hohenzollerns more seriously, interpreting the
term more literally, than any of his ancestors since Frederick the
Great. It is his vanity that is responsible for his incessant shiftings
of uniforms, for his posturings, his obvious attempts to conceal or
distract attention from his shrunken arm. He is the most consummate
master of stagecraft; indeed, the Fates spoiled a great producer of
spectacles--one who would have eclipsed Reinhardt--to make, not an
indifferent Emperor, but----’ The Baron checked himself and concluded
with: ‘Perhaps I had best not say what I had in mind. Everything
considered, however, I am convinced that it would have been better
for Germany if William the Second had been stage-manager rather than
Kaiser.’
Specific and intimate instance of the pettiness with which the Kaiser’s
vanity occasionally expressed itself Baron Y---- gave me the following
evening. I had been turning the pages of some of his German illustrated
papers, and was unable to refrain from commenting, not only on the
frequency with which the portrait of the Kaiser appeared, but also of
the defiant ‘come-one-come-all’ attitude of all of those in which the
War Lord appeared in uniform. The Baron laughed good-naturedly. ‘The
Kaiser’s attitudinizings,’ he said, ‘never seem to strike the Prussians
as in the least funny (they haven’t much of a sense of humour,
anyhow): but we Bavarians have always taken them as quite as much of a
joke as has the rest of Europe. Now this picture’ (he began turning the
pages of ‘Ueber Land und Meer’ in search of it), ‘which is one of the
most popular with the Prussians, we of Bavaria have always called “Ajax
Defying the Lightning,” and I am going to tell you the history of it.
‘This picture is reproduced from one of several dozen almost identical
photographs which have been taken of the Kaiser glowering into the
emptiness of the upper empyrean from the vantage of a little basaltic
crag which crops up at the forks of a road in one of the Imperial game
preserves. I have always taken a sort of paternal interest in this
apparently “to-be-continued-indefinitely” series of photographs, for
it chanced that I was in the company of their central figure on the
occasion when he discovered this now famous pedestal, and it was due to
a suggestion of mine that he was enabled to turn his find to what he no
doubt considers a most felicitous use.
‘It was on one of the early days of an imperial hunting party--just
the ordinary affair of its kind, with no one in particular from the
outside on hand, and nothing especial in the way of sport offered--and
the Kaiser, not being in very good fettle, had bidden me remain in the
lodge with him to discuss some experiments I had been conducting on my
estates with some drought-resisting barleys and lucernes, the seed of
which had been sent to Germany by one of our “agricultural explorers”
in Central Asia. The Kaiser’s keenness for skimming the cream of the
world and bringing it home for the German people is only exceeded by
his vanity,’ the Baron added parenthetically.
‘Having heard all I had to report, my imperial host suggested a stroll
in the forest, and it was while pushing on from tree to tree to study
the efficacy of a new kind of chemically treated cement the foresters
had been using to arrest the progress of decay that we wandered out
upon the jutting crag shown in this picture. It was late in the
afternoon, and by both of the two converging roads, several hundred
metres of vista of each of which were commanded from our lofty eyrie,
men were drifting back toward the lodge from the hunt. The dramatic
possibilities of the unexpected vantage point--the manner in which one
was able to step from behind the drop-curtain of the forest undergrowth
to the front of the stage at the tip of the jutting crag--kindled the
fire of the Kaiser’s imagination instantly.
‘“What a place from which to review my hunting guests!” he exclaimed,
stepping forward and throwing out his chest in his best “reviewing”
manner. “Strange I have never noticed it from the road. It must be
because the light is so bad here. Yes, that is what the trouble is.
They cannot see us even as clearly as we can see them.” (He frowned
his palpable disappointment that all eyes from below were not centred
upon him where he stood in fine defiance in the middle of his new-found
stage.)
‘“If I may venture a suggestion, Your Majesty,” I said, “I think it is
the dense shadow from that big tree on the next point that makes it so
dark here. Do you not see that the sun is directly behind it at this
hour? The removal of that out-reaching limb on the right would give
this crag at least an hour of sunshine, but, as a practical forester, I
should warn you that doing so would destroy the ‘balance’ of the tree
so much that the next heavy storm would probably topple it over to the
left. It already inclines that way, and----”
‘“There are several hundred thousand more trees like that in the Black
Forest,” cut in the Kaiser, “but not one other look-out to compare with
this. My sincere thanks for the suggestion. I will have it carried out.”
‘And so,’ continued Baron Y----, ‘the obscuring limb was removed, and
the mutilated tree, as I knew it must, went down the following winter.
“My look-out now will have three hours of sunlight instead of one,” the
Kaiser observed gleefully when he told me about it; “I was glad to see
it go.”
‘It was a case of one monarch against another, and as the Kaiser is
resolved to brook no rival, especially where the question of his
“sunlight” is concerned, I suppose the sequel was inevitable. All the
same I am sorry that--that it was the monarch of the forest that had to
go down. But though the tree went down,’ he concluded with a grimace,
tossing the magazine into my lap, ‘the “Ajax” pictures still continue.’
‘Wouldn’t “His Place in the Sun” be even an apter title than “Ajax
Defying the Lightning”?’ I ventured.
‘Unquestionably,’ was the reply. ‘I had thought of that myself. But,
you see, even we Bavarians are very keen in the matter of the extension
of Germany’s “_übersee_” colonies, and it wouldn’t do to make light of
our own ambitions.’
I have set down this little story just as it was told to me, and it is
only since the outbreak of the war, when the mainsprings of German
motives are revealed at Armageddon, that it has occurred to me how
perfectly it resolves itself into allegory. To the world at large, but
to the Briton especially, is there no suggestion in what the Kaiser
_did_ to the tree, which for a hundred years or more had shadowed his
tardily stumbled-upon look-out, of what he _planned to do_ to the
Empire which he had so often intimated had crowded him out of his
‘place in the sun’? With the tree he hewed off a sun-obscuring limb,
and the unbalanced, mutilated remnant succumbed to the first storm that
assailed it. Was not this the procedure that he reckoned upon following
with the ‘obscuring limbs’ of the British Empire?
The foregoing instance of the extravagant vanity of the Kaiser Baron
Y---- told more in amusement than in censoriousness, but I recall
another little story to much the same point that he related with hard
eyes and the shade of a frown, as one man speaks of another who has not
quite ‘played the game’ in sport or business. It, also, had to do with
an imperial hunt.
‘As you doubtless know,’ he said, after telling me something of how
creditably the Kaiser shot, considering his infirmity, ‘a strenuous
endeavour is always made on these occasions that the best game be
driven up to the rifles of royalty, a custom which none of the
Hohenzollerns have ever had the sporting instinct to modify in favour
of even the most distinguished visitors. By some chance on the day in
question, a remarkably fine boar ran unscathed the gauntlet of the
imperial batteries and fell--an easy shot--to my own bullet. It was a
really magnificent trophy--the brute was as high at the shoulder as a
good-sized pony, and his tusks curved through fully ninety degrees more
than a complete circle--and it had occurred to me at once that it was
in order that I should at least _offer_ to make a present of the head
to my royal host. Frankly, however, I really wanted it very badly for
my own hall, and I can still recall hoping that the Kaiser would “touch
and remit, after the manner of kings,” as Kipling puts it.’
The Baron was silent for a few moments, staring hard in front of him
with the look of a man who ponders something that has rankled in
his mind for years. ‘Well,’ he resumed presently, ‘the Kaiser _did_
“touch” (in the sense the Yankees use the term, I mean), but he did
not “remit.” When we came to group for the inevitable after-the-hunt
photograph, I was dumbfounded to see a couple of the imperial huntsmen
drag up my prize, not in front of me, where immemorial custom decreed
it should go, but to the feet of the Kaiser. He even had the nerve to
have the photograph taken with his foot on its head. You have shot big
game yourself, and you will know, therefore, that this would convey to
any hunter exactly the same thing as his writing under the photograph,
“I shot this boar myself.”’
The Baron took a long breath before resuming. ‘I need not tell you how
surprised and angry I was, and I will not tell you what it took all
the self-control I had to keep from doing. What I _did_ do, I flatter
myself, would have been thoroughly efficacious in bringing home to any
other man in this world the consummate meanness of the thing he had
done. The moment the photograph was finished I stepped up to the Kaiser
and, controlling my voice as best I could, said: “Your Majesty, I beg
you will deign to accept as a humble token of my admiration of your
prowess as a hunter and your courtesy as a host the fine boar which my
poor rifle was fortunate to bring down to-day.”
‘I still think that my polite sarcasm would have cut through the armour
of any other man on earth. It was impossible to mistake my meaning,
and he must have known that every man there knew it was _my_ boar that
he had had his picture taken with and was still coolly keeping his
boot upon. Possibly he decided in his own mind, then and there, that
the time had come to extend the “Divine Right of the Hohenzollerns”
to the hunting field. At any rate, he bowed graciously, thanked me
warmly, and, pointing down to where I had stood in the picture, said he
presumed it was “that little fellow with the deformed tusk.”
‘My head was humming from the shock of the effrontery, but I still
have distinct recollection of the deliberate _sang-froid_ of the
Kaiser’s manner as he directed someone to “mark that little boar with
a twisted tusk, a gift from my good friend, Baron Y----, for mounting
as a trophy.” I was a potential regicide for the next week or two, but
my sense of humour pulled me up in the end. For, after all, what is
the use of taking seriously a man who, for the sake of tickling his
insatiate vanity by having his photograph taken with his foot on the
head of a bigger pig than those in front of his hunting guests, commits
an act that, were he anything less than an Emperor, would stamp him
with every one of them as an out-and-out bounder? The memory of the
thing makes me “see red” a bit even to-day if I let my mind dwell on
it at all, but mingling with my resentment and mortification there is
always a sort of sneaking admiration for the way the Kaiser (as the
Yankees say) “got away with the goods.” The Hohenzollern--the trait
is as evident in the Crown Prince as it is in his father--will always
go forward instead of backward when it comes to being confronted with
the consequences of either their bluffs or their breaks, and it is
about time that the people in Germany, as well as the people outside of
Germany, got this fact well in mind when dealing with them.’
These words were spoken before the Kaiser backed down when his Agadir
bluff was called, but, generally speaking, I think the action of both
father and son since then has been eloquent vindication of their truth.
Another noble German of my acquaintance who had at one time been on
terms of exceptional intimacy with the Kaiser was the wealthy and
distinguished Baron von K----, who, in the two decades previous to
the outbreak of the war, had divided his time about equally between
his ancestral castle on the Rhine and a great Northern California
ranch brought him by his wealthy American wife. I met him first at
a house-party in Honolulu about ten years ago, and at that time he
appeared to take considerable pride in his friendship with the Kaiser,
of whom he was wont to speak often and sympathetically. Since then I
have encountered him, now in America, now in Europe, on an average of
once a year, and on each succeeding occasion I noticed a decreasing
warmth on his part, not so much for Germany and the Germans, for whom
he still expressed great affection, but rather toward the Kaiser and
his policies. It must have been fully seven years ago that he told me,
at the Lotus Club in New York, that the mad race of armaments in which
Germany was setting the pace for the rest of Europe could only end in
one way--a great war in which his country would run a risk of losing
far more than it had any chance of winning.
It was not long after this that I heard that Baron von K---- had
returned hurriedly and unexpectedly from Germany to America, taking
with him his two sons who had been at school there. I never learned
exactly what the trouble was, but a friend of his told me that it
had some connection with an effort that had been made to induce the
youngsters to become German subjects and join the army, flattering
prospects in which were held out to them. Von K---- is said to have
declared that the boys should never be allowed to set foot in Germany
again. Whether this latter statement is true or not, it is a fact that
neither of the lads has ever since crossed the Atlantic, and that both
are now at Harvard.
In the spring of 1911 von K---- cut short what was to have been a
fortnight’s business trip to Germany to one of four days, the change
in plan, as I have since learned, being due to an ‘invitation’ (an
euphemism for a command) from the Kaiser to invest a huge sum of
money in one of his armament concerns, great extensions in which
were contemplated. Von K---- refused point-blank, rushed through his
business, and took the first boat for New York. I did not see him until
the following year, but friends told me that for a couple of months
after his return to California he absolutely refused to talk of Germany
or of German affairs even with his intimates.
This silence was dramatically broken in the smoking-room of the Union
League Club, San Francisco, on the evening when the news came that the
Kaiser had sent the gunboat ‘Panther’ to Agadir as a trump card for the
game he was playing for the control of Morocco. Von K---- was frowning
over his paper when an American friend came up, clapped him on the
shoulder, and exclaimed: ‘The Baron is in close touch with the Kaiser;
perhaps he can tell us what “The Mailed Fist” is punching at in North
Africa.’
What von K---- said regarding the allegation that he was in close touch
with the Kaiser was not stated in words that even the San Francisco
papers (whose ‘news vultures’ had pounced upon the incident within
an hour) felt able to report verbatim the following morning, but his
‘Mailed Fist’ _mot_ went from California to Maine in the next twelve
hours, and even to-day is still freely quoted whenever the question of
the War Lord’s mentality is the subject of discussion.
‘Mailed vist!’ snorted the Baron, whose English has never climbed
entirely out of his throat; ‘Vell, berhabst dey haas mailed his
vist, but, by Gott, dey haas neffer mailed his prain.’ Then, as an
afterthought, ‘Or maype, if dey haas mailed his prain, der bostmann
haas forgodt it to deliffer.’
I saw Baron von K---- in San Francisco--encountered him beaming
over the sculptures in the Italian Building at the Panama-Pacific
Exposition--but was unable to draw him into any discussion of Germany
and the war. He did, however, tell me that his German estates were
for sale, that he never expected to return there again, and that--the
day after Belgium was invaded--he had applied for his first papers of
American citizenship.
_THE TUTOR’S STORY._[1]
BY THE LATE CHARLES KINGSLEY,
REVISED AND COMPLETED BY HIS DAUGHTER, LUCAS MALET.
CHAPTER XXX.
That was the first of many days--for by both Braithwaite’s and Nellie’s
request I stayed on at Westrea until nearly the end of the vacation--of
sweet but very searching experience. If I played with fire it was
a purifying fire surely, burning away the baser metal and leaving
whatever of gold might be in me free of dross.
Not that I say this boastfully--who am I, indeed, to boast?--but humbly
and thankfully, knowing I passed through an ordeal from which--while
the animal man cowered and shrank, crying aloud, aye, and with tears
of agony, to be spared--the spiritual man drew strength and rose, in
God’s mercy, to greater fulness of life. For I learned very much, and
that at first hand, by personal experiment, not by hearsay merely or,
parrot-like, by rote. Learned the truth of the apostle’s dictum, that
although ‘all things are lawful,’ yet, for some of us, many things,
however good in themselves or good for others, are ‘not expedient.’
Learned, too, the value of the second best, learned to accept the lower
place. Learned to rejoice in friendship, since the greater joys of love
were denied me, schooling myself to play a brother’s part; play it
fearlessly and, as I trust, unselfishly, watchful that neither by word,
or deed, or even by look, I overstepped the limit I had set myself and
forfeited the trust and faith Nellie reposed in me.
To do this was no easy matter. At moments, I own, the springs of
courage and resolution ran perilously dry. Then I would go away by
myself for a time; and--why should I hesitate to tell it?--pray,
wrestle in prayer, for self-mastery which, with that wrestling, came.
For if we are honest with ourselves and with Him, disdaining self-pity
and self-excuse, Almighty God is very safe to fulfil His part of the
bargain. This, also, I learned, during those sweet and searching days
at Westrea, beyond all question of doubt.
I rode or drove with Braithwaite about the neighbouring country.
Walked with him over his farm. Talked with him endlessly of his
agricultural schemes and improvements. Talked with him about public
events, too, and about politics. Only once or twice was Hartover, or
Hover, mentioned; and then, I observed, his tone took on a certain
bitterness. He had been up to Yorkshire on business a little prior to
my visit, had happened to run across Warcop--aged and sad, so he told
me. But my old friend laid aside much of his customary caution, it
appeared, on hearing Braithwaite expected shortly to see me, and bade
him tell me things were not well at Hover.
‘What he actually knows, what he only suspects, I could not quite
discover,’ Braithwaite went on. ‘But I gathered the Countess has
been up to queer tricks. As to that business, now, of the Italian
rascal going off with the plate--you heard of it?--well, it looks
uncommonly as though my lady was in no haste to have him laid by the
heels--bamboozled the police, as she bamboozled pretty well every
unlucky wretch she comes across, until he had time to make good his
escape.’
‘And the Colonel?’ I asked.
‘A dark horse. Connived at the fellow’s escape, too, I am inclined to
think. Marsigli knew too much of the family goings-on, and, if he was
caught, was pretty sure to blab in revenge. I am not given to troubling
myself about the unsavoury doings of great folks, Brownlow. They had
a short way with aristocratic heads during the French Revolution at
the end of last century, and I am not altogether sure they weren’t
right. But for my poor Nellie’s sake, I should never give that Longmoor
faction a second thought. As it is I have been obliged to think about
them, and I believe the plain English of the whole affair is that the
Colonel and my lady have been on better terms than they should be for
many years past. What she wants is a second Lord Longmoor as husband,
and the money, and the property, and--a son of her own to inherit it.
An ugly accusation? Yes. But can you spell out the mystery any better
way than that?’
I did not know that I could, and told him so. There the conversation
dropped, while my mind went back to the letter Nellie had shown me.--It
was a devilish action of Fédore’s, I thought, the mark of a base, cruel
nature, capable--the last sin--of trampling on the fallen. And yet
might it not have been dictated by the pardonable desire to secure her
prize for herself, to prevent pursuit, inquiry, scandal, perhaps fresh
misery for Nellie? There are two sides, two explanations, of every
human act; and the charitable one is just as rational, often more so,
than the uncharitable. If she stated her case somewhat coarsely, was
she not low-bred, ill-taught, excited by success?
Thus did I argue with myself, trying to excuse the woman, lest I should
let anger get the upper hand of reason and judgment. But what was her
relation to Marsigli? This it was which really mattered, which was of
lasting moment. And about this I must be silent, be cool and prudent.
At present I could take no action. I must wait on events.
Meanwhile each day brought me a closer acquaintance with, and respect
for, Nellie’s character; the liveliness of her intelligence, and
justness of her taste. And to it, the intellectual side of her nature,
I made my appeal, trying to take her mind off personal matters and
interest her in literature and thought. On warm mornings, her household
duties finished, she would bring her needlework out to a sheltered
spot in the garden, where the high red-brick wall formed an angle with
the house front; and sitting there, the flowers, the brimming water,
the gently upward sloping grass-land and avenue of oaks before us, I
would read aloud to her from her favourite authors or introduce her to
books she had not yet read. On chill evenings we would sit beside the
wood fire in the hall, while Braithwaite was busy with the newspaper
or accounts, and read till the dying twilight obliged her to rise
and light the lamp. Much of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, along with
Pope’s rendering of the Iliad, Hazlitt’s Lectures and Lamb’s Essays,
we studied thus. Shelley, save for a few of the lyrics, we avoided
by tacit consent; and Byron likewise, with the exception of certain
portions of ‘Childe Harold’; the heroic rather than the sentimental
note seeming safest--though from different causes--to us both.
Often I would illustrate our reading by telling her about the authors,
the places, or the period with which it dealt, to see her hands drop in
her lap, her face grow bright, her manner animated, as she listened and
questioned me--argued a little too, if she differed from my opinion.
Sometimes she laughed with frank enjoyment at some merry tale or novel
idea. And then I was indeed rewarded--only too well rewarded. For her
laughter was exquisite to me, both in sound and in token of--were it
but momentary--lightness of heart.
After that first morning in the Orchard Close, we rarely mentioned the
dear boy. I felt nothing could be gained by leading the conversation in
his direction. If it would afford her relief, if she wanted to speak,
she knew by now, I felt, she could do so without embarrassment or fear
of misunderstanding on my part. But it was not until the afternoon of
the day preceding my return to Cambridge that we had any prolonged talk
on the subject.
Braithwaite, I remember, had driven over to Thetford upon business;
and, at Nellie’s request, I walked with her to the village, so that she
might show me the fine old monuments and brasses in the parish church.
Coming back across the fields, we lingered a little, watching the
loveliness of the early May sunset. For, looking westward, all the
land lay drenched in golden haze, which--obliterating the horizon
line--faded upward into a faint golden-green sky, across which long
webs were drawn of rose and grey. Out of the sunset a soft wind blew;
full, as it seemed, of memory and wistful invitation to--well--I know
not what. But either that wind or consciousness of our parting on the
morrow moved Nellie to open her heart to me more freely than ever
before.
‘Dear Mr. Brownlow,’ she said, her eyes still fixed on that loveliness
of sunset--‘I want to thank you now, while we are still alone, for all
you have done for me. You have, indeed, been a good physician, and I
want you to know how much better I am since you came--stronger, and
more at peace. I promise you I will do my utmost to keep the ground I
have gained, and not fall back into the unworthy state of mind out of
which you have brought me. I do not say I am cured.’
She looked up at me, smiling.
‘I do not think you would ask that of me. I have no wish to be--I
should, I think, be ashamed to be cured of--of my love. For it would
make what was most beautiful seem unreal and untrue. But I am resigned
to all--almost all--which has happened. I no longer kick against the
pricks, or ask to have things otherwise. I shall not let it make me
sour or envious--thanks to you.’
And as she spoke I read in her dear eyes a depth of innocent and
trustful affection, which was almost more than I could endure.
‘I have come to a better frame of mind,’ she said. ‘It will last. It
shall last, I promise you.’
‘Then all is well,’ I answered, haltingly.
But as I spoke her expression changed. She walked forward along the
field path, looking upon the ground.
‘Yes, all--I suppose--is well,’ she repeated. ‘All except one
thing--that hurts still.’
‘And what is that one thing?’
I thought I knew. If I was right, I had a remedy at hand--a desperate
one, perhaps, but she was firm enough to bear it now.
‘I always felt how little I had to offer, as against his position, his
gifts, and all the attractions of his life at Hover, and still more his
life in town. The wonder was he should ever have found me worth caring
for at all. But I thought his nature was deeper and more constant, and
it hurts--it must always hurt--that he should have forgotten so soon
and so entirely as she--his wife--says he has.’
‘There she lied. He has not forgotten,’ I answered. ‘Here are
Hartover’s own words.’
And I gave her the letter I received after my visit to Chelsea. Let her
learn the truth, the whole truth, as from his own lips--learn the best
and the worst of him, and so meet whatever the future might bring with
open eyes.
Some twenty yards ahead a stile and gate divided the field of spring
wheat we were crossing from the pasture beyond. I must leave Nellie to
herself. So I went on and stood, leaning my elbows on the top bar of
the gate.
Below, in the hollow, the red roofs and chimneys of Westrea and a glint
of water showed through the veil of golden haze. An abode of peace, of
those wholesome fruitful industries which link man to mother-earth and
all her ancient mysteries of the seasons, of seed-time and harvest,
rain and shine. How far away in purpose and sentiment from the gaudy
world of fashion, of artificial excitement, intrigue and acrimonious
rivalries, to which my poor boy, Hartover, now belonged! Yes, and
therefore, since here her lot was cast, it was well Nellie should know
the best and worst of him, his weakness and his fine instincts alike;
because--because--in the back of my mind was a conviction, irrational,
unfounded, very foolish perhaps, but at this moment absolute, that
the end was not yet. And that, in the end, by ways which I knew not,
once again Nellie would find Hartover, and Hartover would find Nellie,
and finding her would find rest to his soul, salvation to his wayward
nature, and thus escape the fate of Alcibiades, which I had always
so dreaded for him, and prove worthy of his high station, his great
possessions, his singular beauty, charm and talent, even yet.
For five minutes, nearly ten minutes, while the gold faded to grey, I
waited, and Nellie gave no sign. I began to grow nervous and question
the wisdom of my own action. To her, pure and high-minded as she was,
would this revelation of dissipation and hard-living prove too painful,
would she turn from it in anger and disgust? Had I betrayed my trust,
been disloyal to the dear boy in letting her see his confession? I
bowed my head upon my hands. Fool, fool, thus to rush in where angels
might truly fear to tread!
Then quick, light footsteps behind me--the rustle of a woman’s dress.
And as, fearful and humiliated, I, turning, looked up, Nellie’s eyes
like stars, her face pale but glorious in its exaltation and triumphant
tenderness.
‘Dear good physician,’ she said, ‘I am really cured at last--not of,
but by love. All that seemed spoilt and lost is given back. How can
I thank you enough? I can bear to be away from him, bear to give him
up, now that I know he really cared for me, really suffered in leaving
me. I can even forgive her, though she has been cruel and insolent,
because she went to him in his trouble and helped to save his life. And
I understand why he married her--it was chivalrous and generous on his
part. It places him higher in my estimation. I can admire him in that
too.’
I gazed at her, dazzled, enchanted, wondering. And then--shame, thrice
shame to me after all my struggles, resolutions, prayers--the devil of
envy raised its evil head, of bitterness against the rich man, who with
all his gold and precious stones, his flocks and herds, must yet steal
the poor man’s one jewel, one little ewe lamb.
‘Have you read all the letter--read that part in which he speaks of his
first months in London?’ I asked.
For an instant she looked at me without comprehension, her eyebrows
drawn together, in evident question and surprise. Then the tension
relaxed. Gently and sweetly she laughed.
‘Ah! yes,’ she said. ‘I know. He grew reckless--he did wrong.
But--but, dear Mr. Brownlow--is it wicked of me?--I cannot condemn him
for that--because it was his love for me which drove him to it. He
tells you so himself. I suppose I ought to be shocked--I will try to
be--presently--if you say I ought. But not just yet--please not just
yet.’
‘Neither now nor presently,’ I answered, conscience-stricken and
ashamed. ‘You know far better than I what is right. Follow your own
heart.’
I opened the gate, and stood back for her to pass. As she did so she
paused.
‘You are displeased with me,’ she said. ‘Yet why? Why did you let me
read his letter, except to comfort me and make me happy by showing me
he was not to blame?’
Why indeed? She well might ask. And how was I to answer without still
further betraying my trust--my trust to her, this time, since I had
sworn to be to her as a brother and let no hint of my own feelings
disturb the serenity of our intercourse?
So I replied, I am afraid clumsily enough--
‘You are mistaken. And to show you how little I am displeased I beg you
to keep this letter, in exchange for the one you gave me to keep. You
may like to read it through again, from time to time.’
I held it out. And for an instant she hesitated, her eyes fixed upon
the writing, upon the paper, as though these actual and material things
were precious in her sight. Then she put her hands behind her and shook
her head.
‘No--better not. It is not necessary,’ she said with a childlike
gravity. Her whole attitude just now was curiously simple and
childlike. ‘I have every word of it by heart already, dear Mr.
Brownlow. I shall remember every word--always.’
And for a while we walked on in silence, side by side, beneath the
dying sunset. Upon the hump-backed bridge spanning the stream Nellie
stopped.
‘One thing more, good physician,’ she said, very gently. ‘I am cut off
from him for--for ever by his marriage. But you can watch over him and
care for his welfare still. You will do so?’
‘Before God--yes,’ I answered.
‘And, sometimes, you will let me hear, you will come and tell me about
him?’
‘Again--yes--before God.’
And I smiled to myself, bowing my head. Oh! the magnificent and
relentless egoism of love!--But she should have this since she asked
it; this and more than this. Plans began to form in my mind, a
determination to make sure, whatever it might cost me, about this same
marriage of Hartover’s. I would devote myself to an inquiry, pursue it
carefully, prudently; but pursue it regardless of time, regardless of
money--such money as, by economy and hard work, I could command. For
was not such an inquiry part, and an integral one, of the pledge to
watch over Hartover and care for his welfare which I had so recently
and solemnly given her? Undoubtedly it was.
‘Thank you,’ she said. Then after a pause, ‘I wonder why you are so
kind to me? Sometimes I am almost afraid of your kindness, lest it
should make me selfish and conceited, make me think too highly of
myself. Indeed I will try better to deserve it. I will read. I will
improve my mind, so as to be more worthy of your society and teaching,
when you come again.--But, Mr. Brownlow, I have never kept anything
from my father until now. Is it deceitful of me not to tell him of
these two letters? They would anger and vex him; and he has been so
much happier and like his old self since you have been with us. I hate
to disturb him and open up the past.’
‘I think you are, at least, justified in waiting for a time before
telling him,’ I faltered.
For my poor head was spinning, and I had much ado to collect my wits.
She would read, improve herself, be more worthy of my teaching when
I came again, forsooth!--Ah! Nellie, Nellie, that I must listen with
unmoved pedagogic countenance, that I must give you impersonal and sage
advice, out of a broken heart!--
‘Yes, wait,’ I repeated. ‘Later your course of action may be made
clearer, and you may have an opportunity of speaking without causing
him annoyance or distress. You are not disobeying his orders, in any
case.’
‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘See, the lamps are lit. My father must be
home and we are late. Oh! how I wish you were not going away to-morrow.
He will miss you, we shall all miss you so badly.’
I did not sleep much that night.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The ancient postboy drove out to Westrea next morning, and conveyed me
and my impedimenta back to Cambridge.
The journey was a silent one, I being as little disposed for
conversation as he. My thoughts were not very cheerful. Yet what had
I, after all, to make a poor mouth about? I had asked to know my own
mind, and arrive at a definite decision concerning certain matters
closely affecting my future. Now I knew it very thoroughly; and, as
to those matters, had decided once and for all. It only remained for
me to acquaint my kind old friend, the Master, with that decision as
tactfully and delicately as might be. But how should I acquit myself?
And how would he take it? And how far should I be compelled to speak of
Hartover and Nellie, and of my own relation to both, to make my meaning
clear? For what a tangle it all was--a tangle almost humorous, though
almost tragic too, as such human tangles mostly are! Well, I supposed I
must stick to my old method of blunt truth-telling, leaving the event
to my Maker, who, having created that strange anomaly, the human heart,
must surely know how best to deal with its manifold needs and vagaries!
So far then, it was, after all, fairly plain sailing. But,
unfortunately, these thoughts were not the only thing which troubled me.
For I felt as well as thought; and feeling is more dangerous than
thought because at once more intimate and more intangible. A great
emptiness filled--for emptiness can fill, just as silence can shout,
and that hideously--not only my own soul but, as it seemed, all Nature
around me. The land was empty, the sky empty. An east-wind blight
spread abroad, taking all colour out of the landscape and warmth out
of the sunshine. Just so had my parting with Nellie cast a blight over
me, taking the colour and warmth out of my life. For I had been with
her long enough for her presence, the sound of her voice, and constant
sight of her to become a habit. How terribly I missed, and should
continue to miss, her--not only in great matters but in small, in all
the pleasant, trivial, friendly incidents of every day!
After the freshness and spotless cleanliness of Westrea, my college
rooms--fond though I was of them--looked dingy and uncared for, as
is too often the way of an exclusively masculine dwelling-place. The
men had not come up yet, which spared me the annoyance of Halidane’s
neighbourhood for the moment. Still I felt the depressing lack of
life and movement throughout the college buildings and quadrangles.
Cambridge was asleep--a dull and dismal sleep, as it struck me. The
Master, I found, was back and at the Lodge once more; but, since only
a portion of the house was ready for habitation, Mrs. Dynevor and her
daughters would remain at Bath for some weeks longer. This I was glad
to hear, as it promised to simplify my rather awkward task.
I called at the Lodge the same evening, to be received by the Master
with his usual cordiality. He invited me to stay and dine, admitting
he felt somewhat lonely without his ladies in the still partially
dismantled house.
‘Unlike the three children in the Babylonian furnace, the smell of fire
is very much upon it still,’ he said. ‘Signs and odours of destruction
meet me at every turn. I dare say in the end--for I have an excellent
architect--we shall make a more comfortable and certainly more sanitary
place of it than ever before; but the continuity is broken, much
history and many a tradition lost for good. I am only heartily glad you
are not among the latter, Brownlow. It was a very near thing.’
Whether this was intended to give me an opening for explanation, I
could not say. In any case I did not choose to take advantage of it,
preferring to explain at my own time and in my own way.
We talked on general subjects for a while. But at the end of dinner,
when the butler left the room, he said, eyeing me with a twinkle--
‘It was a pity you could not manage to meet us at Bath, Brownlow,
for you would have found some old friends there. One of whom, a very
splendid personage by the same token, made many gracious inquiries
after you--put me through the longer catechism in respect of you, and
put my sister and nieces through it also, I understand.’
‘Old friends?’ I asked, considerably puzzled both by his words and
manner.
‘You had not heard, then, any more than I, that Lord Longmoor has
settled permanently at Bath?’
I assured him I had not.
‘Yes--and under sad enough circumstances,’ he went on, with a change of
tone. ‘Poor gentleman, he and those about him have cried wolf for so
many years that I, for one, had grown sceptical regarding his ailments.
But what of constitution he ever possessed has been undermined by
coddling and dosing. I was admitted once or twice, and was, I own,
most painfully impressed by his appearance and by his state of
mind--religious mania, or something alarmingly akin to it, and that of
at once the most abject and arrogant sort.’
I was greatly shocked by this news, and said so.
‘What is being done?’ I asked.
‘Everything that common sense would forbid, in my opinion. He is
surrounded by an army of obsequious servants and rapacious medical and
religious quacks, all and each busy to secure their private advantage
while fooling him, poor soul, to the top of his bent. Our hopeful
convert and gownsman Halidane had joined the throng, so I heard, but
fled at my approach. Where the carcass is, there the vultures are
gathered together--a repulsive and odious sight, showing the case of
Dives may after all be hardly less miserable than that of Lazarus.’
The Master paused.
‘Lady Longmoor is there too; and heaven forgive me, Brownlow,’ he
added, ‘I could not but wonder what sentiments that remarkably fair
lady really entertains towards her lord. She confided in me in the most
charming manner; yet, honestly, I knew less what to think and believe,
knew less how the land really lay, after receiving those confidences
than before.’
In spite of myself I was amused. For could I not picture her
Magnificence and my good kind old Master in solemn conclave? Picture
the arts and graces let loose on him, the touching appeals, admissions,
protests; the disarming innocence of glance and gesture, along with
flashes of naughty laughter, beneath the black-fringed eyelids, in the
demurely downcast eyes.
‘Her ladyship’s communications are not always easy to interpret. They
are not always intended to enlighten--perhaps,’ I ventured.
‘Then you, too, have been honoured?’
‘I have.’
He chuckled.
But, in my case, amusement speedily gave place to sober reflection. For
if Lord Longmoor was in so critical a condition, dying possibly, what
an immense change in Hartover’s position this entailed! All my fears
for the dear boy reawakened. What means might not be taken to embroil
him with his father, at this critical moment, to injure and dispossess
him! Particularly did I dislike the fact that Halidane had been in
attendance. I questioned the Master anxiously.
‘Ah! there you have me, Brownlow,’ he replied. ‘Lord Hartover is a
point upon which my lady’s confidences proved peculiarly obscure. She
spoke of her “dear George” with a great show of affection, deploring
that the festivities in celebration of his coming of age next month
must be postponed. She had so counted on seeing both you and me at
Hover then, she declared. Deploring, also’--and he looked rather hard
at me, I thought, across the corner of the dinner table over the row of
decanters, as he spoke--‘deploring also an unfortunate disposition in
her stepson to become enamoured of young women very much beneath him
in the social scale. She gave me to understand both she and his father
had been caused much annoyance and trouble by more than one affair
of this sort. Yet I could not help fancying she sought information,
just then, rather than offered it. I had a notion--I may have been
mistaken--she was doing her best to pump me and find out whether I had
heard anything from you upon the subject of these amatory escapades.
Come, Brownlow--for my instruction, not for hers--can you fill in the
gaps?’
I hesitated. Had the right moment come for explanation? I believed
that it had. And so, as plainly and briefly as I could, I told him the
whole story. I kept back nothing--why should I? There was nothing to be
ashamed of, though somewhat to grieve over, and much to regret. I told
him of Nellie, of Fédore; of Hartover’s love, Hartover’s marriage. I
told him of my own love.
For a while he remained silent. Then, laying his hand on my shoulder,
as I sat, my elbows upon the table, my face buried in my hands--
‘My poor fellow, my poor fellow--I had no notion of all this,’ he said.
‘So this is the upshot of your two years at Hover. I sent you out to
make your fortune, and you found your fate. Well--well--things are as
they are; but I do not deny that recently I had formed very different
plans for you.’
‘Do not think me presumptuous, sir, if I answer I feared as much. And
that is my reason for telling you what I have told no other human
being--what, indeed, I had hoped to keep locked inviolably in my own
breast as long as I live.’
Something in my tone or in my narrative must have stirred him deeply,
for he rose and took a turn up and down the room, as though with
difficulty retaining his composure. For my part, I own, I felt broken,
carried out of myself. It had been searching work, dislocating work, to
lay bare my innermost heart thus. But only so, as I judged, could the
mention of Alice Dynevor’s name be avoided between us. It was better to
sacrifice myself, if by so doing I could at once spare her and arrive
at a clear understanding. Of this I was glad. I think the Master was
glad too; for, his rather agitated walk ended, he stood beside me and
spoke most kindly.
‘Your secret is perfectly safe with me, Brownlow, rest assured. I
give you my word I will never reveal it. You have behaved honourably
and high-mindedly throughout. Your conduct commands my respect and
admiration,--though I could wish some matters had turned out otherwise.
But now as to this marriage--real or supposed--of poor Hartover’s and
all the ugly plotting of which, I fear with you, he is the victim. I do
not think I can find it in my conscience to stand by, or encourage you
to stand by, with folded hands.’
‘That is exactly what I was coming to, sir,’ I said, choking down
alike my thanks and my emotion. ‘If, as you inform me, Lord Longmoor’s
health is so precarious, the poor dear boy’s future must not be left to
chance.’
‘No, no,’ he answered warmly. ‘His foes, I fear, are very literally
of his own household. If this woman is legally his wife, we, as his
friends, are called upon to stand by the marriage and, on grounds of
public policy, make the best of what, I admit, strikes me as a very bad
business. If she is not legally his wife, if there is any flaw in the
marriage, we must take means to establish the fact of that flaw and set
him free. Whether he is grateful to us for our self-imposed labours
affects our duty neither one way nor the other at this stage of the
proceedings. But, should she prove the unscrupulous person I take her
to be, he will very certainly thank us in the end. And now, Brownlow,
it occurs to me the sooner we move in all this the better. There is no
time to be lost.’
He gave me reasons for his opinion, in which I fully agreed; and we sat
talking far into the night, with the result that within a fortnight I
travelled, first to Yorkshire, and then up to town.
CHAPTER XXXII.
About my Yorkshire journey it is unnecessary to say much. I saw Hover
once more, stately as ever, but lifeless. The great house shut up, its
many treasures swathed in dust sheets and brown paper. When it would
be opened again none knew. Probably Colonel Esdaile would bring some
gentlemen down in August for grouse-shooting, or for covert-shooting in
October. He would hunt there during the winter.--The Colonel, always
and only the Colonel, as man in possession?
I said as much to Warcop--to whom my visit was made--sitting before
the empty stove in that queer sanctum of his, hung round with prints
and spoils of the stud-farm and the chase. Whereupon he stuck out his
bulldog under-jaw and mournfully shook his big grizzled head.
Yes, he answered, that was pretty well what it all came to. Would to
God it did not!--always and only Colonel Jack at Hover in these days.
And my lord lay a-dying, so they said, at Bath; and my young lord gave
no sign. And her ladyship flitted in, like some great bright-painted
butterfly, for a day and a night. Looked round the stables and gardens
with a laugh, hanging on the Colonel’s arm, and flitted off again, as
gay as you please, to London or Bath, or Old Nick knew where; while
Colonel Jack, with a face like thunder and a temper like tinder, cursed
the very guts out of anyone unlucky enough to cross his path for full
twenty-four hours afterwards. Colonel Esdaile was a changed man, as I
gathered; his swaggering manner and jovial good-humour a thing of the
past, save at rare intervals or when her ladyship happened to be about.
All of which was bad hearing. The more so as, without going all lengths
with Braithwaite in his condemnation of our hereditary nobility, I
believed then--and believe firmly still--that if a great nobleman,
or great landowner, is to justify his position--aye, and his very
existence--he must live on his estate, keep in close touch with, and
hold himself directly responsible for the welfare of, all ranks of its
population--labourers, artisans, rent-payers great and small, alike.
The middle-man, however just or able an administrator, introduces, and
must always introduce, a cold-blooded, mechanical relation as between
landlord and tenant, employer and employed. And, now listening to
Warcop’s lament, I trembled lest the curse of absenteeism--which during
recent years has worked such havoc of class hatred and disaffection in
Ireland--should set its evil mark upon this English country-side.
In this connection it was inevitable that memories of my former dreams
and ambitions for Hover should come back to me with a bitter sense
of failure and of regret. Dreams and ambitions of so educating and
training my dear pupil as to make him an ideal landowner, an ideal
nobleman, to whom no corner of his vast possessions, the lives lived
and work done there, would be a matter of indifference; but who would
accept and obey the divinely ordained law of rulership and ownership
which reminds us every privilege carries with it a corresponding
obligation, and that the highest duty of him who governs is to serve.
Where had all those fair dreams and ambitions departed now? Were they
for ever undone and dissipated? It seemed so, alas! Yet who could tell?
Had I not promised Nellie, and that in some sort against my dearest
interests, to watch over Hartover to the best of my power, and care
for him still? And if a poor faulty human creature, such as I, could
be faithful, how much more God, his Maker! Yes, I would set my hope,
both for him and for Hover, firmly there, black though things looked
at present. For Almighty God, loving him infinitely more than I--much
though I loved him--would surely find means for his redemption, and,
notwithstanding his many temptations, still make for him a way of
escape.
And with that I turned my mind resolutely to the practical inquiry
which had brought me north, questioning Warcop concerning the
disappearance of Marsigli and the theft, with which he stood charged,
of jewels and of plate.
Warcop’s first words in reply, I own, set my heart beating.
‘Best ask French Mamzelle, sir,’ he said, with a snarl. ‘For, as sure
as my name’s Jesse Warcop, she’d the main finger in that pie. Picked
out t’ fattest o’ the plums for herself, too, and fathered the job upon
Marsigli to rid herself of the fellow.’
‘To rid herself of him?’
‘’Od, an’ why not? So long as ye were here wi’ us, sir, what she’d
set her mind to have was out of her reach. But, you safe gone, she’d
na more stomach for my lord’s Italian butler, bless you--must fly at
higher game than that.’
‘Lord Hartover?’
‘And who else? Eh! but she’s a canny one; none of your hot-heads,
rushing into a thing afore they’ve fairly planned it. She’d her plan
pat enough. Laid her train or ever she struck a match; waited till she
kenned it was all over between t’ dear lad and Braithwaite’s lass. Had
Marsigli muzzled, seeing that to tell on her was to tell on himself.
And others, that should ha’ shown her up, durstn’t do it, lest she
opened her mouth and set scandal yelping after them. So she’d a
muzzle onto them too, and could afford to laugh t’ whole lot in the
face--upstairs as well as down--and follow her own fancy.’
He ruminated, chewing viciously at the straw he carried in his mouth.
‘And, as the talk goes, she’s followed it to a finish,’ he added, ‘and
fixed her devil she-kite’s claws in my young lord, poor dear lad, safe
enough. Is the talk true, sir?’
I answered, sadly, I feared it was so; but that, as some method might
still possibly be found of unfixing those same kite’s claws, I had come
in search of any information he could give.
‘Then you mean to put up a fight, sir?’ he said, his jaw hard and his
eyes bright. ‘For all your colleging and your black coat, you’re o’ the
same kidney as when ye rode t’ little brown horse across the fells and
saved t’ pack.’
And therewith he settled down to recount all he had puzzled out, all
he believed and thought. Inferential rather than circumstantial,
this, alas! for the most part; yet to me valuable, from the man’s
caution, honesty, power of close observation, shrewd intelligence and
mother-wit. In his opinion the theft had been carried out at Fédore’s
instigation, and upon her undertaking to join Marsigli as soon as
it was accomplished, and fly with him to his native city of Milan.
Having thus involved the Italian--whose long-standing passion for, and
jealousy of her, were matters of common knowledge among the servants,
Warcop said--she evidently played him false, although covering his
escape by putting the police on a wrong scent. Where was he now? In
England, Warcop opined, probably hiding in London, still hoping to
induce Fédore to redeem her promise. Were the two man and wife? Over
that Warcop shook his head. Who could say, save the two themselves?
Yet, if they were, there must needs be a record of the marriage, which
would have taken place during the period of my tutorship at Hover, at
some time when her ladyship was in Grosvenor Square.
Here, at last, I had a definite starting-point. For the church could be
found, the clergyman who performed the ceremony could be found, always
supposing any such ceremony had really taken place.
I returned to Cambridge to talk everything over with the Master; and
subsequently journeyed up to town, where, under seal of the strictest
secrecy, I placed matters in the hands of Inspector Lavender, of the
Detective Police. He must find the church, the clergyman--above all,
must find Marsigli.--This was a desperate game to play. I knew it.
Would the dear boy ever forgive me for interfering in his affairs thus?
I knew not. But I did know it had to be risked both for his fortune and
his honour’s sake. Further, was I not bound by my word solemnly given
to Nellie? Still more, then, had it to be done for my own oath’s sake.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
And now we were well on into the May term. The noble elms towers of
dense and solid green; lilac and laburnum giving place to roses in the
Fellows’ Garden; and the river, a little shrunken by the summer heat,
slipping past smooth lawns and beneath the weeping willows’ graceful
shade with truly academic deliberation and repose.
Never had I enjoyed my daily work so much, or met with so hearty and
intelligent a response. An excellent set of men were in college that
year; gentlemanlike, eager to learn, in some cases notably clever, in
almost all agreeable to deal with. My popularity--enhanced by that
episode of the fire at the Master’s Lodge--was great. Why should I
hesitate to say so, since thankfulness rather than vanity did, I can
honestly affirm, fill my heart? I had arranged to take a reading
party to North Wales during the long vacation, and to this I looked
forward as a new and interesting experience. Halidane, moreover, for
cause unknown, had ceased from troubling me. Ever since his return,
at the beginning of term, he had worn a somewhat hang-dog look; and,
though almost cringingly civil when we chanced to meet, appeared, as
I thought, to shun rather than seek my society. What had happened to
the fellow? Had the change in his demeanour any connection with the
Master’s visit to his ‘sainted patron,’ Lord Longmoor, at Bath? I did
not know, nor did I greatly care, so long as I continued to be relieved
of his officious and unsavoury attentions.
And so, taking things all round, it seemed to me, just now, the lines
had after all fallen to me in pleasant places. Temptation had been
resisted, difficulties overcome, honour--and my conscience--satisfied.
If much had been denied, yet much remained--sufficient, and more than
sufficient, to make life a gift, not only good but glad--though after,
perhaps, a somewhat serious pattern.
Then came an afternoon the events of which stand out very forcibly in
my memory. They marked a turning-point; a parting of the ways, abrupt
as it was unexpected.
For, neglecting alike the attractions of the glorious weather and of
‘the boats’--it was during the June races--I stayed in my rooms to look
through a set of mathematical papers. Some pleased me by their ability.
Others amused--or irritated--me by their blunders. Heavens, what thick
heads some of those youngsters had! After about an hour’s work, lulled
by the stillness and the sunny warmth--droning of bees in the clematis
below my window, chippering cries and glancing flight of swallows back
and forth to their nests under the parapet above--I laid aside the
papers, and, leaning back in my chair, sank into a brown study.
The morning’s post had brought me a brief communication from Lavender,
the detective. After weeks of silent pursuit he had reason to believe
he was on Marsigli’s track at last. My own sensations in face of this
announcement surprised me a little. By all rules of the game I should
of course have felt unalloyed gratification. But did I really feel
that? With a movement of shame, I was obliged to confess I did not.
For a certain moral indolence had overtaken me. I was established in a
routine from which I had no wish to break away. My college work, into
which I threw myself at first mainly as a refuge from haunting desires
and disturbing thoughts, had become an end in itself. It engrossed me.
I found it restful--in that, while making small demand on my emotions,
it gave scope for such talents, whether intellectual or practical, as
I possessed. I found it exhilarating to deal with these young men, in
the first flush of their mental powers, to--in some measure at all
events--form their minds, influence their conduct and their thought.
It was delightful, moreover, to have time and opportunity for private
study; to read books, and ever more books. The scholar’s life, the
life of the university, held me as never before. Hence this obtrusion
of Lavender, hunter of crime and of criminals, this obtrusion of
wretched Marsigli, the absconding Italian butler, were, to be honest,
displeasing rather than welcome. I cried off further demands upon my
energies in the direction of conflict and adventure. Leave the student
to his library, the teacher to his lecture-room, unvexed by the
passions and tumult of the world without.
In fastidious repulsion, in something, heaven forgive me, approaching
disgust, I turned away from both thief and thief-catcher, all they
were and all they stood for, as beneath my notice, common and unclean.
Almost angrily I prayed to be let alone, let be. Prayed no fresh
exertion might be required of me; but that I might pursue my course, as
a comfortable, well-read, well-fed Cambridge don, in security and peace.
And, mercifully, my lazy prayer was not heard, not answered; or, more
truly, was both heard and answered, though in a manner conspicuously
the reverse of my intention in offering it.
For, as I mused thus, the calm of the summer afternoon was disturbed
by a sudden loud knocking at my door. The door was flung open. On the
threshold a man stood. No learned brother fellow, no ordinary gownsman;
but, with his pride of bearing, his air of fashion, the finest young
fine gentleman I had ever seen--in long drab driving coat, smartly
outstanding from the waist, and white top hat with rakish up-curled
brim.
For an instant I gazed in stupid amazement. Then, as the door closed
behind him and he came from out the shadow, I sprang to my feet and ran
forward, with a cry. And, almost before I knew what was happening, his
two hands gripped my shoulders, and he backed me into the full light of
the window, holding me away from him at arms’ length and looking down
into my face. He was a good half head taller than I.
‘Dearest Brownlow--my dear old man, my dear old man,’ he repeated, and
his grip tightened while his voice was tender as a girl’s.
Then, while I stammered in my excitement and surprise, he gave a
naughty little laugh.
‘Oh! I am no ghost,’ he said. ‘You needn’t be afraid. I’m very solid
flesh and blood; worse luck for you, perhaps, old man. Gad, but it’s
good, though, to see you once again.’
He threw down his hat among the papers on the table, tossed his gloves
into it, and drew me on to the window-seat beside him.
Already the spell began to work, the spell of his extraordinary
personal charm. Already he captivated me, firing my somewhat sluggish
imagination. Already I asked nothing better than to devote myself to
him, spend myself for him, stamp out the evil and nourish the good in
him, at whatever loss or disadvantage to myself.
I inquired what had brought him to Cambridge.
‘I am in trouble, Brownlow,’ he answered simply, while his face
hardened. ‘It’s an ugly sort of trouble, which I have not the pluck
to meet single-handed. I cannot see my way through or out of it. I
tell you, it was beginning to make me feel rather desperate. And I
remembered your wisdom of old’--
He smiled at me, patting my knee.
‘So, as I do not want to take to drink--which last night seemed the
only alternative--I took the road this morning instead, and came to
look for you. Perhaps it is a rather presumptuous proceeding on my
part. I have no claim on you, for I have been neglectful and selfish.
I know that well enough--not by any means a model pupil, dear old man,
not any great credit to you. But you cared for me once.’
Cared for him? God was my witness that I did!
‘And, as I tell you, I have not courage to meet this trouble alone. It
raises a devil of suspicion and anger in me. I am afraid of being
unjust, of losing my head and doing some wild thing I shall regret for
the rest of my life. But we need not go into all this just yet, and
spoil our first half-hour together. It will keep.’
And he looked away, avoiding my eyes with a certain shyness, as
I fancied; glanced round the room, at its sober colouring, solid
furniture, ranges of bookshelves and many books; glanced through the
window at the fine trees, the bright garden, and quiet river glistening
in the still June sunlight.
‘Gad! but what a delightful place!’ he said. ‘I am glad to know where
you live, Brownlow, and I could find it in my heart to envy you, I
think. The wheels must run very smooth.’
I thought of Nellie, of my home-coming from Westrea. Verily, less
smooth than he imagined--sometimes.
‘Why, why did not they let me come here,’ he broke out--‘as I implored
them to, after the row about--about--at Hover, I mean, when you left
me? I would have given anything to come up to the university then,
and work, and have you with me still. Ah! how different everything
would be now! But my father refused to listen. The plan did not suit
some people’s book, I suppose; and they worked upon him, making him
hopelessly obstinate. Nothing would do, but into the Guards I must go.
I begged for if only a year with you here, at Cambridge, first. But
not a bit of it. Out they pitched me, neck and crop, into the London
whirlpool, to sink or swim as I could--sink for choice, I fancy, as far
as they were concerned.’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘It is to be hoped they are better satisfied at the result than I am,’
he added, with an oath. ‘But what is done is done--and, curse it,
there is no going back. As you make your bed--or as others make it for
you--so must you lie on it.’
Sad words from a boy of barely one-and-twenty, as I thought. Surely
punishment awaited those, somewhere and somewhen, who had taught him so
harsh a lesson, and taught it him so young.
Meanwhile, my first surprise and excitement over, I watched Hartover
carefully, fearing to see in him signs of past dissipation and excess.
But his beauty was as great as ever. His flesh firm, moreover, his eyes
and skin clear. He had matured rather than altered, grown considerably
taller and filled-out, though his figure remained gracefully alert
and slight. Two points only did I observe which I did not quite
like--namely an aspect of anxiety and care upon the brow, and little
bitter lines at the corners of the handsome mouth, giving a singular
arrogance to his expression when the face was in repose.
We talked for a while of indifferent matters, and he asked me to walk
with him to the Bull Hotel, where he had left the post-chaise in which
he drove down from town, and where he invited me to dine with him and
stay the night as his guest.
‘Give me what time you can, Brownlow,’ he said. ‘Leave all the
good boys, the white sheep of your numerous flock, to take care of
themselves for once; and look after the bad boy, the black sheep--the
scapegoat, rather. For, upon my soul, it amounts to that. The sins
of others are loaded on to my unhappy head, I promise you, with a
vengeance.’
I could not but be aware of curious and admiring glances, as I walked
up King’s Parade in his company. Reflected glory covered me, while he,
royally careless of the observation he excited, was quick to note the
grace of the different college buildings, the effects of light and
colour, to ask a hundred pertinent questions, make a hundred pertinent
remarks on all which caught his eye. What a delightful mind he had,
open both to poetic and humorous impressions; instinctively using the
right word, moreover, and striking out the happy phrase when it suited
him to lay aside his slang.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
We dined in a private room on the first floor, which overlooked
the street. Hartover proved a brilliant host. Once or twice, after
anecdotes a trifle too highly salted for my white tie and clerical
coat, he checked himself with a pretty air of penitence, expressing
a mischievous hope I ‘wasn’t shocked.’ Shocked I was not, being no
puritan; but somewhat grieved, I must admit, his wit should take so
gross a turn. Yet what wonder? The guard-room is hardly mealy-mouthed,
I supposed; neither, I could imagine, was French Mademoiselle--in
intimacy. To her, by the way, I observed, Hartover made so far no
smallest allusion.
But he spoke of Braithwaite, asking, with an indifference too studied
to carry conviction, if my friendship still continued with the father
and daughter, and--‘were they well?’ I answered both questions briefly
in the affirmative; and there, to my relief, the subject dropped.
Towards the end of dinner his high spirits, which, entertaining though
he had been, struck me all along as slightly forced, deserted him,
and he became silent and preoccupied. Were we approaching disclosure
of the trouble which, as he asserted, brought him here hot-foot, to
Cambridge and to me? How gladly would I have made the way of confession
easy for him! But I had sense to know I must be passive in the matter.
Whatever confidence he gave must be given spontaneously. To question
him, however circumspectly, would be to put him off by arousing his
sensitive pride.
As the waiter brought in coffee and lights, Hartover rose, swung out
onto the balcony, and, leaning his elbows on the high iron rail of
it, stood gazing down into the street. The June twilight lingered,
disputing the feeble glimmer of the street lamps. Roofs, gables,
pinnacles and towers showed velvet black against the sweet translucence
of an almost colourless sky. Footsteps, voices, a grind of wheels and
cloppet, cloppet, of horse-hoofs over the stones; the scream of swifts
in the buoyant rush of their evening flight, and the tang of a chapel
bell, a single reiterated note. Some five minutes must have elapsed
while these varied sounds reached me from without. Then Hartover raised
his head, calling imperatively over his shoulder----
‘Brownlow, Brownlow, where are you? I want you. Come here.’
Evidently he had reached some crisis of purpose or of feeling. I went
out into the warm evening air and stood beside him. His head was
lowered, and again he gazed down into the street.
‘I am sorry, I am ashamed, Brownlow,’ he said, an odd thickness in his
speech, ‘but I am afraid I have come here to-day and disturbed you on
false pretences. I am afraid I cannot bring myself to talk to you about
this matter after all.’
He paused as asking an answer.
‘Very well,’ I replied. ‘I, at all events, have gained by your coming,
in that I have had the joy of seeing you again. Leave the rest if you
think fit. You alone can know what you wish--know what appears to you
right under the circumstances. You must use your own judgment.’
‘Ah! there you have me,’ he returned sharply. ‘I don’t know what I
wish. I am uncertain what is right. I distrust my own judgment. In
short I’m cornered, Brownlow, miserably, detestably cornered. To speak
looks to me, at this moment, like an act of unpardonable treachery.
Yet, if I don’t speak, I may be rushed before many days are out, by
my own mad anger, into something even worse than treachery. Do you
understand?’
In a sense I did understand, by intuition born of affection and
sympathy. But, unless I was greatly mistaken in my reading of him, all
this was merely preliminary. If I waited, I should understand, or at
least hear, the whole. And that it would be well for him I should hear
the whole I had--God helping me--no shadow of doubt.
Slowly the twilight expired, while the blue of the night sky, opaque,
profound, travelled stealthily, almost imperceptibly, downward from
the zenith. The joyous scream of the swifts ceased, and the bell
tanged irregularly, nearing its finish. As it did so, a little group
of gownsmen, gathered upon the pavement immediately below, seized by
an irresponsible spirit of frolic--as most young animals are prone
to be at dusk--started laughing and skylarking, their black raiment
fluttering, batlike, as they skirmished across the greyness of the
street.
Whether the sudden outcry jarred his already strained nerves, or
whether the careless whole-hearted fun and laughter of these men, so
little younger than himself, offered too mordant a contrast to his
own troubled state, Hartover flung in from the balcony with an oath,
hesitated for an instant, then blew out the lights and threw himself
into an armchair.
‘No, I’m not strong enough to hold my tongue. Wretched weakling that I
am,’ he groaned, ‘I must blab. And concerning a woman too.’
He extended his hand, through the semi-darkness, motioning me to a
chair.
‘Sit there, please,’ he said. ‘My God, when it comes to the point how I
despise myself, Brownlow! It’s--it’s about her, about Fédore.’
‘Yes,’ I replied, as calmly as I could, for his tone moved me deeply.
And the subject, too! I trembled, penetrated alike by fear and hope of
what I should hear next.
‘For the last month or six weeks something’s been wrong--some mystery
on hand I cannot fathom. Somebody who has, or imagines they have, a
hold over her is pressing her for money, as far as I can make out.
I believe--oh! it is an abominable suspicion, but I cannot rid my
mind of it--this person visits the house when she is sure I shall be
away. I have no idea who, Brownlow; but someone belonging to her old
life, before I married her. Each time lately that I have been with
her she has insisted upon my telling her exactly when I intend to
come again. Nothing will pacify her but that I must fix a date and
hour. Her persistence has vexed me once or twice. We nearly quarrelled
over it. She says’--he choked a little--‘it is only that she may be
able to put on a pretty gown, prepare a nice little dinner, and have
everything smart and charming for me. But I don’t believe that is her
sole reason--perhaps I am just a jealous brute--but I can’t. I wish to
heaven I could!’
He waited, fighting down his emotion.
‘Yesterday matters came to a head. I went with’--he mentioned the names
of several young men, well known, not to say notorious, in fashionable
and sporting circles--‘to a race meeting at ----. I meant to stop the
week. But racing bores me after a little while, and the play was too
high at night. Positively I couldn’t afford it. So I cut my stay short,
went back to town, and to Chelsea. I can’t deny I had been living
rather hard, and I was cross with myself--I really have kept awfully
straight for the last six months, Brownlow--and a bit seedy and out of
sorts.’
Again he waited.
‘I let myself in at the garden door, and then at the house-door--as a
matter of course. I had no intention of jumping any surprise on her. I
was not thinking about my suspicions or any little tiff we had had. I
only wanted to get to her, Brownlow, because I knew she’d put me into
good conceit with myself--tease and pet and amuse me, you know--she can
be devilish amusing when she likes’----
His voice broke.
‘Yes,’ I said quietly, ‘yes’----
My heart bled for him; but I must be cautious and husband my resources.
The time to speak would surely come, but it was not yet.
‘I found the house empty,’ he went on presently, recovering himself,
‘windows bolted and doors locked. I called her, and looked for her
upstairs and down; but neither she nor the maid was at home. I was
disappointed, of course; but I would not let myself be angry. I had
told her I should be away till the end of the week, so she had a
perfect right to go out if she wanted to. Finally I went into the
drawing-room, meaning to wait there till she came in. But, somehow, I
received a new impression of the house. It struck me as grubby, fusty,
low-class. I wondered why I had never observed this before, or whether
it was merely the effect of my disappointment at her absence. There
were scraps of a torn-up letter on the carpet, for one thing, which
I greatly disliked. I began to pick them up, and casually--I did not
attempt to read it of course--I remarked the writing was in French.
Then I thought I would smoke, to pass the time until she came back. I
wanted something with which to cut off the end of my cigar, but found
I had brought no penknife, so I rummaged in her little worktable for
a pair of scissors. I could not find any in the top workbox part,
and tried to pull out the square silk-covered drawer arrangement
underneath, as I remembered often seeing her put her scissors away
in it with her work. But the beastly thing was locked or jammed.
Like a fool, I lost my temper over it, and dragged and poked till
the catch gave and the drawer flew open. And--and, Brownlow, inside
I saw a couple of white leather jewel-cases--oh! the whole thing was
so incredible, such a profanation--it made me sick--stamped with a
monogram and coronet. I recognised them at once. They belonged to my
mother--own mother I mean’--
His tone grew fierce.
‘Not her Magnificence. Her hands have never touched, and touching
defiled them, I am thankful to think.--These jewels would come to me,
in the ordinary course of events, with certain other possessions
of my mother’s, at my majority. Meanwhile they have always been
kept in the strong-room at Hover. And, Brownlow--this is the point
of the whole hateful business--they were among the valuables that
scoundrel, Marsigli--you remember him, my step-mother’s beloved
Italian butler?--made off with last year, and which by some to my mind
incomprehensible stupidity on the part of the police--I have often
talked it over with Fédore--have never yet been traced.’
‘Were the contents of the cases intact?’ I asked.
He hesitated.
‘No--’ he said at last, unwillingly, almost I thought
despairingly--‘and that makes it all the more intolerable. The cases
were empty; and from the position in which I found them it seemed to
me they had been thrown into the drawer just anyhow, by a person in a
frantic hurry--too great a hurry to make sure the drawer was actually
locked. For, if it had been properly locked, it would not have given
way so easily when I tried to force it. These signs of haste increased
my fears, Brownlow. For think,’ he cried with sudden passion, ‘only
think what it all points to, what it may all mean! How could these
precious things of my mother’s have found their way into the drawer
of Fédore’s worktable--unless? The conjunction of ideas would be
positively grotesque if--if it were not so damnable.--Does not it occur
to you what horrible possibilities are opened out?’
It did. I gauged those possibilities far more clearly than he, indeed,
remembering my conversation with Warcop in the stables at Hover but
a few weeks back. For was not Warcop’s theory in process of being
proven up to the hilt? But how could I speak of either theory or
proof to Hartover, distracted and tortured as he was? To do so would
be incomparably cruel. No, I must play a waiting game still. The
truth--or, to be exact, that which I firmly and increasingly believed
to be the truth--must reach him by degrees, lest he should be driven
into recklessness or violence. I would temporise, try to find excuses
even, so as to retard rather than hasten the shock of that most ugly
disclosure.
‘All which you tell me is very strange and perplexing,’ I said. ‘But do
not let us be hurried into rash and possibly unjust conclusions. There
may be some explanation which will put a very different complexion upon
affairs. Have you asked for any?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It was too soon to think of that. I could not meet her,
could not trust myself to see or speak to her then. My one impulse was
to get away, to get out of the house in which, as it seemed to me, I
had been so shamelessly betrayed and tricked. I was half mad with rage
and grief. For--ah! don’t you understand, Brownlow?--I do love her. Not
as I loved Nellie Braithwaite. That was unique--a love more of the soul
than the senses. Pure and clean as a wind of morning, blowing straight
out of paradise. The love of my youth, of--in a way--my virginity; such
as can never come twice in my or any man’s life.’
He stopped, a sob in his throat. But not for long. The floodgates were
open--all the proud, wayward, undisciplined, sensitive nature in revolt.
‘My love for Fédore is different--no morning wind from Eden about that.
How should there be? In the interval I had very effectually parted
company with all claims to the angelic state. But think--she nursed me,
dragged me back from the very mouth of hell; protected me from those
who sought to ruin me; gave herself to me; made a home for me, too, of
a sort--oh! that poor, poor, hateful little Chelsea house!--coaxed me,
flirted with me, kept me from gambling and from drink. How could I do
otherwise than marry her, and love her, out of the merest decency of
ordinary gratitude? I owe her so much---- And now’----
Here Hartover gave way completely. I felt rather than saw him--there
was no light in the room save that thrown upward from the lamps in the
street--fling himself sideways in the chair, crushing his face down
upon the arm of it in a paroxysm of weeping.
Only a woman should look on a man’s tears, since the motherhood
resident in every woman--whether potential or as an accomplished
act--has power to staunch those tears without humiliation and offence.
To his fellow-man the sight is disabling; painful or unseemly according
to individual quality, but, in either case, excluding all possibility
of approach.
I rose, went over to the window, and waited there. The boy should
have his cry out, unhindered by my neighbourhood, since I knew he was
beyond my clumsy male capacity of consolation. Later, when he came to
himself, he would understand I had withdrawn not through callousness,
but through reverence. Meanwhile, what a position and what a prospect!
My heart sank. How, in heaven’s name, could he be drawn up out of this
pit he had digged for himself? And he loved Nellie still. And, whatever
his faults, whatever his weaknesses--vices even--his beauty and charm
remained, beguiling, compelling, as ever. What woman could resist him?
The thought gave me a pang. I put it from me sternly. Self, and again
self--would self never die? Even in this hour of my dear boy’s agony,
as he lay sobbing his hot young heart out within half a dozen paces of
me, must I think of myself and of my private sorrow?
I looked up into the vast serenity of the star-gemmed sky above the
black irregular outline of the buildings opposite, and renewed my vow
to Nellie--remembering no greater love hath any man than this, that he
lay down his life--life of the body, or far dearer life of emotions,
the affections--for his friend.
And presently, as I still mused, I became aware of a movement in the
room and of Hartover close beside me, his right arm cast about my neck.
‘Dear old man, dear old man,’ he said hoarsely, yet very gently,
‘forgive me. I have felt for these past twenty-four hours as though the
last foothold had gone, the last foothold between me and perdition.
But it isn’t so--you are left. Stay by me, Brownlow. See me through.
Before God, I want to do right. Your worthless pupil wants for once to
be a credit to you. But I cannot stand alone. I am afraid of myself.
I distrust my own nature. If I go to her--to Fédore--with those empty
jewel boxes of my mother’s in my hand and she lies to me, I shall want
to kill her. And if she tells we what I can’t but believe is the truth,
I shall want to blow my own brains out. For she has been very much to
me. She is my wife--and what can the future hold for either of us but
estrangement, misery and disgrace?’
He waited, steadied his voice, and then--
‘I know it is no small thing I ask of you; but will you come back to
town with me to-morrow? And will you see her first, and so give me time
to get myself in hand and decide what is to be done, before she and I
meet? Will you stand between me and the devils of revenge and despair
who tempt me? Will you do this because--barring you, Brownlow--I have
nothing, no one, left?’
Needless to set down here what I answered. He should have his way. How,
in God’s name, could I refuse him?
Then, as on that first night of my arrival at Hover long ago, I got him
away to bed. Sat by him till he slept--at first restlessly, feverishly,
murmuring to himself; and once--it cut me to the quick--calling Fédore
by name, as one who calls for help in limitless distress.
The brief summer night was over and the dawn breaking before I felt
free to leave him, seek my room, and take some much-needed rest.
(_To be continued._)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Copyright by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. in the United
States of America.
_LEST WE FORGET._
_A WORD ON WAR MEMORIALS._
An old friend of mine, who was a boy at Rugby under the kindly,
orthodox and dignified Dr. Goulburn, told me that on his first evening
at that great school, a bewildered and timid little creature, after he
had been much catechised and derided by a lot of cheerful youngsters,
and with a terrible perspective before him of endless interviews with
countless strange and not necessarily amiable mortals, a loud bell
rang, and all trooped down to prayers. He sat on a bench in a big bare
hall with a timbered roof, a door opened and a grave butler appeared,
carrying two wax candles in silver candlesticks, followed by the
Headmaster in silk gown and bands, in unimaginable state. The candles
were set down on a table. The Headmaster opened a great Bible, and in
a sonorous voice read the twelfth chapter of the Book of Joshua, a
gloomy enough record, which begins, ‘Now these are the kings of the
land, which the Children of Israel smote,’ and ends up with a sinister
catalogue, ‘The king of Jericho, one; the king of Ai, one’--and so on
for many verses, finishing up with ‘The king of the nations of Gilgal,
one; the king of Tirzah, one; all the kings, thirty and one.’ After
which pious and edifying exercise, the book was closed, and prayer
offered.
My old friend was an impressionable boy, and it seemed to him, he
said, that there was a fearful and ominous significance in this list
of slaughtered monarchs, depicting and emphasizing the darker side of
life. But I have often thought that a few words from the Headmaster, on
the vanity of human greatness and the triumph of the divine purpose,
might have turned these lean and bitter memorials of the dead into an
unforgettable parable. What, for instance, could be more profoundly
moving in the scene of the ‘Passing of Arthur,’ where the knight steps
slowly in the moonlight from the ruined shrine and the place of tombs:
‘Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights--and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam’?
That seems to lend the last touch of mystery and greatness to a scene
of human endeavour, that the earth beneath the living feet should cover
the bones, the hardy and heroic limbs of those who had lived and fought
worthily. As the dying king, with the poignant accent of passion cries
aloud:
‘“Such a sleep
They sleep--the men I loved!”’
For nothing surely in the world can be so utterly and simply moving as
the record of dead greatness--unless perhaps it be the oblivion which
is the end of all greatness at the last. There is a place on the bleak
top of the South Downs, a great tumulus, with an earth-work round it,
all grassy now and tufted with gorse, the sheep grazing over it, which
looks for miles north and east and west over the fertile weald, with
shadowy hills on the horizon; and to the south, where the great ridges
fold together, you can catch through the haze a golden glint of the
sea. I never pass the place without a deep and strange thrill. It is
called the Mound of the Seven Kings; it looks over a grassy space which
is known as ‘Terrible Down,’ and of what day and what doom it is the
record, who shall say?
It seems impossible to us now, just as it seemed to the old hill-men
who raised that tumulus, that as the world welters and widens onward,
the great tragedies and losses and sacrifices which we have seen with
our eyes, and the thought of which has so possessed our souls with a
sense of grief and glory combined, should become but a tale that is
told. But it is one of the thoughts which lie deepest and noblest in
the mind and soul of man, the thought of old and infinite strife and
endeavour, pain and death, courage and hope so richly blended, till
it seems too great for the heart to hold. The mystery of it is that,
as the Psalmist says: ‘I see that all things come to an end; but Thy
commandment is exceeding broad.’ The thought, if I can define it, leaps
like fire from crumbling ashes--all this great pageant of energy and
heroism and fame fading farther and farther into the past--and yet,
in spite of the hush of the tolling bell and the solemn music, the
certainty that it is all worth doing and enduring, that we must wrest
the great values out of life and make of it a noble thing; and that
while memory fades and honour seems to perish, yet the seed once sown,
it springs up again and again in life and beyond death, beyond all
possibility of extinction.
One of the things for which, in a great time like the present--great
for all its sadness, and perhaps because of its sadness--one of the
things for which I thank God is that this war has revealed as nothing
else could have done the latent heroism of our nation. If only it could
make us poets and cure us of being prophets! I have often been ashamed
to the bottom of my heart of the cries of panic-mongers and crabbed
pessimists shrieking in our ears that we were a nation sunk in sloth
and luxury and indifference. I have lived all my life among the young,
and if ever there was a thing of which I was certain, it was that our
youth was brave and modest and manly--as this long and bitter fight has
daily and hourly proved.
And we have a task before us--to see that the memory of those who
have fought for us and died for us should be as stably and as durably
commemorated as possible. It is not that I think of a memorial as being
in any sense a reward for the honoured dead. If there is one thing
which our heart tells us, it is that they have a nobler reward than
that. A new life, doubtless, a passing from strength to strength. But
as Shelley so immortally said, ‘Fame is love disguised,’ and we owe it
to our love and gratitude not only to remember, but to commemorate.
I defy anyone, however simple and stolid, to set foot in our great
Abbey, and not be thrilled with the thought, ‘After all, humanity is a
splendid thing, so full of devotion and greatness as it is!’ Statesmen,
monarchs, writers, artists, men of science, men of learning, there they
sleep; there is a generous glow in many young hearts, which may thus be
kindled. The poet of boyhood makes the boy, just disengaging himself
from the beloved school and stepping into the world, say to himself:
‘Much lost I: something stayed behind,
A snatch maybe of ancient song,
Some breathings of a deathless mind;
Some love of truth; some hate of wrong.
And to myself in games I said,
“What mean the books? Can I win fame?
I would be like the faithful dead,
A fearless man and pure of blame.”’
This, then, is our present task--to see that our dead are worthily
commemorated for our own sakes and for the sake of those who come
after. How shall we do it?
In the first place, we must not do it idly and carelessly--we must take
thought, have a plan and a purpose, not be in too great a hurry. Hurry
is the worst foe of memorials. We have a national habit--I think it is
rather a sign of greatness--not to do anything until we are obliged;
but the result of that often is a loss of grace and fineness; because
people who must act, and are a little ashamed of not having acted,
accept any solution.
What I hope we shall do is to take careful thought where our memorials
shall be set, so that they may be most constantly and plainly seen;
and then how they may best fulfil their purpose, which is to remind
us first, and next to kindle emotion and imagination. We have an ugly
habit of combining, if we can, local utility with a memorial, as in
the well-known story of the benevolent clergyman who read out the
announcement of the death of a great statesman and added, ‘That is
just what we wanted! We have long needed a new water supply!’ That is
like using a grandfather’s sword to trim a privet-hedge with! I do not
believe in fitting things in. If we commemorate, let us commemorate by
a memorial which arrests and attracts the eye, is long and gratefully
remembered, and by an inscription which touches the heart, and does not
merely merge a man among the possessors of all human gifts and virtues.
I remember a Georgian monument in a cathedral, where a lean man in a
toga peeped anxiously out of an arbour of fluted columns, and of whom
it was announced that in him ‘every talent which adorns the human
spirit was united with every virtue which sustains it.’ How different
is the little tablet in a church I know on which a former choir-boy
is commemorated! He had joined the army, and had won a Victoria Cross
in the Boer War which he did not live to receive. The facts were most
briefly told; and below were the words, which I can hardly read without
tears:
‘Thou hast put a new song in my mouth.’
What we want, then, are beauty, dignity, simplicity, and force. We want
what appeals directly to the eye, and then darts a strong emotion into
the heart, an emotion in which gratitude and hope are blended.
I must not here attempt to unfold a wide technical scheme; indeed I
could not if I would; but I may perhaps outline a few principles.
First comes the difficulty that places like to manage their own
affairs; and that the men who administer local interests, however
devotedly and industriously, do not acquire their influence by artistic
tastes. The next difficulty is that our artistic instinct in England is
not widely diffused. When Walter Pater’s attention was called to some
expensive tribute, and he became aware that an expression of admiration
was required, he used to say in his soft voice, ‘Very costly, no
doubt,’ and this was always accepted as an appropriate compliment, he
said. A third difficulty is the deep-seated mistrust in England of the
expert--it is all part of our independence--but the expert is often
regarded simply as a man who lets you in for heavier expense than you
had intended.
It would be well if some central advisory board could be established--a
central authority can hardly be expected, and indeed would not even be
desirable. The nature of memorials should be carefully scrutinised. We
are always weak in allegorical representation, and perhaps for that
very reason have a great fondness for it. Our civic heraldry, for
instance, is woefully weak, not by excess of symbolism, so much as by a
desperate inclusiveness of all local tradition, till the shield becomes
a landscape in which a company of travellers have hung their private
property on every bush.
Thus with our taste for representing and explaining and accounting
and cataloguing, our memorials become architectural first, with every
cornice loaded with precarious figures, like the painting described by
Dickens of six angels carrying a stout gentleman to heaven in festoons
with some difficulty. Our inscriptions become biographies. Again,
the surrounding scene is little regarded. A statesman in a bronze
frock-coat and trousers reading aloud a bronze manuscript behind the
railings of a city square, embowered in acacias, has no power over the
mind except the power of a ludicrous sense of embarrassment. A statue,
majestic enough in a pillared alcove, is only uncomfortable in a storm
of wind and rain.
We ought, I believe, to fight shy of elaborate _designs_, because
the pantomime of allegory at once begins. What we rather need is
simplicity of statement, with perhaps a touch of emblem, no more, of
characteristic material, of perfect gravity, so that the gazer can see
at once that the matter recorded is great and significant, and desires
to know more. It is said that an inscription was once to be seen in
India, marking one of the farthest points of the advance of Alexander
the Great. It was a slab with the words:
ΕΝΤΑΥΘΑ · ΕϹΤΗΝ
‘Here I stood’--upon it. What could be more impressive, what more
calculated to sow a seed of wonder in an imaginative mind?
These memorials should, I believe, evoke the spirit of the artist, as
a craftsman, rather than as a designer. Alike in inscriptions and in
representations, the wholesome and humble appeal must be direct and
personal, avoiding rhetoric and over-emphasis, as well as elaborate
conventions which other hands will dully and mechanically reproduce.
If, as in cast metal-work, reproduction is natural and inevitable, let
the designs be perfectly simple and sincere; if again it be painter,
sculptor, carver, or builder that is called upon to create a memorial,
let the responsibility and originality of the craft be his, and not
be superseded or overruled by the authority of the design--for this
indeed is, as Professor Prior said wittily to me the other day, as
though a surgeon should provide a specification and an estimate for an
operation, and leave the execution of it to other hands.
But we must not suppose that we can insist upon any particular form
of memorial in any particular place. What we may desire is that the
memorial, whatever it is, of this great and heroic trial through which
we are passing, should grow up out of the minds of the inhabitants of a
city or a town, and should be made by the hands of inhabitants as well.
I do not desire that they should be too costly. Indeed it may well be
that we shall have given so much of our resources to the prosecution of
the war that we shall have but little left for adorning our trophies.
I do not desire that they should be constructed to serve other uses,
at least not primarily. They are to tell their own story, a story of
noble deeds, and provide alike a dedication of our dead to honour, and
a dedication of ourselves to gratitude and future effort.
I hope too most earnestly that we shall not accumulate resources on one
national monument, to astonish tourists and to feed our vanity; but
that as many places as possible should have a record of a great fact
which has penetrated our national life more deeply than any historical
event in the whole of our annals.
Forethought, then, simplicity, naturalness, eloquence of emotion rather
than of word, native feeling, these will, I hope, be the notes of our
memorials. Let us try for once to express ourselves, not to cover up
truth with turgid verdicts, but to say what we mean and what we feel as
simply and emphatically as we can.
We are not likely to forget the war; but what we may forget is that
the result of it is the outcome of modest, faithful, loyal services
done with no flourish or vanity, by thousands of very simple,
straightforward people, who did not argue themselves into indignation,
or reflect much about what they were doing, but came forward, leaving
comfort and home and work and love, without any balancing of motives,
but just because they felt that they must take their place in the
battle of liberty and right with intolerable pride and aggression.
That is the plain truth; and that is the best and only proof of the
greatness of a nation that it should prefer death, if need be, to all
the pleasant business of life. If this or any of this can be recorded,
if this national impulse can be kept alive in our children, we need
not fear either life with all its complications, or death with all its
mysteries. The nation will live; and the memorials of these dark and
great days will stand to witness to our far-off sons and daughters that
their old forefathers did not live to no purpose and did not die in
vain.
_A GERMAN BUSINESS MIND._
BY SIR JOHN WOLFE BARRY, K.C.B.
Now that we are entering on the third year of the war so shamelessly
brought about by Germany, the accompanying correspondence,
commencing in August 1914, may interest your readers. It indicates
the extreme rancour against our country of a leading and capable
German manufacturer, not merely evoked by our declaration of war,
but pre-existing for a long time and very carefully concealed from
his English friends. It was to me in 1914 a curious lifting of the
curtain, and indicates for our present guidance what will remain to
be encountered by us in the economic struggle against the mercantile
interests of Germany when the war ends.
The manufacturer’s letter is also interesting as showing clearly the
anticipations held in Germany, when she declared war, of a speedy and
highly successful result of the wicked and stealthy attack on her
neighbours for which she had been so long preparing. It is astonishing
moreover in the extraordinary ignorance displayed, on the part of a
clever leader of German enterprise, as to the Constitution, resources,
and temper of the British Empire, and it gives full vent to his hatred
and contempt of France, Russia, and Japan.
This letter, printed second in the series, was addressed to an intimate
friend of mine who was closely connected with engineering interests in
Germany, and who had known the writer well for some years, having had
important interests with him in business. My friend sent me the letter
for my perusal, but did not disclose the name of the writer.
The third letter is an attempted reply on my part to the statements and
misstatements of the German manufacturer, and requires no comment from
me. My friend sent a copy of my letter to his German correspondent, but
it evoked no reply.
Copies of both these letters were forwarded, anonymously, by my friend
to a well-known English engineer long resident in Germany, who occupied
a leading and acknowledged position in that country. He had been for
many years closely in touch with very many members of his profession
there, and was connected with numerous commercial interests.
As will be seen, he promptly identified the German manufacturer,
and his note on the correspondence is placed first in the series in
order to make clear the character and position of the writer of the
amazing letter No. 2. He expresses the astonishment which he felt at
its contents, remarking that the sentiments expressed in it had been
carefully concealed in his interviews with him both before and after
the outbreak of the war. The correspondence appears to me to give
much food for thought in many various ways, and I may, with these few
explanatory comments, let the letters speak for themselves.
Letter No. 1.
Extract from a letter received by Mr. A. B. of London from Mr. C. D., a
gentleman long resident in Germany and unusually well acquainted with
German commercial life:
Received February 1915.
‘I now see from whom the letter came. He is a friend of
mine. I have had a good deal to do with him lately, also
after the outbreak of war. Curiously, although knowing
me to be an Englishman, he has never in the slightest
manner expressed himself in a like sense to me. He has
evidently written to you in a great state of excitement.
Nevertheless I cannot understand his doing so nor his
harbouring the thoughts expressed in his letter. He is a
clever and clear-headed man and much respected. His conduct
in the labour question is looked upon as exemplary. He has
proceeded by quiet well-considered but energetic measures
to get his working staff entirely free from labour and
social-democratic influences. His workmen are all content
with their conditions, and his works therefore free from
labour troubles when these break out in other works. I
am told that all works at ---- have profited by his wise
measures. I therefore can all the less understand his
writing you such an incredible letter. How can men of his
position be so blinded to the true facts?
‘The reply you sent[2] me sets this forth very clearly. I
entirely concur in the contents and the opinions expressed
in the same.’
Letter No. 2.
A letter written on August 29, 1914, to Mr. A. B. of London by a German
business friend, and sent by Mr. A. B., in September 1914, to Sir John
Wolfe Barry for his perusal:
‘The poisonous seed sown by your good King Edward VII. has
sprung up. It is a well-known fact that the great aim of
his life, to which he devoted all his energy, was to unite
the whole world in one bond against Germany, to annihilate
that hated nation.
‘His disciple Minister Grey has seized the opportunity of
tightening the noose with which Germany is to be strangled.
For ten years English diplomacy has worked for that end,
to close up the ring round us. Now the die is irrevocably
cast and Destiny goes its way. No one can say positively
what the outcome will be, but one thing I do believe, and
sixty-seven million Germans believe it with me, and that is
that we shall be victorious.
‘We shall win because we are fighting for the right, for
our national existence, for civilization. Without England’s
intervention this war would have been inconceivable. In
France, whom we sincerely pity, and whom this war will
crush, one hears a united cry that she is ready for peace.
In Russia it was only the aristocratic party that has
forced on the war, and they will seize this opportunity to
steal. That party of course owns the anti-German press,
such as the _Nowoje Wremja_ and other papers, which are
financed by England. England alone was thirsting for war,
and has pressed the other nations into war against us.
For years she has seen how we have excelled her more and
more in the industrial world. If people were but honest,
they would know that the reason for our success lies in
the fact that we are an industrious and hardworking folk.
In England, on the other hand, there exists a widespread
tendency to avoid work. We have no public holidays. Our
working week averages fifty-eight hours. We Directors have
no “week-ends,” we work in the factory on an average from
fifty to sixty hours a week, and as a rule spend one or two
nights and sometimes even all Sunday in the train in order
to get work for our business. Moreover we understand how
to adapt ourselves to all possible circumstances, while
your people in their well-known arrogance, do not concern
themselves with the requirements of other countries.
‘Because we have attained great prosperity by ability and
hard work, the hatred and jealousy you bear us Germans has
grown beyond all bounds. This embarrassing competition
must be crushed so that you can go on in your comfortable
decadent existence.
‘In order that a people, who appear particularly Christian,
may attain this worthy goal, the barbarian hordes of the
Slavs are mobilised against the champions of civilization,
to whom the world owes so much. The natives in Africa are
incited against us, and we are even betrayed in Japan. This
last act has raised a storm of indignation in our country
which would alarm you, had you any idea of it. England will
certainly make terrible amends for this underhand deed.
The hatred which is raging among Germany’s sixty-seven
millions will avenge itself on England in a most fearful
way. For a hundred years the fist of every German will be
clenched whenever the word “England” is spoken.
‘I have had many experiences in my time, but never have
I known anything like the satisfaction which prevailed
throughout our country yesterday, when it first became
known that your army of mercenaries had been under the
fire of our noble reserves, and that we were in a position
to shoot down the people who draw the sword for money.
Your soldiers who oppose us in the field will yet learn
something of the loathing which our army has for anything
that is English. Our sailors look forward eagerly to the
time when your fleet, of which you talk so much, appears
in German waters. You may be quite sure that a large part
of it will never again see the shores of England, even
if we lose the whole of our navy. It is to be hoped that
your fleet will at last summon up courage to attack us. If
they come under the guns of Heligoland and Kuxhaven, your
battleships will share the same fate as befell the forts at
Liège and Namur.
‘In this war, which is the most shameful crime that has
ever been committed against humanity, and which lies
entirely at the door of English statesmen, we shall be
triumphant. England will be shaken to her foundations.
Mankind could not but lose its belief in right and
justice, and more particularly in the Divine guidance of
the universe, if a country, who in the most shameless way
professes Christianity and yet allies herself with Asiatics
and barbarians, were to be victorious.
‘Your newspapers, of which we still regularly receive
copies, may overwhelm English readers with falsehoods
about our army and its successes. Truth is going forward,
and before fourteen days have passed our forces will be
investing Paris. Belgium, whom you incited to oppose us,
is cursing you. France, whom you likewise forced into war
against us, will in future show perfidious Albion the door.
‘It is very sad that a country like England which has won
for herself so much merit in the progress of mankind,
and has produced so many able men, should abandon moral
principles proved through the centuries and hand herself
over to a band of unscrupulous men like Minister Grey.
When one considers all the misery which this war, which is
the most terrible the world has yet seen, has caused, it
makes one shudder to imagine what sort of conscience the
Councillors of the Czar, your Minister Grey and Minister
Churchill must have.
‘Your great philosopher Carlyle has foreseen and indeed
prophesied the moral decadence which always precedes
political downfall. England has become the champion of
a band of murderers who eleven years ago assassinated
their King and his consort and have now killed a foreign
prince. This nation who wishes to be so great conspires
with the most barbaric race which the world has ever seen,
the Russians, and is the brother-in-arms of the most
treacherous, most contemptible, most ungrateful people that
the earth holds, the Japanese.
‘I am sure America will endorse the general scorn and wrath
towards your country. Australia will not be very grateful
to England who wishes to make the position of the Japanese
more assured. I will go so far as to maintain that the
British world-empire will split off in all directions. The
world’s history must be judged by subsequent generations,
and the judgment of the world now passes sentence on your
country’s action.
‘If I have offended you by what I have written, just
consider I cannot do otherwise than say what is my opinion.
My personal esteem for you is not altered by what is taking
place.’
Letter No. 3.
From Sir John Wolfe Barry to Mr. A. B.:
October 4th, 1914.
‘I have read with profound interest and grief the copy of
the letter of August 29th from your German friend. The
rancour which it displays is beyond words. It is apparently
useless to criticise its contents looking to the frame of
mind of the writer, who, I think and fear, expresses the
present general feeling in Germany of hatred and anger
with our country. Many of his statements and arguments are
however absolutely and fundamentally erroneous and are
capable of complete refutation.
‘The poisoning of German thought in respect of Great
Britain does not date from anything done by King Edward
and still less from Sir Edward Grey or the present or
former Ministry. It began long earlier in the antagonism
between the military class and what may be termed the
liberal aspirations of many thoughtful Germans when the
Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick William,
married our Princess Royal. Both were in sympathy with
liberal ideas and they were violently opposed by Bismarck
and the blood-and-iron school, while the youth of Germany
were systematically taught by the professors and writers of
Germany, under the encouragement of Bismarck and his school
of thought, to hate and despise Great Britain. There is not
and never has been a corresponding feeling here towards
Germany.
‘Of course the two countries are rivals in trade and
commerce, but that is no reason for rancorous hatred.
We are keen rivals in trade with the United States and
other countries, but such rivalries have not engendered
any other feelings than that each country should do its
best honourably to succeed in competition. It must never
be forgotten in this connection that in England and in
our colonies Germans, though keeping a strict barrier
of tariffs themselves, have had absolute freedom in
competition, that they have availed themselves of it and
have made huge profits under our Free Trade system. Thus
the rancour of Germany against Great Britain must be sought
for in other directions, and it cannot be truthfully put
down to trade rivalry.
‘The cause is in fact to be found in the _Welt Politik_,
the jealousy of Germany of British world power and in the
aspirations of crushing Great Britain by force of arms.
This has been the persistent and avowed policy of the
Kaiser and the Junker class.
‘The idea was to fight France and Russia to a finish
and then concentrate all forces against England (and
parenthetically against Belgium) and to destroy the British
Empire. The present extreme and violent hatred on the part
of Germany is due to the probability of the failure of
that deep-laid scheme in consequence of England supporting
her Allies, and refusing to break her pledged word to
Belgium. It may be also caused by the feeling which must
be somewhere embedded in German thought, that Germany has
behaved dishonourably and scandalously to Belgium, whose
neutrality she most solemnly guaranteed.
‘If one looks back on the history of the last twenty-five
years, or thereabouts, one sees Bismarck threatening an
unprovoked war with France, and only withdrawing under the
threat of the opposition of Russia and Great Britain. This
proposed attack on France by Bismarck was a most shameful
episode, for France’s only offence was her existence and
recuperative power after her disasters in 1870. Then came
the Emperor’s policy in our South African War, when, if he
could have done so, he would have arrayed Europe against
this country, but ended only in having lured Kruger to
ruin. Then came the “mailed fist” in China, the seizure
of Tsing-tau, and Germany’s efforts to crush Japan after
the Russo-Japanese war. The demonstrations at Tangiers and
Agadir occurred soon afterwards, with more threats of an
European war. Afterwards came the annexation of Bosnia by
Austria backed by Germany and the insults hurled at Russia
by Germany in “shining armour.”
‘It is these things and others of a similar nature when
the German “sabre has been rattled” constantly in the face
of Europe, that demonstrated that Germany was the enemy of
peace, and which, crowned by the breach of the Treaty of
Belgium, showed to the Allies that no treaty would hold
Germany, and that her aspirations and lust for world power
were Napoleonic. Lastly the Allies knew that Germany had
resolved on war and was making a catspaw of Austria by
preventing her from coming to an agreement with Servia and
Russia.
‘I have said nothing about the systematic building of
the German navy. It was within her rights as a Sovereign
Power, but none the less the avowed object was to seize the
“Trident of the Seas” and to attack Great Britain. It was
obviously intended to attack our coasts, so as to enable an
invasion of this country to be possible, and to seize the
colonies of Great Britain and France.
‘Germany was utterly deceived by her diplomatists about
England, which was troubled with threats of civil war and
by trade disputes, and they never thought that we would
stand up for Belgium and fight now rather than later. It is
chagrin at the miscalculation, combined with the effects
of our maritime power, which has produced the outburst of
hatred against us. Commercial rivalry has no real basis for
hatred, and as for the question of a “place in the sun,”
Germany has large and advantageous colonial possessions
but can do but little with those which she owns, and has
preferred to compete with us in our colonies as she has
done so long and so successfully.
‘All this history of German jealousy, hatred and designs
is very sad, and I do not suppose that your German friend,
obsessed as he is, would listen to any facts or arguments.
But since I began to write, somewhat hurriedly, to you I
have been led on to write more than I intended to try to
deal with. I do not imagine that he has seen or would be
allowed to see the statement of the British case in the
White Paper, which I understand will be further elaborated
in a new paper to be published next Tuesday.
‘Have you answered your friend’s letter, or have you looked
upon it as hopeless to do so? In the temper in which he
wrote there was nothing visible but fighting to a finish.
‘Yours very sincerely,
‘(_Signed_) J. WOLFE BARRY.
‘_P.S._--I suppose you have not had another letter? It
would be interesting to see one of a later date than August
29th.
‘J. W. B.’
_N.B._--A copy of Sir John Wolfe Barry’s letter was sent by Mr. A.
B. to his German business friend, but no reply was attempted and the
correspondence then ceased.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Viz. that of Sir John Wolfe Barry printed below as
letter No. 3.
_THE NEW TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY._
BY JOHN W. N. SULLIVAN.
(_The time is the present day. St. Anthony is discovered seated on the
ground outside his hut. The cross stands in its accustomed place, erect
before him; and the great panorama, of which he is now weary, lies
below him. He has changed but slightly with the years; something of his
old immobility has disappeared. He occasionally shrugs his shoulders
when speaking, and he often accompanies his reflections with slight
gestures of the hands._)
ANTHONY (_thinking_). I have attained peace. Those troubling visions
have disappeared. Never for an instant have I departed from grace since
the Saviour’s face appeared to me in its shining disc of gold. The
burning days and solemn nights pass noiselessly. Rare tempests mutter
unnoticed about me. Nothing has power to disturb my beatific monotony;
nor hope, nor fear, nor love, nor regrets. I have triumphed over all
temptations. The devil has left me. (_He sighs._) That journey through
space, upborne on his wings! (_Stars commence to shine: the daylight
lingers._) I have resisted all the seductions of the flesh. I value not
the riches of the mind. (_He starts, and looks fixedly at a vague light
which advances across the desert._) It seems as if----. But that cannot
be: I have already sustained all assaults.
(_The light approaches rapidly. It is rose-coloured; within it a figure
is dimly visible. With a thunderous noise it rolls to within ten paces
of the saint. The air shakes and for an instant the stars are obscured.
This passes: the light fades, and the form of a woman is perceived,
upright, robed in white, her face stern and majestic. The sleeves of
her garment are very wide, reaching to the ground._)
THE WOMAN (_slightly raising her right arm_). I have need of you.
ANTHONY (_stammering_). What mean you?
THE WOMAN. I am your creator. Much study and great gifts came together
for your making. They also were my children. My best blood flows in
your veins. My name must mean everything to you, for you are wholly a
product of my essence. I am called La France.
ANTHONY (_pales and gazes fixedly at his visitor_). I belong to God.
THE WOMAN (_sternly_). Do you deny that you are French? (_Anthony
blushes and averts his gaze. He becomes sulky._) What existence have
you had apart from France? Would the world still hold you, you and your
temptations, apart from----
ANTHONY (_starting up and with outstretched hands_). Say not that name!
Say it not! (_He places his fingers in his ears and then, observing
that the woman’s lips do not move, lowers his hands._) Speak! but avoid
that name. I can endure aught else.
THE WOMAN (_speaks, her arms hanging by her sides. Her head is thrown
slightly back. Her words come slowly. Her voice is as the sound of a
solemn sea plunging in distant caverns_). The hour of my agony is upon
me. I am beset. My strength is great, my courage greater, and my pride
reaches to the stars. But I have mighty foes, skilled in all cruel
arts. I suffer. I dwell in the shadow of pain. My woes increase and the
issue is doubtful. (_She stretches her hands towards Anthony._) Can you
remain aloof?
ANTHONY (_frowning_). This touches me not.
THE WOMAN (_with irony_). Have you, then, purified your heart of
all compassion? (_Anthony shrugs his shoulders with a gesture of
indifference._) Are you, indeed, amongst the noblest of my offspring?
My sons have sacrificed life for me: they have been content to forgo
their ardent curiosities for my sake. What holds you back?
ANTHONY (_with great dignity_). I seek union with God. The Devil
himself tempted me for many days. He failed. How, then, can you
succeed? (_Softly._) You cannot, even if you be he.
THE WOMAN (_flinging her arms apart, and letting them drop heavily_).
Shame cannot move you. But he who aids me receives great rewards. I
will show you visions.
(_She waves her hand. A cloud descends, swaying slowly in the air. It
unwinds in sluggish masses till it fills the horizon. It glows with
pale fire. Upon it are cities and wide plains. It is a very clean,
neat, and precise land. Rivers wind gently between ploughed fields,
red and brown. The cloud surges nearer, and presently Anthony discerns
an immense temple shining in the sun. It approaches more quickly,
its crystalline walls sending innumerable shafts of light before it.
Anthony and his companion are enveloped in an insupportable radiance,
and the next instant they find they are within the building. Facing
them is a great altar, its gold shining dully in the light of a
thousand lighted candles. The flags of France droop motionless about
the altar; upon it the carved figure of a soldier lies prone. The
pavement of the temple is invisible under the feet of the silent crowd.
Mighty columns rush upward and are lost in the sweep of the dim roof.
The air begins to pulsate with the heavy notes of an organ. Anthony
and The Woman are floating above the heads of the multitude. None have
observed them._)
THE WOMAN (_motioning to the crowd_). Here are assembled rich and poor,
wise men and fools; judges, statesmen, poets, the criminal and the
peasant. All France is here, united in a common gratitude.
ANTHONY. What do they?
THE WOMAN. They honour the dead. (_She points to the prone figure on
the altar._) The soldiers who saved France.
(_A trumpet note is heard and the air rustles with the inclining of a
myriad heads. A sweet singing arises behind the altar. A procession
slowly passes before it. The first to pass is a man beyond middle age,
with a grave, bearded face, a broad white forehead and serene eyes. He
kneels for an instant and passes on._)
THE WOMAN. The Philosophy of France. (_A young man, with a dark, keen
face, and a very penetrating look, follows. Each figure, on arriving
before the altar, kneels and passes on._) The Science of France.
(_Then follow the Literature of France, an old man, very harmoniously
dressed; the Music and Painting of France, two smaller figures; the
Statesmanship and Laws of France, superb men, but badly clothed. There
follow priests, merchants, scribes, criminals and courtesans. Anthony
and his companion begin to soar higher. The music fades; the bowed
heads of the people become indistinct. There is a period of darkness,
and Anthony finds himself back on his rock. Before him stands The
Woman. The great cloud has utterly vanished._)
THE WOMAN. You have seen the greatness of France.
ANTHONY (_thoughtfully_). It is a land not without merit.
THE WOMAN. Many have died for it. Many more must die for it, or it will
be a stricken land. Is it worth dying for?
ANTHONY (_who has grown more argumentative with the years, hesitates.
Then_:) That depends! (_He faces The Woman with a stern and questioning
look._) Much knowledge and beauty lie within the borders of your land,
but no man should die for knowledge or beauty. A man’s life belongs to
God alone. Do your great ones serve God? Do they use their wisdom more
fully to understand His counsels? Do they create beauty to glorify His
praise? (_The Woman does not answer._) I will die for you if my death
serves God. I will not die to extend your borders, to add beauty to
your palaces, to make you more skilled in wisdom. Will my death bring
you nearer to God?
THE WOMAN (_regards Anthony sadly_). You ask me hard questions. Are
there not many ways of serving God? I worship God in His creation. I
meditate on the laws of His universe. I reveal to the world the beauty
of His handiwork. Do I not therefore serve God?
ANTHONY (_drily_). Does that heresy still flourish? God is not His
creation.
THE WOMAN. Is knowledge to vanish from the earth? Must none seek after
beauty?
ANTHONY (_raising his right hand and speaking with deliberation_). None
may seek knowledge for the sake of wisdom. None may seek beauty for the
sake of happiness. These things are but the raiment of God. Your great
ones count the threads in God’s garment, but do they seek God? (_He
delicately shrugs his shoulders._) Does France worship clothes?
THE WOMAN (_sad and bewildered_). I do not understand.
ANTHONY (_regards her long and then speaks gently_). You will never
understand, for you are La France. You cannot see without eyes, nor
hear without ears. You are the cleverest and most limited of God’s
children.
THE WOMAN (_stands still, her arms hanging limp, her head bowed.
Suddenly she raises her head_). But I suffer!
(_The air grows dim and a cold wind rises. The stars vanish. In the
valley, mysteriously visible, Anthony sees a road. It is cumbered
with dead and wounded men, lying in all attitudes, some as if asleep,
head resting on arm, and some contorted hideously. Anthony notes the
curious attitude of one man who seems to have his legs drawn right up
under him; until presently he sees that he has no legs. A dead man sits
propped against a gun. The whole of his tongue is visible, hanging
downwards; the lower jaw is shot away. Presently one of the black
shapes starts to flounder clumsily. In the mysterious light comes the
glint of steel; the black shape is trying to fix the end of a bayonet
in the ground. In one of his clumsy attempts the man reveals the fact
that he has but one arm. For some minutes he struggles and finally the
bayonet is fixed. The man lies still. Then he raises himself awkwardly
on his one arm till the bayonet point touches his chest; he flings his
arm straight out and falls with his whole weight on the point. A long
red finger points up from his back._
_The Woman waves her arm and the scene vanishes, to be replaced by
another. A soldier, young, and with a look of bright intelligence,
is saying farewell to his mother at the door of a cottage. The old
woman’s face is lined; her hands tremble. Her eyes peer up anxiously
at the young man, as she fondles the sleeve of his tunic. He speaks
confidently and cheerfully, and after a final embrace walks briskly
away. The old woman enters the cottage and sits there, in silence and
alone. She picks up a book the young man had been reading and very
carefully places it in a drawer._)
THE WOMAN. An only child, and she a widow.
ANTHONY (_looks very thoughtful_). What of her son?
THE WOMAN. His agony is greater. He feels all her grief and his own.
She feels but her own, for his leave-taking deceived her, and she
believes he has joy in battle.
ANTHONY (_as if musing_). Will men do so much to keep France?
THE WOMAN (_softly_). They do much more. They know the issue is
doubtful. They sacrifice so much, knowing the sacrifice may be in vain.
(_Anthony raises his head and looks very intently at The Woman; she
continues, her eyes glowing._) For years you have suffered on your
rock. You suffer to save yourself. Jesus, your master, suffered to
save the world. (_She stretches out her arms and her voice rings with
triumph._) I offer you greater suffering. He who suffers for me knows
not the fruit of his suffering. I offer you the opportunity of the
greatest sacrifice: the sacrifice of all, knowing that your all may be
in vain.
(_The Woman pauses, her arms outspread. Anthony presses his hands to
his head, and remains silent for a long time. Then, taking a step
forward, he places his right hand in that of The Woman. They slowly
leave the ground. As they mount in the air the few retarded rays of
light utterly vanish, and blackest night confounds the jutting rock
with the starless heaven._)
_THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES: THE GOOD WORD._
BY BOYD CABLE.
It is quite inadequate to say that the troops were worn out, and indeed
it is hard to find words to convey to anyone who has not experienced
some days of a mixture of fighting and forced marching how utterly
exhausted, how dead beat, how stupefied and numbed in mind and body the
men were. For four days and nights they had fought and dug trenches and
marched, and fought again, and halted to dig again, and fought again,
and extricated themselves under hailing bullets and pouring shells from
positions they never expected to leave alive, only to scramble together
into some sort of ragged-shaped units and march again. And all this was
under a fierce August sun, with irregular meals and sometimes no meals,
at odd times with a scarcity or complete want of water, at all times
with a burning lack and want of sleep.
This want of sleep was the worst of it all. Any sort of fighting is
heavy sleep inducing; when it is prolonged for days and nights without
one good full, satisfying sleep, the desire for rest becomes a craving,
an all-absorbing aching passion. At first a man wants a bed or space
to lie down and stretch his limbs and pillow his head and sink into
dreamless oblivion; at last he would give his last possession merely
to be allowed to lean against a wall, to stand upright on his feet and
close his eyes. To keep awake is torture, to lift and move each foot is
a desperate effort, to keep the burning eyes open and seeing an agony.
It takes the most tremendous effort of will to contemplate another five
minutes of wakefulness, another hundred yards to be covered; and here
were hours, endless hours, of wakefulness, miles and tens of miles to
be covered.
Cruelly hard as the conditions were for the whole retreating army,
the rear-guard suffered the worst by a good deal. They were under the
constant threat of attack, were halted every now and then under that
threat or to allow the main body to keep a sufficient distance, had to
make some attempt to dig in again, had to endure spasmodic shelling
either in their shallow trenches or as they marched along the road.
By the fourth day the men were reduced to the condition of automatons.
They marched--no, it could hardly be said any longer that they
‘marched’; they stumbled and staggered along like drunken men; their
chins were sunk on their chests, their jaws hung slack, their eyes
were set in a fixed and glassy stare, or blinked, and shut and opened
heavily, slowly, and drowsily, their feet trailed draggingly, their
knees sagged under them. When the word passed to halt, the front ranks
took a minute or two to realise its meaning and obey, and the ranks
behind bumped into them and raised heads and vacant staring eyes for
a moment and let them drop again in a stupor of apathy. The change,
the cessation of automatic motion was too much for many men; once
halted they could no longer keep their feet, and dropped and sat or
rolled helplessly to lie in the dust of the road. These men who fell
were almost impossible to rouse. They sank into sleep that was almost
a swoon, and no shaking or calling or cursing could rouse them or get
them up again. The officers, knowing this, tried to keep them from
sitting or lying down, moved, staggering themselves as they walked, to
and fro along the line, exhorting, begging, beseeching, or scolding and
swearing and ordering the men to keep up, to stand, to be ready to move
on. And when the order was given again, the pathetically ridiculous
order to ‘Quick march,’ the front ranks slowly roused and shuffled off,
and the rear stirred slowly and with an effort heaved their rifles over
their shoulders again and reeled after the leaders.
Scores of the men had abandoned packs and haversacks, all of them had
cast away their overcoats. Many had taken their boots off and marched
with rags or puttees wound round their blistered and swollen feet.
But no matter what one or other or all had thrown away, there was no
man without his rifle, his full ammunition pouches, and his bayonet.
These things weighed murderously, cut deep and agonisingly into the
shoulders, cramped arms and fingers to an aching numbness; but every
man clung to them, had never a thought of throwing them into the ditch,
although many of them had many thoughts of throwing themselves there.
Many fell out--fell out in the literal as well as the drill sense
of the word; swerved to the side of the road and missed foot in the
ditch and fell there, or stumbled in the ranks, tripped, lacking the
brain or body quickness to recover themselves, collapsed, and rolled
and lay helpless. Others, again, gasped a word or two to a comrade or
an N.C.O., stumbled out of the ranks to the roadside, sank down with
hanging head and rounded shoulders to a sitting position. Few or none
of these men deliberately lay down. They sat till the regiment had
plodded his trailing length past, tried to stagger to knees and feet,
succeeded, and stood swaying a moment, and then lurched off after the
rear ranks; or failed, stared stupidly after them, collapsed again
slowly and completely. All these were left to lie where they fell. It
was useless to urge them to move, because every officer and N.C.O. knew
that no man gave up while he had an ounce of strength or energy left to
carry on, that orders or entreaties had less power to keep a man moving
than his own dogged pluck and will, that when these failed to keep a
man going nothing else could succeed.
All were not, of course, so hopelessly done as this. There were still a
number of the tougher muscled, the firmer willed, who kept their limbs
moving with conscious volition, who still retained some thinking power,
who even at times exchanged a few words or a mouthful of curses. These,
and the officers, kept the whole together, kept them moving by force
of example, set the pace for them and gave them the direction. Most of
them were in the leading ranks of their own companies, merely because
their greater energy had carried them there past and through the ranks
of those whose minds were nearly or quite a blank, whose bodies were
more completely exhausted, whose will-power was reduced to a blind and
sheep-like instinct to follow a leader, move when and where the dimly
seen khaki form or tramping boots in front of them moved, stop when and
where they stopped.
The roads by which the army was retreating were cumbered and in places
choked and blocked with fugitive peasantry fleeing from the advancing
Germans, spurred into and upon their flight by the tales that reached
them of ravished Belgium, by first-hand accounts of the murder of old
men and women and children, of rape and violation and pillage and
burning. Their slow, crawling procession checked and hindered the army
transport, added to the trials of the weary troops by making necessary
frequent halts and deviations off the road and back to it to clear some
block in the traffic where a cart had broken down, or where worn-out
women with hollow cheeks and staring eyes, and children with dusty,
tear-streaked faces crowded and filled the road.
The rear-guard passed numbers of these lying utterly exhausted by
the roadside, and the road for miles was strewn with the wreckage
of the retreat, with men who had fallen out unable longer to march
on blistered or bleeding feet or collapsed in the heedless sleep of
complete exhaustion; with broken-down carts dragged clear into the
roadside and spilled with their jumbled contents into the ditch; with
crippled horses and footsore cattle; with quivering-lipped, grey-haired
old men, and dry-eyed, cowering women, and frightened, clinging
children. Some of these peasantry roused themselves as the last of
the rear-guard regiments came up with them, struggled again to follow
on the road, or dragged themselves clear of it and sought refuge and
hiding in abandoned cottages or barns or the deep dry ditches.
At one point where the road crept up the long slope of a hill the
rear-guard came under the longe-range fire of the German guns. The
shells came roaring down, to burst in clouds of belching black smoke
in the fields to either side of the road, or to explode with a sharp
tearing cr-r-rash in the air, their splinters and bullets raining down
out of the thick white woolly smoke cloud that coiled and writhed and
unfolded in slow heavy oily eddies.
One battalion of the rear-guard was halted at the foot of the hill and
spread out off the road and across the line of it. Again they were told
not to lie down, and for the most part the men obeyed, leaning heavily
with their arms folded on the muzzles of their rifles or watching the
regiments crawling slowly up the road with the coal-black shell-bursts
in the fields about them or the white air-bursts of the shrapnel above
them.
‘Pretty bloomin’ sight--I don’t think,’ growled a gaunt and weary-eyed
private. The man next him laughed shortly. ‘Pretty one for the Germs,
anyway,’ he said; ‘and one they’re seein’ a sight too often for my
fancy. They’ll be forgettin’ wot our faces look like if we keep on at
this everlastin’ runnin’ away.’
‘Blast ’em,’ said the first speaker savagely, ‘but our turn will come
presently. D’you think this yarn is right, Jacko, that we’re retirin’
this way just to draw ’em away from their base?’
‘Gawd knows,’ said Jacko; ‘but they didn’t bring us over ’ere to do
nothin’ but run away, an’ you can bet on that, Peter.’
An order passed down the line, and the men began to move slowly into
the road again and to shake into some sort of formation on it, and
then to plod off up the hill in the wake of the rest. The shells were
still plastering the hillside and crashing over the road, and several
men were hit as the battalion tramped wearily up the hill. Even the
shells failed to rouse most of the men from their apathy and weariness,
but those it did stir it roused mainly to angry resentment or sullen
oath-mumblings and curses.
‘Well, Jacko,’ said Peter bitterly, ‘I’ve knowed I had a fair chance
o’ bein’ shot, but burn me if ever I thought I was goin’ to be shot in
the back.’
‘It’s a long way to Tipperary,’ said Jacko, ‘an’ there’s bound to be a
turnin’ in it somewheres.’
‘An’ it’s a longer way to Berlin if we keeps on marchin’ like this with
our backs to it,’ grumbled Peter.
The sound of another approaching shell rose from a faint moan to
a loud shriek, to a roar, to a wild torrent of yelling, whooping,
rush-of-an-express-train, whirlwind noise; and then, just when it
seemed to each man that the shell was about to fall directly on his own
individual head, it burst with a harsh crash over them, and a storm of
bullets and fragments whistled and hummed down, hitting the fields’
soft ground with deep _whutts_, clashing sharply on the harder road. A
young officer jerked out a cry, stumbled blindly forward a few paces
with outstretched arms, pitched, and fell heavily on his face. He was
close to where Peter and Jacko marched, and the two shambled hastily
together to where he lay, lifted and turned him over. Neither needed
a second look. ‘Done in,’ said Peter briefly, and ‘Never knew wot hit
’im,’ agreed Jacko.
An officer ran back to them, followed slowly and heavily by another.
There was no question as to what should be done with the lad’s body.
He had to be left there, and the utmost they could do for him was to
lift and carry him--four dog-tired men hardly able to lift their feet
and carry their own bodies--to a cottage by the roadside, and bring him
into an empty room with a litter of clothes and papers spilled about
the floor from the tumbled drawers, and lay him on a dishevelled bed
and spread a crumpled sheet over him.
‘Let’s hope they’ll bury him decently,’ said one of the officers. The
other was pocketing the watch and few pitiful trinkets he had taken
from the lad’s pockets. ‘Hope so,’ he said dully. ‘Not that it matters
much to poor old Dicky. Come on, we must move, or I’ll never be able to
catch the others up.’
They left the empty house quietly, pulling the door gently shut behind
them.
‘Pore little Blinker,’ said Jacko as they trudged up the road after the
battalion; ‘the best bloomin’ officer the platoon ever ’ad.’
‘The best I ever ’ad in all my seven,’ said Peter. ‘I ain’t forgettin’
the way ’e stood up for me afore the C.O. at Aldershot when I was
carpeted for drunk. And ’im tryin’ to stand wi’ the right side of ’is
face turned away from the light, so the C.O. wouldn’t spot the black
eye I gave ’im in that same drunk!’
‘Ah, an’ that was just like ’im,’ said Jacko. ‘An’ to think ’e’s washed
out with a ’ole in the back of his ’ead--the back of it, mind you.’
Peter cursed sourly.
The battalion trailed wearily on until noon, halted then, and for
the greater part flung themselves down and slept on the roadside for
the two hours they waited there; were roused--as many of them, that
is, as would rouse, for many, having stopped the machine-like motion
of marching, could not recommence it, and had to be left there--and
plodded on again through the baking afternoon heat. They had marched
over thirty miles that day when at last they trailed into a small town
where they were told they were to be billeted for the night. Other
troops, almost as worn as themselves, were to take over the duties of
rear-guard next day, but although that was good enough news it was
nothing to the fact that to-night, now, the battalion was to halt and
lie down and take their fill--if the Huns let them--of sleep.
They were halted in the main square and waited there for what seemed to
the tired men an interminable time.
‘Findin’ billets,’ said Jacko. ‘Wish they’d hurry up about it.’
‘Seems to me there’s something more than billets in the wind,’ said
Peter suspiciously. ‘Wot’s all the officers confabbin’ about, an’ wot’s
that _tamasha_ over there wi’ them Staff officers an’ the C.O.?’
The _tamasha_ broke up, and the C.O. tramped back to the group of his
officers, and after a short parley they saluted him and walked over to
the battalion.
‘Fall in,’ came the order sharply. ‘Fall in there, fall in.’
Most of the men were sitting along the curb of the pavement or in the
dusty road, or standing leaning on their rifles. They rose and moved
heavily and stiffly, and shuffled into line.
‘Wot is it, sergeant?’ asked Jacko suspiciously. ‘Wot’s the move?’
‘We’re goin’ back,’ said the sergeant. ‘Hurry up there, you. Fall in.
We’re goin’ back, an’ there’s some word of a fight.’
The word flew round the ranks. ‘Going back ... a fight ... back....’
Across the square another regiment tramped stolidly and turned down a
side street. A man in their rear ranks turned and waved a hand to the
waiting battalion. ‘So long, chums,’ he called. ‘See you in Berlin.’
‘Ga’ strewth,’ said Jacko, and drew a deep breath. ‘Goin’ back; an’ a
fight; an’ the ol’ Buffs on the move too. In Berlin, eh; wonder wot
they’ve ’eard. Back--blimey, Peter, I believe we’re goin’ for the
blinkin’ ’Uns again. I believe we’re goin’ to advance.’
That word went round even faster than the other, and where it passed
it left behind it a stir of excitement, a straightening of rounded
shoulders, a lifting of lolling heads. ‘Going back ... going to attack
this time ... going to advance....’
Actually this was untrue, or partly so at least. They were going back,
but still merely acting as rear-guard to take up a position clear of
the town and hold it against the threat of too close-pressing pursuit.
But the men knew nothing of that at the time. They were going back;
there was word of a fight; what else did that spell but a finish to
this cursed running away, an advance instead of a retreat? The rumour
acted like strong wine to the men. They moved to the parade orders
with something of their old drilled and disciplined appearance; they
swung off in their fours with shuffling steps, it is true, but with a
decent attempt to keep the step, with their heads more or less erect
and their shoulders back. And when the head of the column turned off
the square back into the same street they had come up into the town,
a buzz of talk and calling ran through the ranks, a voice piped up
shakily ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ and a dozen, a score, a hundred
voices took up the chorus sturdily and defiantly. The battalion moved
out with the narrow streets ringing to their steady tramp, tramp,
over the _pavé_ cobbles and the sound of their singing. Once clear of
the town, it is true, the singing died away and the regular tramping
march tailed off into the murmuring shuffle of feet moving out of
step. But the deadly apathy had lifted from the men, there was an air
of new life about them; one would never have known this battalion for
the one that had marched in over the same road half an hour before.
Then they were no more than a broken, dispirited crowd, their minds
dazed, their bodies numbed with fatigue, moving mechanically, dully,
apathetically, still plodding and shuffling their feet forward merely
because their conscious minds had set their limbs the task, and then
the tired brains, run down, had left the machinery of their bodies
still working--working jerkily and slackly perhaps, but nevertheless
working as it would continue to work until the overstrained muscles
refused their mechanical duty.
Now they were a battalion, a knitted and coherent body of fighting
men, still worn out and fatigued almost to the point of collapse, but
with working minds, with a conscious thought in their brains, with
discipline locking their ranks again, with the prospect of a fight
ahead, with the hope strong in them that the tide was turning, that
they were done with the running away and retreating and abandoning
hard-fought fields they were positive they had won; that now their turn
was come, that here they were commencing and making the longed-for
advance.
And as they marched they heard behind them a deep _boo-boom_,
_boo-boom_, _boo-moom_ and the whistling rush of the shells over their
heads. That and the low muttering rumble of guns far out on the flank
brought to them a final touch of satisfaction. They were advancing, and
the guns were supporting them already then--good, oh good!
And as they marched back down the road they had come they met some of
their stragglers hobbling painfully on bandaged feet, or picked them
up from where they still lay in a stupor of sleep on the roadside. And
to all of them the one word ‘advance’ was enough. ‘We’re going back
... it’s an advance,’ turned them staggering round to limp back in the
tail of the battalion, or lifted them to their feet to follow on as
best they might. They picked up more than their own men, too, men of
other regiments who had straggled and fallen out, but now drew fresh
store of strength from the cheerful word ‘advance,’ and would not be
denied their chance to be in the van of it, but tailed on in rear of
the battalion and struggled to keep up with them. ‘We’re all right,
sir,’ said one when an officer would have turned him and sent him back
to find his own battalion. ‘We’re pretty near done in on marching; but
there’s a plenty fight left in us--specially when it’s an advance.’
‘Jacko,’ said Peter, ‘I’m damn near dead; but thank the Lord I won’t
’ave to die runnin’ away.’
‘All I asks,’ said Jacko, ‘is as fair a target on ’em as we’ve ’ad
before, an’ a chance to put a ’ole in the back o’ some o’ _their_
’eads.’
‘Ah!’ said Peter. ‘Pore little Blinker. They’ve got to pay for ’im an’
a few more like ’im.’
‘They ’ave, blarst them,’ said Jacko savagely, and dropped his hand
to his bayonet haft, slid the steel half out and home again. ‘Don’t
fret, chum, they’ll pay--soon or late, this time or nex’, one day or
another--they’ll pay.’
_THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS._
BY BENNET COPPLESTONE.
I.
BAITING THE TRAP.
This story--which contains a moral for those fearful folk who exalt
everything German--was told to me by Richard Cary, the accomplished
naval correspondent of a big paper in the North of England. I have
known him and his enthusiasm for the White Ensign for twenty years.
He springs from an old naval stock, the Carys of North Devon, and
has devoted his life to the study of the Sea Service. He had for so
long been accustomed to move freely among shipyards and navymen, and
was trusted so completely, that the veil of secrecy which dropped in
August 1914 between the Fleets and the world scarcely existed for
him. Everything which he desired to know for the better understanding
of the real work of the Navy came to him officially or unofficially.
When, therefore, he states that the Naval Notes with which this story
deals would have been of incalculable value to the enemy, I accept
his word without hesitation. I have myself seen some of them and they
made me tremble--for Cary’s neck. I pressed him to write this story
himself, but he refused. ‘No,’ said he, ‘I have told you the yarn just
as it happened; write it yourself. I am a dull dog, quite efficient at
handling hard facts and making scientific deductions from them, but
with no eye for the picturesque details. I give it to you.’ He rose to
go--Cary had been lunching with me--but paused for an instant upon my
front doorstep. ‘If you insist upon it,’ added he, smiling, ‘I don’t
mind sharing in the plunder.’
* * * * *
It was in the latter part of May 1916. Cary was hard at work one
morning in his rooms in the Northern City where he had established
his headquarters. His study table was littered with papers--notes,
diagrams, and newspaper cuttings--and he was laboriously reducing the
apparent chaos into an orderly series of chapters upon the Navy’s
Work which he proposed to publish after the war was over. It was not
designed to be an exciting book--Cary has no dramatic instinct--but
it would be full of fine sound stuff, close accurate detail, and clear
analysis. Day by day for more than twenty months he had been collecting
details of every phase of the Navy’s operations, here a little and
there a little. He had recently returned from a confidential tour of
the shipyards and naval bases, and had exercised his trained eye upon
checking and amplifying what he had previously learned. While his
recollection of this tour was fresh he was actively writing up his
Notes and revising the rough early draft of his book. More than once
it had occurred to him that his accumulations of Notes were dangerous
explosives to store in a private house. They were becoming so full and
so accurate that the enemy would have paid any sum or have committed
any crime to secure possession of them. Cary is not nervous or
imaginative--have I not said that he springs from a naval stock?--but
even he now and then felt anxious. He would, I believe, have slept
peacefully though knowing that a delicately primed bomb lay beneath his
bed, for personal risks troubled him little, but the thought that hurt
to his country might come from his well-meant labours sometimes rapped
against his nerves. A few days before his patriotic conscience had been
stabbed by no less a personage than Admiral Jellicoe, who, speaking
to a group of naval students which included Cary, had said: ‘We have
concealed nothing from you, for we trust absolutely to your discretion.
Remember what you have seen, but do not make any notes.’ Yet here at
this moment was Cary disregarding the orders of a Commander-in-Chief
whom he worshipped. He tried to square his conscience by reflecting
that no more than three people knew of the existence of his Notes
or of the book which he was writing from them, and that each one of
those three was as trustworthy as himself. So he went on collating,
comparing, writing, and the heap upon his table grew bigger under his
hands.
The clock had just struck twelve upon that morning when a servant
entered and said ‘A gentleman to see you, sir, upon important business.
His name is Mr. Dawson.’
Cary jumped up and went to his dining-room, where the visitor was
waiting. The name had meant nothing to him, but the instant his eyes
fell upon Mr. Dawson he remembered that he was the chief Scotland
Yard officer who had come north to teach the local police how to keep
track of the German agents who infested the shipbuilding centres. Cary
had met Dawson more than once and had assisted him with his intimate
local knowledge. He greeted his visitor with smiling courtesy, but
Dawson did not smile. His first words, indeed, came like shots from an
automatic pistol.
‘Mr. Cary,’ said he, ‘I want to see your Naval Notes.’
Cary was staggered, for the three people whom I have mentioned did not
include Mr. Dawson. ‘Certainly,’ said he, ‘I will show them to you if
you ask officially. But how in the world did you hear anything about
them?’
‘I am afraid that a good many people know about them, most undesirable
people, too. If you will show them to me--I am asking officially--I
will tell you what I know.’
Cary led the way to his study. Dawson glanced round the room, at
the papers heaped upon the table, at the tall windows bare of
curtains--Cary, who loved light and sunshine, hated curtains--and
growled. Then he locked the door, pulled down the thick blue blinds
required by the East Coast lighting orders, and switched on the
electric lights though it was high noon in May. ‘That’s better,’ said
he. ‘You are an absolutely trustworthy man, Mr. Cary. I know all about
you. But you are damned careless. That bare window is overlooked from
half a dozen flats. You might as well do your work in the street.’
Dawson picked up some of the papers, and their purport was explained to
him by Cary. ‘I don’t know anything of naval details,’ said he, ‘but I
don’t need any evidence of the value of the stuff here. The enemy wants
it, wants it badly; that is good enough for me.’
‘But,’ remonstrated Cary, ‘no one knows of these papers, or of the use
to which I am putting them, except my son in the Navy, my wife (who has
not read a line of them), and my publisher in London.’
‘Hum!’ commented Dawson. ‘Then how do you account for this?’
He opened his leather despatch-case and drew forth a parcel carefully
wrapped up in brown paper. Within the wrapping was a large white
envelope of the linen woven paper used for registered letters, and
generously sealed. To Cary’s surprise, for the envelope appeared to be
secure, Dawson cautiously opened it so as not to break the seal which
was adhering to the flap and drew out a second smaller envelope, also
sealed. This he opened in the same delicate way and took out a third;
from the third he drew a fourth, and so on until eleven empty envelopes
had been added to the litter piled upon Cary’s table, and the twelfth,
a small one, remained in Dawson’s hands.
‘Did you ever see anything so childish?’ observed he, indicating the
envelopes. ‘A big, registered, sealed Chinese puzzle like that is just
crying out to be opened. We would have seen the inside of that one even
if it had been addressed to the Lord Mayor, and not to--well, someone
in whom we are deeply interested, though he does not know it.’
Cary, who had been fascinated by the succession of sealed envelopes,
stretched out his hand towards one of them. ‘Don’t touch,’ snapped out
Dawson. ‘Your clumsy hands would break the seals, and then there would
be the devil to pay. Of course all these envelopes were first opened in
my office. It takes a dozen years to train men to open sealed envelopes
so that neither flap nor seal is broken, and both can be again secured
without showing a sign of disturbance. It is a trade secret.’
Dawson’s expert fingers then opened the twelfth envelope and he
produced a letter. ‘Now, Mr. Cary, if we had not known you and also
known that you were absolutely honest and loyal--though dangerously
simple-minded and careless in the matter of windows--this letter would
have been very awkward indeed for you. It runs: “Hagan arrives 10.30
P.M. Wednesday to get Cary’s Naval Notes. Meet him. Urgent.” Had we not
known you, Mr. Richard Cary might have been asked to explain how Hagan
knew all about his Naval Notes and was so very confident of being able
to get them.’
Cary smiled. ‘I have often felt,’ said he, ‘especially in war-time,
that it was most useful to be well known to the police. You may ask me
anything you like and I will do my best to answer. I confess that I am
aghast at the searchlight of inquiry which has suddenly been turned
upon my humble labours. My son at sea knows nothing of the Notes except
what I have told him in my letters, my wife has not read a line of
them, and my publisher is the last man to talk. I seem to have suddenly
dropped into the middle of a detective story.’ The poor man scratched
his head and smiled ruefully at the Scotland Yard officer.
‘Mr. Cary,’ said Dawson, ‘those windows of yours would account for
anything. You have been watched for a long time, and I am perfectly
sure that our friend Hagan and his associates here know precisely in
what drawer of that desk you keep your naval papers. Your flat is easy
to enter--I had a look round before coming in to-day--and on Wednesday
night (that is to-morrow) there will be a scientific burglary here and
your Notes will be stolen.’
‘Oh no they won’t,’ cried Cary. ‘I will take them down this afternoon
to my office and lock them up in the big safe. It will put me to a lot
of bother, for I shall also have to lock up there the chapters of my
book.’
‘You newspaper men ought all to be locked up yourselves. You are a
cursed nuisance to honest, hard-worked Scotland Yard men like me. But
you mistake the object of my visit. I want this flat to be entered
to-morrow night, and I want your naval papers to be stolen.’
For a moment the wild thought came to Cary that this man Dawson--the
chosen of the Yard--was himself a German Secret Service agent, and
must have shown in his eyes some signs of the suspicion, for Dawson
laughed loudly. ‘No, Mr. Cary, I am not in the Kaiser’s pay, nor are
you, though the case against you might be painted pretty black. This
man Hagan is on our string in London and we want him very badly indeed.
Not to arrest--at least not just yet--but to keep running round showing
us his pals and all their little games. He is an Irish American, a very
unbenevolent neutral, to whom we want to give a nice, easy, happy time,
so that he can mix himself up thoroughly with the spy business and wrap
a rope many times round his neck. We will pull on to the end when we
have finished with him, but not a minute too soon. He is too precious
to be frightened. Did you ever come across such an ass’--Dawson
contemptuously indicated the pile of sealed envelopes--‘he must have
soaked himself in American dime novels and cinema crime films. He will
be of more use to us than a dozen of our best officers. I feel that I
love Hagan and won’t have him disturbed. When he comes here to-morrow
night he shall be seen but not heard. He shall enter this room, lift
your Notes, which shall be in their usual drawer, and shall take them
safely away. After that I rather fancy that we shall enjoy ourselves,
and that the salt will stick very firmly upon Hagan’s little tail.’
Cary did not at all like this plan; it might offer amusement and
instruction to the police, but seemed to involve himself in an
excessive amount of responsibility. ‘Will it not be far too risky to
let him take my Notes even if you do shadow him closely afterwards? He
will get them copied and scattered amongst a score of agents, one of
whom may get the information through to Germany. You know your job,
of course, but the risk seems too big for me. After all, they are my
Notes, and I would far sooner burn them now than that the Germans
should see a line of them.’
Dawson laughed again. ‘You are a dear simple soul, Mr. Cary; it does
one good to meet you. Why on earth do you suppose I came here to-day
if it were not to enlist your help? Hagan is going to take all the
risks; you and I are not looking for any. He is going to steal some
Naval Notes, but they will not be those which lie on this table. I
myself will take charge of those and of the chapters of your most
reprehensible book. You shall prepare, right now, a beautiful new
artistic set of notes calculated to deceive. They must be accurate
where any errors would be spotted, but wickedly false wherever
deception would be good for Fritz’s health. I want you to get down
to a real plant. This letter shall be sealed up again in its twelve
silly envelopes and go by registered post to Hagan’s correspondent.
You shall have till to-morrow morning to invent all those things which
we want Fritz to believe about the Navy. Make us out to be as rotten
as you plausibly can. Give him some heavy losses to gloat over and to
tempt him out of harbour. Don’t overdo it, but mix up your fiction with
enough facts to keep it sweet and make it sound convincing. If you do
your work well--and the Naval authorities here seem to think a lot of
you--Hagan will believe in your Notes, and will try to get them to
his German friends at any cost or risk, which will be exactly what we
want of him. Then, when he has served our purpose, he will find that
we--have--no--more--use--for--him.’
Dawson accompanied this slow, harmlessly sounding sentence with a grim
and nasty smile. Cary, before whose eyes flashed for a moment the
vision of a chill dawn, cold grey walls, and a silent firing party,
shuddered. It was a dirty task to lay so subtle a trap even for a dirty
Irish-American spy. His honest English soul revolted at the call upon
his brains and knowledge, but common sense told him that in this way,
Dawson’s way, he could do his country a very real service. For a few
minutes he mused over the task set to his hand, and then spoke.
‘All right. I think that I can put up exactly what you want. The faked
Notes shall be ready when you come to-morrow. I will give the whole day
to them.’
In the morning the new set of Naval Papers was ready, and their
purport was explained in detail to Dawson, who chuckled joyously. ‘This
is exactly what Admiral ---- wants, and it shall get through to Germany
by Fritz’s own channels. I have misjudged you, Mr. Cary; I thought you
little better than a fool, but that story here of a collision in a fog
and the list of damaged Queen Elizabeths in dock would have taken in
even me. Fritz will suck it down like cream. I like that effort even
better than your grave comments on damaged turbines and worn-out gun
tubes. You are a genius, Mr. Cary, and I must take you to lunch with
the Admiral this very day. You can explain the plant better than I can,
and he is dying to hear all about it. Oh, by the way, he particularly
wants a description of the failure to complete the latest batch of
big shell fuses, and the shortage of lyddite. You might get that done
before the evening. Now for the burglary. Do nothing, nothing at all,
outside your usual routine. Come home at your usual hour, go to bed
as usual, and sleep soundly if you can. Should you hear any noise in
the night put your head under the bedclothes. Say nothing to Mrs. Cary
unless you are obliged, and for God’s sake don’t let any woman--wife,
daughter, or maidservant--disturb my pearl of a burglar while he is at
work. He must have a clear run, with everything exactly as he expects
to find it. Can I depend upon you?’
‘I don’t pretend to like the business,’ said Cary, ‘but you can depend
upon me to the letter of my orders.’
‘Good,’ cried Dawson. ‘That is all I want.’
II.
THE TRAP CLOSES.
Cary heard no noise though he lay awake for most of the night,
listening intently. The flat seemed to be more quiet even than usual.
There was little traffic in the street below, and hardly a step
broke the long silence of the night. Early in the morning--at six
B.S.T.--Cary slipped out of bed, stole down to his study, and pulled
open the deep drawer in which he had placed the bundle of faked Naval
Notes. They had gone! So the Spy-Burglar had come, and, carefully
shepherded by Dawson’s sleuth-hounds, had found the primrose path easy
for his crime. To Cary, the simple, honest gentleman, the whole plot
seemed to be utterly revolting--justified, of course, by the country’s
needs in time of war, but none the less revolting. There is nothing
of glamour in the Secret Service, nothing of romance, little even of
excitement. It is a cold-blooded exercise of wits against wits, of
spies against spies. The amateur plays a fish upon a line and gives
him a fair run for his life, but the professional fisherman--to whom
a salmon is a people’s food--nets him coldly and expeditiously as he
comes in from the sea.
Shortly after breakfast there came a call from Dawson on the telephone.
‘All goes well. Come to my office as soon as possible.’ Cary found
Dawson bubbling with professional satisfaction. ‘It was beautiful,’
cried he. ‘Hagan was met at the train, taken to a place we know of,
and shadowed by us tight as wax. We now know all his associates--the
swine have not even the excuse of being German. He burgled your flat
himself while one of his gang watched outside. Never mind where I was;
you would be surprised if I told you; but I saw everything. He has the
faked papers, is busy making copies, and this afternoon is going down
the river in a steamer to get a glimpse of the shipyards and docks and
check your Notes as far as can be done. Will they stand all right?’
‘Quite all right,’ said Cary. ‘The obvious things were given correctly.’
‘Good. We will be in the steamer.’
Cary went that afternoon, quite unchanged in appearance by Dawson’s
order. ‘If you try to disguise yourself,’ declared that expert, ‘you
will be spotted at once. Leave the refinements to us.’ Dawson himself
went as an elderly dug-out officer with the rank marks of a colonel,
and never spoke a word to Cary upon the whole trip down and up the
teeming river. Dawson’s men were scattered here and there--one a
passenger of inquiring mind, another a deckhand, yet a third--a pretty
girl in khaki--sold tea and cakes in the vessel’s saloon. Hagan--who,
Cary heard afterwards, wore the brass-bound cap and blue kit of a mate
in the American merchant service--was never out of sight for an instant
of Dawson or of one of his troupe. He busied himself with a strong pair
of marine glasses and now and then asked innocent questions of the
ship’s deckhands. He had evidently himself once served as a sailor.
One deckhand, an idle fellow to whom Hagan was very civil, told his
questioner quite a lot of interesting details about the Navy ships,
great and small, which could be seen upon the building slips. All
these details tallied strangely with those recorded in Cary’s Notes.
The trip up and down the river was a great success for Hagan and for
Dawson, but for Cary it was rather a bore. He felt somehow out of the
picture. In the evening Dawson called at Cary’s office and broke in
upon him. ‘We had a splendid trip to-day,’ said he. ‘It exceeded my
utmost hopes. Hagan thinks no end of your Notes, but he is not taking
any risks. He leaves in the morning for Glasgow to do the Clyde and to
check some more of your stuff. Would you like to come?’ Cary remarked
that he was rather busy, and that these river excursions, though
doubtless great fun for Dawson, were rather poor sport for himself.
Dawson laughed joyously--he was a cheerful soul when he had a spy upon
his string. ‘Come along,’ said he. ‘See the thing through. I should
like you to be in at the death.’ Cary observed that he had no stomach
for cold damp dawns, and firing parties.
‘I did not quite mean that,’ replied Dawson. ‘Those closing ceremonies
are still strictly private. But you should see the chase through
to a finish. You are a newspaper man and should be eager for new
experiences.’
‘I will come,’ said Cary, rather reluctantly. ‘But I warn you that my
sympathies are steadily going over to Hagan. The poor devil does not
look to have a dog’s chance against you.’
‘He hasn’t,’ said Dawson with great satisfaction.
Cary, to whom the wonderful Clyde was as familiar as the river near
his own home, found the second trip almost as wearisome as the first.
But not quite. He was now able to recognise Hagan, who again appeared
as a brass-bounder, and did not affect to conceal his deep interest in
the Naval panorama offered by the river. Nothing of real importance
can, of course, be learned from a casual steamer trip, but Hagan
seemed to think otherwise, for he was always either watching through
his glasses or asking apparently artless questions of passengers or
passing deckhands. Again a sailor seemed disposed to be communicative;
he pointed out more than one monster in steel, red raw with surface
rust, and gave particulars of a completed power which would have
surprised the Admiralty Superintendent. They would not, however, have
surprised Mr. Cary, in whose ingenious brain they had been conceived.
This second trip, like the first, was declared by Dawson to have been
a great success. ‘Did you know me?’ he asked. ‘I was a clean-shaven
Naval doctor, about as unlike the Army colonel of the first trip as a
pigeon is unlike a gamecock. Hagan is off to London to-night by the
North-Western. There are three copies of your Notes. One is going
by Edinburgh and the east coast, and another by the Midland. Hagan
has the original masterpiece. I will look after him and leave the two
other messengers to my men. I have been on to the Yard by ’phone and
have arranged that all three shall have passports for Holland. The
two copies shall reach the Kaiser, bless him, but I really must have
Hagan’s set of Notes for my Museum.’
‘And what will become of Hagan?’ asked Cary.
‘Come and see,’ said Mr. Dawson.
Dawson entertained Cary at dinner in a private room at the Station
Hotel, waited upon by one of his own confidential men. ‘Nobody ever
sees me,’ he observed with much satisfaction, ‘though I am everywhere.’
(I suspect that Dawson is not without his little vanities.) ‘Except
in my office and with people whom I know well, I am always someone
else. The first time I came to your house I wore a beard, and the
second time looked like a gas inspector. You saw only the real Dawson.
When one has got the passion for the chase in one’s blood, one cannot
bide for long in a stuffy office. As I have a jewel of an assistant,
I can always escape and follow up my own victims. This man Hagan is
a black heartless devil. Don’t waste your sympathy on him, Mr. Cary.
He took money from us quite lately to betray the silly asses of Sinn
Feiners, and now, thinking us hoodwinked, is after more money from the
Kaiser. He is of the type that would sell his own mother and buy a
mistress with the money. He’s not worth your pity. We use him and his
like for just so long as they can be useful, and then the jaws of the
trap close. By letting him take those faked Notes we have done a fine
stroke for the Navy, for the Yard, and for Bill Dawson. We have got
into close touch with four new German agents here and two more down
south. We shan’t seize them yet; just keep them hanging on and use
them. That’s the game. I am never anxious about an agent when I know
him and can keep him watched. Anxious, bless you; I love him like a
cat loves a mouse. I’ve had some spies on my string ever since the war
began; I wouldn’t have them touched or worried for the world. Their
correspondence tells me everything, and if a letter to Holland which
they haven’t written slips in sometimes it’s useful, very useful, as
useful almost as your faked Notes.’
Half an hour before the night train was due to leave for the South,
Dawson, very simply but effectively changed in appearance--for Hagan
knew by sight the real Dawson,--led Cary to the middle sleeping-coach
on the train. ‘I have had Hagan put in No. 5,’ he said, ‘and you and
I will take Nos. 4 and 6. No. 5 is an observation berth; there is one
fixed up for us on this sleeping-coach. Come in here.’ He pulled Cary
into No. 4, shut the door, and pointed to a small wooden knob set a few
inches below the luggage rack. ‘If one unscrews that knob one can see
into the next berth, No. 5. No. 6 is fitted in the same way, so that
we can rake No. 5 from both sides. But, mind you, on no account touch
those knobs until the train is moving fast and until you have switched
out the lights. If No. 5 was dark when you opened the peep-hole, a ray
of light from your side would give the show away. And unless there was
a good deal of vibration and rattle in the train you might be heard.
Now cut away to No. 6, fasten the door, and go to bed. I shall sit up
and watch, but there is nothing for you to do.’
Hagan appeared in due course, was shown into No. 5 berth, and the train
started. Cary asked himself whether he should go to bed as advised or
sit up reading. He decided to obey Dawson’s orders, but to take a look
in upon Hagan before settling down for the journey. He switched off his
lights, climbed upon the bed, and carefully unscrewed the little knob
which was like the one shown to him by Dawson. A beam of light stabbed
the darkness of his berth, and putting his eye with some difficulty
to the hole--one’s nose gets so confoundedly in the way--he saw Hagan
comfortably arranging himself for the night. The spy had no suspicion
of his watchers on both sides, for, after settling himself in bed, he
unwrapped a flat parcel, and took out a bundle of blue papers which
Cary at once recognised as the originals of his stolen Notes. Hagan
went through them--he had put his suit-case across his knees to form
a desk--and carefully made marginal jottings. Cary, who had often
tried to write in trains, could not but admire the man’s laborious
patience. He painted his letters and figures over and over again, in
order to secure distinctness, in spite of the swaying of the train, and
frequently stopped to suck the point of his pencil.
‘I suppose,’ thought Cary, ‘that Dawson yonder is just gloating over
his prey, but for my part I feel an utterly contemptible beast. Never
again will I set a trap for even the worst of my fellow-creatures.’ He
put back the knob, went to bed, and passed half the night in extreme
mental discomfort and the other half in snatching brief intervals of
sleep. It was not a pleasant journey.
Dawson did not come out of his berth at Euston until after Hagan had
left the station in a taxicab, much to Cary’s surprise, and then was
quite ready, even anxious, to remain for breakfast at the hotel.
He explained his strange conduct. ‘Two of my men,’ said he, as he
wallowed in tea and fried soles--one cannot get Dover soles in the
weary North--‘who travelled in ordinary compartments, are after Hagan
in two taxis, so that if one is delayed the other will keep touch.
Hagan’s driver also has had a police warning, so that our spy is in a
barbed-wire net. I shall hear before very long all about him.’
Cary and Dawson spent the morning at the hotel with a telephone beside
them; every few minutes the bell would ring, and a whisper of Hagan’s
movements steal over the wires into the ears of the spider Dawson. He
reported progress to Cary with ever-increasing satisfaction.
‘Hagan has applied for and been granted a passport to Holland, and
has booked a passage in the boat which leaves Harwich to-night for
the Hook. We will go with him. The other two spies, with the copies,
haven’t turned up yet, but they are all right. My men will see them
safe across into Dutch territory, and make sure that no blundering
Customs officer interferes with their papers. This time the way of
transgressors shall be very soft. As for Hagan, he is not going to
arrive.’
‘I don’t quite understand why you carry on so long with him,’ said
Cary, who, though tired, could not but feel intense interest in the
perfection of the police system and in the serene confidence of Dawson.
The Yard could, it appeared, do unto the spies precisely what Dawson
chose to direct.
‘Hagan is an American citizen,’ explained Dawson. ‘If he had been a
British subject I would have taken him at Euston--we have full evidence
of the burglary, and of the stolen papers in his suit-case. But as he
is a damned unbenevolent neutral, and the American Government is very
touchy, we must prove his intention to sell the papers to Germany. Then
we can deal with him by secret court-martial, and President Wilson can
go to blazes. The journey to Holland will prove this intention. Hagan
has been most useful to us in Ireland, and now in the North of England
and in Scotland, but he is too enterprising and too daring to be left
any longer on the string. I will draw the ends together at the Hook.’
‘I did not want to go to Holland,’ said Cary to me, when telling his
story. ‘I was utterly sick and disgusted with the whole cold-blooded
game of cat and mouse, but the police needed my evidence about the
Notes and the burglary, and did not intend to let me slip out of their
clutches. Dawson was very civil and pleasant, but I was in fact as
tightly held upon his string as was the wretched Hagan. So I went on to
Holland with that quick-change artist, and watched him come on board
the steamer at Parkeston Quay, dressed as a rather German-looking
commercial traveller, eager for war commissions upon smuggled goods.
This sounds absurd, but his get-up seemed somehow to suggest the idea.
Then I went below. Dawson always kept away from me whenever Hagan might
have seen us together.’
The passage across to Holland was free from incident; there was no
sign that we were at war, and Continental traffic was being carried
serenely on, within easy striking distance of the German submarine base
at Zeebrugge. The steamer had drawn in to the Hook beside the train,
and Hagan was approaching the gangway, suit-case in hand. The man was
on the edge of safety; once upon Dutch soil, Dawson could not have
laid hands upon him. He would have been a neutral citizen in a neutral
country, and no English warrant would run against him. But between
Hagan and the gangway suddenly interposed the tall form of the ship’s
captain; instantly the man was ringed about by officers, and before
he could say a word or move a hand he was gripped hard and led across
the deck to the steamer’s chart-house. Therein sat Dawson, the real,
undisguised Dawson, and beside him sat Richard Cary. Hagan’s face,
which two minutes earlier had been glowing with triumph and with the
anticipation of German gold beyond the dreams of avarice, went white as
chalk. He staggered and gasped as one stabbed to the heart, and dropped
into a chair. His suit-case fell from his relaxed fingers to the floor.
‘Give him a stiff brandy-and-soda,’ directed Dawson, almost kindly, and
when the victim’s colour had ebbed back a little from his overcharged
heart, and he had drunk deep of the friendly cordial, the detective put
him out of pain. The game of cat and mouse was over.
‘It is all up, Hagan,’ said the detective gently. ‘Face the music and
make the best of it, my poor friend. This is Mr. Richard Cary, and you
have not for a moment been out of our sight since you left London for
the north four days ago.’
When I had completed the writing of his story I showed the MS. to
Richard Cary, who was pleased to express a general approval. ‘Not at
all bad, Copplestone,’ said he, ‘not at all bad. You have clothed my
dry bones in real flesh and blood. But you have missed what to me is
the outstanding feature of the whole affair, that which justifies to my
mind the whole rather grubby business. Let me give you two dates. On
May 25 two copies of my faked Notes were shepherded through to Holland
and reached the Germans; on May 31 was fought the Battle of Jutland.
Can the brief space between these dates have been merely an accident?
I cannot believe it. No, I prefer to believe that in my humble way I
induced the German Fleet to issue forth and to risk an action which,
under more favourable conditions for us, would have resulted in their
utter destruction. I may be wrong, but I am happy in retaining my
faith.’
‘What became of Hagan?’ I asked, for I wished to bring the narrative to
a clean artistic finish.
‘I am not sure,’ answered Cary, ‘though I gave evidence as ordered
by the court-martial. But I rather think that I have here Hagan’s
epitaph.’ He took out his pocket-book, and drew forth a slip of paper
upon which was gummed a brief newspaper cutting. This he handed to me,
and I read as follows:
The War Office announces that a
prisoner who was charged with espionage
and recently tried by court-martial at
the Westminster Guildhall was found
guilty and sentenced to death. The
sentence was duly confirmed and carried
out yesterday morning.
_THREE GENERATIONS._
Out in the quiet paddock, with the mellow brick walls screening them
from the common life in Bushey Park, they are browsing gently through
the last days of their existence. It is not so many years since, gay
with trappings, led by a groom apiece to restrain their Hanoverian
tempers, these old cream-coloured horses drew the wonderful glass coach
through the streets of London, haughtily accepting for themselves
the acclamations of the people. At how many pageants, could they but
tell us, have they not assisted? Are they old enough to have drawn
Queen Victoria to her Diamond Jubilee, and did they drag that heavy
gun-carriage with its pathetically small burden through the mourning
streets on a Queen’s last journey? Certainly in their own estimation
they were the central figures on the chilly August day when they
at last carried King Edward to Westminster Abbey amid the joyous
thanksgiving of a whole Empire. Their reminiscences would not probably
take them very far into the present reign. It must be some little time
since the next generation callously ousted them from between the royal
shafts, stripped them once for all of their gay trappings, and set them
on a back shelf of history.
So now they browse and slumber among the buttercups, and perhaps wonder
vaguely at their unshorn and generally disordered condition, and at
their prolonged days of idleness. They know and care nothing about the
war. They are aliens who have no need to be registered, naturalised as
they have been by long generations of royal service. For it is just two
hundred years since the first George, in a spirit of arrogance which,
as a race, they appear to have assimilated, brought their ancestors
from Hanover to draw his royal coach in his adopted country.
They came with those ill-featured ladies who, according to tradition,
gave the name to the _Frog Walk_ outside the Palace walls--yes,
_outside_--and the creams had nothing to do with them. Never, in
the course of their aristocratic history, have they drawn anything
but crowned heads and their most legitimate spouses, and for this
the British nation reveres and respects them. And now these, their
descendants in the paddock, have done with streets and crowds and
uniforms--and even with sovereigns. Sometimes one old fellow will lift
his head at the sound of the children’s cries on the swings in the
Park, and wonder if he is once more being cheered by the populace,
but his dim eyes can only see the chestnuts hanging out their red and
white candles, and a crow laughs at him from the wall. By his side
his comrades, wholly unmoved, with hanging heads and slowly switching
tails, are busy cropping the sweet grass, with no thought beyond it.
Old age does sometimes, in spite of evidence to the contrary, broaden
and mellow the sympathies, and the Cream Colours, who have been above
all things exclusive, have developed a very soft spot in their hearts
for the old bay horse who shares their paddock. Possibly he, who,
whatever he has done in private life, in royal processions has never
aspired beyond princesses, knows how to keep his place. At all events,
when a sudden spurt of renewed activity will carry him at a gallant
pace across the paddock, the august Three will follow him at a feeble
canter and with anxious whinnies, until at last, finding him on the
other side, they will happily nuzzle their noses into his neck, with
every sign of equine affection, which he must accept with mingled pride
and resignation. Is he not the _enfant gâté de la maison_?
Well, their great days are over, but they could have found no more
dignified place of retirement than under the royal shadow of Hampton
Court Palace, the accepted home of retirement and dignity.
Meantime, out in the road, could they but know it, their successors on
these summer mornings are taking part in a strange, rather pathetic
mimicry of those greater pageants which have no place in war-time.
For the Cream Colours of to-day cannot be allowed to idle like their
parents. Much may yet, we hope, be expected of them, and they must
not forget the manner of that service to which alone they owe their
existence. So in the early morning, when trams are few and other
traffic is non-existent, they may be met, eight of them, stepping
proudly along, with arched necks and haughty expressions, quite unaware
that the grooms holding to their bridles are in mufti, that their
trappings are of plain wood, and that the royal coach they imagine to
be rumbling behind them resembles nothing so much as an empty jail van!
The King in the fairy tale was not better pleased with his imaginary
fine raiment than the Cream Colours with their phantom state. But
nobody troubles to undeceive them; the rooks flap cawing overhead in
pursuit of their breakfasts, and the cuckoo monotonously calling from
the Home Park is entirely absorbed in his own business. All is vanity,
and in another few years they also will be cropping buttercups, with no
higher aspiration.
For the next generation is already knocking at the door. On the further
side of the road from his forebears, a little dusky foal who will some
day be of a correct highly polished cream colour is kicking up his
heels in a paddock, a truly royal nursery with a golden floor. He is
separated even at this early age from his black and bay contemporaries,
whose lot, however, will certainly be more varied and interesting than
any which he can look for. Let us hope that he may still be in the
nursery when his sleek elders, now disappearing in their own dust along
the road, will draw their sovereign in state to return thanks for the
greatest of all victories, and the establishment of a righteous peace
throughout the world.
ROSE M. BRADLEY.
_ARMY UNIFORMS, PAST AND PRESENT._
BY THE RT. HON. SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, BT.
In the early ’seventies of last century there was staged in London
a very amusing musical comedy called _The Happy Land_, the scene
being laid in Paradise. Among the principal characters were extremely
skilful and poignant burlesques of Mr. Gladstone, Prime Minister at
the time, Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Ayrton, First
Commissioner of Works. The piece had but a short, though brilliant,
run in the metropolis; for the Lord Chamberlain ordered it off the
stage, not on the grounds of what is usually implied by immorality, but
because it brought Her Majesty’s Ministers into contempt by mordant
caricature of their features and action.[3] It is not known--to me,
at least--which of the three victims set the censorship in motion.
Certainly it was not ‘Bob’ Lowe, who was gifted with a fine strain
of humour. Probably it was done at Mr. Ayrton’s instance, he being
destitute of that saving grace, and, besides, having been more
mercilessly satirised in the play than his colleagues. He had outraged
public feeling, if not public taste, by some acts of his administration
as ædile, notably by painting grey some of the fine stone-work in the
lobbies of the Houses of Parliament. I forget the libretto of _The
Happy Land_; but this much I remember, that, whereas in the first act
the scenery of Paradise appeared glowing with rainbow radiance and
shimmering with gems, in the second act it represented the effect of
Ayrton’s régime--everything had been painted ‘government grey.’
All this was brought to mind by the change wrought upon the appearance
of the British Army after the outbreak of the South African war in
1899. By a wave of his wand or a scratch of his quill the Secretary of
State for War, Mr. St. John Brodrick (now Viscount Midleton) quenched
all gaiety of colour in the fighting dress of our troops; the historic
thin red line was to be seen no more; the glittering squadrons were
doomed to ride in raiment as sombre as the dust of their own raising;
henceforward standards and regimental colours were to be returned to
store before the troops went on active service.
Had that been all, it would have sufficed to mark a notable era in the
operations of war--a wise measure, imposed upon the Army Council by the
vast improvement in the range, trajectory, and precision of artillery
and small arms. Hitherto it had been the object of the military
authorities of all nations to make their fighting men as conspicuous as
possible, exaggerating their stature by fantastic headgear and setting
them in strong relief to every variety of natural background by means
of bright colours and pipeclay. The Brigade of Guards landed in the
Crimea without their knapsacks, which followed in another ship. The
men had to do without them for some weeks; but the cumbrous bearskin
caps were considered indispensable, and offered a fine target for the
Russian defenders of the slopes of the Alma. The hint was thrown away
upon our military authorities. It required a sharper lesson to convince
them of the cruel absurdity of figging out men for battle in a dress
that hampered the limbs and obscured the eyesight. The Guards were not
more absurdly dressed on that occasion than the rest of the British
troops. The late Sir William Flower described to me his feelings when,
as surgeon of an infantry regiment, he stepped out from a boat on the
wet sands at the mouth of the Alma, dressed in a skin-tight scarlet
coatee with swallow tails, a high collar enclosing a black stock,
close-fitting trousers tightly strapped over Wellington boots, and a
cocked hat!
Two years before that--in 1852--Colonel Luard published his _History of
the Dress of the British Soldier_. Having served as a heavy dragoon in
the Peninsula, as a light dragoon at Waterloo, as a lancer in India,
and as a staff officer both in India and at home, he had practical
experience of the variety of torment inflicted by different kinds of
uniform. He advocated many reforms in the soldier’s dress, tending
as much to increased efficiency as to comfort, and he supported his
argument by extracts from his correspondence with regimental officers.
One of these wrote--‘If an infantry soldier has to step over a drain
two feet broad, he has to put one hand to his cap to keep it on his
head, and his other to his pouch, and what becomes of his musket?’ And
this, be it remembered, was the fighting-kit; for no general in those
days ever dreamed of taking troops into action except in full review
order.
James I. was not a warlike king, but he was a pretty shrewd observer
of men and matters. He was not far wrong when he observed that plate
armour was a fine thing, for it not only protected the life of the
wearer, but hindered him from hurting anybody else! The remark might
have been applied with equal justice to the costume of British soldiers
in the Crimean campaign, except that it afforded no protection to the
wearer’s life or limb. It required nearly one hundred years of painful
experience to convince the War Office that it was cruel stupidity to
put men in the field in clothing so tight as to fetter the limbs and
compress the chest. That was the legacy of George IV. to the British
Army.
Although, to one looking back over the history of what is now the
United Kingdom, the most salient features seem to be campaigns and
battles, invasion and counter-invasion, it was not until the Civil
War that any attempt was made towards a uniform dress for any army.
It is true that both the English and Scottish Parliaments from time
to time prescribed with the utmost care the offensive and defensive
armour with which every able-bodied subject was to provide himself or
be provided by his feudal chief, and if that chief were a wealthy baron
his following would be clothed in his liveries. Thus, in describing the
famous scene at Lauder when Archibald Douglas, fifth Earl of Angus,
won his sobriquet of Bell-the-Cat, Pitscottie tells us in deliciously
quaint phrase how luckless Thomas Cochrane, newly created Earl of Mar,
rode down to the kirk where the disaffected lords were in conference,
at the head of three hundred men all dressed in his liveries of white
doublets with black bands. Cromwell was the first ruler of England
who succeeded in what several of his predecessors had failed--in
maintaining a standing army. At one time he had 80,000 men under
arms. There was a degree of uniformity in the dress of his cavalry
and infantry. It consisted mainly of buff coats, with the addition of
breast and back pieces, iron caps, and other defensive armour. But that
army was disbanded after the Restoration, and it was not until the
reign of William III. that a standing army was finally constituted,
and colonels commanding regiments, being allowed a sufficient sum for
clothing the men, were required to do so according to sealed pattern.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the British soldier’s dress was,
on the whole, both picturesque and comfortable. In cut, it conformed
pretty faithfully to the fashion prevailing in civilian attire,
though there occurred an interval when George II. inflicted upon his
Guards regiments the preposterous conical head-dress, copied from the
Prussian Guards of Frederick the Great. This disfiguring headgear did
not last very long, and gave place before the end of the century to
the three-cocked hat of the style called, I believe, Nivernois or
Kevenhüller.
The easy grace of the full-dress uniform of an officer of the Guards
towards the close of the eighteenth century is admirably shown in
Romney’s portrait of John, tenth Earl of Westmorland, now at Osterley
Park. It shows a long-skirted scarlet frock, lined with white, faced
with blue, with ruffles at the wrists, and without any ornament save
a pair of gilt epaulets of moderate size and soft material, very
different from the cumbrous, unyielding things now prescribed for
naval officers and lords-lieutenant. The frock is worn open over a
Ramillies cravat and waistcoat and breeches of white kersey. It would
be difficult to devise a dress for a soldier so well combining comfort
and dignified distinction. To one feature only can objection be taken.
The powdered and curled hair, clubbed in a pigtail, looks charming on
Romney’s canvas, but must have proved an intolerable nuisance both to
officers and men.
‘During the command of the late Duke of Kent at Gibraltar
[1802-3], when a field-day was ordered, there not being
sufficient barbers in the town to attend to all the
officers in the morning, the seniors claimed the privilege
of their rank; the juniors consequently were obliged to
have their heads dressed the night before; and to preserve
the beauty of this artistic arrangement--pomatumed,
powdered, curled and clubbed--these poor fellows were
obliged to sleep on their faces! It is said that in the
adjutant’s office of each regiment there was kept a pattern
of the correct curls, to which the barbers could refer.’[4]
The men wore tunics of a cut similar to those of the officers, but of
coarser cloth. They were buttoned up on duty, the skirts being looped
back. It was a thoroughly sensible and workmanlike dress, giving
perfect freedom to breathing and circulation, together with protection
to loins and thighs. The Chelsea pensioners wear a coat of the old
infantry pattern to this day.
With the Regency came a vicious change. The Prince Regent paid
incessant attention to dress--both to his own and that of others. He
was proud of his figure, which, indeed, was a fine one till it was
ruined by excess, and he loved to display it in closely fitting dress.
Nor was he content until he got his father’s army buttoned up to the
limit of endurance and disfigured by headgear of appalling dimensions.
The easy open collar and Ramillies tie were replaced by an upright
fence of buckram and a leather stock. It would be hardly credible,
were there not abundant evidence in the correspondence of the Horse
Guards to prove it, that while Wellington was absorbed in manœuvring
against immensely superior forces in Spain, he had to give attention
to correspondence about changes in the dress of the army, not with a
view to making it more comfortable and workmanlike, but in order to
gratify the caprice of the Prince Regent. No man ever gave less thought
to niceties of tailoring than Lord Wellington (as he was at that time).
His views are set forth in a letter to the Military Secretary who had
consulted him about the uniform to be prescribed for those regiments
of Light Dragoons which the Prince Regent had desired the Duke of York
(recently reinstated as Commander-in-Chief) to convert into Hussars.
‘FRENEDA, _6th November, 1811_.
‘... There is no subject of which I understand so little
[as military uniforms], and, abstractedly speaking, I think
it indifferent how a soldier is clothed, provided it is in
an uniform manner, and that he is forced to keep himself
clean and smart, as a soldier ought to be. But there is one
thing I deprecate, and that is any imitation of the French
in any manner. It is impossible to form an idea of the
inconvenience and injury which result from having anything
like them, either on horseback or on foot.[5] Lutyens and
his piquet were taken in June because the 3rd Hussars had
the same caps as the French _Chasseurs-à-cheval_ and some
of their Hussars, and I was near being taken on September
25 from the same cause. At a distance or in action colours
are nothing; the profile and shape of a man’s cap, and his
general appearance, are what guide us; and why should we
make our people look like the French?... I only beg that
we may be as different as possible from the French in
everything. The narrow tops of our infantry, as opposed to
their broad top caps, are a great advantage to those who
are to look at long lines of posts opposed to each other.’
Two years later, at the battle of Vitoria, the justice of Wellington’s
views about the soldier’s uniform received apt illustration.
Wellington on that day kept the Light Division and 4th Division under
his immediate command. The 3rd and 7th Divisions, under Picton and
Lord Dalhousie, were to join him in order to complete the centre of
the line, but they had difficult ground to traverse, and were late.
The Zadora flowed swift and deep in front of the French position. A
countryman having informed Wellington that the bridge of Tres Puentes
was unguarded, Kempt’s riflemen were sent forward to seize it, which
they did, and went so far up the heights on the farther side that they
were able to establish themselves in shelter of a crest well in rear
of a French advanced post. There they lay, until Wellington’s line was
completed by the arrival of ‘old Picton, riding at the head of the 3rd
Division, dressed in a blue coat and a round hat, swearing as loudly
all the way as if he wore two cocked ones.’[6] The 7th Division came up
at the same time, and while they were deploying the enemy opened fire
upon them. Kempt immediately drew his riflemen from their shelter and
took the French batteries in flank, thereby enabling the 3rd Division
to cross the bridge of Mendoza without loss. But the dark uniforms of
the Rifles deceived the British on the other side of the river into the
belief that they were French. A battery opened upon them and continued
pounding them with round shot and shrapnel till the advance of Picton’s
Division revealed the blunder.
Wellington’s warning against copying the uniforms of other nations
received little attention. After 1815, when he was in command of the
Army of Occupation in Paris, it was decided to arm four regiments
of cavalry with lances, a most effective weapon which had not been
carried by British troops since the seventeenth century. One would
have supposed that the lance might be wielded as effectively by a man
dressed as a light dragoon or a hussar as in any other rig; but the
Prince Regent hailed the innovation as an opportunity for an entirely
new costume. Consequently the 9th, 12th, 16th and 23rd Light Dragoons
were put into a Polish dress, modified in such manner as to agree with
his Royal Highness’s sartorial taste.
‘An officer of rank commanding one of the Lancer regiments
was ordered to attend the Prince Regent to fit the new
jacket on him. The tailor, with a pair of scissors, was
ordered to cut smooth every wrinkle and fine-draw the
seams. The consequence was that the coats of the private
soldiers, as well as those of the officers, were made so
tight they could hardly get into them; the freedom of
action was so restricted that the infantry with difficulty
handled their muskets, and the cavalry could scarcely do
the sword exercise.’
The cuirass had been discontinued in the British cavalry since 1794,
when it had been found most unsuitable for active service in the
Netherlands. But it was far too showy a piece of goods to escape the
Prince Regent’s attention. Accordingly the three regiments of Household
Cavalry were made to appear at his coronation in 1820 in steel
cuirasses and burnished helmets, with enormous combs of bearskin; the
latter, as Colonel Luard caustically observes, rendering it impossible
for a man to deliver the sixth cut in the sword exercise of that day.
The cuirass and helmet remain, with the unwieldy jack-boots and leather
breeches, an effective, if archaic, part of a theatrical pageant which
Londoners have learnt to love; but as the equipment of a modern soldier
the costume is ludicrously inapt and very costly. In an era when war
has become more terrible and more intensely destructive than in any
previous age, and at a time when the whole resources of the nation
are strained for the country to hold its own, it may well be asked
whether money might not be more profitably employed than in causing the
splendid men of the Household Cavalry to masquerade in such attire as
would be grotesque to imagine them wearing in modern warfare.
About the same time that the cuirass was inflicted upon the Household
Cavalry, the sentry boxes in London and at Windsor Castle had to be
increased in height in order to accommodate a new pattern of bearskin
cap which had been approved for the Foot Guards. The old pattern,
which had superseded the three-cocked hat at the end of the previous
century, was a sensible affair of reasonable dimensions; but the army
tailors, encouraged by the new King, were indefatigable in devising
extravagance in uniforms, and the bearskin was made to shoot up several
inches in height. ‘Ridicule,’ observed Colonel Luard, ‘subsides when
the eye is no longer a stranger to the object of excitement; otherwise
the little boys would run after the guardsmen when they appear in the
streets of London, and shout at the overwhelming, preposterous, hideous
bearskin caps.’ It is rumoured that the supply of the right sort of
bear is now running short. It may not be too much to hope that, when
our armies return victorious at the end of the war, the occasion may
be marked by the invention of some uniform for the Brigade of Guards
more comfortable and workmanlike than a skin-tight tunic and a grossly
exaggerated fur-cap. Londoners, laudably conservative in what they have
become used with, would be the less likely to murmur at the change,
inasmuch as they have grown accustomed to see guard-mounting performed
in forage-caps.
Among all the variety of uniforms of the British infantry, none has
undergone so little change in the last hundred and fifty years as
that of the Highland regiments. Well that it is so, for there is
none other that so admirably sets off a soldier-like figure, none
that stirs so much enthusiasm among the spectators at a field-day.
So fully has this been recognised that a society has recently been
formed to protest against and endeavour to remedy what is deemed the
unmerited neglect of Lowland Scottish regiments, whereof the records
certainly are no whit inferior in lustre to those of the Highland
corps. It is complained that the Lowland regiments are always kept in
the background; that Edinburgh, though a Lowland city, is invariably
garrisoned by a Highland regiment, and that facilities for recruiting
in Edinburgh and Glasgow are accorded to Highland regiments and refused
to Lowland regiments. Much of this is unfortunately true; but the real
reason for it exists in the greater popularity of the Highland uniform.
No amount of protest or persuasion will prevail to make the general
public take the same interest in a trousered regiment as in a kilted
one. Might not the surest remedy be to put the Lowland regiments also
into kilts? Purists will object that Lowlanders have no business to
don the philabeg; but, for that matter, neither have they any business
to wear tartan trews, _which all the Lowland regiments do at the
present time, besides being furnished with kilted pipers_.[7] Then
all Scottish regiments would be on an equal footing, and no material
would remain for the present irritation. It is difficult to understand,
impossible to explain, the emotion--involuntary, as all true emotion
must be--roused, even in Saisneach breasts, by the sight of a Highland
regiment marching to the skirl of the pipes. In order to illustrate it,
let me lapse for a moment into the first person singular.
During Queen Victoria’s memorable progress through her metropolis in
the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, I was seated with two ladies of my family
in the stand set up for members of Parliament in Palace Yard. The
long hours of waiting on that shining summer forenoon were enlivened
by the march of many regiments, headed by their bands, passing to
their appointed places in the route. It was a shifting pageant of
stirring sight and sound. Presently, over Westminster Bridge came the
Seaforth Highlanders stepping to the lively strains of _The Muckin’ o’
Geordie’s Byre_.[8] The effect was indescribable--the swing of kilts
and sporrans, the dark waving plumes, the gallant but simple melody,
thrilled all spectators. As for myself, I felt a big lump in my throat,
and I was ashamed to feel something trickle down both cheeks. Yet am
I a Lowland Scot, if anybody is; so far as I am aware, I can lay no
claim to any strain of Celtic blood. If such an one was so deeply moved
by the passing of a single Highland regiment, why should not all the
Scottish regiments be clothed in the romantic garb of Old Gaul, with
the desirable result of rendering the Lowland corps as well-beloved
by the people as the Highlanders? If this were carried out, it would
be esteemed a privilege by the former and a compliment by the latter.
Objection on the score of economy would be raised because of the cost
of the full-dress feather-bonnet, which, though picturesque, is but a
tailor’s parody of the bonnet of the _duine uasail_. Let the Lowland
regiments be content, then, with the Glengarry. Nobody who has seen
a battalion of the London Scottish marching through Pall Mall, and
listened to the comments of those who crowd to the club windows at
the sound of the pibroch, will tell you that that fine corps would
gain anything in soldierly appearance by wearing feather-bonnets.
That head-dress was condemned in 1882, but in deference to Queen
Victoria’s wishes it was restored. Its abolition had previously been
hotly challenged in the House of Commons by certain perfervid Scots,
one of whom volunteered a quaint explanation to an honourable member
who had ventured to express some doubt about ostrich feathers being
an appropriate ornament for a Scottish soldier. He gravely assured
the House that the costume had its origin in Sir Ralph Abercromby’s
Egyptian campaign in 1801, when the Highland soldiers picked up ostrich
feathers in the desert and stuck them in their bonnets as a protection
from the sun!
The fact is that the feather-bonnet, and all other exaggerated and
expensive head-dresses, should be as resolutely relegated to limbo as
the hideous masks worn by the fighting men of Old Japan. Both were
designed to overawe the enemy; but, as modern fighting is done in
forage-caps, that naïve purpose cannot be carried into effect, and the
object should be to provide such clothing as will best enable a man to
keep himself, in the Duke of Wellington’s words, ‘clean and smart, as a
soldier ought to be.’ And no headgear is smarter, none more easily kept
clean, than the Glengarry bonnet.
While it is hardly possible to imagine any dress better calculated
to impede a soldier’s movements than the uniforms inflicted upon all
arms in the service during the early years of the nineteenth century,
one should not overlook the relief that was ordained in a detail that
was a source of constant unnecessary trouble to the soldier. Clubbed
pigtails had been transmitted as an irksome legacy from Marlborough’s
army, until in 1808 the Horse Guards decreed their abolition. When Sir
Arthur Wellesley landed in Mondego Bay on August 1-5 in that year, one
of his first orders was that these senseless, dirty appendages were
to be cut off. Never, one may believe, was an order more cheerfully
obeyed. A counter-order was issued shortly after from the Horse Guards,
requiring the retention of pigtails, but it was beyond the power of man
to comply with it. It was easy to cut off pigtails, but they could not
be replaced; and now the only vestige of a barbarous fashion in the
army remains in the bow of black ribbon worn by the Welsh Fusiliers at
the back of the collar of the tunic.
Unfortunately, the irrational fashion of tight clothing for the army
instituted by the Prince Regent endures to this day. It is true that
a sensible field-dress of khaki was devised and worn during the South
African War, and is now the service dress of the army; but the full
dress for officers and the ‘walking-out’ uniform for men is still
cut and fitted on the old excruciating lines. I think it took three
weeks to fit a young friend of mine, joining a battalion of Guards a
few years ago, before the adjutant of that _corps d’élite_ passed the
tunic as satisfactory. Every crease and wrinkle had to be obliterated,
at such cost to freedom of limbs and lungs as may be imagined. It may
not be an extravagant hope that, when our army returns once more to
a peace footing, the full dress may be designed with more regard to
health and comfort than hitherto. Our eyes have grown accustomed during
the present war to seeing soldiers in a costume, far from beautiful,
indeed, but easy and respectable. There is no reason why a scarlet coat
should be less comfortable than a dust-coloured one, and it will be a
sad thing if the historic red of the English infantry is not preserved
for full dress. But even if it were not, the khaki uniform might be
rendered very becoming by the addition of a little modest ornament,
especially by the restoration of the old regimental facings. These
would not make troops one whit more conspicuous in the field; on the
contrary, it is a commonplace of optics that parti-coloured objects are
less easily detected in a landscape than those of one uniform colour.
One desirable result of making uniform more comfortable wear might be
expected to follow; officers might not be so scrupulous to exchange
it for mufti the moment they are released from duty. Alone among the
nationalities of Europe has the British officer hitherto treated his
uniform as if it were something to be ashamed of in private life. It is
an unseemly, even an unhandsome practice, seeing that non-commissioned
officers and privates are not allowed to disport themselves in what
they call ‘private clothes.’ Nor was it the custom among officers in
the eighteenth century, when uniform was as easy and becoming as any
other dress. The usual dress of an officer, even when on leave, was
then his undress uniform, just as it is now in Continental armies.
The change in the British Army was the direct outcome of the Prince
Regent’s tyranny in buttoning up soldiers to the throat in clothes
which it was a torment to wear.
It must be owned that the Duke of Wellington was in large measure
responsible, inasmuch as he set the example of preferring easy clothes
to uneasy ones. A plain blue frock opening at the throat to a white
cravat was his invariable dress throughout his campaigns. He had for
his own wear a cocked hat one third the size of the huge one prescribed
for general officers. There was a famous occasion in 1814, after the
restoration of Louis XVIII., when the King and the Royal Princes, with
a brilliant suite, attended a state performance in the Odéon Theatre.
The house was ablaze with uniforms of many nations and the gay dresses
of ladies of the Court. In a box immediately opposite the royal one
sat the Duke--in plain clothes! ‘The pride that apes humility’? Not a
bit. _Le vainqueur des vainqueurs_ could scarcely be suspected of that.
Simply, as he had to sit through a long performance, he chose to do so
in clothes that enabled him to sit in comfort.
Much praiseworthy attention is now given to the equipment and clothing
of British troops serving in hot climates, but it was otherwise
throughout most of the nineteenth century, and it is incalculable
how much suffering, disease, and death was caused by neglect of any
such provision. When Colonel Luard was preparing his book in 1850-52
he received letters from many officers calling his attention to this
matter. One of these writes:
‘I shall be very glad if you dedicate a portion of your
work to the dress of our soldiers in the colonies.... I
have myself seen the Spanish, French, and Danish troops in
the West Indies much more healthy than our own, from great
attention to their comfort in their dress.... The whole
body of civilians in the tropics appear in loose white
jackets and trousers and a skull-cap ... the shakoes and
red coats of our troops were not altered in our West India
colonies.’
* * * * *
A cavalry officer remarks: ‘I hope you will dwell on the madness of
our soldiers wearing leather caps under a tropical sun’; while another
observes that ‘a brass helmet was not found serviceable in Africa by
the 7th Dragoon Guards when that regiment was at the Cape.’
Our troops suffered horribly during the first Kaffir war, 1846-48, from
being clothed exactly as they had been at home--leather stocks, tight
coatees, heavy shakoes, and all the rest of it. Some consideration was
shown for the soldier in the second Kaffir war, 1851-52. Captain King,
of the 74th Highlanders, describes how his regiment landed at Cape Town
(after a voyage from England of two months!) wearing their ordinary
clothing, and it was not until they had marched far into the interior
that ‘our bonnets and plaids were replaced by a costume more suitable
for the bush--viz., a short dark canvas blouse; in addition to which
feldt-schoen and lighter pouches, made of untanned leather, were issued
to the men, and broad leather peaks affixed to their forage-caps.’[9]
Captain King’s narrative is illustrated by lithographs from his own
excellent drawings, which show his men, heavily accoutred with pack and
pouch, and with no protection against the sun except the aforesaid peak
to the forage-cap, severely handicapped in fighting nearly naked blacks
armed with rifles. No wonder the 74th lost heavily, their commander,
Colonel Fordyce, falling at their head in a bush fight, together with
some of his best officers.
It is not only in matters of dress and equipment that we have learnt
consideration for our troops on foreign service. The splendid
organisation of the Royal Army Medical Corps has been severely tested
in coping with the requirements of such a force as it was never
contemplated Great Britain would or could put in the field; but the
test has been nobly met; the latest discoveries in science have been
employed to avert disease and mortality from wounds, thereby saving
soldiers and their families and friends from an incalculable amount of
misery. The Transport Service has not only met the extraordinary demand
upon its resources in the conveyance of necessary supplies--food,
munitions, &c.--but has proved equal to the punctual deliverance of
the vast stores of comforts and even luxuries consigned from voluntary
sources at home.
Among the said luxuries is one whereon the Iron Duke would have turned
no favouring eye. The tobacco which has been supplied to our troops at
the front--aye, and in hospital at home--must amount to a prodigious
figure. When the Duke was Commander-in-Chief in 1845 he issued the
following counterblast:
‘G.O. No. 577.--The Commander-in-Chief has been informed
that the practice of smoking, by the use of pipes, cigars
and cheroots, has become prevalent among the Officers
of the Army, which is not only in itself a species of
intoxication occasioned by the fumes of tobacco, but,
undoubtedly, occasions drinking and tippling by those who
acquire the habit; and he intreats the Officers commanding
Regiments to prevent smoking in the Mess Rooms of their
several Regiments, and in the adjoining apartments, and to
discourage the practice among the Officers of Junior Rank
in their Regiments.’
There was no Press Censor in those days, and _Punch_, which was then
a vigorous stripling in its fourth year, was allowed to make merry
over this fulmination, declaring that officers of the Army were
greatly perturbed, ‘dreading the possibility of being thrown upon
their conversational resources, which must have a most dreary effect.’
Tobacconists drove a brisk trade in pipe-stoppers carved in the
likeness of the Duke’s head. These might now be a fitting object of
pursuit on the part of collectors.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] The piece continued to be given in the provinces, where
the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship does not take effect.
[4] _A History of the Dress of the British Soldier_, by
Lieut.-Col. John Luard, 1852, p. 99.
[5] Of course because the French were the enemy in that
campaign.
[6] Kincaid’s _Adventures in the Rifle Brigade_, 2nd
edition, 1838, p. 222.
[7] See report of meeting of the Lowland Scots Society,
held in Edinburgh on November 25, 1915.
[8] An old air, subsequently set to the song _My Tocher’s
the Jewel_.
[9] _Campaigning in Kaffirland_, by Capt. W. R. King, 1853,
p. 27.
_THE NEW UBIQUE: SPIT AND POLISH._
BY JEFFERY E. JEFFERY.
‘Per_son_ally myself,’ said the Child, tilting back his chair until his
head touched the wall behind him, and stretching out a lazy arm towards
the cigarette-box--‘per_son_ally myself, I’ve enjoyed this trip no
end--haven’t you?’
‘I have,’ I answered; ‘so much so, Child, that the thought of going
back to gun-pits and trenches and O.P.s again fills me with gloom.’
It was our last night in a most comfortable billet near ----, where, on
and off, we had spent rather more than a month of ease: on the morrow
we were going into the line again. The trip to which the Child was
referring, however, was an eight days’ course at a place vaguely known
as ‘the --th Army Mobile Artillery Training School,’ from which our
battery had but lately returned.
The circumstances were these. When, five weeks ago, the division moved
(for the _n_th time!) to a different part of the line, it transpired
that three batteries would be ‘out at rest,’ as there would be no
room for them in action. It also so chanced that it was our colonel’s
turn to be left without a ‘group’[10] to command. This being so, he
suggested to higher authorities that the three batteries ‘out’ should
be those of his own brigade, in order that he might have a chance
‘to tidy them up a bit,’ as he phrased it. Thus it was that we found
ourselves, as I have said, in extremely comfortable billets--places,
I mean, where they have sheets on the beds and china jugs and gas and
drains--with every prospect of a pleasant loaf. But in this we were
somewhat sanguine.
The colonel’s idea in having us ‘out’ for a while was not so much to
rest us as to give us a variation of work. Being essentially a thorough
man, he started--or rather ordered me to start--at the very beginning.
The gunners paraded daily for marching drill, physical exercises, and
‘elementary standing gun drill by numbers.’ N.C.O.s and drivers were
taken out and given hours of riding drill under the supervision of
subalterns bursting with knowledge crammed up from the book the night
before and under the personal direction of a brazen-voiced sergeant
who, having passed through the ‘riding troop’ at Woolwich in his
youth, knew his business. The strangest sight of all was the class
of signallers--men who had spent months in the fœtid atmosphere of
cellars and dug-outs, or creeping along telephone wires in ‘unhealthy’
spots--now waving flags at a word of command and going solemnly through
the Morse alphabet letter by letter. Of the whole community this was
perhaps the most scandalised portion. But in a few days, when everybody
(not excluding myself and the other officers) had discovered how much
had been forgotten during our long spell in action, a great spirit of
emulation began to be displayed. Subsections vied with one another to
produce the smartest gun detachment, the sleekest horses, the best
turned-out ride, the cleanest harness, guns, and wagons.
The colonel, after the manner of his kind, came at the end of a week
or so to inspect things. He is not the sort of man upon whom one can
easily impose. A dozen of the shiniest saddles or bits in the battery
placed so as to catch the light (and the eye) near the doorway of the
harness-room do not necessarily satisfy him: nor is he content with
the mere general and symmetrical effect of rows of superficially clean
breast-collars, traces, and breechings. On the contrary, he is quite
prepared to spend an hour or more over his inspection, examining every
set of harness in minute detail, even down to the backs of the buckle
tongues, the inside of the double-folded breast collars, and the
oft-neglected underside of saddle flaps. It is the same thing with the
guns and wagons. Burnished breech-rings and polished brasswork look
very nice, and he approves of them, but he does not on that account
omit to look closely at every oil-hole or to check the lists of ‘small
stores’ and ‘spare parts.’
For the next week or so we were kept very busy on ‘the many small
points which required attention,’ to quote the colonel’s phrase.
Nevertheless, as a variation from the monotony of siege warfare, the
time was regarded by most of us as a holiday. Many things combined to
enhance our pleasure. The sun shone and the country became gorgeously
green again; the horses began to get their summer coats and to lose
their unkempt winter’s appearance; there was a fair-sized town near at
hand, and passes to visit it were freely granted to N.C.O.s and men;
at the back of the officers’ billet was a garden with real flower-beds
in it and a bit of lawn on which one could have tea. Occasionally we
could hear the distant muttering of the guns, and at night we could see
the ‘flares’ darting up from the black horizon--just to remind us, I
suppose, that the war was only in the next parish....
But it was not to be supposed that a man of such energy as our
colonel would be content just to ride round daily and watch three of
his batteries doing rides and gun drill. It occurred to him at once
that this was the time to practise the legitimate business--that is,
open, moving warfare. Wherefore he made representations to various
quite superior authorities. In three days, by dint of considerable
personal exertion, he had secured the following concessions: two large
tracts of ground suitable for driving drill and battery manœuvre,
good billets, an area of some six square miles (part of the --th Army
Training area) for the purpose of tactical schemes, the appointment of
himself as commandant of the ‘school,’ a Ford ambulance for his private
use, three motor lorries for the supply of the units under training,
and a magnificent château for his own headquarters. And all this he
accomplished without causing any serious friction between the various
‘offices’ and departments concerned--no mean feat.
Each course was to last eight days, and there were to be four
batteries, taken from different divisions, undergoing it
simultaneously. It fell to us to go with the second batch, and we
spent a strenuous week of preparation: it was four months since we
had done any work ‘in the open,’ and we knew, inwardly, that we were
distinctly rusty. We packed up, and at full war strength, transport,
spare horses and all, we marched our sixteen miles to the selected
area. At the half-way halt we met the commander of a battery of our own
brigade returning. He stopped to pass the time of day and volunteered
the information that he was going on leave that night. ‘And, by Jove!’
he added significantly, ‘I deserve a bit of rest. Réveillé at 4 A.M.
every morning, out all day wet or fine, gun drill at every odd moment,
schemes, tactical exercises, everybody at high pressure all the time.
The colonel’s fairly in his element, revels in it, and “strafes”
everybody indiscriminately. But it’s done us all a world of good
though. Cheeriho! wish you luck.’ And he rode on, leaving us rather
flabbergasted.
We discovered quite early (on the following morning about dawn, to be
precise) that there had been no exaggeration. We began with elementary
driving drill, and we did four and a half hours of it straight on end,
except for occasional ten-minute halts to rest the astonished teams. It
was wonderful how much we had forgotten and yet how much came back to
us after the first hour or so.
‘I want all your officers to drill the battery in turn,’ said the
colonel. ‘I shall just ride round and correct mistakes.’
He did--with an energy, a power of observation, and a command of
language which I have seldom seen or heard surpassed. But the ultimate
result by mid-day, when all the officers and N.C.O.s were hoarse, the
teams sweating and the carriages caked in oily dust--the ultimate
result was, as the Child politely says, ‘not too stinkin’ awful.’ And
it had been good to hear once again the rattle and bump of the guns and
wagons over hard ground, the jingle of harness and the thud of many
hoofs; good to see the teams swing round together as they wheeled into
line or column at a spanking trot; good above all to remember that
_this_ was our job and that the months spent in concrete gun-pits and
double-bricked O.P.s were but a lengthy prelude to our resumption of
it--some day.
In the evening, when the day’s work was over and ‘stables’ finished, we
left the tired horses picking over the remains of their hay and walked
down the _pavé_ village street, Angelo and I, to look at the church.
Angelo is my eldest but not, as it so happens, my senior subaltern.
Before the war he was a budding architect, with a taste for painting:
hence the nickname, coined by the Child in one of his more erudite
moods.
The church at L---- is very fine. Its square tower is thirteenth
century, its interior is pure Gothic, and its vaulted roof a marvel.
For its size the building is well-nigh perfect. We spent some time
examining the nave and chancel--Angelo, his professional as well as
his artistic enthusiasm aroused, explaining technicalities to me and
making me envious of his knowledge. It was with regret that we turned
away at last, for in spite of the tattered colours of some French
regiment which hung on the north side of the chancel, we had forgotten
the war in the quiet peacefulness of that exquisite interior. But we
were quickly reminded. At the end of the church, kneeling on one of
the rough chairs, was an old peasant woman: her head was bowed, and
the beads dropped slowly through her twisted fingers. As we crept
down the aisle she raised her eyes--not to look at us, for I think
she was unconscious of our presence--but to gaze earnestly at the
altar. Her lips moved in prayer, but no tear damped her yellow cheek.
And, passing out into the sunlight again, I wondered for whom she was
praying--husband, brother, sons?--whether, still hoping, she prayed for
the living, or, faithfully, for the souls of those lost to her. They
are brave, the peasant women of France....
Madame our hostess, besides being one of the fattest, was also one of
the most agreeable ladies it has ever been our lot to be billeted upon.
Before we had been in her house ten minutes she had given us (at an
amazing speed) the following information:
Her only remaining son had been wounded and was now a prisoner in
Germany.
She had played hostess continuously since August 1914 to every kind of
soldier, including French motor-bus drivers, Indian chiefs (_sic_), and
generals.
English officers arriving after the battle of Loos slept in her hall
for twenty-four hours, woke to have a bath and to eat an omelette, and
then slept the clock round again.
She remembered 1870, in which war her husband had fought.
The Boches were barbarians, but they would never advance now, though at
one time they had been within a few kilometres of her house.
The lettuce and cabbages in her garden were at our disposal.
She took an enormous interest in the Infant, who is even younger than
the Child and is our latest acquisition.
‘Regardez donc le petit, comme il est fatigué!’ she exclaimed to me in
the tones of an anxious mother--and then added in an excited whisper,
‘A-t-il vu les Boches, ce petit sous-lieutenant?’
When I assured her not only that he had seen them, but had fired his
guns at them, she was delighted and declared that he could not be more
than sixteen. But here the Infant, considering that the conversation
was becoming personal, intervened, and the old lady left us to our
dinner.
Towards the end of our week we packed up essentials and marched out
to bivouac two nights and fight a two days’ running battle--directed,
of course, by our indefatigable colonel. After the dead flat ugliness
where we had been in action all the winter and early spring it was a
delight to find ourselves in this spacious undulating country, with
its trees and church spires and red-tiled villages. We fought all day
against an imaginary foe, made innumerable mistakes, all forcibly
pointed out by the colonel (who rode both his horses to a standstill
in endeavouring to direct operations and at the same time watch the
procedure of four widely separated batteries); our imaginary infantry
captured ridge after ridge, and we advanced from position to position
‘in close support,’ until finally, the rout of the foe being complete,
we moved to our appointed bivouacs.
In peace time it would have been regarded as a quite ordinary day,
boring because of its resemblance to so many others. Now it was
different. True, it was make-believe from start to finish, without
even blank cartridge to give the vaguest hint of reality. But there
was this: at the back of all our minds was the knowledge that this
was a preparation--possibly our last preparation--not for something
in the indefinite future (as in peace time), but for an occasion that
assuredly _is_ coming, perhaps in a few months, perhaps even in a few
weeks. The colonel spoke truly when, at his first conference, he said:
‘During these schemes you must all of you force yourselves to imagine
that there is a real enemy opposed to you. The Boche is no fool:
he’s got guns, and he knows how to use them. If you show up on crest
lines with a whole battery staff at your heels, he’ll have the place
“registered,” and he’ll smash your show to bits before you ever get
your guns into action at all. _Think_ where he is likely to be, _think_
what he’s likely to be doing, don’t expose yourselves unless you must,
and above all, _get a move on_.’
It was a delightful bivouac. We were on the sheltered side of a little
hill, looking south into a wooded valley. Nightingales sang to us as we
lay smoking on our valises after a picnic dinner and stared dreamily at
the stars above us.
‘Jolly, isn’t it?’ said the Child, ‘but I s’pose we wouldn’t be feeling
quite so comfy if it was the real business.’
‘Don’t,’ said Angelo quietly. ‘I was pretending to myself that we were
just a merry camping party, here for pleasure only. I’d forgotten the
war.’
But I had not. I was thinking of the last time I had
bivouacked--amongst the corn sheaves of a harvest that was never
gathered, side by side with friends who were soon to fall, on the night
before the first day of Mons, nearly two years ago.
The following day was more or less a repetition of the first, except
that we made fewer mistakes and ‘dropped into action’ with more style
and finish. We were now becoming fully aware of the almost-forgotten
fact that a field battery is designed to be a mobile unit, and we
were just beginning to take shape as such when our time was over. A
day’s rest for the horses and then we returned to our comfortable
rest billets. It had been a strenuous week, but I think everyone had
thoroughly enjoyed it....
We have had two days in which to ‘clean up,’ and now to-morrow we are
to relieve another battery and take our place in the line again. Our
holiday is definitely over. It will take a little time to settle down
to the old conditions: our week’s practice of open warfare has spoilt
us for this other kind. We who have climbed hills and looked over
miles of rolling country will find an increased ugliness in our old
flat surroundings. It will seem ludicrous to put our guns into pits
again--the guns that we have seen bounding over rough ground behind the
straining teams. To be cooped up in a brick O.P. staring at a strip
of desolation will be odious after our bivouacs under the stars and
our dashes into action under a blazing sun. Worst of all, perhaps, is
the thought that the battery will be split up again into ‘gun line’
and ‘wagon line,’ with three miles or more separating its two halves,
instead of its being, as it has been all these weeks, one complete
cohesive unit. But what must be, must be; and it is absurd to grumble.
Moreover--the end is not yet.
* * * * *
‘Let’s toss up for who takes first turn at the O.P. when the relief is
completed,’ suggested the Child.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said, remembering something suddenly. ‘Do you know
what to-day is?’
‘Friday,’ he volunteered, ‘and to-morrow ought to be a half-holiday,
but it won’t be, ’cos we’re going into action.’
I passed the port round again. ‘It’s only a fortnight since we
celebrated the battery’s first birthday,’ I said, ‘but to-day the Royal
Regiment of Artillery is two hundred years old. Let’s drink its health.’
And we did.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] A certain number of batteries.
_THE REHABILITATION OF PRIVATE HAGAN._
BY ‘MAJOR, R.A.M.C.’
Private Timothy Hagan, of ‘D’ Company, extracted a box of matches from
his pocket, mechanically lighted a seasoned briar pipe, and sought
inspiration from the log roof of the dugout.
The last of the enemy’s usual evening salvo of shells screamed above
the tree-tops and burst harmlessly in a stubble field. Hagan did not
move. The announcement that the evening meal was ready equally failed
to interest him.
The dugout, efficiently constructed of sand-bags, logs, and earth, was
just large enough for the accommodation of two improvised beds and
blankets. Private Sawyer, the normal occupant of the other half, was
at the moment busy in the kitchen outside beneath the trees. It was
seclusion that Hagan courted, not protection.
Presently, Sawyer, his face smoke-begrimed and heated, thrust his head
over a sand-bag parapet.
‘Tea ready, cooky,’ he cried.
‘Phwat’s the good ov thay?’ grunted Hagan, dropping his pipe
listlessly. ‘Fed up!’
Sawyer’s eyes dilated in speechless surprise. His rapid scrutiny of his
pal’s downcast features failed to help.
‘’Ullo, what’s wrong, hey?’ he asked, wiping his face with the back of
his hand and dropping into the trench. ‘Can’t yer high-class stomach
relish bully-beef no more? What’s wrong with it?’
Without answering in words Timothy slipped his hand into the breast
pocket of his tunic, produced a much-thumbed envelope, and slowly
unfolded a letter. The sight of the irregular writing seemed to have
an immediate tonic effect upon his demeanour. His eyes suddenly became
suffused with red-blood anger. (He had learned the habit in more than
one barbed-wire scrimmage against the enemy.) Clenching his fists, he
cursed beneath his breath, thoughtfully, with intent.
‘H’m!’ grunted Sawyer sympathetically.
‘There’s a blighter at home,’ stammered Hagan, ‘phwat is afeared to do
his bit out here’--he hesitated as if to swallow pent-up gorge--‘of the
name of O’Shea--a damned thaivin’ grocer. The letter says as how he’s
afther walking out wid Kitty Murphy, as is promised to mesilf.’
‘Ugh, a woman is it?’ breathed Sawyer.
‘And me not able to get me hands on him,’ groaned Hagan. ‘’Tis
perishin’ hard.’
The sharp explosions of anti-aircraft shells in rapid succession
overhead caused Sawyer to glance upwards. Shading his eyes with
his hand, he shook his head in disappointment at the marksmanship
displayed, and slipped back again into a sitting posture.
‘What abhart leave ’ome?’ he inquired. ‘The captain says as ’ow each of
us is to ’ave a turn--in doo course.’
‘Bah!’ ejaculated Hagan contemptuously. ‘We all knows phwat in doo
course mains.’ Meditatively refolding his letter, he consigned it
again to its inner pocket. ‘There ain’t no proper foighting now
naither--nothin’ but scrappin’ phwat doesn’t even kape the blood wharm
in yez veins.’ Striking a match on the heel of his boot, he stared into
space and forgot to use it. ‘I be afther thinkin’, Jock, it is now that
I could be sphared, or not at all.’
‘Wot’s wimmin to you now, anyway? ’Tis different with the married
blokes,’ murmured Sawyer. ‘Won’t we both be killed in doo course?’
‘We will that,’ agreed Hagan. ‘But, all the same, I could not lie happy
loike widout I be afther settlin’ first wid the grocer.’
For some seconds Sawyer did not speak. In the cool calm of the autumn
evening there arose before him the memory of a dozen little wayside
cemeteries marked by stereotyped plain wooden crosses--the British
soldier’s humble badge of honour won. With a whimsical smile upon his
lips he wondered vaguely where his own resting-place would lie.
‘Ye see, Jock,’ persisted Hagan, ‘’tisn’t as if I was much wanted here
just now.’
Sawyer, turning suddenly, stared hard at his friend’s bronzed
countenance, noted the stern-set jaw, and ceased sucking his pipe.
He had learned to read Tim Hagan’s moods with the accuracy of much
practice in the course of many devious wanderings.
‘Humph! Wot’s the bloomin’ plan of campaign?’ he demanded. ‘Sneakin’
be’ind mud’eaps, or fightin’ in the open?’
Hagan mechanically refilled his pipe and rammed down the tobacco with
mature deliberation. An indefinite hum of voices near the company
cooking-pots and the sharp bark of a French 75-gun in the near distance
accentuated the seclusion of the dugout. A dull crimson glow of sunset
irradiated a cloudless skyline. To the rear of the wood the lowing of
a cow sounded strangely out of place. On the left, cutting the winding
line of trenches, lay the long, straight, deserted, _pavé_ road leading
to the German lines. The scene, through many days of comparative
stagnation, had grown contemptuously familiar.
‘I’m sick,’ said Hagan, ‘to-morrow morning as iver is.’
Sawyer, gurgling in a characteristic manner meant to denote mirth,
shook his head.
‘Sick is it?’ he commented. ‘Wot’s the complaint, matey? Some ’as fits;
others injures their trigger fingers; some ’as lost their glasses and
carn’t see nothink; some breaks their false teeth and gets shockin’
pains from the hard biscuits; some ’as pains in the kidneys; some ’as
a narsty corph. ’Tain’t the season for corphs.’ Rubbing his nose with
the back of a begrimed finger, he relapsed into thought. ‘Some ’as a
buzzin’ in the ’ead wot nothink can cure. Some’--looking serious, he
suddenly ended in a grunt--‘’Tain’t good enough, Tim, me lad, even for
the pleasure of punchin’ the ’ead of a stinkin’ grocer. You see, if
you only get a few days in ’orspital, back you come again. If you’re
took serious, ’ome you goes and stays there for a long time and misses
everythink ’ere.’ Gripping Hagan’s arm with highly strung fingers, he
leaned nearer. ‘You ain’t goin’ to schrimshank at ’ome if a big push
comes, old pal, are you?’
Hagan’s jaw clenched and his lips moved speechlessly. Then once more he
drew the letter from his pocket and handed it to his friend.
‘Read that!’ he said. ‘I’m goin’ home.’
Sawyer’s face assumed a sphinx-like gravity. He knew the proverbial
strength of obstinacy, also the amount of that commodity possessed by
Tim Hagan. He smoothed out the paper and sniffed violently. A faint
perfume of cheap scent permeated the immediate atmosphere. With a
grunt, he proceeded to master the contents of the epistle. So slowly
did he progress, however, that presently even Hagan began to show signs
of impatience. Sawyer was, in truth, merely gaining time for thought.
‘If you’re caught out malingerin’ on active service, Tim,’ he whispered
at length, ‘it won’t be only seven days “confined to barracks” you will
be gettin’ off with.’
With eyes bent upon the crimson skyline, Hagan sighed wearily.
‘’Tis goin’ home I be, Jock,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll be afther marryin’
Kitty Murphy, and thin me sickness will all go and back it is I’ll
come.’
With a groan of despair Sawyer crawled to his feet and, without another
word, walked off in the direction of a ruined château. He knew there
was no immediate urgency. For ordinary cases of illness the ambulance
wagon would not arrive until the morning. He, therefore, still had all
night in which to formulate a plan of operations. It was, of course,
open to him to drop a hint to the R.A.M.C. orderly, but that would have
to be a _dernier ressort_ indeed.
Left to himself, Hagan brooded more sombrely than before. The
regulations regarding reporting sick were perfectly familiar to him.
For a serious case the medical officer could be summoned within a few
minutes. The Field Ambulance advanced dressing-station, located in a
school-house in the nearest village, was not more than a mile away.
Weighing the matter in all its visible points, he suddenly decided that
the rôle of an emergency case would better fit his purpose than that of
the ordinary sick soldier reporting at the sealed-pattern hour.
To determine was to act. Smearing the perspiration of undue thought
from his forehead, he buttoned his tunic, looked hastily about
the interstices of the sand-bags of the dugout for small valued
possessions, and slipped out beneath the shelter of the trees.
The area lying between the wood and the village where the Field
Ambulance had located its post was alive with troops. The pavé of the
road, upheaved by continuous traffic and an occasional shell, was not
a healthy place for evening exercise, but there was no order against
it. The danger of being shot during the journey had long become a
negligible quantity. A church tower, shell-riddled and tottering, was
the landmark. Behind it Hagan knew he should find the red-cross flag
hanging limply from its pole.
Women, with a horse and cart gathering the wheat in a field on his
left, glanced up with pleasant smile of greeting as he passed. The
orderlies filling a regimental water-cart at the village pump took no
notice of him whatever. Presently, reaching the shadows of the church,
he began to walk slower, then halted. He felt as if he needed a moment
in which to pull himself together. So far in his life his histrionic
sense had never been tested. It is notorious that even experienced
actors occasionally suffer from stage fright.
A couple of R.A.M.C. orderlies, leaning against the door-post beneath
the red-cross flag, presently noticed a soldier staggering towards
them and blindly clutching at the empty air. In normal times their
unanimous diagnosis woud have been ‘beer.’ They knew, however, that in
the firing line such could not be.
Hagan, squinting between half-closed eyelashes, staggered another ten
yards, embraced one of the orderlies round the neck, slid limply to the
ground, and, breathing heavily, lay quite still.
In a moment a stretcher was at hand; within a minute the patient was
inside the building. There were only half a dozen other men to share it
with him, as the evening evacuation of sick and wounded to the Clearing
Hospital had already taken place.
‘What’s wrong, matey?’ questioned one of the orderlies, holding a
pannikin of soup to the patient’s lips. ‘Here, drink this. Wake up! Can
you hear me?’
With a shudder Hagan opened his eyes, and, half-rising to his feet,
glared about him. Rolls of wool and bandages, trays of surgical
instruments, splints, buckets, and basins surrounded him upon all sides.
‘Ah--the hospital!’ he muttered. ‘I remimber now. It is afther faintin’
I be.’
‘H’m--lie down!’ advised the orderly, pushing him back on the
stretcher. ‘I will call the medical officer. Perhaps he’ll give you a
tot of brandy.’
‘Begob, and I’m all roight, me bhoy,’ asserted Hagan, with well-assumed
eagerness to depart. ‘Give me only foive--or maybe tin--minutes’ rest
and a sip av whater.’
The orderly gave the water, but, none the less, called his officer.
Meanwhile Hagan, with shut eyes, summoned to his aid all medical
knowledge, real and spurious, that had ever crossed his path of
life. The rôle he had assigned to himself was extremely difficult.
Whatever else might be imaginary, the beads of perspiration bedewing
his forehead were certainly genuine enough. In order to fool a man
successfully one requires to know something of his mental attitude
towards the subject in hand. What a medico’s mind might contain, or
what pitfalls it was necessary to beware of in dealing with him, were
points that suddenly assailed the wretched Tim with terrifying force.
In fact, had the R.A.M.C. officer not arrived within a few moments, it
is probable that fear of superior wisdom would have driven the schemer
forth from the building.
‘Well, my man, what is the matter?’ asked the officer, feeling his
patient’s pulse. ‘Fainted, hey?’
‘Yes, sir,’ asserted the orderly. ‘Fell into my arms.’
Hagan, opening his eyes slowly, shook his head from side to side,
noisily blew out his cheeks, and ‘marked time.’ Adjusting a
stethoscope, the officer examined his chest, grunted, and ordered his
temperature to be taken. That the result would be negative Hagan knew
only too well. Consequently, it seemed obvious that it behoved him to
make the next move.
‘Terrible buzzin’ in me head, sor,’ he breathed.
‘Ah--quite so. Rest and light diet. Overstrain. Perhaps you will be all
right again by morning.’
Emboldened by an initiatory success, Hagan ventured upon driving the
nail still deeper.
‘Lost all feelin’s in me legs, sor,’ he added, with a groan.
‘It--er--has been comin’ on, sor, for a week; but it wasn’t loikin’ to
go sick I was.’
The medico, with newly awakened interest, bent his eyes upon the man’s
face and silently observed the movements of his rolling head and eyes.
Hagan, gradually ceasing his gyrations, at length opened his eyes and
met the doctor’s absorbed gaze. It was at that moment--had he but known
it--that he sorely needed all the knowledge available regarding his
interrogator. The latter was by nature a silent man, but that did not
interfere with his power of absorbing details and piecing them together
with uncanny accuracy.
‘A pin, sir?’ suggested the orderly.
‘What for?’ asked the officer blandly.
‘Thought, perhaps, you wanted to test his feelings, sir,’ explained the
zealot.
‘No--er--that is, not to-night,’ answered the officer, suppressing a
half-smile beneath his moustache. ‘We will see what a night’s rest can
do.’
As he watched the tall figure of the doctor sauntering out of the room,
Hagan experienced a sensation of acute alarm. In the presence of the
calm assurance of this man of few words he felt that he had slipped
up somewhere. But where? Loss of all feeling in the legs was surely a
good effort! Glancing at the orderly, he noticed the man smiling in a
peculiar manner as his officer disappeared from sight. An orderly’s
knowledge has its limitations, even if a doctor’s has not. The more
thought he gave to it the more suspicious did he feel, and a guilty
conscience did not assist matters.
Soup and biscuits were served out for supper. Tim Hagan could have
absorbed both with relish. He felt, however, that such diet might
not be good for buzzing in the head--and said so. The night orderly,
indifferent to arguments, deposited the food on a box by his side
and departed. The fact, however, that all the articles of diet had
disappeared by morning was by no means lost upon the day orderly when
he returned to duty at the hour of breakfast.
During the silent watches of the night Hagan had time to think of
many things. He decided that he did not like the look of the medical
officer, nor, indeed, did he know what to make of the orderly. Could
he have fought them hand to hand, he would have known exactly where
he was. In this subtle, silent contest of brains he was beginning to
writhe against an invisible foe which seemed to be closing in upon him
more surely with every tick of his watch. A change of diagnosis seemed
advisable. But, with his scanty repertoire of diseases, the point was
none too easy. In fact, when the officer unexpectedly stood by his
side, he was still so undecided, that closed eyes and immobility seemed
the path of least resistance.
‘Well, Private Hagan, how are you this morning?’ inquired the officer,
shaking him by the shoulder.
What the answer to the question was Timothy did not know. He conceded a
point, however, by opening his eyes.
The question being repeated with emphasis, an inspiration gripped him.
In a flash his line of country seemed to open out before him. The
dizziness in the head had led to complications.
‘Carn’t hear,’ he blurted.
‘Ah!’ commented the persecutor, raising his eyebrows. ‘Deaf, are you?
That’s bad.’ Perceptibly dropping his voice, he studied his victim’s
face. ‘H’m--I wonder what degree of deafness. Which is the worst ear?’
With praiseworthy presence of mind, Hagan resisted the impulse to
answer. Staring blankly at the ceiling, he made no sign.
Stepping a pace nearer, the officer spoke louder. Hagan still made no
voluntary response, but the perspiration upon his face attested to the
physical effort.
From the psychological standpoint the doctor was intensely amused.
That Private Timothy Hagan was a clumsy malingerer, pure and simple,
he had no doubt. To prove such a negative condition however is quite
another matter. If proved, the offence meant a court-martial. As an
officer it was his duty to conceal no crime which could be proved. He
was interested, but had little time just then for fancy cases. Hagan’s
facial expression of struggling conjecture condemned him, morally,
beyond a doubt, but the production of the self-same expression before
the members of a court-martial could hardly be guaranteed.
It was a six-inch German shell that solved the situation for the
moment. Dropping three hundred yards from the dressing-station in the
middle of the village street it exploded with a roar which smashed
every pane of glass in the building. A second quickly followed. The
R.A.M.C. staff, expectant of they knew not what, stood listening.
Hagan, feeling the eyes of the medical officer upon him, did not move a
muscle.
‘One to you,’ murmured the officer to himself. ‘I don’t believe a word
of it all the same.’ Turning on his heel, he winked to the orderly and
with well-assumed indifference strode to the far end of the room.
The orderly, quickly stepping round to the head of Hagan’s stretcher,
needed no further instructions. With book and pencil in hand, he
appeared to be engaged upon his ordinary duty of taking names for the
Clearing Hospital.
‘What’s your number, matey?’ he asked quickly.
The wretched competitor, breathing heavily after his recent mental
tension, had dropped his guard.
‘4179,’ he answered promptly.
‘_Thank you!_’ remarked a bland voice from the doorway.
To state that Hagan could have kicked himself for his stupidity, is
to put the case mildly. Conscious that no words of his could possibly
regain lost ground, he stared blankly at the accusing face of the
officer.
‘It’s all UP, matey,’ whispered the orderly, indulging in an open
guffaw.
‘Thin I may as well be afther gettin’ on me bhoots,’ remarked the
culprit quietly, rising to his feet. ‘You’ve bin done down, Tim, me
bhoy, and there ain’t no manner av use in kickin’.’
What happened next in that little school-house, as regards points of
detail, has never been actually recorded. That a deafening explosion
resembling the noise of the end of all things earthly, accompanied by
the caving in of the brickwork of the side of the room, and followed by
the collapse of most of the roof, took place at that moment are facts
of history.
‘It has come at last,’ groaned the doctor. ‘Thank God, there are only a
few men in the building.’
A second later, a tottering rafter, swaying beneath its weight of
tiles, fell with a sickening crash and buried him beneath its ruins.
In an instant all had become chaos.
Whatever the damage done, it was probably at an end. Hagan appreciated
that much immediately. That he himself remained unhurt was a miracle.
The orderly, holding both hands to his head, lay like a log on the
floor. Several stretchers, with their occupants, lay buried beneath the
débris of brick and plaster.
‘A fifteen-inch, begob!’ exclaimed Hagan, seizing the orderly by the
shoulders and dragging him into the open air.
The atmosphere outside was still reeking with heavy black smoke and
dust. A cavern in the road, large enough to conceal a motor-bus,
yawned in his path. The heat of action was upon him. Handing over the
orderly to other hands, he did not hesitate. There were wounded men to
be rescued. At any moment a second shell might follow the first, or
more walls might fall. A feeble, muffled call for help, emanating from
the very centre of the wreckage, arrested his attention. He knew that
bland, cool voice only too well. The available orderlies were already
struggling to remove the wounded and unearth their officer.
Hagan dashed forward. He was a strong man, and in the best of
condition. Without argument, he took command.
To remove the smaller masses of mortared brick was the work of but a
few moments. The men worked at fever heat. The cries from beneath grew
feebler, almost ceased. It was the weight of long rafters which formed
the main obstruction. Without axes or saws, its removal might be a
matter of hours.
Wiping the sweat from his face, Hagan set his teeth and urged on his
party to final effort. But their combined strength was without avail to
clear the rafters. The victim beneath seemed nearing suffocation with
every breath he drew.
Hagan could see only one way, and he took it.
Throwing himself on his face, he insinuated his head beneath the
rafters, and by herculean efforts forced his shoulders to follow.
Tearing away the loose stuff with his hands, whilst the orderlies
endeavoured to ease the weight above him, he at length was able to
gauge the situation accurately. A great beam lay across the chest of
the officer, whose body supported it.
Tim Hagan sweated in an agony as he looked. He had seen hundreds of men
killed in action, but to see his late persecutor being slowly crushed
to death before his eyes was more than he could bear.
From outside the cries of men with axes reached him. Immediate action,
however, was what was wanted. An instant’s thought, a whispered,
guttural prayer, and he proceeded with his task.
Rolling with difficulty upon his back, he wriggled himself, inch by
inch, close up beside his now silent antagonist, and with all the
strength in his body pressed upwards until he managed to relieve the
pressure on the other’s chest. Inch by inch he shoved the unconscious
man aside and replaced the latter’s body by his own. Then, with ears at
acutest tension, he listened to the crash of the axes and wondered how
long he could last--how long it would take him to die.
* * * * *
Two weeks later, Private Timothy Hagan, propped up in bed, lay in a
hospital at the base. Presently an R.A.M.C. officer, obviously also
more or less convalescent, entered the ward by means of a wheeled
chair and looked about him. Hagan, catching the visitor’s eye, flushed
deeply, laboriously drew a long breath, and turned away his head. The
next minute, the officer, having given an order to the orderly pushing
his chair, was at Hagan’s side. A word to the orderly, and the two
wounded men were alone.
‘I have come, Hagan, to thank you for my life,’ said the officer.
Hagan nervously rubbed his forehead with his hand, moved his lips as if
framing unspoken words, and drew a deep inspiration.
‘’Twasn’t cowardice, sor,’ he breathed at last. ‘’Twas nought but a
litle gurl at home phwat drew me.’
‘Cowardice! You! You’re one of the pluckiest men I have ever seen. What
do you mean?’
‘I main, sor, whin I was schrimshankin’.’
‘Sh--sh, my man! That little matter is all forgotten.’
‘Yez did have me beat, sor,’ persisted Hagan, with a flash of humour in
his eyes. ‘’Twas too cliver for me you was, sor. ’Twas the orderly hit
me below the belt. He took me unbeknownst, sor.’
With a light laugh, the medical officer placed his hand upon the brawny
fist of the man beside him.
‘You will get home to see your girl after all, Hagan--in your own
way--and I am glad,’ he said.
‘Is it to be quits then, sor?’
‘Yes--we will call it that,’ agreed the officer. ‘For the time being,
we are quits. Later, I will repay you what is over--if I ever can.’
_DURING MUSIC: FANTASY AND FUGUE._
BY J. B. TREND.
I.
That low-breathed air and inwoven melody,
Twined marvellously together, swift to run
To the farthest bound of song, or knit in one
To melt and glow in o’erwhelming harmony,
You played. And I, startled to fantasy,
Beheld a land of dishevelled wood and stream,
A desperate rally of men, a flash, a scream--
And a friend riven beyond all agony.
Yet did you play. Each delicate, rival thread
Of sound was knotted at last and the music ended.
Forest, colour, and mountain, earth held none
But stunted woods with no companion tread,
Greyness, and little hills, in a life unfriended;
For all joy in things and love of them were gone.
II.
I heard those echoing tones your touch unpenned,
Now hammer-notes that rivetted life with love,
Now light as sou’west wind blown softly above;
But all you played only to him could tend.
So let it be, I said, until life’s end;
In the tinkling wash at the bows, or water lapping
All night upon the dinghy’s side, or tapping
Of light wind in the halyards; there is my friend.
So did your unrelenting notes flit by,
While death and music in my thought were welded
To swing me lonely down to the loveless night.
I am a sail that wind takes wantonly
Because the sheet has carried away that held it--
Then let your fugue pursue its scornful flight!
_LADY CONNIE._[11]
BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.
CHAPTER XVII.
Falloden had just finished a solitary luncheon, in the little
dining-room of the Boar’s Hill cottage. There was a garden door in the
room, and lighting a cigarette, he passed out through it to the terrace
outside. A landscape lay before him, which has often been compared to
that of the Val d’Arno seen from Fiesole, and has indeed some common
points with that incomparable mingling of man’s best with the best of
mountain and river. It was the last week of October, and the autumn was
still warm and windless, as though there were no shrieking November
to come. Oxford, the beautiful city, with its domes and spires, lay
in the hollow beneath the spectator, wreathed in thin mists of sunlit
amethyst. Behind that ridge in the middle distance ran the river and
the Nuneham woods; beyond rose the long blue line of the Chilterns.
In front of the cottage the ground sank through copse and field to
the river level, the hedge lines all held by sentinel trees, to which
the advancing autumn had given that significance the indiscriminate
summer green denies. The gravely rounded elms with their golden caps,
the scarlet of the beeches, the pale lemon-yellow of the nearly naked
limes, the splendid blacks of yew and fir--they were all there, mingled
in the autumn cup of misty sunshine, like melting jewels. And among
them, the enchanted city shone, fair and insubstantial, from the depth
below; as it were, the spiritual word and voice of all the scene.
Falloden paced up and down the terrace, smoking and thinking. That was
Otto’s open window. But Radowitz had not yet appeared that morning, and
the ex-scout, who acted butler and valet to the two men, had brought
word that he would come down in the afternoon, but was not to be
disturbed till then.
‘What lunacy made me do it?’ thought Falloden, standing still at the
end of the terrace which fronted the view.
He and Radowitz had been three weeks together. Had he been of the
slightest service or consolation to Radowitz during that time? He
doubted it. That incalculable impulse which had made him propose
himself as Otto’s companion for the winter still persisted indeed. He
was haunted still by a sense of being ‘under command’--directed--by a
force which could not be repelled. Ill at ease, unhappy, as he was, and
conscious of being quite ineffective, whether as nurse or companion,
unless Radowitz proposed to ‘throw up,’ he knew that he himself should
hold on; though why, he could scarcely have explained.
But the divergences between them were great; the possibilities of
friction many. Falloden was astonished to find that he disliked Otto’s
little fopperies and eccentricities quite as much as he had ever done
in college days; his finicking dress, his foreign ways in eating, his
tendency to boast about his music, his country, and his forebears, on
his good days, balanced by a brooding irritability on his bad days. And
he was conscious that his own ways and customs were no less teasing
to Radowitz; his Tory habits of thought, his British contempt for
vague sentimentalisms and heroics, for all that _panache_ means to the
Frenchman, or ‘glory’ to the Slav.
‘Then why, in the name of common sense, are we living together?’
He could really give no answer but the answer of ‘necessity’--of
a spiritual ἀνάγκη[ananki]--issuing from a strange tangle of
circumstance. The helpless form, the upturned face of his dying
father, seemed to make the centre of it, and those faint last words,
so sharply, and as it were, dynamically connected with the hateful
memory of Otto’s fall and cry in the Marmion Quad, and the hateful
ever-present fact of his maimed life. Constance too--his scene with
her on the river bank--her letter breaking with him--and then the soft
mysterious change in her--and that passionate involuntary promise in
her eyes and voice, as they stood together in her aunts’ garden--all
these various elements, bitter and sweet, were mingled in the influence
which was shaping his own life. He wanted to forgive himself; and he
wanted Constance to forgive him, whether she married him or no. A kind
of sublimated egotism, he said to himself, after all!
But Otto? What had really made him consent to take up daily life with
the man to whom he owed his disaster? Falloden seemed occasionally to
be on the track of an explanation, which would then vanish and evade
him. He was conscious, however, that here also, Constance Bledlow
was somehow concerned; and, perhaps, the Pole’s mystical religion.
He asked himself, indeed, as Constance had already done, whether
some presentiment of doom, together with the Christian doctrines of
forgiveness and vicarious suffering, were not at the root of it? There
had been certain symptoms apparent during Otto’s last weeks at Penfold
known only to the old vicar, to himself and Sorell. The doctors were
not convinced yet of the presence of phthisis; but from various signs,
Falloden was inclined to think that the boy believed himself sentenced
to the same death which had carried off his mother. Was there then a
kind of calculated charity in his act also--but aiming in his case at
an eternal reward?
‘He wants to please God--and comfort Constance--by forgiving me. I want
to please her--and relieve myself, by doing something to make up to
him. He has the best of it! But we are neither of us disinterested.’
* * * * *
The manservant came out with a cup of coffee.
‘How is he?’ said Falloden, as he took it, glancing up at a still
curtained window.
The man hesitated.
‘Well, I don’t know, sir, I’m sure. He saw the doctor this morning, and
told me afterwards not to disturb him till three o’clock. But he rang
just now, and said I was to tell you that two ladies were coming to
tea.’
‘Did he mention their names?’
‘Not as I’m aware of, sir.’
Falloden pondered a moment.
‘Tell Mr. Radowitz, when he rings again, that I have gone down to the
college ground for some football, and I shan’t be back till after six.
You’re sure he doesn’t want to see me?’
‘No, sir, I think not. He told me to leave the blind down, and not to
come in again till he rang.’
Falloden put on flannels, and ran down the field paths towards Oxford,
and the Marmion ground, which lay on the hither side of the river. Here
he took hard exercise for a couple of hours, walking on afterwards to
his club in the High Street, where he kept a change of clothes. He
found some old Marmion friends there, including Robertson and Meyrick,
who asked him eagerly after Radowitz.
‘Better come and see,’ said Falloden. ‘Give you a bread and cheese
luncheon any day.’
They got no more out of him. But his reticence made them visibly
uneasy, and they both declared their intention of coming up the
following day. In both men there was a certain indefinable change
which Falloden soon perceived. Both seemed, at times, to be dragging a
weight too heavy for their youth. At other times, they were just like
other men of their age; but Falloden, who knew them well, realised
that they were both hag-ridden by remorse for what had happened in the
summer. And indeed the attitude of a large part of the college towards
them, and towards Falloden, when at rare intervals he shewed himself
there, could hardly have been colder or more hostile. The ‘bloods’
were broken up; the dons had set their faces steadily against any form
of ‘ragging’; and the story of the maimed hand, of the wrecking of
Radowitz’s career, together with sinister rumours as to his general
health, had spread through Oxford, magnifying as they went. Falloden
met it all with a haughty silence; and was but seldom seen in his old
haunts.
And presently it had become known, to the stupefaction of those who
were aware of the earlier facts, that victim and tormentor, the injured
and the offender, were living together in the Boar’s Hill cottage where
Radowitz was finishing the composition required for his second musical
examination, and Falloden--having lost his father, his money and his
prospects--was reading for a prize Fellowship to be given by Merton in
December.
* * * * *
It was already moonlight when Falloden began to climb the long hill
again, which leads up from Folly Bridge to the height on which stood
the cottage. But the autumn sunset was not long over, and in the
mingled light, all the rich colours of the fading woodland seemed to
be suspended in, or fused with, the evening air. Forms and distances,
hedges, trees, moving figures, and distant buildings were marvellously
though dimly glorified; and above the golds and reds and purples of the
misty earth, shone broad and large--an Achilles shield in heaven--the
autumn moon, with one bright star beside it.
Suddenly, out of the twilight, Falloden became aware of a pony-carriage
descending the hill, and two ladies in it. His blood leapt. He
recognised Constance Bledlow, and he supposed the other lady was Mrs.
Mulholland.
Constance on her side knew in a moment from the bearing of his head and
shoulders who was the tall man approaching them. She spoke hurriedly to
Mrs. Mulholland.
‘Do you mind if I stop and speak to Mr. Falloden?’
Mrs. Mulholland shrugged her shoulders--
‘Do as you like, my dear. Only don’t expect me to be very forthcoming!’
Constance stopped the carriage, and bent forward.
‘Mr. Falloden!’
He came up to her. Connie introduced him to Mrs. Mulholland, who bowed
coldly.
‘We have just been to see Otto Radowitz,’ said Constance. ‘We found
him--very sadly, to-day.’ Her hesitating voice, with the note of
wistful appeal in it, affected him strangely.
‘Yes, it has been a bad day. I haven’t seen him at all.’
‘He gave us tea, and talked a great deal. He was rather excited. But he
looked wretched. And why has he turned against his doctor?’
‘Has he turned against his doctor?’ Falloden’s tone was one of
surprise. ‘I thought he liked him.’
‘He said he was a croaker, and he wasn’t going to let himself be
depressed by anybody--doctor or no.’
Falloden was silent. Mrs. Mulholland interposed.
‘Perhaps you would like to walk a little way with Mr. Falloden? I can
manage the pony.’
Constance descended. Falloden turned back with her towards Oxford. The
pony-carriage followed at some distance behind.
Then Falloden talked freely. The presence of the light figure beside
him, in its dark dress and close-fitting cap, seemed to thaw the chill
of life. He began rapidly to pour out his own anxieties, his own sense
of failure.
‘I am the last man in the world who ought to be looking after him; I
know that as well as anybody,’ he said, with emphasis. ‘But what’s to
be done? Sorell can’t get away from college. And Radowitz knows very
few men intimately. Neither Meyrick nor Robertson would be any better
than me.’
‘Oh, not so good--not nearly so good!’ exclaimed Constance eagerly.
‘You don’t know! He counts on you.’
Falloden shook his head.
‘Then he counts on a broken reed. I irritate and annoy him a hundred
times a day.’
‘Oh, no, no--he _does_ count on you,’ repeated Connie in her soft,
determined voice. ‘If you give up, he will be much--much worse off!’
Then she added after a moment--‘Don’t give up! I--I ask you!’
‘Then I shall stay.’
They moved on a few steps in silence, till Connie said eagerly--
‘Have you any news from Paris?’
‘Yes, I am going over next week. We wrote in the nick of time. The
whole thing was just being given up--for lack of funds. Now I have told
him he may spend what he pleases, so long as he does the thing.’
‘Please--mayn’t I help?’
‘Thank you. It’s my affair.’
‘It’ll be very--very expensive.’
‘I shall manage it.’
‘It would be kinder’--her voice shook a little--‘if I might help.’
He considered it--then said doubtfully--
‘Suppose you provide the records?--the things it plays? I don’t know
anything about music--and I have been racking my brains to think of
somebody in Paris who could look after that part of it.’
Constance exclaimed. Why, she had several friends in Paris, in the very
thick of the musical world there! She had herself had lessons all one
winter in Paris at the Conservatoire from a dear old fellow--a Pole, a
pupil of Chopin in his youth, and in touch with the whole Polish colony
in Paris, which was steeped in music.
‘He made love to me a little’--she said laughing--‘I’m sure he’d do
anything for us. I’ll write _at once_! And there is somebody at the
Embassy--why, of course, I can set all kinds of people to work!’
And her feet began to dance along the road beside him.
‘We must get some Polish music’--she went on--‘There’s that marvellous
young pianist they rave about in Paris--Paderewski. I’m sure he’d help!
Otto has often talked to me about him. We must have lots of Chopin--and
Liszt--though of course he wasn’t a Pole!--And Polish national
songs!--Otto was only telling me to-day how Chopin loved them--how he
and Liszt used to go about the villages and farms and note them down.
Oh we’ll have a _wonderful_ collection!’
Her eyes shone in her small, flushed face. They walked on fast, talking
and dreaming, till there was Folly Bridge in front of them, and the
beginnings of Oxford. Falloden pulled up sharply.
‘I must run back. We have supper early. Will you come again?’
She held out her hand. His face beside her, as the moonlight caught it,
stirred in her a sudden, acute sense of delight.
‘Oh yes--we’ll come again. But don’t leave him!--don’t, please, think
of it! He trusts you--he leans on you.’
‘It is kind of you to believe it. But I am no use!’
He put her back into the carriage, bowed formally, and was gone,
running up the hill at an athlete’s pace.
The two ladies drove silently on, and were soon amongst the movement
and traffic of the Oxford streets. Connie’s mind was steeped in
passionate feeling. Till now Falloden had touched first her senses,
then her pity. Now in these painful and despondent attempts of his to
adjust himself to Otto’s weakness and irritability, he was stirring
sympathies and enthusiasms in her which belonged to that deepest soul
in Connie which was just becoming conscious of itself. And all the
more, perhaps, because in Falloden’s manner towards her there was
nothing left of the lover. For the moment at any rate she preferred it
so. Life was all doubt, expectation, thrill--its colour heightened, its
meanings underlined. And in her complete uncertainty as to what turn
it would take, and how the doubt would end, lay the spell--the potent
tormenting charm--of the situation.
She was sorry, bitterly sorry for Radowitz--the victim. But she loved
Falloden--the offender! It was the perennial injustice of passion, the
eternal injustice of human things.
When Falloden was half-way up the hill, he left the road, and took
a short cut through fields, by a path which led him to the back of
the cottage, where its sitting-room window opened on the garden and
the view. As he approached the house, he saw that the sitting-room
blinds had not been drawn, and some of the windows were still open.
The whole room was brilliantly lit by fire and lamp. Otto was there
alone, sitting at the piano, with his back to the approaching spectator
and the moonlit night outside. He was playing something with his left
hand; Falloden could see him plainly. Suddenly, he saw the boy’s figure
collapse. He was still sitting, but his face was buried in his arms
which were lying on the piano; and through the open window, Falloden
heard a sound which, muffled as it was, produced upon him a strange and
horrible impression. It was a low cry, or groan--the voice of despair
itself.
Falloden stood motionless. All he knew was that he would have given
anything in the world to recall the past; to undo the events of that
June evening in the Marmion quadrangle.
Then, before Otto could discover his presence, he went noiselessly
round the corner of the house, and entered it by the front door. In the
hall, he called loudly to the ex-scout, as he went upstairs, so that
Radowitz might know he had come back. When he returned, Radowitz was
sitting over the fire with sheets of scribbled music paper on a small
table before him. His eyes shone, his cheeks were feverishly bright. He
turned with forced gaiety at the sight of Falloden--
‘Well, did you meet them on the road?’
‘Lady Constance, and her friend? Yes. I had a few words with them. How
are you now? What did the doctor say to you?’
‘What on earth does it matter!’ said Radowitz impatiently. ‘He was just
a fool--a young one--the worst sort--I can put up with the old ones. I
know my own case a great deal better than he does.’
‘Does he want you to stop working?’ Falloden stood on the hearth,
looking down on the huddled figure in the chair; himself broad and tall
and curly-haired, like the divine Odysseus, when Athene had breathed
ambrosial youth upon him. But he was pale, and his eyes frowned
perpetually under his splendid brows.
‘Some nonsense of that sort!’ said Radowitz. ‘Don’t let’s talk about
it.’
They went in to dinner, and Radowitz sent for champagne.
‘That’s the only sensible thing the idiot said--that I might have that
stuff whenever I liked.’
His spirits rose with the wine; and presently Falloden could have
thought what he had seen from the dark had been a mere illusion. A
review in _The Times_ of a book of Polish memoirs served to let loose
a flood of boastful talk, which jarred abominably on the Englishman.
Under the Oxford code, to boast in plain language of your ancestors, or
your own performances, meant simply that you were an outsider, not sure
of your footing. If a man really had ancestors, or more brains than
other people, his neighbours saved him the trouble of talking about
them. Only the fools and the _parvenus_ trumpeted themselves; a process
in any case not worth while, since it defeated its own ends. You might
of course be as insolent or arrogant as you pleased; but only an idiot
tried to explain why.
In Otto, however, there was the characteristic Slav mingling of quick
wits with streaks of childish vanity. He wanted passionately to make
this tough Englishman feel what a great country Poland had been and
would be again; what great people his ancestors had been; and what a
leading part they had played in the national movements. And the more he
hit against an answering stubbornness--or coolness--in Falloden, the
more he held forth. So that it was an uncomfortable dinner. And again
Falloden said to himself--‘Why did I do it? I am only in his way. I
shall bore and chill him; and I don’t seem to be able to help it.’
But after dinner, as the night frost grew sharper, and as Otto sat over
the fire, piling on the coal, Falloden suddenly went and fetched a warm
Scotch plaid of his own. When he offered it, Radowitz received it with
surprise, and a little annoyance.
‘I am not the least cold--thank you!’
But, presently, he had wrapped it round his knees; and some restraint
had broken down in Falloden.
‘Isn’t there a splendid church in Cracow?’ he asked casually,
stretching himself, with his pipe, in a long chair on the opposite side
of the fire.
‘One!--five or six!’ cried Otto, indignantly. ‘But I expect you’re
thinking of Panna Marya. Panna means Lady. I tell you, you English
haven’t got anything to touch it!’
‘What’s it like?--what date?’--said Falloden, laughing.
‘I don’t know--I don’t know anything about architecture. But it’s
glorious. It’s all colour and stained glass--and magnificent
tombs--like the gate of Heaven,’ said the boy with ardour. ‘It’s the
church that every Pole loves. Some of my ancestors are buried there.
And it’s the church where, instead of a clock striking, the hours are
given out by a watchman who plays a horn. He plays an old air--ever so
old--we call it the “Heynal,” on the top of one of the towers. The only
time I was ever in Cracow I heard a man at a concert--a magnificent
player--improvise on it. And it comes into one of Chopin’s sonatas.’
He began to hum under his breath a sweet wandering melody. And suddenly
he sprang up, and ran to the piano. He played the air with his left
hand, embroidering it with delicate arabesques and variations, catching
a bass here and there with a flying touch, suggesting marvellously
what had once been a rich and complete whole. The injured hand, which
had that day been very painful, lay helpless in its sling; the other
flashed over the piano, while the boy’s blue eyes shone beneath his
vivid frieze of hair. Falloden, lying back in his chair, noticed the
emaciation of the face, the hollow eyes, the contracted shoulders; and
as he did so, he thought of the scene in the Magdalen ballroom--the
slender girl, wreathed in pearls, and the brilliant foreign
youth--dancing, dancing, with all the eyes of the room upon them.
Presently, with a sound of impatience, Radowitz left the piano. He
could do nothing that he wanted to do. He stood at the window for some
minutes looking out at the autumn moon, with his back to Falloden.
Falloden took up one of the books he was at work on for his Fellowship
exam. When Radowitz came back to the fire, however, white and
shivering, he laid it down again, and once more made conversation.
Radowitz was at first unwilling to respond. But he was by nature
_bavard_, and Falloden played him with some skill.
Very soon he was talking fast and brilliantly again, about his
artistic life in Paris, his friends at the Conservatoire or in the
Quartier Latin; and so back to his childish days in Poland, and the
rising of ’63, in which the family estates near Warsaw had been
forfeited. Falloden found it all very strange. The seething, artistic,
revolutionary world which had produced Otto was wholly foreign to him;
and this patriotic passion for a dead country seemed to his English
common sense a waste of force. But in Otto’s eyes Poland was not dead;
the white eagle, torn and bloodstained though she was, would mount the
heavens again; and in those dark skies the stars were already rising!
At eleven, Falloden got up--
‘I must go and swat. It was awfully jolly, what you’ve been telling me.
I know a lot I didn’t know before.’
A gleam of pleasure shewed in the boy’s sunken eyes.
‘I expect I’m a bore,’ he said, with a shrug; ‘and I’d better go to
bed.’
Falloden helped him carry up his plaid, his books and papers. In Otto’s
room, the windows were wide open, but there was a bright fire, and
Bateson the scout was waiting to help him undress. Falloden asked some
questions about the doctor’s orders. Various things were wanted from
Oxford. He undertook to get them in the morning.
When he came back to the sitting-room, he stood some time in a brown
study. He wondered again whether he had any qualifications at all as a
nurse. But he was inclined to think now that Radowitz might be worse
off without him; what Constance had said seemed less unreal; and his
effort of the evening, as he looked back on it, brought him a certain
bitter satisfaction.
* * * * *
The following day, Radowitz came downstairs with the course of the
second movement of his symphony clear before him. He worked feverishly
all day, now writing, now walking up and down, humming and thinking,
now getting out of his piano--a beautiful Erard hired for the
winter--all that his maimed state allowed him to get; and passing
hour after hour, between an ecstasy of happy creation, and a state of
impotent rage with his own helplessness. Towards sunset he was worn
out, and with tea beside him which he had been greedily drinking, he
was sitting huddled over the fire, when he heard someone ride up to the
front door.
In another minute the sitting-room door opened, and a girl’s figure in
a riding habit appeared.
‘May I come in?’ said Connie, flushing rather pink.
Otto sprang up, and drew her in. His fatigue disappeared as though by
magic. He seemed all gaiety and force.
‘Come in! Sit down and have some tea! I was so depressed five minutes
ago--I was fit to kill myself. And now you make the room shine--you
come in like a goddess!’
He busied himself excitedly in putting a chair for her, in relighting
the spirit kettle, in blowing up the fire.
Constance meanwhile stood in some embarrassment with one hand on the
back of a chair--a charming vision in her close fitting habit, and
the same black _tricorne_ that she had worn in the Lathom Woods, at
Falloden’s side.
‘I came to bring you a book, dear Mr. Otto, the book we talked of
yesterday.’ She held out a paper-covered volume. ‘But I mustn’t stay.’
‘Oh, do stay!’ he implored her. ‘Don’t bother about Mrs. Grundy. I’m
so tired and so bored. Anybody may visit an invalid. Think this is a
nursing home, and you’re my daily visitor. Falloden’s miles away on a
drag-hunt. Ah, that’s right!’ He waved his hand as he saw that she had
seated herself. ‘Now you shall have some tea!’
She let him provide her, watching him the while with slightly frowning
brows. How ill he looked--how ill! Her heart sank.
‘Dear Mr. Otto, how are you? You don’t seem so well to-day.’
‘I have been working myself to death. It won’t come right--this beastly
_Andante_. It’s too jerky--it wants _liaison_. And I can’t hear it--I
can’t _hear_ it!--that’s the devilish part of it.’
And taking his helpless hand out of the sling in which it had been
resting, he struck it bitterly against the arm of his chair. The tears
came to Connie’s eyes.
‘Don’t!--you’ll hurt yourself. It’ll be all right--it’ll be all right!
You’ll hear it in your mind.’ And bending forward under a sudden
impulse, she took the maimed hand in her two hands--so small and
soft--and lifting it tenderly she put her lips to it.
He looked at her in amazement.
‘You do that--for me?’
‘Yes. Because you are a great artist--and a brave man!’ she said,
gulping. ‘You are not to despair. Your music is in your soul--your
brain. Other people shall play it for you.’
He calmed down.
‘At least I am not deaf, like Beethoven,’ he said, trying to please
her. ‘That would have been worse.--Do you know last night, Falloden
and I had a glorious talk. He was awfully decent. He made me tell him
all about Poland, and my people. He never scoffed once. He makes me do
what the doctor says. And last night--when it was freezing cold--he
brought a rug and wrapped it round me. Think of that!’--he looked at
her--half-shamefaced, half-laughing--‘_Falloden!_’
Her eyes shone.
‘I’m glad!’ she said softly. ‘I’m glad!’
‘Yes, but do you know why he’s kind--why he’s here at all?’ he asked
her, abruptly.
‘What’s the good of silly questions?’ she said hastily. ‘Take it as it
comes.’
He laughed.
‘He does it--I’m going to say it!--yes, I _am_--and you are not to be
angry--he does it because--simply--he’s in love with _you_!’
Connie flushed again, more deeply, and he, already alarmed by his own
boldness, looked at her nervously.
‘You are quite wrong.’ Her tone was quiet, but decided. ‘He did it,
first of all, because of what you did for his father----’
‘I did nothing!’ interposed Radowitz.
She took no notice.
‘And secondly’--her voice shook a little--‘because--he was sorry.
Now--_now_--he is doing it’--suddenly her smile flashed out, with its
touch of humour--‘just simply because he likes it!’
It was a bold assertion. She knew it. But she straightened her slight
shoulders, prepared to stick to it.
Radowitz shook his head.
‘And what am I doing it for? Do you remember when I said to you I
loathed him?’
‘No--not him.’
‘Well, something in him--the chief thing, it seemed to me then. I felt
towards him really--as a man might feel towards his murderer--or the
murderer of someone else, some innocent, helpless person who had given
no offence. Hatred--loathing--_abhorrence!_--you couldn’t put it too
strongly. Well then,’--he began to fidget with the fire, tongs in
hand, building it up, while he went on thinking aloud--‘God brought us
together in that strange manner. By the way’--he turned to her--‘are
you a Christian?’
‘I--I don’t know. I suppose I am.’
‘I am,’ he said firmly. ‘I am a practising Catholic. Catholicism with
us Poles is partly religion, partly patriotism--do you understand? I
go to confession--I am a communicant. And for some time I couldn’t go
to Communion at all. I always felt Falloden’s hand on my shoulder, as
he was pushing me down the stairs; and I wanted _to kill him_!--just
that! You know our Polish blood runs hotter than yours. I didn’t want
the college to punish him. Not at all. It was my affair. After I saw
you in town, it grew worse--it was an obsession. When we first got
to Yorkshire, Sorell and I, and I knew that Falloden was only a few
miles away, I never could get quit of it--of the thought that some
day--somewhere--I should kill him. I never, if I could help it, crossed
a certain boundary line that I had made for myself, between our side of
the moor, and the side which belonged to the Fallodens. I couldn’t be
sure of myself if I had come upon him unawares. Oh, of course, he would
soon have got the better of me--but there would have been a struggle--I
should have attacked him--and I might have had a revolver. So for your
sake’--he turned to look at her with his hollow blue eyes--‘I kept
away. Then, one evening, I quite forgot all about it. I was thinking
of the theme for the slow movement in my symphony, and I didn’t notice
where I was going. I walked on and on over the hill--and at last I
heard a man groaning--and there was Sir Arthur--by the stream. I saw at
once that he was dying, and I took a card from his waistcoat pocket,
which told me who he was. There I sat, alone with him. He asked me not
to leave him. He said something about Douglas. “Poor Douglas!” And when
the horrible thing came back--the last time--he just whispered, “Pray!”
and I said our Catholic prayers--that our priest had said when my
mother died. Then Falloden came--just in time--and instead of wanting
to kill him, I waited there, a little way off--and prayed hard for
myself and him! Queer, wasn’t it? And afterwards--you know--I saw his
mother. Then the next day, I confessed to a dear old priest, who was
very kind to me, and on the Sunday he gave me Communion. He said God
had been very gracious to me; and I saw what he meant. That very week
I had a hæmorrhage, the first I ever had.’
Connie gave a sudden, startled cry. He turned again to smile at her.
‘Didn’t you know? No, I believe no one knew, but Sorell and the
doctors. It was nothing. It’s quite healed. But the strange thing was
how extraordinarily happy I felt that week. I didn’t hate Falloden
any more. It was as though a sharp thorn had gone from one’s mind.
It didn’t last long of course, the queer ecstatic feeling. There was
always my hand--and I got very low again. But _something_ lasted;
and when Falloden said that extraordinary thing--I don’t believe he
meant to say it at all!--suggesting we should settle together for the
winter--I knew that I must do it. It was a kind of miracle--one thing
after another--_driving_ us.’
His voice dropped. He remained gazing absently into the fire.
‘Dear Otto’--said Constance softly--‘you have forgiven him?’
He smiled.
‘What does that matter? _Have you?_’
His eager eyes searched her face. She faltered under them.
‘He doesn’t care whether I have or not.’
At that he laughed out.
‘Doesn’t he? I say, did you ask us both to come--on purpose--that
afternoon?--in the garden?’
She was silent.
‘It was bold of you!’ he said, in the same laughing tone. ‘But it’s
answered. Unless, of course, I bore him to death. I talk a lot of
nonsense--I can’t help it--and he bears it. And he says hard, horrid
things, sometimes--and my blood boils--and I bear it. And I expect he
wants to break off a hundred times a day--and so do I. Yet here we
stay. And it’s _you_’--he raised his head deliberately--‘it’s _you_
that are really at the bottom of it.’
Constance rose trembling from her chair.
‘Don’t say any more, dear Otto. I didn’t mean any harm. I--I was so
sorry for you both.’
He laughed again.
‘You’ve got to marry him!’ he said triumphantly. ‘There!--you may go
now--But you’ll come again soon. I know you will!’
She seemed to slip, to melt, out of the room. But he had a last vision
of flushed cheeks, and half-reproachful eyes.
(_To be continued._)
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Copyright, 1915, by Mrs. Humphry Ward in the United
States of America.
_TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘CORNHILL.’_
Dear Sir,--If it gives Mr. Russell any pleasure to accuse me of ‘living
in a happy remoteness from affairs,’ and of having ‘only just awakened
from a slumber which seems to have lasted longer than that of Rip Van
Winkle,’ it would be cruel of me to object. But the proof of my guilt,
it seems, is to be found in the article I wrote in the CORNHILL on
‘The Duke of Wellington and Miss J.’ That article, Mr. Russell thinks,
proves that I had only just discovered Miss J. and her correspondence
with the Duke. As a matter of fact I have been familiar with the volume
published by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin for more than twenty years, and it
must be fifteen years ago since I wrote an article on the subject in an
Australian magazine. But Mr. Russell himself thinks the letters of Miss
J. so little known, and so very interesting, that he himself expends
another article on them, three months later than mine, and taking
exactly the same view of them! It seems clear that there are two Rip
Van Winkles--one in England and one in Australia: and the English Van
Winkle is even drowsier, and wakes later, than his Australian kinsman.
I should not trouble you with this note, however, except for the
opportunity it gives me of apologising for an injustice to Sir Herbert
Maxwell which I committed in the article I wrote in the CORNHILL. I
represented him as saying the Duke ‘must have been inexpressibly bored
by the correspondence,’ and the words are in inverted commas, giving
the reader the impression these were the exact words Sir Herbert
Maxwell used. I apologise for those unfortunate inverted commas. The
words they seem to quote were not the precise words Sir Herbert Maxwell
used in his ‘Life of Wellington,’ and they do not accurately convey his
meaning. ‘The letters,’ he says, ‘_some might think_ were of the very
kind to bore the Duke, whose religion was of a somewhat conventional
kind.’ But Sir Herbert Maxwell does not say that that was his personal
opinion.
Yours truly,
W. H. FITCHETT.
NOTE.--In her article, ‘Dublin Days: the Rising,’ which appeared in
my July number, Mrs. Hamilton Norway, on page 51, repeats the current
story that Messrs. Jacob were ready to let the military blow up their
biscuit factory, for they would never make another biscuit in Ireland.
In justice to Messrs. Jacob, let me add that I have since learnt on the
one unimpeachable authority that this story, however picturesque, is
wholly apocryphal.
THE EDITOR.
Transcriber’s Note:
This book was written in a period when many words had not become
standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling
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