hungry' was about to despair of finding any German prisoners when he
saw before him a gravel-pit, and three men working therein. Clad in
dungaree, and very dusty, they had a cast of countenance so unmistakably
Teutonic that Mr. Lavender stood still. They paid little or no attention
to him, however, but went on sadly and silently with their work,
which was that of sifting gravel. Mr. Lavender sat down on a milestone
opposite, and his heart contracted within him. “They look very thin and
sad,” he thought, “I should not like to be a prisoner myself far from my
country, in the midst of a hostile population, without a woman or a dog
to throw me a wag of the tail. Poor men! For though it is necessary to
hate the Germans, it seems impossible to forget that we are all human
beings. This is weakness,” he added to himself, “which no editor would
tolerate for a moment. I must fight against it if I am to fulfil my duty
of rousing the population to the task of starving them. How hungry they
look already—their checks are hollow! I must be firm. Perhaps they have
wives and families at home, thinking of them at this moment. But, after
all, they are Huns. What did the great writer say? 'Vermin—creatures
no more worthy of pity than the tiger or the rat.' How true! And
yet—Blink!” For his dog, seated on her haunches, was looking at him with
that peculiarly steady gaze which betokened in her the desire for food.
“Yes,” mused Mr. Lavender, “pity is the mark of the weak man. It is a
vice which was at one time rampant in this country; the war has made one
beneficial change at least—we are moving more and more towards the manly
and unforgiving vigour of the tiger and the rat. To be brutal! This
is the one lesson that the Germans can teach us, for we had almost
forgotten the art. What danger we were in! Thank God, we have past
masters again among us now!” A frown became fixed between his brows.
“Yes, indeed, past masters. How I venerate those good journalists and
all the great crowd of witnesses who have dominated the mortal weakness,
pity. 'The Hun must and shall be destroyed—root and branch—hip and
thigh—bag and baggage man, woman, and babe—this is the sole duty of the
great and humane British people. Roll up, ladies and gentlemen, roll up!
Great thought—great language! And yet——”
Here Mr. Lavender broke into a gentle sweat, while the Germans went on
sifting gravel in front of him, and Blink continued to look up into his
face with her fixed, lustrous eyes. “What an awful thing,” he thought,
“to be a man. If only I were just a public man and could, as they do,
leave out the human and individual side of everything, how simple it
would be! It is the being a man as well which is so troublesome. A man
has feelings; it is wrong—wrong! There should be no connection whatever
between public duty and the feelings of a man. One ought to be able to
starve one's enemy without a quiver, to watch him drown without a wink.
In fact, one ought to be a German. We ought all to be Germans. Blink,
we ought all to be Germans, dear! I must steel myself!” And Mr. Lavender
wiped his forehead, for, though a great idea had come to him, he still
lacked the heroic savagery to put it into execution. “It is my duty,” he
thought, “to cause those hungry, sad-looking men to follow me and watch
me eat my lunch. It is my duty. God give me strength! For unless I make
this sacrifice of my gentler nature I shall be unworthy to call myself a
public man, or to be reported in the newspapers. 'En avant, de Bracy!'”
So musing, he rose, and Blink with him. Crossing the road, he clenched
his fists, and said in a voice which anguish made somewhat shrill:
“Are you hungry, my friends?”
The Germans stopped sifting gravel, looked up at him, and one of them
nodded.
“And thirsty?”
This time they all three nodded.
“Come on, then,” said Mr. Lavender.
And he led the way back along the road, followed by Blink and the three
Germans. Arriving at the beech clump whose great trees were already
throwing shadows, denoting that it was long past noon, Mr. Lavender saw
that Joe had spread food on the smooth ground, and was, indeed, just
finishing his own repast.
“What is there to eat?” thought Mr. Lavender, with a soft of horror.
“For I feel as if I were about to devour a meal of human flesh.” And he
looked round at the three Germans slouching up shamefacedly behind him.
“Sit down, please,” he said. The three men sat down.
“Joe,” said Mr. Lavender to his surprised chauffeur, “serve my lunch.
Give me a large helping, and a glass of ale.” And, paler than his
holland dust-coat, he sat resolutely down on the bole of a beech, with
Blink on her haunches beside him. While Joe was filling a plate with
pigeon-pie and pouring out a glass of foaming Bass, Mr. Lavender stared
at the three Germans and suffered the tortures of the damned. “I will
not flinch,” he thought; “God helping me, I certainly will not flinch.
Nothing shall prevent my going through with it.” And his eyes, more
prominent than a hunted rabbit's, watched the approach of Joe with
the plate and glass. The three men also followed the movements of the
chauffeur, and it seemed to Mr. Lavender that their eyes were watering.
“Courage!” he murmured to himself, transfixing a succulent morsel with
his fork and conveying it to his lips. For fully a minute he revolved
the tasty mouthful, which he could not swallow, while the three men's
eyes watched him with a sort of lugubrious surprise. “If,” he thought
with anguish, “if I were a prisoner in Germany! Come, come! One
effort, it's only the first mouthful!” and with a superhuman effort,
he swallowed. “Look at me!” he cried to the three Germans, “look at
me! I—I—I'm going to be sick!” and putting down his plate, he rose and
staggered forward. “Joe,” he said in a dying voice, “feed these poor
men, feed them; make them drink; feed them!” And rushing headlong to
the edge of the grove, he returned what he had swallowed—to the great
interest of Brink. Then, waving away the approach of Joe, and consumed
with shame and remorse at his lack of heroism, he ran and hid himself
in a clump of hazel bushes, trying to slink into the earth. “No,” he
thought; “no; I am not for public life. I have failed at the first test.
Was ever so squeamish an exhibition? I have betrayed my country and
the honour of public life. These Germans are now full of beer and
pigeon-pie. What am I but a poltroon, unworthy to lace the shoes of the
great leaders of my land? The sun has witnessed my disgrace.”
How long he stayed there lying on his face he did not know before he
heard the voice of Joe saying, “Wot oh, sir!”
“Joe,” replied Mr. Lavender faintly, “my body is here, but my spirit has
departed.”
“Ah!” said Joe, “a rum upset—that there. Swig this down, sir!” and he
held out to his master, a flask-cup filled with brandy. Mr. Lavender
swallowed it.
“Have they gone?” he said, gasping.
“They 'ave, sir,” replied Joe, “and not 'alf full neither. Where did you
pick 'em up?”
“In a gravel-pit,” said Mr. Lavender. “I can never forgive myself for
this betrayal of my King and country. I have fed three Germans. Leave
me, for I am not fit to mingle with my fellows.”
“Well, I don't think,” said Joe. “Germans?”
Gazing up into his face Mr. Lavender read the unmistakable signs of
uncontrolled surprise.
“Why do you look at me like that?” he said.
“Germans?” repeated Joe; “what Germans? Three blighters workin' on the
road, as English as you or me. Wot are you talkin' about, sir?”
“What!” cried Mr. Lavender, “do you tell me they were not Germans?”
“Well, their names was Tompkins, 'Obson, and Brown, and they 'adn't an
'aitch in their 'eads.”
“God be praised!” said Mr. Lavender. “I am, then, still an English
gentleman. Joe, I am very hungry; is there nothing left?”
“Nothin' whatever, sir,” replied Joe.
“Then take me home,” said Mr. Lavender; “I care not, for my spirit has
come back to me.”
So saying, he rose, and supported by Joe, made his way towards the car,
praising God in his heart that he had not disgraced his country.
IX CONVERSES WITH A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
“Yes,” said Mr. Lavender, when they had proceeded some twenty miles
along the road for home, “my hunger is excessive. If we come across an
hotel, Joe, pull up.”
“Right-o, sir,” returned Joe. “'Otels, ain't what they were, but we'll
find something. I've got your coupons.”
Mr. Lavender, who was seated beside his chauffeur on the driving-seat,
while Blink occupied in solitude the body of the car, was silent for a
minute, revolving a philosophic thought.
“Do you find,” he said suddenly, “that compulsory sacrifice is doing you
good, Joe?”
“It's good for my thirst, sir,” replied Joe. “Never was so powerful
thirsty in me life as I've been since they watered beer. There's just
'enough in it to tickle you. That bottle o' Bass you would 'ave 'ad at
lunch is the last of the old stock at 'ome, sir; an' the sight of it
fair gave me the wind up. To think those blighters 'ad it! Wish I'd
known they was Germans—I wouldn't 'ave weakened on it.”
“Do not, I beg,” said Mr. Lavender, “remind me of that episode. I
sometimes think,” he went on as dreamily as his hunger would permit,
“that being forced to deprive oneself awakens one's worst passions; that
is, of course, speaking rather as a man than a public man. What do
you think will happen, Joe, when we are no longer obliged to sacrifice
ourselves?
“Do wot we've been doin all along—sacrifice someone else,” said Joe
lightly.
“Be serious, Joe,” said Mr. Lavender.
“Well,” returned Joe, “I don't know what'll 'appen to you, sir, but I
shall go on the bust permanent.”
Mr. Lavender sighed. “I do so wonder whether I shall, too,” he said.
Joe looked round at him, and a gleam of compassion twinkled in his
greenish eyes. “Don't you worry, sir,” he said; “it's a question of
constitootion. A week'd sew you up.”
“A week!” said Mr. Lavender with watering lips, “I trust I may not
forget myself so long as that. Public men do not go 'on the bust,' Joe,
as you put it.”
“Be careful, sir! I can't drive with one eye.”
“How can they, indeed?” went on Mr. Lavender; “they are like athletes,
ever in training for their unending conflict with the national life.”
“Well,” answered Joe indulgently, “they 'as their own kind of
intoxication, too—that's true; and the fumes is permanent; they're
gassed all the time, and chloroformed the rest.
“I don't know to what you allude, Joe,” said Mr. Lavender severely.
“'Aven't you never noticed, sir, that there's two worlds—the world as it
is, and the world as it seems to the public man?”
“That may be,” said Mr. Lavender with some excitement. “But which is
the greater, which is the nobler, Joe? And what does the other matter?
Surely that which flourishes in great minds, and by their utterances
is made plain. Is it not better to live in a world where nobody shrinks
from being starved or killed so long as they can die for their kings and
countries, rather than in a world where people merely wish to live?”
“Ah!” said Joe, “we're all ready to die for our countries if we've got
to. But we don't look on it, like the public speakers, as a picnic.
They're a bit too light--light- light-'earteartearted.”
“Joe,” said Mr. Lavender, covering his ears, and instantly uncovering
them again, “this is the most horrible blasphemy I have ever listened
to.”
“I can do better than that, sir,” answered Joe. “Shall I get on with
it?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Lavender, clenching his hands, “a public man shrinks
from nothing—not even from the gibes of his enemies.”
“Well, wot abaht it, sir? Look at the things they say, and at what
really is. Mind you, I'm not speakin' particular of the public men in
this country—or any other country; I'm speakin' of the lot of 'em in
every country. They're a sort of secret society, brought up on gas.
And every now and then someone sets a match to it, and we get it in
the neck. Look 'ere, sir. Dahn squats one on his backside an' writes
something in 'igh words. Up pops another and says something in 'igher;
an' so they go on poppin' up an' squattin' dahn till you get an
atmosphere where you can't breathe; and all the time all we want is to
be let alone, and 'uman kindness do the rest. All these fellers 'ave
got two weaknesses—one's ideas, and the other's their own importance.
They've got to be conspicuous, and without ideas they can't, so it's a
vicious circle. When I see a man bein' conspicuous, I says to meself:
'Gawd 'elp us, we shall want it!' And sooner or later we always do. I'll
tell you what's the curse of the world, sir; it's the gift of expressin'
what ain't your real feeling. And—Lord! what a lot of us 'ave got it!”
“Joe,” said Mr. Lavender, whose eyes were almost starting from his head,
“your words are the knell of poetry, philosophy, and prose—especially of
prose. They are the grave of history, which, as you know, is made up
of the wars and intrigues which have originated in the brains of public
men. If your sordid views were true, how do you suppose for one minute
that in this great epic struggle we could be consoled by the thought
that we are 'making history'? Has there been a single utterance of any
note which has not poured the balm of those words into our ears? Think
how they have sustained the widow and the orphan, and the wounded lying
out in agony under the stars. 'To make history,' 'to act out the great
drama'—that thought, ever kept before us, has been our comfort and
their stay. And you would take it from us? Shame—shame!” repeated Mr.
Lavender. “You would destroy all glamour, and be the death of every
principle.”
“Give me facts,” said Joe stubbornly, “an' you may 'ave my principles.
As to the other thing, I don't know what it is, but you may 'ave it,
too. And 'ere's another thing, sir: haven't you never noticed that when
a public man blows off and says something, it does 'im in? No matter
what 'appens afterwards, he's got to stick to it or look a fool.”
“I certainly have not,” said Mr. Lavender. “I have never, or very
seldom, noticed that narrowness in public men, nor have I ever seen them
'looking fools' as you rudely put it.”
“Where are your eyes, sir?” answered Joe; “where are your eyes? I
give you my word it's one or the other, though I admit they've brought
camouflage to an 'igh art. But, speaking soberly, sir, if that's
possible, public men are a good thing' and you can 'ave too much of it.
But you began it, sir,” he added soothingly, “and 'ere's your hotel.
You'll feel better with something inside you.”
So saying, he brought the car to a standstill before a sign which bore
the words, “Royal Goat.”
Mr. Lavender, deep sunk in the whirlpool of feeling which had been
stirred in him by his chauffeur's cynicism, gazed at the square redbrick
building with bewildered eyes.
“It's quite O. K.,” said Joe; “I used to call here regular when I was
travellin' in breeches. Where the commercials are gathered together the
tap is good,” he added, laying a finger against the side of his nose.
“And they've a fine brand of pickles. Here's your coupon.”
Thus encouraged, Mr. Lavender descended from the car, and, accompanied
by Blink, entered the hotel and sought the coffee-room.
A maid of robust and comely appearance, with a fine free eye, divested
him of his overcoat and the coupon, and pointed to a table and a pale
and intellectual-looking young man in spectacles who was eating.
“Have you any more beef?” said the latter without looking up.
“No, sir,” replied the maid.
“Then bring me the ham and eggs,” he added.
“Here's another coupon—and anything else you've got.”
Mr. Lavender, whose pangs had leaped in him at the word “beef,” gazed at
the bare bone of the beef-joint, and sighed.
“I, too, will have some ham and a couple of poached eggs,” he said.
“You can have ham, sir,” replied the maid, “but there are only eggs
enough for one.”
“And I am the one,” said the young man, looking up for the first time.
Mr. Lavender at once conceived an aversion from him; his appearance was
unhealthy, and his eyes ravened from behind the spectacles beneath his
high forehead.
“I have no wish to deprive you of your eggs, sir,” he said, “though I
have had nothing to eat all day.”
“I have had nothing to eat to speak of for six months,” replied the
young man, “and in a fortnight's time I shall have nothing to eat again
for two years.”
Mr. Lavender, who habitually spoke, the truth, looked at him with a sort
of horror. But the young man had again concentrated his attention on his
plate. “How deceptive are appearances,” thought Mr. Lavender; “one would
say an intellectual, not to say a spiritual type, and yet he eats like a
savage, and lies like a trooper!” And the pinchings of his hunger again
attacking him, he said rather acidly:
May I ask you, sir, whether you consider it amusing to tell such
untruths to a stranger?
The young man, who had finished what was on his plate, paused, and with
a faint smile said:
“I spoke figuratively. You, sir, I expect, have never been in prison.”
At the word 'prison' Mr. Lavender's natural kindliness reasserted itself
at once. “Forgive me,” he said gently; “please eat all the ham. I can
easily do with bread and cheese. I am extremely sorry you have had that
misfortune, and would on no account do anything which might encourage
you to incur it again. If it is a question of money or anything of
that sort,” he went on timidly, “please command me. I abhor prisons;
I consider them inhuman; people should only be confined upon their
honours.”
The young man's eyes kindled behind his spectacles.
“I have been confined,” he said, “not upon my honour, but because of my
honour; to break it in.”
“How is that?” cried Mr. Lavender, aghast, “to break it in?”
“Yes,” said the young man, cutting a large slice of bread, “there's no
other way of putting it with truth. They want me to go back on my word
to go back on my faith, and I won't. In a fortnight's time they'll gaol
me again, so I MUST eat—excuse me. I shall want all my strength.” And he
filled his mouth too full to go on speaking.
Mr. Lavender stared at him, greatly perturbed.
“How unjustly I judged him,” he thought; and seeing that the maid had
placed the end of a ham before him he began carving off what little
there was left on it, and, filling a plate, placed it before the young
man. The latter thanked him, and without looking up ate rapidly on. Mr.
Lavender watched him with beaming eyes. “It's lovely to see him!” he
thought; “poor fellow!”
“Where are the eggs?” said the young man suddenly.
Mr. Lavender got up and rang the bell.
“Please bring those eggs for him,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said the maid. “And what are you going to have? There's
nothing in the house now.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Lavender, startled. “A cup of coffee and a slice of
bread, thank you. I can always eat at any time.”
The maid went away muttering to herself, and bringing the eggs, plumped
them down before the young man, who ate them more hastily than words
could tell.
“I mean,” he said, “to do all I can in this fort-night to build up my
strength. I shall eat almost continuously. They shall never break me.”
And, reaching out, he took the remainder of the loaf.
Mr. Lavender watched it disappear with a certain irritation which he
subdued at once. “How selfish of me,” he thought, “even to think of
eating while this young hero is still hungry.”
“Are you, then,” he said, “the victim of some religious or political
plot?”
“Both,” replied the young man, leaning back with a sigh of repletion,
and wiping his mouth. “I was released to-day, and, as I said, I shall be
court-martialled again to-day fortnight. It'll be two years this time.
But they can't break me.”
Mr. Lavender gasped, for at the word “courtmartialled” a dreadful doubt
had assailed him.
“Are you,” he stammered—“you are not—you cannot be a Conscientious
Objector?”
“I can,” said the young man.
Mr. Lavender half rose in horror.
“I don't approve,” he ejaculated; “I do not approve of you.”
“Of course not,” said the young man with a little smile at once proud
and sad, “who does? If you did I shouldn't have to eat like this, nor
should I have the consciousness of spiritual loneliness to sustain me.
You look on me as a moral outcast, as a leper. That is my comfort and
my strength. For though I have a genuine abhorrence of war, I know full
well that I could not stick this if it were not for the feeling that
I must not and will not lower myself to the level of mere opportunists
like you, and sink myself in the herd of men in the street.”
At hearing himself thus described Mr. Lavender flushed.
“I yield to no one,” he said, “in my admiration of principle. It is
because of my principles that I regard you as a——”
“Shirker,” put in the young man calmly. “Go on; don't mince words; we're
used to them.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Lavender, kindling, “a shirker. Excuse me! A renegade
from the camp of Liberty, a deserter from the ranks of Humanity, if you
will pardon me.”
“Say a Christian, and have done with it,” said the young man.
“No,” said Mr. Lavender, who had risen to his feet, “I will not go so
far as that. You are not a Christian, you are a Pharisee. I abhor you.”
“And I abhor you,” said the young man suddenly. “I am a Christian
Socialist, but I refuse to consider you my brother. And I can tell
you this: Some day when through our struggle the triumph of Christian
Socialism and of Peace is assured, we shall see that you firebrands
and jingoes get no chance to put up your noxious heads and disturb the
brotherhood of the world. We shall stamp you out. We shall do you in. We
who believe in love will take jolly good care that you apostles of hate
get all we've had and more—if you provoke us enough that is.”
He stopped, for Mr. Lavender's figure had rigidified on the other side
of the table into the semblance of one who is about to address the House
of Lords.
“I can find here,” he cried, “no analogy with religious persecution.
This is a simple matter. The burden of defending his country falls
equally on every citizen. I know not, and I care not, what promises
were made to you, or in what spirit the laws of compulsory service were
passed. You will either serve or go to prison till you do. I am a plain
Englishman, expressing the view of my plain countrymen.”
The young man, tilting back in his chair, rapped on the table with the
handle of his dinner-knife.
“Hear, hear!” he murmured.
“And let me tell you this,” continued Mr. Lavender, “you have no right
to put a mouthful of food between your lips so long as you are not
prepared to die for it. And if the Huns came here tomorrow I would not
lift a finger to save you from the fate you would undoubtedly receive.”
During this colloquy their voices had grown so loud that the maid,
entering in dismay, had gone into the bar and informed the company that
a Conscientious Objector had eaten all the food and was “carrying on
outrageous” in the coffee-room. On hearing this report those who were
assembled—being four commercial travellers far gone in liquor—taking
up the weapons which came nearest to hand—to wit, four syphons—formed
themselves two deep and marched into the coffee-room. Aware at once
from Mr. Lavender's white hair and words that he was not the Objector
in question, they advanced upon the young man, who was still seated,
and taking up the four points of the compass, began squirting him
unmercifully with soda-water. Blinded and dripping, the unfortunate
young fellow tried desperately to elude the cordon of his persecutors,
only to receive a fresh stream in his face at each attempt. Seeing
him thus tormented, amid the coarse laughter of these half-drunken
“travellers,” Mr. Lavender suffered a moment of the most poignant
struggle between his principles and his chivalry. Then, almost
unconsciously grasping the ham-bone, he advanced and called out loudly:
“Stop! Do not persecute that young man. You are four and he is one. Drop
it, I tell you—Huns that you are!”
The commercial fellows, however, laughed; and this infuriating Mr.
Lavender, he dealt one of them a blow with the ham-bone, which, lighting
on the funny point of his elbow, caused him to howl and spin round the
room. One of the others promptly avenged him with a squirt of syphon
in Mr. Lavender's left eye; whereon he incontinently attacked them all,
whirling the ham-bone round his head like a shillelagh. And had it not
been that Blink and the maid seized his coat-tails he would have done
them severe injury. It was at this moment that Joe Petty, attracted by
the hullabaloo, arrived in the doorway, and running up to his master,
lifted him from behind and carried him from the room, still brandishing
the ham-bone and kicking out with his legs. Dumping him into the car,
Joe mounted hastily and drove off. Mr. Lavender sat for two or three
minutes coming to his senses before full realization of what he had done
dawned on him. Then, flinging the ham-bone from him, he sank back among
the cushions, with his chin buried on his chest. “What have I done?” he
thought over and over again. “What have I done? Taken up the bone for a
Conscientious Objector—defended a renegade against great odds! My God! I
am indeed less than a public man!”
And in this state of utter dejection, inanition, and collapse, with
Blink asleep on his feet, he was driven back to Hampstead.
X DREAMS A DREAM AND SEES A VISION