evening when he sat down to supper that he was unable to leave the
lobster which Mrs. Petty had provided until it was reduced to mere
integument. Since his principles prevented his lightening it with
anything but ginger-beer he went to bed in some discomfort, and, tired
out with the emotions of the day, soon fell into a heavy slumber, which
at dawn became troubled by a dream of an extremely vivid character. He
fancied himself, indeed, dressed in khaki, with a breastplate composed
of newspapers containing reports of speeches which he had been charged
to deliver to soldiers at the front. He was passing in a winged tank
along those scenes of desolation of which he had so often read in his
daily papers, and which his swollen fancy now coloured even more vividly
than had those striking phrases of the past, when presently the tank
turned a somersault, and shot him out into a morass lighted up by
countless star-shells whizzing round and above. In this morass were
hundreds and thousands of figures sunk like himself up to the waist,
and waving their arms above their heads. “These,” thought Mr. Lavender,
“must be the soldiers I have come to speak to,” and he tore a sheet off
his breastplate; but before he could speak from its columns it became
thin air in his hand; and he went on tearing off sheet after sheet,
hoping to find a speech which would stay solid long enough for him to
deliver it. At last a little corner stayed substantial in his hand, and
he called out in a loud voice: “Heroes!”
But at the word the figures vanished with a wail, sinking into the
mud, which was left covered with bubbles iridescent in the light of the
star-shells. At this moment one of these, bursting over his head, turned
into a large bright moon; and Mr. Lavender saw to his amazement that
the bubbles were really butterflies, perched on the liquid moonlit mud,
fluttering their crimson wings, and peering up at him with tiny human
faces. “Who are you?” he cried; “oh! who are you?” The butterflies
closed their wings; and on each of their little faces came a look so
sad and questioning that Mr. Lavender's tears rolled down into his
breastplate of speeches. A whisper rose from them. “We are the dead.”
And they flew up suddenly in swarms, and beat his face with their wings.
Mr. Lavender woke up sitting in the middle of the floor, with light
shining in on him through a hole in the curtain, and Blink licking off
the tears which were streaming down his face.
“Blink,” he said, “I have had a horrible dream.” And still conscious of
that weight on his chest, as of many undelivered speeches, he was
afraid to go back to bed; so, putting on some clothes, he went carefully
downstairs and out of doors into the morning. He walked with his
dog towards the risen sun, alone in the silvery light of Hampstead,
meditating deeply on his dream. “I have evidently,” he thought, “not yet
acquired that felicitous insensibility which is needful for successful
public speaking. This is undoubtedly the secret of my dream. For the
sub-conscious knowledge of my deficiency explains the weight on my chest
and the futile tearing of sheet after sheet, which vanished as I tore
them away. I lack the self-complacency necessary to the orator in any
surroundings, and that golden certainty which has enchanted me in the
outpourings of great men, whether in ink or speech. This is, however,
a matter which I can rectify with practice.” And coming to a little
may-tree in full blossom, he thus addressed it:
“Little tree, be my audience, for I see in you, tipped with the
sunlight, a vision of the tranquil and beautiful world, which, according
to every authority, will emerge out of this carnival of blood and iron.”
And the little tree lifted up its voice and answered him with the song
of a blackbird.
Mr. Lavender's heart, deeply responsive to the voice of Nature, melted
within him.
“What are the realms of this earth, the dreams of statesmen, and all
plots and policies,” he said, “compared with the beauty of this little
tree? She—or is it a he?—breathes, in her wild and simple dress, just
to be lovely and loved. He harbours the blackbird, and shakes fragrance
into the morning; and with her blossom catches the rain and the sun
drops of heaven. I see in him the witchery of God; and of her prettiness
would I make a song of redemption.”
So saying he knelt down before the little tree, while Blink on her
haunches, very quiet beside him, looked wiser than many dogs.
A familiar gurgling sound roused him from his devotions, and turning his
head he saw his young neighbour in the garb of a nurse, standing on
the path behind him. “She has dropped from heaven,” he thought for all
nurses are angels.
And, taking off his hat, he said:
“You surprised me at a moment of which I am not ashamed; I was communing
with Beauty. And behold! Aurora is with me.”
“Say, rather, Borealis,” said the young lady. “I was so fed-up with
hospital that I had to have a scamper before turning in. If you're going
home we might go together?”
“It would, indeed, be a joy,” said Mr. Lavender. “The garb of mercy
becomes you.”
“Do you think so?” replied the young lady, in whose cheeks a lovely
flush had not deepened. “I call it hideous. Do you always come out and
pray to that tree?”
“I am ashamed to say,” returned Mr. Lavender, “that I do not. But I
intend to do so in future, since it has brought me such a vision.”
And he looked with such deferential and shining eyes at his companion
that she placed the back of her hand before her mouth, and her breast
rose.
“I'm most fearfully sleepy,” she said. “Have you had any adventures
lately—you and Samjoe?
“Samjoe?” repeated Mr. Lavender.
“Your chauffeur—I call him that. He's very like Sam Weller and Sancho
Panza, don't you think, Don Pickwixote?
“Ah!” said Mr. Lavender, bewildered; “Joe, you mean. A good fellow. He
has in him the sort of heroism which I admire more than any other.”
“Which is that?” asked the young lady.
“That imperturbable humour in the face of adverse circumstances for
which our soldiers are renowned.”
“You are a great believer in heroics, Don Pickwixote,” said the young
lady.
“What would life be without them?” returned Mr. Lavender. “The war could
not go on for a minute.”
“You're right there,” said the young lady bitterly.
“You surely,” said Mr. Lavender, aghast, “cannot wish it to stop until
we have destroyed our common enemies?”
“Well,” said the young lady, “I'm not a Pacifist; but when you see as
many people without arms and legs as I do, heroics get a bit off, don't
you know.” And she increased her pace until Mr. Lavender, who was not
within four inches of her stature, was almost compelled to trot. “If I
were a Tommy,” she added, “I should want to shoot every man who uttered
a phrase. Really, at this time of day, they are the limit.”
“Aurora,” said Mr. Lavender, “if you will permit me, who am old
enough—alas!—to be your father, to call you that, you must surely be
aware that phrases are the very munitions of war, and certainly not less
important than mere material explosives. Take the word 'Liberty,' for
instance; would you deprive us of it?”
The young lady fixed on him those large grey eyes which had in them the
roll of genius. “Dear Don Pickwixote,” she said, “I would merely take it
from the mouths of those who don't know what it means; and how much do
you think would be left? Not enough to butter the parsnips of a
Borough Council, or fill one leader in a month of Sundays. Have you
not discovered, Don Pickwixote, that Liberty means the special form of
tyranny which one happens to serve under; and that our form of tyranny
is GAS.”
“High heaven!” cried Mr. Lavender, “that I should hear such words from
so red lips!”
“I've not been a Pacifist, so far,” continued the young lady, stifling
a yawn, “because I hate cruelty, I hate it enough to want to be cruel
to it. I want the Huns to lap their own sauce. I don't want to be
revengeful, but I just can't help it.”
“My dear young lady,” said Mr. Lavender soothingly, “you are not—you
cannot be revengeful; for every great writer and speaker tells us that
revengefulness is an emotion alien to the Allies, who are merely just.
“Rats!”
At this familiar word, Blink who had been following their conversation
quietly, threw up her nose and licked the young lady's hand so
unexpectedly that she started and added:
“Darling!”
Mr. Lavender, who took the expression as meant for himself, coloured
furiously.
“Aurora,” he said in a faint voice, “the rapture in my heart prevents my
taking advantage of your sweet words. Forgive me, and let us go quietly
in, with the vision I have seen, for I know my place.”
The young lady's composure seemed to tremble in the balance, and her
lips twitched; then holding out her hand she took Mr. Lavender's and
gave it a good squeeze.
“You really are a dear,” she said. “I think you ought to be in bed. My
name's Isabel, you know.”
“Not to me,” said Mr. Lavender. “You are the Dawn; nothing shall
persuade me to the contrary. And from henceforth I swear to rise with
you every morning.”
“Oh, no!” cried the young lady, “please don't imagine that I sniff the
matutinal as a rule. I just happened to be in a night shift.”
“No matter,” said Mr. Lavender; “I shall see you with the eye of faith,
in your night shifts, and draw from the vision strength to continue my
public work beckoned by the fingers of the roseate future.”
“Well,” murmured the young lady, “so long for now; and do go back to
bed. It's only about five.” And waving the tips of those fingers, she
ran lightly up the garden-path and disappeared into her house.
Mr. Lavender remained for a moment as if transfigured; then entering
his garden, he stood gazing up at her window, until the thought that she
might appear there was too much for him, and he went in.
XI BREAKS UP A PEACE MEETING
While seated at breakfast on the morning after he had seen this vision,
Mr. Lavender, who read his papers as though they had been Holy Writ,
came on an announcement that a meeting would be held that evening at a
chapel in Holloway under the auspices of the “Free Speakers' League,” an
association which his journals had often branded with a reputation, for
desiring Peace. On reading the names of the speakers Mr. Lavender felt
at once that it would be his duty to attend. “There will,” he thought,
“very likely be no one there to register a protest. For in this country
we have pushed the doctrine of free speech to a limit which threatens
the noble virtue of patriotism. This is no doubt a recrudescence of
that terrible horse-sense in the British people which used to permit
everybody to have his say, no matter what he said. Yet I would rather
stay at home,” he mused “for they will do me violence, I expect;
cowardice, however, would not become me, and I must go.”
He was in a state of flurry all day, thinking of his unpleasant duty
towards those violent persons, and garbishing up his memory by reading
such past leaders in his five journals as bore on the subject. He spoke
no word of his intentions, convinced that he ran a considerable risk
at the hands of the Pacifists, but too sensible of his honour to assist
anyone to put that spoke in his wheel which he could not help longing
for.
At six o'clock he locked Blink into his study, and arming himself with
three leaders, set forth on his perilous adventure. Seven o'clock saw
him hurrying along the dismal road to the chapel, at whose door he met
with an unexpected check.
“Where is your ticket?” said a large man.
“I have none,” replied Mr. Lavender, disconcerted; “for this is a
meeting of the Free Speakers' League, and it is for that reason that I
have come.”
The large man looked at him attentively. “No admittance without ticket,”
he said.
“I protest,” said Mr. Lavender. “How can you call yourselves by that
name and not let me in?”
The large man smiled.
“Well, he said, you haven't the strength of—of a rabbit—in you go!”
Mr. Lavender found himself inside and some indignation.
The meeting had begun, and a tall man at the pulpit end, with the face
of a sorrowful bull, was addressing an audience composed almost entirely
of women and old men, while his confederates sat behind him trying to
look as if they were not present. At the end of a row, about half-way up
the chapel, Mr. Lavender composed himself to listen, thinking, “However
eager I may be to fulfil my duty and break up this meeting, it behoves
me as a fair-minded man to ascertain first what manner of meeting it
is that I am breaking up.” But as the speaker progressed, in periods
punctuated by applause from what, by his experience at the door, Mr.
Lavender knew to be a packed audience, he grew more and more uneasy. It
cannot be said that he took in what the speaker was saying, obsessed as
he was by the necessity of formulating a reply, and of revolving, to
the exclusion of all else, the flowers and phrases of the leaders which
during the day he had almost learned by heart. But by nature polite he
waited till the orator was sitting down before he rose, and, with the
three leaders firmly grasped in his hand, walked deliberately up to the
seated speakers. Turning his back on them, he said, in a voice to which
nervousness and emotion lent shrillness:
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is now your turn, in accordance with the
tradition of your society, to listen to me. Let us not mince matters
with mealy mouths. There are in our midst certain viperous persons,
like that notorious gentleman who had the sulphurous impudence to have a
French father—French! gentlemen; not German, ladies-mark the cunning and
audacity of the fellow; like that renegade Labour leader, who has never
led anything, yet, if he had his will, would lead us all into the pit
of destruction; like those other high-brow emasculates who mistake their
pettifogging pedantry for pearls of price, and plaster the plain issue
before us with perfidious and Pacifistic platitudes. We say at once, and
let them note it, we will have none of them; we will have——” Here his
words were drowned by an interruption greater even than that; which was
fast gathering among the row of speakers behind him, and the surprised
audience in front; and he could see the large man being forced from the
door and up the aisle by a posse of noisy youths, till he stood with
arms pinioned, struggling to turn round, just in front of Mr. Lavender.
Seeing his speech thus endangered, the latter cried out at the top
of his voice: “Free speech, gentlemen, free speech; I have come here
expressly to see that we have nothing of the sort.” At this the young
men, who now filled the aisle, raised a mighty booing.
“Gentlemen,” shouted Mr. Lavender, waving his leaders, “gentlemen—-” But
at this moment the large man was hurled into contact with what served
Mr. Lavender for stomach, and the two fell in confusion. An uproar
ensued of which Mr. Lavender was more than vaguely conscious, for many
feet went over him. He managed, however, to creep into a corner, and,
getting up, surveyed the scene. The young men who had invaded the
meeting, much superior in numbers and strength to the speakers, to
the large man, and the three or four other able-bodied persons who had
rallied to them from among the audience, were taking every advantage of
their superiority; and it went to Mr. Lavender's heart to see how they
thumped and maltreated their opponents. The sight of their brutality,
indeed, rendered him so furious that, forgetting all his principles
and his purpose in coming to the meeting, he climbed on to a form, and
folding his arms tightly on his breast, called out at the top of his
voice:
“Cads! Do not thus take advantage of your numbers. Cads!” Having thus
defended what in his calmer moments he would have known to be the wrong,
he awaited his own fate calmly. But in the hubbub his words had passed
unnoticed. “It is in moments like these,” he thought, “that the great
speaker asserts his supremacy, quells the storm, and secures himself a
hearing.” And he began to rack his brains to remember how they did it.
“It must require the voice of an ox,” he thought, “and the skin of
an alligator. Alas! How deficient I am in public qualities!” But his
self-depreciation was here cut off with the electric light. At this
sheer intervention of Providence Mr. Lavender, listening to the
disentangling sounds which rose in the black room, became aware that he
had a chance such as he had not yet had of being heard.
“Stay, my friends!” he said; “here in darkness we can see better the
true proportions of this great question of free speech. There are some
who contend that in a democracy every opinion should be heard; that,
just because the good sense of the majority will ever lead the country
into the right paths, the minority should be accorded full and fair
expression, for they cannot deflect the country's course, and because
such expression acts as a healthful safety-valve. Moreover, they say
there is no way of preventing the minority from speaking save that of
force, which is unworthy of a majority, and the negation of what we are
fighting for in this war. But I say, following the great leader-writers,
that in a time of national danger nobody ought to say anything except
what is in accord with the opinions of the majority; for only in this
way can we present a front which will seem to be united to our common
enemies. I say, and since I am the majority I must be in the right, that
no one who disagrees with me must say anything if we are to save the
cause of freedom and humanity. I deprecate violence, but I am thoroughly
determined to stand no nonsense, and shall not hesitate to suppress by
every means in the power of the majority—including, if need be, Prussian
measures—any whisper from those misguided and unpatriotic persons whose
so-called principles induce them to assert their right to have opinions
of their own. This has ever been a free country, and they shall not
imperil its freedom by their volubility and self-conceit.” Here Mr.
Lavender paused for breath, and in the darkness a faint noise, as of a
mouse scrattling at a wainscot, attracted his attention. “Wonderful,”
he thought, elated by the silence, “that I should so have succeeded in
riveting their attention as to be able to hear a mouse gnawing. I
must have made a considerable impression.” And, fearing to spoil it by
further speech, he set to work to grope his way round the chapel wall
in the hope of coming to the door. He had gone but a little way when his
outstretched hand came into contact with something warm, which shrank
away with a squeal.
“Oh!” cried Mr. Lavender, while a shiver went down his spine, “what is
that?”
“Me,” said a stifled voice. “Who are you?”
“A public speaker, madam,” answered Mr. Lavender, unutterably relieved.
Don't be alarmed.
“Ouch!” whispered the voice. That madman!
“I assure you, madam,” replied Mr. Lavender, striving to regain contact,
“I wouldn't harm you for the world. Can you tell me in what portion of
the hall we are?” And crouching down he stretched out his arms and felt
about him. No answer came; but he could tell that he was between two
rows of chairs, and, holding to the top of one, he began to sidle along,
crouching, so as not to lose touch with the chairs behind him. He had
not proceeded the length of six chairs in the pitchy darkness when the
light was suddenly turned up, and he found himself glaring over the
backs of the chairs in front into the eyes of a young woman, who was
crouching and glaring back over the same chairs.
“Dear me,” said Mr. Lavender, as with a certain dignity they both rose
to their full height, “I had no conception——”
Without a word, the young woman put her hand up to her back hair, sidled
swiftly down the row of chairs, ran down the aisle, and vanished.
There was no one else in the chapel. Mr. Lavender, after surveying the
considerable wreckage, made his way to the door and passed out into
the night. “Like a dream,” he thought; “but I have done my duty, for no
meeting was ever more completely broken up. With a clear conscience and
a good appetite I can how go home.”
XII SPEEDS UP TRANSPORT, AND SEES A DOCTOR
Greatly cheered by his success at the Peace meeting, Mr. Lavender
searched his papers next morning to find a new field for his activities;
nor had he to read far before he came on this paragraph:
“Everything is dependent on transport, and we cannot sufficiently
urge that this should be speeded up by
every means in our power.”
“How true!” he thought. And, finishing his breakfast hastily, he went
out with Blink to think over what he could do to help. “I can exhort,”
he mused, “anyone engaged in transport who is not exerting himself to
the utmost. It will not be pleasant to do so, for it will certainly
provoke much ill-feeling. I must not, however, be deterred by that,
for it is the daily concomitant of public life, and hard words break no
bones, as they say, but rather serve to thicken the skins and sharpen
the tongues of us public men, so that, we are able to meet our opponents
with their own weapons. I perceive before me, indeed, a liberal
education in just those public qualities wherein I am conscious of being
as yet deficient.” And his heart sank within him, thinking of the carts
on the hills of Hampstead and the boys who drove them. “What is lacking
to them,” he mused, “is the power of seeing this problem steadily and
seeing it whole. Let me endeavour to impart this habit to all who have
any connection with transport.”
He had just completed this reflection when, turning a corner, he came on
a large van standing stockstill at the top of an incline. The driver was
leaning idly against the hind wheel filling a pipe. Mr. Lavender glanced
at the near horse, and seeing that he was not distressed, he thus
addressed the man:
“Do you not know, my friend, that every minute is of importance in this
national crisis? If I could get you to see the question of transport
steadily, and to see it whole, I feel convinced that you would not be
standing there lighting your pipe when perhaps this half-hour's delay in
the delivery of your goods may mean the death of one of your comrades at
the front.”
The man, who was wizened, weathered, and old, with but few teeth, looked
up at him from above the curved hands with which he was coaxing the
flame of a match into the bowl of his pipe. His brow was wrinkled, and
moisture stood at the comers of his eyes.
“I assure you,” went on Mr. Lavender, “that we have none of us the right
in these days to delay for a single minute the delivery of anything—not
even of speeches. When I am tempted to do so, I think of our sons and
brothers in the trenches, and how every shell and every word saves their
lives, and I deliver——”
The old man, who had finished lighting his pipe, took a long pull at it,
and said hoarsely:
“Go on!”
“I will,” said Mr. Lavender, “for I perceive that I can effect a
revolution in your outlook, so that instead of wasting the country's
time by leaning against that wheel you will drive on zealously and help
to win the war.”
The old man looked at him, and one side of his face became drawn up in
a smile, which seemed to Mr. Lavender so horrible that he said: “Why do
you look at me like that?”
“Cawn't 'elp it,” said the man.
“What makes you,” continued Mr. Lavender, “pause here with your job half
finished? It is not the hill which keeps you back, for you are at the
top, and your horses seem rested.”
“Yes,” said the old man, with another contortion of his face, “they're
rested—leastways, one of 'em.”
“Then what delays you—if not that British sluggishness which we in
public life find such a terrible handicap to our efforts in conducting
the war?”
“Ah!” said the old man. “But out of one you don't make two, guv'nor. Git
on the offside and you'll see it a bit steadier and a bit 'oler than you
'ave 'itherto.”
Struck by his words, which were accompanied by a painful puckering of
the checks, Mr. Lavender moved round the van looking for some defect in
its machinery, and suddenly became aware that the off horse was lying on
the ground, with the traces cut. It lay on its side, and did not move.
“Oh!” cried Mr. Lavender; “oh!” And going up to the horse's head he
knelt down. The animal's eye was glazing.
“Oh!” he cried again, “poor horse! Don't die!” And tears dropped out of
his eyes on to the horse's cheek. The eye seemed to give him a look, and
became quite glazed.