thin horse—nothing but bones!” And his gaze haunted the ridge and furrow
of the horse's carcase, while the living horse looked round and down at
its dead fellow, from whose hollow face a ragged forelock drooped in the
dust.
“I must go and apologize to that old man,” said Mr. Lavender aloud, “for
no doubt he is even more distressed than I am.”
“Not 'e, guv'nor,” said a voice, and looking beside him he saw the aged
driver standing beside him; “not 'e; for of all the crool jobs I ever
'ad—drivin' that 'orse these last three months 'as been the croolest.
There 'e lies and 'es aht of it; and that's where they'd all like to be.
Speed, done 'im in, savin' 'is country's 'time an' 'is country's oats;
that done 'im in. A good old 'orse, a willin' old 'orse, 'as broke 'is
'eart tryin' to do 'is bit on 'alf rations. There 'e lies; and I'm glad
'e does.” And with the back of his hand the old fellow removed some
brown moisture which was trembling on his jaw. Mr. Lavender rose from
his knees.
“Dreadful!—monstrous!” he cried; “poor horse! Who is responsible for
this?”
“Why,” said the old driver, “the gents as sees it steady and sees it
'ole from one side o' the van, same as you.”
So smitten to the heart was Mr. Lavender by those words that he covered
his ears with his hands and almost ran from the scene, nor did he stop
till he had reached the shelter of his study, and was sitting in his
arm-chair with Blink upon his feet. “I will buy a go-cart,” he thought,
“Blink and I will pull our weight and save the poor horses. We can at
least deliver our own milk and vegetables.”
He had not been sitting there for half-an-hour revolving the painful
complexities of national life before the voice of Mrs. Petty recalled
him from that sad reverie.
“Dr. Gobang to see you, sir.”
At sight of the doctor who had attended him for alcoholic poisoning Mr.
Lavender experienced one or those vaguely disagreeable sensations which
follow on half-realized insults.
“Good-morning, sir,” said the doctor; “thought I'd just look in and make
my mind easy about you. That was a nasty attack. Do you still feel your
back?”
“No,” said Mr. Lavender rather coldly, while Blink growled.
“Nor your head?”
“I have never felt my head,” replied Mr. Lavender, still more coldly.
“I seem to remember——” began the doctor.
“Doctor,” said Mr. Lavender with dignity, “surely you know that public
men—do not feel—their heads—it would not do. They sometimes suffer from
their throats, but otherwise they have perfect health, fortunately.”
The doctor smiled.
“Well, what do you think of the war?” he asked chattily.
“Be quiet, Blink,” said Mr. Lavender. Then, in a far-away voice, he
added: “Whatever the clouds which have gathered above our heads for the
moment, and whatever the blows which Fate may have in store for us, we
shall not relax our efforts till we have attained our aims and hurled
our enemies back. Nor shall we stop there,” he went on, warming at his
own words. “It is but a weak-kneed patriotism which would be content
with securing the objects for which we began to fight. We shall not
hesitate to sacrifice the last of our men, the last of our money, in the
sacred task of achieving the complete ruin of the fiendish Power which
has brought this great calamity on the world. Even if our enemies
surrender we will fight on till we have dictated terms on the doorsteps
of Potsdam.”
The doctor, who, since Mr. Lavender began to speak, had been looking at
him with strange intensity, dropped his eyes.
“Quite so,” he said heartily, “quite so. Well, good-morning. I only just
ran in!” And leaving Mr. Lavender to the exultation he was evidently
feeling, this singular visitor went out and closed the door. Outside the
garden-gate he rejoined the nephew Sinkin.
“Well?” asked the latter.
“Sane as you or me,” said the doctor. “A little pedantic in his way of
expressing himself, but quite all there, really.”
“Did his dog bite you?” muttered the nephew. “No,” said the doctor
absently. “I wish to heaven everyone held his views. So long. I must be
getting on.” And they parted.
But Mr. Lavender, after pacing the room six times, had sat down again in
his chair, with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, such as other
men feel on mornings after a debauch.
XIII ADDRESSES SOME SOLDIERS ON THEIR FUTURE
On pleasant afternoons Mr. Lavender would often take his seat on one of
the benches which adorned the Spaniard's Road to enjoy the beams of the
sun and the towers of the City confused in smoky distance. And strolling
forth with Blink on the afternoon of the day on which the doctor had
come to see him he sat down to read a periodical, which enjoined
on everyone the necessity of taking the utmost interest in soldiers
disabled by the war. “Yes,” he thought, “it is indeed our duty to force
them, no matter what their disablements, to continue and surpass the
heroism they displayed out there, and become superior to what they once
were.” And it seemed to him a distinct dispensation of Providence when
the rest of his bench was suddenly occupied by three soldiers in the
blue garments and red ties of hospital life. They had been sitting there
for some minutes, divided by the iron bars necessary to the morals of
the neighbourhood, while Mr. Lavender cudgelled his brains for an easy
and natural method of approach, before Blink supplied the necessary
avenue by taking her stand before a soldier and looking up into his eye.
“Lord!” said the one thus accosted, “what a fyce! Look at her moustache!
Well, cocky, 'oo are you starin' at?”
“My dog,” said Mr. Lavender, perceiving his chance, “has an eye for the
strange and beautiful.
“Wow said the soldier, whose face was bandaged, she'll get it 'ere,
won't she?”
Encouraged by the smiles of the soldier and his comrades, Mr. Lavender
went on in the most natural voice he could assume.
“I'm sure you appreciate, my friends, the enormous importance of your
own futures?”
The three soldiers, whose faces were all bandaged, looked as surprised
as they could between them, and did not answer. Mr. Lavender went on,
dropping unconsciously into the diction of the article he had been
reading: “We are now at the turning-point of the ways, and not a moment
is to be lost in impressing on the disabled man the paramount necessity
of becoming again the captain of his soul. He who was a hero in the
field must again lead us in those qualities of enterprise and endurance
which have made him the admiration of the world.”
The three soldiers had turned what was visible of their faces towards
Mr. Lavender, and, seeing that he had riveted their attention, he
proceeded: “The apathy which hospital produces, together with the
present scarcity of labour, is largely responsible for the dangerous
position in which the disabled man now finds himself. Only we who have
not to face his future can appreciate what that future is likely to be
if he does not make the most strenuous efforts to overcome it. Boys,” he
added earnestly, remembering suddenly that this was the word which those
who had the personal touch ever employed, “are you making those efforts?
Are you equipping your minds? Are you taking advantage of your enforced
leisure to place yourselves upon some path of life in which you can
largely hold your own against all comers?”
He paused for a reply.
The soldiers, silent for a moment, in what seemed to Mr. Lavender to be
sheer astonishment, began to fidget; then the one next him turned to his
neighbour, and said:
“Are we, Alf? Are we doin' what the gentleman says?”
“I can answer that for you,” returned Mr. Lavender brightly; “for I can
tell by your hospitalized faces that you are living in the present; a
habit which, according to our best writers, is peculiar to the British.
I assure you,” he went on with a winning look, “there is no future in
that. If you do not at once begin to carve fresh niches for yourselves
in the temple of industrialism you will be engulfed by the returning
flood, and left high and dry upon the beach of fortune.”
During these last few words the half of an irritated look on the faces
of the soldiers changed to fragments of an indulgent and protective
expression.
“Right you are, guv'nor,” said the one in the middle. Don't you worry,
we'll see you home all right.
“It is you,” said Mr. Lavender, “that I must see home. For that is
largely the duty of us who have not had the great privilege of fighting
for our country.”
These words, which completed the soldiers' conviction that Mr. Lavender
was not quite all there, caused them to rise.
“Come on, then,” said one; “we'll see each other home. We've got to be
in by five. You don't have a string to your dog, I see.”
“Oh no!” said Mr. Lavender puzzled “I am not blind.”
“Balmy,” said the soldier soothingly. “Come on, sir, an' we can talk
abaht it on the way.”
Mr. Lavender, delighted at the impression he had made, rose and walked
beside them, taking insensibly the direction for home.
“What do you advise us to do, then, guv'nor?” said one of the soldiers.
“Throw away all thought of the present,” returned Mr. Lavender, with
intense earnestness; “forget the past entirely, wrap yourselves wholly
in the future. Do nothing which will give you immediate satisfaction.
Do not consider your families, or any of those transient considerations
such as pleasure, your homes, your condition of health, or your economic
position; but place yourselves unreservedly in the hands of those who by
hard thinking on this subject are alone in the condition to appreciate
the individual circumstances of each of you. For only by becoming a
flock of sheep can you be conducted into those new pastures where the
grass of your future will be sweet and plentiful. Above all, continue to
be the heroes which you were under the spur of your country's call, for
you must remember that your country is still calling you.”
“That's right,” said the soldier on Mr. Lavender's left. “Puss, puss!
Does your dog swot cats?”
At so irrelevant a remark Mr. Lavender looked suspiciously from left to
right, but what there was of the soldiers' faces told him nothing.
“Which is your hospital?” he asked.
“Down the 'ill, on the right,” returned the soldier. “Which is yours?”
“Alas! it is not in a hospital that I——”
“I know,” said the soldier delicately, “don't give it a name; no need.
We're all friends 'ere. Do you get out much?”
“I always take an afternoon stroll,” said Mr. Lavender, “when my public
life permits. If you think your comrades would like me to come and
lecture to them on their future I should be only too happy.”
“D'you 'ear, Alf?” said the soldier. “D'you think they would?”
The soldier, addressed put a finger to the sound side of his mouth and
uttered a catcall.
“I might effect a radical change in their views,” continued Mr.
Lavender, a little puzzled. “Let me leave you this periodical. Read it,
and you will see how extremely vital all that I have been saying is. And
then, perhaps, if you would send me a round robin, such as is usual in
a democratic country, I could pop over almost any day after five. I
sometimes feel”—and here Mr. Lavender stopped in the middle of the road,
overcome by sudden emotion—“that I have really no right to be alive when
I see what you have suffered for me.”
“That's all right, old bean,”, said the soldier on his left; “you'd 'a
done the same for us but for your disabilities. We don't grudge it you.”
“Boys,” said Mr. Lavender, “you are men. I cannot tell you how much I
admire and love you.”
“Well, give it a rest, then; t'ain't good for yer. And, look 'ere! Any
time they don't treat you fair in there, tip us the wink, and we'll come
over and do in your 'ousekeeper.”
Mr. Lavender smiled.
“My poor housekeeper!” he said. “I thank you all the same for your
charming goodwill. This is where I live,” he added, stopping at the gate
of the little house smothered in lilac and laburnum. “Can I offer you
some tea?”
The three soldiers looked at each other, and Mr. Lavender, noticing
their surprise, attributed it to the word tea.
“I regret exceedingly that I am a total abstainer,” he said.
The remark, completing the soldiers' judgment of his case, increased
their surprise at the nature of his residence; it remained unanswered,
save by a shuffling of the feet.
Mr. Lavender took off his hat.
“I consider it a great privilege,” he said, “to have been allowed to
converse with you. Goodbye, and God bless you!”
So saying, he opened the gate and entered his little garden carrying his
hat in his hand, and followed by Blink.
The soldiers watched him disappear within, then continued on their way
down the hill in silence.
“Blimy,” said one suddenly, “some of these old civilians 'ave come it
balmy on the crumpet since the war began. Give me the trenches!”
XIV ENDEAVOURS TO INTERN A GERMAN
Aglow with satisfaction at what he had been able to do for the wounded
soldiers, Mr. Lavender sat down in his study to drink the tea which he
found there. “There is nothing in life,” he thought, “which gives one
such satisfaction as friendliness and being able to do something for
others. Moon-cat!”
The moon-cat, who, since Mr. Lavender had given her milk, abode in his
castle, awaiting her confinement, purred loudly, regarding him with
burning eyes, as was her fashion when she wanted milk, Mr. Lavender put
down the saucer and continued his meditations. “Everything is vain; the
world is full of ghosts and shadows; but in friendliness and the purring
of a little cat there is solidity.”
“A lady has called, sir.”
Looking up, Mr. Lavender became aware of Mrs. Petty.
“How very agreeable!
“I don't know, sir,” returned his housekeeper in her decisive voice;
“but she wants to see you. Name of Pullbody.”
“Pullbody,” repeated Mr. Lavender dreamily; “I don't seem——Ask her in,
Mrs. Petty, ask her in.”
“It's on your head, sir,” said Mrs. Petty, and went out.
Mr. Lavender was immediately conscious of a presence in dark green
silk, with a long upper lip, a loose lower lip, and a fixed and faintly
raddled air, moving stealthily towards him.
“Sit down, madam, I beg. Will you have some tea?”
The lady sat down. “Thank you, I have had tea. It was on the
recommendation of your next-door neighbour, Miss Isabel Scarlet——”
“Indeed,” replied Mr. Lavender, whose heart began to beat; “command me,
for I am entirely at her service.”
“I have come to see you,” began the lady with a peculiar sinuous smile,
“as a public man and a patriot.”
Mr. Lavender bowed, and the lady went on: “I am in very great trouble.
The fact is, my sister's husband's sister is married to a German.”
“Is it possible, madam?” murmured Mr. Lavender, crossing his knees, and
joining the tips of his fingers.
“Yes,” resumed the lady, “and what's more, he is still at large.”
Mr. Lavender, into whose mind there had instantly rushed a flood of
public utterances, stood gazing at her haggard face in silent sympathy.
“You may imagine my distress, sir, and the condition of my conscience,”
pursued the lady, “when I tell you that my sister's husband's sister is
a very old friend of mine—and, indeed, so was this German. The two are
a very attached young couple, and, being childless, are quite wrapped
up in each other. I have come to you, feeling it my duty to secure his
internment.”
Mr. Lavender, moved by the human element in her words, was about to say,
“But why, madam?” when the lady continued:
“I have not myself precisely heard him speak well of his country.
But the sister of a friend of mine who was having tea in their house
distinctly heard him say that there were two sides to every question,
and that he could not believe all that was said in the English papers.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Lavender, troubled; “that is serious.”
“Yes,” went on the lady; “and on another occasion my sister's husband
himself heard him remark that a man could not help loving his country
and hoping that it would win.”
“But that is natural,” began Mr. Lavender.
“What!” said the lady, nearly rising, “when that country is Germany?”
The word revived Mr. Lavender's sense of proportion.
“True,” he said, “true. I was forgetting for the moment. It is
extraordinary how irresponsible one's thoughts are sometimes. Have you
reason to suppose that he is dangerous?”
“I should have thought that what I have said might have convinced you,”
replied the lady reproachfully; “but I don't wish you to act without
satisfying yourself. It is not as if you knew him, of course. I have
easily been able to get up an agitation among his friends, but I should
not expect an outsider—so I thought if I gave you his address you could
form your own opinion.”
“Yes,” murmured Mr. Lavender, “yes. It is in the last degree undesirable
that any man of German origin should remain free to work possible harm
to our country. There is no question in this of hatred or of mere rabid
patriotism,” he went on, in a voice growing more and more far-away; “it
is largely the A. B. C. of common prudence.”
“I ought to say,” interrupted his visitor, “that we all thought him, of
course, an honourable man until this war, or we should not have been his
friends. He is a dentist,” she added, “and, I suppose, may be said to
be doing useful work, which makes it difficult. I suggest that you go to
him to have a tooth out.”
Mr. Lavender quivered, and insensibly felt his teeth.
“Thank you,” he said, “I will see if I can find one. It is certainly a
matter which cannot be left to chance. We public men, madam, often have
to do very hard and even inhumane things for no apparent reason. Our
consciences alone support us. An impression, I am told, sometimes gets
abroad that we yield to clamour. Those alone who know us realize how
unfounded that aspersion is.”
“This is his address,” said the lady, rising, and handing him an
envelope. “I shall not feel at rest until he is safely interned. You
will not mention my name, of course. It is tragic to be obliged to
work against one's friends in the dark. Your young neighbour spoke in
enthusiastic terms of your zeal, and I am sure that in choosing you for
my public man she was not pulling—er—was not making a mistake.”
Mr. Lavender bowed.
“I hope not, madam, he said humbly I try to do my duty.”
The lady smiled her sinuous smile and moved towards the door, leaving on
the air a faint odour of vinegar and sandalwood.
When she was gone Mr. Lavender sat down on the edge of his chair before
the tea-tray and extracted his teeth while Blink, taking them for a
bone, gazed at them lustrously, and the moon-cat between his feet purred
from repletion. “There is reason in all things,” he thought, running his
finger over what was left in his mouth, “but not in patriotism, for
that would prevent us from consummating the destruction of our common
enemies. It behoves us public men ever to set an extreme example. Which
one can I spare, I wonder?” And he fixed upon a large rambling tooth on
the left wing of his lower jaw. “It will hurt horribly, I'm afraid; and
if I have an anaesthetic there will be someone else present; and not
improbably I shall feel ill afterwards, and be unable to form a clear
judgment. I must steel myself. Blink!”
For Blink was making tremulous advances to the teeth. “How pleasant to
be a dog!” thought Mr. Lavender, “and know nothing of Germans and teeth.
I shall be very unhappy till this is out; but Aurora recommended me, and
I must not complain, but rather consider myself the most fortunate of
public men.” And, ruffling his hair till it stood up all over his head,
while his loose eyebrow worked up and down, he gazed at the moon-cat.
“Moon-cat,” he said suddenly, “we are but creatures of chance, unable to
tell from one day to another what Fate has in store for us. My tooth
is beginning to ache already. That is, perhaps, as it should be, for I
shall not forget which one it is.” So musing he resumed his teeth; and,
going to his bookcase, sought fortitude and inspiration in the records
of a Parliamentary debate on enemy aliens.
It was not without considerable trepidation, however, on the following
afternoon that he made his way up Welkin Street, and rang at the number
on the envelope in his hand.
“Yes sir, doctor is at home,” said the maid.
Mr. Lavender's heart was about to fail him when, conjuring up the vision
of Aurora, he said in a faint voice: “I wish to see him professionally.”
And, while the maid departed up the stairs, he waited in the narrow
hall, alternately taking his hat off and putting it on again, so great
was his spiritual confusion.
“Doctor will see you at once, sir.”
Putting his hat on hastily, Mr. Lavender followed her upstairs, feeling
at his tooth to make quite sure that he remembered which it was. His
courage mounted as he came nearer to his fate, and he marched into the
room behind the maid holding his hat on firmly with one hand and his
tooth in firmly with the other. There, beside a red velvet dentist's
chair, he saw a youngish man dressed in a white coat, with round eyes
and a domestic face, who said in good English:
“What can I do for you, my dear sir? I fear you are in bain.”
“In great pain,” replied Mr. Lavender faintly, “in great pain.” And,
indeed, he was; for the nervous crisis from which he was suffering had
settled in the tooth, on which he still pressed a finger through his
cheek.
“Sit down, sir, sit down,” said the young man, “and perhaps it would be
better if you should remove your hat. We shall not hurd you—no, no, we
shall not hurd you.”
At those words, which seemed to cast doubt on his courage, Mr. Lavender
recovered all his presence of mind. He took off his hat, advanced
resolutely to the chair, sat down in it, and, looking up, said:
“Do to me what you will; I shall not flinch, nor depart in any way from
the behaviour of those whose duty it is to set an example to others.”
So saying, he removed his teeth, and placing them in a bowl on the
little swinging table which he perceived on his left hand, he closed his
eyes, put his finger in his mouth, and articulated:
“'Ith one.”
“Excuse me, sir,” said the young German, “but do you wish a dooth oud?”
“'At ish my deshire,” said Mr. Lavender, keeping his finger on his
tooth, and his eyes closed. “'At one.”
“I cannot give you gas without my anaesthedist.”
“I dow,” said Mr. Lavender; “be wick.”
And, feeling the little cold spy-glass begin to touch his gums, he
clenched his hands and thought: “This is the moment to prove that I,
too, can die for a good cause. If I am not man enough to bear for my
country so small a woe I can never again look Aurora in the face.”
The voice of the young dentist dragged him rudely from the depth of his
resignation.
“Excuse me, but which dooth did you say?”
Mr. Lavender again inserted his finger, and opened his eyes.
The dentist shook his head. “Imbossible,” he said; “that dooth is
perfectly sound. The other two are rotten. But they do not ache?”
Mr. Lavender shook his head and repeated:
“At one.”
“You are my first client this week, sir,” said the young German calmly,
“but I cannot that dooth dake out.”
At those words Mr. Lavender experienced a sensation as if his soul were
creeping back up his legs; he spoke as it reached his stomach.
“Noc?” he said.
“No,” replied the young German. It is nod the dooth which causes you the
bain.
Mr. Lavender, suddenly conscious that he had no pain, took his finger
out.
“Sir,” he said, “I perceive that you are an honourable man. There is
something sublime in your abnegation if, indeed, you have had no other
client this week.
“No fear,” said the young German. “Haf I, Cicely?”
Mr. Lavender became conscious for the first time of a young woman
leaning up against the wall, with a pair of tweezers in her hand.
“Take it out, Otto,” she said in a low voice, “if he wants it.”
“No no,” said Mr. Lavender sharply, resuming his teeth; “I would not for
the world burden your conscience.”
“My clients are all batriots,” said the young dentist, “and my bractice
is Kaput. We are in a bad way, sir,” he added, with a smile, “but we try
to do the correct ting.”
Mr. Lavender saw the young woman move the tweezers in a manner which
caused his blood to run a little cold.
“We must live,” he heard her say.
“Young madam,” he said, “I honour the impulse which makes you desire
to extend your husband's practice. Indeed, I perceive you both to be so
honourable that I cannot but make you a confession. My tooth is indeed
sound, though, since I have been pretending that it isn't, it has caused
me much discomfort. I came here largely to form an opinion of your
husband's character, with a view to securing his internment.”