London Scottish, first in the fray in the long ago, the Queen's
Westminsters, the Kensingtons, the London Rifle Brigade, the H.A.C.,
the numberless battalions of the London Regiment--they came, each
with its aura of the deathless dead. They came from the interminable
purgatory of the endless trenches, terminated at last, from the
unimaginable inferno of Hill 60, from the hopeless dying of May the
Ninth, from the fierce hopes, the bitter strife of Loos, from the
massacre of Gommecourt and the bloody fights of Guillemont, of Vimy
Ridge, of Messines, of a thousand places that were humble and are
henceforth names of splendour. Miraculously strong, happy, pregnant
with vivid life they emerged from that distant whelm of peril. And
the eyes that had looked so long at death in the bare fields pocked
hideously with the disease of war, looked up now at the ranked tall
buildings, so familiar and yet so strange, so impressively permanent
after timeless æons of destruction. Behind those windows--could it
be?--they had sat at desk through months and years. Between them and
that past was a curtain of fire, of emotions that had transformed, of
the intensity of life which has persisted in the face of death. And
rank by rank, battalion after battalion, swinging with powerful stride,
they marched back into the past that had seemed for ever gone.
And those who watched the level ranks flowing in their endless stream,
cheering with throats now incapable of aught but the inarticulate cry,
perceiving them mistily through a blur of tears, saw more than the men
who marched, treading once again the asphalt of the London streets.
They saw the ghosts of ranks, doubling--more than doubling--the ranks
of living men, the ghosts of those who had looked as these looked,
brown-faced, strong-limbed, the incarnation of living will, and were
now no more than the wind blowing over the desolate countrysides where
they had ceased to be. Yet were they present, the men who had died
that England might live. The stir of their souls was in the skirling
pipes, the wail and feverish beat of the fifes and drums, the maddening
purposeful blare and thud of the brass bands. They looked out of the
eyes of those who marched--the soul unconquerable, the living spirit
of the English race. And a divine afflatus swept over the waving,
cheering crowds, swept them to a wilder intoxication. One, whose
faculty of speech was not yet overwhelmed, cried: "Three cheers for the
boys who are left behind! Hurrah! Hurrah!----" and could not finish.
And a woman who stood, tensely pallid, staring at the so-familiar
badges of the troops who passed, stared at utter strangeness, and fell
as dead.
The next battalion followed on, singing, carrying on a tune caught up
far back along the route, the farewell song of Kitchener's Army of
1915, sung now as an instinctive antistrophe to that old chorale when
they had marched to war:
"Keep the home fires burning,
While your hearts are yearning,
Though your lads are far away, they dream of home,
There's a silver lining
Through the dark cloud shining,
Turn your dark clouds inside out
Till the boys come home."
They passed in a roar of voices that drowned the band.
So the long, long columns of the London Divisions tramped through the
heart of the Mother-City, under the fluttering of countless flags,
under the surge and resurge of joy-bells from every steeple, under
great banners that proclaimed the gratitude of the city. Rank after
rank they lifted their eyes to the laurel-green inscription that
spanned the street at Temple Bar: "SHALL WE FORGET?--NEVER!"
Rank by rank they passed under the promise--the thousands of men welded
in the fires of war to a wondrous miracle of collective soul--passed
onward for the last time as one living unit, ere they should lay down
their arms, _fall out_--and disperse, individuals that were fragments
of a sacred memory, the shreds of a battle-flag distributed.
* * * * *
Sir Thomas Jackson Hathaway, Kt., Alderman of the City of London,
looked along the masculine faces, spaced with the interstices of the
departed ladies, of the little dinner-party of intimate friends, and
then again to the brown keen visage of his son. He pushed along the
decanter--he was old-fashioned and made a virtue of it--"Fill up,
Harry, my boy--I've been looking after the cellar while you've been
away--there's more of it." He laughed a little at the mirth of his
implied suggestion that there might possibly be a shortage in the
cellars of Sir Thomas Hathaway. And his guests laughed a little in
courtesy.
"We've kept the flag flying here also, my boy," said the big, heavily
jovial host, puffing hugely at his cigar and then taking it from his
mouth to examine it with a superfluously critical eye. "You'll find
things as well--better, than when you left. You don't mind, gentlemen,
this little talk of shop? After all, we're all friends together, and
most of us have some small interest in the little business, ha! ha!"
The guests were, in fact, Sir Thomas Hathaway's co-directors in the
large enterprises he controlled. He continued: "Better I may say, for
we have been very conservative--we've looked to the younger generation
away fighting our battles for us--and we've built up a reserve fund
that a few years ago we shouldn't have dreamed of. You've come back
to a first-class concern, Harry, my boy. Here's to it!" He raised and
drained his glass, setting a followed example to his guests.
Captain Hathaway had been toying with a match on the tablecloth. He
looked up--quiet and thoughtful, his face clean-cut and aristocratic by
contrast with the heavy opulence of his sire.
"You don't anticipate Labour trouble, then, father?"
Sir Thomas Hathaway laughed, a guffaw, and crashed his hand on the
table.
"Labour troubles, my boy! You need have no fear on that score. We're
going to teach Labour a lesson. We haven't built up our reserve for
nothing.--not only ourselves, but all the houses in the trade. For long
enough we've been dictated to by Labour--and now, by God, we're going
to crush it! Do you know what's coming, my boy? Have you thought about
it? There's going to be the biggest flood of Labour chucked on the
market that the world has ever known. All of 'em fightin'--_fightin'_
for jobs! And the trade, Harry, my boy, is going to _lock out_! We're
closed down now, and we shan't open again till our own good time. How
long d'you think the Union funds'll last? _We'll bust 'em_--bust 'em
for ever and a day. And when we open our shops again to Labour--it'll
be on our own terms! Here, fill up, gentlemen, I can vouch for this
wine--cost me a sinful price it did. We'll bust 'em, my lad, so that
never again in our time shall we hear a word of Labour trouble." He
gulped the glassful of his sinfully costly wine.
Captain Hathaway glanced round the table at the somewhat flushed,
semi-senile features of his father's guests and partners. They were one
and all nodding their heads in varying emphasis of approbation. He got
up.
"Well, father, I don't think we'll discuss it now. Suppose we join the
ladies?"
In the high drawing-room, softly lit with diffused radiance from the
ceiling, draped with precious modern hangings that were genuine and
spaced out with expensive antique paintings that were not, furnished
with the luxury of a wealth too utterly complete in its overwhelming
newness to allow imagination its leap across an artistic restraint,
the ladies purred, or cooed in careful falsetto, as they awaited the
entrance of the males. At a grand piano, slightly removed, a young
woman with a delicately refined face played softly to herself--in
a quiet ecstasy of gladness for which this was the only satisfying
expression.
Captain Hathaway, entering with his father's guests, came straight
across to her, and she looked up, smiling, into her husband's face
as though he had come in response to a murmured summoning spell. She
ceased and leaned back her head against him as he stood close behind
her.
"Oh, Harry," she said, "it's so lovely to have you again--for always,
always!" Her eyes half closed and her bosom heaved as she drank in an
intoxicating realization of his definite return, sketched to herself a
delicious little swoon.
"My dear!" he murmured. "It's good! Home--home for always with my
beloved!"
She clutched at his hand, and for a moment, while the loud-voiced
crowd vanished, they were secret lovers, snatched up to dizzy heights,
intensely thrilling with an exquisite community, eyes looking into
eyes and seeing more than human brain can translate of transcendent
vision. She released him and bowed forward suddenly with a little gulp,
striking, with trembling hands, vague chords on the piano.
"Now, Ethel, my dear," came the crass boom of her father-in-law's
voice, "when you've finished your spooning, let's have something jolly.
What about that bit out of 'Not a Word to the Wife!' Tra-la-la-la-la!"
He sketched a hideous caricature of blatant banality. "We're all jolly
to-night--none of your mooning sentiment, but jolly. Eh, ladies and
gentlemen?--properly jolly for Harry's first night back."
Ethel got up from the piano, coupling an allegation of another's
superior capacity with an invitation to perform, an invitation
smirkingly accepted.
The slangy crash and bang alternating with hyper-emphasized
sentimentality of the current tune was a cover under which Ethel
Hathaway retreated to happy intimacy with her husband. Not for long was
she allowed it. The very-consciously best-looking of the co-directors'
wives sidled up and subsided into the adjacent chair. She yearned
up into Captain Hathaway's face, while she cooed deprecation of her
intrusion to his wife.
"But I do so want to hear how Captain Hathaway earned his Military
Cross! Of course, I read all about it in the papers--but then--they're
so bald, aren't they? One misses, what shall I say?--the human touch of
heroism."
Mrs. Hathaway caught her husband's eye and forbade the instant flight.
"Tell Mrs. Jameson all about it, Harry," she commanded coolly. There
was something in the tone which rendered Mrs. Jameson's extorted
confidence quite worthless.
"There's little to tell," said Captain Hathaway. "The fellow who
really earned anything there was to get--and, I'm glad to say, got the
D.C.M.--was one of my men, a chap named Jim Swain. He used to be in our
employment, Ethel, by the way. It was a pretty tight corner and I got
practically left alone--all the other fellows knocked out--and this
chap Swain came up with a bag of bombs--jolly plucky thing, for there
didn't seem a dog's chance--and we chucked the bombs at the Hun till he
didn't dare raise his head. After a bit, some of another company came
up and we consolidated that bit of trench. That's all there was to it."
"Oh, how splendid!" Mrs. Jameson enthused vaguely. "Leadership _is_
everything, isn't it?"
"When you've got something to lead, Mrs. Jameson. One couldn't have
better stuff than my men--they're magnificent. They're the nation--and
now they're coming back they've got to be treated like the men they
are and not like soulless machinery." He wound up on a note of fierce
protest against something not obvious to his hearers.
"Now, Harry," said his wife, "don't inflict your theories on Mrs.
Jameson. We both of us positively refuse to be sympathetic with the
working class, don't we, Mrs. Jameson?" She laughed lightly. "The
working class is just as selfish as any other."
A wave of collective chatter from an approaching group engulfed this
conversation.
Late that night Sir Thomas Hathaway sat alone with his son.
"Now, Harry, my lad," he said. "You're going to take Ethel away for a
three months' holiday. You've jolly well earned it, both of you. And,
when you come back, you'll be head of Hathaway and Company. I've done
my bit and I'm going to rest. My interest in the business is now being
transferred into your name. That's my little present to you, my boy, by
way of showing that I'm proud of you. And I know that you'll keep up
the fine old traditions of the house, eh?"
* * * * *
The curtains had disappeared from the windows of Whittingham Street.
The brass of the doors had lost its polish. The women who had tripped
along in an earnest display of finery were replaced by blowsy unkempt
females who stood at the doors and gossiped. Once more the corners
emphasized by the sordid public-houses were the idling-ground of groups
of men, more numerous, shabbier even than of old. But these men had
not the shiftless look of their predecessors. In their faces, thin
and white, was a hardness which was odd in an urban population. In
the eyes which followed the progress of a stranger up the street was
a dangerous glare. The flags of the War Shrine had disappeared; its
gilt-inscribed panel was dingy and splashed with mud. At the far end of
the street the great chimneys of Hathaway's works stuck up, clean of
smoke, into a clear sky. The massive entrance gates were a closed wall
across the vista.
In the little room to which Jim Swain had returned--after the days
unnumbered of life in the open trenches, wet dykes in the winter, and
in summer dusty sunken avenues where death struck suddenly in the
glare; after the countless nights of clear stars rising to a wondrous
infinity of multitude and distance above the dark bank of parapet--Ann
bent over a soap-box cradle where a child whimpered in faint misery.
The room was utterly bare of any furniture save the poor substitutes
of a number of packing-cases of various sizes. The little home which
Jim had established, which Ann had worked so passionately to improve,
was a home no longer. It was merely a squalid shelter for squalid human
animals.
Ann, on her knees by the child, looked up to the three figures in the
centre of the room, her attention suddenly challenged by the clash of
angry voices.
A tall man, fierce, with a shock of untidy hair falling on a narrow
brow, a vivid red tie overwhelming the soft collar which kept it in
place, was pointing a quivering finger at her husband's breast.
"You call yourself the leader of these men," he was saying, in a rage
of scorn, "and you flaunt that scrap of coloured rag--you advertise
your pride that you helped the bourgeois to fight his war! Take it
off, man--fling it down and trample on it! The red on it is the blood
of your fellow-workers!"
"Aye, that's just what it is, Laurence," said the ex-soldier with
equal anger. "And I _am_ proud of it. I'm proud that I did my bit for
England--for England's ours, too, as well as the capitalists', and the
war was our war, the war of the crowd of us--and we went out and risked
our lives while you and your cowardly kind stayed at home and helped
the enemy all you could. That's your patriotism! And now to hear you
talk one would think England was an enemy country! I tell you it's our
country as much as anybody's and our war that we fought for it! The red
on this medal ribbon is the red of the blood of the chaps that died for
it if you like--and I'm mighty proud to wear it. And, by God, Laurence,
while I'm the leader of these poor chaps I won't have any traitor
talk--is that clear?"
"Your country!" the other laughed bitterly. "What right have you got to
a ha'porth of it?--you, who are being chucked out into the street--you,
who haven't even the right to demand work and earn your bread! Bah!
Militarism has rotted the soul of you!"
"It taught me to know a true man when I see him, anyway, Laurence--and
you're none o' that kind! You, poisoning the minds of starving men----"
"And who keeps 'em starving? Who prevents 'em from helping themselves
in the nearest baker's shop----"
"Now, lads--now, lads!" intervened the third man, a thick-set fellow
in black coat and turned-up trousers over yellow boots. A smug
self-confidence was native to his podgy countenance, was the complement
of the cunning, scheming eyes. "There's no use quarrelling. What we've
got to do is to 'elp each other--we working-men. The Union's _bust_,
Jim, an' that's the fact of it--an' if Mr. Laurence's organization 'ere
can't give us a 'and--well, I don't know what'll happen. This last
trick of 'Athaway's, chucking the whole street out o' doors, fairly
puts the lid on it!"
There was silence in the room and Jim glanced round at the haggard
visage of his wife, bending, with tears on her cheeks, over the
whimpering child.
"Yes, look!" said the tall man. "That's what you fought for, my lad!"
Jim did not reply. He pressed his hand to his brow as though his brain
reeled. The Trade Union leader tried to profit by his silence.
"We're properly up against it--there's no dodging it. Mind you, Jim, I
think there's a lot of reason in what Mr. Laurence says."
Ann stood up quickly and faced her husband.
"Jim!" she said, and her voice was firm though her chest heaved with
weakness. "You'll do what's right--whatever 'appens!"
Laurence spoke again.
"We're perfectly ready to help--but this is the last time of offering.
You know the terms. You're responsible for a good many hundreds of
starving families, Swain--they mayn't listen to you much longer, don't
forget----"
He was interrupted by fierce shouts in the street below, the reiterated
blasts of a motor-horn, the crash of broken glass, a whir of machinery
and yet fiercer shouts. All three rushed to the window. Below them a
motor-car was stationary in the midst of a surging mob. The chauffeur
lay senseless amid the debris of a shattered wind-screen. In the rear
seat a youngish man was defending himself vigorously against the rain
of blows showered on him by the mob which clambered on to the vehicle.
"My God! Captain Hathaway!" Even as Jim shouted he had turned to dash
down the stairs.
He flung himself into the fierce mob as once before he had rushed at
the knot of Germans with bombs poised to throw, his captain an imminent
victim. Old instincts surged to supremacy--he fought his way blindly to
the car in a blur of blows. A second later he had dragged a dazed man
into the entrance of the house, had slammed the door.
"Come on, sir--come upstairs and sit down." Jim forgot for the moment
the wretched room to which he invited him. He was living in a memory
of the trench days where he had sometimes dreamed that his beloved
captain might on some incredible occasion sit at tea with them in a
nice little home and tell Ann that her husband had been a good soldier.
Half supporting him, he pushed him into the apartment, pulled a box out
for him to sit on.
"Here you are, sir. Take it easy for a minute. You'll soon be all
right."
Captain Hathaway put his hand to a damp forehead, looked stupidly at
the blood on it, and then, still dazed, stared at his rescuer.
"What?--Swain?" He smiled faintly. "For the second time, eh?"
"Yes, sir--I'm glad to say!"
The tall man picked up his soft hat, glaring from Jim to the employer
he had rescued.
"Come on, Bruxby," he said, in a voice quivering with anger. "There's
nothing more for us here--the man's a d--d scab!"
Jim listened to the heavy feet of the pair of them tramping down the
staircase.
Captain Hathaway looked around him, then took a deep breath and stood
up.
"I'm all right again now. It's all come back to me. Swain," he put his
hand on the man's shoulder, "will you believe me when I say I quite
understand--and that's it a shame, a d--d shame! I've been away. I
couldn't do anything till now." He looked at the woman by the cradle,
held out his hand. "This is Mrs. Swain?" She stood staring at him,
making no responsive movement. "Look here, I want to help--here"--his
hand dived into his pocket, fished up a bundle of notes--"why, you're
starving, woman!" He thrust them into her hand and she let them fall on
the floor.
"I want work, Captain Hathaway--not charity," said Ann, shaking with
temptation resisted.
The ex-officer turned to his man.
"Swain," he said. "I haven't been blind to all this--but, believe me, I
couldn't do anything till now. I want to talk to you. Will you listen
to me?"
It was some time later when Captain Hathaway (who had already seen his
chauffeur into a police ambulance while Jim harangued the crowd into
sullenness) drove his car down to the great gates of Hathaway's works.
Jim Swain, the men's leader, sat by his side.
* * * * *
In the long boardroom, with its thick Turkey carpet, its heavy mahogany
furniture, its framed photographs of former directors, the controllers
of Hathaway's and its linked houses sat already at the council-table.
The air was heavy with cigar smoke when Captain Hathaway entered.
"Sorry I'm late, gentlemen--no,--a little accident--I'm quite all
right--nothing at all serious," so he responded to the queries evoked
by his cut forehead as he sat down.
His father rose, pompous, full-cheeked, settling his pince-nez with
one hand, while he gathered together a little sheaf of papers with the
other.
"Gentlemen," he said, "to-day I have to communicate to you officially
what I think all of you know privately--a communication which (hem!)
marks another epoch in the successful history of the house of
Hathaway. I have transferred to my son, Captain Hathaway--who has
not unsuccessfully graduated in the stern business of war--(Hear,
hear!)--my controlling interest in all the enterprises of which
hitherto I have been the head. I propose--and I believe you will second
me in this--that Captain Hathaway be duly elected to the board as
managing director." (It would have been difficult for the audience
to have disputed this had they wished. There was a unanimous "Hear,
hear!") Sir Thomas Hathaway passed a bulky envelope across to his son.
"Here, Harry, I give you all the deeds of transfer, duly executed and
dated as from yesterday. You are now the head of Hathaway and Company!"
There was a faint sketch of a cheer from the fat old gentlemen round
the table.
"Now, gentlemen," continued the retiring chief, "before I sit down,
I should like to give you some account of my stewardship. I think
we all of us perceived in the circumstances of the present time an
opportunity to settle, once and for all, our score with Labour. That
opportunity has not been neglected. All the factories controlled by
us, in agreement with the other houses in the trade--which have most
loyally backed our action--have been shut down. The date of their
reopening has not yet been decided upon, but I may tell you this,
gentlemen, the Trade Union with which we have had so much trouble in
the past is _bankrupt_. We are entitled to industrial peace, on our
own terms--but the terms which we have offered, and which were not
ungenerous in the circumstances after safeguarding our interests, have
been stubbornly rejected by the men's leader--the man Swain. This
left us no alternative but to put on the screw--and we have replied
by serving notices of ejection on all those of our ex-employees who
are behindhand in their rent. I think you will agree with me that in
this we have the fullest justice on our side! (Hear, hear!) And now,
gentlemen, I retire from my managing directorship and make way for my
son, in the fullest confidence that he will maintain and extend the
great and honourable traditions of this business."
Captain Hathaway stood up. His face was strangely pale and set.
"Gentlemen, you have listened to my father's remarks. They represent
accurately the theory of our past relationship between ourselves and
our employees. (Hear, hear!) But, gentlemen, I want to bring home to
you that it is a theory quite impossible to maintain at the present
day! In accepting the leadership of this house, I am fully conscious
of my responsibilities--responsibilities not only to you who have
financial interests in the business, but to those who live by the
employment we offer them and to the State which makes it possible for
them to work and for ourselves to derive profit from that work. From
this day, gentlemen, and for so long as I am head of this firm, our
relations with our employees are on a different basis. The factories
will reopen to-morrow--at the old Trade Union rates, excepting where
the new rates I have offered to the men are more remunerative to them.
The policy of the firm is reversed!"