There are districts both in Scotland and Ireland, to say nothing of

Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, where there is hardly a shoe to be

found. Yet the people there are more stalwart than in any district in

England where every foot has its shoe. The finest lads I have ever come

across are certainly the Montenegrin; and not one in twenty of them has

either a shoe or a stocking. The only reformatory I have known where

the little inmates are physically quite on a par with other children,

as strong, alert, and light-hearted as other children, is the Eggenburg

Reformatory, in Lower Austria, where both boys and girls all go barefoot,

in winter as well as in summer.

Eggenburg is the one public institution, so far as I know, where the

going-barefoot experiment has been tried, on a large scale, for the

express purpose of benefiting the health of the inmates. And it was

tried there under conditions that were just about as unfavourable as

any conditions the wit of man could have devised. For the Eggenburg

children are for the most part of the poorest of the poor class, the

most demoralised, the criminal or semi-criminal class; and such children

almost always start life heavily handicapped physically, as well as

morally. Everyone who goes to this Reformatory must have given proof,

before he—or she—goes, that his natural bent is to do what is wrong;

that he turns to the left rather than the right instinctively; that he

takes to evil ways, in fact, just as a duckling takes to water. There

were nearly 400 inmates the first time I was there; and among them,

although the eldest was under sixteen, there were sixty convicted

thieves, nine incendiaries, and a murderer. One boy had been forty times

in the hands of the police before he went to Eggenburg; another, a tiny

little fellow, was suffering from alcoholism when he arrived there. Nor

was that all: very many of the children were being cruelly ill-treated,

beaten, tortured, or starved, when the police took possession of them.

Thus to try this experiment with such material as they were was to invite

failure. And to try it in the Eggenburg district was certainly not to

invite success. For the climate there is bitterly cold in winter. I have

seen snow five feet deep around the Reformatory, and it lies there for

months together. If folk can go barefoot there with impunity, they can

assuredly go barefoot anywhere in England.

To make matters worse, the very officials who were told off to try the

experiment were against it: they resented being called upon to try it, so

sure were they that it was foredoomed. Not one among them was inclined,

therefore, to do his best to render it a success. I very much doubt,

indeed, judging by what they themselves told me later, whether anyone

among them had even the wish that it should be a success. When Dr.

Schöffel, the Provincial Home Minister, informed them that their charges

were to go barefoot, every man in the institution, every woman too, rose

up indignantly and denounced his project as quite wicked. The Directress

of the girls’ wing stoutly refused to have lot or parcel with any such

doings. If he chose to kill the boys, that was no concern of hers, but

kill her girls he should not, she told him roundly. And to make them

go barefoot would be to kill them, it would be downright murder, she

declared; and she had never a doubt in her mind but that it would.

The storm spread from Eggenburg to Vienna, where public opinion was

strongly on the side of the officials and against their Chief. The

Viennese professed themselves quite shocked at his meanness. Questions

were asked in the Landtag. ‘Is Lower Austria so poor that she cannot

buy shoes for her own adopted children?’ member after member demanded

indignantly. Dr. Schöffel stood his ground firmly, however. That the

experiment should be tried, he was determined; and for the children’s

sake, not the rate-payers’. He was responsible for the children; it was

his duty to see that the best that could be done for them should be

done; and the best was not being done, he declared. When they arrived at

Eggenburg they were almost all physically below the average of children

of their age; they were lacking in stamina even when not tainted with

disease. That in itself was bad, he maintained; but, what was worse, most

of them were still below the average when they left. These children must

each one of them, while at the Reformatory, be put on a par so far as in

them lay with other children, he insisted. Otherwise they would later,

when out in the world, be handicapped in the struggle for life, unable,

therefore, to hold their own and earn their daily bread. It was, as he

told me himself, for the express purpose of trying to put them physically

on a par with other children, and thus give them a fair chance of making

their way in the world, that he had determined they should go barefoot.

Consumption is terribly prevalent among the very poor in Lower Austria,

it must be remembered; and it was at that time very prevalent at

Eggenburg. The doctors had long been insisting that the little inmates

ought to live practically out of doors the whole year round, working on

the land, tending cattle. Arrangements had already been made for them

to do so, but a difficulty had arisen. Working on the land and tending

cattle in deep snow meant wet feet, wet stockings as well as wet shoes;

and that for many of them spelt disaster. Dr. Schöffel was convinced,

however, that it was not the wet feet that did the harm, but the wet

shoes and stockings; and many of the doctors whom he consulted agreed

with him. It was with their warm approval that he had decided to banish

stockings and shoes and leave feet to take care of themselves—to try the

going-barefoot experiment, in fact.

The experiment had long passed the experimental stage when I paid my

first visit to Eggenburg; for, by that time, the inmates had already been

going barefoot for some ten years. From the first it had proved a marked

success, the very officials who had done everything they could to prevent

its being tried, frankly admitted; so marked a success, indeed, that they

had all become hearty supporters of the new system. Even the Directress

of the girls’ wing, who had almost broken her heart when the change was

made, and would have resigned her post forthwith but for her devotion

to her charges, spoke enthusiastically of the good it had wrought among

them. Most of them were at a trying age, between twelve and sixteen; and

most of them were delicate, never free from coughs and colds. She was as

sure as of life itself, therefore, the first day they went barefoot, that

they would all be ill in bed on the morrow. To her amazement, however, as

she told me, when the morrow came, there was no sign of special illness

among them. On the contrary, instead of coughing more than usual, they

coughed less, and were in less urgent need of pocket-handkerchiefs.

Before a week had passed the great majority of them had ceased coughing

at all, and not one of them had a cold in her head.

The Director told me much the same tale; as it was with the girls so was

it with the boys. By banishing shoes and stockings, he declared, Dr.

Schöffel had practically banished colds with all their attendant evils.

Under the new system, it was a rare thing for any boy to develop a cold

after being at Eggenburg a week. The general health of all the children

had improved quite wonderfully, both he and the Directress assured me,

since going barefoot had become the order of the day. And what they said

was confirmed by what I heard from every doctor I came across who knew

Eggenburg; was confirmed, too, by what I saw there with my own eyes. For

a finer set of youngsters than the boys and girls there I have never seen

in any institution, and have not often seen anywhere else.

I had hardly crossed the threshold of Eggenburg before I heard, what I

rarely hear in institutions, peal after peal of hearty laughter; and I

saw little urchins flying as the wind in pursuit of something, I could

not tell what. The very way they threw up their heels as they ran, the

speed with which they went, showed the stuff of which they were made,

the strength of their legs and backs; while the cries they raised left

no doubt as to the strength of their lungs. There was not a laggard

among them, not a weakling. Some of them, it is true, would have been

all the better for more flesh on their bones, I found when I came to

examine them; and some few were not quite so well grown as they ought to

have been. Still they were a wonderfully vigorous set, considering the

handicap with which they had started in life; and they were as alert as

they were vigorous. They swarmed up poles and twirled themselves round

bars, in quite professional style; and went through their drill with head

erect and soldierly swing. Evidently they were not troubled with nerves

at all, nor had they any fear at all of strangers. They met my advances

in the most friendly fashion; and answered my questions intelligently

without hesitation, looking at me straight the while. Their eyes, I

noticed, were not only bright, but, oddly enough, full of fun, many of

them. They were a light-hearted set, it was easy to see, bubbling over

with delight at being alive; they were a kindly sociable set, too, on

good terms with themselves, one another, and even the officials.

This Eggenburg experiment certainly proves that both boys and girls are

the better, not the worse, for going barefoot. Why, then, should they

wear shoes? The wearing of them is sheer waste, surely; and in war days

waste of any sort is unpatriotic, especially waste in shoes. For leather

is none too plentiful, and is becoming scarcer and scarcer from day to

day; while it is only by straining every nerve that shoemakers can keep

the men at the Front even decently well shod. Were all the children in

England to go barefoot, even if only for the next three months, our

soldiers would many of them have much better shoes than they have. And

most children would be delighted to go barefoot; and very many mothers

would be delighted to save the money they now spend on shoes, if only the

School Authorities, by appealing to them to do so for their country’s

sake, would give them the chance of doing so without offence to their

fetish, respectability. Unfortunately, many of these Authorities seem to

prefer the worst of leaking, toe-crippling shoes to bare feet.

I once asked a certain Head Master to let a little Gipsy, who was

sojourning in his district, go to his school without shoes. She had never

worn them and did not wish to wear them. He was quite shocked. Such a

thing was impossible, he assured me. The tone of the whole school would

be lowered were a barefoot child to cross its threshold!

EDITH SELLERS.

_LONG ODDS._

BY BOYD CABLE.

This story belongs to an officer of the Canadians who at the time of

its happening was playing a part in the opening months of the war as a

private in the French Foreign Legion. In that capacity he saw a good deal

of the men of our first Expeditionary Force, and although he is full of

good stories of their amazing doings, he tells this particular one as

perhaps the best and most typical example he met of the cold-blooded

contempt of certain death, the calm indifference to consequences, the

matter-of-fact tackling of the impossible which were such commonplaces

with the old Regular Army in the first days, and which perhaps were the

main factors in the performance of so many historic feats of arms.

It was during the Retreat, in the middle of that constant series

of forced marches and hard fighting, when the remnants of retiring

regiments were inextricably mixed, when the wounded were left behind,

and the unwounded who were unable to keep up with their column or who

strayed from it in the darkness found themselves blundering about the

countryside, dodging groups of enemy cavalry and columns of enemy

infantry, being fed and guided by the French villagers, working always

towards the sound of the guns and struggling to rejoin their own army,

that three just such stragglers after a careful reconnaissance ventured

into the outskirts of a tiny French hamlet. One, the Canadian (who had

been in Paris on the outbreak of war and, fearing that it would be

months before a British force could take the field, had signed on in the

French Foreign Legion and so made sure of an early and ample dose of

the fighting), wore the picturesque dress of a private of the Legion;

another was a French infantry of the Lines-man, and the third a private

of a British infantry regiment. The ‘khaki,’ for no particular reason,

except that he apparently took it for granted that it should be so,

more or less took command of the party, while the Canadian, who spoke

fluent French, acted as interpreter both between the party and the French

‘civvies,’ as the local inhabitants were indiscriminately described by

the Englishman, and in conveying the orders of the self-appointed C.O. to

the non-English-speaking ‘piou-piou.’

Enquiry of the villagers brought the information that there were no

Germans in the hamlet, that a party of Uhlans had ridden through towards

the south an hour before, and that nothing had been seen of any Germans

since.

‘Good enough,’ said the khaki man on hearing this. ‘I’m just about ready

for a shut-eye myself after trekkin’ all last night. We’d better lie up

till it’s gettin’ dark again, and then shove on an’ see if we can get

the touch with our own push. You might ask ’em if this dorp has anythin’

goin’ in the way o’ rations—rooty an’ cheese an’ a pot o’ beer would just

suit my present complaint.’

But the village did better than bread and cheese. The village—women,

old men, and children—escorted the three warriors to the estaminet in

the main street and with voluble explanations handed them over to the

estaminet keeper.

‘Food? But assuredly yes—soup, good strong soup, and all ready and hot;

an omelette, a very large omelette for three, to be ready the moment

the soup was finished with; and then a veal stew, and cream cheese, and

wine—wine white or red, whichever messieurs preferred.’

‘Fust class. Canada, tell ’er fust bloomin’ class. I’ll give up dinin’ at

the Carlton an’ Savoy an’ come ’ere reg’lar in future, tell ’er. An’ how

long before the bugle sounds for dinner?’

At once, they were told. If they would enter, the soup would be served as

soon as they were seated. But the khaki demurred at that. ‘I must ’ave

a wash first,’ he declared. ‘I ’aven’t ’ad a decent wash for days. Just

ask ’er if she’ll show me where the pump is.’ He extracted soap and a

very dirty towel from his haversack and followed his conductress out to

the back, whence presently came the sound of pumping water, a vigorous

splashing and mighty blowing.

‘Come on, Tommy,’ said the Canadian when the other appeared again clean,

save for the stubble on his chin, glowing and rosy. ‘We’ve started the

soup. Good goods too. Pitch in.’

‘That looks good,’ said Tommy sniffing hungrily. He pulled down his

shirt-sleeves and carefully deposited in the corner near his chair the

rifle, haversack, and ammunition-pouches he had carried with him out to

the pump and in again. ‘But we don’t want them Oo-lans ’oppin’ in an’

spoilin’ the dessert. There ain’t enough o’ us to post proper pickets

an’ outposts, but wot’s the matter wi’ enlistin’ some o’ them kids for

temporary duty? I’ll bet they’d spot a Oo-lan a mile off an’ tip us the

wink if they was comin’ this way.’

There were plenty of volunteers for the duty, and half a dozen of the old

men of the village hobbled off to post themselves at various points,

each with several enthusiastic small boy gallopers in attendance to carry

urgent despatches as required.

Then Tommy sat down, and the three ate and drank ravenously. They

devoured the soup, the omelette, and the stew, and were proceeding with

the cheese when they heard the patter and rush of flying feet outside.

Next instant one boy burst into the room, another followed in a whirlwind

rush, and the two broke into breathless and excited speech.

The first dozen words were enough for the Canadian. ‘They’re coming,’ he

said abruptly to the others and jumped from his seat. ‘Very many Germans,

the kid says. Come on, we must hustle out of this quick.’

He ran to the door and looked out, the small boys following, still

talking rapidly and pointing and gesticulating. The Canadian took one

look and stepped back instantly under cover, the French piou-piou, who

had followed close on his heels, doing the same. ‘They’re not in sight

yet, but from what the kids say they should be round the corner and in

sight in minutes. They’re coming from the north, so we’d better slide out

south—or hike out into the fields and find a hole to hide up in.’

‘Comin’ from the north, eh?’ said the Englishman. He was quickly but

methodically stowing the remains of the long loaf in his haversack, and

that done slipped quickly into his accoutrements. ‘That means they’re

goin’ on the way we was tryin’ to stop ’em goin’, an’ pushin’ up into the

firin’ line.’

The Canadian and the piou-piou were engaged in rapid talk with the

landlady and a few other women and a couple of old men who had hurried

in. Tommy walked over to the door, stepped outside, and had a careful

look round. ‘Look ’ere,’ he said calmly, stepping back into the room.

‘There’s a good ditch on both sides o’ the road. You an’ Froggy ’ad

better take a side each. I’ll take the middle o’ the road, an’ there’s a

barrel outside I can roll out there for cover.’

The Canadian stared at him blankly. ‘What d’ you mean?’ he said. ‘What

are you going to do?’

‘Why, we’re goin’ to stop them, of course,’ said Tommy, looking at him

with an air of slight surprise. ‘You said they was Germans an’ goin’

south. That means they’re goin’ to reinforce their firin’ line, so we’ll

’ave to stop their reinforcin’ game. Come on, you two ’ad better take

cover, an’ we’ll give ’em socks as they come round the corner.’

He walked outside and proceeded to roll the empty barrel into the middle

of the road a little way down from the estaminet, which was the last

house of the village. He left an utterly dumbfounded Canadian and an

impatient and non-comprehending Frenchman who was rapidly reduced to a

state of incredulous amazement by the information which the Canadian,

after a long breath and a longer pause, proceeded to impart to him.

Now the Canadian, who is responsible for this story, openly confesses

that the last thing on earth he should have thought of attempting was any

resistance of the German advance, and more than that, that it was with

the greatest possible reluctance he did finally join the imperturbable

Tommy in the impossible task. He tried first to point out the folly of it.

‘See here, Tommy,’ he called from the inn door. ‘You don’t rightly

understand. There’s hundreds of these chaps coming, thousands of ’em for

all I know, but at least a regiment from what the old man says who saw

them. We can’t do anything to a lot like that. We’d far better get off

the grass while we’ve a chance.’

But Tommy had planted his empty barrel fairly in the middle of the road

and was settling himself snugly at full length behind it, his legs spread

wide and left shoulder well advanced after the approved fashion of his

musketry instructor. ‘They’re goin’ south,’ he called back. ‘An’ we come

over ’ere to stop ’em going south. So we’ll just ’ave to stop ’em.’ And

he commenced to lay cartridges in a convenient little pile at his elbow

and push a clip into his rifle magazine.

Even then the Canadian hesitated. The whole thing was so utterly mad,

such a senseless throwing away of their three lives that he was still

inclined to clear out and away. But that prone figure in the road held

him. He felt, as he puts it himself, that he couldn’t decently leave the

beggar there and run away. And a call from outside settled the matter by

the calm assurance it held that the two of them were going to stand by

and see the game through. ‘You two ’ad better be _jildi_.[3] I can see

the dust risin’ just round the corner.’

The Canadian flung a last hurried sentence to the piou-piou, ran out and

across the road and dropped into the ditch in line with the barrel. The

Frenchman looked round at the women and old men, shrugged his shoulders

and laughed shortly. ‘These mad English,’ he said hopelessly, ‘but, name

of a name, what can a Frenchman do but die along with them?’ and he too

ran out and took his place in the nearer ditch in line with the others.

Tommy looked over his shoulder at him and nodded encouragingly. ‘Good

man, Froggy,’ he said loudly, and then turning to the Canadian and

lowering his voice to a confidential undertone, ‘I’m glad to see Froggy

roll up, for the credit of ’is reg’ment’s sake—whatever ’is reg’ment may

be. ’E was so long, I was beginnin’ to think ’e was funkin’ it.’ The

Canadian admits to a queer relief that he himself had not ‘funked it,’

but he had little time to think about it.

A thin dust rose slowly from the road at the distant bend, and ‘’Ere

they come,’ said Tommy. ‘Don’t begin shootin’ till I do. We want to get

into the brown of ’em before we start, an’ we haven’t cartridges enough

to keep goin’ long. I think about four ’undred should be near enough the

range, but I’ll try a sightin’ shot first at that an’ you’ll see where it

lands.’

For long interminably dragging minutes the three lay there, and then

suddenly, in a bang that made him jump, the Canadian heard the soldier’s

first shot. ‘Just short,’ said Tommy coolly. ‘Better put your sights four

fifty an’ take a fine sight. Come on, let ’em ’ave it.’

The three rifles opened in a crackle of rapid fire, and far down the road

a swirl of dust and a stampede of grey-coated figures to the sides of

the road showed the alarm that the sudden onslaught had raised. It took

several minutes for the crowd to get to any sort of cover, and before

they did so they evidently began to understand how weak was the force

opposed to them. The grey mass dropped to the road and next minute a

steady drum of rifle fire and a storm of bullets came beating down on the

three. The road was _pavé_, floored with the flat cobble-stones common on

first-class French roads, and on these the bullets cracked and smacked

with vicious emphasis, ricochetted and rose with ugly screams and whirrs

and singings. A dozen times in that first minute the hollow barrel banged

to the blow of a bullet, but the figure behind it kept on firing steadily

and without a pause. And presently the Germans, impatient of the delay

perhaps, or angered by the impudence of the attack of such a handful as

they were now sure blocked the way, began to climb over the fence along

the roadside and move along the fields firing as they came, while another

group commenced to trot steadily straight down the road. ‘Now then,

Canada,’ called Tommy, ‘pick your target an’ tell Froggy we’ll fire in

turns. We can’t afford to waste shots.’

So the three commenced to fire steadily and in turn, each waiting after

the other’s shot to see if a man fell, each calling to the others in

triumph if a man went down after their shot, growling angrily if the

shot missed. They made good shooting amongst them, the man in the middle

of the road an unmistakable best and the Canadian second. Their shooting

in fact was so good that it broke the attack down the road, and presently

the remainder of this force ran crouching to the ditches, jumped into

them, and stayed there.

But because the ammunition of the three was almost gone the affair was

almost over, and now there appeared a new factor that looked like ending

it even before their cartridges gave out. Back in the ranks of the main

body three or four men grouped about a machine-gun opened a rapid fire,

and the hailing bullets clashed on the walls of the estaminet, swept down

on to the stones of the _pavé_, found their range and began drumming

and banging on the barrel. The soldier beside it quietly laid down his

empty rifle and looked towards the Canadian. ‘I’m done in,’ he called.

‘Punctured ’arf a dozen places.... You two better keep down ... let ’em

come close, then finish it ... wi’ the bayonet.’

That struck the Canadian as the last word in lunacy; but before he could

speak, he saw the barrel dissolved in splintering wreckage about the

figure lying on the road. Tommy raised his head a little and called once

more, but faintly. ‘Good fight. We did all we could ... to stop ’em. We

did stop ’em all a good time ... an’ we stopped a lot for good.’ A gust

of bullets swept lower, clattered on the stones, set the broken barrel

staves dancing, hailed drumming and thudding on the prone figure in the

road.

Both the Canadian and the Frenchman were wounded severely, but they still

had the strength to crawl back along the ditch, and the luck to emerge

from it amongst the houses in time to be hidden away by the villagers

before the Germans arrived. And that night after they had passed through

and gone, the Canadian went back and found the body of the soldier where

it had been flung in the ditch—a body riddled and rent to pieces with

innumerable bullet wounds.

The Canadian had the villagers bury the body there close outside the

village, and wrote on a smooth board the number and name he took from the

identity disc about the dead man’s neck. And underneath it he wrote in

indelible pencil ‘A good fighting man,’ and the last words he had heard

the fighter gasp—‘We did all we could to stop them; stopped them all a

good time, and stopped a lot for good.’

And as the Canadian said afterwards, ‘That same, if you remember their

record and their fate, being a fairly close fitting epitaph for the old

Contemptible Little Army.’

FOOTNOTES

[3] ‘_Jildi_’—quick.

_A PEEP AT AN OLD PARLIAMENT._

BY SIR HENRY LUCY.

A short time ago an unknown friend, ‘thinking it may interest you,’ sent

me what turned out to be a precious volume. Its full title runs thus:

‘Random Recollections of the House of Commons from the Year 1830 to the

Close of 1835, including Personal Sketches of the Leading Members of all

Parties; by One of No Party.’ Readers of the CORNHILL will be not the

less attracted by it since, as the imprint shows, it was published in

1836 by the eminent firm of Smith, Elder & Co., at that date located at

Cornhill.

Throughout the volume ‘One of No Party,’ whom, for the sake of brevity,

I will in future refer to by the letter Q, preserves his anonymity. In a

modest preface he describes himself as ‘during a very regular attendance

in the House of Commons for several years past being in the habit of

taking notes of what was most interesting in the proceedings, as well as

of the personal and oratorical peculiarities of the leading members.’ As

‘One of No Party’ and all the historical personages who live again under

the magic of his graphic pen have long since passed on to another state,

it would not be indiscreet if the day-books of the old firm in Cornhill

for the year 1835 were looked through and his identity revealed.

Alas, poor Yorick! The final—to be precise, the penultimate—chapter of

the life-story of his book has something touching in its sadness. Its

price on the day of publication is not mentioned. Pencil memoranda on the

fly-sheet indicate that fourscore years later the second-hand bookseller

to whom its possession fell temptingly offered it at the price of one

shilling. There being apparently no bidding, the shilling was crossed out

and sixpence substituted. Finally, oh ye who pass by remaining obdurate

or worse still indifferent, the volume, with its old-fashioned brown

paper back bound with a strip of cloth, was thrown into the fourpenny

box, receptacle of many unrecognised but memorable treasures. As

affording a vivid peep at an historic Parliament, few have exceeded the

intrinsic value of this time-and-weather-stained volume.

Beginning his record in the Unreformed Parliament of 1830, Q indulged

himself in the production of a series of thumb-nail sketches of eminent

members long since gone to another place, whose names live in history.

Here we have the men as they lived and dressed, moved or spoke, depicted

by a keen-sighted independent looker-on. In this Parliament Sir Charles

Wetherell, Member for Bristol, high Tory of a type now extinct, held a

prominent and popular place.

‘He never opened his mouth,’ Q says, ‘but the House was

convulsed with laughter, Wetherell himself preserving a

countenance morose in its gravity.’

His personal appearance sufficed to attract attention.

‘His clothes are always threadbare. I never saw a suit on him

for which a Jew old-clothes man would give ten shillings. They

always look as if made by accident, hanging loosely about his

tall figure. As for braces, he has an unconquerable aversion to

them.’

There is a story about the famous Member for Bristol which Q must have

heard but does not relate. When with frequent gestures he addressed

the House his unbraced trousers parted from his waistcoat, displaying

a considerable rim of shirt. A member, gravely rising to a point of

order, once called the attention of the Speaker to the lapse. Manners

Sutton, who filled the Chair at the time, with equal gravity declined to

interfere. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘the hon. gentleman’s only lucid interval.’

Leaving the House at a quarter past seven one morning, having fought the

Reform Bill in Committee through a long series of divisions, Wetherell

discovered it was raining heavily. ‘By G—,’ he said, ‘if I had known this

we would have had a few more divisions.’

A contemporary of Wetherell’s, an active fellow-worker against the Reform

Bill, was Croker, object of Macaulay’s particular aversion, a prejudice

shared by Disraeli. Q describes him as tall, well-made, full six feet in

height.

‘He is bald-headed and has been so for ten or twelve years.

He is about sixty years of age, for one half of which time he

has been in Parliament. He is a very fluent speaker, but his

elocution is impaired by the circumstance of his not being able

to pronounce the letter R. His gestures are violent, often

theatrically so. He makes infinitely varied evolution, wheeling

his body round and round, by that means managing to address

by turns not only every part of the House, but almost every

member in it. Like a hen on a hot girdle, as an Irish member

describes him.’

Through a series of weeks Croker spoke every night against clauses

of the Reform Bill. Some nights he made as many as twenty speeches

occupying three hours of the sitting. His apprehension of disastrous

results accruing from the passing of the Bill, fear shared by Sir Charles

Wetherell, was justified by the event. In both cases the enlarged

constituencies rejected their candidature.

At the date of this fascinating record, which closes with the session of

1835, neither Disraeli nor Gladstone was yet in the House. Sir Robert

Peel, unconscious of what was in store for him in the way of personal

connection with them, was Leader of the Tory party in the House of

Commons, a post to which he succeeded on the death of Canning. Q gives us

one of his vivid sketches of the living man:

‘He is remarkably good-looking, rather above the usual size,

and finely proportioned. He is of clear complexion, full round

face, and red-haired. His usual dress is a green surtout, a

light waistcoat, and dark trousers. He generally displays

a watch-chain on his breast, with a bunch of gold seals of

unusually large dimensions and great splendour. He can scarcely

be called a dandy, and yet he sacrifices a good deal to these

graces. I hardly know a public man who dresses in better taste.

He is in the prime of life, being forty-seven years of age. His

whole appearance indicates health. He is capable of undergoing

a great deal of fatigue.’

It was Peel’s custom to remain in the House till one or two o’clock

in the morning, later if necessary. Nor was he a quiescent listener,

following the debate with tireless attention and occasionally

intervening. In this respect Disraeli and Gladstone, brought up at his

feet, were equally close in their attendance and attention. Up to the

last both, whether in office or in Opposition, seated themselves when the

Speaker took the Chair, and with brief interval for dinner remained till

the House was up. The fashion of to-day is widely different, the habit of

the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition (when there was one) being

to withdraw to the privacy of their respective rooms as soon as questions

are over, an example loyally followed by their colleagues.

I don’t know why, but it is something of a surprise to learn that Sir

Robert Peel was a red-haired man. His son Arthur, who for many years

added grace and authority to the Speaker’s Chair, had raven locks. The

circumstance lends support to Q’s quaint theory that in the House of

Commons red hair is the concomitant of supreme ability. There is none in

the present House.

It is curious and interesting to find in this close contemporaneous study

of Sir Robert Peel two mannerisms strongly marked in his most famous

disciple when in due time he filled his master’s official place in the

House of Commons. Q describes how Sir Robert, when speaking on any great

question, was accustomed to strike at regular intervals the brass-bound

box which lies on the table, in front of which a Minister is habituated

to stand whilst addressing the House. Nothing if not precise, Q, with

his eye on the clock, reckoned that Peel smote the box at the rate of

two strokes a minute. Old members of the House of Commons will recall

this curious habit as practised by Gladstone. It was occasionally varied

by another trick of driving home his argument by smiting the open palm

of his left hand with his right. The consequence was that he frequently

drowned in the clamour the concluding words of his leading sentences.

Another trick of Peel’s, unconsciously imitated by his pupil, was that

of turning his back on the Speaker and addressing passages of his

speech directly to supporters on the bench behind him or seated below

the gangway. This is a violation of the fundamental rule of order

requiring a member on his legs to address himself directly to the Chair.

In Gladstone’s case it afforded opportunity for welcome diversion on

the part of members on the benches opposite, who lustily cried ‘Order!

Order!’ Interrupted in the flow of his argument and not immediately

recognising the cause, he added to the merriment by turning round with

inquiring look at his tormentors.

‘Sir Robert is the idol of the Tory Party,’ writes this shrewd

observer. ‘With the Conservatives in the House of Commons

everything he says is oracular. He can do with them and make of

them what he pleases. They are the mere creatures of his will,

are as much under his control, and as ready to be formed and

fashioned in any way he chooses, as is the clay in the hands of

the potter.’

Ten years later Peel, counting upon this deference, and believing with

Q that the Tory Party was in all matters submissive to his command,

declared himself a Free Trader. Whereupon, as happened in the old

potter’s shop visited by Omar Khayyam, there was revolt by the clay

population.

And suddenly one more impatient cried:

‘Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?’

The awkward question was answered by Peel’s former vassals uprising and

turning out his Government.

* * * * *

The name of Colonel Sibthorpe lingers in the Parliamentary gallery of

notabilities of the Unreformed Parliament. Q describes him as woefully

deficient in judgment.

‘If there be a right and a wrong side to any subject he is

sure to adopt the wrong one. He never makes a very long speech

because he cannot. But he speaks on every subject, and in

Committee it is no unusual thing for him to make fifteen or

twenty speeches in one night.’

Like the maid in the pastoral poem, Colonel Sibthorpe’s face was his

fortune, at least the early making of it.

‘Two or three Senators rejoice in tufts,’ Q writes, ‘and a

few more in whiskers of decent proportions. Compared with

the moustache and whiskers of the gallant Colonel one feels

indignant that they should be dignified by the name. The lower

section of his face, drawing a straight line from ear to ear

immediately under his nose, is one great forest of hair. You

hardly know whether he has a mouth or not, so completely is it

buried amidst the surrounding crop of hair.’

This personal peculiarity elicited from O’Connell a fair example of the

sort of humour that in these past times appealed to an assembly grateful

for temporary deliverance from a state of boredom. Sibthorpe, making one

of his incoherent attacks upon the Liberal majority, said:

‘I am no party man. I have never acted from party feelings, but

I must say I do not like the countenances of hon. gentlemen

opposite.’

O’Connell, following, retorted amid what Q describes as peals of laughter:

‘We who sit on this side certainly have not such remarkable

countenances as that of the gallant Colonel. I would not abate

him a single hair’—here resounded a peal of laughter—‘in good

humour on this or any other ordinary occasion.’

Macaulay, seated in the Commons as Member for Leeds, a connection broken

when he went out to India as a Member of Council, did not escape Q’s

searching and shrewd observation. He gives a description of his personal

appearance founded on the style of the ‘Police News’ circulating

particulars respecting an absconded criminal:

‘His personal appearance is prepossessing. In stature he is

about middle size and well formed. His eyes are of a deep blue

and have a very intelligent expression. His complexion is dark,

his hair of a beautiful jet black. His face is rather inclined

to the oval form. His features are small and regular. He is now

in the thirty-eighth year of his age.’

Passing through the stately hall of the Reform Club, I often stop to look

at a portrait of Macaulay hung on the wall at the foot of the stairway.

One would not recognise it from this minute description of the Member

for Leeds who sat in the Parliament in the early ’thirties of the last

century. But between the printed letter and the painted canvas a period

of thirty years stretched.

In his incomparable biography of his uncle, Sir George Trevelyan

tells of the success of his maiden speech. Q, who heard it, describes

it as electrifying the House. He adds that by refraining from early

reappearance in debate Macaulay shrewdly preserved his laurels.

‘He had no gift for extemporaneous speeches. His contributions

to debate were carefully studied and committed to memory. He

bestowed a world of labour on their preparation. In every

sentence we saw the man of genius, the profound scholar, the

deep thinker, the close and powerful reasoner. His diction

was faultless. As a speaker, he was not forcible or vehement,

carrying his audience away with him as by force. Rather, by his

dulcet tones and engaging manner, he took his hearers with him

willing captives.’

Whilst the late Duke of Devonshire sat in the House of Commons as Lord

Hartington, I frequently found in him curiously close resemblance,

mental and physical, to Lord Althorpe, Leader of the House of Commons

during Lord Grey’s premiership, and the short duration of the first

administration of Lord Melbourne. The impression is confirmed by Q’s

description.

‘He was one of the worst speakers in the House. It was a truly

melancholy spectacle to see him vindicating the Government

when in the progress of the Irish Coercion Bill of 1833 it

was assailed by O’Connell, Sheil, and other Irish Members.

He could not put three or four sentences together without

stammering, recalling his words over and over again.’

This is an exaggerated description of Lord Hartington’s manner of

speech. In later days he with sedulous practice improved. His speeches,

found to be surprisingly good when read from verbatim report, suffered

considerably by ineffective delivery.

We come nearer to Lord Hartington as Q proceeds with his study of Lord

Althorpe.

‘He has a sound judgment, which makes him invariably take

the common-sense view of a subject. With all his faults as a

speaker he was much esteemed by men of all parties. It was

impossible for anyone, however much he might differ from him

in sentiment, not to respect him. Nothing could make him lose

his temper. In the most violent altercations, amid scenes of

greatest uproar and confusion, there he stood motionless as a

statue, his face shadowing forth the most perfect placidness of

mind.’

This might have been written of Lord Hartington through many a stormy

scene in the House of Commons, as he sat on the front Opposition Bench,

one hand in his trouser pocket, his hat tilted over his nose, his face as

stony as that of the Sphinx.

It is common experience in modern Parliaments that men who have attained

the highest position at the Bar have been failures in the House of

Commons. Illustrations of the rule are provided in the cases of Lord

Davey and Lord Russell of Killowen. The former, who probably never opened

his mouth in a Court of Law under a fee of one hundred guineas, when

as Sir Horace Davey he spoke in the House of Commons was as successful

as the traditional dinner bell in emptying the Chamber. During a long

parliamentary career Sir Charles Russell only once rose to the height

of his fame as an advocate at the Bar. It was when in debate he pleaded

the cause of Home Rule, whose final triumph he did not live to see.

Exceptions are found in the cases of Sir John Herschell, who, entering

the House of Commons as an unknown barrister, won his way to the

Woolsack, and Sir Edward Clarke, who, if he had set his mind on the same

goal, would certainly have reached it.

That this state of things, though paradoxical, is not new appears from

the case of Lord Jeffrey as narrated by this shrewd observer. Apart

from his pre-eminence at the Scottish Bar, Jeffrey’s editorship of the

‘Edinburgh Review’ invested him with double personal interest. His

maiden speech was looked forward to with absorbing interest. He rose in

a crowded House. According to the implacable Q, the effort was a failure

so lamentable that he never repeated it, content with briefly taking part

in debate only when the duty was imposed upon him in connection with

his office as Lord Advocate. In delivering his maiden speech he spoke

for an hour and twenty minutes with unparalleled rapidity of delivery.

Unfaltering, he proceeded to the end.

‘His manner was graceful, his voice clear and pleasant.

Both lacked variety and flexibility. The discourse was as

unintelligible to the majority of its auditory as if he had

spoken some abstruse article intended for the “Edinburgh

Review” in answer to Kant or some other German metaphysician.’

Jeffrey was approaching his fiftieth year when he entered Parliament. He

is described as being

‘Below the middle size and slender in make. His face is small

and compact, inclining to the angular form. His eyelashes are

prominent. His forehead is remarkably low considering the

intellectual character of the man. His complexion is dark and

his hair black.’

Cobbett, who at the age of seventy-three sat in the same Parliament with

Jeffrey, was of a different physical type. Six foot two in height, he was

one of the stoutest men in the House.

‘His ruddy complexion was crowned by a shock of milk-white

hair. His usual dress was a light grey coat, a white waistcoat,

and kerseymere breeches of sandy colour, into whose pockets he

used to thrust his hands when he walked about the House. There

was something so dull and heavy about his whole appearance

that anyone who did not know him would have set him down

for a country clodpoll—to use a favourite expression of his

own—who not only never read a book or had a single idea in his

head, but was a mere mass of mortality without a particle of

sensibility of any kind.’

Lord John Russell, at this time a member of Lord Melbourne’s Cabinet

equally with Jeffrey, had nothing in common with Cobbett except a

light-coloured waistcoat and kerseymere trousers of a sandy complexion.

His height was even less than that attained by the famous editor of the

‘Edinburgh.’ Q describes him as

‘Considerably below middle size, slenderly made, and presenting

the appearance of a person of weakened constitution. His

features are large and broadly marked, his complexion pale,

his countenance of a pensive cast. He scarcely ever indulges in

a smile.’

He is roundly described as one of the worst speakers in the House. His

voice was weak and his enunciation imperfect, hampered by stammer or

stutter at every fourth or fifth sentence. He had a habit of repeating

frequently three or four times the first two or three words of a

sentence. His oratorical style was further embellished by a hesitating

cough. Q supplies a verbatim note taken down as Lord John stood

inanimate at the table, his voice inaudible to one-half of his audience.

‘I—I—I—hem—think the motion of the honourable member is—is ill-timed at

the—at the—hem—present moment.’

Q is inexplicably hard on Palmerston, who at the early age of forty-five

attained the position of Foreign Secretary.

‘The situation he fills in the Cabinet,’ he writes with

solitary touch of personal rancour, ‘gives him a certain degree

of prominence in the eyes of the country which he certainly

does not possess in Parliament. His talents are by no means of

a high order.’

He is described as an indifferent speaker, handicapped like his colleague

Lord John Russell by a vocal trick of stuttering and stammering. ‘He is

very indolent, irregular in his attendance upon his parliamentary duties,

and when in the House by no means active in defence of his principles or

his friends.’

Tall and handsome in person, he was always dressed in the height of

fashion, a habit which we are told suggested to _The Times_ the sobriquet

of ‘Cupid,’ by which, with levity unknown in Printing House Square in

these later days, it was accustomed to make editorial allusion to the

Foreign Secretary.

Hume is described as head of the country Liberal Party.

‘He is short-necked, and his head is one of the largest I have

seen. His hair, of dark brown tipped with grey, is long and

bushy; his face fat and round, and his complexion has that

rough, healthy aspect common among gentlemen-farmers.’

Hume was impervious to ridicule or sarcasm, heedless of abuse however

virulent. It was calculated that in the course of a session he delivered

more speeches than the aggregate of any other three members. On a May

night, when the House was in Committee on Civil Service Estimates,

he spoke for forty minutes. His hat played a prominent part in these

parliamentary incursions. He invariably brought it into the House

cram-full of papers. When he rose to speak he planted it out on the bench

or floor within arm’s length, as if it were a cabbage. When he interposed

to make a passing remark, he had an odd trick of putting his hat under

his left arm at an angle that dexterously precluded its contents tumbling

out on the floor. There is somewhere in existence a caricature sketch

of him by H.B. thus possessed of his hat. In his ordinary attire he

lightened up his speeches, which though learned were a little dull, by

presentation of a compact costume of a blue coat, a tartan waistcoat, and

the apparently popular light-coloured ‘cassimere trousers.’

Roebuck, in his thirty-third year, was a member of this House. Here is a

pen-picture of him:

‘He is much under the middle size, so slender withal that

he has quite a boyish appearance. His countenance is pale

and sickly, with very little flesh on it. His nose is rather

prominent; his eyes are disproportionately large and sunken.

There is a scowl so visibly impressed on his brow that the

merest novice in physiognomy must observe it. He is not a

favourite in the House, and the limited popularity he has

acquired out of doors seems to be on the decline.’

Q evidently did not like Roebuck, who, when more than forty years later

he reappeared on the parliamentary scene as Member for Sheffield,

disclosed a natural talent for getting himself disliked. He came back

with the flood of Toryism that in the General Election of 1874 swamped

Mr. Gladstone. Dillwyn, an old and generally esteemed member, secured

the corner seat below the gangway on the Opposition side, a place

made historic in a later Parliament by the occupancy of Lord Randolph

Churchill. Roebuck hankered after this seat, which he might have obtained

by the regulation process of attendance at prayer-time. He preferred to

arrive later and turn out Dillwyn, making himself otherwise pleasant

by prodding his stick along the back of the bench, regardless of the

presence of honourable members.

Dillwyn stood this for a long time. At length his patience was exhausted.

I remember one afternoon when Roebuck, arriving as usual midway in the

course of questions, made for the corner seat and stood there expecting

Dillwyn to rise. The Member for Swansea, studiously unaware of his

presence, made no sign. After a pause watched with eager eyes by a

crowded House, Roebuck turned about and amid a ringing cheer from the

Ministerialists crossed over to the Tory camp, where politically he was

more at home.

In the days when Roebuck represented Bath, Q describes him as

‘One of the most petulant, discontented, and conceited of men

in the House. Full of airs, he was in his own estimation one of

the most consequential men within the walls of Parliament. He

spoke frequently, in a voice feeble but clear and distinct.’

‘A man of fair talent but nothing more,’ is Q’s summing-up of one who,

alike in his early prime and in his old age, filled a prominent place in

the House of Commons.

O’Connell was closer to Q’s heart. He devotes an exceptional number of

pages to a study of the Great Beggarman. Tall and athletic in person,

O’Connell’s complexion had about it a freshness and ruddiness indicative

of good health and excellent spirits. In a voice clear and strong he

spoke with broad Irish accent. Occasionally he stammered, not from

physical defect, but because he had upon his mind two or more ideas

struggling for priority of expression. He was known occasionally to

break off in the middle of a sentence, leaving it unfinished whilst he

expounded a brilliant thought that struck him as he spoke.

His gestures and attitude were of endless variety. He had a trick of

stretching out his neck and making wry faces at the Speaker. The next

moment his arms were raised above his head, his fists firmly clenched as

he declaimed a passionate passage of denunciation. He wore a wig, which

suffered greatly in the course of a busy session. He would suddenly

seize it with both hands as if about to tear it to pieces. He was merely

half-consciously intent upon adjusting it. During a memorable speech

advocating the repeal of the Union in 1834 he amazed the House by untying

his cravat, taking it off, and laying it on the bench beside him. In the

height of oratorical happiness he felt incommoded by the tightening of

his neckcloth, and the simplest thing to do obviously was to remove it.

Among Irish members of this epoch Sheil ranked next to O’Connell. His

eloquence commanded attention on both sides of the House. It was,

however, hampered by several eccentricities. Mr. Gladstone, who preserved

to the last a vivid impression of him, told me that when addressing the

House he started on a loud key and rather screeched than spoke. Another

tradition coming down to modern Parliaments describes him as bending

down to scrape the floor with his thumbnail and thanking God he had no

gestures. This reads like fable, but it is confirmed from Q’s personal

observation.

‘Sometimes,’ he wrote, ‘Mr. Sheil bends his body to such

a degree that you are not without fear he may lose his

equilibrium and fall head prostrate on the floor. At other

times he advances to the table, gives three or four lusty

strokes on the box, and then suddenly retreats backwards four

or five steps. In a few seconds we see him by another sudden

bound leaning over the table, stretching out his neck as if

trying to reach some hon. member opposite. In addition to an

unmelodious voice, Sheil’s articulation is indistinct, his

utterance reaching a stage of amazing rapidity.’

Feargus O’Connor, best known in connection with the Chartist movement,

by favour of O’Connell represented County Cork in the session of 1834.

Among stories told in the smoking-room of the House of Commons during the

Parliament of 1874-80 was one that does not seem to have reached Q’s ear.

It ran to the effect that, strolling about behind the Speaker’s Chair in

the old House of Commons, O’Connor observed through the open door of the

Speaker’s private room preparations for the right hon. gentleman’s early

evening meal. Feargus, so the story ran, whether in a moment of absence

of mind or in a preliminary state of mental defection that some years

later necessitated incarceration in an asylum for the insane, seated

himself at the table and ate the Speaker’s chop.

Differing in all ways from these illustrious unconventional Irishmen

was Edward Bulwer Lytton, who sat in the session of 1835 as Member for

Lincoln. Q describes him as

‘Artificial throughout, the mere creature of self-discipline. A

fine-looking man, tall and handsome, he always dressed in the

extreme of fashion. His manner of speaking, like his manner

in all other respects, was affected. He wrote his speeches

out, learned them off by heart, and delivered them with great

rapidity in a weak voice, made more difficult to follow by

reason of affected pronunciation. He did not often speak, and

was rewarded for his moderation in this respect by finding the

benches crowded when he interposed in debate.’

_LADY CONNIE._

BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.

Copyright, 1915, by Mrs. Humphry Ward, in the United States of America.

CHAPTER XV.

Douglas Falloden was sitting alone in his father’s library surrounded

by paper and documents. He had just concluded a long interview with

the family lawyer; and a tray containing the remains of their hasty

luncheon was on a side table. The room had a dusty, dishevelled air.

Half of the house-servants had been already dismissed; the rest were

disorganised. Lady Laura had left Flood the day before. To her son’s

infinite relief she had consented to take the younger children and go on

a long visit to some Scotch relations. It had been left vague whether she

returned to Flood or not; but Douglas hoped that the parting was already

over—without her knowing it; and that he should be able to persuade her,

after Scotland, to go straight to the London house—which was her own

property—for the winter.

Meanwhile he himself had been doing his best to wind up affairs. The

elaborate will of twenty years earlier, with its many legacies and

bequests, had been cancelled by Sir Arthur only six weeks before his

death. A very short document had been substituted for it, making Douglas

and a certain Marmaduke Falloden, his uncle and an eminent K.C., joint

executors, and appointing Douglas and Lady Laura guardians of the younger

children. Whatever property might remain ‘after the payment of my just

debts’ was to be divided in certain proportions between Douglas and his

brother and sister.

The estates, with the exception of the lands immediately surrounding the

Castle, were to be sold to the tenants, and the dates of the auction were

already fixed. For the Castle itself, negotiations had been opened with

an enormously successful soap-boiler from the north, but the American

proprietor of a dry-goods store in Chicago was also in the market, and

the Falloden solicitors were skilfully playing the two big fish against

each other. The sale of the pictures would come before the Court early in

October. Meanwhile the beautiful Romney—the lady in black—still looked

down upon her stripped and impoverished descendant; and Falloden,

whose sole companion she often was through dreary hours, imagined her

sometimes as tragic or reproachful, but more commonly as mocking him with

a malicious Irish glee.

There would be some few thousand pounds left for himself when all was

settled. He was determined to go into Parliament, and his present

intention was to stand for a Merton Fellowship, and read for the Bar. If

other men could make three or four thousand a year within three years

or so of being called, why not he? His character had steeled under the

pressure of disaster. He realised with a clearer intelligence, day by

day, all that had gone from him—his father—his inheritance—the careless

ease and self-assurance that goes with the chief places at the feast

of life. But if he must now drop to the lower rooms, it would not be

‘with shame’ that he would do that, or anything else. He felt within

himself a driving and boundless energy; an iron will to succeed. There

was even a certain bitter satisfaction in measuring himself against the

world without the props and privileges he had hitherto possessed. He

was often sore and miserable to his heart’s depths; haunted by black

regrets and compunction he could not get rid of. All the same it was his

fixed resolve to waste no thoughts on mere happiness. His business was

to make a place for himself as an able man among able men, to ask of

ambition, intelligence, hard work, and the sharpening of brain on brain,

the satisfaction he had once hoped to get out of marriage with Constance

Bledlow, and the easy, though masterly, use of great wealth.

* * * * *

He turned to look at the clock.

She had asked him for five. He had ordered his horse accordingly, the

only beast still left in the Flood stables, and his chief means of

escape, during a dreary fortnight, from his peevish co-executor, who

was of little or no service, and had allowed himself already to say

unpardonable things about his dead brother, even to that brother’s son.

It was too soon to start, but he pushed his papers aside impatiently.

The mere prospect of seeing Constance Bledlow provoked in him a dumb and

troubled excitement. Under its impulse he left the library, and began

to walk aimlessly through the dreary and deserted house, for the mere

sake of movement. The pictures were still on the walls, for the sale of

them had not yet been formally sanctioned by the Court; but all Lady

Laura’s private and personal possessions had been removed to London, and

dust-sheets covered the furniture. Some of it indeed had been already

sold, and workmen were busy packing in the great hall, amid a dusty

litter of paper and straw. The clocks had run down; the flowers had gone,

and with them all the other signs of normal life which make the character

of a house; what remained was only the débris of a once animated whole.

Houses have their fate no less than books; and in the ears of its last

Falloden possessor the whole of the great many-dated fabric, from

its fourteenth-century foundations beneath the central tower to the

pseudo-Gothic with which Wyatt under the fourth George had disfigured the

garden front, had often, since his father’s death, seemed to speak with

an almost human voice of lamentation and distress.

But this afternoon Falloden took little notice of his surroundings. Why

had she written to him?

Well, after all, death is death, and the merest strangers had written to

him—letters that he was now wearily answering. But there had been nothing

perfunctory in her letter. As he read it he had seemed to hear her very

voice saying the soft touching things in it—things that women say so

easily and men can’t hit upon; and to be looking into her changing face,

and the eyes that could be so fierce, and then again so childishly sweet

and sad—as he had seen them, at their last meeting on the moor, while she

was giving him news of Radowitz. Yet there was not a word in the letter

that might not have been read on the house-tops—not a trace in it of

her old alluring, challenging self. Simplicity—deep feeling—sympathy—in

halting words, and unfinished sentences:—and yet—something conspicuously

absent and to all appearance so easily, unconsciously absent, that all

the sweetness and the pity brought him more smart than soothing. Yes, she

had done with him—for all her wish to be kind to him. He saw it plainly;

and he turned back thirstily to those past hours in Lathom Woods, when

he had felt himself, if only for a moment, triumphant master of her

thoughts if not her heart; rebelled against, scolded, flouted, yet still

tormentingly necessary and important. All that delicious friction, those

disputes that are the fore-runner of passion, were gone—for ever. She

was sorry for him—and very kind. His touchy pride recoiled, reading into

her letter what she had never dreamt of putting into it, just because

of the absence of that something—that old tremor—those old signs of his

influence over her, which, of course, she would never let him see again.

All the same he had replied at once, asking if he might come and

say good-bye before she left Scarfedale. And she had sent him a

telegram—‘Delighted—to-morrow—five o’clock.’

And he was going—out of a kind of recklessness—a kind of obstinate recoil

against the sorrowful or depressing circumstance of life. He had given

up all thoughts of trying to win her back—even if there were any chance

of it. His pride would not let him sue as a pauper; and of course the

Langmoors, to whom she was going—he understood—from Scarfedale, would

take good care she did not throw herself away. Quite right too. Very

likely the Tamworths would capture her; and Bletchley was quite a nice

fellow.

When he did see her, what could they talk about? Radowitz?

He would like to send a message through her to Radowitz—to say something—

What could he say? He had seen Radowitz for a few minutes after the

inquest—to thank him for his evidence—and for what he had done for Sir

Arthur. Both had hurried through it. Falloden had seemed to himself

stricken with aphasia. His mouth was dry, his tongue useless. And

Radowitz had been all nerves, a flickering colour—good God, how deathly

he looked!

Afterwards he had begun a letter to Radowitz, and had toiled at it,

sometimes at dead of night, and in a feverish heat of brain. But he had

never finished or sent it. What was the use? Nothing was changed. That

black sling and the damaged hand in it stood for one of those hard facts

that no wishing, and no sentimentalising, and no remorse could get over.

‘I wish to God I had let him alone!’

That now was the frequent and bitter cry of Falloden’s inmost being.

Trouble and the sight of trouble—sorrow—and death—had been to him, as

to other men, sobering and astonishing facts. The most decisive effect

of them had been to make him vulnerable, to break through the hard

defences of pride and custom, so that he realised what he had done. And

this realisation was fast becoming a more acute and haunting thing than

anything else. It constantly drove out the poignant recollection of his

father’s death, or the dull sense of financial loss and catastrophe. Loss

and catastrophe might be at some distant time made good. But what could

ever give Radowitz back his art—his career—his natural object in life?

The hatches of the present had just got to be closed over this ugly,

irreparable thing. ‘I can’t undo it—nothing can ever be undone. But I

can’t spend my life in repenting it; one must just go forward, and not

let that, or anything else, hamstring a man who has got his fight to

fight, and can’t get out of it.’

Undo it? No. But were no, even partial, amends possible?—nothing that

could be offered, or done, or said?—nothing that would give Constance

Bledlow pleasure, or change her opinion?—efface that shrinking in her, of

which he hated to think?

He cudgelled his brains, but could think of nothing.

Money, of course, was of no use, even if he still possessed it. Radowitz,

in all matters connected with money, was hyper-sensitive and touchy. It

was well known that he had private means; and it was certainly probable

that he was now the richer man of the two.

No—there was nothing to be done. He had maimed for ever the vital

energising impulse in another human being, and it could never be

repaired. ‘His poor music!—_murdered_’—the words from Constance Bledlow’s

horror-stricken letter were always in his mind. And the day after the

inquest on Sir Arthur he had had some conversation on the medical points

of his father’s case, and on the light thrown on them by Radowitz’s

evidence, with the family doctor who was then attending Lady Laura, and

had, it appeared, been several times called in by Sorell during the

preceding weeks to see Radowitz and report on the progress of the hand.

‘A bad business!’ said the young man, who had intelligence and was fresh

from hospital—‘and awful hard luck!—he might have hurt his hand in a

score of ways and still have recovered the use of it, but this particular

injury’—he shook his head—‘nothing to be done! And the worst of it is

that a trouble like this, which cuts across a man’s career, goes so

deep. The thing I should be most afraid of is his general health. You

can see that he’s delicate—narrow-chested—a bundle of nerves. It might

be phthisis—it might be’—he shrugged his shoulders—‘well, depression,

bad neurasthenia. And the poor lad seems to have no family—no mother or

sisters—to look after him. But he’ll want a lot of care if he’s to pull

round again. An Oxford row, wasn’t it? Abominable!’

But here the sudden incursion of Lady Laura’s maid, to ask a question

for her mistress, had diverted the doctor’s thoughts and spared Falloden

reply.

* * * * *

A little later, he was riding slowly up the side of the moor towards

Scarfedale, looking down on a landscape which since his childhood had

been so intimate and familiar a part of himself that the thought of

being wrenched away from it, immediately and for good, seemed merely

absurd.

September was nearly gone; and the trees had long passed out of their

August monotony, and were already prophetic of the October blaze. The

level afternoon light was searching out the different planes of distance,

giving to each hedgerow, elm or oak, a separate force and kingship: and

the golden or bronze shades, which were day by day stealing through the

woods, made gorgeous marriage with the evening purple. The Castle, as he

gazed back upon it, had sunk into the shadows, a dim magnificent ghost,

seen through mist, like the Rhine Maidens through the blue water.

And there it would stand, perhaps for generations yet, long after he

and his kindred knew it no more. What did the plight of its last owner

matter to it, or to the woods and hills? He tried to think of that

valley a hundred years hence—a thousand!—and felt himself the merest

insect crawling on the face of this old world, which is yet so young.

But only for a moment. Rushing back, came the proud, resisting sense of

personality—of man’s dominance over Nature—of the Nietzschean ‘will to

power.’ To be strong, to be sufficient to oneself; not to yield, but to

be for ever counter-attacking circumstance, so as to be the master of

circumstance, whatever blows it might choose to strike—that seemed to be

the best, the only creed left to him.

When he reached the Scarfedale house, and a gardener had taken his horse,

the maid who opened the door told him he would find Lady Constance on the

lawn. The old ladies were out driving.

Very decent of the old ladies, he thought, as he followed the path into

the garden.

There she was!—her light form lost, almost, in a deep chair, under a lime

tree. The garden was a tangle of roses and heliotrope; everything growing

rank and fast, as though to get as much out of the soil and the sun as

possible, before the first frost made execution. It was surrounded by old

red walls that held the dropping sun, and it was full of droning bees,

and wagtails stepping daintily over the lawns.

Connie rose and came towards him. She was in black, with pale pink roses

in her hat. In spite of her height, she seemed to him the slightest,

gracefullest thing, and as she neared him she lifted her deep brown eyes,

and it was as though he had never seen before how beautiful they were.

‘It was kind of you to come!’ she said shyly.

He made no reply till she had placed him beside her under the lime. Then

he looked round him, a smile twitching his lip.

‘Your aunts are not at home?’

‘No. They have gone for their drive. Did you wish to see them?’

‘I am in terror of your Aunt Winifred. She and I had many ructions when I

was small. She thought our keepers used to shoot her cats.’

‘They probably did!’

‘Of course. But a keeper who told the truth about it would have no moral

sense.’

They both laughed, looking into each other’s faces with a sudden sense

of relief from tension. After all the tragedy and the pain, there they

were, still young, still in the same world together. And the sun was

still shining and the roses blooming. Yet, all the same, there was no

thought of any renewal of their old relation on either side. Something

unexpressed, yet apparently final, seemed to stand between them;

differing very much in his mind from the something in hers, yet equally

potent. She, who had gone through agonies of far too tender pity for

him, felt now a touch of something chill and stern in the circumstance

surrounding him, that seemed to put her aside. ‘This is not your

business,’ it seemed to say; so that she saw herself as an inexperienced

child playing with that incalculable thing—the male. Attempts at sympathy

or advice died away—she rebelled—and submitted.

Still there are things—experiments—that even an inexperienced child, a

child ‘of good will,’ may venture. All the time that she was talking to

Falloden, a secret expectation, a secret excitement ran through her inner

mind. There was a garden door to her left, across a lawn. Her eyes were

often on it, and her ear listened for the click of the latch.

Meanwhile Falloden talked very frankly of the family circumstances and

his own plans. How changed the tone was, since they had discussed the

same things, riding through the Lathom Woods in June! There was little

less self-confidence, perhaps; but the quality of it was not the same.

Instead of alienating, it began to touch and thrill her. And her heart

could not help its sudden tremor when he spoke of wintering ‘in or near

Oxford.’ There was apparently a Merton prize Fellowship in December, on

which his hopes were set, and the first part of his Bar examination to

read for, whether he got a Fellowship or no.

‘And Parliament?’ she asked him.

‘Yes—that’s my aim,’ he said, quietly. ‘Of course it’s the fashion just

now, especially in Oxford, to scoff at politics and the House of Commons.

It’s like the art-for-arters in town. As if you could solve anything by

words—or paints!’

‘Your father was in the House for some time?’

She bent towards him, as she mentioned his father, with a lovely

unconscious gesture that sent a tremor through him. He seemed to perceive

all that shaken feeling in her mind to which she found it so impossible

to give expression; on which his own action had placed so strong a curb.

He replied that his father had been in Parliament for some twelve years,

and had been a Tory Whip part of the time. Then he paused, his eyes on

the grass, till he raised them to say abruptly:—

‘You heard about it all—from Radowitz?’

She nodded.

‘He came here that same night.’ And then suddenly, in the golden light,

he saw her flush vividly. Had she realised that what she had said implied

a good deal?—or might be thought to imply it? Why should Radowitz take

the trouble—after his long and exhausting experience—to come round by the

Scarfedale manor-house?

‘It was an awful time for him,’ he said, his eyes on hers. ‘It was very

strange—that he should be there.’

And again he looked down—poking at the grass with his stick.

She hesitated. Her lips trembled.

‘He was very glad—to be there. Only he was sorry—for you.’

‘You mean he was sorry that I wasn’t there sooner—with my father?’

‘I think that was what he felt—that there was only—a stranger.’

‘I was just in time,’ said Falloden, slowly. ‘And I wonder—whether

anything matters, to the dying?’

There was a pause, after which he added, with sudden energy—

I thought—at the inquest—he himself looked pretty bad.’

‘Otto Radowitz?’ Constance covered her eyes with her hands a moment—a

gesture of pain. ‘Mr. Sorell doesn’t know what to do for him. He has been

losing ground lately. The doctors say he ought to live in the open air.

He and Mr. Sorell talk of a cottage near Oxford, where Mr. Sorell can go

often and see him. But he can’t live alone.’

As she spoke Falloden’s attention was diverted. He had raised his head

and was looking across the lawn, towards the garden entrance. There

was the sound of a clicking latch. Constance turned, and saw Radowitz

entering.

The young musician paused and wavered at the sight of the two under the

lime. It seemed as though he would have taken to flight. But, instead,

he came on with hesitating step. He had taken off his hat, as he often

did when walking; and his red-gold hair _en brosse_ was as conspicuous as

ever. But otherwise what a change from the youth of three months before!

Falloden, now that the immediate pressure of his own tragedy was relaxed,

perceived the change even more sharply than he had done at the inquest;

perceived it, at first with horror, and then with a wild sense of recoil

and denial, as though some hovering Erinnys advanced with Radowitz over

the leaf-strewn grass.

Radowitz grew paler still as he reached Connie. He gave Falloden a short,

embarrassed greeting, and then subsided into the chair that Constance

offered him. The thought crossed Falloden’s mind—‘Did she arrange this?’

Her face gave little clue—though she could not restrain one quick,

hesitating glance at Falloden. She pressed tea on Radowitz, who accepted

it to please her, and then, schooled as she was in all the minor social

arts, she had soon succeeded in establishing a sort of small-talk between

the three. Falloden, self-conscious and on the rack, could not imagine

why he stayed. But this languid boy had ministered to his dying father!

And to what, and to whom, were the languor, the tragic physical change,

due? He stayed—in purgatory—looking out for any chance to escape.

‘Did you walk all the way?’

The note in Connie’s voice was softly reproachful.

‘Why, it’s only three miles!’ said Radowitz, as though defending himself,

but he spoke with an accent of depression. And Connie remembered how,

in the early days of his recovery from his injury, he had spent hours

rambling over the moors, by himself or with Sorell. Her heart yearned

to him. She would have liked to take his poor hands in hers, and talk

to him, tenderly, like a sister. But there was that other dark face and

those other eyes opposite—watching. And to them too her young sympathy

went out—how differently!—how passionately! A kind of rending and

widening process seemed to be going on within her own nature. Veils were

falling between her and life; and feelings, deeper and stronger than any

she had ever known, were fast developing the woman in the girl. How to

heal Radowitz!—how to comfort Falloden! Her mind ached under the feelings

that filled it—feelings wholly disinterested and pure.

‘You really are taking the Boar’s Hill cottage?’ she asked, addressing

Radowitz.

‘I think so. It is nearly settled. But I am trying to find some

companion. Sorell can only come occasionally.’

As he spoke, a wild idea flashed into Falloden’s brain. It seemed to

have entered without—or against—his will; as though suggested by some

imperious agency outside himself. His intelligence laughed at it.

Something else in him entertained it—breathlessly.

Radowitz stooped down to try and tempt Lady Marcia’s dachshund with a

piece of cake.

‘I must anyhow have a dog,’ he said, as the pampered Max accepted the

cake, and laid his head gratefully on the donor’s knee:—‘they’re always

company.’

He looked wistfully into the dog’s large friendly eyes.

Connie rose.

‘Please don’t move!’ she said, flushing, ‘I shall be back directly. But

I must put up a letter. I hear the postman!’ She ran across the grass,

leaving the two men in acute discomfort. Falloden thought again, with

rising excitement: ‘She planned it! She wants me to do something—to take

some step⸺ But what?’

An awkward pause followed. Radowitz was still playing with the dog,

caressing its beautiful head with his uninjured hand, and talking to it

in a half whisper. As Constance departed, a bright and feverish red had

rushed into his cheeks; but it had only made his aspect more ghostly,

more unreal.

Again the absurd idea emerged in Falloden’s consciousness; and this time

it seemed to find its own expression, and to be merely making use of his

voice, which he heard as though it were someone else’s.

He bent over towards Radowitz.

‘Would you care to share the cottage with me?’ he said abruptly. ‘I want

to find a place to read in—out of Oxford.’

Radowitz looked up, amazed—speechless! Falloden’s eyes met Otto’s

steadily. The boy turned away. Suddenly he covered his face with his free

hand.

‘Why did you hate me so?’ he said, breathing quick. ‘What had I done to

you?’

‘I didn’t hate you,’ said Falloden, thickly. ‘I was mad.’

‘Because you were jealous? What a fool you were! She never cared a brass

farthing for me—except as she does now. She would like to nurse me—and

give me back my music. But she can’t—and you can’t.’

There was silence again. Otto’s chest heaved. As far as he could with his

one hand, he hid the tears in his eyes from his companion. And at last he

shook off emotion—with a laugh in which there was no mirth.

‘Well, at least, I shouldn’t make such a row now as I used to

do—practising.’

Falloden understood his reference to the soda-water bottle fusillade, by

which the ‘bloods,’ in their first attack upon him, had tried to silence

his piano.

‘Can’t you play at all?’ he said, at last; choosing the easiest of

several remarks that presented themselves.

‘I get about somehow on the keys. It’s better than nothing. And I’m

writing something for my degree. It’s rather good. If I could only keep

well!’ said the boy impatiently. ‘It’s this damned health that gets in

the way.’

Then he threw himself back in his chair, all the melancholy of his face

suddenly breaking up, the eyes sparkling.

‘Suppose I set up one of those automatic pianos they’re now talking

about—could you stand that?’

‘I would have a room where I didn’t hear it. That would be all right.’

‘There’s a wonderful idea I heard of from Paris a week or two ago,’ said

Otto excitedly—‘a marvellous electric invention a man’s at work on, where

you only turn a handle, or press a button, and you get Rubinstein—or

Madame Schumann or my countryman, Paderewski, who’s going to beat

everybody. It isn’t finished yet. But it won’t be for the likes of me.

It’ll cost at least a thousand pounds.’

‘They’ll get cheaper,’ said Falloden, his chin in his hands, elbows on

knees—eyes fixed on his companion. It seemed to him he was talking in a

dream, so strange was this thing he had proposed; which apparently was

going to come to pass. At any rate Radowitz had not refused. He sat with

the dachshund on his knees, alternately pulling out and folding its long

ears. He seemed to be, all in a moment, in high spirits, and when he saw

Connie coming back through the garden gate, with a shy, hesitating step,

he sprang up eagerly to greet her. But there was another figure behind

her. It was Sorell; and at sight of him ‘something sealed’ the boy’s

lips. He looked round at Falloden, and dropped back into his chair.

Falloden rose from his seat abruptly. A formal and scarcely perceptible

greeting passed between him and Sorell. All Falloden’s irritable

self-consciousness rushed back upon him as he recognised the St.

Cyprian’s tutor. He was not going to stay and cry peccavi any more, in

the presence of a bloodless prig, for whom Oxford was the world. But it

was bitter to him all the same to leave him in possession of the garden

and Connie Bledlow’s company.

‘Thank you—I must go,’ he said brusquely, as Connie tried to detain him.

‘There is so much to do nowadays. I shall be leaving Flood next week. The

agent will be in charge.’

‘Leaving—for good?’ she asked, in her appealing voice as they stood apart.

‘Probably—for good.’

‘I don’t know how to say—how sorry I am!’

‘Thank you. But I am glad it’s over. When you get back to Oxford—I shall

venture to come and call.’

‘That’s a promise,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Where will you be?’

‘Ask Otto Radowitz! Good-bye.’

Her start of surprise pleased him. He approached Radowitz. ‘Shall I hear

from you?’ he said stiffly.

‘Certainly!’ The boy looked up. ‘I will write to-morrow.’

* * * * *

The garden door had no sooner closed on Falloden than Radowitz threw

himself back and went into a fit of laughter, curious, hollow laughter.

Sorell looked at him anxiously.

‘What’s the meaning of that, Otto?’

‘You’ll laugh, when you hear! Falloden and I are going to set up house

together, in a cottage on Boar’s Hill—when we’ve found one. He’s going to

read—and I’m to be allowed a piano, and a pianola. Queer, isn’t it?’

‘My dear Otto!’ cried Sorell, in dismay. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘Well, he offered it—said he’d come and look after me. I don’t know what

possessed him—nor me either. I didn’t exactly accept. But I shall accept.

Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Because Falloden’s the last person in the world to look after

anybody—least of all, you!’ said Sorell with indignant energy. ‘But of

course it’s a joke! You mean it for a joke. If he proposed it, it was

like his audacity. Nobody would, who had a shred of delicacy. I suppose

he wants to disarm public opinion!’

Radowitz looked oddly at Sorell, from under his finely-marked eyebrows.

‘I don’t believe he cares a hang for public opinion,’ he said slowly.

‘Nor do I. If you could come, Alexis, of course that would settle it. And

if you won’t come to see me, supposing Falloden and I do share diggings,

that settles it too. But you will come, old man—you will come!’

And he nodded, smiling, at his quasi-guardian. Neither of them noticed

Connie. Yet she had hung absorbed on their conversation, the breath

fluttering on her parted lips. And when their talk paused she bent

forward, and laid her hand on Sorell’s arm.

‘Let him!’ she said pleadingly—‘let him do it!’

Sorell looked at her in troubled perplexity. ‘Let Douglas Falloden make

_some_ amends to his victim; if he can and will. Don’t be so unkind as to

prevent it!’ That, he supposed, was what she meant. It seemed to him the

mere sentimental unreason of the young girl, who will not believe that

there is any irrevocableness in things at all, till life teaches her.

Radowitz too! What folly, what mistaken religiosity could make him dream

of consenting to such a housemate through this winter which might very

well be his last!

Monstrous! What kind of qualities had Falloden to fit him for such a

task? All very well, indeed, that he should feel remorse! Sorell hoped

he might feel it a good deal more sharply yet. But that he should ease

his remorse at Otto’s expense, by offering what he could never fulfil,

and by taking the place of someone on whom Otto could have really

leaned: that seemed to Sorell all of a piece with the man’s egotism, his

epicurean impatience of anything that permanently made him uncomfortable

or unhappy. He put something of this into impetuous words as well as

he could. But Otto listened in silence. So did Constance. And Sorell

presently felt that there was a secret bond between them.

* * * * *

Before the aunts returned, the rectory pony-carriage came for Radowitz,

who was not strong enough to walk both ways. Sorell and Constance were

left alone.

Sorell, observing her, was struck anew by the signs of change and

development in her. It was as though her mother and her mother’s soul

showed through the girl’s slighter temperament. The old satiric aloofness

in Connie’s brown eyes, an expression all her own, and not her mother’s,

seemed to have slipped away; Sorell missed it. Ella Risborough’s

sympathetic charm had replaced it, but with suggestions of hidden

conflict and suffering, of which Lady Risborough’s bright sweetness

had known nothing. It was borne in upon him that, since her arrival in

Oxford, Constance had gone through a great deal, and gone through it

alone. For after all what had his efforts amounted to? What can a man

friend do for a young girl in these fermenting years of her youth? And

when the man friend knows very well that, but for an iron force upon

himself, he himself would be among her lovers? Sorell felt himself

powerless—in all the greater matters—and was inclined to think that he

deserved to be powerless. Yet he had done his best; and through his Greek

lessons he humbly knew that he had helped her spiritual growth, just as

the Greek immortals had helped and chastened his own youth. They had been

reading Homer together—parts both of the ‘Iliad’ and the ‘Odyssey’; and

through ‘that ageless mouth of all the world,’ what splendid things had

spoken to her!—Hector’s courage, and Andromache’s tenderness, the bitter

sorrow of Priam, the bitter pity of Achilles, mother-love and wife-love,

death and the scorn of death. He had felt her glow and tremble in the

grip of that supreme poetry; for himself he had found her, especially of

late, the dearest and most responsive of pupils.

But what use was anything, if after all, as Radowitz vowed, she was in

love with Douglas Falloden? The antagonism between the men of Sorell’s

type—disinterested, pure-minded, poetic, and liable, often, in action

to the scrupulosity which destroys action; and the men of Falloden’s

type—strong, claimant, self-centred, arrogant, determined—is perennial.

Nor can a man of the one type ever understand the attraction for women of

the other.

Sorell sat on impatiently in the darkening garden, hoping always that

Connie would explain, would confess; for he was certain that she had

somehow schemed for this preposterous reconciliation—if it was a

reconciliation. She wanted, no doubt, to heal Falloden’s conscience, and

so to comfort her own. And she would sacrifice Otto, if need be, in the

process! He vowed to himself that he would prevent it, if he could.

Connie eyed him wistfully. Confidences seemed to be on her very lips, and

then stopped there. In the end she neither explained nor confessed. But

when he was gone she walked up and down the lawn under the evening sky,

her hands behind her—passionately dreaming.

She had never thought of any such plan as had actually sprung to light.

And she understood Sorell’s opposition.

All the same, her heart sang over it. When she had asked Radowitz and

Douglas to meet, each unbeknown to the other, when she had sent away the

kind old aunts and prepared it all, she had reckoned on powers of feeling

in Falloden, in which apparently only she and Aunt Marcia believed; and

she had counted on the mystical and religious fervour she had long since

discovered in Radowitz. That night—after Sir Arthur’s death—she had

looked trembling into the boy’s very soul, had perceived his wondering

sense of a special message to him, through what had happened, from a God

who suffered and forgives.

Yes, she had tried—to make peace.

And she guessed—the tears blinding her as she walked—at the true meaning

of Falloden’s sudden impulse, and Otto’s consent. Falloden’s was an

impulse of repentance; and Otto’s had been an impulse of pardon, in the

Christian sense. ‘If I am to die, I will die at peace with him.’ Was that

the thought—the tragic and touching thought, in the boy’s mind?

As to Falloden, could he do it?—could he rise to the height of what was

offered him? She prayed he might; she believed he could.

Her whole being was aflame. Douglas was no longer in love with her;

that was clear. What matter, if he made peace with his own soul? As for

her, she loved him with her whole heart, and meant to go on loving him,

whatever anyone might say. And that being so, she would of course never

marry.

Could she ever make Nora understand the situation? By letter, it was

certainly useless to try!

(_To be continued._)