TRIUMPH
1
The brief remainder of the battle was for Jeremy a confused and violent
phantasmagoria. Immediately on the heels of that triumphant shout he
ordered the guns to be brought forward again and had the luck to plump
a single shell into a body of the enemies’ reserves before they finally
melted out of existence. After that he could not find another mark to
fire at. The northern army, struck down in the moment of victory by
an overwhelming panic, crumbled all along its line and broke up into
flying knots of terrified men, who were surrounded and harried by the
jubilant and suddenly blood-thirsty troops of the Speaker. When he
perceived this, Jeremy was overcome by a rush of blood to the head.
“We’ve done it! We’ve done it!” he muttered in a dazed way. And then
this stupefaction was replaced by a wild and reckless delight. “Come
on, Jabez!” he yelled, pounding with his heels the long-suffering
horse. “Come on! We’ve got to see this!” Again they were off together,
this time leaving the guns behind. Jabez, exalted to an activity wholly
unsuited to his years, flung up and down at the stirrup, while Jeremy
waved his whip in the air and shouted incoherently. Before they knew
it they had shot into the rearmost of the scattered fighting, and had
ridden down an escaping Yorkshireman. Jeremy saw for a moment at his
bridle the backward-turned, terror-distorted face and slashed at it
fiercely with his whip. The man fell and lay still; and Jabez with a
convulsive leap passed over the body. Out of the corner of his eyes
Jeremy half saw, only half realizing it, that one of the Speaker’s men
was jabbing with his bayonet at a wriggling mass on the ground beside
him. Then they were through that skirmish, and for a couple of hundred
yards in front of them the field was empty. But the gentle slope beyond
was covered with small figures, running, dodging, stopping and striking
with the furious and aimless vitality of the ants in a disturbed nest.
Jeremy and Jabez had hastened into the midst of them before Jeremy was
overtaken by a belated coolness of the reason. When the sobering moment
came, he wished he had had the sense to keep out of this confused and
murderous struggle, and at the same time he remembered that his only
weapon was a pistol still strapped in its clumsy holster. He reached
for it and began to fumble with the straps; but while he fumbled a
desperate Yorkshireman, turning like a rat, pushed a rifle into his
face and pulled the trigger. It was not loaded. Jeremy, trying to
understand that he was still alive, saw in an arrested instant like an
eternity the man’s jaw drop and his eyes grow rounder and rounder, till
suddenly the staring face vanished altogether. Jabez, shaken to his
knees by the man’s onset, had grasped an abandoned pike and had stabbed
upward.
Jeremy reined in and quieted the almost frantic horse. A cold sweat
broke out on his face, and he felt a little sick. He wiped his forehead
with his sleeve and looked faintly from the dead Yorkshireman to
Jabez, who stood with the bloody pike in his hand, an expression of
complacent excitement wrinkling the skin round his eyes. The fighting
had already passed beyond them; and Jeremy without moving let it roll
away noisily over the crest of the hill. He made no sign even when
Jabez shouldered his weapon with a determined air and began to trudge
off defiantly in its wake. But when the queer lolloping figure had
already begun to grow smaller, Jeremy put his hands to his mouth and
shouted:
“Jabez! Jabez! Come back!” Jabez turned, shook his head, waved the
pike with warlike ferocity, and shouted something in reply that came
faintly, indistinguishably against the breeze. Then he resumed his
march, leaving his commanding officer alone.
It was over half-an-hour later that Jeremy found the Speaker. By that
time the fighting was all over, and the fields, hardly changed in
appearance by being dotted with a number of corpses, so soon to be
resolved into the same substance as their own, were quiet again. In
the course of his search, Jeremy encountered much that he would rather
not have seen. He saw too many men lying face downwards with wounds
in their backs, too many with tied hands and cut throats. He realized
that a battlefield can too literally resemble a slaughter-house; and
these evidences of the ferocity of an unwarlike race appalled him. And
he even found one of the mercenary officers, of the sort that he had
observed earlier in the day and had disliked, in the act of dispatching
a prisoner, preparatory to going through his pockets. He advanced
angrily on the man, who did not know him and turned with a curse from
his just accomplished work to suggest that Jeremy’s throat would prove
equally vulnerable. Held off by Jeremy’s pistol, he strolled away with
insolent unconcern. Jeremy continued his way and at last discovered
the Speaker, a couple of miles beyond the line on which the battle had
been decided. As he came up, he could see that the old man’s dress was
disheveled, and that his horse was lathered and weary, presumably from
taking part in the pursuit.
By this time he was faint and exhausted, and he did not announce
himself in the confident manner that might have been permitted him. He
rode up slowly to the crossroads, where the Speaker and Thomas Wells
were standing under a sign-post, and dismounted. They were deep in a
conversation and at first did not see him. The Speaker’s thick voice
came in rapid jerky bursts. His reins were lying on the horse’s neck,
and he gesticulated violently with his hands. The Canadian, whose eyes
seemed to Jeremy to burn with a fiercer red than ever, spoke more
slowly, but there was a kind of intense richness and gusto in his tone.
Jeremy felt too inert to make any sound to attract their attention; but
as he came nearer Thomas Wells touched the Speaker’s arm and pronounced
deeply:
“There’s your hero!”
The Speaker dismounted and, running without consideration of dignity to
Jeremy, clasped the astonished young man in his arms.
“You have done it! You have done it!” he cried again and again. “There
is nothing left of them!” Then, when his transports had abated a
little, he went on more calmly. “We have smashed them to pieces. The
rebel army has ceased to exist, and the Chairman has been killed.”
“Killed?” cried Jeremy, in surprise.
“Yes, killed,” the Canadian interjected, still in the saddle and
leaning down a little to them. “There’s no doubt that he’s dead. I
killed him myself.”
“But was that wise----” Jeremy began. “Wouldn’t it have been better to
keep him? It would have given us a hold over his people.”
“That’s what _he_ said,” the Canadian answered drily. “He seemed quite
anxious about it. But I always go on the principle that you can’t be
sure what any man is going to do unless he’s dead. Then you know where
he is.”
“Yes, he’s dead, he’s dead,” the Speaker broke in, in a rising voice.
“The scoundrel has got what he asked for. He’ll never lift his hand
against me or my people again!” Jeremy, dismayed and sickened, saw in
the old man’s posture something of the inspiration, of the inhuman
rage, of a Hebrew prophet. He dared not look at Thomas Wells, from
whose grinning mouth, he fancied, as from that of a successful ferret,
drops of blood must still be trickling.
“But it was you that gave him into our hands, Jeremy,” the Speaker
resumed, in a softer and caressing voice. “You did for him--you killed
him. All the thanks is yours, and I shall not be ungrateful!”
The Canadian laughed, low and ironical. Jeremy’s stomach for a moment
revolted and a thick mist of horror swam before his eyes.
“Listen! Listen to the bells!”
Jeremy roused himself, cocked his head and listened. He was riding
slowly beside the Speaker down the long undulations of the Great North
Road that led them back to London. Sure enough, far and faint but
insistent, that sweet metallic music reached his ears, a phantom of
sound that stood for a reality. London was already rejoicing over its
deliverance. A thin haze covered the city; and out of it there rose
continuously the ringing of the bells.
“I sent messengers in front of us,” the Speaker went on, with great
content. “They will be ready to greet us--to greet you, I ought to say.
This has been your battle.”
Jeremy bestirred himself again. An urgent honesty drove him to do what
he could to make the truth plain. It was pleasant, and yet intolerable,
that he should be saddled with a victory that he had won only because
he had been the instrument of fortune. He reasoned earnestly with the
old man. He pointed out to him what a piece of luck it had been that
the Yorkshiremen were fools enough to leave their transport exposed.
He insisted that it was a mere chance that the destruction of their
ammunition had thrown them into so disastrous a panic. When at last he
was silent, the Speaker resumed, unmoved:
“It was your battle, Jeremy Tuft. You settled them. I was right to rely
on you.”
The Canadian, who was riding on the Speaker’s left hand and had not
yet uttered a word, breathed again upon the air a shadow of ironical
laughter, which Jeremy felt rather than heard, and which the old man
disregarded.
“They will come out to meet us,” the Speaker murmured in a rapturous
dream, “and you shall be toasted at our banquet. Ah, this is a great
day, a wonderful day! England is restored. Happiness and greatness
lie before us. I shall be remembered in history with the good Queen
Victoria.” He turned a little in the saddle and looked keenly at
Jeremy. “Do you not ask what lies before you?”
Jeremy, staring straight in front of him, knew that he was reddening
and swore inwardly. He wanted to be left alone.
“I’m glad you’re pleased,” he muttered, awkwardly and absurdly; and he
began to calculate how far they were now from Whitehall and how much
longer the journey would take. He supposed that he would be overwhelmed
with undeserved congratulations at the end of it; but he reckoned that
under them it would be his part to be dumb and that no disconcerting
questions would be asked of him. The Speaker was too happy to do
more than smile at the young man’s moodiness. As they rode along he
continued his murmurings, which rose now and then into loud-voiced
rhapsody.
In the daylight Jeremy vaguely recognized the country through which
he had passed, in darkness, on the previous night, for the first time
for many generations. At the Archway Tavern, which looked even ruder
and more squalid under the sun than under the moon, the inn-keeper and
his family threw flowers at them and shouted uncouth blessings. But
as they passed through Holloway and Islington, deserted and ruined
districts, only a few squatters appeared to watch the conquerors
march by. These hardly human beings displayed no emotion save a faint
curiosity. They stood by the roadside, singly or in little groups, here
and there, and gazed on the triumphant cavalcade with enigmatic faces.
They reminded Jeremy of horses which he had seen gathering at a gate
by the railway-line to watch a train go past. Their thoughts, their
expectations, their hopes and fears, were as much hidden from him as
were the minds of animals. And, as he looked at them, he experienced a
singular pang. What to these creatures was all human history? What did
it matter to them whence he had come, what he had done, what his future
fortunes might be? Their sort, oppressed and tortured, had risen and
had smashed in pieces the vast machine that tortured them, destroying
by that act all that made life gracious and pleasant, and accomplished
for their masters. It mattered so little to them what their own
ancestors had done: it could not much matter what had been or would be
the deeds of Jeremy Tuft, what edifice the old Jew would erect on the
foundation laid by the victory. They gaped a little as they stared.
Their attention was fleeting: they turned away and spoke and laughed
among themselves. Jeremy felt in a piercing instant the nullity of
human striving; and his blood was chilled.
When they reached the crossroads at the Angel, they went through a
more elaborate repetition of the ceremony at the Archway Tavern. A
deputation of good villagers brought out hastily twined wreaths to
them, waved cloths in the air and shouted loyally; and the Speaker,
bowing his thanks and his gratification, urgently commanded Jeremy
to do the same. So it went all the way, save that the demonstrations
grew increasingly elaborate, and as they approached the city became
continuous. The people were throwing down flowers from their windows
and hanging out flags. At the doors of the larger houses crowds were
assembling to receive free distributions of beer; and down some of the
turnings off the main street Jeremy could see rings of men and women
beginning already to dance and romp in the abandon of an unexpected
holiday.
In Piccadilly the crowd had grown impenetrable; and by the spot where
the Tube Station had stood they were brought to a halt and remained for
some minutes. Loud and incessant cheering mingled with the noise of the
bells. Daring young girls ran out from the crowd to hang the victors
with flowers; and Jeremy saw with concern the profusion of blossoms
covering first his horse’s head and at last mounting up round his
own. The mechanical bowing and smiling which the Speaker had enjoined
on him began to tell on his nerves. He was conscious of bright eyes
persistently seeking his, as the lingering hands fastened garlands
wherever there was room for them, on his saddle or on his coat. He
turned his head uncomfortably this way and that, shifted in the saddle,
sought shamefacedly the eyes of the Canadian for some sort of sympathy.
When he saw that Thomas Wells had had few wreaths bestowed on him and
was grinning with more than his usual malice, he looked away again
hastily.
The noise and movement around him continually increased; and it seemed
that every minute some new bell found its voice and the crowd grew
larger. Jeremy felt crushed and stunned, felt that he was sinking
under the weight of the people’s enthusiasm. He felt so small and so
oppressed that it seemed impossible that most of this could be meant
for him. And yet vaguely, dully, he could see the Speaker at his side,
pointing at him and apparently shouting something. He could not make
out what it was; but he knew that every time the Speaker paused the
continuous yelling of the crowd rose to a frantic crescendo, in which
the whole world seemed to sway dizzily around him.
Suddenly, when he thought that he could bear no more, there was a
wavelike motion in the press before them; and it broke open, leaving
a passage through it. A carriage advanced slowly and stopped; and
out of it came the Lady Burney, followed by the Lady Eva, each of
them carrying in each hand a small wreath of green leaves. Jeremy,
petrified, watched them walking through the narrow clear space. The
Lady Burney moved very slowly with corpulent dignity and acknowledged
the cheering as she came, while the Lady Eva seemed nervous, and looked
persistently at the ground. When they reached the little group of
motionless horsemen, the Lady Burney would have handed a wreath to the
Speaker, but he signed her away, crying in a loud voice:
“Both to Jeremy Tuft! Both to Jeremy Tuft!”
The crowd redoubled its vociferations, while Jeremy, feeling himself
at the lowest point of misfortune, leant over to the Lady Burney. She
deposited both of her wreaths somewhere, anywhere, on the saddle before
him and then, raising her arms, firmly embraced him and planted a kiss
on his cheek, just underneath the left eye. He nearly yelled aloud
in his astonishment; but before he could do or say anything, she had
rolled away and the Lady Eva was standing in her place.
It seemed to Jeremy at this moment that the shouting abruptly grew
less, and that as the noise faded the surroundings faded too, and
became misty and unreal. There was nothing left vivid and substantial
in the world but himself, numb, dazed, unhappy, and the tall girl
beside him, her face bravely raised to his, though her cheeks were
burning. She, too, seemed, by the convulsive movement of her hands,
to be about to put her wreaths on any spot that would hold them, but,
with an effort that made her body quiver, she controlled herself and
placed one on his head, from which the hat long since had gone, and
fastened the other on his breast. She did this with interminable
deliberation, while the people maintained their astonishing quietude.
Then, after a pause, she put her arms round his neck and placed her
lips on his cheek. At this signal the crowd’s restrained joy broke out
tumultuously. Jeremy closed his eyes and swayed over towards the girl,
then caught at his horse’s mane to save himself as she slipped away.
When they began to move again, he had lost all control of himself. He
shivered like a man in a high fever, his teeth were chattering, and
he was sobbing ungovernably. He had afterwards a confused memory of
how they proceeded slowly down the Haymarket into Whitehall, and how
a dozen helpers at once sought to lift him from his horse outside the
door of the Treasury.
2
Jeremy’s next distinct impression was that of sitting in a small room
while the Speaker poured down his throat a glass of neat smoke-flavored
whisky. It revived him, and he straightened himself and stood up, but
he found that his back ached and that his legs were unsteady. The
Speaker forced him down again and bent over him tenderly, muttering
caressing and soothing words at the back of his throat.
“You will feel better presently,” he said at last; and he went out
softly, looking back and smiling as he went. When he was alone, Jeremy
rose again and walked towards the door, but was checked at once by a
great fatigue and weakness. He looked round the room, and, seeing a
couch, threw himself at full length upon it.
“I wish I could go to sleep,” he murmured to himself. But his brain,
though it was exhausted, was so clear and active that he gave up all
hope of it. When, a minute later, sleep came to him, it would have
astonished him if he could have noticed it coming.
He woke to wonder how long he had been unconscious. It had been about
noon when they had arrived at the Treasury; but now the tall trees
outside the window hid the sky and prevented him guessing by the sun
what hour it was. He turned over on to his back and stared up lazily
at the ceiling. The confusion which had at first overwhelmed his mind,
and the unnatural clarity which had followed it, were both gone, and he
felt that he was normal again, not even very much tired. The indolence
and calm of the spirit which he now experienced were delicious: they
were like the physical sensations which succeed violent exercise.
He looked down again with a start, as he heard the door quietly opened;
and he saw the Lady Eva standing there. She had a mysterious smile on
her lips, and her whole attitude suggested that she was bracing herself
to meet something which frightened but did not displease her. Jeremy
rose abruptly, his heart beating, and tried to speak; but he could not
get out a single word.
“My father sent me to ask if you were better,” said the Lady Eva in
a low voice. As he did not answer she closed the door behind her and
advanced into the room. “Are you better?” she repeated, a little more
firmly. Jeremy took a step towards her and hesitated. The situation
seemed plain, and yet, at the last moment of decision, his will was
paralyzed by a fear that he might be absurdly deceiving himself.
“I am much better now,” he answered, with an effort. “I only feel a
little tired.”
“There is a banquet at five o’clock. I hope you will be able to attend
it.”
Jeremy shivered slightly and his wits began to return to him. “Will it
be like--like this morning?” he enquired with a faint smile.
She smiled a little in reply. “Don’t you want us to be grateful to
you?” she said. “You know what you have saved us from--all of us. How
can we ever reward you?”
“That’s my chance,” Jeremy’s mind insisted again and again. “That’s my
chance ... that’s my chance ... I ought to speak now.” But the short
interval of her silence slipped away, and she went on gently:
“You must expect to be congratulated and toasted. Will you be strong
enough to bear it? My father will be disappointed if you are not.”
It was at that moment, quite irrelevantly and by a process he did not
understand, that Jeremy took the Lady Eva in his arms. Afterwards he
had no consciousness, no recollection, of the instant in which their
lips had met. There had simply been an insurgence of his passion and of
his loneliness, ending in an action that blinded him. The next thing
he remembered was folding her bowed head into his shoulder, stroking
her smooth hair with a trembling hand, and muttering hoarsely and
helplessly, “Dearest ... dear one....”
Then they were sitting side by side on the couch and their positions
were reversed. His head lay on her shoulder, while her fingers moved
gently up and down his cheek. He stayed thus for some minutes without
speaking or moving. He had been in love before and had not escaped
the mood in which young men picture the surrender of the beloved. He
had even more than once, after a long or a short wooing, held a girl
in his arms and kissed her. But he had never yet seen this sudden and
astonishing transformation of a stranger, mysterious and incalculable,
whose faults and peculiarities were as obvious as her beauty was
enchanting, into a creature who could thus silently and familiarly
comfort him. The moment before she had been some one else, the Lady
Eva, a person as to whose opinion of himself he was uncertain and
curious, that most baffling and impenetrable of all enigmas, another
human being, divided from him by every barrier that looks or speech
can put in the way of understanding. And now she was at once a lover,
a part of himself, a spirit known by his without any need of words. He
adjusted himself slowly to the miracle.
Presently he raised his head and searched her eyes keenly. She bore his
gaze without flinching; and something again drew their mouths together.
Then Jeremy said,
“I must speak to your father at once. Do you suppose he will feel that
I have presumed on his gratitude to me?”
“I know he will not,” she answered. “I am sure he meant to give me to
you. Do you think that otherwise....” She stopped, and there was a long
pause. “But I wanted you ... first....” Again she could not go on, but
began to sob a little, quietly. Jeremy, helpless and inexperienced,
could think of nothing better to do than to gather her into his arms
and kiss her hair. His sudden comprehension of her seemed to have
vanished with as little warning as it came. She was again a mysterious
creature; but now the mystery was a new one. He was like a man who,
after the triumph of accomplishing a steep ascent, finds that he has
reached no more than the first slope of the mountain.
When her face was hidden she continued with more confidence, but in
a low and broken voice. “I wanted you to tell me that you ... wanted
me, before my father gave me to you. I thought ... perhaps you did ...
I hoped....” She freed herself from his arms and sat up, looking at
him with proud eyes, though her face was blazing. “It is better than
being given to you only as a reward for winning a battle,” she finished
deliberately.
Jeremy experienced the most inexplicable feeling of the young
lover--admiration for the beloved. He wished to hold her away from
him, to contemplate the lovely face, the gallant eyes, to tell her
how wonderful she was, and how he could thank Heaven for her even if
he might never touch her hand again. And on the heels of this came
a great rush of unbearable longing, with the realization that human
tongue was not able to express, or human nerves to endure, his love for
her. He turned dizzy and faint, his sight went black, and he stretched
out his arms vaguely and helplessly. When she gave herself into them,
he clasped her fiercely as though by force he could make her part of
himself, and she bore his clumsy violence gladly.
“This hurts me,” he said in the puzzled voice of a child, when he had
let her go again. She gave him with wet eyes a sufficient answer. Then
he went on with the same simplicity, “I have been so lonely here--I
didn’t know how lonely. Are we going to be happy now? I am afraid ...
of what may happen....” She kissed him once and rose.
“I must go now,” she said steadily. “Oh, we shall be happy--this dread
means nothing, it is only because we are so happy.” He started and
looked at her, made uneasy by her echo of his thoughts. “Good-by, my
dear,” she said. She left the room quietly without his raising a hand
to keep her back.
When she had gone his feelings were too violent to find vent in any
movement. He sat quite still for some minutes until his brain was
calmer and he could at last stand up and walk about the room. It was
thus that the Speaker found him; and Jeremy stopped guiltily and stood
waiting. The old man was evidently still in good humor. He stroked his
chin and regarded Jeremy with beaming eyes.
“I take it you are feeling better,” he pronounced drily, after a
moment’s silence.
“I am quite well,” Jeremy answered hurriedly, “very well. I must tell
you at once, sir----”
The Speaker stopped him with a gesture. “I know. I passed my daughter
in the corridor leading to her room. You want to tell me that you have
taken my gift before I could make it. Nevertheless, I shall have the
great joy of putting her hand in yours at the banquet to-night.”
“I can’t thank you ...” Jeremy mumbled.
The Speaker made a benevolent movement of his hand. “What you and she
have done,” he went on, “is much against our customs, but we are not
ordinary people, you and I and she. You will be happy together, and it
will make me happy to see you so. And I think you are young enough to
get from her the help that I should have had, if there had not been so
many years between us. She has something of me in her that you will be
able to use. You will need to use it, for you will have a great deal to
do, both now and afterwards, when I am gone and you are the Speaker.”
Jeremy inclined his head in silence.
“The banquet is in half-an-hour from now,” the Speaker said, turning
towards the door. “If you are well enough to attend it, you must go and
dress at once.”