THE MAN FROM THE NORTH
A few days later, on a Saturday afternoon, the Colonel was sitting in
the loggia of the hostel looking out over the sea when he saw two men
coming down the shoulder of Beau-nez along the coast-guard path.
The tall man in black with flying coat-tails he recognised at once. It
was Mr. Geddes, the one outstanding minister of the Gospel in
Beachbourne: a scholar, yet in touch with his own times, eloquent and
broad, with a more than local reputation as a Liberal leader. His
companion was a sturdy fellow in a cap, with curly black hair and a
merry eye.
The Colonel, who never missed a chance, went out to waylay the pair.
Mr. Geddes introduced his friend--Mr. Burt, who'd come down recently
from Mather and Platt's in the North to act as foreman fitter at Hewson
and Clarke's in the East-end.
The Colonel reached out a bony hand, which the other gripped fiercely.
"I know you're both conspirators," he said with a wary smile. "What
troubles are you hatching for me now?"
Mr. Geddes laughed, and the engineer, surly a little from shyness and
self-conscious as a school-boy, grinned.
"Mr. Burt and I are both keen on education," said the minister. "He's
been telling me of Tawney's tutorial class at Rochdale. We're hatching
a branch of the W.E.A. down here. That's our only conspiracy."
"What's the W.E.A.?" asked the Colonel, always keen.
"It's the Democratic wing of the National Service League," the engineer
answered in broad Lancashire--"Workers' Education Association."
The Colonel nodded.
"He's getting at me!" he said. "I'm always being shot at. Will you
both come in to tea and talk?--I should like you to meet my wife, Burt.
She'll take you on. She's a red-hot Tory and a bonnie fighter."
But Mr. Geddes had a committee, and--"A must get on with the
Revolution," said Burt gravely.
"What Revolution's that?" asked the Colonel.
"The Revolution that begun in 1906--and that's been going on ever
since; and will go on till we're through!" He said the last words with
a kind of ferocity; and then burst into a sudden jovial roar as he saw
the humour of his own ultra-seriousness.
Mrs. Lewknor, who had been watching the interview from the loggia,
called to her husband as he returned to the house.
"Who was that man with Mr. Geddes?" she asked.
"Stanley Bessemere's friend," the Colonel answered. "A red
Revolutionary from Lancasheer--on the bubble; and a capital good fellow
too, I should say."
That evening the Colonel rang up Mr. Geddes to ask about the engineer.
"He's the new type of intellectual artizan," the minister informed him.
"The russet-coated captain who knows what he's fighting for and loves
what he knows. Unless I'm mistaken he's going to play a considerable
part in our East-end politics down here." He gave the other the
engineer's address, adding with characteristic breadth,
"It might be worth your while to follow him up perhaps, Colonel."
Joe Burt lodged in the East-end off Pevensey Road in the heart of the
new and ever-growing industrial quarter of Seagate, which was gradually
transforming a rather suburban little town of villas with a
fishing-station attached into a manufacturing city, oppressed with all
the thronging problems of our century. There the Colonel visited his
new friend. Burt was the first man of his type the old soldier, who
had done most of his service in India, had met. The engineer himself,
and even more the room in which he lived, with its obvious air of
culture, was an eye-opener to the Colonel.
There was an old sideboard, beautifully kept, and on it a copper kettle
and spirit lamp; a good carpet, decent curtains. On the walls were
Millais's _Knight Errant_, Greiffenhagen's _Man with a Scythe_, and
Clausen's _Girl at the Gate_. But it was the books on a long deal
plank that most amazed the old soldier; not so much the number of them
but the quality. He stood in front of them and read their titles with
grunts.
Alfred Marshall's _Principles of Economics_ lolled up against the
Webbs' _Industrial Democracy_; Bradley's lectures on the tragedies of
Shakespeare hobnobbed with Gilbert Murray's translations from
Euripides. Few of the standard books on Economics and Industrial
History, English or American, were missing. And the work of the modern
creators in imaginative literature, Wells, Shaw, Arnold Bennett were
mixed with _Alton Locke_, _Daniel Deronda_, _Sybil_, and the essays of
Samuel Butler and Edward Carpenter.
"You're not married then?" said the Colonel, throwing a glance round
the well-appointed room.
"Yes, A am though," the engineer answered, his black-brown eyes
twinkling. "A'm married to Democracy. She's ma first loov and like to
be ma last."
"What you doing down South?" asked the Colonel, tossing one leg over
the other as he sat down to smoke.
"Coom to make trouble," replied the other.
"Good for you!" said the Colonel. "Hotting things up for our friend
Stan. Well, he wants it. All the politicians do."
His first visit to Seagate Lane was by no means his last: for the
engineer's courage, his integrity, his aggressive tactics, delighted
and amused the scholarly old soldier; but when he came to tackle his
man seriously on the business of the National Service League he found
he could not move him an inch from the position he invariably took up:
The Army would be used by the Government in the only war that
matters--the Industrial war; and therefore the Army must not be
strengthened.
"If the Army was used for the only purpose it ought to be used
for--defence--A'd be with you. So'd the boolk of the workers. But
it's not. They use it to croosh strikes!" And he brought his fist
down on the table with a characteristic thump. "That's to croosh
us!--For the strike's our only weapon, Colonel."
The power, the earnestness, even the savagery he displayed, amazed the
other. Here was a reality, an elemental force of which he had scarcely
been aware. This was Democracy incarnate. And whatever else he might
think he could not but admire the sincerity and strength of it. But he
always brought his opponent back to what was for him the only issue.
"Germany!" he said.
"That's blooff!" replied the other. "They'll get the machine-guns for
use against Germany, and when they've got em they'll use them against
us. That's the capitalists' game.--Then there's the officers."
"What about em?" said the Colonel cheerfully. "They're harmless
enough, poor devils."
"Tories to a man. Coom from the capitalist class."
"What if they do?"
"The Army does what the capitalist officer tells it. And he knows
where his interest lies aw reet."
"Well, of course you know the British officer better than I do, Burt,"
replied the Colonel, nettled for once.
His opponent was grimly pleased to have drawn blood.
"In the next few years if things go as they look like goin we shall
see," was his comment. "Wait till we get a Labour Government in power!"
The Colonel knocked out his pipe.
"Well, Burt, I'll say this," he remarked. "If we could get half the
passion into our cause you do into yours, we should do."
"We're fighting a reality, Colonel," the other answered. "You're
fighting a shadow, that's the difference."
"I hope to God it may prove so!" said the Colonel, as they shook hands.
The two men thoroughly enjoyed their spars. And the battle was well
matched: for the soldier of the Old Army and the soldier of the New
were both scholars, well-read, logical, and fair-minded.
On one of his visits the Colonel found Ernie Caspar in the engineer's
room standing before the book-shelf, handling the books. Ernie showed
himself a little shame-faced in the presence of his old Commanding
Officer.
"How do they compare to your father's, Caspar?" asked the Colonel,
innocently unaware of the other's _mauvaise honte_ and the cause of it.
"Dad's got ne'er a book now, sir," Ernie answered gruffly. "Only just
the Bible, and Wordsworth, and Troward's Lectures. Not as he'd ever
anythink like this--only Carpenter. See, dad's not an economist. More
of a philosopher and poet like."
"I wish they were mine," said the Colonel, turning over Zimmeni's
_Greek Commonwealth_.
"They're all right if so be you can afford em," answered Ernie shortly,
almost sourly.
"Books are better'n beer, Ernie," said Joe Burt, a thought maliciously;
and added with the little touch of priggishness that is rarely absent
from those who have acquired knowledge comparatively late in
life--"They're the bread of life and source of power."
"Maybe," retorted Ernie with a snort; "but they aren't the equal of
wife and children, I'll lay."
He left the room surlily.
Burt grinned at the Colonel.
"Ern's one o the much-married uns," he said.
"D'you know his wife?" the Colonel asked.
Joe shook his bull-head.
"Nay," he said. "And don't wish to."
"She's a fine woman all the same," replied the Colonel.
"Happen so," the other answered. "All the more reason a should avoid
her. They canna thole me, the women canna. And A don't blame em."
"Why can't they thole you?" asked the Colonel curiously.
"Most Labour leaders rise to power at the expense of their wives," the
other explained. "They go on; but the wives stay where they are--at
the wash-tub. The women see that; and they don't like it. And they're
right."
"What's the remedy?"
"There's nobbut one." Joe now not seldom honoured the Colonel by
relapsing into dialect when addressing him. "And that's for the Labour
leader to remain unmarried. They're the priests of Democracy--or
should be."
"You'll never make a Labour leader out of Caspar," said the Colonel
genially. "I've tried to make an N.C.O. of him before now and failed."
"A'm none so sure," Joe said, and added with genuine concern: "He's on
the wobble. Might go up; might go down. Anything might happen to yon
lad now. He's just the age. But he's one o ma best pupils--if he'll
nobbut work."
"Ah," said the Colonel with interest. "So he's joined your class at
St. Andrew's Hall, has he?"
"Yes," replied the other. "Mr. Chislehurst brought him along--the new
curate in Old Town. D'ye know him?"
"He's my cousin," replied the Colonel. "I got him here. He'd been
overworking in Bermondsey--in connection with the Oxford Bermondsey
Mission."
"Oh, he's one of _them_!" cried the other. "That accounts for it. A
know _them_. They were at Oxford when A was at Ruskin. They're
jannock,--and so yoong with it. They think they're going to convert
the Church to Christianity!" He chuckled.
"In the course of history," remarked the Colonel, "many Churchmen have
thought that. But the end of it's always been the same."
"What's that?" asked the engineer.
"That the Church has converted them."