CHAPTER XXIX.

A warm drizzling mist, shot with silver light where the April sun vainly

tried to break through, covered the hedgeless fields, dark plough and

green pasture, and the great fen lands, as I drove out the twenty miles

from Cambridge to Westrea. I had hired a gig from the livery stable,

driven by a superannuated post-boy, a withered scrap of a creature,

toothless and—rather to my relief—silent, save for professional clickings

and chirrupings addressed to his horse. The gig bobbed and curtsied over

the rutted cross-country roads at a bare six miles an hour. We passed but

few villages, a few scattered cottages, a few farm-carts—these mostly

drawn by oxen, to me an unusual sight. The country was bare, featureless,

sparsely inhabited, and sad. Once or twice the mist, lifting, disclosed

vast reed-beds and expanses of still blue-brown water, off which, with

strange plaintive cries and a mighty whirring and beating of wings, great

flocks of wild fowl rose.

As we neared our destination the landscape assumed a more cheerful

character, being diversified by low hills, fine timber trees, and patches

of wood; more prosperous, too, with neater cottages, a better type both

of farm and farming, and clean running brooks in place of stagnant fen.

Directed by the rubicund and jovial host of a wayside inn, we turned

off the main road, through a field gate, and drove some quarter of a

mile down an avenue of fine oaks to a comely red-brick house set in the

hollow—tile-roofed and gabled, with stacks of high twisted chimneys,

the whole dating, as I judged, from the latter part of the seventeenth

century. In front of it a garden the box-edged borders bright with

spring flowers, brick walls—against which fruit trees were trained—on

either hand, stretched down to the stream, here artificially widened into

a sort of moat, its banks supported by masonry. Even now, through the

drizzling rain, the place seemed to tell of ample, if homely, comfort and

prosperity.

Crossing the stream by a hump-backed brick bridge, the gig drew up, amid

flutter of pigeons and barking of dogs, before a square porch, where

Braithwaite met me with extended hand.

‘Well—so here you are,’ he said. ‘And welcome to Westrea—no man more so;

though the skies might have treated you in kindlier fashion, we must own.’

Then, as I clambered down and tipped my ancient driver, he lifted out

my carpet bag and called to Nellie. And I, looking once again into her

beautiful face, knew, beyond all question of doubt, that the words asking

the Master’s niece, Alice Dynevor, to be my bride would never be spoken.

No—whether hopeless or not as to the final issue, here my heart was

anchored; so that, failing the beloved woman who stood before me, I must

go mateless to the end of my days.

Nellie’s greeting was very quiet. Yet I fancied my coming gave her

pleasure, for her cheek flushed and the old witch-smile played about

her lips. Still, I use the word ‘woman’ advisedly. For, even in the dim

light of the porch, I was conscious of a change in her—of something lost,

yet something gained and added; of a greater poise, a greater dignity,

for hers was—may I not say is, and that how thankfully?—one of those

natures which experience and trial serve to mature and enrich rather

than to break.—Would there were more of such; for are they not the salt

of the earth, the divinely given leaven which, unto strength, courage,

righteousness, leavens the whole lump? Ah! what a wife for my dear, weak,

wayward, noble boy, Hartover!—Or, he being free no longer, what a wife

for⸺

Sternly I put that thought from me. To indulge it would be to sink myself

in intoxicating dreams and visions, drench my senses with sweet poison,

emasculate my reason and my will—in a word, unman myself. Since her

presence affected me even more profoundly than I anticipated, I must, in

honour, arm myself against the delight of it with all the fortitude and

prudence I possessed.

We had passed straight from the porch into the main living-room of the

house, a large hall with a heavily timbered ceiling and a big open

fireplace at the further end. Some logs burned cheerfully upon the

hearth—a not unwelcome sight after my long drive in the drizzling mist.

Here sweet-faced Miss Ann Braithwaite, in quakerish grey gown and close

net cap, received me with kindly speech. Everything spoke of the same

easy circumstances and solid comfort, along with an exquisite cleanliness

very pleasant to the eye and touch.

At supper Nellie performed her duties as hostess with a pretty solicitude

and dignity; and the evening passed in talk, Braithwaite glad enough, I

think, to hold forth once more on social reform, national and political

subjects. He certainly talked well and to the point—his views humorously

and, I must add, enlighteningly different to those I was accustomed to

hear set forth in College Common-rooms or at the High Table in Hall. But

I fancied his radicalism sounded a less temperate and genial note, and

that he looked anxiously at Nellie from time to time. His manner to her

was peculiarly gentle, and he referred to her opinion with an almost

wistful desire to interest her in our conversation.

I had no opportunity of speaking with her alone that night, for which I

was not altogether sorry. Better to wait until the first sweet torment of

her nearness had worn off, and I had schooled myself to accept it without

nervousness.

I rose to a day as brilliantly fair as yesterday had been wet. Sunshine

and fresh air pervaded the house. A side door, in the hall—where

breakfast awaited me—stood open on to the garden, the moat, and avenue of

oaks climbing the gentle grass slope beyond to the sky-line.

After breakfast Braithwaite went out on to his farm, and Miss Ann retired

to attend to some household business. Nellie, an all-round blue apron

tied over her light gown and a white sunbonnet upon her head, stood at

the table gathering scraps of broken food into a bowl. She was going, so

she told me, to feed some broods of young chickens in the Orchard Close;

and, on my asking permission to go with her, seemed pleased to have my

company. As we passed out of the porch into the morning sunshine, I could

not but exclaim at the peaceful charm of the place.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is peaceful—almost too peaceful, perhaps. But my

father does not feel that. He has plenty to occupy him. The land had been

neglected and the farm buildings suffered to fall into decay before we

came; and you know his energy in making improvements and setting things

to rights—working himself and making, not only his labourers, but nature

itself work for and with him.’

She glanced at me with a smile of tender amusement.

‘He is happy here,’ she added.

‘And you?’ I asked, perhaps unwisely.

‘If he is happy, I am content,’ she answered. ‘He is the best father

living, and—his will is mine, dear Mr. Brownlow. It ought to be so, for

he is most indulgent to me. There is nothing I could ask for which he

would not give me if he could.’

And she paused.

‘If he could?’ I repeated, for it struck me she alluded to a subject

which must be in both our minds, and about which she might be glad to

speak.

‘Yes,’ she said; ‘there are things—or at least there is one thing he

cannot give me, because it is—or rather was—against his principles and

judgment, against his conviction of what is wise and right. And now⸺’

Again she paused.

‘Now it is too late.’

She moved forward quickly and opened the door leading into the Orchard

Close—some half acre of ancient turf, in which grew fine old fruit trees,

apple, pear, plum, cherry, and shining-leafed walnut. The pears were

already in blossom, their pyramids and wreaths of powdery white seen,

overhead, against the radiant blue. High brick walls, mellow with age

and encrusted in places with lichens of every tint from vivid orange to

delicate grey, enclosed the place. Hen-coops were set out upon the warm

short grass, over which a busy population of yellow chicks and ducklings

scampered towards us—their mothers and foster-mothers, meanwhile, craning

ruffled necks between the wooden bars of the coops, with distracted

callings and cluckings.

With a wooden spoon Nellie scattered the food among them from her bowl,

looking down at the pretty, clean, scrambling little creatures—both she,

they, the blossoming trees, and ruddy walls making a charming picture.

But a change had come over her. The smile, the play of feature, vanished.

The cheek seemed to sharpen, the dark line under the eyes to darken yet

more. A settled sadness seemed to touch her. Was it thus she looked when

she had not to amuse her father, when she had not to put a force upon

herself, and feign cheerfulness for the sake of those about her—when she

found herself alone, in short?

Vain heart of mine!—for was this not a confession that she dare be

herself before me, that I was privileged to witness what she hid from

others? There was a compression about the lips now, a kindling of the

eyes, which told me she was coming straight to the point, like the fine

and fearless woman she was—but I little expected to what point.

She set down the bowl upon the grass, where the greedy chicks swarmed

over and into it, and thrusting her hand within the bosom of her dress

drew out a letter.

‘This reached me a week ago,’ she said. ‘I could not show it to my

father, nor to dear Aunt Ann. Had you not been coming, I must have

written to you, Mr. Brownlow. Suspense was intolerable; and, if you

yourself knew, I was sure you would tell me the truth.’

She put the letter into my hand. I recognised the writing at once, and

with a feeling of shame and sorrow, amounting almost to horror, looked

her in the face. God! how glorious it was in its agony—courage which

could meet anything which must be; act on anything which was right; and,

with all, such invincible sweetness!

I read the letter.

‘Silly Country Girl—Listen to me, and cease to follow what you

will never win and try to reach honours which belong to bolder

hearts than yours. You are thrown aside and done with, like his

old glove, his old shoe. Know, then—but do not tell it, for the

day you do tell shall be the last safe one of your life—that he

is married already; and to me, who am far cleverer than you,

and can please him better, love him better than you, ignorant

little peasant, could ever please or love.’

‘Devil!’ was all I said, as I finished this melodramatic effusion, for

anger and disgust choked me.

‘It is so, then?’—from Nellie, watching me.

‘You asked me to be truthful?—It is. I know the handwriting too well.’

‘Whose is it?’ she asked, in a low but steady voice.

‘That of the person—the Frenchwoman—whom he has married.’

‘Mademoiselle Fédore, who used to be at Hover?’

‘Mademoiselle Fédore.’

She raised her head, standing stiffly erect, her whole form tense and

rigid for a moment. I could not speak. What comfort could I offer? Her

grief was too sacred for me to profane it with any chance words of

sympathy. I could only admire, reverence,—aye, and worship—before this

martyrdom of true love.

At last: ‘I believed it. Yes—I was sure from the first. But it is very

cruel. I have not deserved that insult. Whom have I followed? What

honours have I tried to reach? I have striven, dear Mr. Brownlow, not

even to think of him. Ever since my father forbade me to see him, or hold

any sort of intercourse with him, there was but one thing to do—to obey.

And I have obeyed. God knows that I have. You believe me?’

She glanced up in my face with something of the old witch-smile. My eyes

answered yes. I dared not trust myself to speak. She looked down again on

to the smooth turf and soft, scrambling, peeping chickens.

‘Tell me—I only saw her once, and saw she was very handsome. But is

she—is she worthy of him?’

‘Do not ask me,’ I said, weakly perhaps; but I was hard pressed, wellnigh

desperate. ‘Judge for yourself of the nature of the woman who could write

such a letter.’

‘No, if I begin to judge, if I begin to fancy, I should go—it is wrong,

it is wicked of me—but I feel, at times, I should go mad.’

She was silent again, looking down. Then:

‘God forgive her—for this letter has undone the work of months. Ever

since we left Yorkshire, and came here to Westrea, I have struggled for

my father’s sake, for Aunt Ann’s—and for my own pride’s sake too—to put

the thought of him out of my mind, and interest myself in books, in my

father’s schemes, and in my own home duties. I believed I had conquered

myself, conquered my—my love. But this letter brought back all the pain,

and stirred up something violent and evil in me—something I have never

felt before. It is degrading. I am jealous, dear Mr. Brownlow—jealous. Do

you know what that means?’

Alas! did I not know?—and most bitterly!

‘But of course you do not. How should you!’ she went on.

How should I indeed?—And she smiled at me in lovely apology, thereby

cutting me to the quick. For did not her words, her look, show how wholly

innocent and ignorant she was of all personal feeling on my part?

Well, and if so, what had I to complain of? Earlier, had it not been

an integral element in that mystic, fantastic inner life of mine, to

conceive of her loving the dear boy as deeply, eternally; even though as

hopelessly, as I loved her? Now that my conception proved true in fact,

what cause had I to be hurt, and to shrink? Was it not inconsistent,

illogical, a very height of unreason? I took myself to task for my folly;

but I suffered. Meanwhile an idea occurred to me, but I dared not put

it into execution yet. In Fédore’s letter was one lie which could and,

in justice to the dear boy, ought to be refuted. But I must wait until I

could judge better of Nellie’s powers of endurance, and better trust my

own calmness and nerve in handling a very delicate subject.

Now I only said to her:

‘Will you trust me with this letter, and let me keep it for the present?’

‘Why?’

‘Because—forgive me if I seem to preach to you—as long as it remains in

your possession, you cannot, I think, but read and re-read it.’

‘That is true,’ she said.

‘And each time you do so, you renew your own pain, renew—quite

naturally—your sense of injury, of anger at the insult offered you. Yet

this renewal works to no good end. It is useless, merely causing you to

move in a vicious circle, since it cannot alter the facts or affect the

result.’

‘Yes—yes,’ she said. ‘Ah! how well you understand, dear Mr. Brownlow!

Keep the letter. It is better out of my possession. And I feel less

unhappy now that I have spoken to you. I longed for, yet dreaded, your

coming. I knew that I should want to tell you of this—to speak freely

to you; and yet I doubted if it were possible to talk on such a subject

without seeming wanting in modesty. But you have made it easy by your

sympathy—which I feel. It is wonderful. And I am very grateful—more

grateful than I can express.’

For the first time her eyes had tears in them, and her brave lips

quivered. I could bear no more. I turned and walked away a few steps, the

sunshine gay among the pear blossom above my head, warm upon the turf

at my feet. Ah, dear God, what a beautiful world—and I to go through it

lonely all the days of my life!

Nellie picked up her bowl and came after me, a wistfulness in her sweet

face.

‘What is the matter, dear Mr. Brownlow? I have not offended you?’ she

said.

‘No—ten thousand times, no,’ I answered. ‘But the times are somewhat out

of joint, and—well—would to heaven I were a better, abler man to set them

right!’

Just then Braithwaite hailed us from the doorway. We joined him and, with

him, went back to the house.

(_To be continued._)

_LAMENT BEFITTING THESE ‘TIMES OF NIGHT.’_

BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË.

_This Lament for martyr, soldier, and sage_,

‘_Him who had walked through the times of night_,’

_so apposite to these present times, is from verses in the MSS. of the

British Museum, signed in her handwriting, ‘Unfinished. C. Brontë. 70

lines, Novbr. 28th, 1834.’ The lines bear no title. They were preserved

by her in a collection of her writings for which she made a title-page,

‘The Scrap Book. A Mingling of Many Things, compiled by Lord C. A. F.

Wellesley. C. Brontë, March 17th, 1835.’ The book contains ‘chips from

her workshop’ during her nineteenth year, one of her happiest years at

home. She was still using the pseudonym of her childhood days, associated

with her idol, the Duke of Wellington. In this period she was celebrating

heroes; compare her poems ‘Richard Cœur de Lion and Blondel’ and ‘Saul.’_

_The obvious allusion in the first twelve lines is to the protomartyr of

Christianity. The stanza upon the ‘son of wisdom’ refers to Socrates,

the protomartyr of Paganism. The lament for the soldier, ‘laid on the

battle-plain,’ is set like a gem between these stanzas, and flashes out

her conception of the true patriot and hero. She ranks the dying common

soldier,_

‘_His thoughts all for his fatherland_,’

_with St. Stephen and Socrates, a trinity of martyrs of faith, of

patriotism, and of philosophy._

_I trust lovers of Charlotte Brontë will welcome, in this centennial year

of her birth, the first publication of this poem._

GEORGE E. MACLEAN.

Lament for the Martyr who dies for his faith,

Who prays for his foes with his failing breath,

Who sees, as he looks to the kindling sky,

God and his captain, the Saviour, nigh;

Who sees the mighty recompense,

When soul is conquering flesh and sense;

Sees heaven and all its angels bright,

At the very end of his mortal fight,

At the black close of that agony

Which sets the impatient spirit free;

Then, as in Christ he sinks to sleep,

Weep for the Dying Martyr, weep.

And the soldier, laid on the battle-plain

Alone at the close of night, alone,

The passing off of some warlike-strain

Blent with his latest moan;

His thoughts all for his fatherland,

His feeble heart, his unnerved hand

Still quiveringly upraised to wield

Once more his bright sword on the field,

While wakes his fainting energy

To gain her yet one victory;

As he lies bleeding, cold and low,

As life’s red tide is ebbing slow,

Lament for fallen bravery.

For the son of wisdom, the holy sage,

Full of knowledge and hoar with age,

Him who had walked through the times of night,

As if on his path a secret light

Lustrous and pure and silent fell;

To all, save himself, invisible,

A secret ray from Heaven’s own shrine

Poured on that spirit half divine,

And making a single Isle of light

In the wide blank ocean of Pagan night;

Lament for him as you see him laid

Waiting for Death on the Dungeon bed,

The sickly lamp beside him burning,

Its dim ray falling on sorrow and gloom;

Around him his sad disciples mourning,

As they watch for the hour of awful doom;

And he, by coming death unshaken,

As if that slumber would soon be o’er,

As if all freshened he should waken

And see the light of morn once more.

Ay, on the sage’s, the soldier’s bier

I could drop many a pitying tear,

And as the martyr sinks to sleep

I could in love, in sorrow weep.

...

‘_THE IMPERIAL JUNKER._’

_WHAT THE KAISER’S OWN MEN THOUGHT OF HIM._

BY A NEUTRAL DIPLOMAT.

My work never brought me into intimate contact with court circles in

Berlin, but—as the very existence of my country has hung for years on

the tenuous thread of the Kaiser’s whim—I have missed no opportunity

(during the decade or more in which special missions for my Government

have taken me to various foreign capitals) to study the War Lord

through those who, in one way or another, had been given opportunities

for forming their estimates of him at first hand. My surest and most

intimate knowledge of the Kaiser was gained, perhaps, from German and

Austrian diplomatic and consular officials who were either included in

the inner circle of his personal friends, or whose duties had been of a

character to reveal to them the hidden springs and cogs of their master’s

intricate machine of welt-politik. But very illuminative, also, I found

the after-dinner confidences of several prominent Americans—notably

two world-famous ‘kings of industry’ and an almost equally well known

‘intellectual’—through whom the Kaiser had made cleverly calculated

efforts to extend his influence in the United States.

The German and Austrian officials alluded to were, for the most part,

pre-war acquaintances, but their attitudes toward the Kaiser and his

world policies are of pertinent interest at this time as showing that

the present apparently unbroken front of German unity is in reality

a structure no less artificial and precarious than the tottering

‘paper castle’ of the German scheme of war finance. But two of the

Americans—the very ones, too, I found most impressed by Wilhelm’s

‘guide-counsellor-and-friend’ tactics—I have seen since the first of

the present year, and it is a significant coincidence that each of them

prefaced a scathing denunciation and sweeping repudiation of the Kaiser

with the words, ‘He lied to me!’

It is undoubtedly true, as has occasionally been stated in the British

press by those intimately acquainted with Germany and the Germans, that

the Kaiser was not an ultra-militarist; or rather, that while he might be

so rated according to the standard of less ‘organised-for-war’ countries

than Germany, he was not so extreme in his views in this regard as many

of the leaders of the so-called ‘Military Party,’ the royal member of

which was the Crown Prince. But it _is_ true that he was the leader in

fact as well as in name—the soul and the mainspring—of what I may call

the ‘Deutschland-über-Alles’ movement, which had for its end not only

Teutonic ‘kultural’ supremacy, but also Teutonic commercial, financial,

and—ultimately—political supremacy. And it is also true that he strove to

attain these ends by methods so rough-shod, tactless and cynical that the

arbitrament of the sword became the inevitable and only alternative to

the national effacement of those countries which stood in Germany’s way.

Let me make myself plain on this point. The Kaiser strove not only to win

Germany _a_ place in the sun, but to make Germany _the_ place in the sun,

and, in a sense, it is true, as he has so often claimed, that he desired

and worked to bring this about by peaceful means. But—_he did not follow

this course through any inherent love for, or humane predilection toward

peace, but only because it was the cheaper way; because it would cost

less in treasure and industrial potentiality; because it was calculated

to set back Germany less than would the drain of even a victorious war_.

He hoped—by building up the most perfect military machine the world had

ever known, supplemented by a navy unquestionably designed to equal and

ultimately surpass that of Great Britain—to bluff and bully his way

through to his goal without paying the price. The principal difference

between the Kaiser and the German military party leaders was that the

latter proposed to fight first and take what they wanted after all

opposition had been crushed, while the former proposed trying to seize

what he wanted first and to fight only if some one had the audacity

to resist. Both were the schemes of international outlaws, with the

militarists comparable to the brigand and the Kaiser to the burglar. That

is the most one can say for the Kaiser’s vaunted ‘peacefulness.’

Twice or thrice—notably in the cases of Tsingtau and

Bosnia-Herzegovina—the Imperial thief or his accomplices got away,

unscathed, with the ‘goods’; but at Agadir his nerve failed him and he

was compelled to withdraw with empty pockets. The German military party

leaders, knowing his aims and methods rendered ultimate war inevitable,

bided their time far more patiently than would have been the case had

they not known the Kaiser was no lover of peace for its own sake; that

either his bungling or his opportunism must finally make his means, like

his end, identical with their own.

It was, therefore, not among even the extremest militarists that one

found the deepest distrust of their impetuous emperor, but rather among

the members of two other classes (I am not considering the Socialists

in this article at all, because the feud between them and the Kaiser

was known to all the world), the diplomats and the industrialists.

Among German diplomatic and consular officials one met occasional

personal favourites of the Kaiser who manifested a kind of sycophantic

devotion to him; but the great majority of them—through their broader

knowledge of the world, and especially their keener appreciation of

the latent might of the British Empire—were restive and apprehensive

over the parts they were being compelled to play in a policy which they

knew could only lead to a conflict from which the chances of Germany’s

emerging victorious were very slender indeed. The most widely informed

and most rational of these—and, therefore, the bitterest critics of the

Kaiser—were men doing the same character of ‘emergency work’ on which I

have so long been engaged myself. Sent on special missions of one kind or

another to various parts of the world, they had an appreciation of world

‘values,’ a ‘sense’ for the set of political and racial undercurrents,

such as no Prussian Junker ever attained to. Heart and soul in the

‘Deutschland-über-Alles’ crusade though they were, there is scarcely one

of these I can recall who was not distrustful of the Kaiser’s way of

trying to bring the thing about, and, when opportunity offered for them

to speak out, several were frankly condemnatory.

Of such was an unusually level-headed German who was a fellow passenger

of mine on the British-India mailboat from Rangoon to Calcutta about five

years ago. He claimed to have been on a special tour of investigation of

Germany’s Pacific colonies and to be taking advantage of his return trip

to see what the Netherlands and England were doing in a colonial way. It

was just at the crisis of the Agadir imbroglio, and a wireless message

announcing the recall of the gunboat _Panther_ (after Mr. Lloyd George’s

‘Mansion House’ speech had brought home to the Kaiser the disagreeable

truth that Great Britain was ready to stand by France) was the direct

occasion of the conversation I am about to allude to.

Up to this moment I had found my friend unusually reticent on

international politics, even for a German diplomat, but his palpable

relief at the turn things had taken over Morocco seemed to have the

effect of loosening his hitherto well-bitted tongue.

‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘I am whole-heartedly glad to hear this news, even

though, as a German, the _dénouement_ is a very humiliating one. But for

a long time I have been afraid that this periodic waving of a lighted

torch over such a powder-magazine as Europe has become would cause an

explosion. It will _have_ to come if—if “someone” continues to scatter

sparks in the future as he has done in the past. Please don’t understand

me as intimating that Germany would not render a good account of herself

in such an event (you may be sure that her enemies would have some

terrible surprises in store for them); but the folly of the thing lies in

the fact that we are already on our way to win by “peaceful penetration”

all that the most successful war could give us. _But if we should fight

a war and chance to lose it—nay, even if it should result in more or

less of a draw—Germany will never again have such an opportunity for a

commercial—and through that, for a political—conquest of the world as she

has enjoyed for the last two or three decades, and as she will continue

to enjoy so long, but only so long, as we can keep at peace._ That is

why I deplore so deeply the fact that we have such⸺’ He checked the

half-spoken German expletive that had leapt to the tip of his tongue and

concluded with ‘that we are not under a safer and saner leadership.’

Very similar views of the Kaiser’s foreign policy I found were held

by many outstanding figures among what I have called the German

‘industrialists.’ In this class I would include the heads of the great

shipping companies and all of the important manufactories save only

those, like Krupps, which were engaged in turning out war supplies. Herr

Ballin was, I am assured, one of those who watched the development of

the Kaiser’s insidiously ruthless policy with the gravest misgivings,

and it is a German shipper only a shade less powerful than the head of

the Hamburg-Amerika line that I am about to quote in this connection. I

had met this gentleman more or less casually at several points during

his tour of the Far East, but it was not until we chanced to be spending

the same week-end at the Peak Hotel, Hongkong, that we had any chance to

exchange views.

‘How are German trade prospects in the East?’ I asked him one evening as

we sat over after-dinner coffee and cigars on the veranda of the hotel.

‘Colossal, simply colossal,’ was the reply. ‘Quite beyond anything I had

hoped to find. Will you please take a look at this,’ and he took from

his pocket and unfolded a little publication called ‘The Daily Consular

Reports,’ published by the American State Department at Washington.

Turning to a report written by the American Consul-General at Hongkong,

he pointed to a table of figures preceded by a paragraph of comment. I

have not the exact figures in mind at this moment, but their purport was

to show the remarkable manner in which Germany’s share of Hongkong’s

trade had increased until it was finally greater than that of Great

Britain itself.

‘That is the one most significant thing I have observed on my whole

tour,’ he said. ‘To fully appreciate the weight of it, you must consider

that not only is Hongkong a British port, but that it is also a port

whose principal, almost its only, _raison d’être_ was commercial. And now

what do we see? To-day—on the strength of the official figures of the

representative of a nation that specialises in figures—Germany has 60 per

cent. of all its trade. And next year it will have more, and still more

the year after. What do you think of that?’

‘I think, in the first place,’ I replied, ‘that it seems rather

effectually to dispose of Germany’s contention that she is not enjoying

the “freedom of the seas”; and, in the second place, that it would

appear to be a remarkable tribute to the efficacy of Emperor William’s

_welt-politik_.’

The latter was a ‘bait’ I had often used successfully before under

similar circumstances, and in this instance the ‘rise’ was sharp and

clean. Indeed, I think he was rather glad to avail himself of the excuse

to avoid the ‘freedom of the seas’ issue.

‘Emperor William’s _welt-politik_!’ he fairly shouted, grasping the

arms of his long reclining chair in his anger. ‘Emperor William’s

_welt-politik_ is the worst, almost the one, menace to the continuance

of our commercial triumphs. We have done what we have in spite of, not

because of, this kind of _welt-politik_. What is more, it is the one

thing that threatens to bring all our achievements to nought. Yes, not

only to check our advance, but even to put us back so far that we may

never be able to regain the place we hold to-day, to say nothing of the

one we might attain to in the course of another decade of peace.

‘See here!’ he exclaimed, raising himself in his chair and peering

down across the verdant slopes of the Peak to the arcaded squares of

the city and the bay beyond, where the ships of all the world swung at

their anchors in the turning tide and a thousand wide-eyed, high-sterned

junks came winging home to roost for the night. ‘Do you want to know the

reason Germany has already the greater part of the trade of Hongkong? why

Germany, if left alone, will ultimately control the trade of the world?

There’s the answer. Can you read it?’

Kowloon, with its newly-opened railway disappearing into the ‘China-side’

hills, the grim lines of the four-funnelled British battle-cruiser at

the naval dock, the red rectangles of bunting sliding gently down the

flag-poles at the sterns of a hundred British merchantmen at the boom of

the sunset gun—I scanned these for the answer, but they all seemed to

argue the other way—against German dominance.

‘I give it up,’ I said finally. ‘What is it? Where is it?’

‘There,’ he replied, pointing to the solid blocks of tall office

buildings in the heart of the town and along the Bund. ‘You see, do you

not, that some of the buildings are dark and deserted, and that in others

the lights are being turned on? Well then! The lighted ones are German,

the dark ones English. _That_ is the answer. The English are at the

Cricket Club (see the lights on the veranda) and at Happy Valley—you saw

them trooping to one or the other all the way from three o’clock onward.

But in some of the German offices those lights will be burning at nine

and ten o’clock, and even up to twelve or one on the nights before mail

day. _That_ is the answer. We Germans are winning the trade of the world

because of our capacity for, our willingness to, _work, work, work_,’ he

concluded, punctuating the final words with blows upon the wicker arms of

his chair.

He puffed his cigar in angry impatience for a few moments, peering

moodily into the gathering darkness, before resuming. ‘The continuance

of our present rate of progress would win us everything if only we could

contrive to remain free to concentrate our energies upon it. Instead

of working to that end, however, it is as though every move of—from a

certain quarter, was deliberately calculated to provoke, to embroil

us with, the very powers whom it would serve every material interest

we have to remain friendly with. A very little more of the brand of

_welt-politik_ that the Kaiser’ (he did not attempt an euphemism this

time) ‘has been launching during the last few years, and we will not,

cannot, be left free to win on to the goal that is already in sight.

There is, perhaps, an even chance—certainly not better than that—that a

great European war might be a short-cut to our commercial supremacy; but,

the way things are going now, we take _no_ chances. And if we failed to

win the war, we could never have the same clear field again. You will

understand now why I feel so strongly opposed to an Imperial policy

which, if not radically changed, cannot but end in war.’

Between diplomats, colonial officials, manufacturers, shippers, etc.,

I could mention at least a score of Germans of outstanding prominence

whom I heard express views so nearly identical with those already quoted

that it will hardly be worth while setting them down here. (These would

include, I may say, two men who have rendered important service—one

politically and the other as an engineer—to the Kaiser in Asiatic

Turkey, and another—whom I had met in East Africa and Samoa—who is a

member of the present Cabinet, and, moreover, prominently mentioned for

the ‘reconstruction period’ Premiership.) Among all of these there was

not a single individual who did not have a far clearer comprehension

of ‘world problems’—a less ‘warped’ international perspective—than the

Kaiser (from the very one-sidedness of his life) could possibly have

had. They may be taken as thoroughly representative of the very small

class of Germans whose minds and observations had been sufficiently

broad to have made their opinions and admonitions worth heeding. No

less ‘Deutschland-über-Alles’ than the Kaiser himself, theirs was a

practical policy which might have succeeded, while his was a mad piece

of international adventuring that not only marked the Kaiser himself for

a fall, but—since his country elected to follow him—also made inevitable

the downfall of Germany. Had counsellors of this type been heeded,

there is little doubt that _welt-politik_ would have been exercised

in a manner that would have prevented its becoming, for many years at

least, the veritable boomerang into which the Kaiser’s inordinate vanity,

cynicism and hot-headedness have converted it. From Great Britain’s

standpoint, however, there can be no doubt that it was best that the

‘Imperial Bungler’ should have been allowed to have his own way, that the

‘showdown’ should have been forced at the time it was. The Germany of

a decade from now would have been far richer, far more wonderful, far

more difficult to defeat than the Germany of to-day. Just as I have heard

so many far-sighted Germans say in the course of the last decade, the

Kaiser, with his ‘shining armour’ and his trumpetings, has, in the end,

only played into the hands of his enemies by awakening the lion which he

might have netted—had, indeed, already half netted—in its sleep.

The interesting question which now arises is what attitude these powerful

leaders, who feared, distrusted and warned against the Kaiser’s policy

for more than a decade, are going to take toward that ill-advised monarch

when the once rapidly rising edifice of German commercial and political

domination which they had done so much to rear, finally comes down, as

come it must, in ruins. Most, if not all, of the men I have alluded to or

quoted were already rowing in the Kaiser’s war-galley when the explosion

they had so long foreseen and dreaded rent Europe in twain and left them

only the dust of their past achievements and less than the ashes of their

hopes and dreams. Doubtless they have strained obediently if sullenly at

their oars (I have read glowing accounts in the German papers of what

several of them have done); but surely not without _arrière pensée_, not

without thoughts of how differently things might have gone if even an

amiable nonentity had been their ruler instead of an imperial adventurer.

The fact that, even in the present development of events, Germany’s

future, both immediate and remote, looms far darker than even the most

prescient or pessimistic of those who followed so mistrustfully the

bellicose gesturings of ‘The Mailed Fist’ could have well anticipated,

must bode a state of feeling against the man who is responsible for it

all that augurs ominously for the lone figure at the helm of the German

ship of state when it becomes a case of _sauve qui peut_ in the final

wreck. When this day comes—how different a one will it be from ‘_Der

Tag_’ to which the hoodwinked German so long has lifted his glass!—‘I

told you so’ will be the mildest of the reproaches that will be launched

at the wrecker from the lips of the men whose task it will be to salvage

the foundered ship as best they may.

Cut off by the pall of the more imminent war clouds, we on the outside

have as yet had little chance to gauge the force of the storm that is

gathering to break upon Germany from within. Whether the breaking of that

storm will precede and accelerate the coming of peace, or whether the

coming of peace will precede and accelerate the breaking of the storm,

it is still too early to say. But break it must, sooner or later, and

when this hour arrives I feel that I know enough of the temper of the men

who distrusted and hated the Kaiser before the war to be safe in saying,

that whatever of his just deserts he may have escaped receiving at the

hands of the Allies he will stand every chance of having meted out to him

at the hands of his own outraged people.

_THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES: AT ALL COSTS._

BY BOYD CABLE.

One might have supposed it impossible for the Colonel to have found a

single favourable condition about the coming fight. His battalion had

withered away to little more than half its strength; that remaining half

was almost completely worn out with want of sleep, with constant cruel

fighting, with forced marching; had scarcely been brought out of the

water-logged trenches to rest before being marched up into them again,

had the prospect before them now of a desperate fight against enormous

odds with no cover but the inadequate scratches that in those days passed

for trenches, and with even these battered and smashed by shell fire,

swimming in water and liquid mud.

It might even be difficult to understand any reason for his ‘Well, thank

Heaven the orders are plain and simple enough this time,’ since those

orders were ‘to hold the position _at all costs_ until relieved,’ the

words ‘at all costs’ being heavily underlined, if one had not known

the nightmare uncertainty that in the Retreat-Advance days worried the

harassed commanding officers to a point of distraction. Usually the

orders were full of instructions to do this if the Germans retired, to do

that if they advanced in strength, to do something else if they attacked

any one of a dozen points; to conform to the movements of a certain

regiment, to support the advance or cover the retirement of another

or another—to have, in fact, enough possibilities to consider and act

promptly upon to have kept a dozen heads and a hundred eyes very fully

occupied; and all, of course, in addition to the C.O.’s own paramount job

of fighting his battalion.

So that after all there was some cause for his relief at the simplicity

of the orders which this time bade him hold on ‘at all costs,’ even

although it might well be that those orders were the death-warrant of

himself and most of his remaining men. He had no doubts as to the nature

of the struggle close ahead; indeed there was so little of a secret

about it that every officer and man of the battalion was fully aware

that the Germans had determined on an attack which was to break through

the thin British line. There was to be no manœuvring, no feinting here

and striking there, no cunning tactics about this attack. The Germans

were going to strike straight and hard and heavy, and burst through by

sheer hard fighting and weight of numbers—‘Leastways,’ as the brigade

signaller put it in passing on this cheerful intelligence to the

battalion signallers, ‘that’s what they think they’re goin’ to do.’

‘I like their bloomin’ cheek,’ said the signaller who took the message.

‘I wonder what they fancy we’ll be doin’ while they break through.’ The

fact that a weak battalion of British infantry should consider itself fit

to stem the advance of ten times their number of picked German troops did

not appear to strike him in any way as being a piece of equally ‘bloomin’

cheek.’

The promised attack, however, did not develop for the next forty-eight

hours, and during the whole of that time the battalion had to lie still

and suffer such an inferno of bombardment, such a purgatory of bitter

cold and driving rain, such a misery of knee-deep mud and crouching in

painfully cramped positions, that at the end of the time they were openly

praying for an attack, British or German, they did not care which, so

long as it ended or even relieved the intolerable waiting.

‘I made up my mind a month ago that I was bound to be killed,’ said

Sergeant Billy Ruff of ‘C’ Company disgustedly. ‘I’d sorter reconciled

myself to bein’ blotted out by a bullet, or blasted off the earth by a

Black Maria, or skewered on a bayonet; but blow me if I ever counted on

bein’ drownded in a two-foot mud puddle as I looks like bein’ now.’

‘Why don’t the _soors_[1] come on an’ fight it out,’ said Corporal

Smedley. ‘They _bukked_[2] enough about wot they was goin’ to do. Why

don’t they _hitherao_[3] an’ do it. I’m about sick o’ this shellin’ game.’

‘The shellin’ is bad enough,’ agreed Sergeant Ruff, ‘but I’m sicker o’

this swimmin’ gymkhana. They ought to serve us out a cork jacket an’ a

swimmin’ suit an’ a harpoon a-piece instead o’ a rifle, to play this game

proper.’

He was certainly fairly entitled to call the shelling ‘bad enough.’ It

was the worst they had known yet, and that, for men who had been in

it from the first days of Mons, was saying a good deal. The Germans

appeared to have selected their portion of the front for the heaviest

concentration of their artillery, and a rain of shells fell without

ceasing night or day on the battered trenches. The men kept what cover

they could, but that was little use against monster shells which blew

to fragments them and their cover together. The British artillery was

completely overwhelmed, and although it had struggled gallantly to

maintain the unequal contest, was unable to afford the slightest relief

to the suffering infantry. The casualties in the battalion mounted

steadily, and apparently it was merely a matter of time until it should

be utterly destroyed; but the men, although they grumbled deep and loud

about the weather and the wet and the mud, the slowness of the Germans to

attack, the bully beef and the biscuits and the missing of a rum ration,

uttered no single grumble about the fate that kept them there or the

wounds and death that carried them off singly and in groups.

At dawn of the third day the shelling rose to its highest pitch of fury.

The wet ground shook to the roaring blast of heavy high-explosive,

the air pulsed and sang to the shriek of passing shells, the crack

of bursting high-explosive ‘woolly bears,’ the rip and thud of their

shrapnel showers. The noise was deafening, the smoke and reek of

high-explosive fumes blinding and choking. The flank of the battalion

rested on a road which ran through the British and German lines, and the

trenches to both sides of this road appeared to have been selected for

the heaviest share by far of the bombardment.

‘They’ll charge across the open and down the road,’ said Sergeant Billy

Ruff. ‘You see now if I’m not right.’

‘I don’t care a two-anna-bit how or where they charges,’ answered the

private he spoke to, ‘if so be they’d only be _jildi_[4] an’ get on wi’

the drill.’

‘Here they come,’ said the sergeant hurriedly. ‘_Dekko_[5] the road. Wot

did I tell you? ’Strewth, an’ there ain’t ’arf a mob of ’em, I don’t

think.’

‘Hold your fire, men,’ called one of the officers. ‘Wait till they get

well in the open. Pass the word—hold your fire;’ and down the line of the

wrecked trench ran the order from man to man, ‘Hold your fire—pass the

word—hold your fire.’

So they held their fire, although on the other side of the road the

trenches had already opened at the longer range. Deceived apparently

by the silence into believing that the battalion had retired or been

annihilated by the storm of shell-fire, the Germans poured out into the

open and swarmed down in solid mass. They sang in a deep chorus as they

came running heavily and waving their rifles over their heads.

‘Blimey, ’ark at ’em singing,’ said Sergeant Billy Ruff. ‘Come on, my

bloomin’ canaries, you’ll get somethin’ to sing about presently.’

And they did ‘get something.’ When they were within two hundred yards

of the trench an officer’s whistle shrilled, a line of heads and rifle

barrels appeared above the parapet, and in one long rolling crash the

rifles broke out in the ‘mad minute’ of fire. Now, in the training of

the old Regular Army the ‘mad minute’ was a firing practice to which a

good deal of time and attention was devoted, and a remarkable proficiency

attained in the two essential respects of speed in firing and accuracy

of aim. Since it was a practice in which this particular battalion had

acquired a notable reputation at a target and range immeasurably more

difficult than was now presented to it, the effect on the dense mass of

the attack may be imagined. The front rank was simply swept away in the

first five seconds of the minute, and for another full fifty-five seconds

the bullets beat down on the block of men, chopped up and cut away the

advancing face of it, exactly as a chaff-cutter slices to fragments the

straw bundle pushed under its destroying knives. At the end of the minute

the mass had come to a standstill; at the end of another it had broken

and shredded away and was swirling back to cover with the relentless

bullets still hailing after it and tearing through and through it.

‘Funny thing,’ said Sergeant Ruff grimly, ‘I don’t seem to ’ave ’eard

no singin’ lately. P’raps them Prussians ’as found out they come to the

wrong room for the smokin’ concert.’

The respite was very short. Another mass of Germans swarmed out from

their trenches and came on at a hard run, and again the British rifles

broke out in a devastating whirlwind of fire. The attack was pushed

harder and closer this time, till the defenders of the trench could

simply point their rifles and fire without putting eye to sights and

yet not miss because of the nearness and size of the target. Again the

attack broke, or rather it was withered and burnt away as it came and

came into the face of the furnace-blast of fire; but this time the

battalion did not cease to work bolt and trigger at top speed, because on

their flank across the road the rush had come further and was already in

places pouring in and down over the trenches. The regiment there had to

give up the bullet for the bayonet and fight now for their bare lives;

but the weight of numbers was too much for them, and gradually, still

fighting fiercely, they were overborne, pressed back, thrust from the

trenches yard by yard, killed where they stood in the parts where they

still clung stubbornly and refused to budge. The regiment was practically

annihilated, and their trenches were in the hands of the enemy.

‘Now,’ said Sergeant Ruff, ‘this is where we gets ready to hang out the

“House Full” sign.’

‘Going to be a regular Guest Night in Mess, eh, sergeant? and every

prospect of a full table,’ said a youthful lieutenant, grinning—and fell

forward in the sergeant’s arms with the laugh still on his lips and a

bullet through his heart.

The Colonel had been killed by a shell the first day, and before he went

he passed the word to the next senior, ‘Don’t forget, Major ... simple

orders ... hold on at all costs.’

The Major was not long in command before he was out of action with a

shattered thigh, and following him acting C.O. after C.O. was killed

or wounded, until now the command was in the hands of the only captain

left in the battalion. And each C.O. in turn received or knew his simple

orders—‘Hold on at all costs,’ and no C.O. of them all had any doubt as

to how they were to be carried out.

So it was that when the trenches on their flank went, and the immediate

prospect before the battalion was of out-and-out annihilation, the

Captain made his way round the trenches, splashing through muddy pools

streaked and tinted with crimson, stumbling over the dead, stepping as

carefully as might be over the men too sorely wounded to move aside, and

repeated to his few remaining officers and senior N.C.O.’s the clear

instructions, ‘Hold on at all costs.’

‘Not much doubt, sir, of how much the cost will be,’ one very junior

lieutenant answered him.

‘No,’ said the Captain gravely; ‘but we’ve done our job so far, and

that’s always something. Now we’ve only to make a good finish to it.’

‘We’ll do that all right,’ said the lieutenant confidently. ‘We’ll be

cornered soon, but there’s enough of us left to make them feel our teeth.

And anyhow, we’ve made them pay a pretty full price already for this

patch of ground,’ and he motioned with his hand out towards where the

open out in front of their trench was carpeted thick with the German dead.

An orderly, stooping low, splashed along the trench to them. ‘The wire’s

through again, sir,’ he said, ‘and Brigade wishes to speak to you if

you can spare a minute.’ He said nothing of how the wire had been got

through, or of how its repairing had cost another good half-dozen

casualties—which in itself is another tale well worth the telling. The

Captain went to the telephone dug-out and crawled into the shallow,

wet-dripping cave and called the Brigade and spoke with them there for

five minutes. The Adjutant who was at the other end was an old personal

friend of the Captain’s, but chiefly because neither knew the instant

the wire might be cut again they first talked strict business and left

personal affairs out of it.

‘Brigadier says to ask what chance have you,’ asked the Adjutant

abruptly. ‘How much longer can you hold on?’

‘Ten minutes after they attack in force,’ said the Captain with equal

brevity; ‘fifteen with luck; twenty at the outside. Trenches across the

road are gone, you know, and we’re getting cut up badly with enfilade

fire now. There’s nothing to stop them getting round behind us, so I

expect to be attacked front, rear, and flank. We can’t stand that off

long.’

‘They’ve managed to spare us a few companies of supports,’ said the

Adjutant quickly. ‘They’re occupying the line behind you now, and the

moment they’re ready they’ll be pushed up to help hold your trenches and

retake the ones on your flank.’

‘If they don’t hurry,’ said the Captain, ‘they’ll have the job of

retaking both lots. By the sound of the firing I fancy the attack is

coming now. I must get along and see.’

‘All right. Good luck, Jacky.’

‘Good-bye,’ said the Captain. ‘You know the messages I’d like sent if....

And tell the General we held on to the end. Good-bye.’

He was gone, and at the other end the Adjutant sat for some minutes

listening to the empty singing of the wire. That cut off suddenly to the

flat deadness that means a broken connection, and the Adjutant dropped

the useless instrument and hurried out to try to catch a glimpse of the

last act. It was little enough he could see, for a driving misty rain

obscured the view again; but from that little and from the fragments that

he gathered after from the handful of wounded brought in, it was easy

enough to piece out the finish.

The attack developed, as the Captain had predicted, on front, rear, and

flank. Under cover of a storm of frontal and enfilade fire the Germans

swarmed up along the rear of the battalion’s trenches. A score or two

of men were faced about to try to beat back this rear attack, but their

bullets were as powerless to stop it as pebbles flung in the face of a

breaking wave. The rear attack secured a footing in the trenches and

began to spread slowly along them. Their progress was disputed furiously,

but in the end the remnants of the battalion were beaten back to a

point where a couple of shallow communication trenches ran back to the

supporting trench on the one side, and another branched off forward to

the ruins of the front-line trench. Even then a few score men might have

saved themselves by taking the road to the rear. None did, but to the

last man turned frontward and joined the handful of their fellows. In

the end the remains of the battalion clung together to a few yards of

battered trench that twisted about the telephone dug-out, and finished

out the fight there.

Few as they were, it took some minutes to come at them, and before

the last hand-to-hand scrimmage had finished there came from the mist

to rearward a clatter of rifle fire, the rush of a charging line. The

Germans had been so occupied with their task of clearing out the last of

the defence that the fresh attack took them by surprise. The rescuing

companies were in on them before they could face about to meet the

charge, so that the charge went crashing home, swept the trenches clear

in a wild five minutes’ work, pushed the Germans across the road, and

drove into the trenches there after them. At this critical moment another

two companies charged in from the rear—companies in those days, remember,

were given, and cheerfully accepted, the work of battalions, just as

platoons took and did the work of companies; and the Germans, taken in

flank and rear, were accounted for to the last man in killed, wounded,

and prisoners.

The Captain was picked up in that last patch of trenches the battalion

had held. He carried wounds enough to have killed a dozen, and his last

word again was, ‘I’m glad we were able to hold on—till we were relieved.’

They found Sergeant Billy Ruff, too, with no more than a few flesh wounds

and a smashed leg. The Adjutant, in the piecing out of the end of the

story, sat by him and asked questions while the sergeant’s wounds were

being dressed and he sucked hard on a damp cigarette. ‘At all costs,

the orders was,’ said the sergeant at the finish. ‘An’ that patch o’

duck-pond trenches has just cost me seven-an’-six that was owed me

by my corporal that’s killed, a cock-eyed leg, an’ a carcase full o’

rheumatics for the rest o’ my days; an’ it’s cost the army the finest set

of officers that ever stepped, an’ the best battalion o’ fightin’ men it

owned.’

‘Amen to all of that,’ said the Adjutant. ‘But—you held on.’

‘Course we held on,’ said Sergeant Billy Ruff, his voice showing just a

shade of surprise at the comment. ‘Y’see we was ordered to hold on.’

PRESS BUREAU: PASSED FOR PUBLICATION.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Slang Hindustani—‘pigs.’

[2] ‘Talked.’

[3] ‘Come on.’

[4] ‘Quick.’

[5] ‘See.’

_CHILDREN’S CHILDREN._

BY MAJOR-GENERAL G. F. MACMUNN, C.B., D.S.O.

Old Schwartz rode over the _bult_ on his lean _veldt_ pony, his corduroys

flapping in the wind and his _veldt schoen_ barely resting in the

stirrups. And the prospect pleased him. Not a roof-tree could he see

except his own. The blue sheen on the scrub and the shimmer on the vlei

grass gave an air of peace on a road untold that men have searched the

world for since time was. Away on the slopes were some of his own cattle,

and a herd of his own horses; several generations of mares, each with

their foals, were galloping down to the pan for the evening. The prospect

was such as every old _voortrekker_ dreamed of and looked for.

Gabriel Jacobus Schwartzberg was a _voortrekker_ in the sense that, a

baby in arms, he had rumbled up in the great oxwain, with his father,

old Gabriel Hermanus (he being long known as young Garvie, pronounced

‘Harvie’), had seen the republic grow and wane and come again. He had

brought a secret commando across from the Free State to help Piet Cronje

crush the _roineks_ at Potchefstroom, and as a young man had fired his

father’s old _roei_ into Harry Smith’s force at Boomplaatz—and perhaps

shot the ensign who lies in his tombstoned grave there. Therefore an old

implacable he was, ‘a stout ould Pratestant’ like the Ulster man, if ever

there was one.

The Great Boer War had seen him too old save to ride transport, but

ridden he had and then hidden in the Gnaadeberg till the republics had

gone down in sorrow, and he for the time had cursed the God of David

for forsaking His chosen; till one day a slim _predikant_ had explained

that the Lord worked in wondrous ways, and that they had already got

the country back from the _verdomde roineks_. It was easy enough so to

describe what everyone in England, since party politics are dead, has

recognised as an act of statesmanship; and the _predikant_ wanted fifty

sheep as a contribution to his new manse.

So old Schwartz took heart of grace, and, finding that no _roineks_ came

his way, sat in the _stoep_ in the sun, smoking away the remaining years

that God gave him, his sun-dried old eyes peering out across the shimmer

of the veldt, his rifle by his side, and the volume of the Sacred Law

on a table, for it is so the old Dutch wait their end, rich in years and

in inheritance, as the Lord has promised. And in the year of grace 1915

it was far, far past the threescore years and ten. Yet had it not turned

to sorrow and tears. Daily did old Schwartz ride round his estate by the

_vlei_, where the springbok dwelt, and over the _bult_ to Bessie’s Dam,

where his son lived hidden from view, and back by _Saltpan_, past his own

oxen to his own old house at _Sweetfontein_, the sweet spring that old

Hermanus had found and built beside, with Marie, his wife, and little

Garvie, his son, far back in the ages, as time is counted in South Africa.

But now in his old, old age great trouble had come on old Schwartz, and

he sat long o’ days in the _stoep_ peering out into the shimmer. The

Great War in Europe was nothing to him. At ninety-two, be one never

so hale, kings may rise and fall, and wars may come and go, and leave

ninety-two sitting in the _stoep_.

The rising of De Wet had stirred him not. That was a foolishness. Had not

the _predikant_ explained that Dutch slimness had given them the country

back these eight years past. Louis Botha had very properly settled _his_

goose, and the _trek_ into German South-west Africa and Namaqualand

was right. The German had no business there at all, _Oud_ Brand had

always said so. He knew what Germans were, he had known the old Legion

men whom the English had settled on the land after that Crimean War of

theirs—pretty settlers they were. Look at that Colonel Schermbrücker,

bah! _Verdomde Kerbs_ every one. But now—a dreadful story had come up

from Philippolis. Folk said that Afrikanders were going to Europe to help

the English in this mad war of theirs.

So old Schwartz was sore perplexed, as well he might be, and Julie, his

wife, was away to town to _Nachtmaal_, the monthly Communion; an old body

too, as years went, near thirty years his junior, and his third wife

forby; and wise withal.

In the _Zit-kammer_ hung a huge gold frame, and in the frame an

illuminated border, and within the border a big black coffin, and round

the coffin the names of the wives and the children who had died. The

names were many, for the Boers bear more than they rear; the little

cemetery above the dam had many little graves. Beneath the golden frame

stood a table, and on it an old faded wool-worked cloth, and on the table

stood the great family Bible in Dutch, the volume of the Sacred Law in

all its glory, and therein were written the names of all the wives and

all the children of Gabriel Schwartzberg and his wives, and the names

were more numerous than those of the golden frame. Eleven sons and three

daughters still survived. And the last were the entries of Julie Armand

Duplessis, his last wife, and her sons, of whom two survived.

In the sacred volume also stood the names of Gabriel Hermanus

Schwartzberg, born 1798, and Marie Duplooy, his wife, born 1802 and

married in 1820, and of _his_ father, Gabriel Petrus Schwartzberg, born

1760, and of his wife, Flavie Terblanche, married in 1782.

The record read like the record of the Patriarchs, and one might notice

how the wives were always French, as indeed he who looks below the

surface has always noticed, that the Dutch are more French than Dutch,

Huguenots all. There are more Delareys, and Fouchées, and Terblanches,

and Duplooys, and Duplessis, and Duprés, and Oliviers, and Villiers, and

Dutoits, and Mathias, and Krugers, and Cronjes, and Bothas than ever

there be Vandermerwes, or Forsters, or Rensbergs, or Vanzyls; which folk

forget, or that they who strive most to preserve the _Taal_ stamped out

the French with a bitter fury. It is further to be remembered by those

who care for such varieties that when the Emperor Napoleon would restore

the old nobility, he found that Madame Guillotine had left the heirdom of

the _Ducs_ de Richelieu, the family of du Plessis and the great cardinal,

in the Boer Huguenot family of Duplessis, and further that the heir, a

placid, contented farmer, settled on the land a hundred years and more,

and married to Helena Duplooy, refused the offer of land and estates in

France. And so the rightful heir remained where he was, to trek later to

the Krapzak Rivier in the Free State and speak the _Taal_ for all time.

Little there remains of the old France, save in those natural manners and

courtesy and more that surprise those who really know the old Cape Dutch.

Some of the old legends remain in some of the old families, cherished by

the women more than the men, as such things are the world over.

Thinking nothing of such things, old Schwartz had grown as the other

Dutch, and his own _veldt_ was all the world to him, so that as he came

back from Bessie’s Dam to talk of the outer world, his own solitary farm,

with the poplars of Lombardy growing on the dam where Julie had planted

them, her first communion after they married, peace for a while came over

his vexed mind. At ninety-two perhaps even the thought of khaki hardly

vexes for long.

But it was true; not only had the Dutch quelled their rebellions

alongside the English, and had taken the German State, but they were

actually fitting out troops to help the English overseas.

Now the English are a curious folk. The world understands them not,

which is not to be marvelled at, since they certainly do not understand

themselves—but as the lamented Price Collier wrote, they—the folks of a

tiny island, own and rule a sixth of the world. The writers tell you that

they are antiquated and unbusinesslike, _but they govern a sixth of the

world_! Their navy is known to be bad and their army absurd, ‘_but they

govern a sixth of the world!_’ Their finance, folk say, is archaic, and

their politics a folly, ‘but,’ reiterates Price Collier, ‘_they govern a

sixth of the world_.’

And so goes on the incomprehensible, with the persistent result, and

still the world, and especially the poor Teutonic world, understands them

not. Their allies the French have tried very hard, until some glimmer of

light on island minds has come to them, and with that light, faith—faith

to believe that, however dull, and queer, and gruff, and awkward the

English might be, there is something to be liked and trusted in the queer

methods that so successfully and so illogically govern one-sixth of the

world.

Old Schwartz’s horse lolloped over the crisp red grass of the _vlei_,

and a brace of _Kuoorhaan_, the scolding hens, rose with a whirr and a

clatter that roused the old man from his dreams, and he pulled himself

together to cross the slope to his farm. The sun was low over the

_veldt_, and the light of fairyland was falling on the countryside, as

he rode into the yards—past the sheep-kraals. There were geese under the

willows picking at the water-cress in the fountain cut, and the boys were

driving in the cows. Strangers had arrived, and Schwartz could see old

Tanta Fouché, his half-sister, a woman of seventy, out in the _stoep_,

and there were strange horses in the kraal.

Four figures in khaki sat in the _stoep_ drinking coffee, and old

Schwartz climbed down from his horse and stiffly mounted the steps,

while the new-comers rose to greet him. It was his son Hermanus from

Slipklip Oost, and with him a man he knew, Commandant Jacobus Delarey of

Witkopjie, but in khaki, with rifle and bandolier. Why in khaki?

Old Schwartz shook hands in silence, and peered under his shaggy eyebrows

at the other two, also in khaki, with rifles and bandoliers. They were

his grandsons, Willie and Munik, his two favourites, ‘the children’s

children that are an old man’s crown.’

The old man passed his hand over his brow in perplexity. ‘What are you

all doing in khaki? I don’t understand, Hermanus.’

‘The boys are going with the commando, father!’

‘What commando?’

‘The new commando that is going to help the English in Egypt, and the

French.’

‘Going to help the English, my grandsons—going to wear khaki? I will

never allow that.’

‘But, father, they are all doing it; all the young men are going. General

Smuts is raising many commandos, English and Dutch. The English are

fighting to protect the world against Germany. I have read it out to you,

and mother has told you of the war.’

‘Your mother never told me that the farmers were going to wear khaki and

be English soldiers. Cursed be any of mine who join the English.’

And the old man drew himself up and glared, and his old eyes blazed under

his eyebrows.

‘Man and boy have I hated them and fought them, and never trusted them,

and now, cursed be you, Hermanus, if you let them go—cursed be you,

Willie! cursed be you, Munik!...’

The boys had shrunk back into the doorway, and Commandant Delarey was

biting his beard, when a Cape cart came clattering up the courtyard to

the _stoep_.

‘Here is mother,’ called Hermanus, and an old lady descended with many

parcels and called out to them to help her, and came up the steps like a

woman of forty rather than one of seventy. Small and dark and shrivelled

and active, the black grapes on her head shaking and dancing, and her

bead cape quivering.

‘Why, grandsons! come along and get my parcels, or you’ll get no fresh

coffee. Why, what’s the matter, Hermanus! What’s wrong with grandfather?’

The old man stood erect with his hand still half raised on high.

‘What are you doing, Gabriel?’

‘Father curses Willie and Munik for joining the English to help the

French.’

‘Oh, does he? then let him wait till he has heard me. I’ll have none of

his Dopper ways now. What is the trouble, Gabriel?’

The old man raised his hand: ‘Cursed are the Dutch who join the English

commandos! Cursed....’

‘Now, listen to me, Gabriel Schwartzberg. Am I faithful wife of yours?’

‘That have you ever been, Julie.’

‘Then will you listen to me, and keep your cursing to the end, old man!’

The old man bowed his head and lowered his hand, and sank to a chair that

Hermanus brought him.

‘Listen, then, Gabriel Jacobus Schwartzberg. The English are helping the

French to fight those German brutes who would make slaves of all. You

remember all I read you that the Germans did to the Belgian girls at

Louvain. Did ever the English behave like that here? You know they did

not. Did I love the English? You know I did not. But they were fair and

honest and kindly. The _Mori Kaptan_ who took me away to the _laager_

treated me as if I had been his mother. Did they not give us back our

Government? Oh yes, I know the _Predikant_, told you it was Boer slimness

got it back, but he wanted money from you for his manse. It was English

slimness who knew how to manage free people, not like your dirty Germans.

Besides they are helping the French, whom you Germans attacked. I am

French. I am a Duplessis, and I have not forgotten it, nor my mother, nor

my mother’s mother, for all we married you fusty old _veldt_ Dutch. And

your mother told me the same, and she was a Duplooy, and her mother was a

Terblanche. Look in the old Bible and see! You men are so busy shooting

bucks and smoking, you don’t think of such things, but we women do. So,

Mr. Dutchman, my grandsons shall wear khaki and go and help the English

and the French and those poor Belgian girls, and you shall give them

your blessing, Gabriel, or I will go right away to my brother Armande

Duplessis, who is _vriede reckter_[6] at Fauriesberg, and _Tanta_ will

make your coffee. You know how you will like that.’

Julie was a very voluble person when stirred, and when she had finished

the others murmured ‘_Ja! Ja!_’ while Commandant Delarey brought his

rifle-butt with a ring on to the stones and said:

‘The Vrouw is right, _mynheer_, and the boys must come.’

The fire had gone out of the old man’s eye. Fire at ninety-two is not

constant, and old _Tanta_ coming to say supper was ready clinched the

situation.

After supper Hermanus read the word of God from the Second Book of Kings

out of the great Bible, and poor old Schwartz was taken to bed to hear

more for his pains.

Julie was a strategist and an advocate. Next morning early, before dawn,

after the simple wont of the simple Dutch, the songs of David in simple

point swelled in the morning air, and the quavering voice of old Schwartz

led the chaunt.

It was the glorious words of the _Dominus Regnavit_, and it suited the

donning of khaki and the old man’s surrender.

‘The Lord is King, and hath put on glorious apparel and girded

Himself with strength....

‘The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly, but yet

the Lord who dwelleth on high is mightier.’

As the sun glinted under the _stoep_, old Schwartz was being shown the

glories of a Mark VII rifle, and the merits of the pointed bullet, while

the horses were saddling in the _kraal_. Later, as Commandant Delarey

marched off his commando, rifles on hip in due and ancient form, it was

Julie who waved a Union flag and a tricolour, while old Schwartz stood on

the _stoep_ and gave his blessing from the Book:

‘In courage keep your heart

In strength lift up your hand.’

FOOTNOTES

[6] Justice of the Peace.

_COINCIDENCES._

BY SIR LAURENCE GOMME.

A few weeks ago some remarkable examples of coincidences were recorded

in the newspapers. They were the actual experiences of the writers,

or the guaranteed experiences of relatives or intimate friends. Their

genuineness cannot be called in question. But they are all isolated

examples, each of them being communicated by different correspondents.

Even as such they were sufficiently remarkable to make it worth while to

ask whether coincidences in the order of things human play a definite

part in life’s drama, in the science of life perhaps one ought to say, or

whether they are so accidental and non-influential as to have no bearing

upon the problems of life.

If they have a bearing on the unexplored meanings of human action,

they seem to me to belong to individual, and not to social, man. They

might explain the individual action of Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and the

great ones of the world; they might be one of the influences which have

apparently made individual men rulers of human destiny for a time. But to

prove any such theory as this, even if it be a possible theory at all,

one must deal, not with single examples of coincidences which occur to

different people, but with a series of examples which have happened to

one individual. The comparative study of coincidences in separate lives

would, it occurs to me, be not only scientifically valuable, but of

intense interest to all who are fond of reading the lives of men who have

made a mark in the world.

So much for the psychological aspect of what may be expected from

the study of coincidences. In my small life as a student and public

servant it happens that I have had two or three remarkable examples

of coincidences. They principally belong to my literary life, and

have always been of special interest to me; they have remained in my

recollection as a sort of indication that the line I was taking was,

on the whole, the right line. Upon my pledged assurance that they are

all true, I propose to relate them for the amusement of my readers, and

with a hope that more important cases may be related in due course.

They are merely anecdotal and have no other interest beyond, perhaps,

supplying a new chapter of the ‘Curiosities of Literature.’ I propose as

far as possible to treat them chronologically in groups, as they have

no possible relationship one with another. They will be related quite

simply, and with many circumstantial details omitted.

The first incident which I have to relate is connected with my friendship

with Henry Charles Coote, lawyer and historian. I had lent to me a copy

of his little book, ‘A Neglected Fact in English History’ (London, 1864),

and arranged to begin reading it one Sunday morning in 1876, while I

walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens on my way to luncheon at

Shepherd’s Bush. The brilliant little preface fascinated me. The still

more brilliant pages in which his thesis of a Roman origin for the people

of Britain was developed carried me right away, and I did not put the

book down until I had finished it. As I read the last page, I remember

saying to myself ‘I must know this man and I believe I shall know him.’

I met Mr. Coote at the first meeting of what was afterwards the Council

of the Folklore Society on December 19, 1877. He sat next to me, and to

my delight, after the meeting had concluded, he proposed to walk with

me as far as Waterloo Place, with the result that we stood opposite the

Athenæum Club for over an hour talking of things that interested both

of us. He promised me a copy of his ‘Neglected Fact,’ and I have the

volume before me, as I write, with his inscription to me written on the

title-page. From that day we became fast friends. He never ceased to do

kindnesses to me, and I never ceased to think of him with gratitude and

affection. We used to discuss his special view of British history, and I

gradually fell away from accepting this view. This made no difference to

our intercourse until the end came. It impressed me with extraordinary

force. Mr. and Mrs. Coote always spent their summer holiday in Italy, the

Italy he loved so well, and returning in October, I generally met him for

the first time after their journey at the November meeting of the Society

of Antiquaries. In 1884 I went to this meeting as usual, but all during

the evening I had been feeling strangely uneasy. I did not expect to see

Mr. Coote there. And he was not there. On the next day I called upon

him with every foreboding of evil, and I found him stricken down with

paralysis, the seizure having taken place the night before just at the

time when I was feeling so strangely anxious about him. Perhaps this may

be a mere case of telepathy between two people with kindred ideas, but

the coincidences are too close for this hypothesis. They are indeed too

close to be described in anecdotal form, but I like the recollection to

open the story of coincidences which I have to narrate.

I have one other coincidence to record, which belongs to the same sort of

experience. After my father died, my mother and sisters came to stop with

me for a short time while their affairs were being settled. Some pieces

of family furniture, portraits, etc. were brought to my house. Among

these was a library chair belonging to my father, and it was placed in my

own library.

About this time I was being pressed by an official friend to attend a

meeting at his house, for the purpose of taking part in a spirit rapping

ceremony, but had always declined, because I did not believe in the

phenomenon. However he particularly pressed me to come on account of my

father’s recent death, saying I should be certain to learn something.

Perhaps my nerves had been worn by recent events. In any case I consented

to come, and I remember wearing my father’s watch chain and seal for the

first time, to attune me to the atmosphere. I told no one at my house

that I was going for this particular purpose. They thought I was simply

going out to dinner in the ordinary way. My object in this silence was

obvious. It was not to disturb the minds of those at home.

On arrival at my friend’s house we had dinner and then adjourned to

the drawing-room. The whole company sat round a largish table holding

hands. Several members of the company described certain experiences and

conducted conversations with spirit manifestations. But I was absolutely

unmoved and looked upon the whole thing as unreal and made up. I left the

house angry with myself for giving way to such nonsense.

Reaching home, not very late, I let myself in with my latch-key, and

was immediately met by my wife, my mother and sisters having retired,

who was strongly agitated and troubled. The explanation was that about

ten o’clock she was working in the library as usual, and looking up

from her seat she saw the form of my father seated in his usual way in

his old chair. And ten o’clock was the time when I, an unbeliever in

spirit manifestations, had been seated at the round table gathering of

spirit believers. The coincidence is remarkable, and I have ever since

been deeply impressed by it, but it has not made me a believer in spirit

manifestations.

My remaining coincidences are of a much more ordinary character. The

first case occurred in 1882, when I was reading Elton’s ‘Origins of

English History.’ On page 194 he describes from a printed collection the

manorial customs of Taunton Deane in his own county of Somersetshire.

For my own studies I wanted to examine these customs. I sought for the

book in vain at the British Museum, at the Law Society’s Library, and at

other libraries to which I had access. And at last I determined to appeal

to Mr. Elton himself. At that time I did not know him well. He replied,

pointing out the great value of the book, owing to it being printed

locally for the use of the tenants of the manor and not for publication,

and stated the probability of his copy being the only one in existence.

Eventually he lent me the book on condition that I returned it within a

week. It reached me one Monday morning, and in the evening I commenced

to copy the entire book. It consisted of 132 and xxix pages of a small

octavo, and its title was ‘The Ancient Customs of the Manor of Taunton

Deane; collected from the records of the Manor presented by the Jury at

the Law Day Court, the twenty-fourth of April 1817, and published under

their sanction. By H. B. Shillibeer, Land surveyor etc. Taunton, 1821.’

I finished my copying for the night, a dozen pages or so, skipping the

introduction of twenty-five pages. Among my letters on Tuesday morning

was a catalogue from Hindley, the bookseller in the old Booksellers’ Row

in the Strand, and the first entry which caught my eye was Shillibeer’s

‘Customs of Taunton Deane’ marked in the catalogue for three shillings

and sixpence. Breakfast had no longer any interest for me, and I posted

up to London and secured the copy, which still holds its place in my

library. I have a note of one other copy in a Manchester catalogue at

fifteen shillings, but have never met with another copy in a catalogue or

in a library.

Always having been a student of manorial customs, I had sought for a copy

of Elton’s ‘Tenures of Kent,’ 1867, which had gone out of print, and I

remember the joy with which I at last secured a copy in Chancery Lane,

and was assured it was the last copy in the market. But another manorial

experience is more curious. The London County Council had succeeded

to the rights of the Lord of Manor of Tooting Bec in connection with

the purchase of Tooting Bec Common as an open space for London by the

Metropolitan Board of Works. The Court Rolls of the Manor and documents

relating thereto passed into possession of the Council, and in 1900 the

Council decided to commence the publication of its records with that

portion of these manor rolls which terminated with the reign of Henry

V. Examination of the rolls showed two gaps, one a portion of the reign

of Edward IV., and a second the period between the years 1443 and 1447.

While editing the first volume for the Council, published in 1909, I had

the good fortune to discover, in a second-hand catalogue, the missing

rolls from 1443 and 1447, and the Council purchased them to include in

the fine collection. My luck in coincidences had served me well in this

instance. One other example comes from my collection of manorial books.

‘Extracts from the Court Rolls of the Manor of Wimbledon extending

from 1 Edward IV. to A.D. 1864’ was published in 1866, and I picked up

a second-hand copy. But there was a second volume published in 1869,

consisting of ‘extracts from miscellaneous MSS., some of them purporting

to be custumals and terriers,’ and I sought for a copy of this volume

for many years in vain. At last one of my coincidences occurred. I was

on my way to visit friends at Wimbledon one Saturday afternoon, and in

the Waterloo Road I secured a copy of this second volume, picked out of a

‘twopenny box’ of pamphlets and small books.

Coincidences from the library do not, however, limit themselves to

one subject. Some years ago I was due to dine with a folklore friend

at Twickenham, and at luncheon time, on the same day, I sauntered up

Whitcomb Street to look at a second-hand book-stall, from which I had

occasionally secured some bargains. On this occasion my luck did not

desert me, for I purchased, for, I think, the modest twopence so dear

to book hunters, four volumes of ‘Times Telescope.’ This was a sort of

calendar published annually, from 1801 to 1821, describing itself as ‘a

complete guide to the almanack, containing an explanation of Saints’ days

and holidays, with illustrations of British history and antiquities,

notices of obsolete rites and customs,’ etc. This last feature was, of

course, the centre of attraction to folklorists, and the information

collected in these volumes is certainly curious and interesting, forming

as they do forerunners to Hone’s ‘Year Book’ and ‘Every Day Book’ and

Chambers’ ‘Book of Days.’ I did not feel equal to taking all four volumes

with me to Twickenham and back again home, so I left three of the volumes

at my office, and proceeded with my remaining treasure to my dinner

appointment.

After dinner we were taking our coffee in my friend’s library, and of

course talking of the books on the shelves, and I incidentally mentioned

that I had that very morning secured a find. Upon informing my friend

that the find consisted of some volumes of ‘Times Telescope,’ one of

which I had brought with me, he eagerly asked to see it, and we proceeded

to the hall where my coat was hanging. My friend took the volume from my

hands, very hastily I remember, looked at the cover very narrowly, and

then at the title-page, and proceeded with the volume in his possession,

back to the library, where he promptly mounted the library steps and

placed my volume in a vacant space on his shelves. It was the one volume

he wanted to complete the series. The explanation was curious. He had

collected all the volumes, but could not find a copy of this particular

one. It had a curious misprint. The title-page showed the year to be

1812, but on the cover the figures had been transposed to 1821, and hence

collectors had made mistakes over this volume time out of mind. The

coincidence in this case was a double one. There was my purchase in the

morning, and then my accidental selection of this volume to carry down to

my friend’s house in the evening. Of course I left the volume there.

Another such coincidence occurred on a visit to my old friend Edward

Solly at Sutton, where he had built himself a library, which was full

of rarities dear only to an enthusiastic bibliophile. Mr. Solly never

came home from a journey to London without bringing a book with him as

an addition to his treasures, and I well remember the joy of browsing in

his magnificent library. Among other treasures, he had a great collection

of Swift’s works, first editions and the best of all the later editions.

On the occasion of one of my visits to him, he showed me a copy of

the first edition of ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ and then interested me by

drawing attention to the book-plate and arms of a previous owner, ‘James

Gomme.’ I told him of my relationship to this member of my family, my

great-grandfather, and then he informed me that he only possessed two

volumes of the three as published, and that he despaired of ever getting

the third. I possessed that third volume, and had always mourned its lost

fellows. Next day I sent my volume to Mr. Solly, thus adding a quite

unusual example to my list of coincidences.

My next examples of coincidences, three in number, relate to the

curiosities of research, and they are all three of a remarkable

character. In writing my book on the ‘Governance of London’ (1907) I

described the mode of land settlement outside London as compared with the

mode inside London, and wrote as follows (pp. 162-163): ‘One has only

to consult old London maps to discover easily in various parts the acre

strips of ancient arable lands which distinguished London before the

building of the houses and, which determine the position and site of

houses to this day.’ I instanced the houses at Putney facing the river,

for information as to which I was indebted to my friend Mr. Walter Rye,

and then my discovery of a parallel case furnished by Park Lane, the

line of frontage of which is so splendidly irregular. I had examined

this irregularity very closely, and incurred the watchful attention of

the police in so doing, and I concluded that it was due to the separate

ownership of acre strips upon which owners built their modern property in

succession to the ancient cultivating methods of Teutonic settlements.

But I could find no proof of this conclusion, and my book was printed

with the mere surmise. Almost immediately afterwards I discovered the

needed proof from a map of the Ebury estate in the Crace collection, a

‘mapp or plot of the Lordship of Eburie being situated in the parish of

St. Martins in the Fields Mary Dammison being proprietess by Henry Morgan

1675.’ This map showed the eastern side of Park Lane before it was built

upon, and running parallel to Piccadilly, and therefore at right angles

to Park Lane, are depicted the separate acre strips, with the names

of the different owners marked on each strip. Proof of my unconfirmed

conclusion was thus completed, and this coincidence of research was

gleefully added to my memory of the other instances which have now been

related in this paper.

The second example of a coincidence in research work is almost uncanny.

I was at work upon my ‘Making of London’ (1912) and was behindhand with

my proofs. On a Friday morning I received a special request from the

publishers to send off the revised proof of a sheet not returned in its

proper order. A difficulty had arisen. This part of the proof dealt

with the relationship of the Tower of London to the city, and my story

was incomplete without the evidence of the Tudor period. I could find

nothing, and my morning’s work of research ended fruitlessly. We expected

a distinguished visitor immediately after luncheon, and I knew there

would be no chance of my finishing the proof after his arrival. I was

singularly vexed at my want of success, and suddenly I said to myself ‘I

can’t get any information by ordinary means, I will try extraordinary.’

I have no idea what led me to this decision. I was not in a credulous

mood, but frankly annoyed with myself. Taking down a volume, selected

by mere chance, of the folio edition of the ‘Report of the Historical

Manuscripts Commission,’ printed in double columns and containing some

hundreds of pages, I stuck my paper-knife into the top of the volume, on

the principle of the old practice of Sortes Virgilianae, and turned to

discover the results. On the right-hand page of the volume thus arrived

at I found the record of a legal case drawn up by Lord Coke dealing with

the very subject upon which I was interested. Such a coincidence is

surely quite remarkable, even in a lifetime of literary research.

My last example is even more remarkable because it is more important in

its results. I have been studying the tradition of London for some time,

and am satisfied that I have made some important discoveries, which I

hope soon to be in a position to publish. A fragment of this tradition

was communicated to _The Athenæum_ by a distinguished scholar, and it

was important to the case I was developing, especially if I could trace

it to a Celtic source. But I had no evidence of this. Now business took

me to Cardiff shortly after my discovery of this fragment, and I was

occupied there for some few days. On the Saturday before returning home

I journeyed to Caerleon to see the Roman remains there, and thoroughly

enjoyed my morning’s visit. I wanted to go on to Caerwent to continue

investigation there, and negotiated with the landlord of the inn to

drive me over. While waiting for the trap being made ready, I talked to

the landlady about the antiquities of Caerleon and asked whether there

were any traditions of the place. She mentioned several quite well-known

superstitions current in many parts of the country and believed in by the

people of Caerleon, and then suddenly repeated almost word for word the

fragment of London tradition in which I was so interested. The Caerleon

people believed in and practised this London traditional rite definitely

because it was a London rite, and the Celtic aspect of which I was in

search was thereby established.

This short survey of coincidences in the experience of one person may

be useful in more ways than one. Smaller occurrences have happened, but

it did not seem worth while to note them. They seem to have produced a

sort of feeling that my ‘luck’ was considerable, and accordingly I have

thought it worth while to record them in the hope of discovering whether

they have any value beyond that of interest for the curious.

_RAMBLER’S LICHEN._

BY SIR JAMES H. YOXALL, M.P.

With trunk, limbs, and branches of travel an English country highway

lies on the land like the section or vertical slice of a tall felled

tree; fringes of hedge its foliage and fields its clouds of air. Never

straight-ruled on the map, no Roman cypress nor close, unerring poplar,

it is rather some indigenous great beech or elm, that swayed to the winds

with a not too ready yielding, and grew up in lines hardly gaunt enough

to be angular yet too clean-run to be curves.

Rooted at Sherborne, say, one of these great arboriferous road-systems

wends north by east, towards camps of the present and earthworks of the

past. At a widening of bole it forks, pushing one arm out easterly and

another south-westerly; such is the swayed posture here that you glimpse

the dryad in it, as you do the Venus de Milo in some real tree-trunk

that ivy swathes to the hip. The eastward limb, if you cleave to that,

will become stem itself, and sway out curved arms of its own to woo you;

take one of those rustling prongs for a mile or two and it bifurcates,

so that soon, like the squirrel, you must choose your branch. From bough

to bough you may leap (so to speak) by agile footpaths, but if you keep

on along a lean lane that presently thins into a mere rut, you attain to

the extremest twig. It is thus that afoot from Sherborne you reach to

Sandford Orcas, say, or if your wayfaring tree be rooted at Yeovil, to

that extremity of path a foredraught (to use the old Worcestershire name

for an approach to a farm), which brings you to Barrington Court.

And all along your way there will have been bivouacs of blossoms, fruit,

seed for the next blooming; or in every footprint of Primavera you may

have seen the primrose lichening the banks, some morning still covered

with dew. Pray do not remark that the primroses are primulaceous—it is

the occulter analogies a true loiterer likes to ramble into—nor declare

that lichens are parasites which stifle their billets: maybe, maybe.

But they are gentle intruders anyhow, no Prussians in Belgium, and the

householder lives long, on excellent terms with his guest. Lichens are

dowerings; indeed, our own wrinkles might be glad of them—they prank and

enrich; even the sad coloured ones do, and the black. ‘These weeds are

memories,’ Lear said, and fair lichen of remembrance, musing emotions

of pity or relish, and dew of tears, even, may alight upon a rambler as

he goes his discursive, his essayist’s way. Though he latterly gad at

a slackening pace, and the extreme twig bring him, chief mourner for

himself, at the head of a dark procession, to some short, shallow trench

and clay cot, I think he will have been the happier and the longer-lived

for his lichening; he may also have become wealthy meanwhile, in

_memorabilia_, the thiefless hoard that never lessens; he may even have

been hallowed somewhat, not left untouched at heart as the true ungodly,

they whom neither the beauty of this world nor the dream of another can

impassion, or the ‘sense of tears in mortal things’ soften inside. With a

venial, reverent Pharisaism, therefore, that in truth is but gratitude,

a rambler may thank his wandering stars that _he_ has been no man

unlichenable, upon whom no charm of place, or quip of illusion, nor the

_lacrymae rerum_ gat hold.

Lovely are the swayed bodies of dryad and Venus trees in silvery April,

before they have hung their leafy mantillas and aprons about them, as

if shrinking from gaze. But beautiful as September sunshine is the

lichen upon them too, itself a veil; so goodly to look at that county

men quarrel across their small frontiers about it—I remember Sir William

Harcourt saying at Malwood that whenever Mr. Gladstone and he met in the

country they contended whether Hawarden or Malwood trees were lichened

the better. Yet I think it is upon stone walls and roofs, in Dorset,

say, that the fungi-algae look best of all. Pickthanks and esurient

flatterers of trees they may be, perhaps, but like Danaë gold and silver

they descend upon masonry, giving, not taking, and finely wrought as

coins that were minted at Syracuse. With nothing of Sir Gorgius Midas in

their profusion, they do not pretend to be county people, exclusive, and

as soon will gild a hamlet gable as a mansion coat-of-arms. Like sunshine

spattered through meshes of leaves they descend upon their billets, but

to last there after sunset, and to endure through winter, like our men

entrenched in Flanders. The lodging they prefer is stone, I say—a brown

stone that empurples; they seldom select the wattle-and-daub of a washed,

half-timbered wall.

Few dwellings of that architecture linger on in stone counties now,

however—I mean the prototypal make, the human nest built of mud; masonry

has almost everywhere ousted the caked stuff which Shakespeare so often

saw ‘stop a hole, to keep the wind away.’ In Warwickshire, Wilts, and

other river-bed counties a rambler still happens upon this primal type of

cottage sometimes; as he does at Clifden Hampden, in the aged building

called the ‘Barley Mow’ near Wallingford Bridge. He recognises the

ancient cot, cote, hutch, hut, or whatever its earliest English name was,

by the inwardly-slanting timbers of its ends, cloven tree-trunks, which

lean up into the gables from the floor corners, in couples that meet

as if to embrace, beneath the watershed of the roof. Two pairs of such

tree-trunks, starting from right distances at the base, and tied together

at the top by a ridge-tree, formed the skeleton of the prototypal house;

perhaps in the earliest huts the four supports were living saplings,

still growing in pairs at convenient spots, for these could be yoked

into service—bent while still green, to be then beheaded; maybe our word

‘roof-tree’ began in that.

We think of the famous half-timbered house at Stratford-on-Avon as

‘Elizabethan,’ but Beowulf may have had some such a habitation as that:

this primal type must be inconceivably aged;

‘Old shepherd in your wattle cote,

I think a thousand years are done

Since first you took your pipe of oat.’