After Haidee’s death Lucian left Paris, and during the rest of the
spring and summer of that year went wandering hither and thither about
Europe. His mind was at this time in a state of quiescence; he lounged
from one place to another, faintly interested and lazily amused. He was
beginning to be a little bored by life, and a little tempted to drift
with its stream. It was in this frame of mind that he returned to London
in the following autumn. There, soon after his return, he sprang into
unwonted activity.
It was on the very eve of the outbreak of the war in South Africa. Men
were wondering what was going to happen. Some, clearer of vision than
their fellows, saw that nothing but war would solve the problem which
had assumed vast proportions and strange intricacies because of the
vacillating policy of a weak Government of twenty years before; the
Empire was going to pay now, with millions of its treasure and thousands
of its men, for the fatal error which had brought the name of England
into contempt in the Transvaal and given the Boers a false notion of
English strength and character. Others were all for a policy of
smoothing things over, for spreading green boughs over pitfalls--not
that any one should fall into them, but in order to make believe that
the pitfalls were not there. Others again, of a breed that has but
lately sprung into existence in these islands, advocated, not without
success, a policy of surrender to everybody and everything. There was
much talking at street corners and in the market-place; much angry
debate and acrimonious discussion. Men began to be labelled by new
names, and few took the trouble to understand each other. In the
meantime, events developed as inevitable consequence always develops
them in such situations. Amidst the chattering of tiny voices the
thunders of war burst loud and clear.
Lucian was furious with indignation. Fond as he was of insisting on his
Italian nationality, he was passionately devoted to England and the
English, and had a great admiration for the history and traditions of
the country of his adoption. There had once been a question in his mind
as to whether he should write in English or in Italian--he had elected
to serve England for many reasons, but chiefly because he recognised her
greatness and believed in her destiny. Like all Italians, he loved her
for what she had done for Greece and for Italy. England and Liberty were
synonymous names; of all nations in the world, none had made for freedom
as England had. His blood had leapt in his veins many a time at the
thought of the thousand and one great things she had done, the mighty
battles she had fought for truth and liberty; he had drunk in the notion
from boyhood that England stood in the very vanguard of the army of
deliverance. And now she was sending out her armies, marshalling her
forces, pouring out her money like water, to crush a tiny folk, a nation
of farmers, a sturdy, simple-minded race, one of the least amongst the
peoples of the earth! He shook his head as if he had been asleep, and
asked himself if the nation had suddenly gone mad with lust of blood. It
was inconceivable that the England of his dreams could do this thing. He
looked for her, and found her nowhere. The streets were hot all day with
the tramping of armed men. The first tidings of reverse filled the land
with the old savage determination to fight things out to the end, even
though all the world should range itself on the other side.
Lucian flung all his feelings of rage, indignation, sorrow, and infinite
amazement into a passionate sonnet which appeared next morning in large
type, well leaded and spaced, in the columns of a London daily newspaper
that favoured the views of the peace-at-any-price party. He followed it
up with others. At first there was more sorrow and surprise than
anything else in these admonitions; but as the days went on their tone
altered. He had endeavoured to bring the giant to his senses by an
appeal to certain feelings which the giant was too much engaged to feel
at that moment; eliciting no response, he became troublesome, and strove
to attract the giant’s attention by pricking him with pins. The giant
paid small attention to this; he looked down, saw a small thing hanging
about his feet with apparently mischievous intentions, and calmly pushed
it away. Then Lucian began the assault in dead earnest. He could dip his
pen in vitriol with the best of them, and when he realised that the
giant was drunk with the lust of blood he fell upon him with fury. The
vials of poetic wrath had never been emptied of such a flood of
righteous anger since the days wherein Milton called for vengeance upon
the murderers of the Piedmontese.
It is an ill thing to fight against the prevalent temper of a nation.
Lucian soon discovered that you may kick and prick John Bull for a long
time with safety to yourself, because of his good nature, his dislike of
bothering about trifles, and his natural sluggishness, but that he
always draws a line somewhere, and brings down a heavy fist upon the man
who crosses it. He began to find people fighting shy of his company;
invitations became less in number; men nodded who used to shake hands;
strong things were said in newspapers; and he was warned by friends that
he was carrying things too far.
‘Endeavour,’ said one man, an acquaintance of some years’ standing, for
whose character and abilities he had a great regard, ‘endeavour to get
some accurate sense of the position. You are blackguarding us every day
with your sonorous sonnets as if we were cut-throats and thieves going
out on a murdering and marauding expedition. We are nothing of the sort.
We are a great nation, with a very painful sense of responsibility,
engaged in a very difficult task. The war is bringing us together like
brothers--out of its blood and ashes there will spring an Empire such as
the world has never seen. You are belittling everything to the level of
Hooliganism.’
‘What is it but Hooliganism?’ retorted Lucian. ‘The most powerful
nation in the world seizing one of the weakest by the throat!’
‘It is nothing of the sort,’ said the other. ‘You know it is your great
curse, my dear Lucian, that you never get a clear notion of the truth.
You have a trick of seeing things as you think they ought to be; you
will not see them as they are. Just because the Boers happen to be
numerically small, to lead a pastoral life, and to have gone into the
desert like the Israelites of old, you have brought that far too
powerful imagination of yours to bear upon them, and have elevated them
into a class with the Swiss and the Italians, who fought for their
country.’
‘What are the Boers fighting for?’ asked Lucian.
‘At present to grab somebody else’s property,’ returned the other.
‘Don’t get sentimental about them. After all, much as you love us,
you’re only half an Englishman, and you don’t understand the English
feeling. Are the English folk not suffering, and is a Boer widow or a
Boer orphan more worthy of pity than a Yorkshire lass whose lad is lying
dead out there, or a Scottish child whose father will never come back
again?’
Lucian swept these small and insignificant details aside with some
impatience.
‘You are the mightiest nation the world has ever seen,’ he said. ‘You
have a past--such a past as no other people can boast. You have a
responsibility because of that past, and at present you have thrown all
sense of it away, and are behaving like the drunken brute who rises
gorged with flesh and wine, and yells for blood. This is an England with
vine-leaves in her hair--it is not the England of Cromwell.’
‘I thank God it is not!’ said the other man with heartfelt reverence.
‘We wish for no dictatorship here. Come, leave off slanging us in this
bloodthirsty fashion, and try to arrive at a sensible view of things.
Turn your energies to a practical direction--write a new romantic play
for Harcourt, something that will cheer us in these dark days, and give
the money for bandages and warm socks and tobacco for poor Tommy out at
the front. He isn’t as picturesque--so it’s said--as Brother Boer, but
he’s a man after all, and has a stomach.’
But Lucian would neither be cajoled nor chaffed out of his _rôle_ of
prophet. He became that most objectionable of all things--the man who
believes he has a message, and must deliver it. He continued to hurl his
philippics at the British public through the ever-ready columns of the
peace-at-any-price paper, and the man in the street, who is not given to
the drawing of fine distinctions, called him a pro-Boer. Lucian, in
strict reality, was not a pro-Boer--he merely saw the artistry of the
pro-Boer position. He remembered Byron’s attitude with respect to
Greece, and a too generous instinct had led him to compare Mr. Kruger to
Cincinnatus. The man in the street knew nothing of these things, and
cared less. It seemed to him that Lucian, who was, after all, nothing
but an ink-slinger, a blooming poet, was slanging the quarter of a
million men who were hurrying to Table Bay as rapidly as the War Office
could get them there. To this sort of thing the man in the street
objected. He did not care if Lucian’s instincts were all on the side of
the weaker party, nor was it an excuse that Lucian himself, in the
matter of strict nationality, was an Italian. He had chosen to write his
poems in England, said the man in the street, and also in the English
language, and he had made a good thing out of it too, and no error, and
the best thing he could do now was to keep a civil tongue in his head,
or, rather, pen in his hand. This was no time for the cuckoo to foul the
nest wherein he had had free quarters for so long.
The opinion of the man in the street is the crystallised common-sense of
England, voiced in elementary language. Lucian, unfortunately, did not
know this, and he kept on firing sonnets at the heads of people who,
without bluster or complaint, were already tearing up their shirts for
bandages. The man in the street read them, and ground his teeth, and
waited for an opportunity. That came when Lucian was ill-advised enough
to allow his name to be printed in large letters upon the placard of a
great meeting whereat various well-intentioned but somewhat thoughtless
persons proposed to protest against a war which had been forced upon the
nation, and from which it was then impossible to draw back with either
safety or honour. Lucian was still in the clouds; still thinking of
Byron at Missolonghi; still harping upon the undoubted but scarcely
pertinent facts that England had freed slaves, slain giants, and waved
her flag protectingly over all who ran to her for help. The foolishness
of assisting at a public meeting whereat the nation was to be admonished
of its wickedness in daring to assert itself never occurred to him. He
was still the man with the message.
He formed one of a platform party of whom it might safely have been said
that every man was a crank, and every woman a faddist. He was somewhat
astonished and a little perplexed when he looked around him, and
realised that his fellow-protestants were not of the sort wherewith he
usually foregathered; but he speedily became interested in the audience.
It had been intended to restrict admission to those well-intentioned
folk who desired peace at any price, but the man in the street had
placed a veto upon that, and had come in large numbers, and with a
definite resolve to take part in the proceedings. The meeting began in a
cheerful and vivacious fashion, and ended in one dear to the English
heart. The chairman was listened to with some forbearance and patience;
a lady was allowed to have her say because she was a woman. It was a sad
inspiration that led the chairman to put Lucian up next; a still sadder
one to refer to his poetical exhortations to the people. The sight of
Lucian, the fashionably attired, dilettante, dreamy-eyed poet, who had
lashed and pricked the nation whose blood was being poured out like
water, and whose coffers were being depleted at a rapid rate, was too
much for the folk he essayed to address. They knew him and his recent
record. At the first word they rose as one man, and made for the
platform. Lucian and the seekers after peace were obliged to run, as
rabbits run to their warrens, and the enemy occupied the position.
Somebody unfurled a large flag, and the entire assemblage joined in
singing Mr. Kipling’s invitation to contribute to the tambourine fund.
In the school of life the teacher may write many lessons with the
whitest chalk upon the blackest blackboard, and there will always be a
child in the corner who will swear that he cannot see the writing.
Lucian could not see the lesson of the stormed platform, and he
continued his rhyming crusade and made enemies by the million. He walked
with closed eyes along a road literally bristling with bayonets: it was
nothing but the good-natured English tolerance of a poet as being more
or less of a lunatic that kept the small boys of the Strand from going
for him. Men at street corners made remarks upon him which were
delightful to overhear: it was never Lucian’s good fortune to overhear
them. His nose was in the air.
He heard the truth at last from that always truthful person, the man in
liquor. In the smoking-room of his club he was encountered one night by
a gentleman who had dined in too generous fashion, and whose natural
patriotism glowed and scintillated around him with equal generosity. He
met Lucian face to face, and he stopped and looked him up and down with
a fine and eminently natural scorn.
‘Mr. Lucian Damerel,’ he said, with an only slightly interrupted
articulation; ‘Mr. Lucian Damerel--the gentleman who spills ink while
better men spend blood.’ Then he spat on the ground at Lucian’s feet,
and moved away with a sneer and a laugh.
The room was full of men. They all saw, and they all heard. No one
spoke, but every one looked at Lucian. He knew that the drunken man had
voiced the prevalent sentiment. He looked round him, without reproach,
without defiance, and walked quietly from the room and the house. He
had suddenly realised the true complexion of things.
Next morning, as he sat over a late breakfast in his rooms, he was
informed that a young gentleman who would give no name desired earnestly
to see him. He was feeling somewhat bored that morning, and he bade his
man show the unknown one in. He looked up from his coffee to behold a
very young gentleman upon whom the word subaltern was written in very
large letters, whose youthful face was very grim and earnest, and who
was obviously a young man with a mission. He pulled himself up in stiff
fashion as the door closed upon him, and Lucian observed that one hand
evidently grasped something which was concealed behind his back.
‘Mr. Lucian Damerel?’ the young gentleman said, with polite
interrogation.
Lucian bowed and looked equally interrogative. His visitor glowered upon
him.
‘I have come to tell you that you are a damned scoundrel, Mr. Lucian
Damerel,’ he said, ‘and to thrash you within an inch of your beastly
life!’
Lucian stared, smiled, and rose lazily from his seat.
The visitor displayed a cutting-whip, brandished it, and advanced as
seriously as if he were on parade. Lucian met him, seized the
cutting-whip in one hand and his assailant’s collar in the other,
disarmed him, shook him, and threw him lightly into an easy-chair, where
he lay gasping and surprised. Lucian hung the cutting-whip on the wall.
He looked at his visitor with a speculative gaze.
‘What shall I do with you, young sir?’ he said. ‘Throw you out of the
window, or grill you on the fire, or merely kick you downstairs? I
suppose you thought that because I happen to be what your lot call “a
writin’ feller,” there wouldn’t be any spunk in me, eh?’
The visitor was placed in a strange predicament. He had expected the
sweet savour of groans and tears from a muscleless, flabby
ink-and-parchment thing: this man had hands which could grip like steel
and iron. Moreover, he was cool--he actually sat down again and
continued his breakfast.
‘I hope I didn’t squeeze your throat too much,’ said Lucian politely. ‘I
have a nasty trick of forgetting that my hands are abnormally developed.
If you feel shaken, help yourself to a brandy and soda, and then tell me
what’s the matter.’
The youth shook his head hopelessly.
‘Y--you have insulted the Army!’ he stammered at last.
‘Of which, I take it, you are the self-appointed champion. Well, I’m
afraid I don’t plead guilty, because, you see, I know myself rather
better than you know me. But you came to punish me? Well, again, you see
you can’t do that. Shall I give you satisfaction of some sort? There are
pistols in that cabinet--shall we shoot at each other across the table?
There are rapiers in the cupboard--shall we try to prick each other?’
The young gentleman in the easy-chair grew more and more uncomfortable.
He was being made ridiculous, and the man was laughing at him.
‘I have heard of the tricks of foreign duellists,’ he said rudely.
Lucian’s face flushed.
‘That was a silly thing to say, my boy,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘Most
men would throw you out of the window for it. As it is, I’ll let you off
easy. You’ll find some gloves in that cupboard--get them out and take
your coat off. I’m not an _Englishman_, as you just now reminded me in
very pointed fashion, but I can use my fists.’
Then he took off his dressing-gown and rolled up his sleeves, and the
youngster, who had spent many unholy hours in practising the noble art,
looked at the poet’s muscles with a knowing eye and realised that he was
in for a very pretty scrap. He was a little vain of his own prowess,
and fought for all he was worth, but at the end of five minutes he was a
well-licked man, and at the expiration of ten was glad to be allowed to
put on his coat and go.
Lucian flung his gloves into the corner of the room with a hearty curse.
He stroked the satiny skin under which his muscle rippled smoothly. He
had the arm of a blacksmith, and had always been proud of it. The remark
of the drunken man came back to him. That was what they thought of him,
was it?--that he was a mere slinger of ink, afraid of spilling his blood
or suffering discomfort for the courage of his convictions? Well, they
should see. England had gone mad with the lust of blood and domination,
and after all he was not her son. He had discharged whatever debt he
owed her. To the real England, the true England that had fallen on
sleep, he would explain everything, when the awakening came. It would be
no crime to shoulder a rifle and strap a bandolier around one’s
shoulders in order to help the weak against the strong. He had fought
with his pen, taking what he believed to be the right and honest course,
in the endeavour to convert people who would not be converted, and who
regarded his efforts as evidences of enmity. Very well: there seemed now
to be but one straight path, and he would take it.
It was remembered afterwards as a great thing in Lucian’s favour that he
made no fuss about his next step. He left London very quietly, and no
one knew that he was setting out to join the men whom he honestly
believed to be fighting for the best principles of liberty and freedom.