For one day at least Mr. Julian Burgetrode ceased to control anything.
He put on the oldest clothes he could find, a shabby brown Norfolk
jacket, and a pair of old grey knickers and grey stockings. The athlete
in him showed when he put on such clothes, and he looked the long,
gaunt, iron-muscled Viking that he was, a man of many adventures and of
many victories. And yesterday he had won a victory over himself.
Tod came in from his hotel to breakfast with him, fresh-faced,
clean-eyed, carrying himself with a quiet yet boyish dignity. He did not
appear to notice Mr. Burgetrode’s clothes, for with Mr. Burgetrode
clothes did not matter. He would have dominated and effaced a collection
of rags, for the older his clothes were, the better he looked in them.
But he noticed Tod’s.
“Hallo, a new tunic and nice pink breeches!”
“They were waiting for me in town.”
Mr. Burgetrode’s eyes approved of Tod, and approved of him with fierce
affection. He was the finest type that England has produced,
big-hearted, shrewd, yet simple; very grim when thwarted, yet smiling
even when grim; big in the chest, with a fairish and well-squared head;
not too bulky like some of the Germans and Americans; a powerful, quick,
alert figure, never jerky or self-conscious in speech or movement. And
utterly frank; a man who could take blows and keep his temper.
“Porridge?” said Mr. Burgetrode.
“I feel like porridge. What a gorgeous day we’ve got!”
Mr. Burgetrode glanced at the ribbons on Tod’s tunic, the ribbons of the
Military Cross, the M.M. and the Croix de Guerre. He glanced too, at
Tod’s stiff left arm, and the crown and star on his sleeve. And Mr.
Burgetrode was proud, quite absurdly proud, prouder than Tod ever
guessed.
“And I daresay the clever little people in London would think him a very
ordinary sort of man,” he reflected, “so long as there was nothing but
talk. But let a mob get loose, and they would be chattering like
frightened apes behind this big boy’s back. Character—character’s
everything.”
“Where are we going to-day?”
Tod had left it to Mr. Burgetrode.
“What about your boots, Tod? I shall walk you twenty miles.”
“And we attack at the end of it?”
“My idea it to capture Leith Hill. The car drops us at a little place
called East Horsley. We find our way over the downs into Shere, strike
across to Abinger Hatch, lunch there, go on to Leith Hill, on to Ockley,
and then somewhere along the line of the old Staine Street back to
Dorking. The car picks us up there.”
“You won’t be jumping fences to-day, sir?” Tod asked.
“I believe I could beat you at it, my son. Those nice cord
riding-breeches would be something of a handicap!”
December had produced its jewel of a day, a softly clouded amethyst,
with rents of blue sky and splashes of sunlight. The hills were a grey
blue, the valleys full of violet shadow. The day had the soft eyes of a
woman, very gentle and very calm.
Here and there the bracken still had a touch of gold in its brownness,
and so had the fallen leaves. They were crisp to the feet under the
beech trees. The red-throated old Scots firs had a blue bloom on their
tops like the bloom on a grape. Nothing could have been more solemn than
the massed blackness of the spruces.
Old Burgetrode walked with his head up, keen as a boy, smelling the
smell of the woods and finding it good. The fall of the leaf always
stimulated him; there was nothing melancholy about it to a man who was
destined to die in harness.
Tod had been telling him about the last battles, and how he had been
thrilled and touched by all that he had seen in those redeemed French
towns and villages.
“It was worth all those years of slogging, to win back the poor, shabby
old places—with the poor, shabby, plucky people. It made me feel good.
It’s a thing I shall never forget.”
“The most epic thing that ever happened on earth,” said Mr.
Burgetrode—“that and the return of the Serbs. But I’m going to
catechise you, Tod.”
“Right. What in?”
“How did you run your battalion?”
Tod gave a short laugh.
“Towards the end it seemed to run itself. I never had any bother.”
“A complete and self-regulating organism, every cell functioning
automatically? Not quite that, I think! I’m a vitalist, and I always
look for the vitaliser. You were the central stimulus, what?”
“I got things done,” said Tod.
“Exactly. That’s a very simple definition of a vitaliser. And the men?”
“They were good chaps.”
“How did you manage them?”
“If I found a man running crooked I had him up alone and talked to him
absolutely frankly as man to man. I tried to be the father to him; I
gave him that chance.”
“And if he remained bad after that heart to heart talk?”
“I broke him,” said Tod simply; “that was the only thing to do.”
Mr. Burgetrode walked on, head in air, smiling in the deeps of his eyes.
“That is what you are going to do with me—manage men.”
“It’s one of the most interesting games in the world,” said Tod. “I’m
fond of men.”
“You won’t find is so easy in civil life.”
“I don’t suppose I shall.”
“You’ll have no machine behind you save the machine that some of our
visionaries want to smash. All the discipline will have to come out of
yourself. There will be days when you will be tempted to use ferocious
blasphemy, when you feel you could smite some fool on the mouth. If you
try to discipline some blackguard you may find a thousand men on strike.
The solidarity of labour, which may be just organised stupidity.”
“There is a lot of common sense in the average man,” said Tod.
“Yes, when he uses it and doesn’t let himself be tricked by being
tempted with a carrot. Socialism is the carrot just at present—not the
ordered and scientific Socialism that you and I might try to evolve—but
a sort of beautiful dream in which you do half the work you used to do
and get twice the money, and you begin the dream by confiscating other
people’s superfluous possessions. For Socialism, extreme Socialism, to
work effectually, ordinary men would have to be either angels or slaves.
Can’t you see the discipline that would be needed? An army might have
arrived at that state of discipline, a mass of civilians—well, I’ll say
never.”
“You are an individualist?” said Tod.
Mr. Burgetrode laughed.
“Haven’t you glimpsed the real solution—what has happened and will
happen every time? Supposing I accept Socialism, the scheme is not
complete. Individualism will ride on the patient Socialist ass. The
socialised many will be led and managed by the individualised few,
enlightened and sympathetic individuals, no doubt. It is the most
obvious thing that ever there was.”
“I suppose it is. But have the workers ever had their fair share?”
“They haven’t. And in a very short time they will be wanting more than
their fair share. I’m not thinking in money, but in products, the sweat
we give and the sweat we live on—other men’s sweat. We live on other
men’s sweat, mental or manual; that ought to be obvious—even to your
common-sense man, but sometimes it isn’t. John Brown is not going to
sweat for you. Charge him more for his sweat and he’ll retaliate. In the
end the thing becomes ridiculous; there is a row in the tap-room, and
some big person has to restore order. Besides, all this is deep down in
the bowels of Nature. Some people say that we have superseded Nature,
taken over her job. Bosh! Don’t you believe it.”
They were climbing through the woods to Leith Hill, and the
brown-coloured tower showed against a patch of soft grey-cloud.
“Get up high, get a view,” said Julian Burgetrode; “leave your heart
down below to learn, but push your head up to the stars to think.”
They sat down on the great grassy mound and looked south over the trough
of the Weald. The Downs showed in the far south, and even Chanctonbury
Ring was visible, like a patch of smoke from some giant smithy.
“It makes me think of Cassel,” said Tod when he had gazed a long while
in silence.
“Why did they make you a lieutenant-colonel, Tod?” Burgetrode asked him
suddenly.
“Don’t know, I’m sure,” said Tod; “I suppose they knew I was keen.”
“Exactly. Do you know what your trouble is going to be?”
“What?”
“Managing a unit in which half the men think they ought to be
lieutenant-colonels, and want to know why they’re not. The answer’s so
simple, but we seem to be afraid of hurting the working man’s feelings.
He’s so sensitive, so susceptible, and if you offend his dignity he
throws down his tools.”
“I prefer the working man to the rich Jew,” Tod said.
“Tod, my friend, have I ever said that I loved the Jew type? I should
think the Assyrians were the most beastly people who ever lived. I have
a sort of silly fondness for the plain Englishman; but are you going to
play the game by him if you are afraid to stand up and tell him the
truth? People don’t like being told the truth, and the plain man is in a
very nasty temper.”
“What particular truth?”
“That the plain man has got to work damned hard, and that then some of
his dream may come true.”
“Yes,” said Tod.
“That all men are not equal; that all men can’t be colonels, not only
because they are not fit to be colonels, but because a world of colonels
wouldn’t work.”
“But do they want to be colonels?” Tod laughed.
“Ask the women what they want. What has the great cry been? ‘We want a
bigger share in running things.’ Ambition! Quite right. And there you
have Nature’s old primitive cry. These fierce and discontented young men
in Glasgow and Manchester and Sheffield and London—what do they want?
Get to the heart of it. Power! They want to run their own people. Let
them. But when they start the poor ignorant mass like a lot of Gadarene
swine straight for the precipice—what then?”
A sudden grimness came over Tod’s face.
“We had something like that once or twice over there.”
“And you had to stop it.”
“Yes. I was only a second lieutenant then.”
“And what did you do?”
“Used my revolver. It was beastly—the most damnable thing I have ever
had to do. But it stopped it.”
“Quite so. And if the big men fail at a crisis, Nature steps in. Adam,
who has been drunk with words, is scourged back to work. And Nature
shows no mercy. She sets the slave to clean up the mess he has made.”
Mr. Burgetrode paused suddenly and looked at Tod. And then he laughed.
“Beyond the Downs lies the sea, and across the sea is a bit of old
Picardy, where the peasants are at work in the fields and children are
sitting in the school.”
“Sorry, Sir,” said Tod, “I couldn’t help it.”