THE EVACUATION.
Events were moving rapidly. Ever since the Parliament, by a legislative
decree, had authorized the desertion of England, and the eventful day
approached when the King and his household, the Parliament itself, and
the Church and the Titled Estate should, in a formal and expressive
manner, leave England’s shores, the mass of the population had been
diligently hunting about for refuge and occupation. Steamers and ships
had scattered in all directions the fleeing multitudes. Relatives
abroad, friends and even acquaintances offered homes and employment,
no utility now was too small to be considered, nor any designation too
insignificant to merit attention. This scampering was largely among
those who felt the pinch already of idleness and the diminishing chance
of work, among operatives and workmen, clerks and the bread winners of
the middle class. The nobleman and the pauper did not stir.
The English nation had decreed through its legislature, that the
evacuation of the country should be conducted with pageantry, that the
solemn parting should be enrolled in all time honored ceremony and
stately pomp with which kings had been crowned, and for which, with
all its heart and mind, the English nature cries out with unappeasible
hunger. So the moment for the King’s departure, which meant the
official desertion of the Old Home, might be justly compared to the
flight of the queen bee in the bee colony when her faithful followers
swarm after and upon her, and with resolute constancy create a new city
about her inviolable person.
The King was to leave England in June, 1910, and when he left with
sumptuous and melancholy observance, with splendor of color and
depth and power of music, with uniform and ritual, with prayer and
chorus and prophecy, with august and intolerable grandeur, with the
art of tradition and the ornaments of invention, he was to pass down
to Tilbury and sail away beyond Gravesend to the new realm of his
possession on the shores of Australia. It was a pretty hard thing to
believe; it was a harder thing to do.
But it was to be done with all the gorgeous effectiveness which
accumulated traditions of centuries and the practice of every day and
the mere resources in artifices and equipment of a magnificent realm
could display. The day came with splendid beauty, the sun shone over
an England which somewhat returned to the flowery loveliness of its
olden sweet estate. The city had been cleared, though the snowfalls had
reached the most unexpected depth, and the severity of the winter had
been appalling. The meteorologists discovered the fact that the western
and northwestern zones of extreme precipitation, those of eighty inches
had moved inward, and had even exceeded this maximum, and the condition
of the country was really extraordinary and desperate. The immense
accumulations of snow in the outlying districts had risen to such
heights that the low, long houses of the peasantry were covered and the
aspect of the country was that of a Labrador landscape transplanted to
southern latitudes, where trees, stone walls and villages assumed the
place of the more familiar tundra, plains and stone floored plains.
Suffering had been very general, and the importunity of nature had done
more to convince the people that the necessity of removal was an actual
threat, not to be avoided or placated, than the speeches, the tracts of
the scientific societies, or the deliberations of statesmen and editors.
But in London, on this twentieth of June, though the air bore the
strange traces of the changed climate, in its tingling sharpness, yet
this exhilaration only served the purpose of adding swiftness to the
movement of the hosts of people in the streets, and a new and wonderful
tremor of excitement to their eagerness in awaiting the development of
the day’s great preparations.
In the morning the King was to be enthroned in Westminster Abbey, and
to receive the homage of the Peers, and, as usual at a coronation,
the day itself was inaugurated with the firing of a royal salute at
sunrise. A measure of the august and overpowering rites and observances
that mark the assumption of a King’s rule was now to be gone through
with, as a symbol and memento, before the King transferred his throne
to another land; and this ceremonial was emblematic of the unbroken
allegiance of the English nation to his removed majesty.
The King was to ascend the theatre of the Abbey, and be lifted into His
Throne by the Archbishops and Bishops, and other Peers of the kingdom,
and being enthronized, or placed therein, all the great officers, those
that bear the swords and sceptres, and the rest of the nobles, should
stand round about the steps of the throne, and the Archbishop standing
before the King should say the exhortation, beginning with the words,
“Stand firm, and hold fast from henceforth the Seat of State of Royal
and Imperial Dignity, which is this day delivered unto you in the Name
and by the Authority of Almighty God, and by the hands of Us, the
Bishops and Servants of God, though unworthy, etc, etc.”
And then the homage being offered and accepted, the King attended and
accompanied, the four swords--being the sword of Mercy, the sword of
Justice to the Spirituality, the sword of Justice to the Temporality,
and the sword of State--were to be carried before him. He should then
descend from his throne crowned, and, carrying his Sceptre and Rod in
his hands, should go into the area eastward of the theatre, and pass
on through the door on the south side of the altar into King Edward’s
Chapel, the organ and other instruments all the while playing.
The King should then, standing before the altar, deliver the Sceptre
with the Dove to the Archbishop, who would lay it upon the altar there.
The King would then be disrobed of his imperial mantle, and be arrayed
in his royal robe of purple velvet, by the Lord Great Chamberlain.
The Archbishop should then place the orb in his majesty’s left hand.
Then his majesty should proceed through the choir to the west door of
the Abbey, in the same manner as he came, wearing his crown and bearing
in his right hand the Sceptre, with the Cross, and in his left the orb;
all Peers wearing their coronets, and the Archbishops and Bishops their
caps.
The interior arrangements in the Abbey were familiar. From the west
door where the procession should enter to the screen which divides
choir from nave, two rows of galleries were to be erected on each side
of the centre aisle--the one gallery level with the vaultings, the
other with the summit of the western door. These galleries should have
their fronts fluted with crimson cloth richly draped at the top, and
decorated with broad golden fringe at the bottom.
On the floor of the centre aisle a slightly raised platform or carpeted
way, should be laid down, along which the King and Queen, in procession
should pass to the choir. This was to be matted over and covered with
crimson cloth. On the pavement of the aisle bordering this carpeted way
should stand the soldiery as a fence against interference.
The theatre where the principal parts of the ceremony were to be
enacted lies immediately under the central tower of the Abbey, and was
a square formed by the intersection of the choir and the transcepts,
extending nearly the whole breadth of the choir. On this square a
platform was to be erected ascended by five steps. The summit of this
platform and also the highest step leading to it, was to be covered
with the richest cloth of gold. From that step down to the flooring of
the theatre, all was covered with carpet of rich red or purple color
bordered with gold. In the centre of the theatre the sumptuously
draped chair was to be placed for the sovereign, in which he receives
the homage of the Peers.
This interior pomp and splendor escaped the observation of Leacraft,
though he was not unfamiliar with the details of the solemn pageant,
but now it hardly interested him. His mind by a natural emancipation
from the thrall of such spectacles, dwelt rather on the attitude of the
people in this extreme peril and solicitude. He felt inquisitive to
learn their feelings, their hopes, their cohesiveness in the changed
estate. Were they likely to resolve into a chaos of preferences with
only the cry of _sauve qui peut_ in their mouths, or would they follow
the new destinies, and preserve the nation. At length the populace were
coming into their own. It was pretty evident that a King and Queen
and Regalia, and Peers, and Peeresses, and a much surpliced Clergy,
would not make a nation, without the workers, the rent payers, the men
of action, the bread winners, the clerks, artisans, and merchants,
the householder and his family, and that the sacred classes would be
suddenly subjected to a _reductio ad absurdum_, if they formed the
only inhabitants of the new regime and their titles lost their _raison
d’etre_ with the disappearance of the untitled mass.
After the rendering of the Homage at the Abbey, the Procession was to
take place, and the King arriving at Tilbury, with the royal family,
a selection of the Peers, the highest Episcopal prelates, and certain
representative men from the Commons, including the Ministry, would be
received on the Dreadnought, and with a glorious escort of the largest
battleships, carrying the royal equipage, the furniture of Windsor
Castle, and of St. James palace, and of the Buckingham mansion, the
archives of the Parliament, at least a portion, steam away from England
to Australia, to Melbourne. This Nucleus of Government holding the
inseparable insignia, and the actual essence of the English nation
would there, with pomp and solemn allegations, with rolling music and
pious prayers, with thunders of the guns by the Navy, and the salute of
the Army, be as it were reinstalled.
But the route of the procession was not to be straight out of London.
It comprised a broader purpose. It was proposed to circumvallate
London, to impregnate it with the sentiment of the King’s leaving.
It should be traversed and penetrated in all directions, gathering
thus the public allegiance, and absorbing its loyalty, shedding the
effulgence of the royal splendor upon the populace, and enchaining
them anew to the principle and fact of English Sovreignty. It was a
stupendous project. It involved stations and relays. Camps of the
military were to be established at St. James Park, at Victoria Park, at
Regent’s Park, at the West End near Paddington, at Wormwood Scrubs,
and in the southern districts around Clapham Common and towards Putney.
The King was to stop at resting places, and in the largest local
churches, a reduced form of the Homage was to be instituted involving
the _enthronization_, with the displays of the Regalia, and the
jubilation, and the reverence of the people expressed, as always in the
shouts--
God save King Edward!
Long live King Edward!
May the King live forever!
The bells of the churches were to ring, the houses were to hang out
their banners, flags were to cover the streets, bands stationed on
prominent balconies, at points covering the entire long journey through
and around the city, were to play national airs, that so there might
be generated an overwhelming enthusiasm, a tumult of devotion, and
thus constrain the Englishman afresh in the religion of the nation’s
immortality.
It was finely conceived, this elevation of the King. It was gorgeously
executed. The imagination of the people was tremendously impressed, and
the Ark of the Covenant of the eternal supremacy of the English crown
seemed thus visibly incorporated, and presented to them. The procession
was glittering, and it was majestic. It ponderously emphasized the
English idea. There were really two processions, the first from
Westminster to Buckingham Palace, the second through London. In the
first--the King issued from Westminster, his crown borne before him,
but holding in his right hand the Sceptre with the Cross, and in his
left the Orb. Then began the most wonderful State ride through London.
The superb chariot of the King surrounded by heralds, kings at arms,
pursuivants, with judges, councillors, lords, and dignitaries, was
followed by the open carriages of the nobility.
The King was immersed in color. Garter--principal King-at-arms--was
a miracle of dress. He wore a frock or tabard, crimson and gold
emblazoned with the quarters of the United Kingdom. Then there was
the Clarencieux of the South, and Norroy of the North--and the
heralds of Lancaster, Somerset, Richmond, all wonderfully bedight,
and the pursuivants--Rouge Croix, Rouge Dragon, Portcullis, and Blue
Mantel--looking like the genii of a Christmas pantomime. And here with
the King were the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Steward, and the Master
of the Horse. And there followed this cavalcade, surrounding the King
like a many colored fringe, the carriages of the nobles wherein all the
signs of degree, order, rank, were sumptuously shown. Here the robes of
the Peers, crimson velvet edged with miniver--the capes furred with the
same--and powdered with bars or rows of ermine, according to degree,
rolled together in a bank of oscillating glory. Beneath the mantles
a court dress, a uniform, or regimentals were descried. The coronets
were even worn, and as the scintillating groups passed, eager admirers
separated the coronet of the baron with its six silver equidistant
balls, from the coronet of a viscount with sixteen, from the coronet
of an earl with eight balls raised on points, and with glistening gold
strawberry leaves between the points, from the coronet of a marquis
with four gold strawberry leaves alternating with four silver balls,
and from the coronet of a duke with the eight gold strawberry leaves.
Nor did beauty hesitate to add its witchery to the sports of splendor,
and in behalf of that ancient idea of Monarchy, which now was enlisted
against a deep peril of mistrust and repudiation. The Peeresses formed
part of the procession. Their scarlet kirtles over the petticoats of
white satin and lace, their flowing sleeves slashed and furred, their
cushioned trains heaped in confusion in the carriages, and relieved by
shining plaques of silver silk, were still more bewilderingly graced by
jewelry, by oceans of gems resplendently transfigured in the blazing
sun. In this momentous pageant the limits of the spectacular were
invaded, even distended, in which some saw not only a lack of good
taste, but the pressure of a little fear.
Even the church advanced the bold bid for admiration and wonder. It
sent out its archbishops, bishops, rectors, canons, prebendaries and
deacons, to compose parts of the vast exhibit to be interwoven in the
variegated human carpet that filled the streets. Before the churches
that were passed, choirs gathered and sang melodiously; the strong
religious fibre of the English men and women was sedulously appealed
to, or else it was the elemental flaming forward of their powerful
conviction. At this strange moment there was less of pretence and trick
than sincerity. The heart of the people was steadfastly united with the
old traditions; they clung unbrokenly to the inheritance of English
greatness. There was no reason to doubt their faith.
The route of the second marvellous procession was from the Abbey
through Bird Cage Walk past Victoria monument to Procession road, to
the Strand, to Fleet street, over Ludgate hill, past St. Paul’s, to
Cheapside, to Bishops street, to Shoreditch, to Hackney street, and so
out to Victoria Park and Homerton. Back again to Highbury Fields, south
by Essex road to Pentonville road, to Euston road, to Marylebone road,
through Regents Park, through Hampstead road to Hampstead, to West
Side, through Edgeware road to Hyde Park, and the Bays water to Holland
park, to Hammersmith road, by Hammersmith bridge road to Castelnau;
thence to Putney, to Battersea, to Clapham, to Camberwell, thence to
Walworth road, by London road, by Waterloo road to Westminster bridge,
to the Houses of Parliament, and on the banks of the river Thames to
the Tower, and on through White Chapel, Mile End road, Bow road, to
Bromley, to Stratford, to Barking, to Tilbury.
Nothing so prodigious had ever been conceived; and the resources of the
empire, of the military, and the squadrons of the colonists, who should
again, as at the Jubilee of Queen Victoria, present the diversified
elements of English power, would be involved.
At Tilbury on the Essex bank, opposite Gravesend, where rise the low
bastions of Tilbury Fort, originally constructed by Henry III, King
Edward the VII, would in a fashion diverse, and with a different end in
view, also declare that he “had the heart and stomach of a King, and of
a King of England too,” as had said Queen Elizabeth. But now it should
be said by a King unappalled by the invasion of the powers of the air,
as she was before the power of Spain, but now said with undiminished
confidence and high hope, though said too with obedience to the supreme
mandate of expulsion.
Before it took place, Leacraft and Thomsen began their long walk from
Ludgate hill, and Leacraft intently watched the street crowds. He
noted also with recording interest the groups in the balconies with
lunch baskets. The expectant air everywhere was not unnoticeably
mingled with a kind of frightened silence. There was not much noise,
no indiscriminate hubbub in the streets, and where groups were
encountered, hurrying to their destination, they were quiet and
restrained. Tension was evident, a high strung expectancy verging with
impalpable approach upon tears, and the agony of penitential promises.
The fundamentally religious optimism of the Englishman was confounded,
and his acceptance of invisible guidance made itself seen in faces
desolated by the grief of tears.
The preparations were remarkable and elaborate. The windows were filled
with chairs. Platforms were erected, almost luxuriously draped with red
cloth and scarlet velvet, and surging crowds in spots seemed to bely
the significance of the portentous moment. From time to time as the two
observers walked in the middle of the street, they stopped reluctantly
to notice signs of mourning. These took on the form of trailing
streamers of crape, hung upon white cloth and their singularity amid
the almost bombastic surplusage of scarlet dressings, awoke protest and
resentment. At one point there was a particularly conspicuous dismal
challenge to the susceptibilities of the spectators in a balcony loaded
with sombre trappings which gained a startling prominence because of
the patriotic and cheerful decorations on either side of it. Before
this lugubrious appeal a small group of malcontents had gathered, and
were indulging in incendiary criticism.
“Hits no use turning a sour face to the thing. What’s got to be, is
got to be, and a little heart will keep a sour stomach from making
itself sick. Hi say we’re hall in the same boat, and cheerfulness makes
pleasant company. Such a show as that hought not to be tolerated, Hi
say.” This belligerency came from the thick lips of a red faced man,
who had his coat over his arm, and whose leathern leggings, corduroy
knee breeches, and flaming weskit with a high collar strapped to his
muscular neck by a pea green scarf, betokened a representative of the
“fancy,” or an ostler turned out for a day’s holiday.
“Indeed I think so,” squealed a thin, short man with a red nose and a
curious habit of wiping his mouth with a yellow handkerchief. “It’s
hard enough for the sufferin’ masses to leave hearth, home, and, I
may say, family, not to be saddened more’n than is natural with these
funereal suggestions.”
“Well,” shouted a sturdy arrival on the other limit of the circle;
“Let’s tear them down. The quickest way to cure trouble is to git
rid of it. It’s rotten insultin’ to stick those weeds under our
noses.” Under the influence of these defiant words the knot of men
moved towards the objectionable drapery with evidently unfriendly
intentions. But they had not been unobserved from the inside of
the house on whose front these sad reminders hung. A window shot up
and a tall slender woman advanced to the edge of the balcony. She
was dressed deeply in black, her neck was surrounded by some white
crepe stuff, and the sentiment, as Howells has it, of her dress was
a pathetic suggestion of bereavement and misfortune. Her hair, yet
luxuriant, was plentifully sprinkled with gray; her face had the
authorized look of nobility and distinction. She was yet prepossessing,
though the crowding years had brought her past middle life. The
distinctive impression she made upon Leacraft, as he and Thomsen,
somewhat withdrawn, watched the denouement of this street episode,
was that of abiding sorrow, patiently borne, and doubtless united
in her, with Christian resignation and unsullied piety. A beautiful
picture of the English woman, who resolutely lives her earnest life of
prayer and self-sacrifice, holding intensely to her heart some fond
memory, wreathed in amaranth. And Leacraft, as an Englishman, blessed
Providence there were such. The men on the street were a little abashed
by the pale face and lofty mien of the lady who had recognized their
purpose, and placed herself there to thwart it.
She came forward and instantly spoke; her voice was excessively clear,
but an underlying mellowness imparted an extreme sweetness to its
tones.
“My friends you wish these mourning signs taken away. They offend
you. But when you know that they express to me the approaching loss
of all my friends, you will not, I think, feel so harshly about them.
The King, in a week, leaves the shores of England--the evacuation of
England begins to-day--and with the King goes the great English nation
and this wonderful city with all its memories, with its beauty, its
historic power, its incessant interest, our common home for all our
lifetimes, will dwindle and dwindle and disappear, lost in arctic snows
and ice, at least so they tell us.
“But I shall stay. In this house suffering has come to me; it has never
left _me_. I shall not leave _it_. I mourn for those who in going away
die to English pride, to English love, to English devotion, and”--she
leaned out over the sullen men beneath her--“and die to me. These black
films are for them.”
She stopped. The men, worried and puzzled and surprised, looked a
little sheepishly at each other.
“Oh, well,” said he of the hostler type, “my leddy, no offense, seein’
how you feel about it. Hi say--’ave your way.”
“Yes, yes,” squealed the preacher, “if the empty badges of mournin’
give ennyone--ennyone--satisfaction, why it’s not in reason to question
their motives in this excroociating moment.”
“Gad! the lady’s right,” shouted the former belligerent, whose prompt
hint had at first nearly precipitated the riot, “She’s got the right
ring--and I’m damned if anyone teches the rags there I’ll bust his
cock-eyed head aff his shoulders.”
This vociferous statement produced a hubbub of approval, and won many
distinct admissions of entire acquiescence--and with these reassuring
murmurs the lady retired, after telling her thanks, and the gathering
withdrew down the street.
Leacraft and Thomsen continued their way westward. Before them
suddenly, after a half-hour’s sauntering, shone an avenue of military
splendor. They were in Charing Cross, having pushed down the Strand,
and they were on the south side of Trafalgar Square, and not far from
the equestrian statue of Charles I. Trafalgar Square was filled with
troops. The effect of color was transporting. The massed regiments of
infantry were broken by parks of artillery, while immediately under
Nelson’s column the Nineteenth Hussars--the “Dumpies of 1759,” the
Fifteenth Hussars--“Elliott’s Light Horse,” the Sixteenth Lancers--“the
Queen’s,” and the Thirteenth Hussars--“the ragged brigade”--were
confusedly stationed, their mingling busbies and dependent bags looking
like a garden patch.
From point to point issued galloping videttes, carrying their pennants
on lance-heads affixed to the stirrups, which undulated in the air,
as the horses pranced and caracolled. The tramp of troops, the sighing
of bugles, and the resounding surges of music, surrounded them. It was
afternoon. The beginning of the first day’s procession from the Abbey
doubtless was at hand. The stirring air communicated the thrills of an
immense event, and the people, petrified into attention, stood crushed
against each other in rows of forlorn expectancy. The suffocating
excitement was unbearable, the more so because of its immobility.
Leacraft decided to rush through London, and reach Victoria Park, the
Hackney Marshes and Clapton, in order to determine the attitude, the
action, of the poorer classes. Thomsen was unwilling to desert the
fermenting throngs around Trafalgar Square, or miss, for a moment,
the kaleidoscope of changing soldiery, and so Leacraft, leaving him,
entered a hansom and shot off.
He was not averse to this solitude. His affections for Miss Tobit had
lately warmed into a less indifferent kindliness, and he began to
feel a gnawing anxiety lest the pretty Scotch woman thought less of
him--in the way lovers like--than she did of her cousin, the handsome
and obnoxiously unconcerned Thomsen. Thomsen knew exactly Leacraft’s
feelings, and regarded them with unconcealed forbearance, and--what
was more provoking--with a frank condescension of sympathy. And yet
the men had become good friends; they had talked long and seriously,
with all the elements of critical guidance they could summon, about the
strange reversal or revolution in the nation’s affairs. But at these
moments they were in an impersonal frame of contact, and the personal
exigencies which later crept between them, were all absent. Leacraft’s
intellectual weight easily made itself felt in these discussions,
and Thomsen, with cordial alacrity, assumed the obedient position of
audience and pupil.
As Leacraft was driven eastward in the swinging vehicle, he flung
himself against its cushions, and again thought of the monstrous and
incredible metamorphosis in the fortunes of his people. The vigorous
life of ten centuries, with all its memories, the heaped up riches of
its achievements, the splendid literary legacy of the past, with its
art, its lineaments of beauty, its dusky shadows, the solicitous charm
of its contrasted periods of history, the deep encrustation, nay,
rather, the unfathomable deposits of character, and accomplishment
which overlaid the Kingdom of England, and, in this city of London,
the beating heart of its vast interests, thickly choked each avenue
and current of its life--to abandon all this at the summons of a
temperatural caprice, at the tempestuous whim of an earthquake, before
the blind violence of frost and snow and ice, was the most unendurable
of humiliations! It bit too deeply at the generalized assumption of
the whole world, that man ruled the earth; it soured the contentment
of his avid vanity, and to the Englishman it assailed the hitherto
impregnable fortress of his heroic conceit. And yet--the old dream
of a greater England arose, as it had arisen a hundred times before,
in all these troubling and disconcerting months--an England leaping
forward, as an exultant youth, bearing in his hands the trophies of new
and brighter conquests, flushed under changed environments, with the
inspiration of new ambitions, and new powers of creation, issuing into
a greater chapter of human growth than had ever before been conceived
or written.
And yet what an eviction! This glorious old England, with its sweet
homes, its innumerable beauties, its convincing happiness of downs and
glade and gardens, flowering into clouds of blossoms, its lakes, its
gentle streams, its æsthetic softness and dimness, its manifold and
opulent charm of landscape, the hurrying and constant kisses of its
moist skies, in league with all the graces of the seasons--to cast this
aside, and begin again, elsewhere, in regions drear and sterile of all
these things; ah! that was too hard! too hard! and, as he had often
done, Leacraft covered his face with his hands and sobbed.
Amid these fluctuating thoughts and feelings, the hansom swung with
vehement oscillations along the streets, in the more deserted parts
of London, and brought its occupant in sight of the Bethnal Green
Museum, from which a diversion along Old Ford Road and Approach Road,
flung him into Victoria Park, the huge playground of the poorer eastern
section of the city. He was driven to the eastern part of the immense
reservation, and was gratified to find a public meeting in progress,
the exact thing he most wished to be present at, and to estimate.
In a broad and treeless area of the park, with the grass showing
hesitatingly after the long winter, but vivid also in spots, in the
strong light of the afternoon, with an atmosphere strangely variant
from the traditional, and, to Leacraft, much loved velvety softness
and mellowed obscuration of former days, were gathered a multitude of
people. They surrounded a speaker, who, on some sort of improvised
platform, with a knot of associated leaders, with a swaying body and
occasionally outstretched hands, was engaged in a harangue which was
received with attention unattended by the slightest demonstration of
assent or disapproval. It looked from a short distance almost like a
devotional assembly, it seemed so reverently silent, and as Leacraft
approached, this impression was partially at least verified, for the
speaker’s hands ceased their agitated appeal, the occasional higher
cries proceeding from his lips died away, and a song or hymn burst
suddenly from the still motionless multitude. It lasted for an instant,
perhaps a single verse, and as Leacraft drew near, another man from
the platform group stood up, and stepped to the front of the small
stand. At that precise moment the cannonading, agreed upon as a signal,
announced the starting of the royal cortege, and the sad beginning
of the imperial evacuation of England. It was heard with far away
reverberations, as it was repeated from other nearer points, and this
vagueness, by a congruity of effect with the dull misery weighing on
Leacraft’s heart, seemed to give to it a deeper poignancy of grievous
import. It produced the impression of an irrevocable doom. As the
sounds were heard by the assembled crowds, the speaker lifted his hand
and raised his face skyward, as if in supplication, the heads were all
uncovered by one spontaneous impulse, and, caught in the same wave of
feeling, Leacraft sought the invocation of his own blessing on the King
and all he stood for.
The interrupted speaker began his address. The man was a strong type.
His face was somewhat leisurely framed in short whiskers, confined
to his cheeks; his eyes were large, blue and unblinking, with a
resolute look in them that had the merit of extorting, at least,
a respectful recognition; his complexion met all the requirements
of the English reputation for color, but it left no impression of
having attained its superior brilliancy through less innocent means
than exercise and personal care. His broad, high forehead--a little
heightened in its expansive effect through the faltering recession of
the iron grey hair that stood a little stiffly above it--rose above
the admirably firm nose, whose size and contour formed to the reader
of physiognomies another compelling admonition to give its wearer the
rational allegiance of attention. The man’s voice was musical, with
a single intonation that imparted to it much carrying power, and it
yielded to certain tendencies of relaxation in speaking that gave it
almost a feminine sweetness. Leacraft put him down for a labor leader
of a sort, character and design belonging to the best elements of the
current labor thought and organization; a man of that impressive stamp
in modern adjustments of self-assertion, of which John Burns was so
extraordinary an example.
He had begun his speech as Leacraft, with insistent zeal, pushed his
way deeply toward the centre and margins nearer the stage, of the
attentive throng.
“My friends, we must think for ourselves. We are not likely to have
our thinking done for us to the best advantage. Now there are some
plain, undeniable facts. They are the kind of facts which cannot be hid
under a bushel basket, nor, for that matter, under a king’s crown. One
of the most intelligible of these facts--and it is fundamental--is
that the number of individual heads apportioned to the same number
of paired legs make up the population, and units of population make
nations, and nothing else can. An aggregate of gentlemen dressed in
wigs, or holding truncheons sticking out of purple and gold-braided
shawls never has, and, from sheer destitution, never could make a
nation. By all the signs around us, and I am willing to accept them
without any question, this country of ours is going to move; is about
to begin housekeeping somewhere else, and I think it is an imperative
necessity for the success of such a change that everyone living now on
this island and calling himself an Englishman, must move also, and move
to the same place (Hear, Hear,). But that moving is conditioned. It is
indispensably necessary that we proclaim that condition, and insist
upon its acceptance. We hold the situation in our own hands. We control
the key to the future, to make or mar, or destroy the continuity of the
English name. Why? Because if to-morrow the English workingman refused
to follow the English flag to Australia, and took his wisdom, his tools
and his savings somewhere else, that flag would lose twenty millions
of subjects, and would wave over a remnant that could not ensure its
protection or its support. (Hear, Hear). But the condition?”
The speaker paused, sweeping his eyes over the sea of upturned faces,
as if he was hunting through the chaotic assemblage for the disclosure
of some particular visage which, either as an ally or an opponent,
might receive the shock of his omnipotent secret. Whether he discovered
the facial invitation or not, was not revealed in his subsequent
action. He wheeled sideways to the stiffened line of men behind
him--doubtless expectant and impatient numbers in the afternoon’s
programme--and bringing his clenched right hand into the hollowed palm
of his left hand, shouted, and not discordantly: “The condition is the
abolition forever of the Law of Entail that to-day makes us a servile
race.”
Again he paused, as if so ponderous a statement, so fiercely declared,
would elicit a demonstration--but to Leacraft’s abounding wonder, not
a sound arose from the vast audience. Whether it was appalled, or
thrilled, interested, or pleased, or dumbfounded, it gave no sign. Its
immutable decree for the speaker to go on was its very silence. No
public orator could conveniently, with respect to his own sensitive
needs for public encouragement, stop there. But he had become cautious.
He felt that perchance his auditors yet held mental reservations in
favor of things as they were, as they wished them to continue.
“I say, with all my heart and soul,” he went on, “stay with the
Flag, stay with the King, stay with our lords and ladies, but on
one condition as freemen, to whose keeping now in this hour of peril
they are wholly given. Into your hands the God of Nations entrusts
their fate, but that fate can only be propitious as you are true to
yourselves, your children, and your children’s children.”
Then came the long delayed approval. A wave of excited pleasure brushed
across the crowds, and the hand-clapping, begun in many separate
centres, ran together, and with shouts of acquiescence, with cheers,
with central and periphera, agitation, the huge aggregate expressed its
tumultuous adhesion. Leacraft felt that the loyalty of these people was
not impaired, and that the logic of events would still hold them united
in a consentaneous allegiance at least, to the idea of the English
nation, though it was pretty evident that the democratic claims of a
wider opportunity for personal, for family promotion, leavened all
their feelings, and that in the new regime it might be expected, that a
great deal of the present relation of the classes would be swept away,
and that the old time idolatry of degree, the mere flunkeyism of homage
to name and geneological prestige, among the masses, had shrunken into
nothingness.
The stage was again occupied by a speaker, who was interested in very
practical and urgent questions, the _how_ and _where_ and _when_, the
disposition of the emigrants to the new country, and he revelled in
plans, provisions, details of occupancy, and employment. He showed
conclusively the power and effectiveness of organization, and the
surprising accommodations that can be extracted from the most forlorn
prospects by a shrewd use of forethought and combination. Funds had
been scraped together, settlements, as yet in the dream stage of
realization created, and a practical socialism consummated in the
confederation of a large numbers in one common venture. This aspect
of the emigration was dwelt upon by the speaker with some rigor. It
was a surprise to Leacraft, and lent a strange expression to the still
irreconcilable spectacle of Englishmen looking for a new home.
Leacraft soon tired of sums, schedules, names, and lists, and wandered
away over the park through the scattered groups, many centred around
one of those popular tribunes, who, by reason of a little more
leisure, perhaps a little more application, and always much more
labial facility, influence their class profoundly. The broad lawns
were filled with these improvised parliaments, in which too banter,
argument, retort, query, admonition bore a part. The perplexing thing
was the average satisfaction shown by the people, a kind of holiday
anticipation, as if they were off for an excursion. To them perhaps
it seemed a new start in life, with the ground less encumbered by
rivals, by restrictions, less shadowed by priority, and favors for a
few, and by the intimidation of a necessary subserviency. They almost
seemed happy in the thought of change. There was bitterness in this,
and yet to Leacraft with his undissembling and emancipated mind it
was understood. It meant _chance_ to these people--this removal; and
to most of them chance never came, never could come as they were.
And then to linger, was starvation, loneliness, disuse, death. The
business of the country had enormously shrunken, its productive power
had been halved, commerce was drifting in stronger and steadier
currents elsewhere, and no where so strongly as to Germany, while the
over mastering pre-eminence of America loomed up in proportions that
paralysed conjecture.
Pondering on all these things Leacraft, in his absorbed way, stumbled
over a little girl on the edge of one of the shaded walks. He quickly
stooped and picked her up, and confronted the young mother, already
hastening to the rescue of her child.
“I should have been more careful,” said the embarrassed gentleman.
“Well, indeed we have all good reason to be thinking more than seeing,
these times,” said the smiling mother, “I wonder what we’ll all be like
this time, come twelve month.”
“Oh, I dare say that we shall be doing much the same thing that we do
here, in a different place--and then we shall be a year older;” the
young woman laughed, and attested a complete willingness to talk more,
as she raised the ruffled child from the grass and moved nearer to
Leacraft. Nor was Leacraft indifferent. He felt nettled, and willful,
with a subconsciousness of disappointment and fear. This human and
healthy mother, with the fresh guerdon of her blushing youth in her
arms, was a helpful companion, and then she carried the solace of some
new story, perhaps a new need, and Leacraft was not averse to being
sympathetic or helpful.
“Willie, that’s my man, sir,” continued the girl, “is right glad to
get away. Last Candlemas his mother died, and left Willie her savings,
and that, and what we have, will tide us to America, and Willie he
says that he can get a home, and have a little land, and Willie will
be better of his sickness. He’s not here the day, because of his cough
and the fever that he has. Ah! sir, it makes me chill at my heart to
see him, and to think that we are going so far,” and the sweet face
looked piteously at Leacraft, and the tears overran the sad gray eyes.
Leacraft saw it all; a consumptive father, poor, out of work, staking
everything now to reach that bourne, where the hopeless of all nations
saw the welcome light of opportunity. As he thought of this he saw
how great this avulsion was, what a tearing up of the roots of family
and home life, and how ruthlessly they were to be planted in all
sorts of soils, under alien skies, with inauspicious hands to tend
and raise them. He turned to the young mother, and said, “It won’t
seem so far, if a face from the old home greets you there. I shall be
there also, and I will not only be glad to see you, but glad to help
you, if you need it. Take this,” and opening his card case, he wrote
an address in New York city. “If,” he continued, “you do not remain
in New York, this will always find me. Good bye.” He extended his
hand and shook with unaffected warmth the hand of the young English
woman, to whom the future loomed up in misty and insecure, perhaps
menacing shadows. How merciful is sympathy, with what a solacing hand
it soothes the “ruffled brow of care,” and how genially it bids the
springs of life still follow, and, for a moment at least, flow too in
the sunlight of affection. The English woman seized Leacraft’s hand
and pressed it tightly, and her face looked into his with almost an
enamored thankfulness; she raised the baby girl and held it close to
Leacraft, and the restrained Englishman kissed it with quaint shyness.
At the instant, all the shifting helplessness about him moved him
inexpressibly. Again they shook hands and the Englishman betrayed into
emotional excess, walked rapidly away, reassuring her at the last that
he would indeed be soon in America.
A few feet away a different encounter swept him into a contrasted
realm of emotional excitement. A rude brawling loafer, none too sober,
and reckless in oaths and obscenity, had seized the small flags of two
little boys--union jacks--and throwing them down on the ground, with
an outburst of profanity trampled and defaced them. The Englishman
inflamed and ardent, holding a wounded heart, stood stupified and
insulted. The next instant and he had snatched the flags from their
degradation, and with an instantaneous revulsion struck the culprit of
this outrage squarely in the face. The blow was unmistakably adequate.
The ruffian reeled and fell and failed to regain his feet, before a
shout of applause greeted Leacraft and a concourse of men, who had
hastened to the spot on the outcry of the children surrounded him with
welcome salutation.
“A fine blow--well hit and straight as a gunshot man! That was the
right medicine for his complaint. I’m thinking that a little water
might wash it down. I say, boys, let’s duck him, souse him in the lake.
A tubbing might clean his sassy mouth, and a man is none too good to be
rolled in the mud himself, who treads on the English flag.” The subject
of this criticism was on his feet again in rather a belligerent mood,
blinking and rolling his fists in a minatory fashion, and sputtering
defiance, and presenting a transient spectacle of inebriety and
coarseness that would have been ludicrous, if the temper of the men
behind the new speaker had not seemed so hostile. Leacraft felt that
they would do some serious mischief to the miserable delinquent, and he
stepped in front of them interposing his body between the foremost of
the ranks, and the, now somewhat intimidated drunkard.
“I think my friends, that you should spare yourselves the trouble to
punish this miscreant just now. Let him alone. Neither he or his kind
are likely to hurt our flag. He has learned his lesson. To-day my
friends it becomes us to command ourselves, and hold ourselves above
resentment. We are all sad, our hearts are heavy, the old Manse is
to be left and new conquests across the waters made, new homes. Ah!
how large the vision grows.” The men had enclosed Leacraft in a dense
circle. He saw that he had their attention, while the stumbling object
of their first anger effected a shuffling retreat with ignominious
haste. His ruse now was to entirely capture their thoughts. “It is a
vision of a new England, one made so by our devotion, the fixed quality
of our patriotism, an undeviating union among ourselves, and just pride
in our history, our race, our King. It may be a better England; it can
not be a more beautiful England. We are deeply stricken. While we bow
to this necessity, let us make the grandest display of fortitude of
resource, of hope, of courage, of skill, of judgment, ever known. In
our disaster we shall again conquer the world and hold it submissive
at our feet.”
Leacraft had enough disengagement of thought to half smile to himself
at this grandiloquent pretense, but he knew his audience. It was quite
British, embued with that cloutish conceit which all popular masses in
every successful nation instinctively display. He had appealed to their
conceit, though not only to that, and they responded enthusiastically.
As he finished this mild buncombe, not without some misgivings as
to his own honesty, as he intended at first to repair to the United
States, the men nearest to him grasped his hand, others shouted
approbation, and still others in silence moved away shaking their
heads. Leacraft talked with the men about him. He found that they had
been assigned places in the scheme of emigration; some were going to
Australia, with a systematic dispersion over the region, which most
needed their labor, others to New Zealand into socialistic farming;
others to the cape and Rhodesia and still others to Canada; so that his
exalted sentiment of solidarity lost a little of its impressiveness.
Leacraft lingered a while longer, and as the day ended in a refulgent
sunset with church bells, near and far ringing to the services, that
now for a week would be held at all hours, inaugurating an unbroken
intercession at the throne of grace for the guidance and protection of
the people, he left his cordial acquaintances and went westward.
He reached Park Lane near the Kensington Gardens, Gloucester House,
and the fountain of Thornycroft, the region of Mayfair, the dazzling
centre, the illustrious apse of English social splendor, where the
inherited privileges of life were not discordantly blended with the
no less inherited gifts of fortune; that spot in all London which
to relinquish, would seem to sound the depths of national disgrace.
The moon swam in the lucent sky, the air was clear, but cold, and
the familiar ravishing softness of the June nights as London knew
them once, was gone; those illumined mists, the dewyness that spread
from the ground to the enveloping air, and threw veil over veil of
shimmering opacity upon arch and tower, sward, tree, bridge and storied
palace, was all gone, too, and the beautiful neighborhood, as Leacraft
wandered through it, from Cumberland Gate--where he saw snow still
resting in sheltered recesses--along Park Lane to Hyde Park Corners,
through Grosvenor Place to Chapel street, to Belgrave Square, was
revealed in an aerial sincerity, that gave its splendor an almost
scintillant loveliness, and drove still deeper into Leacraft’s heart
the sense of a bewildering bereavement.
The streets were filled with flying equipages, and the mansions were
ablaze, the sidewalks held few pedestrians, and as Leacraft sorrowfully
moved through the stately purlieus, music swept out from open windows
or swinging doors. Often he paused and watched the descending occupants
of the carriages; they were entrancing women and peerless men, their
laughter was silvery and undismayed, unchecked by tears. Could it
be possible that these inner esoteric circles of London high life
and unimaginable wealth indulged in revelry; could not the crash and
fall of empires turn the votaries of gayety to soberer thoughts, or
stifle the intoxicating voice of pleasure? Leacraft wondered, and
the weariness of a great suspense weighed him down; the ingrained
Puritanism of his nature raged against this heartlessness, this
indecent bravado, a mockery of joy, where all should be shadowed with
the sighs of penitence and supplication.
Leacraft was bitterly offended at this apparent heartlessness; it
startled him beyond the limits of endurance; he looked for some
representative of this foolish life, upon whom to turn with rebuke
and denunciation. Leacraft wandered on in a disconsolate mood, and
the growing indications, with the falling night, that the fashionable
world of London was engaged, in a preconcerted way, to spend the last
hours of its metropolitan sojourn in a spendthrift vortex of excitement
and conviviality moved him to muttered objurgations. He had slipped
past Hyde Park Corners, past the Apsley House, and had glided with
hastening steps, as his passion of revolt, at this unseemly loss of
self-respect, rose to a towering indignation, into Grosvenor Square.
He stood facing the long facade, where in repetitive elegance, with
columned porches and mansard roofs, and wall-like chimneys, the
mansions of the very rich, illumined at all their windows, poured forth
a torrent of light. Aggrieved and stupefied, he shot into Berkley
Square, and still no interruption to the aspect of mad revelry. Could
it be a frenzied spasm of indulgence, before separation forever from
the bliss of the West End, that terrestrial paradise of swelldom and
financial and social glory? He wondered. And thus wondering, he came
to Devonshire House, fronting Piccadilly. The comfortable home, with
its small brick work, peeking chimney pots, the low entablature and
triple doors behind the iron gateway, and the unbroken watch of the
woman-headed sphinxes, on either side of the elevated escutcheon of
the Kingdom, was there, encompassed by its imprisoning walls--and
here, too, the effrontery of lavish gayety assaulted his eyes. The
gates were flung wide open, powdered footmen were ranged before the
doors, arriving and departing carriages threaded Piccadilly with
conscienceless celerity, music uttered its delicious melodies, and in
them was no requiem note, no throb of sorrow, and the guests crowding
into its dazzling halls seemed untouched by thoughts less careless
than the joys of the fleeting moments, whose hurrying steps were
bringing the dawn of disaster to England. Exasperated, Leacraft turned
on his heel in disgust, and was going towards Leicester Square, when a
sharp report somewhere on the side of the Geological Museum, and ahead
of his position, startled him, and the next instant he saw a carriage,
with prancing steeds, plunging down the street, the swaying figure of
the driver denoting his complete loss of control, while on one side of
the equipage, that side towards Leacraft, the pale face of a gentleman
was seen, and beside him the distracted visage of an elderly lady.
As the carriage approached Leacraft, it crossed the street, and the
front wheels collided with the curbing. This administered a slight
detention, and the struggling horses turned again to the opposite side
of the thoroughfare. Quick to see his advantage, Leacraft sprang to the
head of the nearer horse, and exerting all his strength, which was not
inconsiderable, he succeeded in tripping the beast, and as it fell the
traces holding its companion broke, and the freed creature raced away
down the avenue. The driver leaped to the sidewalk and held the now
imprisoned horse, which, starting to its feet, stood trembling beside
him, while Leacraft hastened to the door of the vehicle to liberate its
occupants.
He had already been forstalled by the gentleman himself, who pushed
the door back as Leacraft reached it and stepped to the walk,
followed instantly by the lady in much commotion and disorder. Their
agitation was short lived, and succumbed to the exercise of their own
self-control. It was the gentleman who first spoke: “I am under the
deepest obligation to you, sir, for your quickness and your courage.
You may readily have saved us from a miserable fate. And”--Leacraft
interrupted: “You were going to some _rendezvous_ of pleasure; this,
sir, in my opinion, on the eve of the nation’s assassination deserved
punishment.” The speech was crude, rude perhaps, and the bitter
taunt smote the stranger like a physical blow. He recoiled from it
as if the sting of a cowhide had crossed his face. His face itself
was a study. He stared at Leacraft, and as the latter met his gaze
unflinchingly the pale face, distinguished in outline, feature, and
expression, flushed to the temples, while the eyes seated under bushy
brows gazed at Leacraft with a peculiar earnestness, not relieved of
the dangerous suggestion of a rising passion. His companion understood
his excitement, she clutched his arm, and seemed to apprehend a
physical outbreak. Then the mouth opened, and spoke, and the voice was
unexpectedly calm, and the utterances measured: “We are under deep
obligation to you sir, but it is difficult for me to restrain myself
before the false statements you have ventured to make. Can you explain
this insult?”
He moved nearer to Leacraft who did not budge, but inspired with an
increasing vigor of disgust, and eager to summarily remonstrate at the
seeming cruelty of the parade about him, its grotesque wickedness,
said: “I do not wish to take advantage of the accidental relations
which have thus unexpectedly thrown us together. But surely it is
known among men, and known bitterly among Englishmen that the shadows
of an awful twilight are falling about them, and the Nation’s Day is
closing. At such a crisis can it be possible for men and women, calling
themselves English, in whom the memory of English fame and English
glory, is still a present pride, can it be possible that at this moment
they still consort for amusement, for display, for the fugitive follies
of mutual admiration? This aristocracy is the head and forefront of the
nation, and it should now be bowed in penitence, in supplication, in
the agony of self inquiry, and it stupifies me to find them gay, when
the heart of England is breaking with grief.”
A curious metamorphosis worked in the lineaments of the gentleman he
was addressing. The hard lines relaxed, and a wistful smile, that
drew its occult meaning from the man’s interior sadness, stole softly
over his face. He put out his hand, which Leacraft accepted, and he
returned Leacraft’s pressure. There was an instant’s silence, and then
the stranger spoke, still holding Leacraft’s hand, and retaining his
undeviating inspection of Leacraft’s face, as if he would force upon
himself the recognition of a friend.
“These are just words, sir,” he began: “but how much you misunderstand
what is going on here. This apparent revelry is an effort to keep from
swooning: it is the forced continuance of a life familiar to us, when
that life is to be crushed into nothingness; it is the defiance of
habit, the revolt against extinction, the mortal protest against the
infamous tyranny of circumstances. It is a delirium of indulgence, to
forget what is coming upon us; a moment’s arbitrary refusal to think
of the future, a dance, in whose whirl we shall remit the impulses of
suicide. It is unreasonable, but its monstrous unreasonableness to
you sir, measures our appalling sense of the disaster we can not stop
to think of, measures the intensity of the recoil from obliteration;
like the dressed and garlanded victim of an Aztec immolation we taste
again the festive sweets upon which perhaps our cloyed appetites are no
longer to feed. We are the sufferers in this eviction; the greatest,
the poor, the artisan, laborer, the vast mediocrity lose something, but
it amounts to little more than the exchange of one station here, for
another of the same sort somewhere else. In a material sense our loss
is incalculable; half our riches disappears but with that loss goes
social prestige, title, and the moral consciousness of elevation, the
breath of our nostrils. I, sir, am ----.” Leacraft did not move; his
astonishment was too sharply focussed upon all the astounding previous
confession. “And,” continued the man, “the ruin of worldly fortune
seems small, after all, compared with the sacrifice of that dignified
and sheltered life, which moved serenely, with every accompaniment of
joy, in these delightful abodes, and under the protecting aegis of an
inexpressible separation from the rest of the world. But”--he seemed
to wish to justify himself, somehow, as he noticed the still petrified
stare of Leacraft--“we have not been neglectful of the matters
of adjustment. Committees have been appointed, plans laid, funds
appropriated, agents despatched, for the selection of our new homes,
and though we take our flight with lopped wings, our plumage may in
time resume its former beauty. Do not misunderstand us because of these
assemblies. We too carry deeper than you the pain of an unutterable
grief.”
He finished, and Leacraft drawn into a reverie over the singular
confession, which was anything but reassuring, and partook, to his
mind, of the dementia of the foolish victim of a depraved habit, was
silent. He felt the imperious requirements of speech, but he could
say nothing. He felt pity, he was not without sympathy, though
perhaps in that matter, a certain savor of self denying control, and
a practical judgment interfered with his approval of the hyperbole of
the speaker. And, almost dreaming, he stood there while the stranger
and his lady re-entered their carriage, to which the runaway horse had
been reattached, and drove off. Leacraft watched them mechanically and
then turned, walked down Piccadilly, crossed Green Park, and looked at
Buckingham Palace. The huge structure was partially illuminated, and
the square in front of it was filled with soldiers, many of whom were
at rest around the Victoria Memorial. To an officer lounging near by,
Leacraft said, “Can you tell me where the King is to-night?”
“He sleeps at St. Leonards in Shoreditch,” was the laconic reply.