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THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE.
APRIL 1917.
_JUTLAND._
BY FLEET SURGEON.
The time is seven bells in the afternoon watch, and in the wardroom
of one of His Majesty’s battle-cruisers a yawning marine servant with
tousled hair and not too conspicuously clean a face is clattering cups
and saucers at regular intervals round the two long tables which are
the most obvious objects to be seen. Although it is a bright summer’s
day on deck, the electric lights are lit, the wardroom skylights are
battened down, and the heavy bomb-proof shutters pulled into position. In
all the ship, fore and aft, there is not a space where normal daylight
can enter except in a few of the senior officers’ cabins and down the
companion-ways. Without being actually dirty, the whole living spaces are
dingy and depressing. On the mess decks the watch below are indulging
in their afternoon ‘caulk,’ stretched out on the tables or stools, with
their heads resting on their wooden ditty boxes, which are used as
pillows. Their forms are covered by watch coats, old hammocks, or pieces
of deck cloth, for the wind blows chilly in the North Sea even on the
thirty-first of May.
The wardroom is as depressing as the men’s quarters. It measures roughly
thirty feet by twenty; the walls are of white painted steel; the floor
is of steel covered with corticine, which has been coated with red
shellac varnish so that it may not absorb moisture. There are two
doorways opening on the port and starboard sides. The furniture is of the
simplest possible description, consisting of the two long tables already
mentioned, a smaller table, two sofas, three easy-chairs, two fixed
settees about ten feet long, a dilapidated-looking piano covered with
bundles of torn music, and two sideboards in alcoves, in each of which is
a sliding hatch communicating with the pantry. The walls are bare except
for a photograph of the sinking _Bluecher_, an engraving of an earlier
namesake of the ship, and some charts and war maps hanging limply from
drawing-pins, which fix them to wooden battens. In one corner is a coal
stove, the polished brass funnel of which, passing to the deck above, is
the only bright object in the room. Suspended from the beams by their
cords and covered with yellow silken shades whose colour has long ago
lost its pristine freshness and daintiness, are the electric lights. The
gentle swaying of the shades is the only indication that the ship is at
sea. Thanks to her turbine machinery, no noise or movement can be felt,
and she might be lying in harbour for all there is to indicate otherwise.
The ship herself is one of the mammoths of the sea. When describing her
in comparison with any other ship, apply superlatives and you will dimly
reach some idea of her qualities. She is the largest, fastest, most
heavily armed, best armoured, best equipped, highest horse-powered, best
arranged engine of destruction of her time. Compared with a merchant
ship, she has over twice the horse-power of the _Aquitania_. Her crew is
well over a thousand. She has been blooded already, and her officers have
supreme confidence in her and themselves. For over an hour, practically
single-handed, she has fought the fleeing German battle-cruisers, whilst
her supporting consorts were endeavouring to catch her up.
A huge teapot containing a gallon of so-called tea is dropped with a
thud on one of the wardroom sideboards. Plates are rattled violently as
they are served around the table; there is a crash from the pantry as
the third-class officers’ steward, who has been sleeping on top of the
sink, strikes his yawning elbow against a pile of dirty tumblers left
over since lunch-time, and the marine servant shouts out: ‘Tea is ready,
gentlemen, please!’
There is a general movement from the settees, sofas and arm-chairs where
tired officers have been snatching a brief rest. Four uncurl themselves
from the small table where they have been sitting on high-backed chairs
with their heads resting upon their arms. There is a general movement
towards the long tables where the cups, saucers and plates show up
startlingly white against the approved Admiralty pattern of serge
tablecloth, whose main recommendation to the chooser must have been that
it did not show the dirt. The dark red flowers have long ago become
hopelessly mixed with the black background which is its most prominent
feature when new.
The officers—there are thirty when they are all mustered—sit down at the
tables and stare in front of them with the glassy, fixed eyes and owlish
expression of those newly awakened from unrefreshing slumber in a tainted
atmosphere. The marine servant, helped by another, carries round the
enormous tin teapot and carelessly splashes a portion of the fluid into
each cup as he passes. On the table are jugs containing ‘tinned cow’
and basins of brown sugar which the officers push to one another. For
food there is good bread, butter and jam, and some musty fragments of
old cake. For five minutes or so the meal is consumed in silence, when
a signal messenger enters the wardroom and, with an air of conscious
importance, lays a signal on the table beside the senior officer present.
That individual gazes casually at it for a second, and then is suddenly
galvanised into action. Holding it in both hands, he reads out eagerly:
‘Flag to all ships. Our light cruisers report that they have just sighted
an enemy light cruiser.’
There is silence for a moment and then a voice is heard: ‘So much the
worse for the enemy light cruiser!’
The scraping of the chairs against the floor is heard as they are hastily
pushed back and the occupants rise, looking for their caps. No need to
tell them what that signal means. ‘Action stations’ will be sounded in a
few minutes.
A few whose duties are not so urgent remain behind, making hasty efforts
at finishing their tea. They guess it will be a long time before they get
the chance of another meal.
‘I’m a conscientious objector,’ says an engineer officer. ‘I want to go
home to mummy!’
‘And I’m a pacifist,’ remarks a lieutenant, ‘but that’s no reason why
I should drink filth as well as think it. Waiter! bring me a cup of
freshly-made tea, and don’t let the dog get this or you’ll poison him.’
‘One little cruiser from the Spiritual Home
Met the British battle boats—
And then there were none!’
sang in unmelodious, raucous tones a paymaster.
‘Oh, shut up!’ said another. ‘There it goes.’
The bugle-call for ‘Action stations’ was heard gradually getting louder
as the bugle-boy ran along the passage outside.
‘That puts the hat on it! No tea, no nuffink! Now for a drop of
frightfulness. Wonder whether Fritz has any new gas shells.’
‘Put your respirator on first and sniff afterwards,’ said a doctor, as
they crushed through the doorway together. ‘If you really want to sell
that Gieve you were blowing about yesterday, I’ll give you an I.O.U. for
a bob for it.’
‘No good!’ replied the lieutenant. ‘I’ve sold it to a snotty for a quid.
His people sent him two pounds ten to buy one, and we went a burst on the
thirty bob.’
‘Well, so long!’ said the doctor, as they parted at the bottom of a
ladder. ‘If you fall into my hands you will be more cut up than I shall
be.’
‘Go to the devil, you blood-thirsty abomination,’ shouted the lieutenant,
and, seizing the rungs, ran rapidly up the horizontal ladder.
As he reached the upper deck and ran along towards the bridge ladders,
he cast a glance round the horizon. ‘Visibility so-so!’ he thought; ‘but
if it gets no worse than at present it will do. Can see 18,000 easily.
Clouds a bit low though—not much more than a thousand up.’
He ran up the bridge ladders and finally reached the upper bridge, where
the captain and navigating officer, officer of the watch, and signalmen
were busy getting ready to go down to the armoured conning-tower. Above
him towered the foremast, a central thick steel tube supported by two
smaller steel tubes running down and outwards to the deck. On the after
side of the central tube, dropped steel rungs were let into the mast;
and, seizing hold of these, he climbed rapidly upwards until he reached
the trap-door communicating with the top. Pushing up the door, he pulled
himself bodily upwards and at last stood on the platform, a hundred and
twenty feet above the level of the sea.
He was in a circular box about ten feet in diameter, covered with a
roof and with bulwarks rising breast-high all the way round. His duty
was spotting for the secondary armament, and to assist him there were
two other officers and eight men acting as range-takers, messengers,
timekeepers, and in charge of deflection instruments. He gave the range
for the guns to the transmitting station, watched the fall of the shot,
estimated its distance over or short of the target, and supplied the
necessary corrections. As it was useless to expect that firing the
secondary guns would be of any value until the range came down to about
12,000 yards, or to repel destroyer or light cruiser attack, there would
be a long interval of waiting before he would have anything to do.
Meanwhile, he went round the instruments and saw that they were all in
working order, tested the voice tubes, and gave hints and instructions to
his subordinates.
The sky was rapidly becoming more overcast and the clouds were lower,
although the horizon was still plainly visible.
A message came up the voice-tube from the conning-tower, warning him to
keep a sharp look-out on the port bow as the enemy battle-cruisers should
be shortly sighted proceeding in a northerly direction. Every sense was
subordinated to that of sight, and in the tense stillness he strained his
eyes until the sockets hurt. Looking down on the ship, which was spread
like a map beneath his feet, no sign of life was visible, although behind
armoured side and beneath thick steel hoods eager-eyed men were chafing
at the delay.
It was easy to see that the ships were travelling at full speed, and the
smoke belching from the ships ahead blurred his view and damaged his eyes
until he remembered the pair of motor goggles he had supplied himself
with.
Suddenly his attention was riveted by a small patch of the horizon where
the haze seemed slightly thicker than elsewhere. To anyone who had not
spent long weary hours watching for just such a haze it would have
suggested nothing at all, even if it had been observed. He picked up his
binoculars, which were hanging round his neck from a strap, and took a
long, long look.
The other two officers watched his face carefully. Suddenly he dropped
the glasses from his eyes and turned to his companions. ‘Yes; that’s the
enemy battle-cruisers all right. They are making a sixteen-point turn.
I wonder what their game is. Are they running away as they did at the
Dogger Bank, or are they falling back on the High Seas Fleet. Anyhow,
there’s the _Engadine_ sending up a seaplane.’
He watched the movements of the seaplane ship for a few minutes, and then
heaved a sigh of relief as a gigantic bird rose in flight from her side.
‘We haven’t sighted any of their Zeppelins yet and they would be useless
in this atmosphere. If I know anything of the _Engadine’s_ people, we
shall get all the information we need in a little.’
If anything, there was an access of speed on the part of the British
ships. The officers in the top cowered behind the steel bulwark which
protected them a little; but tiny hurricanes played around their coats
and caps and pierced the almost Arctic clothing they were wearing.
The enemy ships were rapidly becoming distinguishable as funnels and
masts hurrying beneath a pall of smoke. The hulls were still under the
rim of the horizon, but were gradually rising.
‘When we can see the hulls the range will be approximately 24,000 yards,
and firing will open any time after that,’ remarked the lieutenant to an
officer whose first action this was.
Meanwhile, the range-finder was being rapidly adjusted by an
able seaman who, seated behind it, commenced singing out in a
monotonous voice with the suspicion of a shake of excitement in it:
‘22,000—20,500—19,000—18,000.’
As he reached the last figure, there was a spattering sound in the seas
on their port side, and huge columns of spray were thrown 200 feet up
in the air. Driven back by the wind, sheets of water swept against the
top and drenched the luckless crew. Heedless, the lieutenant watched the
fall of the shot and muttered: ‘Five hundred short. Damned good effort at
opening the ball.’
As he spoke there was a thundering roar from the ship beneath him, and he
instinctively stepped back from the edge of the top to avoid the blast
from the guns beneath. ‘That’s A turret firing’; and as he traced the
flight of the huge projectile which was plainly visible winging its way
towards the distant speck, he waited anxiously for the splash which would
indicate its fall. ‘Good hunting! About five hundred short, too!’
These were not his guns and were not under his control; but he knew that
the capable lieutenant spotting in the gun control tower below him, and
the warrant officer in the top twenty feet above him, would speedily
correct the error. His job was to wait and watch.
The action had become general. Shells, looking like Gargantuan
hailstones, were falling on every side of him; while columns of water,
like geysers, were rising everywhere and obscuring the range. As a shell
whizzed past them and its breath pushed them farther back into the top,
a shout of admiration escaped him. ‘Straddled in the third salvo! Oh, by
Jove! good shooting! Hope we’re doing as well!’
The top rocked to the thundering reverberation of our own guns; the air
was thick with the cordite smoke; the whistle and shriek of shells as
they passed, hit, or burst short were as insistent as the noise of a
railway engine’s whistle in a tunnel; sheets of spray were wafted up
to them and fell like waterfalls without making any distinguishable
sound; whilst, as he caught sight of them between the showers, the
range-finder’s voice, all trace of excitement gone, went on with its
monotonous sing-song: ‘17,000—16,500—15,000.’
For a second the officer glanced at the ships ahead. Even as he turned,
he saw three enemy shells falling on the next ahead.
The voice of the man at the range-finder again took up the refrain:
‘15,000—14,500—14,000.’
The hulls of the enemy ships were now plainly visible, but the range was
still too great for the secondary armament to be of any value against the
thickly armoured sides of the German ships. Would they never come any
nearer? As if in reply to his question, he suddenly saw a line of low
black hulls emerge from behind the enemy ships and come tearing in a line
diagonally towards him.
Here was work at last! Seizing the navyphone, he shouted down to the
captain: ‘Destroyer attack on the port bow. Request permission to open
fire.’ The reply came back: ‘Open fire at 10,000.’
Dropping the navyphone, he picked up the voice tube and commenced the
orders to the transmitting station which would let loose six thousand six
hundred pounds of shell per minute at the rapidly approaching enemy.
‘Destroyer. One mast, two funnels.
‘Range 9500. Deflection 16 right. Rate 550 closing.
‘Load with lyddite. Salvoes.
‘Shoot!’
Anxiously he gazed at the leader of the approaching destroyers. Good
shooting, but a little to the left. Undoubtedly she was hit or, at least,
badly spattered, as she altered course a little. Correcting this, he
shouted down: ‘Shoot!’
Again the deadly hail smothered the little vessel in foam. From the top
the men on her decks could be clearly seen training the torpedo tubes and
getting ready to fire. As she approached, the order was given: ‘Down 400!
Shoot!’
There was a sudden burst of speed on the part of the destroyer, which was
immediately allowed for.
‘Down 400. Close rate 200. Rate 750 closing! Shoot!’
‘Good hunting!’ he muttered, as the destroyer swerved in her path and,
apparently badly injured, commenced to alter her course so as to get out
of action.
Smoke and flame were belching from her forward, whilst amidships a ragged
hole in her side could be seen from which great clouds of steam came out
in gasps. She was heeling towards him, and the crew could be seen plainly
through glasses, fitting on their life-belts and dragging at the falls of
their badly damaged whaler. Rafts were being cast loose, and the deck was
strewn with bodies which, even as they watched, commenced to roll slowly
down the sloping deck.
‘Not much need to worry about him!’ thought the lieutenant. ‘He’s
finished. Time to get on with the next.’
The second destroyer had been attended to by the ship astern, but the
third was still coming on, apparently uninjured. She was rapidly altering
both course and speed in order to avoid the deadly salvoes and spoil the
range-finding.
‘Oh, that’s your game,’ said the officer. ‘We’ll see what we can do for
you.’ Speaking down the voice-pipe again, he shouted: ‘Object shifted.
Third destroyer from left. Range 8500. Same deflection and rate! Salvoes!
Shoot!’
All-overs was reported by the spotter.
‘Down 400. Shoot!’
‘One hit, others short!’ shouted the spotter.
‘Up 200. Shoot!’
There was no need to listen to the spotter this time. The middle of the
destroyer rose in the air and then burst asunder. With a roar, she broke
in halves, and bow and stem were elevated skyward until she assumed the
shape of the letter V. Almost instantaneously she disappeared. As she did
so, she went straight downwards as if plucked under by a gigantic hand.
The fourth destroyer put her helm hard over and turned sixteen points.
She had been hit once by the ship astern and had evidently had enough.
The lieutenant chuckled. ‘Gave Fritz what-for that time! Guess our
destroyers could have done better than that!
‘Cease firing!’
For the time being, the destroyer attack had been foiled, but others
were sure to come, and, smothered in spray, the men on the top kept
anxiously on the alert. As they looked ahead, they saw first one, then
another, then several separate clouds of smoke on the horizon. The German
battle-cruisers were heading straight for them, and the meaning of that
was all too plain. Evidently these distant vessels were the German High
Seas Fleet. The range of the German battle-cruisers was rapidly getting
less, and it was possible to start shooting at them with the secondary
armament with a fair chance of hitting.
The lieutenant began to give his orders again, after asking permission
from the captain. And, busy and capable as he was professionally, another
part of his brain was speaking to his inner consciousness. ‘This is _Der
Tag_ at last. Thank heaven we’re in it. Verdun must have been a failure.
Where is Jellicoe? We can’t take on all these beggars by ourselves!
Wonder how long Beatty is going to carry on! Their guns are badly
rattled: they haven’t hit us a fair smack for over an hour.’
The rapidly advancing High Seas Fleet was approaching the parallel lines
of fighting battle-cruisers. Still Beatty held on! But the lieutenant had
no doubts in his own mind. ‘Jellicoe can’t be far away, and we are going
to hold them until he comes up. May it be soon!’
Still the battle-cruisers held on, while the German battleships commenced
firing at long ranges.
At last the signal to go about was given, and the helm was jammed hard
a-port so that the big ship heeled heavily over as she spun round. As
she did so, it was obvious enough that the German battle-cruisers were
doing the same and racing back in the direction they had come. They
had apparently got the idea that Beatty was trying to avoid them and
was suffering too much punishment to be able to reply effectually. But
that officer had his own game to play and knew as soon as the German
battle-cruisers turned immediately after him that they had fallen into
the very error he had desired them to make.
The Fifth Battle Squadron had now joined up and was engaging both
the enemy’s cruisers and battleships, and, as far as the battle was
concerned, the day was now more in favour of the British.
As the ships swung round, one after the other, keeping perfect station
as if at manœuvres, they fired their broadsides with telling effect,
which was plainly seen, at the German battleships, which responded
indifferently.
It was easy for those in the top to guess what Beatty’s tactics were.
Evidently, Jellicoe was somewhere up in the north-west, and the whole
German Fleet were walking straight into his hands. If only the light
would hold, but already, although it was barely 5 P.M., the horizon was
becoming misty and the outlines of the enemy ships were no longer sharply
defined. To control effectively this long length of battle line, good
light was absolutely essential.
Still Beatty sped along, keeping station on the German cruisers at 13,000
yards, leaving their battleships to the Fifth Battle Squadron. The
Germans by this time were suffering heavily, and the _Lutzow_ was seen to
drop out of the line.
Suddenly, ahead on the port bow, were seen the welcome signs of the Grand
Fleet arriving at last. There was no longer any doubt as to what the
result would be. Inevitable defeat was staring the Germans in the face.
With the instinct of the born fighting sailor, Beatty seized the chance
to turn the German defeat into a rout. The battle-cruisers leaped ahead
at full speed and he dashed like a fury across towards the head of the
German line in order to concentrate on their leading ships and crumple
their formation. The manœuvre was perfectly successful. The German line
bent, broke and fled, but the thick mist which had gradually been coming
down robbed Jellicoe of the fruits of his victory. As the Grand Fleet
deployed into line and brought their guns to bear on the enemy’s line,
they found for target an occasional wraith-like hull appearing for a few
seconds between the banks of smoke and fog. The battle-cruisers were in
the same quandary, firing at intervals at the flashes which showed the
position of the German ships. The utmost confusion apparently reigned on
board them, and in the thick fog and scattered condition of both fleets,
to go on with the action was impossible.
Once again, as often before, the weather conditions had favoured the
defeated, and both fleets mutually broke off action—the Germans to flee
for their home ports, and the British to re-form for the battle at dawn.
During the night, that best test of the morale of a fleet, a destroyer
attack, was carried out by the British with marked success; but there was
no retaliation on the part of the Germans. They had had enough and more
than enough.
At 10.30 P.M. a group of stiff and wearied officers left the top and made
for the wardroom to get some food. The forsaken afternoon tea was still
standing as it had been left on the table, and, lying about on chairs,
sofas and settees, were men too wearied even to desire to eat.
They sat and looked at one another and said nothing. Members of the mess
who had been joyfully skylarking eight hours before would never draw
their chairs up to the table again. One who had left his cup of tea
untasted had drunk to the dregs the cup that Death had offered him. Only
one officer made a remark: ‘The action is to be resumed at dawn.’ And
only one man made a reply: ‘They won’t get away this time.’
But they did. A Zeppelin was sighted at 3.30 A.M., evidently shadowing
the British Fleet. For ten hours they cruised over the battle area strewn
with the horrible relics of the fight, but the Germans were nowhere to
be seen. They had gone home to celebrate their victory by getting their
wounded into hospital, their dead buried, and their sunken ships renamed.
_IN THE WOOD._
BY BOYD CABLE.
The attack on the wood had begun soon after dawn, and it was no more than
8 A.M. when the Corporal was dropped badly wounded in the advance line
of the attack where it had penetrated about four hundred yards into the
wood. But it was well into afternoon before he sufficiently woke to his
surroundings to understand where he was or what had happened, and when
he did so he found the realisation sufficiently unpleasant. It was plain
from several indications—the direction from which the shells bursting in
his vicinity were coming, a glimpse of some wounded Germans retiring,
the echoing rattle of rifle fire and crash of bombs behind him—that the
battalion had been driven back, as half a dozen other battalions had been
driven back in the course of the ebb-and-flow fighting through the wood
for a couple of weeks past, that he was lying badly wounded and helpless
to defend himself where the Germans could pick him up as a prisoner or
finish him off with a saw-backed bayonet as the mood of his discoverers
turned. His left leg was broken below the knee, his right shoulder and
ribs ached intolerably, a scalp wound six inches long ran across his head
from side to side—a wound that, thanks to the steel shrapnel helmet lying
dinted in deep across the crown, had not split his head open to the teeth.
He felt, as he put it to himself, ‘done in,’ so utterly done in, that for
a good hour he was willing to let it go at that, to lie still and wait
whatever luck brought him, almost indifferent as to whether it would be
another rush that would advance the British line and bring him within
reach of his own stretcher-bearers, or his discovery by some of the
German soldiers who passed every now and then close to where he lay.
Thirst drove him to fumble for his water-bottle, only to find, when
he had twisted it round, that a bullet had punctured it, and that it
was dry; and, after fifteen tortured minutes, thirst drove him to the
impossible, and brought him crawling and dragging his broken leg to a
dead body and its full bottle. An eager, choking swallow and a long
breath-stopping, gurgling draught gave him more life than he had ever
thought to feel again, a sudden revulsion of feeling against the thought
of waiting helpless there to be picked up and carted to a German prison
camp or butchered where he lay a quick hope and a desperate resolve
to attempt to escape such a fate. He had managed to crawl to the
water-bottle; he would attempt to crawl at least a little nearer to the
fighting lines, to where he would have more chance of coming under the
hands of his own men. Without waste of time he took hasty stock of his
wounds and set about preparing for his attempt. The broken leg was the
most seriously crippling, but with puttees, bayonets, and trenching-tool
handles he so splinted and bound it about that he felt he could crawl and
drag it behind him. He attempted to bandage his head, but his arm and
shoulder were so stiff and painful when he lifted his hand to his head
that he desisted and satisfied himself with a water-soaked pad placed
inside a shrapnel helmet. Then he set out to crawl.
It is hard to convey to anyone who has not seen such a place, the
horrible difficulty of the task the Corporal had set himself. The wood
had been shelled for weeks, until almost every tree in it had been
smashed and knocked down and lay in a wild tangle of trunks, tops, and
branches on the ground. The ground itself was pitted with big and little
shell-holes, seamed with deep trenches, littered with whole and broken
arms and equipments, German and British grenades and bombs, scattered
thick with British and German dead who had lain there for any time from
hours to weeks. And into and over it all the shells were still crashing
and roaring. The air palpitated to their savage rushing, the ground
trembled to the impact of their fall, and without pause or break the deep
roll of the drumming gun-fire bellowed and thundered. But through all
the chaos men were still fighting, and would continue to fight, and the
Corporal had set his mind doggedly to come somewhere near to where they
fought. The penetration of such a jungle might have seemed impossible
even to a sound and uninjured man; to one in his plight it appeared
mere madness to attempt. And yet to attempt it he was determined, and
being without any other idea in his throbbing head but the sole one of
overcoming each obstacle as he came to it, had no time to consider the
impossibility of the complete task.
Now, two hundred yards is a short distance as measurement goes, but into
those two hundred yards through the chaos of wrecked wood the Corporal
packed as much suffering, as dragging a passage of time, as many tortures
of hope and fear and pain, as would fill an ordinary lifetime. Every yard
was a desperate struggle, every fallen tree-trunk, each tangle of fallen
branch, was a cruel problem to be solved, a pain-racked and laborious
effort to overcome. A score of times he collapsed and lay panting, and
resigned himself to abandoning the struggle; and a score of times he
roused himself and fought down numbing pain, and raised himself on
trembling arms and knees to crawl again, to wriggle through the wreckage,
to hoist himself over some obstacle, to fight his way on for another
yard or two. Every conscious thought was busied only and solely with
the problems of his passage that presented themselves one by one, but
at the back of his mind some self-working reason or instinct held him
to his direction, took heed of what went on around him, guided him in
action other than that immediately concerned with his passage. When, for
instance, he came to a deep trench cutting across his path, he sat long
with his whole mind occupied on the question as to whether he should
move to right or left, whether the broken place half a dozen yards off
the one way or the more completely broken one a dozen yards the other
would be the best to make for, scanning this way down and that way up, a
litter of barbed wire here and a barrier of broken branches there; and
yet, without even lifting his mind from the problem, he was aware of grey
coats moving along the trench towards him, had sense enough to drop flat
and lie huddled and still until the Germans had passed. And that second
mind again advised him against crawling down into the trench and making
his easier way along it, because it was too probable it would be in use
as a passage for Germans, wounded and unwounded.
He turned and moved slowly along the edge of the trench at last, and held
to it for some distance because the parapet raised along its edge held
up many of the fallen trees and branches enough to let him creep under
them. That advantage was discounted to some extent by the number of dead
bodies that lay heaped on or under the parapet and told of the struggles
and the fierce fighting that had passed for possession of the trench, but
on the whole the dead men were less difficult to pass than the clutching,
wrenching fingers of the dead wood. The pains in his head, shoulder, and
side had by now dulled down to a dead numbness, but his broken leg never
ceased to burn and stab with red-hot needles of agony; and for all the
splints encasing it and despite all the care he took, there was hardly a
yard of his passage that was not marked by some wrenching catch on his
foot, some jarring shock or grind and grate of the broken bones.
He lost count of time, he lost count of distance, but he kept on
crawling. He was utterly indifferent to the turmoil of the guns, to the
rush and yell of the near-falling shells, the crash of their bursts,
the whirr of the flying splinters. When he had been well and whole
these things would have brought his heart to his mouth, would have set
him ducking and dodging and shrinking. Now he paid them no fraction of
his absorbed attention. But to the distinctive and rising sounds of
bursting grenades, to the sharp whip and whistle of rifle bullets about
him and through the leaves and twigs, he gave eager attention because
they told him he was nearing his goal, was coming at last to somewhere
near the fringe of the fighting. His limbs were trembling under him, he
was throbbing with pain from head to foot, his head was swimming and his
vision was blurred and dim, and at last he was forced to drop and lie
still and fight to recover strength to move, and sense to direct his
strength. His mind cleared slowly, and he saw at last that he had come to
a slightly clearer part of the wood, to a portion nearer its edge where
the trees had thinned a little and where the full force of the shell
blast had wrecked and re-wrecked and torn fallen trunks and branches to
fragments.
But although his mind had recovered, his body had not. He found he could
barely raise himself on his shaking arms—had not the strength to crawl
another yard. He tried and tried again, moved no more than bare inches,
and had to drop motionless again.
And there he lay and watched a fresh attack launched by the British into
the wood, heard and saw the tornado of shell-fire that poured crashing
and rending and shattering into the trees, watched the khaki figures
swarm forward through the smoke, the spitting flames of the rifles, the
spurting fire and smoke of the flung grenades. He still lay on the edge
of the broken trench along which he had crept, and he could just make out
that this ran off at an angle away from him and that it was held by the
Germans, and formed probably the point of the British attack. He watched
the attack with consuming eagerness, hope flaming high as he saw the
khaki line press forward, sinking again to leaden depths as it halted or
held or swayed back. To him the attack was an affair much more vital than
the taking of the trench, the advance by a few score yards of the British
line. To him it meant that a successful advance would bring him again
within the British lines, its failure leave him still within the German.
Into the trench below him a knot of Germans scrambled scuffling, and he
lay huddled there almost within arm’s length of them while they hoisted a
couple of machine-guns to the edge of the trench and manned the parapet
and opened a hail of fire down the length of the struggling British line.
Under that streaming fire the line wilted and withered; a fresh torrent
of fire smote it, and it crumpled and gave and ebbed back. But almost
immediately another line swarmed up out of the smoke and swept forward,
and this time, although the same flank and frontal fire caught and smote
it, the line straggled and swayed forward and plunged into and over the
German trench.
The Corporal lying there on the trench edge was suddenly aware of a
stir amongst the men below him. The edge where he lay half screened in
a débris of green stuff and huddled beside a couple of dead Germans was
broken down enough to let him see well into the trench, and he understood
to the full the meaning of the movements of the Germans in the trench, of
their hasty hauling down of the machine-guns, their scrambling retirement
crouched and hurrying along the trench back in the direction from which
he had come. The trench the British had taken ran out at a right angle
from this one where he lay, and the Germans near him were retiring behind
the line of trench that had been taken. And that meant he was as good as
saved.
A minute later two khaki figures emerged from a torn thicket of tree
stumps and branches a dozen yards beyond the trench where he lay, and ran
on across towards the denser wood into which the Germans had retreated.
One was an officer, and close on their heels came half a dozen, a dozen,
a score of men, all following close and pressing on to the wood and
opening out as they went. One came to the edge of the trench where the
machine-guns had been, and the Corporal with an effort lifted and waved
an arm and shouted hoarsely to him. But even as he did so he realised how
futile his shout was, how impossible it was for it to carry even the few
yards in the pandemonium of noise that raved about them. But he shouted
again, and yet again, and felt bitter disappointment as the man without
noticing turned and moved along the trench, peering down into it.
The Corporal had a sudden sense of someone moving behind him, and twisted
round in time to see another khaki figure moving past a dozen paces
away and the upper half bodies of half a score more struggling through
the thickets beyond. This time he screamed at them, but they too passed
unhearing and unheeding. The Corporal dropped quivering and trying to
tell himself that it was all right, that there would be others following,
that some of them must come along the trench, that the stretcher-bearers
would be following close.
But for the moment none followed them, and from where they had vanished
came a renewed uproar of grenade-bursts and rifle fire beating out and
through the uproar of the guns and the screaming, crashing shells. The
Corporal saw a couple of wounded come staggering back ... the tumult of
near fighting died down ... a line of German grey-clad shoulders and
bobbing ‘coal-scuttle’ helmets plunged through and beyond the thicket
from which the khaki had emerged a few minutes before. And then back into
the trench below him scuffled the Germans with their two machine-guns.
With a groan the Corporal dropped his face in the dirt and dead leaves
and groaned hopelessly. He was ‘done in,’ he told himself, ‘clean done
in.’ He could see no chance of escape. The line had been driven back,
and the last ounce of strength to crawl.... He tried once more before he
would finally admit that last ounce gone, but the effort was too much
for his exhausted limbs and pain-wrenched body. He dropped to the ground
again.
The rapid clatter of the two machine-guns close to him lifted his head to
watch. The main German trench was spouting dust and débris, flying clouds
of leaves, flashing white slivers of bark and wood, under the torrent of
shells that poured on it once more. The machine-guns below him ceased,
and the Corporal concluded that their target had gone for the moment.
But that intense bombardment of the trench almost certainly meant the
launching of another British attack, and then the machine-guns would
find their target struggling again across their sights and under their
streaming fire. They had a good ‘field of fire,’ too, as the Corporal
could see. The British line had to advance for the most part through the
waist-high tangle of wrecked wood, but by chance or design a clearer
patch of ground was swept close to the German trench, and as the advance
crossed this the two machine-guns on the flank near the Corporal would
get in their work, would sweep it in enfilade, would be probably the
worst obstacle to the advance. And at that a riot of thoughts swept the
Corporal’s mind. If he could out those machine-guns ... if he could out
those machine-guns ... but how? There were plenty of rifles near, and
plenty of dead about with cartridges on them ... but one shot would bring
the Germans jumping from their trench on him.... Bombs now ... if he had
some Mills’ grenades ... where had he seen....
He steadied himself deliberately and thought back. The whole wood was
littered with grenades, spilt and scattered broadcast singly and in
heaps—German stick-grenades and Mills’. He remembered crawling past a
dead bomber with a bag full of Mills’ beside him only a score of yards
away. Could he crawl to them and back again? The Germans in the trench
might see him; and anyhow—hadn’t he tried? And hadn’t he found the last
ounce of his strength gone?
But he found another last ounce. He half crawled, half dragged himself
back and found his bag of grenades, and with the full bag hooked over his
shoulder and a grenade clutched ready in his hand felt himself a new man.
His strength was gone, but it takes little strength to pull the pin of a
grenade, and if any German rushed him now, at least they’d go together.
The machine-guns broke out again, and the Corporal, gasping and
straining, struggled foot by foot back towards them. The personal
side—the question of his own situation and chances of escape—had left
him. He had forgotten himself. His whole mind was centred on the attack,
on the effect of those machine-guns’ fire, on the taking of the German
trench. He struggled past the break in the trench and on until he had
shelter behind the low parapet. He wanted some cover. One grenade wasn’t
enough. He wanted to make sure, and he wouldn’t chance a splinter from
his own bomb.
The machine-guns were chattering and clattering at top speed, and as
he pulled the pin of his first grenade the Corporal saw another gun
being dragged up beside the others. He held his grenade and counted
‘one-and-two-and-_throw_—’ and lobbed the grenade over into the trench
under the very feet of the machine-gunners. He hastily pulled another
pin and threw the grenade ... and as a spurt of smoke and dust leaped
from the trench before him and the first grenades _crash-crashed_, he
went on pulling out the pins and flinging over others as fast as he could
pitch. The trench spouted fire and dust and flying dirt and débris, the
ground shook beneath him, he was half stunned with the quick-following
reports—but the machine-guns had stopped on the first burst.
That was all he remembered. This time the last ounce was really gone, and
he was practically unconscious when the stretcher-bearers found him after
the trench was taken and the attack had passed on deep into the wood.
And weeks after, lying snug in bed in a London hospital, after a Sister
had scolded him for moving in bed and reaching out for a magazine that
had dropped to the floor, and told him how urgent it was that he must
not move, and how a fractured leg like his must be treated gently and
carefully if he did not wish to be a cripple for life, and so on and
so forth, he grinned up cheerfully at her. ‘Orright, Sister,’ he said,
‘I’ll remember. But it’s a good job for me I didn’t know all that, back
there—in the wood.’
_A TALK WITH COLERIDGE._
_Abstract of a discourse with Mr. Coleridge on the state of the country
in December 1830, written at the time by John Frere._[1]
[While staying with the daughter of Mr. John Frere I came
across this paper in one of the many manuscript volumes in
his writing. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge,
he was one of those known as the ‘Apostles’ at Cambridge, and
Charles and Alfred Tennyson were among his friends as well as
Arthur Hallam, whom he admired greatly, and Coleridge.
The volume is a quaint collection of many things—original
verses, extracts from books, and notes of sermons; and the
reader can only wish that a few of the evenings spent with the
Apostles might have been recorded within these marbled covers.
But this one conversation has a charm peculiarly its own, and
we will no longer keep the reader from entering the Hampstead
room well known to the literary men of the day, where silently
he may observe an old-world courtesy and ceremony belonging to
a past age, while listening to a discourse only too seldom to
be heard.]
_C._ Is there anything stirring now in the world of letters, anything in
the shape of poetry lately produced, for I see nothing of the sort, nor
even a Review that is not a year old?
_F._ No, Sir, at least I have heard no talk of any such thing; these
continual burnings occupy all men’s thoughts and conversation.
_C._ And what remedies are proposed? They talk I suppose of
retrenchments, but what good can retrenchment do? Alas! revolutionary
times are times of general demoralisation; what great men do they ever
produce? What was produced by the late Revolutionary Spirit in France?
There must be something uppermost to be sure in such disturbances; some
military superiority, but what great—I mean truly great—man was produced?
In England the same spirit was curbed in and worsted by the moral sense,
afterwards there followed times of repose, and the Muses began to show
themselves. But now what is going forward? The depravity of the spirit of
the times is marked by the absence of poetry. For it is a great mistake
to suppose that thought is not necessary for poetry; true, at the time of
composition there is that starlight, a dim and holy twilight; but is not
light necessary before?
Poetry is the highest effort of the mind; all the powers are in a state
of equilibrium and equally energetic, the knowledge of individual
existence is forgotten, the man is out of himself and exists in all
things, his eye in _a_ fine &c.
There is no one perhaps who composes with more facility than your Uncle;
but does it cost him nothing before? It is the result of long thought;
and poetry as I have before observed must be the result of thought, and
the want of thought in what is now called poetry is a bad sign of the
times.
There is a want of the proper spirit; if a nation would flourish
(politically speaking) there must be a desire in the breast of each man
of something more than merely to live—he must desire to live well; and if
men cannot live well at home they will go and live well elsewhere. The
condition upon which a country circumstanced as ours is exists, is that
it should become the Mother of Empires, and this Mr. W. Horton feels, but
his plans are not extensive or universal enough. I had a conversation
with him, but could not make him enter into my views. We ought to send
out colonies, but not privately or by parishes; it should be a grand
National concern; there should be in every family one or more brought up
for this and this alone.
A Father should say, ‘There, John now is a fine strong fellow and an
enterprising lad, he shall be a colonist.’
But then some fool-like Lord ⸺ gets up and tells us ‘Oh no! America
should be a warning.’
Good Heavens, Sir! a warning, and of what? Are we to beware of having 2
[sets?] of men bound to us by the ties of allegiance and of affinity; 2
[sets] of men in a distant part of the world speaking the language of
Shakspear and Milton, and living under the laws of Alfred. But a warning
they should be to us, to give freely and in good time that liberty which
is their due, and which they will properly extort from us if we withhold.
_F._ Is it not moreover true, Sir, that we should show ourselves really
a Mother and not a Stepmother to those Empires which we found? We should
with a nursing hand lead them through the dangers of infancy; but why
keep them in leading strings when they are able to act for themselves?
We should relax our hold by slow degrees as they are able to bear it,
and nurture them to be free and manly states, and not the slaves of
any, still less of their own Mother. What Mother ever complains of the
ingratitude of her Son because he does not follow at her apron-strings
all the days of his life? Why then do we complain of America, who
with greater justice might complain of us that we have been far from
remembering one great duty, namely that a Mother if need be should even
sacrifice herself for her child?
_C._ What you say is very true; but with regard to the execution of a
plan of Colonisation, why should we not make the absurd system of Poor
Laws subservient to the measure?
Why not, since as Sir N. T.[2] told Bartle the other day, An offer and
refusal is as good as an acceptance, propose to any person requiring
assistance of the overseer the following terms:—We have it is true bound
ourselves by a most foolish promise to find you work; we have none here,
but if you choose to go out to the Swan River, you shall have as much as
you want, and we will carry you out there, your wife and your children
too, if you have them, and you shall get your livelihood in an honorable
and independent way—and mind you are now to consider us discharged of our
promise to find you work.
_F._ It is true that this would be fair enough, but as long as the poor
man sees the rich enjoy a liberty which he does not, viz. that of living
in the land in which he was born, he would complain, and not without
reason. Let then the young and active in the higher ranks set them the
example. And why should the unlearned be deprived of the countenance
and assistance of the wiser? What can hand do without head, especially
in untamed countries? Heaven knows the labouring classes have been most
iniquitously considered for some time and are now becoming, as Mr.
Coleridge says, more things than persons, and are therefore more than
ever unfit to be sent alone.
_C._ And therefore the younger sons of noblemen and the fops of town
would have been employed in a manner much better for their country, and
more happy for themselves had they been brought up as members and limbs
of a colony instead of thrusting themselves into situations to which they
do not naturally belong, and to the exclusion of all competition, or
wasting their energies at Newmarket or in Crockfords.
* * * * *
_C._ Almost all thinking Jews are Deists. I wonder Mr. ⸺ should ever have
talked with you on those subjects; the persecution which a Jew would
undergo from his brethren if it was known that he did so, is not to be
calculated. The life, you know, of Spinoza was twice attempted, but he
professed Christianity, at least in his way in a letter to a friend;
for he said that if the Logos could be manifested in the flesh, it must
converse and act as Jesus did. At the same time his notions of a God were
very Pantheistic, a ⊙le. whose centre is everywhere and circumference
nowhere. He had no notion of a Conscious Being of a God—but with these
ideas to talk of God becoming flesh appears to me very much like talking
of a square ⊙le.
Spinoza is a man whom I most deeply reverence, I was going to say whom
I reverence as much as it is possible for me to reverence any creature.
He was on the borders of the truth, and would no doubt had he lived have
attained it.
But bless me! to talk of converting the Jews, people are not aware of
what they undertake.
Mr. ⸺ say’d to me, and I thought very beautifully, ‘Convert the Jews!
Alas, Sir, Mammon and Ignorance are the two giant porters who stand at
the gates of Jerusalem and forbid the entrance of Truth.’
* * * * *
_F._ You have not read much of Keats, Sir, I think.
_C._ No, I have not. I have seen two Sonnets which I think showed marks
of a great genius had he lived. I have also read a poem with a classical
name—I forget what. Poor Keats, I saw him once. Mr. Green,[3] whom you
have heard me mention, and I were walking out in these parts, and we were
overtaken by a young man of a very striking countenance whom Mr. Green
recognised and shook hands with, mentioning my name; I wish Mr. Green had
introduced me, for I did not know who it was. He passed on, but in a
few moments sprung back and said, ‘Mr. Coleridge, allow me the honour of
shaking your hand.’
I was struck by the energy of his manner, and gave him my hand.
He passed on and we stood still looking after him, when Mr. Green said,
‘Do you know who that is? That is Keats, the poet.’
‘Heavens!’ said I, ‘when I shook him by the hand there was death!’ This
was about two years before he died.
_F._ But what was it?
_C._ I cannot describe it. There was a heat and a dampness in the hand.
To say that his death was caused by the Review is absurd, but at the same
time it is impossible adequately to conceive the effect which it must
have had on his mind.
It is very well for those who have a place in the world and are
independent to talk of these things, they can bear such a blow, so
can those who have a strong religious principle; but all men are not
born Philosophers, and all men have not those advantages of birth and
education.
Poor Keats had not, and it is impossible I say to conceive the effect
which such a Review[4] must have had upon him, knowing as he did that he
had his way to make in the world by his own exertions, and conscious of
the genius within him.
Have you seen, Mr. F., anything of Lord Byron’s poetry?
_F._ Nothing, Sir, but the Translation of ‘Faust.’
_C._ And what do you think of that?
_F._ Being unacquainted, Sir, with the original I cannot speak of its
merits as a translation. As a poem I think it meagre, nor do I conceive
that the metres are adapted to the subject in English whatever they may
be in German.
_C._ I have been asked why I did not translate the camp scenes in
‘Wallenstein.’
The truth is that the labour would have been immense, and besides it
would not have been borne in English, to say nothing of the fact that
Mrs. Barbauld reviewed my translation of the rest of the play and abused
it through thick and thin, so that it sold for wastepaper. I remember
your uncle telling me that he had picked it up—he approved it, so did
Canning to whom he showed it—and so might one or two more, but the
edition sold for wastepaper.
_F._ Had you ever any thought of translating the ‘Faust’?
_C._ Yes, Sir, I had, but I was prevented by the consideration that
though there are some exquisite passages, the opening chorus, the chapel
and the prison scenes for instance, to say nothing of the Brocken scene
where he has shown peculiar strength in keeping clear of Shakspear, he
has not taken that wonderful admixture of Witch Fate and Fairy but has
kept to the real original witch, and this suits his purpose much better.
I say that a great deal of it I do not admire, and some I reprobate.
The conception of Wagner is bad: whoever heard of a man who had gained
such wonderful proficiency in learning as to call up spirits &c. being
discontented?
No, it is not having the power of knowledge that would make a man
discontented—neither would such a man have suddenly become a sensualist.
The discourses too with the pupil are dull. The Mephistapholes (_sic_),
or whatever the name is, is well executed, but the conception is
not original. It was ⸺ who had before said, ‘The Devil is the great
humourist of the world.’ There are other parts too which I could not
have translated without entering my protest against them in a manner
which would hardly have been fair upon the author, for those things
are understood in Germany in a spirit very different from what they
would infuse here in England. To give you an example, the scene where
Mephistopheles is introduced as coming before the Almighty and talking
with Him would never be borne in English and this whole scene is founded
on a mistranslation of a passage in Scripture, the opening of Job. You
remember how Satan means properly one who goes his rounds, and hence it
came to mean one of those officers whom the King in Eastern countries
used to send round to see how his subjects were going on. This power was
soon abused and the Satans used to accuse people falsely, and hence the
word came to have the meaning now attached to it of a calumniator, a
διάβολος, an accuser.
Now in the Book of Job (which is undoubtedly very ancient, before the law
for there is no mention of the law in it, undoubtedly the most ancient
book in the world) the word Satan meant only this officer, the prime
vizier of the Sultan (you remember in the ‘Arabian Nights’ the Caliph and
his vizier are very fond of going their rounds for the same purpose).
God Almighty is shown to us under the semblance of a mortal king holding
his court, and his officer comes, as the book tells us, ‘from going his
rounds on the earth and walking up and down in it,’ but mind there is
nothing like malignity attached to him.
The King asks him concerning Job—the officer answers that he is a perfect
man—but (adds he) ‘He has yet had no temptation; he is prosperous, and he
might alter if his circumstances were altered.’
The King then commands him to try and to destroy his possessions.
(N.B.—This is a mistake, _He gives him leave_.)
Again on another day the same things happen and when the officer is asked
about Job he says ‘He is yet integer but many men will do this. I can say
nothing for his integrity as long as his possessions only are touched;
but stretch out your hand against his person and see if he will curse
Thee then?’ It is evident that there is no suggestion, no evil in the
officer at all—indeed the belief in Angels and that sort of poultry is
nowhere countenanced in the Old Testament and in the New, nowhere else.
_F._ Indeed, Sir, I think I know a very strong passage.
_C._ Well, what is it?
_F._ Our Saviour tells his disciples when alone with them and apart that
a certain kind of Devils goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
_C._ Well, and what has that to do with Angels?
_F._ I beg your pardon, Sir. I thought you included devils in your
feathered fowl.
_C._ There is nothing I say in the New Testament to countenance the
belief in Angels. For what are the three first Gospels? Every one must
see that they are mere plain narrations, not of things as they are but
of things as they appeared to the ignorant disciples—but when we come to
John, Mr. F., there we find the difference. He told things as they were,
and therefore you must not believe everything that you read implicitly;
and with respect to Devils entering into a man, why it is quite absurd.
What do we mean when we say a thing is in another? Why ‘in’ is merely a
relative term. [The argument, though I was compelled to assent to it, I
am sorry to say was far above my comprehension, and therefore I could
not catch it, still less bag it and carry it away,—however it proved
that there could be no Devils and still less could there be Devils in a
man.] Spirit therefore was not more in a man than it was out of him, the
mistake arising from a misconception of the word _in_. As for all notions
of men with wings, of course they are absurd in the extreme.
I return however to ‘Faust.’
_F._ Did you ever see Shelley’s translation of the Chorus in ‘Faust’ you
were just mentioning?
_C._ I have, and admire it very much. Shelley was a man of great power as
a poet, and could he only have had some notion of order, could you only
have given him some plane whereon to stand, and look down upon his own
mind, he would have succeeded. There are flashes of the true spirit to
be met with in his works. Poor Shelley, it is a pity I often think that
I never met with him. I could have done him good. He went to Keswick on
purpose to see me and unfortunately fell in with Southey instead. There
could have been nothing so unfortunate. Southey had no understanding for
a toleration of such principles as Shelley’s.
I should have laughed at his Atheism. I could have sympathised with him
and shown him that I did so, and he would have felt that I did so. I
could have shown him that I had once been in the same state myself, and I
could have guided him through it. I have often bitterly regretted in my
heart of hearts that I did never meet with Shelley.
_F._ It is time to be gone now I fear, Mr. Coleridge, and when I come up
again I hope you will allow me to bring a volume of Keats with me.
_C._ I shall be most happy to see you for any night you like to come, and
any day before 12 o’clock. Thursday nights are over now, but any night
whether Thursday or not I shall be most happy to see you.
_F._ I must not allow you to come out into the passage, Sir. Good
night....
* * * * *
It was nearly a hundred years ago, yet we seem to see Mr. Frere stepping
out into the night, his mind busy with the thoughts of the last hour.
Were the link boys running through the streets with flaring torches, and
did the stately sedan chair carry home the gay beauty of those far-off
days?
The picture arises which each reader can colour according to his fancy,
yet the impression left as we close the manuscript volume with its
marbled cover, is less of contrast than of unity. The matters that were
of interest in the state of the country in 1830 are of interest in 1917,
though in some cases we see the fulfilment of what was then hoped for.
To-day as the Colonies send their sons in their thousands to uphold
the Motherland in her fight for Justice and Freedom, we know that our
colonial attitude has been more than justified, and England is indeed
proud of her Dominions.
* * * * *
The marble-covered volume closely written in a scholarly hand is once
more placed on the shelf. The ink has grown pale with age, and the
question arises—‘Who to-day would find time to write down an evening’s
conversation, however interesting?’ But another question is more
insistent, as we compare the popular opinion expressed then about Keats,
and other persons and subjects with the verdict of time:
Can a contemporary judgment be as good as a judgment formed when the
person or matter is further from us? And this consideration brings the
consoling thought that not all that may appear failure at the time is
really failure. The age in which they live may be unworthy of its poets
and prophets, yet none the less is their message Divine, and their voice
will be heard at last.
* * * * *
But Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Frere have retired to rest, and we shall not
again disturb them.
E. M. GREEN.
FOOTNOTES
[1] John Frere was the eldest son of George Frere of Lincoln’s Inn and
Twyford, Herts, who was third son of John Frere of Roydon, Norfolk. He
was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; B.A. 1830, M.A.
1833, 2nd class Classical Tripos, 1st Sen. Op.; Curate of Hadleigh,
Suffolk, under Archdeacon Lyall; Chaplain to Blomfield, Bishop of London;
Rector of Cottenham, Cambe, 1839. Married Jane B. Dalton, 1839. Died May
21, 1851. He was first curate of Wakes Colne, Essex, at that time held
with Messing Vicarage.
[2] Possibly Sir Nathaniel Tooke, a celebrated politician of those times.
[3] Possibly Rev. George Rowney Green, Fellow of Eton and grandfather to
the finder of this paper.
[4] These lines were written by Byron in July 1821:
Who kill’d John Keats?
‘I,’ says the _Quarterly_,
So savage and Tartarly;
‘’Twas one of my feats.’
Who shot the arrow?
‘The poet-priest Milman
(So ready to kill man),
Or Southey or Barrow.’
‘_THE WASTREL._’
The black-faced sheep were scattering about the moss when David Moir
stopped to shut the loaning gate. It was getting dark and the lonely
fells rolled back, blurred and shadowy, to the east. In the foreground,
peat-hags showed gashes of oily black among the ling, but some were
filled with leaden water, ruffled by the bitter wind. Beneath him, in a
hollow, his small, white farmstead stood amidst a few bare ash trees, and
a dim gleam to the west indicated the sea. Moir was gaunt and a trifle
bent by age and toil, though his eyes were keen. Sheep dealers called him
a hard man, but took his word about the flocks he sold. As a matter of
fact, he lived with stern frugality because his upland farm was poor and
his younger son’s folly had cost him dear.
By and by his old collie growled and he saw a line of indistinct
figures crossing the moss. As one left the rest and came towards him he
recognised a young Territorial sergeant, who was a seed merchant’s clerk
in peaceful times.
‘Ye’ll hae had a cauld day amang the fells,’ he remarked. ‘What were ye
looking for?’
‘I don’t know,’ the sergeant answered, smiling. ‘The idea may have been
to keep us fit, but we had orders to inquire about the old drove road and
note anything suspicious. You’ll have heard the tales about signal lights
and mysterious cars that cross the moors after dark.’
‘Idle clashes!’
‘I’m not sure. The authorities seem to suspect that something’s going on,
and a strange motor launch has been seen off Barennan Sands; then the old
north road comes down to the shore this way. I expect you know it?’
Moir nodded. The new road, which led through two towns, followed the
water of Ewan down a neighbouring valley; the old one ran straight across
the lonely fells.
‘It’s a green ro’d, but the maist o’ it’s no’ so bad. I hae driven a
young horse ower it in the dark, and it’s no’ verra steep until ye rin
doon to Ewan glen.’
‘Well,’ said the sergeant, ‘you may have a visit from Lieutenant Jardine
and his motor scouts. They start on a patrol at eight o’clock, and, as
they go round by Turnberry Moss, should get to you about two hours
later. There’s a mystery about their job, but my notion is they’re after
the strange car. Anyhow I must catch the boys before they reach the big
plantin’. They’re a sporting lot and I don’t trust them when there’s game
about.’
He turned away, and as Moir went down the loaning the hazy outline of a
ruined kirk on the fellside caught his eye. His only daughter was buried
in its wind-swept yard, and his two sons had left him. Tam, who was a
well-doing lad, had joined the Borderers and been wounded in France; it
was a month since they had news of him. Jimmy had disappeared a year
ago, after Moir, who had crippled himself financially to save the lad
from arrest, disowned him. The farmer suspected that his unemotional
wife sometimes blamed him for harshness and grieved in secret for the
prodigal. She had borne with Jimmy as she had never done with steady Tam.
When he entered the stone-floored, farm kitchen, Janet was sitting near
the peat fire. Her hair was whiter than Moir’s and her face deeply
lined, but her plain dress was marked by austere taste, and she had a
certain dignity. Man and wife were of the old, stern Calvinistic type
that is now dying out. The room was large and draughty, and its precise
neatness had a chilling effect. A rag-mat, which Janet had made before
rheumatism stiffened her fingers, was the only concession to comfort, but
shining china filled a rack above the plain oak press. The hearth-irons
glittered, and a copper jelly pan flashed with an orange lustre in the
glow of the peats. The herd had gone home to his cot-house and there was
nobody else about. When Moir sat down Janet indicated a Glasgow newspaper.
‘Townheid brought it ower—there’s nae news,’ she said.
Moir knew she had been studying the casualty list. Janet seldom showed
her feelings and he could not tell whether she was conscious of relief or
renewed suspense.
‘We’ll maybe get a letter soon,’ he said. ‘I met Ferguson on the moss and
he telt me Mr. Jardine is likely to be here with his men.’
‘Then I’ll hae to offer them a bite to eat. There’s nae loaf-bread and
the scones are getting done; but Euphie’s coming and she’ll help me bake.’
Moir looked at her thoughtfully. Euphie Black was a neighbour’s daughter
and would have married Jimmy had things gone well.
‘Does she ever hear frae him?’
Janet hesitated. ‘I dinna ken; whiles I think—But I’ll need to see if
there’s enough soor milk,’ and she went off to the dairy, while Moir sat
thinking of his wastrel son.
Jimmy was clever and it was by his mother’s wish he went into the Glasgow
merchant’s office, but when he first came home for the Fair holidays,
Moir owned that his wife was right. Jimmy looked well and more of a
man, and his employer sent a good account of him. On subsequent visits
Moir was less satisfied. The lad’s showy clothes offended his sober
taste and he did not like his city smartness. These, however, were not
serious matters, and Janet showed no alarm. Moir thought he could trust
her judgment, but had reflected since that her mother’s partiality had
blinded her. Then one Fair holiday Jimmy did not come home, and before
the next arrived Moir was summoned to Glasgow by the boy’s employer.
He remembered the curious glances cast at him as he walked through the
dingy office to the merchant’s private room, from which he came out
hiding a crushing load of shame behind a stern, set face. Half an hour
later he returned with a bundle of British Linen notes and a letter of
three bitter lines to be sent to the boy’s lodgings. Janet acquiesced in
his decision and never spoke of her son, but the lines on her face had
deepened.
By and by Euphie came in and Moir went to the stable, where he found some
harness that needed repair. He set about it and, as he was thorough in
all he did, an hour passed before he was satisfied. When he came out it
was raining hard, and on going back to the kitchen he found the baking
finished and supper ready for the patrol. They are hospitable folk
among the western fells and Lieutenant Jardine was a nephew of Moir’s
landlord’s. The farmer sat down and watched Euphie knit. She was tall
and had an attractive face, with firmly-lined features and steady grey
eyes. As a rule, she was quiet, but her character was decided, and Moir
sometimes wondered what had drawn her to his weak son.
Nobody spoke. A cold wind wailed about the house and the drips from
a flooded roaning beneath the flagstone eaves splashed against a
window-pane. After a time Janet moved abruptly as the door rattled and
began to open. It had an awkward old-fashioned latch that few strangers
were able to lift. The door, however, had opened and an indistinct figure
stood, hesitating, in the porch. Janet got up and beckoned, but Moir sat
still with his mouth set.
A young man came in, the water running from his light overcoat, and mud
splashed about his leggings. He was breathless, but his face was rather
pale than hot, and as he approached the lamp Moir saw there was blood
upon his sleeve. The lad said nothing, but Janet went to meet him and put
her arms round his neck. She felt him wince at her embrace, and, drawing
back, saw, for the first time, his torn and reddened sleeve. Then with a
low, pitiful cry she led him forward to the fire.
‘Come away while I see til yere arm. How got ye hurt?’
Jimmy looked at his father, who made no sign, and afterwards at Euphie
with a shamefaced air. She did not speak, but gave him a quiet, friendly
smile that offended Moir. It was not for nothing he had disowned his son,
and now the women had, without asking a question, re-instated him. Janet
helped the lad to take off his wet coat, which he dropped upon the floor,
and then, after telling Euphie to bring hot water, took him away.
Euphie sat down silently when she returned, and Moir, who disliked
untidiness, picked up the coat and, after washing the sleeve, hung it
near the door. By and by mother and son came back, but Jimmy now wore a
different suit that Moir remembered. It was an old one he had once left
behind, but Janet had cleaned and pressed it and kept it for three years.
Moir began to realise that he did not know his wife yet. He turned to
Euphie when Jimmy sat down without looking at him.
‘It’s getting late and ye’d be better at home,’ he said.
‘No,’ she answered with firm quietness. ‘I was promised to Jimmy and I’ll
hear what he has to tell.’
Moir made a sign of acquiescence and gave his son a stern commanding look.
‘What brought ye here?’ he asked.
‘I was hurt and had nowhere else to go,’ Jimmy answered in a strained
voice. ‘I only want shelter for a few hours; not to stay.’
‘How did ye get hurt?’
‘A Territorial stopped me at a gate. He tore my arm with his bayonet, but
the cut’s not very deep.’
‘Ye were hard put to it when ye tried to pass the soldier,’ Moir remarked.
‘I had to pass him. It was very dark, and there was a hole in the dyke
not far off. I thought the others were after me.’
‘What ithers? But ye’ll go back and begin at the first o’ it. I sent ye
the price o’ a third-class passage to Canada. Why did ye not go?’
‘The money was stolen.’
‘Ay,’ said Moir grimly, ‘I will not ask ye where! Gang on.’
Jimmy hesitated, but pulled himself together and told his tale. Soon
after he was left penniless and disgraced, he found a friend in Fritz,
one of the boon companions who had brought about his downfall. Fritz
lent him a few small sums and by and by took him to see another man, who
sent him to Leith. Jimmy did not mention what he did there, but stated
awkwardly that he had got in too deep to draw back when he found out what
his employer’s business really was. Then he stopped and said his arm was
hurting him. The women looked puzzled, but Moir’s face set like flint.
‘So ye stayed and helped the Gairman spies!’
There was silence for a few moments. Euphie’s face was flushed and she
fixed her eyes on the fire, while Janet nervously moved her hands.
‘Weel,’ Moir resumed, ‘ye can noo tell us how ye cam’ to visit this pairt
o’ the country.’
Jimmy roused himself with an effort and went on in a low voice: ‘I came
with them in the car now and then, by the old green road; you see I knew
the way. They met another party at the waterfoot by Barennan Sands.’
‘Just that!’ Moir said grimly. ‘I ken why ye went to Leith. There was
news to be picked up aboot the navy yards at Rosyth. What else did ye
bring?’
‘Sometimes a man I didn’t know, and once a load of small iron drums. I
can’t say what was inside. They didn’t tell me much.’
Moir pondered. He imagined that the drums held something that was needed
by enemy submarines; but Jimmy’s frankness puzzled him. He did not think
it was contrition, since he had no faith in his son. The lad seemed to
have told the truth because he was afraid.
‘Where did ye leave yere foreign friends?’ he asked.
‘Where the road turns off to the old place of Whiterigg; they stopped
there now and then, and there’s a gate, you mind. I got down to open it
and they drove off.’
‘Why?’ Moir demanded, and the fear was plainer in Jimmy’s eyes.
‘I think their work must be nearly done and they meant to get rid of me.
After all, I don’t know very much, and they’d reckon I’d be afraid to
tell what I had found out.’
Moir began to understand. The old house at Whiterigg had lately been
left in charge of a caretaker who obviously belonged to the gang, which
indicated that the latter was well organised. The lad was perhaps in some
danger from them.
‘But what for did they gang to the Whiterigg?’
‘To wait for high-tide, I expect. They’d run down to the waterfoot when a
boat could come up the gut through the sands.’
‘That would be the way o’ it, nae doot; but I dinna ken yet why ye cam’
hame.’
‘Where else would he gang for safety?’ Janet asked in a pitiful tone.
‘Ony place but here! It’s to my sorrow he’s a son o’ mine. But let him
speak.’
Jimmy’s narrative was not very lucid, but it appeared that he had been
seized by a kind of panic when left in the road. He had very little
money, something suspicious had happened at the last stopping place, and
he thought his friends had betrayed him to the police, or might send
somebody after him in the dark. He lost his nerve when he found the
soldier in his way, and after getting past the man ran blindly across the
moor towards home. When he finished Moir glanced at the tall oak clock.
‘Ye have aboot an ’oor, and then Mr. Jardine will be here with his motor
scouts,’ he said, and taking his gun from a rack went out.
It was raining hard and very dark, but he made his way across the moss to
where the old road ran down to Ewan Water, and stopped a short distance
from the bank. A weak thorn hedge grew beside it, but Moir could see the
pale glimmer of the water two or three yards below and hear the gurgle
of the current, which swirled round a deep elbow-pool. A pair of stone
gateposts stood close by, but the gate had been removed to allow the
cattle fresh pasture, and Moir, who knew where it was, brought it back.
He hung it to the post and fastened it firmly to the other with some
wire from a fence. He had already lighted a lantern, and now examined
his work. The gate was old, but looked pretty strong; some force would
be required to break it down. Then he went up the steep hill away from
the water and stopped at an opening in a dyke at the top. There was no
gate here, and after hiding his lantern he sheltered behind the wall in a
dangerous mood.
David Moir was a true descendant of the old Westland Whigs; sternly
just and ready to suffer for his principles, he could make no allowance
for a different point of view, and was subject to fits of cold anger
which, while generally righteous, was tinged with fanaticism. His son’s
treachery filled him with horror, but he was calm enough to see that the
weak lad had been the victim of the men who used him. Well, he meant to
settle the black account with them!
It was bitterly cold and he was getting wet, but his watchfulness did
not relax. The growl of Ewan Water, brawling among the stones, rose from
the valley and the wind whistled eeriely through the chinks in the dyke.
For a time he heard nothing else, and then a faint throbbing began and
grew louder. A big car, without lights, was travelling dangerously fast
along the fellside, and as it came near Moir stood in the gateway holding
up his lantern. He heard a warning shout and a rattle of stones as the
locked wheels skidded, and the half-seen car stopped a few yards off.
Moir turned the light upon the two men in it.
‘Which o’ ye is Fritz?’ he asked.
They looked surprised, but one said ‘You want to know too much. Why have
you stopped us?’
‘My name is Moir. I want a word with ye.’
He put the lantern on the dyke and the light glimmered on the barrel of
his gun. It was his duty to hand the men to the patrol, but if this was
impossible, so much the worse for them. They had made his son a traitor
to his country by taking advantage of his need, and Moir suspected that
Fritz had first made him a thief.
‘You’re the young fool’s father, but we can’t waste time on you,’ said
one. ‘Drop that gun and let us pass!’
‘Get doon!’ said Moir, who did not move.
‘Out of the way, or we’ll drive over you!’ the other cried.
The car rolled forward and Moir sprang back, hesitated as it ran past,
and lowered his gun.
‘Drive tae h—, where ye belang!’ he said, as the car lurched furiously
down the hill.
Then he stood and listened. A sharp-pitched throbbing now rose from the
valley, through which the high-road wound on the other side of the water.
It sounded like a motor bicycle, and Moir understood the impatience of
the men he had stopped. Jardine’s scouts had got upon their track, but
the chances were against the fugitives reaching the bridge where the
roads joined. He waited with his face fixed like stone until he heard a
heavy crash in the dark below. Then he picked up his lantern and ran down
the hill.
When he reached the bottom everything was quiet except for the roar of
Ewan Water and the hum of the approaching bicycle, but pieces of the
broken gate lay about the road. Moir raised the lantern and saw a track
deeply ploughed through the grass and stones, in front of which the hedge
was smashed. Looking down through the gap, he distinguished something in
the water. It looked like the wheel of an upset car, but he could not see
it well, because the torrent foamed in an angry swirl across what lay
below. If the men had not jumped before the plunge, it was too late for
help.
A minute later, the motor bicycle rattled across the bridge a short
distance off and sped towards him. It slowed and Lieutenant Jardine got
down.
‘Have you seen a car, David?’ he asked.
‘I hae,’ said Moir. ‘Let yere machine stand. She’s in the pool.’
The young man followed him to the broken hedge and looked down. ‘What
about the men?’
‘Maybe they jumpit aff. If no’, they’re under her.’
Lieutenant Jardine, who had seen no active service yet, caught his breath
with a short gasp.
‘How long will it take to get her out?’
‘An ’oor or two and half a dizzen men; but ye’ll need to send doon the
bay for tackle.’
‘I’m afraid that’s so,’ agreed Jardine, who had got a shock. ‘However,
we’d better see if they’ve escaped and are somewhere about.’
They searched the hedge and bank on both sides, but found nobody, nor any
footprints leading from the water. Then Jardine followed Moir to where
the shattered gate lay about the road.
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘it was justifiable; you warned them to stop.
A herd told us about the car and I started at once. After a time I
thought I heard her in front, but suppose I missed her where the old road
branches off. But some of the boys will have reached your farm, and we
must send for tackle.’
He left the bicycle and resumed as they walked up the hill: ‘When we
stopped at the Mains farm, I sent out flankers to search the by-roads
ahead, by way of training the men. One reported that he challenged and
wounded a suspicious stranger who refused to stop and managed to get
away. I sent him and another on to search the country and report to me at
your house. It looks as if the fellow had something to do with the car.’
‘Ay,’ Moir answered quietly, ‘it looks like that.’
He said nothing further, for his mind was occupied. His duty was to
give up his son, but he thought of the lad’s mother and shrank. Still,
he would not shield him; if Jimmy was in the house when they reached
it, justice must take its course. His heart beat fast as he opened the
door and then he drew a breath of relief. A few men in wet khaki sat
by the hearth, talking to Janet and Euphie, but Jimmy was not there.
Moir thought his wife’s look was somewhat strained, but when she turned
towards him the girl’s glance was steady. The men got up as Jardine came
forward, and he sent one off to obtain appliances for dragging out the
car.
‘Did you get on the track of the fellow you wounded?’ he asked another.
‘No, sir. I took the moss road without a light, but the machine went ower
a big stone and threw me off. The front wheel was buckled, so I left her
behind a peat-stack and cam’ on, without seeing anybody.’
‘Has Watson been in to report?’
‘Yes, sir. He kept the high-road, by the Knowe and Townhead, but they’d
seen nothing o’ our man, and there was nobody on the road as far as where
the drove track runs in. Watson’s gone back to watch by the bothy near
the brig.’
‘Then it looks as if the fellow was hiding between where he was seen and
here, but it’s unlikely that a wounded man would lie out on the moors
on a night like this,’ Jardine said thoughtfully, and turned to Janet.
‘He might have crept into your byre or barn. Did you hear anything
suspicious?’
Moir was sensible of keen tension as he glanced at his wife, but her face
was calm.
‘He couldna have creepit into ony place withoot Rab, the collie, hearing
him.’
‘The dog was outside and he’ll hardly let a stranger set foot in the
loaning,’ Euphie supported her.
‘That’s true, sir,’ one of the men remarked. ‘He cam’ oot to meet us and
it was no’ that easy getting by.’
Jardine hesitated, and Moir felt his heart beat as he glanced at Jimmy’s
coat, which hung in plain view with the wet sleeve suspiciously torn.
Nobody, however, seemed to have noticed it, and when Janet urged them
Jardine and his scouts sat down to supper. When the meal was over and
they were going, Moir said:
‘I’ll hae to drive a son o’ mine, frae Glasgow, doon the water to catch
the early train.’
‘Then Jimmy’s back?’ said Jardine, who knew something about the lad.
‘He got hame late and needit a few ’oors’ sleep before starting again,’
Janet explained.
‘Very well,’ said Jardine, who took out a fountain pen and writing on a
leaf from his pocket-book gave it Moir. ‘My men won’t interfere with you,
but as I must warn the police and Territorials, you’d better take this
pass.’
He went out and Moir turned to Janet. ‘Where hae ye hidden him?’
‘In the barn,’ said Janet, with signs of strain.
‘Then ye’ll baith come and hear what I say til him,’ Moir replied, and
lighted his lantern.
A minute or two later, Jimmy got up from the straw among which he was
lying, as Moir flashed the light into his face.
‘Have they gone?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Ay,’ said Moir; ‘but ye’re no’ safe yet. If yere Gairman friends arena’
drooned, they’ll be in jail the morn.’
‘Then they’ll think I gave them away.’
‘It’s verra probable,’ Moir agreed. ‘For a’ that, ye’ll be in Carlisle by
then to enlist in the Borderers.’
There was silence for a moment, and then Euphie said ‘It’s the only way,
Jimmy. It’s your chance of winning back.’
‘He’ll tak’ it,’ Moir remarked grimly. ‘If he doesna, he leaves here in
chairge o’ the polis.’ Then he turned to the lad. ‘I’ll waken ye when
it’s time. Dinna’ keep yere mither lang.’
He went back to the kitchen, and by and by Janet came in alone. Her eyes
were wet, but she put her hand on Moir’s shoulder.
‘I’m thinking ye found the right way, David,’ she said. ‘He’ll gang.’
HAROLD BINDLOSS.
_ON NIGHT DUTY._
It was a large base hospital in a large and dirty town. South Country men
grew frank with disgust when they saw the pall of fog that hung for a
fortnight outside the windows, yet things were little better when the fog
cleared and the great buildings stood stark in their black ugliness.
Yet the night nurses would linger at the corridor windows on their way
down to the dining-room. There was the glamour of night on the big
city, mighty buildings silhouetted against a sky of dark luminous blue,
towers that divided the stars, and far below in the street the ruby
and topaz lights of the road-menders, with the glowing brazier of the
night-watchman. And then dawn came with its chilling wind and its grey
cheerless light that discovered, without love or pity, the sordid things
of town—the dirty canal, the barges, the heaps of timber, the ugly
money-making warehouses and factories. All this we saw—a world pallid and
cold, with none of the genial glow of noontide.
The hospital never failed to charm me at night. Its interior aspect
had a beauty of dim wards and red subdued lights over the ‘dug-outs,’
where a sister or nurse sat in charge. The long rows of white beds
disappeared into the darkness, and the men in them had that pathos—unreal
in some cases—of the sleeping and the helpless. At night they were all
children—children who talked pitifully in their sleep of Germans and
trenches and ghastly things beyond our ken. They called sometimes a
woman’s name and professed next morning a guileless ignorance of her
existence.
It was a hushed and mysterious world, where one whispered and walked
stealthily, and yet where much was told and where life seemed simpler
and more genuine than by day when the little tin gods were all awake. At
that time I saw most of the mental ward, the most pathetic place in any
hospital. Sleep was an unwilling visitor there, except to the orderlies,
who, in the intervals of card-playing and button-cleaning, relapsed into
the attitudes of the seven sleepers.
Night after night old Dad Hobson would stay awake till two or three
o’clock, without complaint or murmur. Any man a little past his prime was
called ‘dad’ or described as ‘old’ in this land of youth. And in sober
fact Dad Hobson had seven children. He had been a miner before he made
the great sacrifice that had left him maimed and insane. He was always
courteous, always considerate. Even on those days when he refused to eat
it was with a polite ‘I’m sorry not to oblige you, nurse.’ He believed
himself guilty of some crime—he had murdered Sir Ian Hamilton—and in
trivial ways too he held himself responsible for any disturbance in that
much-disturbed ward. At times he was so much better that we hoped he
was regaining his wits, but always there would come a relapse and his
face would be downcast, and ‘I’m puzzled someway, something’s wrong. I
can’t get things clear in my mind,’ would be the explanation. He had odd
delusions too, for a doctor clad in a dressing-gown provoked his question
to an orderly, ‘Is that Lord Nelson?’
It was a strange little party altogether in that ward. Hobson would lie
there by the hour, dimly annoyed by Jimmy in the bed opposite. Jimmy
had nearly died of wounds and later of pneumonia, but he had rallied,
only to reach a state of discomfort and nervous temper that was liable
to fiendish explosions. For the most part he was a lovable boy, with a
curious charm of his own. Sleepless, like Hobson, till the small hours,
he played cards with the orderlies. When things pleased him Jimmy was an
angel, but at other times he was a fiend. A certain soldier, a clarionet
player once in the Queen’s Hall orchestra, came to the ward. He was
suffering from insomnia and melancholia. Jimmy’s drawling voice and his
card-playing and, perhaps, his popularity annoyed the clarionet player,
and they quarrelled. Jimmy merely remarked:
‘I’ll do for him—see if I don’t.’
The clarionet player was removed to the next ward, separated from the
other only by a glass and wood partition.
‘He shan’t sleep to-night if I don’t,’ said Jimmy, and he took careful
aim at the glass partition with his tin mug. He hit the woodwork and
missed his enemy’s head in the next ward, so he fell into heavy-browed
sulking, with the threat ‘I’ll do for myself.’ This is often a mere
threat, but he did make an endeavour by biting up a blue-lead pencil—a
tedious and uncertain form of suicide. The pencil was taken away and,
blue-lipped and weary, like a naughty child he fell asleep. Poor Jimmy!
He went to a Scottish asylum where many of our patients were sent for
further treatment. I heard lately that he was really better and likely to
be discharged.
One of the beds was occupied by Andy—Andy of the picturesque speech and
uncertain behaviour. He came in raging under the effects of alcoholic
poisoning. Such cases always spent a night or so in the X-ray room with
a special orderly. I saw him that night, a flushed unhappy-looking boy,
who was sane enough to speak politely and to say ‘Nurrse,’ with the
delightful roll that our Jocks put into it. Later Andy came down to the
ward, and was duly established in a corner bed. Here we got to know him
for the loquacious rattle-pate he was. By day he was sane enough, but at
night he was subject to awful dreams and fits of horror, which caused him
to roll out of bed with an alarming bump. One night he thought the German
prisoners were coming to murder him—two inoffensive boys with very little
strength between them; another time I found him a hump at the foot of his
bed.
‘Come out, Andy,’ I said.
‘I’ll kill you if I do, Nurrse; I’ve killed all my chums.’
But he crawled out flushed and weary. His face was coarsened and weakened
by too much drinking, but it was a pleasant boyish face. He had, too,
that quick imagination which gives vivid charm even to stories which
tax belief. Andy told us wonderful stories of his doings at Loos and
elsewhere. He had been a bomb-thrower, one of three survivors from a
party of one hundred and sixty. The story was declared to be untrue by
someone who knew him, but Andy could spin a yarn to keep Sister B., the
orderlies, and myself in amazement round his bed. His own history, too,
was a chequered, strange record. He had run away from home at ten years
old and had joined a circus. He had been with Barnum, Wombwell, ‘Lord’
George Sanger, and travelled the kingdom from town to town. At fifteen
he had enlisted in the Cameron Highlanders, deserted after a time,
changed his name and joined the Gordons. He had been a champion boxer
for—I forget the place. He had been everywhere and done most things, and
was—poor Andy!—a nervous, dyspeptic wreck at twenty-four. Yet he had ‘a
way with him’—a way that made us fond and disapproving at the same time.
The night before I started for a holiday, the Sister in charge had given
orders that Andy was to wear pyjamas. He preferred a night-shirt. The
point made a dispute. To humour him I said:
‘Andy, you’ll spoil my holiday if you don’t put on those trousers. I
couldn’t be happy if I thought you hadn’t got them on.’
Andy was on the far side of a screen. There was silence, then a rustling,
then Andy’s voice: ‘Nurrse ... I’ve got on they trrousers. I wouldn’t
spoil your holiday, you ken.’
The next morning I saw the last of him. He was asleep. I put my hand on
his head and said ‘Tell him I left him my blessing.’ It was carelessly
said; I thought I should find him when I came back, but I have never seen
him since.
They sent an armed escort from Aberdeen to bring Andy to a court-martial.
Rumour went round the hospital that he had deserted in France, and
would be sent back to France to be shot. How often in his sleep Andy
had muttered ‘I won’t go back; I won’t.... I won’t.... I’ll do for
myself first. They shan’t court-martial me ... they shan’t.’ Now it was
explained.
When Andy heard that the escort had come for him he was quiet enough.
He promised to pack his kit-bag and go quietly. However, he went off
to the bathroom and was found trying to hang himself. They brought him
back to the ward. He snatched a razor from his locker and tried to cut
his throat. I don’t think he tried very hard—Andy was more dramatic than
thorough. The escort went back to Aberdeen, for Andy was now in one of
his raving, struggling attacks, and obviously unfit for the journey.
When he was better he was handcuffed, his hands behind him, and so left
for more hours than one likes to think of. I heard the story when I came
back, and there was a chorus of pity on his behalf.
‘I could have cried when I saw him handcuffed, marching down the
corridor,’ said a nurse. And the orderlies, even one whom he had kicked
in the stomach, were pitiful for him—orderlies are a compassionate race.
The escort returned and Andy, strapped to a stretcher, was taken away to
Aberdeen. We discussed his fate for many days, always with the decision
‘They _couldn’t_ shoot him.’ Then rumour said he would get five years
in a military prison, but meanwhile Andy sent us letters, written in
lurid-looking red ink. He wrote from a Scottish hospital, and wrote
gaily, jauntily, with no mention of prisons, desertion, or court-martial.
His pride must have suffered horribly, for he had made of himself so
gallant a figure, poor boastful Andy. He loved to write in the dialect
that he talked, though he could, if he chose, send a fine English letter.
Speaking of his very delicate digestion he says ‘I had a wee bit jelly
for dinner; it slipped itself doon and just slipped back again. It doesna
matter, what they gie me, it comes back. I try hard to keep it, but I
canna.’ A few letters came from the large Scottish asylum where many of
our mental cases were sent. They were always written in red ink, and
concluded with a liberal supply of kisses (a matter of politeness this
with many soldiers). Then the letters stopped, and none of us has heard
anything more of poor Andy. He belonged, I fear, to the flotsam of life,
and the waves washed him here and there.
A sad case was poor old Snakes. He was called Snakes because when he
recovered enough to speak, he told us that he had swallowed a lot of
snakes—no wonder that he never smiled. One morning I put the conventional
question, ‘Are you better to-day?’ and received the sad answer, ‘How can
I be better, I’m full of buttons.’ Another time he was full of watches
that ticked in his ears, and again he had swallowed a tramcar—poor,
melancholy old Snakes!
But the dearest of all our sad little family was certainly Alfred; Alfred
Morgan of a Welsh regiment, never mind which. He was brought in from
a military prison—sentenced for desertion, a case for a certain paper
that champions the injured Tommy. Poor Alfred, with his wits all gone
to pieces, his head and limbs shaking, his face working, seemed to us a
living protest against any judgment but a doctor’s. I could hardly bear
to see him, so hopelessly insane did he look. Death would have been far
better than this doddering idiocy. The other men, sanest of the sane
compared with him, tried to pet him and to coax answers out of him, but
his mind, as Sister B. remarked, was a jig-saw puzzle gone to pieces.
The pieces seemed to have no cohesion. He talked ramblingly of Bob his
horse, of a dog, a canal, some medals, a picture, of Ada and the pigeons.
He fancied the floor was the canal, and fished there with groping hands.
Sometimes a word or a place-name would seem to rouse him, and he’d tell
us the names of streets or of people: at other times he would shake his
head and gaze vacantly round him, or look with that worried, bewildered
look that made one’s heart ache.
It was Sister B. who did the most to fit the puzzle together. Every night
she would sit by his bed and question him, bringing him back to the point
time after time. We were filling in more of the puzzle every night.
Alfred had lived in Birmingham, had been on a canal barge, had taken coal
to some place; he had won medals, had a mother, and there was a picture
that he remembered. Policemen excited him to frenzy, and when he saw one
of the Force he would fling apples or slippers, or any handy missile,
through the window. He could play cards too. There was a gradual mental
development—the most fascinating thing one can watch. But it was slow,
and Alfred seemed like a rudderless boat at sea till he met Jock.
Jock is a story all to himself. Suffice it to say of him that his
vocation was to be a guardian angel. Every Scottish soldier is Jock in
hospital, and perhaps other hospitals have found Jocks like ours—always
unselfish, cheery, uncomplaining, infinitely pitiful to every trouble but
their own; still I believe our Jock would outshine theirs.
Sister B. decided to bring Alfred on a visit to Jock’s ward. I must
say that the experiment was painful. A surgical ward is a very
cheerful place, and poor Alfred, shaky, bewildered, pitiful, was a
figure to darken the sun at that time. But Sister B. was a nurse of
brave experiments. She dared and succeeded; she was resourceful and
passionately interested in her patients. So she brought Alfred to this
sane and happy ward, and sat him down by Jock’s bed. Jock had been
wounded at Loos in September, 1915, and had remained in bed for eight
months with the occasional variation of an operation and brief respites
when he was up and in a wheeled chair.
Among many pathetic things I had seen, none seemed to me more pathetic
than the sight of those two war-shattered boys together. Alfred, nearly
speechless, his poor wits all astray, tried to make himself lucid,
while Jock, with infinite pity on his face, tried to understand and to
help. The one looked like an angel of mercy, the other like some poor
soul in search of peace. I don’t know how they talked, but somehow they
made friends. Alfred was utterly unwilling to go back to his own ward,
though he returned laden with cigarettes and apples. From that day the
friendship grew. Every day Alfred visited Jock, and Jock, when he could
get into a chair, returned the call. Somehow they talked. Jock has
infinite patience and tact; he has graduated in the college of suffering
and has learnt the whole art of compassion. He found out that Alfred knew
most things knowable about football, that he was, in fact, a ‘real little
sport.’
The ward adopted Alfred as a sort of mascot; he might do and have what he
liked. He was just an unhappy child, humoured at all points.
Then arrived someone who solved the riddle of the medals and the picture
of which Alfred talked so much. This man had seen a picture of Alfred
boxing another celebrated pugilist. Alfred was a well-known character in
the Ring—he had won his nine medals in various contests. To name a boxer
was to set Alfred blazing with excitement and fearful efforts to stammer
out some story of an encounter in which he had taken part.
We learnt more of Ada at last. Ada was ‘his girl,’ and he had left the
pigeons in her keeping.
‘Poor Ada,’ I said one day to Jock, ‘what would she say if she saw
Alfred?’
‘Alfred writes to her,’ Jock replied solemnly. ‘At least I write for him.’
‘But,’ I objected, ‘Ada may fall in love with your letters—it’s not fair
to her.’
‘Oh! I put “Jock helped to write this” at the top,’ he explained
earnestly.
What Ada thought of these dual letters I cannot say. I suppose she minds
Alfred’s pigeons and hopes on. As for Alfred, I think his real love was
for Jock. When he was restive and talked of going away we could soothe
him by saying that he surely would not leave Jock alone. Everything
he had he brought to his idol to share it with him. He made himself
bath-chairman, and the two would go off to the one window that commanded
an amusing street view. Together they hung out in perfect amity and
understood each other in silence, for Alfred could barely get the words
for even a short sentence. Alfred was the sheep-dog, Jock the shepherd.
It was understood that if one was asked to tea anywhere the other must go
too. With Jock Alfred was known to be ‘all right.’ So things went happily
until the inevitable parting. Jock was sent to a Red Cross hospital
almost at a moment’s notice. Alfred was inconsolable; he wandered,
red-eyed, forlorn, piteously incoherent, from ward to ward, searching
vaguely and vainly for his chum. He shed bitter childlike tears, while
Jock, for his part, suffered for Alfred’s trouble and his own. Such is
the pathos of hospital. Later, Alfred was sent to the Scottish hospital
of which mention has been made. He and Jock write to each other—perhaps
some day they will meet.
As for Jock, I think a star laughed when he was born—though he can suffer
to the full capacity of a Celtic nature. Good angels have him in their
keeping and save him—only Heaven knows how—from being spoilt.
I was present when the sergeant of the guard met Jock being wheeled down
the corridor. He interrupted the triumphal progress with six foot of
stalwart manhood.
‘That,’ said he, ‘is by his looks the happiest boy in this hospital. I’ve
never seen him sad, I’ve never heard him grumble. He’s the boy for my
money—he’s a good boy, a great boy! We need more like him, we do!’
This was embarrassing, but Jock took it quietly and politely. More
touching was the devotion of the corporal of the guard. ‘I had a son just
like him, killed at Suvla Bay,’ he explained.
But Jock was of those who have fairy godmothers. If you imagine Bonnie
Prince Charlie before his heroism was tarnished, you have Jock; or if you
imagine Malcolm, Marquis of Lossie, in a lighter vein, you have him; and
if you picture young Lochinvar, or Jock of Hazeldean, or some other hero
of Scottish ballad, you see our Jock.
When first we saw him—it was an October day soon after the battle of
Loos—he looked haggard, unshaven, and quite unlike the boy of a later
date. He had a shockingly wounded knee, and was running a temperature.
His dressing was a daily torture. We knew it was agony, because he
whistled and sang the whole time and talked the most fascinating nonsense
in beautiful Doric—only he gripped the head rail of his bed with an iron
‘grup,’ as he would have called it, and looked within measurable distance
of fainting.
Movement was dreadful to him, but he had journeys to the X-ray room and
to the operating theatre. Even in semi-consciousness he was true to
himself—true to the self which was always pushed out of sight. I remember
his sitting up just after an operation, and casting a distracted look
round the ward.
‘Are the troops safe and in their places?’ he asked wildly. Reassured,
he asked again ‘Is Paddy all right?’ Paddy was our orderly and a devoted
friend of Jock’s. Then with a sigh of relief he lay down.
The following day he had an extension put on the injured leg. If you can
imagine what it is to have a terribly injured knee, then to have it cut
about, and finally to have it held up for half an hour or more while the
extension is put on, you have just a faint idea what Jock suffered in
grim silence. He was in the torture chamber but he never winced—only the
youth went out of his face and a sort of grey old age seemed to come upon
him.
I said to him later: ‘You’ve had an awful time of it to-day, Jock.’
He was still faint with pain, but he murmured: ‘No so bad. Oh! it was no
so bad at all, Nurse.’
To these bad times belonged his polite requests, ‘Will you pull my leg
a wee?’ and ‘Will you sort my leg?’—a phrase which always delighted me;
but, as a Scottish captain asked seriously when I had quoted this latter
request, ‘What else _could_ he have said?’
Often in those bad winter days when Jock’s temperature rose with such
alarming bounds, I used to wonder if he would ever see Scotland again.
There was the dreadful bugbear septicæmia, and there was always the
likelihood that he would have to lose his leg. But he had a good angel in
Sister B. No one could ‘sort his leg’ as she could, no one could hurt him
so little or so quickly as she, and no one could put in what he called
‘they tubes’ as she could—those deadly tubes that seemed to go by winding
alleys and narrow desperate ways under his patella and right through the
back of his knee. I think she staked her soul (and no one gave more life
and soul to her patients than she did) that Jock should keep his leg.
She was the first who dared to get him into a wheel chair; she taught
him to walk again; she comforted him and helped him to face the long
months, for even Jock had his dark days—more of them than he let us know.
He used at these times to read Burns with devotion, and he told me that
‘Desolation’ and ‘Man is made to Mourn’ were his favourite poems, and
exactly expressive of his feelings.
‘One gets a wee bit fed up at times,’ he confessed, ‘thinking one’ll
never play football again.’
Football had been his joy, and somehow I think he went out to the war
as to football on a larger scale. Quite casually he described the
Highlanders’ charge at Loos. He was out of it very soon himself, but even
at that moment his thoughts had all been outside himself.
‘I prayed then as I never prayed before,’ he remarked.
‘For the stretcher-bearers to come to you,’ suggested a listener.
‘No, of course not’—this with surprise—‘I prayed for the boys. Man! it
was grand to see the kilts go by.’
Casually he told of his effort to save one of his officers who was
severely wounded. But both of them were unable to move and they lay on
the field for twenty-four hours.
Patrick MacGill in his terrible description of Loos tells how the Jocks
were scattered, dead and wounded, on the battlefield, their bare knees
gleaming in the pale morning light. But for many there was no return.
However, this is a happy story. I firmly believe that Jock is the
true fairy-tale hero who marries the princess and lives happily ever
afterwards, even as he deserves. But he will always suffer for the
suffering of others. He confided to me with shame that certain books
brought him inexplicable sensations rather like wanting to cry. ‘It’s a
sort of soft spot in my wooden heart,’ he explained. All alone in the
ward he would solace himself by singing Burns’s songs—with tears in his
eyes. He accounted for them by saying the light had dazzled him.
To the sorrows of the ward he gave all his heart. One of the ineffaceable
memories of hospital is the morning when Patterson died. Patterson, a man
of very different temperament, had loved Jock too and had, during his
long-drawn weeks of dying, found comfort, I believe, in the atmosphere of
cheeriness that emanated from Jock’s bed, when he could not move. They
were two of the worst cases, and they could only exchange greetings by
shouting across the ward.
On this morning there was a terrible silence. No one had the heart for
song or gramophone. Patterson’s pain was too apparent; the coming end
of it held the men in a hushed suspense. Then suddenly Patterson made
an effort and called to Jock, ‘How are you, Jock?’ And Jock, white with
sympathy, called back, ‘Champion! What way are you, Patterson?’ The pity
of it....
But Jock’s story is only a quarter written. Its chapters have been fine
reading for those who have had the luck to read them so far, but I
believe there will be finer chapters yet.
Often I said to myself in fear for him, ‘Whom the orderlies love die
young’—for the orderlies adored Jock, but the adapted proverb did not
come true, for he is walking about now and ‘enjoying life fine to make up
for all the months in bed—not that I suffered so much at all, Nurse.’
This is a happy story, but we saw sad ones.
Death is just an incident in hospital life. Alas! one sometimes forgets
that it is all-important to the dying. A household seems to hold its
breath when somebody dies; a ward continues its automatic routine. There
is pity—much of it—but it is a common-sense pity, that accepts death as
just an inevitable happening to be finished and then forgotten.
I remember so well the night when old Sergeant Meadows died. He had only
been in the ward for three days, so that his personality had had no
chance to impress us. All the men settled down to sleep except Harman,
who had suddenly gone mad. He shrieked if anyone went near him, tried to
push us away, then to blow us away. A hypodermic of morphia seemed to
produce little effect on him except that he was a shade quieter; he did
not sleep but remained sitting up in bed, watchful and terribly alert.
Meanwhile the poor old sergeant was dying. Nothing could be done for him.
Morton, the orderly, always pitiful, came and looked at him.
‘Well,’ he said philosophically, ‘this is a queer night we’re having. A
man in the other ward tells me ’e’s been seein’ rabbits. It’s too much! I
just says “This must stop. There’s too many seein’ rabbits to-night.” I
knew a man what saw red, white, and blue rats—had ’em proper, ’e did.’
Morton sighed. He was a gentle soul, capable of infinite tenderness and
patience, as many orderlies are. They are, one sometimes thinks, gentler
than women, less conventional, and stereotyped in their kindness.
‘Poor man!’ Morton murmured. ‘A good old soul. It’s queer how little one
thinks of it. When the young ones die it comes worse on one.’
A few minutes afterwards the sergeant was dead. Unused to death, I hardly
realised it. At once preparations were made for his laying-out and
subsequent removal. There is a routine about death as about birth. The
immensity of the spiritual change is obscured by the methodical functions
of material life. Yet death is the supreme adventure.
It seemed sad for the old man to have met this great adventure among
strangers, to go forth silently, without tears or prayers or love from us
who watched. Yet I think this quiet, unemotional passing is dignified.
Very soon afterwards the orderlies came with a stretcher and the Union
Jack for pall, and so the old man left us. His body went to the mortuary,
and his soul—surely, ‘his soul goes marching on.’ And all the time the
other men slept like weary children. Only Harman sat up, still awake and
watchful in his terrible nervous tension.
Hospital is a world to itself, and those outside know little of it; so
one often thought, when visitors expressed surprise that we all seemed
cheerful. Of course we were not all cheerful or always cheerful. The
cheerfulness of the Tommy is a composite thing. In part it is due to his
youth and his character, and is in that sense natural; but it is in part
his religion—in some cases his only real religion. To be cheerful is ‘to
play the game’—that wonderful, indefinite, sacred ‘Game’ of the English,
which demands the utmost of body and soul. Just sometimes a man who had
become one’s friend would admit the bitterness of his heart, would say
that he was ‘fed-up,’ only to laugh it off and ask the eternal riddle,
‘Where’s the good of grumbling?’ So we were really cheerful at most
times, but I always thought the most cheerful time the hours between five
o’clock and eight in the morning.
In a surgical ward dressings are begun between four and five o’clock, but
the general stir is not till five. It was customary in many wards for
Sisters and nurses to provide an early cup of tea for the patients, and
the Jocks and a few others had porridge. This was the time of sing-songs.
Torrey-Alexander hymns were sandwiched between such cheerful ditties as
‘What’s the Matter with Father?’ and ‘Hulloa! hulloa! Who’s your Lady
Friend?’ Then of course we had the inevitable ‘Little Grey Home,’ and as
surely ‘Michigan’ and ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling.’ Meantime the bed
patients were washing and beds were being made. The men who could get
up were the last to move. If the delay became insupportable, their more
active companions would tip them on to the floor—I have seen the whole
bedstead turned upside down. The men themselves were great bed-makers,
and one could nearly always find someone to give a hand in quite
professional style.
Yes, things were cheerful in the mornings, and informal too. If work was
done early the Sisters and nurses had time for a private and hasty cup of
coffee in one of the dug-outs, and there was time, too, for talk with the
men, and always we had a cheery visit from the ‘night super,’ Sister L.
As for the war—the very reason of our present estate—it was the subject
least discussed. Sometimes one almost forgot that there was a war. Every
private house worries and thinks more of war than any hospital ward
does—or it seems so. There might be dark thoughts under all the trivial
discussions, the little jokes, the conventional badinage that we carried
on, but they did not appear.
At eight o’clock the day staff arrived and our night was over—always,
I was a little sorry. There is a vague but eternal feud between ‘the
day people and the night people.’ The night staff is ‘the cat’ for the
day staff. Whatever is missing—spoons, mugs, dressings, instruments—the
solution of the mystery is clear—‘it’s those night people.’ The day
orderlies lay on the souls of the night nurses dozens of spoons, forks,
and knives. The day Sister thinks the night Sister either too easy or too
harsh with her patients. It is just one of the inevitables of life.
I shall think often now of those whose watch is by night—not with any
pity, for it is a strange, quiet life, but a happy one. I only knew it
in a rather dead season, not in the busy time when trains were coming
in and patients arriving nightly. There the night staff has small time
for reflection. The hours pass in a whirl of bed-baths, dressings, and
settlement. But it was not my good fortune to know such nights.
‘HALLOW-E’EN.’
_THE ROMANCE OF THE BARBER._
‘We’re much too early, John. I said we should be. There’s not a sign of a
bass.’ I lifted the sail and peered across the shining water.
‘Nought’s lost by bein’ in time, sir,’ said the old boatman. ‘They’ll
sport with the flood. And there be another boat over there. Mr. Harris
and his little boy.’
‘He never misses these early tides,’ I said. ‘I suppose they just suit
him. He can have his sport before he has to open his shop. He’s pretty
venturesome to come out here by himself. But I suppose he knows the Bar
as well as you sailor-men?’
‘He didn’t at one time, sir. He’d as soon have set himself down on a hot
stove as come out here.’ And old John’s deep-set blue eyes twinkled.
‘What changed him? Well, it all had to do with his courtship, and getting
of his wife. There’s a bit o’ ebb to run, and whilst I fixes they minnows
I’ll tell ’ee about it. Just let me get at that locker fust. Thank ’ee,
sir. That’s it.
‘Well, except that the good Lord had ordained his place in the world,
and so he were bound to fill it, I dunno but what the most curious thing
weren’t Mr. Harris coming to Appledore village at all, and living among
us rough fisher-folk, for to all appearance he were as much out o’ place
as a limpet in a garden rockery. And you’ll agree, sir, when you hears
’ow I fust became acquainted with him.
‘’Twas some while ago now, sir, and I’d a-been away from home, out
foreign down along the coast o’ Cuba, and ’twas a wretched night when I
sets foot once more on Appledore quay. Dark, and wet, and blowy. No one
weren’t about, and the shops were all shut, and the street lamps had
blowed out. The light from the barber’s shop at the far corner were the
only cheerful thing in sight. When I gets to it, what should I see but a
little, youngish, clean-faced, bald-headed man in his shirt-sleeves, and
with a white apron on, and big gold spectacles, crouching against the
wall, trying to shelter hisself from the wind and wet. He looks up in a
queer, blinky way, and I stops.
‘“Why,” I says, “what’s this? Where’s old Puggy?”
‘“Mr. Pugstiles is dead,” pipes the little man, “and I’ve bought his
business. And some young men have thrown me out o’ the shop,” and he
coughs behind his ’and very genteel.
‘I opens the door. There was a dozen half-growed young chaps sprawling
about the shop and roaring with laughing, and playing the fool. I never
had no use for they scamps what hangs about the ferry and won’t go to
sea, and I was going to put ’em out when the little man stops me.
‘“No, thank you,” he says very polite, “I would rather manage this alone.”
‘So, as he wouldn’t let me help ’im, I goes off home. And that, sir, were
the fust time as ever I see Mr. Harris. I’ve known him a long time now,
but I’ve never forgot my fust sight o’ him, crouching under the window,
with the rain and wind beating down upon him.
‘He were small and weak, and his chest were bad. That was why he come
away from London. His voice were peepy like a chicken calling the old
hen. He didn’t drink, and he didn’t smoke, and he didn’t swear, and to
say truth there was so many things against him, no one could say which
was the wust. He were the fair butt o’ the place; even the women and
girls derided him.
‘I was always a wanderer, and soon I goes off again, to Antwerp, and
then away to Java. I were three good years older when next I landed on
Appledore quay. ’Twas much such a night as t’other, cold and wet and
blowy. But the light from the barber’s shop was shining out on the wet
stones, and Mr. Harris, who I do believe I hadn’t thought on since I went
away, comes into my mind again, all of a sudden.
‘“He’m gone. The place looks quiet enough now,” says I to myself. Then I
shoves open the door.
‘’Tis a long, narrow room, with benches at the side. They benches were
full o’ men sitting quiet waiting their turn. At the far end I see Mr.
Harris shaving away like a good ’un, his bald head and his gold specs
shining in the lamplight. I were so astonished I stood still without
speaking. Then he says in the peepy little voice I remembered so well,
‘“I will ask one of you gentlemen kindly to shut that door, and keep it
shut.”
‘And I’m blest if the most cantankerous chap in the place didn’t get up
quite quiet, and shut it without a word. And then I went home.
‘Well, sir, I found Mr. Harris had got to be boss of the village. ’Twas
the wonderfullest thing! He was the same little weak man I had fust seen,
a surprised-looking creature with his big gold glasses, and his pale
face, and his mouth half open, but lor bless you! the whole place bowed
down to him. He were Secretary to the Regatta, and Churchwarden, and sang
in the choir, and sometimes read the lessons, and when the Vicar put in
they peal of bells, with the thing by which you can play times on ’em,
it was Mr. Harris who played on ’em all his spare time, till some folks
who lived near the church, and didn’t care for music, wished they bells
further.
‘I saw what he was for myself a few days after I got home. Me and Tom
Jenkyns was passing his shop one fine morning and Mr. Harris, in his
white apron and gold specs, was on the quay peering about in the sun. Tom
ain’t a beauty when he’s sober, which he weren’t then by no means, so I
gets in between ’em. Mr. Harris looks up in his gentle way through his
glasses.
‘“Dear me, Mr. Jenkyns,” he says, “I am sorry to see you with such a
dirty chin! It wouldn’t do for you to meet a young lady with that chin!
Oh, no. You’d better come inside,” and he ’as Tom in the shop and in the
chair, and shaves him, and has ’im outside again, before Tom could think
where to tell him to go to. Now that was a wonderful thing. Don’t ’ee
think so, sir?’
‘Indeed I do,’ I said, for I knew Mr. Jenkyns pretty well. ‘How on earth
did he manage him? How did he work it?’
‘You may well ask that, sir. But ’tis more easy asked than told. How
did he do such things? None can say. He never lost his temper; he never
raised his voice, he never laughed—not out loud. And he looked at you in
that queer, wondering way. And then his manners, and his politeness! And
he never give in to nobody.
‘Time went on, and he prospered. He was clever at his job, having the
London tricks, and he went about attending on gentlemen’s houses. His
’ealth come back, and he got smarter and younger looking, and he wore
a white collar and a white shirt every day, even under his apron. How
’e could abear they collars I can’t think. When my wife puts one on me
I feels like a bird in a cage. But there, I s’pose it is all use. His
white linen used to shine, and his eyes shine through his glasses. And
he painted his ’ouse white, and put boxes of flowers in the windows. He
rigged up a big red and white barber’s pole, and on Sundays he ’oisted
the Jack on it. He did well, and we was proud of him.
‘And then, well then, just as everything was going so well, what do you
think happened, sir?’
‘Perhaps I can guess,’ I said. ‘The ladies. They took a hand?’
‘They did, sir. They did. They’d looked on Mr. Harris all along with
scorn, and troubled noth’en about him. Then all of a sudden it come to
’em how blind they’d been. And that here were a nice young man, for he
were only a little over thirty, with collars and shirts and a business,
and beautiful manners, and a white house with flowers in boxes, and all
agoing begging. From that moment he hadn’t a single hour’s peace. They
was all at him, though the old ’uns was the wust. They sent him things to
eat, and tried to get him to convoy ’em back from church. Old Widow Paul
were took ill on his door-step and had to be carried into the shop. Miss
Belcher, she as married pore old Tom Cole after he ’ad broke his leg,
attacked him on his business side, and sent him a parcel of combings to
be made up. Me and a lot o’ chaps was there when they come, and all I can
say is, if they was all out of her ’ead, she must have ’ad a scalp like a
tortoise-shell cat.
‘But it was all o’ no use. Mr. Harris didn’t like any o’ them, maid or
widow, and he kept away from ’em. He was well guarded too; always there
were someone in his shop. And the old woman who kep’ house for him, her
’usband being in an ’ome for uncurables, helped to keep ’em off.
‘Well, sir, things jogged along quite comfortable like till a queer thing
happened. Me and Jenkyns was in his shop one brisk morning, when Tom, who
’ad a drop o’ beer in him as usual, winks at me and says:
‘“You did ought to see my sister-in-law, Mr. Harris,” says he; “she’d be
the very young lady for you!”
‘Mr. Harris was stropping a razor. He looks round in his queer blinky
way, but instead o’ putting Tom down he says:
‘“And what might she be like, Mr. Jenkyns?”
‘“She’m the fust girl in these parts. She lives with her mother to
Lundy Island. She can cook, and she’m house-wise; what’s more she’m a
heaven-born laundress, and she’m big and dark with red cheeks and blue
eyes, and her name is Mirandy,” says Tom all in a breath.
‘Mr. Harris listens with his ’ead on one side, and a funny look comes
over his face and his eyes sparkles. Tom forgets hisself and spits on the
floor, but instead o’ requesting him to leave the shop Mr. Harris only
says,
‘“And does the young lady ever come over here, Mr. Jenkyns?”
‘“She does not,” says Tom; “she bides to home and ’elps her mother. Capt.
Dark, who goes to Lundy every week with the mails, have many a time
offered her a free pass on his lugger, but she wouldn’t accept.”
‘“But—but her affections?” says Mr. Harris presently very gently;
“perhaps they are engaged? Such a young lady!”
‘“She ain’t got no chap, if that’s what you mean,” says Tom; “there
ain’t none to Lundy. Last time I come away I thought ’twere a pity there
weren’t no young feller to arm ’er up the rocks. She were as pretty as a
picture, with the waves breaking all about her feet.”
‘“Sea King’s daughter,” says Mr. Harris to hisself. But I heered ’im.
‘“She knows about you,” Tom goes on. “I tells her in general conversation
what a deal people think o’ you. ‘He must be a leader o’ men,’ says she.
But there is a phottygraf o’ her to home. I’ll fetch ’un,” and with that
he goes out and Mr. Harris has me in the chair, and shaves me. His ’and
were shaking so I were glad to escape without bloodshed. Then Tom comes
back, and hands over the photty. Mr. Harris looks at it, and drops the
razor. He gets pinker and pinker, and smiles and laughs and sets it on a
little shelf and gazes upon it. As he doesn’t speak we goes out quietly.
Then I remembers I hasn’t paid for my shave. So I goes back just in time
to hear ’im say:
‘“An arrow—an arrow from the blind god’s bow at last!”
‘I says nothing, but puts down my penny and comes away on tiptoe.
‘Well, sir, that puzzles me. And I asks my darter the school-mistress
what he meant. All I can say is, sir, if that little god as she telled me
of did shoot one o’ his arrows at Mr. Harris, he must ha’ got him right
in the wes’cot. For from that moment he were a changed man.
‘He were properly in love and no mistake! He worn’t a bit ashamed o’ it.
He went about smiling and blushing, and very proud. The news soon got
abroad, and the girls, some jeered, some laughed. Things moved along
quickly. Letters passes between ’em. He ’ad his picture took, smiling, in
a long black coat and a flower in his button-hole and a book in his ’and.
He sends over bottles o’ scent and sweet soaps and such truck from his
shop. Then, one beautiful morning in the beginning o’ October, he dresses
hisself very smart, with a white wes’cot and shiny boots and new straw
hat, and embarks on Dark’s lugger to go to Lundy to call on his young
lady.
‘Now, living as he did on the quay, no one ’adn’t partic’ly noticed that
Mr. Harris never went on the watter. Still Dark were surprised when he
tells him he ’ad never yet crossed Appledore Bar. There was no wind, and
Dark drops down with the ebb to the Bar, just about where we be now, and
then all of a sudden Mr. Harris begins to be sea-sick. Dark carries many
passengers, and ’tis a queer bit o’ watter ’twixt here and Lundy, but he
says he never see anyone so bad as Mr. Harris was that day. It fair tore
the inside out o’ him. He gets in such a state that Dark, seeing the job
would be a long ’un for want o’ wind, puts him in his dinghy and lands
him on the golf-links. Mr. Harris crawls into one o’ they bunker things
and there he lay, and I did ’ear that the gentlemen played their golf
right on top o’ him afore he could move. In the evening he creeps back
home and goes to bed.’
‘Poor Mr. Harris!’ I broke in, ‘that was rough luck. How did he take it?’
‘Well, he didn’t give in, sir. Twice more he tried, but he never even
got to the Bar. The second time they had to call the doctor to him. The
doctor says his heart were weak, and it were very onwise to put such a
strain on it, and he mustn’t try them tricks again. Then the doctor puts
a mustard plaster to him, and goes away.
‘After that no one would take him. Steamers from ’Coombe had stopped
running or ’e might ha’ gone by them. He felt hisself beaten, and his
pride were broken. ’Twas a melancholly affair altogether. He thought he
’ad made a fool o’ hisself, though how a man can be stronger than his
stomach I can’t see.
‘And the wust o’ all was to come. Mirandy thought she were a
laughing-stock, and wouldn’t help. She wouldn’t come to him. If he wanted
her, ’e must fetch her. She wouldn’t leave Lundy by herself for any man,
so she said. And everyone were laughing, and talking, and taking sides.
‘He goes about neat and particular as usual, but the life and sparkle had
gone out o’ him. He were looked up to, and had ’is business and his nice
house, but he didn’t want ’em. He wanted Mirandy by his fireside, and her
’and in his.
‘Late one evening I was on Look-out Hill, when I hears a footstep and
sees Mr. Harris. He stands staring out to sea, and presently up pops
Lundy Light and twinks and goes out, and pops up and twinks and goes out
again.
‘“When I sees that light,” says Mr. Harris at last, “I thinks she is
beckoning me”; and from the sound o’ his voice I guessed he were near
crying.
‘“It is not the fust time a queasy stomach have kept loving hearts
apart,” says I, wishing to comfort him.
‘“Love against stomach,” he says very bitter, and walks away without
saying good night.
‘The fine weather held well into October that year, sir; then one night
there come the wust blow known in these parts. It blew hurricane hard
from the nor’-west on a big spring flood. The watter come right up the
streets and flooded the houses. The whole place were in an uproar. And to
make things wuss, about midnight, when the storm were at its height, the
lifeboat rocket was fired. A big ship were ashore on Lundy.’
‘I heard of that gale,’ I said; ‘a barge was put over the sea-wall at
Instow.’
‘That’s right, sir. Well, you knows the rule about the lifeboat, fust
come fust served. They that gets there fust goes. I grabs my oilies and
runs. Me and Tom Jenkyns get there amongst the fust. Old Batten, the
cox’un, gives us our cork jackets. ’Twas pitchy dark. There was no lights
but the hurricane lamps and rope flares, and they kept blowing out. You
couldn’t hear yourself speak for the wind and watter. What was done were
done dumb show, and the boys and people all yelling and shouting.
‘We mans the boat. She was on her cradle and Batten were just giving the
word to let go, when who should come shoving and pushing through the
crowd but Mr. Harris. Tom and me was in the bows, and he spies us and
clasps his ’ands.
‘“Take me, take me,” he cries, and stretches up to us.
‘Someone gives him a hoist up, and I grabs him, and pulls him in. I don’t
think Cap’n Batten see’d him till it were too late, what with the wind
and watter and blowing about of the lights, and general confusion. And at
that very moment the boat goes down the ways like a rocket, and if Mr.
Harris ’ad been half a minute later she’d ha’ been over him. And that
would have been the end o’ his troubles for good and all.
‘He crawls under our seat and lays down. He had got on a little thin
overcoat over his other clothes, but nothing to be no good. I throws down
a spare jersey, and Tom a oilskin. Then I tosses him a bottle o’ tea and
brandy as my missis always gives me.
‘“You’ve done it this time!” I yells. “You must fend for yourself now. I
can’t help you.”
‘We drops down the river, for the tide was ebbing strong. And then I
realises what the weight o’ wind was. I’ve see’d some queer seas in my
time, but never a wuss bit o’ watter than the Bar here was that night,
smooth as oil though it be now. The great wind met the great tide, and
raised a hurricane sea; the boat herself couldn’t ha’ faced it if the
wind hadn’t just then hauled a couple o’ points, and let us get a bit o’
sail on her. Even then I didn’t know half the time whether I were right
side or wrong side up. Cold, wet, and rough work it were. But at last we
gets over and away and shapes a course for Lundy.
‘Before long the wind takes off a bit, and the sea begins to moderate.
’Twas a queer blow altogether. Not a drop o’ rain to it, and all the
wind’ard side o’ the hedges were crisp and black as if fire had burned
’em. Then the sky cleared and the day broke. There were the barque ashore
on the Hen and Chickens Rocks, north end o’ the island. Two boats was
standing by her, the Braunton and ’Coombe boats; so we rows along to the
landing-place, which were sheltered, and brings up. And then me and Tom
bends down and fishes up Mr. Harris.
‘You recollect, sir, he ’ad been rolling about in the watter in the
bottom of the boat the better part o’ the night. I never see such a
melancholly sight! He ’ad no hat, one shoe were gone, his shirt and
wes’cot were half tored off. And the queasiness—! But never mind that!
His gold glasses were smashed, and he ’ad a great bleeding cut over one
eye from the bottle o’ tea and brandy, which had broke. I judged him
pretty near gone; he were cold as a stone, and half drowned.
‘We turns to, and gives him a rub, and shoves a warm jersey on him, and
Cap’n Batten, without making no remark, shoves down a bottle to us, o’
brandy. That pulls him round a bit. He looks about him and points to the
island. We nods, and he slips down again.
‘Just then a boat puts off, and when she gets alongside I see Mirandy
was in her. She looks as pretty as a picture, with her red cap and red
cheeks, and blue eyes all of a sparkle. One o’ our chaps clears his
throat and coughs, and then another till all the boat were doing it. And
even Cap’n Batten, though he were high up in the Wesleyans, and ’ad
ninety-eight grandchildren, winks at her.
‘Then she says, looking up very demure, and trying not to laugh:
‘“If you please, Cap’n Batten, is my brother-in-law Tom Jenkyns in the
boat? And if he is may he come ashore? Mother wants to see him.”
‘“He be aboard, my dear,” says Cap’n Batten, “but I can’t let no one
leave the boat. We been out all night, and we’m for home now. But you can
give ’un a message. He’m down there forrard.”
‘The boat comes down and she gives the message, and then Tom says,
‘“We got something nice for you, Miry.”
‘“For me?” says Mirandy, shaking her curls. “What can that be?”
‘“We’ve brought your young man. He’m come to fetch you after all,” says
Tom.
‘We pokes up Mr. Harris from the bottom of the boat, and then, sir, they
two has their fust look at one another.’
‘By Jove, John!’ I said, ‘that must have been a moment! What happened?’
‘I never see’d anybody’s face, man or woman, change like Miry’s did,
sir. What she had expected him to be like I don’t know; but not what he
was like then, I be sure. And fust one o’ us laughs, and then another,
till the boat’s crew were busting their sides. Mr. Harris draws hisself
together, and looks at us in that blinky, half-puzzled way, and fust one
chap looks shamed and stops, and then another, till there was silence.
Then he looks down again at Mirandy, and she laughs and gets red, and a
funny look, pitiful like, comes into her face, and she gets scarlet red,
and stretches out her arms. We lifts him down, and she helps ’im into her
boat, and she wipes the blood from his face, and he puts his arm round
her, for I reckon he’d ’ad about enough o’ it. Then the boy rows them
ashore, and we watches her ’elping him up the rocks, till we loses sight
o’ them. And then, sir, we sets sail for home.
‘And that be the way, sir, that Mr. Harris come to Lundy Island for his
wife. And I reckon he deserved her! Don’t you think so, sir?’
‘He did,’ I said warmly, ‘if ever a man did. Many a man has dared a lot
for the sake of a girl, but I think Mr. Harris has earned a place among
the bravest of them. He might well have died that night, and he must
have known the lifeboat wouldn’t put back for him.’
‘Yes, sir. He did, o’ course. It were kill or cure, and he knowed it. I
reckon he felt ’twere the only way to get there, so there it was! But
’twas all right. He stayed to Lundy, and Parson Heaven, who owned the
island then, married them. And that’s the way Mr. Harris got his bride,
sir.’
‘But hold on,’ I said; ‘that’s not all the yarn. How did he get back
again?’
‘I’ll tell you how he brought her ’ome, sir, if you pleases. The tide and
the yarn will about finish together.
‘Well, the fame o’ Mr. Harris soon spread abroad, and all were anxious
to welcome him ’ome. The women forgave him, and spoke well o’ him, and
were pleased he ’ad got Miry for his wife at last. The day Dark went
over, chartered special, to fetch the happy pair home, Appledore were
fair a-buzz. Dark, he puts a new suit o’ sails on the lugger, and when
he gets to Lundy and ships Mr. and Mrs. Harris he rigs up every bit o’
bunting he can lay hands on. And home he comes booming with a nice soft
breeze. Seventeen o’ our ketches and two small barques was on the Bar
that evening, waiting for the tide, and when they see the lugger coming,
all dressed and glorious, they cheers, and gives her the road, and falls
in behind. Then the lugger reaches the sand-barges, and they cheers and
falls in behind too. And further up the river she finds the town band on
a barge, and the little rowing and sailing boats all come out to shout
and welcome the bride and bridegroom home.
‘So up they comes. Up the river with a swingeing flood tide, and a fair
breeze and a bright sky, and all shining and sparkling. The old walls and
slips and yards was crowded, and everyone cheered and waved. The Vicar he
started the bells, and hoists the flag on the church tower. ’Twas a grand
and wonderful sight.
‘Fust comes the lugger, with Dark and his mate keeping well out o’ sight,
and Mr. and Mrs. Harris standing well forrard so that all might see. And
as they come Mr. Harris takes off his tall hat and bows and waves, this
way and that way, while his bald head and new glasses shines in the sun.
And Mrs. Harris, who ’ad got her wedding clothes sent over from ’Coombe,
furls her white parasol, and bows that way and this way, very dignified,
from the hips like. Then comes the band a-banging away, and then the
little row-boats and sailing boats, and then the barges and ketches and
trawlers, and two barques, and all shouting and cheering. And what was
best o’ all, sir,’ said old John, tapping my knee in his earnestness,
‘there were no nasty steamers with their smeech and noise. ’Twas all good
sails, sweet and pleasant.
‘Well, Dark brings to, and drops anchor off the quay. Cap’n Batten goes
off with his gig, me bein’ one o’ the crew. We brings Mr. and Mrs. Harris
ashore, and they lands on the quay. The mob form a lane, and Mr. Harris
leads his wife along it. Outside his ’ouse he stops, and waves his ’at
again, and bows and smiles, and then puts his arm round Mrs. Harris and
kisses her afore everyone. Then he opens the door, and takes her in, and
shuts it.
‘And that, sir, is how Mr. Harris brought his wife to Appledore.’
The old man paused and sighed. ‘It were a brave sight,’ he said. ‘Mr.
Harris is up for the Council now. He says ’twill be the proudest day o’
his life if he gets put in. H’m wrong there. His proudest day were when
he brought his wife home to Appledore.’
‘But what about the queasiness coming home?’ I demanded, ‘and why
didn’t⸺’ but my questions were only partially asked. A shiver came over
the shining water; a myriad trickles and rivulets spread themselves over
the great mass of sand that lay exposed to our right hand. The tide had
turned.
‘Get your rod, sir; they won’t be long now. Watch the gulls! The
queasiness? Oh, that never come back. The doing in the lifeboat were kill
or cure, and it cured him. Anyway, he never ’ad no more o’ it. He—but
look there, sir! There’s the bass. My yarn’s spun just in time.’
I flicked the blue-and-white minnow free of the rod. Old John knocked the
ashes out of his pipe, and grasped the oars. For the rest of the morning
_Perca Labrax_ held the stage.
W. H. ADAMS.
_SIGNS AND NOTICES ON THE WESTERN FRONT._
BY F. J. SALMON.
From the military landing officer’s placard, telling you where to report
and what to do, which faces you on the quay before landing in France, to
the stencilled board informing you that the recently captured portion of
German trench you are standing in was called ‘Stellung 19,’ the ‘Front’
is plastered with notices and signs of every description.
Some are bald official orders of little interest, others are full of
meaning and sometimes bring the grim realities of war home to one more
than any other feature of the landscape, and yet others—the unofficial
ones—are full of humour and eloquent of the cheerful spirit which comes
uppermost in the British soldier, be his surroundings ever so miserable.
The most conspicuous ones are those that are intended to be seen by the
swiftly passing motor-car—SPEED LIMIT X MILES PER HOUR,—GO SLOW PAST THE
COLUMN,—AERODROME, DEAD SLOW TO AVOID DUST SPOILING THE ENGINES.
It is regrettable that sufficient notice is not always taken of such
injunctions and those who are affected often have recourse to other
tactics. Some are frankly threatening: DRIVERS’ NUMBERS TAKEN AND
REPORTED TO THE A.P.M. Others appeal to our better feelings—the notice
is put in the form of a request, and a large THANK YOU at the end of
the restricted stretch shames the scorcher who has kept his foot on the
throttle. Others again resort to subterfuges, such as MIND THE BUMP!
There is, of course, no bump, but by the time the driver has found this
out and got up his speed again the column of lorries, or whatever it may
have been by the roadside, is passed.
In addition to the military road restrictions there are still, of course,
the curious mystic signs of the French Auto Club—the grid showing the
level crossing gate, the cross for the cross roads and the V or Z for
single or double corners.
In order not to make things too easy for the Hun agent most units do not
label their billets or transport with their full title, but adopt certain
devices and signs which are allotted to them. These assume the form of
flowers, animals, or geometric designs of every conceivable pattern and
colour. They are to be seen everywhere—few people know what they mean and
the spy who would sort out the signs and the units they represent has an
unenviable job.
In some cases, however, where secrecy does not appear to be necessary,
appropriate emblems are used. I remember one day my car broke down
opposite a column of lorries belonging to an Australian unit. On the side
and back of each of these vehicles was painted a white kangaroo.
My Scottish Sergeant-Major, though a fervent admirer of the gallant
colonials, could not resist a gentle leg-pull. With an air of ignorant
innocence he went up to a group of men and asked them what on earth they
painted pictures of mice all over their lorries for! He affected to be
immensely interested in their explanation.
As one approaches the front there are signs and directions
innumerable—the arrows and flags showing the way to casualty clearing
stations, signposts of all kinds showing the way to dumps, divisional
baths, watering places for horses, canteens, headquarters, field
cashiers, the local cinema show, or the Y.M.C.A. hut.
It is in the villages where the troops nearest the line are billeted that
the greatest variety of amusing inscriptions is to be found. At a badly
strafed cross roads in a certain village there is a small round shell
hole, not unlike a booking office, in the wall of a house. Above it are
the words: BLIGHTY CORNER—BOOK HERE! It was in the same village that the
Xth Siege Battery had the whole side of their mess knocked out—you could
drive a gun team through the hole where the door had been. On a bit of
remaining wall are the words: DON’T STAND OUT THERE KNOCKING—COME RIGHT
IN!
The streets are often labelled with names which at once give evidence
as to the present or late occupants of the billets in them—Piccadilly,
Prince’s Street, Black Watch Street, Quebec Street, Springbok Laager.
The French names have, however, often been retained, and everywhere, for
the benefit of the civilian population, one sees the warning—TAISEZ VOUS,
MÉFIEZ VOUS—LES OREILLES ENNEMIES VOUS ÉCOUTENT. In more than one French
office this notice is decorated with amusing pictures of Huns with huge
ears listening from round corners.
In one place it has been possible to devise a bi-lingual notice—
to the
DANGER pay ATTENTION TRAINS.
aux
A ‘poilu,’ who had come back to his village near the firing line on
‘permission’ and who wished to indulge in a little quiet gardening in
the diminutive plot behind his cottage, was confronted with a large
notice—DANGER—BLIND SHELL. His wife had to explain to him that a German
8-inch ‘dud’ had buried itself there. Being one whose duties lie on
the lines of communication, he had not acquired that contempt for the
unexploded shell which the ‘Bairnsfather’ Tommy has and so the garden was
left severely alone!
The position of this good French soldier is worthy of remark. He was a
farrier at some way back supply depot and, in his whole life, had not
heard a shot fired in anger. It was only when he came home on leave that
he experienced the thrills of being under shell fire, and it was from his
women folk that he had to learn the precise moment when he could decently
retire to the cellar without an undue display of timidity! Ye Gods! What
a leave! We may well be thankful if we get nothing more alarming than a
Zeppelin raid when doing our week in town!
The French villagers who sell groceries, eggs, wine, or ‘Anglish Beere’
in the many half-ruined shops in the shelled area advertise their goods
often with notices in the weirdest of Anglo-French spelling, and it
is extraordinary in what surroundings some of them manage to carry on
business.
I know of one little ‘épicerie’ which does a roaring trade in a house
that has no roof and practically only three walls. The place has been
made more or less weatherproof with some pieces of tin and a few planks.
The rest of the village has been smashed to pieces. The neighbourhood is
shelled almost daily, and whenever I pass I look, not without anxiety, to
see if the plucky old lady’s sign is still there.
At the ruined railway station of a certain town near the line the
notice—‘BILLETS’—still stands over the shattered booking office, and,
sure enough, if you hunt around among the débris you will find tickets to
Charing Cross! At another station a few miles away and also within sight
of the German trenches the door labelled—‘SORTIE’—is barred with wreckage
and is about the only part of the building you can _not_ walk in and out
of at will!
Not very far away some of my own unit were once billeted in part of
what was once a French Barracks, and it was here that I was shown some
inscriptions of quite historical interest.
On the ground floor the walls bear the initials and names of ‘regular,’
‘terrier,’ and K.’s army, together with those of many a French poilu.
The top storey has been smashed in by a 15-centimetre shell, but the
stonework round the windows remains, and there, cut in the limestone,
are to be found records of British soldiers who had tenanted those rooms
under very different circumstances! J. JEMISON, PRISONER OF WAR—TAKEN
AUGUST 1806—ALDERSON—ELLIS—WHEATLEY P. of W. 1806, 07, 08, 09, 10. Rather
a long spell! but, knowing our French friends as we do now, we can be
sure their imprisonment was not wholly unpleasant.
Some of the most incongruous of signs are the ordinary hand-posts at
cross roads indicating the way to places over ‘the other side.’ I seldom
pass one of these plain iron signs without thinking of the strange
contrast between the life now and that of three years ago. An arrow
points towards a straight white road leading over the hill—BAPAUME X
KILOMÈTRES. Not so very far either and yet no man on earth could get
there!—though a whole army can, and will in time. Over the crest the
smooth surface is cut by innumerable trenches and barred with wire
entanglements. Even here, at the cross roads, though well out of view, it
is unwise to linger—the Huns have a machine-gun trained down the road and
open indirect fire at intervals.
On first coming to the front it is curious to see an immortal name like
Neuve Chapelle displayed on an ordinary everyday signpost—what would an
American souvenir hunter give for such a relic!
When travelling towards the line, as you begin to get near things the
type of traffic notice alters. Motorists are no longer asked to ‘mind the
bump’ nor horsemen to ‘keep off the crops.’ ROAD CLOSED TO ALL BUT SINGLE
VEHICLES OR INFANTRY IN SMALL PARTIES shows that it is unwise to attract
the attention of the German observation balloon opposite. Then you may
come to a sentry with a red flag who stops you and points to a large
placard—VEHICLES 4 MILES AN HOUR. _DUST MUST NOT BE RAISED._ The Hun
has probably got a gun or two laid on this bit of road and his observer
is watching patiently for a tell-tale wisp of dust! After this it will
probably not be very long before you have to get out and walk. ROAD
UNDER ENEMY OBSERVATION—NO TRAFFIC OF ANY KIND BEYOND THIS POINT DURING
DAYLIGHT HOURS.
There will be another sentry here and he will show you the way to the
communication trench unless your work is of some special nature and you
have a pass that entitles you to walk on and risk it.
As soon as the trench zone is reached notices and signboards are more
frequent than ever. In addition to our own direction posts and trench
names there are also, frequently, relics of the French occupation.
VERS LE FRONT, VERS L’ARRIÈRE, or the names of communication and fire
trenches, such as BOYAU RIDEAU, TRANCHÉE ILLOT.
Again as we approach the firing line the remarks of the wag and the
humorist are more frequent. In one place there is a board with a finger
pointing to a peculiarly unhealthy sap and inscribed—TO THE WAR! A
frequently shelled trench junction bears the legend—DON’T STAND ABOUT
HERE—THERE’S A WAR ON!
The signpost TO BERLIN is of course common—or was.
Many of the dug-outs bear fantastic names and, in addition to notices
giving the designation of those who occupy them, often have other
inscriptions, hospitable or otherwise, such as DEW DROP INN or NO ROOM
HERE. Those with a double entrance sometimes display the most fearful
threats to those who would attempt to go in by the ‘out’ passage, whereas
some such remark as THE ONLY WAY is inscribed over the correct entrance.
It must be remarked, however, that any apparent inhospitality is usually
in the interests of the service—the nearer one gets to the front line the
more hospitable are the Messes.
The mural decorations of the dug-outs are also worthy of more than
superficial notice, as they often reflect the interests or character of
the occupants. The pretty faces of ‘Harrison Fisher,’ ‘Philip Boileau,’
and other girls smile at one from the walls of many of these abodes, and
Bairnsfather pictures caricaturing the very scenes of the life going on
outside are to be seen everywhere. Grim pictures of the war from the pen
of Matania and other artists may be found in the dug-outs of some of the
more serious-minded, while others show their hankering after yachting,
shooting, or racing. A total of many thousands of square feet of wall
space must be taken up by cuttings from the ‘Vie Parisienne,’ and in many
cases, more especially in the French lines, the occupant himself has been
responsible for the pictures and designs in his quarters.
The enemy, too, has his notice boards, and some of them are written and
stuck up on the parapet for our benefit or otherwise. Insulting remarks
are not infrequently displayed in this way. Sometimes he brags about
some big gun he is bringing up to shell our back billets with, sometimes
we are told that he is quite ready for our attack on such and such a
date—information which is usually incorrect. The German notice with
which continental travellers were, perhaps, most familiar before the war
is conspicuous by its absence—NICHT HINAUSLEHNEN; it would, however, be a
most appropriate warning for visitors to the trenches!
On captured ground some of the German notices and signs still remain, but
many have been replaced. A spot which had once been used by the Germans
as a dump for stores is now labelled—FRITZ’S DUMP—UNDER ENTIRELY NEW
MANAGEMENT!
Those who have their being in the observation posts are particularly shy
of visitors and—NO ADMITTANCE—placards of all descriptions greet one
at their entrances. In this the observers show their wisdom, for the
inexperienced may unwittingly give away the position to the enemy.
It is not always necessary to show oneself to do this. A few puffs of
smoke from a pipe, or the use of a telescope without a protecting cowl
to keep the sun from reflecting in it, may bring about destruction. I
remember a careless Hun drawing attention to an otherwise well concealed
post by flourishing an unshaded telescope in the sunlight!
A comic relief to a scene of havoc and destruction in an observation
post was once presented to me by a portion of a printed notice giving
instructions as to what observers were to look out for and report. The
post had been spotted, and after the expenditure of many rounds, the
enemy had at last obtained a direct hit. Crawling in through the débris
to report the damage, I was confronted by a broken beam to which item
2 of the notice was still adhering—WHAT ARE THE GERMAN GUNS FIRING AT?
Would that the answer had been less easy to guess!
_IN SALONICA: KING CONSTANTINE’S FÊTE._
The last day but one! It was my first waking thought. The hot June sun,
streaming in from the windows facing the beech-crowned summit of Mount
Kotos, which rose above the bare lower downs, warned me it was time
to be gone. The wise storks and swallows had already started on their
long summer flight; it was time to be following the birds North, as the
_Thraki_ was to sail next day.
It was a fascinating place I was leaving, this city on the outer wave of
the whirlpool. Salonica had proved unexpectedly interesting, with its
little known treasures of art and archæology, and its strange old medley
of East and West now further complicated by a new Frankish crusade.
Here were the same mixed feelings of admiration and contempt as at
Byzantium, when the kings and knights of Western Chivalry camped for the
first time without the walls. Here, too, surprised and equally unwilling
hosts watched the foreign soldiery ride clattering through their streets.
Here were the same alarums and excursions, the same continual vague,
political intrigues, and at the back of it all the same real indifference
as to whether French, German, or Russian finally won the Holy Shrine,—or
what would seem more likely now, Franco-Spanish Jews.
Each day brought some novel turn of the wheel of Greco-German affairs or
some fresh discovery in my exploration of the old Byzantine city on the
hill. The summer sun, which woke me up betimes, left me lazily counting
one by one, through the mist of my mosquito net, the tall white minarets
of the town. Delicate, slender shafts holding the Muezzin’s gallery
high in the air, they rose on terrace above terrace to the last broken
spire, near where the brown brick towers of the Heptapyrgeion stood out
clear-cut against the sky.
These minarets, with their finely-contrasting cypress trees, are numerous
at Salonica, for the Turks invariably added one when they altered a
church into a mosque. The Greek king did well to leave them standing when
he took back the town from the Moslems. Apart from their picturesque
beauty, the minarets still serve a useful purpose; for guide books leave
one in Old Greece, they are not to be had at Salonica. Should your way
lie down the tram-ridden Boulevard Reine Olga, where the roses in the
villa gardens are powdered thick with dust, the public will direct you
proudly. Or they will cheerfully point out the Rue Venizelos, and even
follow you up the dim Turkish Bazaar at its end, urging you to buy from
their various eager friends as you pass. Beyond that, across the Roman
Via Egnatia, which cuts the town in half, nobody seems to know what
happens, nor should a well-brought-up Salonican wish to go.
But the minarets beckon; they prove the best of guides. Their white
spires give a sure clue to the whereabouts of the ancient mosques and
churches. And here, through my window, I could count most of these
landmarks by which I steered. Nearest and tallest rose the minaret of
Sancta Sophia, Holy Wisdom, the cathedral church of the Metropolitan.
During the ceremonies of Holy Week and Easter great crowds had gathered
here. Good Friday was the day of the people’s procession. The peasants
from the scattered villages brightened the town with the cheerful reds
and blues of their national costumes, and at night all the world walked
singing solemn chants, following the bishops in their glittering copes
and jewelled mitres and the simple flower-arched bier.
Easter Eve proved to be the official festival of the Greek army and
government. A dense mass of people filled the church and surged
confusedly in the darkness of the open square outside it; each man,
woman, and child, holding an unlit candle in their hands—some large, some
small—painted with holy symbols and flowers; careful souls, mindful of
their gala clothes, taking pains to hold their candle gingerly by its
long cotton wick.
Within the building the deep gloom was hardly broken by the lights at
the two lecterns, at which the laity read by turns, and the glimmer from
where behind the icon-screen came the murmur of priests intoning. After
what felt an interminable period of waiting, it was midnight. ‘Christ is
risen,’ came the cry. The heavy gold embroidered curtain rose, disclosing
within the sanctuary the long, low Altar of the Last Supper. Out poured
a brilliant procession of ecclesiastics, marching down the nave to take
their stand on the platform in the outer court; everyone in the crowd
lighting his candle from his neighbour’s as the _cortège_ passed along.
In a moment the church was bright from end to end. The massive pillars
stood like rocks in a waving flickering sea of gold. Then, for the first
time, the great Madonna of the apse shone revealed. Enthroned on high,
against the hollow, glowing background of mosaic, She held out Her Son
to bless a strange assemblage under the dome, where British and French
officers stood with their Greek comrades, headed by the Greek General
Commanding, and all his staff, each holding a lighted taper in honour of
His resurrection.
What a night for the German aircraft, suddenly flashed across our minds!
In the very street outside, now lit with a thousand lights and packed
with human beings, I had seen their ugly work only a few weeks before. I
shuddered as we forged our way home.
Up the hill directly above Sancta Sophia, the somewhat stumpy minaret of
St. Paraskevi reared its head. This grand fourth-century basilica, finer
than any building of its kind at Constantinople, is now given over to the
Greek refugees from Asia Minor. Their carpets and piteous coloured rags
hang in complete disorder from its high wooden galleries.
The platform for the Mihrab, facing towards Mecca, remains aslant the
apse; although a tiny altar at its northern end claims the church back
for its Christian builders—an altar so small and poor, adorned by such
dim, feeble lights, I hardly noticed it at first the day I found my way
in there. Here were no crowds, no pomp of a church militant, only the
begging children who trotted in my wake. The place appeared empty except
for a solitary peasant woman, bowed in prayer before the icon on the
little shrine, praying, no doubt, for a safe return to her distant home
in Syria—her dress proclaimed how far the wars had driven her. She stood
there, a strange impassive figure in her full dark purple trousers and
dull red veil, silhouetted sharply against the cream plaster walls and
the cipollino columns brown with age and dirt. A faint blue smoke curled
from under the unseen cooking-pots in the gallery behind her, blurring
the light from the large windows and drifting out across the wide open
space. Through it, the arches of the nave and triforium gleamed with the
rose and gold and green of their splendid floral mosaics.
Two more great churches the minarets pointed out. St. Demetrius,
dedicated to the City’s patron saint, is a basilica not unlike that of
the refugees. The mosaics here have a curious silvery sheen, but the
marbles are the church’s special glory. By some piece of good fortune the
original Byzantine casing of the walls is almost intact. Remembering how
this much coveted city has suffered, how, time after time, it has been
besieged, burnt, sacked—for it stands where two famous highways cross,
from Rome to Byzantium, from Vienna to the Aegean and the East—it is
little short of marvellous that any fine old buildings are left; still
more so that these treasures should have escaped the general doom of such
things. A wonderful mellow tone pervades the great interior, where the
one spot of brilliant colour is the gold flag of the Double Empire, which
holds the eagles of the East and West aloft.
Alas, that modern Greece should have St. Demetrius in its clutches! The
Turks at least left the marbles much as they found them. The Greeks have
written their recent triumph in huge black letters right across the
apse; October 1912—there is no escaping that or the monstrous Austrian
stove—another claimant for the double eagles, which stretches its ugly
arms over the nave.
St. Demetrius, as is only right, was used to shelter soldiers rather than
refugee civilians. Sketching there I often wondered why so many Greeks in
khaki wandered in and out. Very devout people, I thought, though their
casual lounge and bored air rather belied them. Anyway, I decided, they
cannot all be former sacristans on leave. To Frenchmen of every rank I
soon grew accustomed; the blue field uniform was invariably to be seen
admiring, drawing, or measuring, each time I went there. Even a British
officer strayed in at times, some odd, adventurous spirit who cared for
such things—unlike his kind. But why all these shabby Greek Tommies?
One afternoon in the gathering dusk when it grew too dark to work and I
was exploring the empty upper galleries, to my astonishment I nearly fell
over a sick man. Startled and peering down I saw it was a soldier curled
up on his blanket bed. A comrade was hastening to him bringing a pannikin
full of water, his footsteps echoing down the long gallery behind me. I
beat a hurried retreat, noticing as I did so the kit and beds of a whole
company, neatly rolled up for the day, lying in the shadow of the low
marble railing. But this was in May; since then there are fewer Royalist
troops tucked away in the heart of Salonica.
The furthermost great church—my favourite among all those the minarets
showed me—was the round fortresslike St. George, built in the third
century. It stands near the Arch of Galerius—the Roman arch of triumph
now resounding to the clang of the British army motor-lorries. From its
massive strength and air of grave simplicity, it might be one of the
towers guarding the eastern wall of the town. No columns interrupt the
view within, and on the majestic dome, whose sweep leaves everything
clear, is the greatest monument in mosaic handed down from antiquity.
It represents a succession of saints, none later than the time of the
Emperor Constantine, who gaze pityingly down from the bronze and gold
Portals of the Heavenly City. The tall figures are just stiffening from
the grace and truth of the classic masters into the cramped outlines of
the monkish artists, who feared to study the human form lest their models
turned to wicked, tempting demons, all claws and teeth and tail, under
their very eyes. The Turks were even more prejudiced on the subject, and
defaced figures wherever met, no matter how many robes they wore. But the
charm of the whole is quite unspoilt; it lies in the background.
The designer’s naïf joy in a fresh architectural expression shines from
this Byzantine Paradise of Revelations. It radiates from these walls
whose foundations were Jasper, Sardonyx, and Emerald—Chalcedony from the
Macedonian peninsula our troops now hold—and all the other stones whose
names are songs, from these arches springing one above another, these
shell-ribbed cupolas and alcoves, these vistas of limitless arcades,
where storks stand sentinel and peacocks spread their jewelled tails,
coloured like cornflowers in grass.
On the low vaulting of the surrounding chapels, hollowed out in the
twenty foot thick fortress wall, humble local birds find a place. Ducks
and quails, cranes and smaller wild fowl from the Vardar marshes cover
the diapered gold ground. Under the Osmanli rule these chapels were
reserved for the different companies of the Sultan’s Regiment of Guards,
hence the church’s Moslem name—Orta Sultan Osman Djami.
Last to be discovered at Salonica are the few Byzantine churches so small
and insignificant they were never claimed by the Turks. No minarets point
these out. But they are well worth finding for their splendid carved and
painted screens.
Backwards and forwards the churches’ fate has swung. Bullet holes pit
their soaring spires, witness to the most recent changes. Feast days and
Holy days abound in this town of many faiths. Perhaps the prettiest among
them is the Feast of Bairam, when the minarets that remain in the hands
of the Moslems twinkle with rows of little lights. Then from my window
I could see just how many mosques were left; each one marked by a tall
fairy candle, burning steadily on the blue darkness of the hill.
* * * * *
‘Signora, wake, make haste, your Excellency’s boat leaves to-day at noon!’
My reverie over the old town came to an abrupt stop. If this were true,
it was useless trying to decide where among all my favourite haunts I
would sketch for the last time.
Eudocia, the good-natured Greek-Italian maid, making a noisy entry with
my coffee, brought the surprising, unwelcome news.
‘But the _Thraki_ doesn’t sail until Saturday!’ I protested. ‘Are you
sure?’
Yes, she was positive. Had not Anastasie, the porter, told her this
moment, having got it casually from the haughty-looking Greek Staff
Colonel as he flicked imaginary dust off his boots after his early
morning ride?
Well, I could not see V. again, or even let him know I was going; that
much was certain. But there was only one thing to be done, and with a
sinking heart I started to finish packing as rapidly as I could. In the
middle of it I remembered I must rush off to the bankers who acted as my
Salonican ‘Cook’; the day before, when I had tried to see them, having
been one of the numerous fête days, when banks and shops were shut.
In the end there was too much to be done: I had to give up the chase. The
_Thraki_ beat me, though not before I had boarded her—luggageless. One
peep into the tiny den I was to have slept in made me thankful enough
to see her start. The _Syria_, ‘_le bateau de luxe_’ her agents proudly
called her (that is the one Greek ship whose decks were ever known to be
washed), was to sail on Monday; I should see V. again to say good-bye.
All appeared to be for the best.
He rode in that evening nothing doubting, bringing me wild Madonna
lilies, with sharp-pointed petals, from the hills above Kerech-Koi; how
sad to have missed them and him.
The next day, the day my ship was to have sailed, the town was again
_en fête_. It was more than a question of shutting the banks and shops;
this time the whole place was gay with pale blue and white bunting for
the festival of King Constantine, Bulgaroctonos (Slayer of Bulgars)—an
old title of the Greek Emperors somewhat too hastily revived. St. Sophia
was to be the scene of another official service, one of triumph at past
victories over the King’s present friends.
Rather a tactless subject for so much rejoicing, I could not help
thinking, as I heard the Greeks of the hotel going gaily out. But, then,
in the Balkans people’s politics change rapidly and irony falls flat.
That day things were to move even faster than usual. The service, if
it was held, must have been short. It seemed only a moment before the
officials were back. It was a very crestfallen little party I met on my
way downstairs. The swords of the Staff Colonel and his smart friends
clanked dolefully up the marble steps. The civilians, in their ceremonial
evening dress and top hats, looked as if they had been to a ball the
night before which had rather disagreed with them. I missed the Railway
Controller, a delicate little man with birdlike eyes and walk and a
monstrous moustache, who had so far successfully dodged all our demands
to open the new line connecting Salonica with Athens. But his _confrère_,
the Censor, was there, quite shorn of his heavy importance. Even the
cheerful fat Banker, who made it his business to keep the pro-German
party in roars of laughter every meal-time—presumably over the Allies’
gullibility—for once hadn’t a smile left and seemed completely nonplussed.
A shot rang out. Or was it only an extra loud bang on the tramway
outside? There was evidently some fresh trouble—perhaps a daylight
Zeppelin raid. Just then a French friend passed.
‘Haven’t you heard?’ she said, excitedly. ‘We have taken the post-office
and the telegraph; not without some fighting. It was early this morning.
Come out with me and see what arrives.’
King Constantine’s fête seemed to be off.
The life of the seaport was going on much as usual, except that the quay
in front had rather an empty look. But as we turned up a side street,
to avoid the press of the Rue Venizelos, we ran into a big crowd. What
it was all about was difficult to discover, but it surged round a
bewildered-looking Serbian soldier who was being dragged away with some
difficulty by a patrol of Greek police. We flattened ourselves against
the wall while the angry waves swept past.
In their back-wash we came on the Official Photographer hard at work,
charmed to have something to take at last. We questioned him eagerly,
but he had only the vaguest notion as to what was on foot. Anyway, here
was copy, when the photographs appeared in the London papers the editors
could christen them what they liked. And he rushed on in the wake of the
ebb-tide, snapshotting as he went.
The Bureau des Postes was our objective. There had been brave doings
there, so we had been told. But the spot, when we reached it, appeared
fairly peaceful. In a corner of the square a little knot of people had
collected round a tall Serbian officer, while a weedy-looking Greek youth
explained with some courage, as it seemed to us from the looks of the
bystanders, what proved to be the true story of the arrest we had just
witnessed.
He had been sitting quietly in that café there up the street, everyone
round him busy discussing the King’s fête, when a Greek at the next table
had shouted out, suddenly: ‘À bas le Roi!’ and then instantly jumped up
and denounced the innocent Serbian as the ill-wisher of Greece’s idol,
and called loudly for the police—_lèse-majesté_ being as grave a crime in
Greece as in Germany. It was a put-up job.
The tall officer listened attentively, taking notes as he did so. Then
mounting his horse, he vanished after the photographer and his prey.
We turned to the post-office at last to try and send a telegram
necessitated by my enforced change of plans. But for all its peaceful air
it was closely guarded. The imposing French ‘dragon’ at the entrance much
regretted, but it was impossible for Madame to do any such thing. ‘Why,
what had happened?’ Ah, how should he know? Those were his orders. A
British Tommy at another door proved equally correct, but less unbending.
He knew nothing officially, of course. ‘Oh, yes, the post-office had been
collared this morning—about time, too.’
‘There had been trouble, hadn’t there?’
‘Oh, bless you, no, Mum. They looked very fierce-like at first, fired
a few shots and all that, but when they saw we meant it, came out as
tame as a Macedonian tortoise.’ As to what was happening inside, he knew
no more than we did, but he ventured to guess ‘The Frenchmen are going
through Tino’s billets-doux to the Bulgars all right.’
Now the crowd had melted the empty streets wore a curiously menacing air.
The grim black vistas of tightly closed iron doors and shutters were
more unpleasantly suggestive than the former rioting and noise. Calling
on a friendly Consul and his wife was a work of some difficulty. Other
unexpected sentries had to be faced. It took time before the suspicious
old Turkish concierge would open the courtyard door wide enough to let
us squeeze through. The family party within were quite cheerful and
unconcerned, but as Monsieur remarked when we were on the point of
leaving: ‘Ces émeutes arrivent souvent ici; nous avons eu trois guerres.
Je trouve c’est toujours mieux de rester chez soi.’
We took his advice. As we reached home I encountered the Commander,
delighted with the change. Now he could stop these wretched local
steamers blowing their sirens all day long below his office windows. For
there was more noise and fuss when a coasting boat left the quay-side
than the whole fleet of the largest liners could possible require.
The English military band, which played to the populace every Saturday
afternoon, had become quite a feature of life at Salonica; one could
fancy oneself in a peaceful Anglo-Indian station watching the curious
semi-Oriental throng gathered at the foot of the old White Tower—a tower
built by the Venetians, formerly part of the town walls, but now left
stranded like a huge rock in a child’s seashore garden.
The afternoon of the ‘émeute’ the White Tower looked strangely quiet.
Gone were the gaily-coloured crowds, the family parties of Israelites and
Dumés, the men in their historic furred gabardines wearing the Moslem
fez, their wives in their long satin coats and brocade aprons—blue,
prune, and violet, the favourite Jewish colours—with curious green,
parakeet-like head-dresses, low lace bodices, and necklaces of many rows
of seed pearls; the younger women copying Athens and Paris in short
skirts and high-heeled yellow boots, for fashions change now the Turks
have left.
No pipers played that afternoon to a delighted audience who followed
their every movement up and down. The soldiers and sailors of the Allied
nations, who usually collected to talk to their friends while they
listened to the music, were nowhere to be seen.
The place was empty I thought as we reached it. But, no, among the beds
of pansies, stocks, and daisies and the carefully watered little plots of
grass, great, grey motor-lorries were drawn up. And there were the French
machine-gunners perched on their guns. Very bored they looked, with a
populace and soldiery which sat tight behind its iron doors and shutters
and wisely refused to come out.
A forest of blue and white flags, festooned with fir branches, fluttered
valiantly in the breeze. But no other sign of life and festivity could
be seen down the three main roads commanded by the guns. There was
nothing doing. As we passed, the soldiers in field-blue were reduced to
re-reading their month-old _Illustrations_ and _Petit Journals_.
Under the pine trees in the little café garden beyond, at this hour
usually crammed with people, only two nursemaids gossiped together, while
their accompanying children and dogs played about unrebuked in the sun.
A nervous-looking waiter brought us tea, having peeped out cautiously and
spied us sitting at one of his little tin tables close to the sea-wall.
The revolution was falling flat, we had given it up, and were busy
discussing the various possibilities of catching a ship home—a matter of
great moment to my present companion fresh from six months unrelieved
front trenches.
We had not been there long before a gardener appeared and started his
evening round of watering. The grass and flowers must not suffer,
whatever happened outside his domain. As he came towards us I looked up
and noticed that a few more people had crept out and were moving about
aimlessly. Then some soldiers walked in carrying instruments; though
late, there was to be a band after all.
It settled itself, got out its music, struck up and was soon playing
merrily. But to our astonishment it was a Greek band this time—our
soldier and sailor musicians were otherwise occupied while General
Sarrail took the town. Since the early morning most of the Greek troops
had been shut up in their barracks, in case of serious trouble. These
must have been specially released. However it was done, it was managed
quite amicably, and as we left, instead of an Allied band playing in a
Greek seaport, this Saturday afternoon here was a Greek band playing in a
French enclave. The ‘émeute’ had ended. King Constantine’s fête-day was
not without music of sorts.
SITA.
_WILLIAM DE MORGAN: A REMINISCENCE._
One dark and snowy day last winter a distinguished company met in the
Old Church at Chelsea to do honour to the memory of Henry James. Once
more this January, under the same grey and gloomy skies, with the same
war-cloud hanging like a pall over the land, another memorable gathering
took place in the ancient riverside shrine, when the last rites were paid
to another illustrious Chelsea resident, William De Morgan. Henry James,
greatly as he had endeared himself to us all and nobly as he had thrown
in his lot with England in these anxious times, had only recently made
his home in this neighbourhood, but William De Morgan had been closely
connected with Chelsea for nearly half-a-century. Chelsea was the scene
of his triumphs both in art and literature. Here he set up his first
kiln, in a garden at the back of Cheyne Row, and here too, in later
years, he wrote his famous novels.
His family was of French origin. He told me how one of his Huguenot
ancestors, four generations back, went out to India, and married two
Frenchwomen in succession. His son, Auguste De Morgan, came over to
England, settled here, and became the grandfather of the distinguished
mathematician, Augustus De Morgan, who held the post of Professor of
Mathematics at University College for more than thirty years, and married
the daughter of another mathematician of note, the Cambridge Lecturer
William Frend. This Mrs. De Morgan was a remarkable woman, of cultured
tastes, whose beautiful face and lively interest in the people and
things about her made her still attractive in old age. She is fondly
remembered by many of her friends in Chelsea. Their eldest son, William
De Morgan, was born at 69 Gower Street in 1839, and took up painting as a
profession, before he turned his attention to pottery. His sister, Mary
De Morgan, who died eight or nine years ago, was an able and talented
woman—a marked contrast to her brother in appearance, being small and
slight, with a sharp voice and abrupt manner. She amused people by her
quick repartees and witty sayings and wrote several fairy-tales, which
recalled Hans Andersen by their imaginative charm. The first of these—‘On
a Pincushion’—was published in 1877, and illustrated with drawings by
William De Morgan; the last—‘Wind-fairies’—appeared in 1900, and was
dedicated to Angela, Dennis, and Clare Mackail, the grandchildren of
Edward Burne-Jones. Mary De Morgan also wrote a striking novel, called
‘A Choice of Chance,’ which was published in 1887, under the _nom de
plume_ of William Dodson, a name which effectually concealed the writer’s
identity. The gift of story-writing was evidently in the family, although
in William De Morgan’s case it was to lie dormant for many years.
In 1871, on the death of his father, William De Morgan brought his mother
and sisters to live in Cheyne Row, two doors from Carlyle’s home, and
began to make his fine lustre-ware in a picturesque old building known
as Orange House. After his marriage to Miss Evelyn Pickering in 1888,
he settled in a charming old house in The Vale, where he and his wife
lived until it was pulled down more than twenty years later, when they
moved into a corner house in Church Street. Their winters, however, were
chiefly spent in Florence, partly for the sake of De Morgan’s never
robust health, partly in order to be near his wife’s uncle, the painter,
Spencer Stanhope, who was a prominent member of the English colony in
that city. But after the death of this relative the ties which bound the
De Morgans to Florence were loosened, and in 1912 they finally gave up
their Italian home to spend the whole year in Chelsea.
From his early youth William De Morgan was the intimate friend of
Burne-Jones and William Morris, whose artistic aims and tastes he shared,
and was a frequent and welcome visitor at the Grange and at Kelmscott
House. His simple childlike nature, his ready wit and love of fun, made
him a great favourite with the young people in both households. Lady
Burne-Jones has told us what an active part he took in their family
life, both in joy and sorrow, at one time amusing her children and their
young cousin, Rudyard Kipling, with his merry pranks, and on another
occasion, when she herself was dangerously ill, sitting up all night
with her distracted husband. And Miss May Morris remembers the delight
of her whole family when her father wrote to say that he was bringing
De Morgan back from town to spend a few days at Kelmscott. De Morgan
himself was never tired of recalling these blissful summer holidays in
the old Manor on the Upper Thames, when he and Morris roamed up and down
the lovely Cotswold country in search of a suitable place for their
workshops. Eventually, in 1882, he built a factory for his tiles near
Morris’s works at Merton Abbey, and his jars and dishes of glowing ruby
and mother-of-pearl were always to be seen in the Morris Company’s
showrooms in Oxford Street. In beauty of shape and colour, these lovely
things recalled the wonderful Gubbio ware wrought by Messer Giorgio in
Renaissance times, while De Morgan’s Persian tiles came so near to those
which Lord Leighton brought from Damascus to decorate his Arab court,
that it was almost impossible to detect any difference between the two.
Unfortunately, in spite of its decorative charm and of the general
admiration which it aroused, De Morgan’s pottery never proved a
commercial success. This was partly due to the great cost of production,
and partly no doubt to his own lack of business capacity. Like the French
potter Palissy, whom in many ways he resembled, De Morgan’s fertile
brain was always busy with fresh ideas, always starting out on untrodden
tracks and attempting new experiments. If one of these happened to prove
successful, he promptly frittered away his earnings in making fresh
ventures on a new and grander scale. His kindness and liberality to the
workmen in his service were unbounded. He took the deepest interest in
their welfare, and countless instances of his generosity to individuals
are on record.
During the winters which he spent abroad he was still busy with new
experiments and inventions, and set up a shop in his garden in Florence,
where he trained Italian workmen to paint tiles with Persian colours
under the glaze. But by degrees his connection with the work ceased, and
about ten years ago the factory was closed and the moulds destroyed, to
the great regret of all lovers of art.
It was just at this moment, when William De Morgan was already sixty-six,
that he startled the world and amazed his most intimate friends by
revealing himself in a new and altogether unexpected capacity. Suddenly,
without any warning, the great potter appeared before the public as a
successful novelist. There are comparatively few men in any age who have
attained distinction in two separate branches of art. Great poet-painters
there have been, it is true, such as Michelangelo in Italy of the
Renaissance, and Dante Rossetti in our own times, but there was generally
a close connection between their creations in the different arts. Either
the picture was inspired by the sonnet, or the verses gave birth to
the painting. It would be difficult to trace any connection between De
Morgan’s tiles and the novels which his prolific pen poured forth in
his later years. Yet, as I have often heard him explain, his novels
were indirectly the result of his work as a potter. It was during these
first fifty years of his life, when he was busily engaged in making
experiments and looking about for boys and men whom he could train to
help him, that he acquired the familiarity with the working classes and
dwellers in the slums which is one of the most striking features of his
novels. The close and daily contact into which he was brought with his
own potters, listening to their talk and watching them at work as he sat
in a corner of the factory making designs or meditating new inventions,
gave him that intimate knowledge of their habits and language, that
insight into the points of view and prejudices of their class of which he
writes with so much sympathy and kindly humour.
As a boy he remembered being told by his father, the professor of
mathematics, that he possessed some literary power, and that if he
applied himself to books he might do something in that line. But in those
early days, young De Morgan’s sole ambition was to be a painter. So he
entered the Academy school and, like Charles Heath in ‘Alice-for-Short,’
gave up painting to design stained glass, giving this up in turn when,
about the age of thirty, he started his experiments as a potter. But he
never made any attempt at original composition until he wrote his first
novel, ‘Joseph Vance,’ when he was well on in the sixties.
It was at this interesting moment in De Morgan’s career, in the summer of
1906, that I had the good fortune to meet him at a country house, where
he was staying with one of his oldest friends. We had often met before,
generally at Burne-Jones’ house, and as I sat by his side at dinner we
recalled those happy times and sighed for the days and the friends that
were no more. George Howard, Lord Carlisle, who happened to be my other
neighbour, joined in our conversation and agreed with all De Morgan said
of the brilliant play of fantasy, the wit and tenderness, the indefinable
charm which made our beloved painter the most delightful companion in
the world. And with tears in his eyes, De Morgan said how it was always
thus in life. ‘We fail to realise the importance of the present and let
the good days go by, without any attempt to keep a record of our friends’
words and actions, until it is too late.’ Towards the end of dinner he
dropped his voice and whispered that he had a secret to tell me. ‘The
fact is,’ he said, ‘I have perpetrated the crime or the folly—whichever
you choose to call it—of writing a novel, which has just been published,
and what is more wonderful I have in my pocket a flattering review of
the book, in to-day’s _Spectator_!’ He went on to tell me how the story
of ‘Joseph Vance’ had grown into being; how when he was ill and away
in Florence, a rheumatic hand disabled him from drawing, so he took to
scribbling instead, and began to jot down ideas that came into his head,
on scraps of paper; how his wife encouraged him to go on with the story;
and how he became interested first of all in the character of Christopher
Vance, the drunken old builder, and then in that of his heroine,
‘Lossie,’ till the actual writing became a pleasure and the book took
its present shape. The speaker’s earnestness and animation, I remember,
excited Lord Carlisle’s curiosity, and after dinner he asked me if what
he had caught of our conversation could be true and De Morgan had really
written a novel. There was no denying the fact, and soon we were all
reading ‘Joseph Vance’ and the friendly review which had given its author
so much satisfaction.
From the first the success of the book was phenomenal. The girls in
the office where the manuscript was typed became so much absorbed in
the story that they forgot to go on with their work. The critics were
unanimous in their chorus of praise, in spite of the unusual length of
the book, which at first seemed likely to prove a stumbling-block. Mr.
Punch pronounced ‘Joseph Vance’ to be quite the best novel which he had
read for a long time, and the public on both sides of the Atlantic hailed
the advent of a new star in the literary horizon.
The plunge once made, William De Morgan went merrily on, and novel after
novel poured forth in rapid succession from his pen. ‘Joseph Vance’
was followed in 1907 by ‘Alice-for-Short,’ which contains the author’s
reminiscences of his experiences as an art-student, and is dedicated
to the memory of Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. Then came
‘Somehow Good,’ in which the lively ‘Sally’ rivalled his first creation,
‘Lossie,’ in the affections of the writer, as in those of his readers.
Indeed, after the manner of authors, De Morgan confessed that he had
fallen in love with his latest creation, but that he was not in the
least responsible for Sally’s erratic conduct, as she simply went her
own way and did whatever she liked with him. The wife’s meeting with her
long-lost husband was, he sometimes said, the passage by which he wished
to be remembered, just as Thackeray used to say that Becky Sharp’s pride
in her Guardsman was what he himself should select as the best thing that
he had written.
In 1909 De Morgan published a two-volume novel, ‘It Never can Happen
Again,’ which he dedicated to the memory of Ralph, second Earl of
Lovelace, ‘in remembrance of two long concurrent lives, and an
uninterrupted friendship.’ Lord Lovelace (who died in 1906) he always
said had been his earliest friend in Chelsea. His mother, Ada, daughter
of Lord Byron, and first Countess of Lovelace, used to study mathematics
with Professor Augustus De Morgan, and their children had known each
other from the age of eight or nine. This new book was hardly as
successful as its predecessors, although the episode of the blind beggar
Jim and ’Lizer Ann was as fresh and delightful as anything its author had
ever written.
Lord Lovelace himself once aptly described De Morgan’s novels as ‘the
work of an idealist with realistic details,’ combining the sentiments
and traditions of the Victorian age with the more analytical methods
of the present generation. His sensitiveness to the deep impressions
left on the youthful mind by passing sights and sounds, and to the
strange way in which these trivial incidents weave themselves about the
great events of life, was a noteworthy feature of De Morgan’s writings.
Another striking feature of his novels was the vigour and animation of
the dialogue, whether he chronicles the sayings of East-end beggars or
West-end charwomen—a class with which he seems to have possessed a close
and intimate acquaintance—or whether he sets down the lively prattle of
Florentine gardeners and barbers or the almost preternatural quickness
of repartee possessed by the small urchins of the slums. These are all
recorded in the writer’s own inimitable fashion, with the same note of
originality, the same gentle irony and warm sympathy, together with a
youthful optimism which never seemed to grow old. Dickens, it has often
been remarked, was the model on which De Morgan fashioned his style, but
there is less of caricature in the characters which De Morgan draws, they
are more real and human, and always lovable. The digressions in which
he often indulges, taking the reader into his confidence and moralising
on love and parting, on death and a future life, seem rather to recall
Thackeray.
In his next novel, ‘An Affair of Dishonour,’ which appeared in 1910, De
Morgan made a new departure. Leaving contemporary England and London
of the Victorian age, he placed the scene of Sir Oliver and Lucinda’s
adventures in the days of the Restoration, and introduced a graphic
account of the naval battle of Solebay into the story. Several good
judges rank this tale amongst the author’s best efforts, but De Morgan
himself was not of this opinion, and when an admirer congratulated him on
his new ‘tour de force,’ he replied ‘Say, rather, tour de faiblesse!’
The enforced break up of his old home in the Vale, Chelsea, and the move
to another house in Church Street, were serious interruptions in De
Morgan’s placid life, and when we met in the following summer he told
me that for the last six months he had not been able to write a line,
adding that it was perhaps just as well, since during the last five years
he had written and published above a million and a quarter words! By the
end of 1910, however, he and his wife were happily settled in their new
home, to which they soon became deeply attached. That winter they spent
Christmas in London for the first time, and before long decided to give
up their house in Florence and make their home entirely in Chelsea. Here
they lived happily, surrounded by old friends and their own beautiful
works of art—De Morgan’s lustre-ware and Persian tiles, and his wife’s
pictures. Mrs. De Morgan was an accomplished artist, and before her
marriage her works appeared for many years at the Grosvenor and New
Gallery exhibitions. Her industry was still as great as ever, and she
went on painting her pictures while De Morgan wrote his novels. Music was
another of their favourite occupations. They were regular attendants at
the Albert Hall Sunday Concerts and the musical afternoons at Leighton
House, and when they settled in Church Street De Morgan found a new
source of delight in the pianola. He became the proud possessor of an
Angelus, which he played all the evenings, and declared that it first
revealed Beethoven to him. But long before this he had loved and studied
the great master’s works, and readers of ‘Joseph Vance’ will remember the
fine passage in which he describes the comfort that came to the bereaved
widower in a dark hour, through hearing a movement of the Waldstein
Sonata.
During the winter and spring of 1911 De Morgan found time to write
another short novel, called ‘A Likely Story,’ in which he tried—not
altogether successfully—to weave an Italian tale of the sixteenth century
into the modern life of Chelsea. But the Italian part of the book is told
with consummate art, and might almost pass as the work of Bandello or
Luigi da Porto.
There was, however, general rejoicing among the readers of De Morgan’s
novels when he returned to his older and more familiar vein in his
second two-volume novel, ‘When Ghost meets Ghost,’ which appeared early
in 1914. The plot of the story turns on the adventures of twin sisters,
who are parted by a cruel fate in their youth, and only meet again after
interminable vicissitudes and delays, when they are eighty years of
age. This time his interest in the tale and the pleasure which he took
in elaborating every detail carried him beyond his usual limits, and
the story in its original form made up over a thousand pages. When in
response to a gentle remonstrance from his publisher he succeeded in
cutting out two hundred pages, he found it absolutely necessary to add
another fifty or sixty, ‘to fill up the gaps.’ But in spite of its great
length, much of the book was written in the author’s happiest manner, and
many of his critics placed it next to ‘Joseph Vance’ in their estimation.
The letters which he received on this occasion, as he said in his quaint
fashion, ‘greatly alimented his vanity.’ But he noticed that most of his
readers referred to ‘Joseph Vance’ as his best book and to ‘Lossie’ as
their favourite heroine. He confessed that for his part ‘Janey’ was ‘his
darling,’ and took great pains to explain that she was not to be regarded
as a ‘pis-aller,’ but as the best possible helpmeet for Joseph Vance—the
true wife of his soul. One thing which surprised and gratified him
extremely was the warm appreciation expressed for his novels by so many
of the clergy—‘even Canons and Bishops’ of the Church of England, ‘in
spite of all his heresies!’ It was in recognition of this kindly attitude
that he felt it necessary to introduce a good parson into his novel, ‘It
Never can Happen Again,’ in the person of the Rector, Athelstan Taylor,
who refutes the ‘ultra-liberal views’ expressed by Alfred Challis.
He came to the conclusion that what attracted ecclesiastics of this
description in his writings must be his ‘immortalism.’ As he always
insisted, he had a firm faith in an overruling Providence which orders
all things well, and in a future life where we shall see and know our
lost friends once more.
It is pleasant to know that the success of De Morgan’s novels brought
him the material rewards which his artistic pottery had failed to
command, and better still to feel how thoroughly he enjoyed the fame and
prosperity which had at length crowned his labours. He took a child-like
pleasure in the letters which reached him from devoted admirers in
all parts of the world, and often said that he was quite ashamed of
the magnificent sums which he received from American publishers. The
popularity of his novels showed no signs of diminishing. Each one was
awaited with the same impatience, and in one instance a distinguished
statesman who knew that his days were numbered, begged to see advance
proofs of the forthcoming novel that was announced in the daily press, in
order that he might enjoy this last pleasure before his death.
In November 1910, De Morgan was the guest of honour at a dinner given
by the Society of Authors, but his gratification at the compliment thus
paid him was considerably damped when he found that he was expected to
make a speech! So nervous was he at the prospect that he would not
allow Mrs. De Morgan to be present, lest he should disgrace himself by
breaking down. But, although his voice at first sounded a little weak and
quavering, he got through the ordeal well, and amused his hearers by a
good-humoured allusion to a boycott which his last novel had sustained at
the hands of one of the largest circulating libraries, which had rejected
it as being improper. This, he suspected, was rather due to the fact that
he had outraged the feelings of circulating libraries by venturing to
publish a novel in two volumes. But he confessed that he could not help
feeling rather hurt at the treatment which he had received, because of
the singular respect that he had always felt for libraries, ever since
the day, sixty-six years before, when his mother first took him, as a
small boy, into Mudie’s Library. He still remembered clearly how, as he
stood with his chin resting on the counter, he saw a tall gentleman step
out from the back of the shop and hand his mother a parcel of books.
‘That,’ said Mrs. De Morgan, ‘was Mr. Mudie.’ He never forgot the thrill
which the words sent through him.
Long residence in Chelsea had made William De Morgan familiar with
its chief landmarks and leading inhabitants. He had known Carlyle and
Rossetti, Whistler and William Bell Scott, John Hungerford Pollen and
many other celebrities of past days. The historic monuments in the Old
Church, and the families whom they commemorate, the Cheynes and Petitts,
the Laurences and Danvers, were a theme of which he was never tired.
He mourned over the destruction of the old wooden Battersea bridge
that figured so often in Whistler’s paintings and etchings. He had
many stories to tell of the part which it had played in the old life
of Chelsea, and of the health-giving properties associated with the
structure in the minds of former inhabitants. There was, it appears, a
popular superstition among Chelsea folk some fifty years ago that seven
currents of air met in the middle span of the bridge. A carpenter who is
still living vividly remembers being taken by his mother to stand on the
bridge, on a bitterly cold March day, with his six brothers and sisters,
who were all suffering from whooping-cough. It must have been a case of
kill or cure, but in this instance the good woman’s faith seems to have
been justified, for all her seven children got over the whooping-cough
and grew up hale and hearty.
In spite, however, of his affection for Chelsea and its people, De
Morgan never forgot Italy and the Florentine home where he and his wife
had spent so many happy seasons. He missed the sun and the flowers and
thought with regret of his friend Spencer Stanhope, whose death had left
so great a blank in the English colony at Florence. Often he recalled the
painter’s lovely home at Villa Nuti, where the De Morgans always spent
the week-end, and their pleasant walks up the steep hillside, on radiant
April mornings, when Val d’Arno lay below in the first flush of spring
loveliness.
One evening towards dusk I happened to meet him in Chelsea, in front of
a new Roman church which has been built of recent years in Cheyne Row.
The door stood open and we saw the priest within reciting the office of
Benediction, the clouds of incense rising heavenwards and the gleam of
silver and lighted candles on the altar. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I like that, it
makes me feel I am at home again!’ And then it flashed across him that
this church stood on the exact spot where his first pottery kiln had been
set up, in the garden of Orange House; and so, as he said, ‘it really was
his home.’
The sudden outbreak of war, in August 1914, found the indefatigable
author busy with a new novel which promised to be both original and
entertaining. It was the story of his own recollections of life in
Chelsea during the last fifty years, put in the mouth of an old pauper
exactly his own age, who was supposed to be living in the workhouse near
his home. But, like many other authors, De Morgan found it impossible
to go on writing when his whole soul was absorbed in the life and death
struggle in which the Empire found itself involved. The new novel was
left unfinished, but since a considerable part had been already written,
it is to be hoped that both this fragment, and another novel on which he
had been for some time engaged, may eventually see the light.
During the next two years and a half, De Morgan thought of little but the
war. He followed every step of the campaign by land and by sea, and did
his utmost to enlighten public opinion abroad and in the United States.
More than this, he devoted a great part of his time to making scientific
experiments at the Polytechnic and perfecting new discoveries, which
might prove useful in submarine warfare. All his old love for chemistry
now revived, and many were the suggestions for saving life and destroying
hostile craft which he sent to the Board of Admiralty.
The splendid optimism and youthful enthusiasm which were so marked a
feature of his character carried him safely through the darkest days
of the last two winters. He took keen interest in an exhibition of his
wife’s symbolical paintings dealing with subjects suggested by the
war, which was held in Chelsea last spring, and was very proud of the
substantial sum which it realised for the English and Italian Red Cross
Societies. All through these anxious months his familiar figure was
frequently to be seen in the streets of Chelsea. You met him in the
morning doing his own marketing and carrying provisions home, and late in
the dusk of evening he was constantly to be seen setting out on a rapid
walk along the Embankment. Often you caught sight of him stopping at a
street corner to exchange greetings with some old inhabitant or engaged
in earnest conversation with a soldier in khaki just back from the front.
The tall figure was slightly bowed with advancing years, and Time had
whitened the locks and beard that were once a rich brown, but the brisk,
alert step and clear blue eyes with their frank, kindly glance, were
still the same as ever.
The last time I saw him he was singularly bright and hopeful. He had
thoroughly enjoyed a short September holiday at Lyme Regis, and was
eloquent on the beauty of the Dorset and Devon coast. And he spoke with
the utmost confidence of the coming campaign on the Western front next
spring. For him there could be no doubt as to the final issue of the
struggle. The devil was let loose for a while and all the powers of evil
were ranged against us in the battle, but right must conquer in the end,
he felt convinced, and the hour of victory, he believed, was not far
off. Alas! he was not destined to see the day to which he looked forward
with such serene confidence. A sharp and sudden attack of influenza
carried him off after a fortnight’s illness, and on the 15th of January
he breathed his last. A few days later, a large company of the friends
who had known and loved him met in the Old Church, which has played so
great a part in the history of Chelsea and is so often mentioned in his
books. Here his mortal remains were laid under a violet pall, bright with
flowers, while sweet boy-voices sang his last Requiem. Among the mourners
were the children and grandchildren of Burne-Jones and the daughter
of William Morris. So, with the music and flowers which he had loved,
and with familiar faces all around, he passed to his well-earned rest,
followed by the love and gratitude of thousands whose lives had been
cheered and gladdened by his genius.
JULIA CARTWRIGHT.
_UNCONQUERED: AN EPISODE OF 1914._
BY MAUD DIVER.
Copyright, 1917, by Mrs. Diver, in the United States of America.
CHAPTER X.
Vanish every idle thought,
Perish, last of Folly’s ways!
All that pride of eye hath sought,
All that rebel flesh hath wrought,
Utterly reduced to naught,
How can ye outlive these days?
X.
That was how his mother found him when she came in search of him. The
lunch-gong had brought no Mark; and no one had seen him, except Maurice,
who, from his window, had caught sight of the lovers entering the wood.
All the morning she had been secretly anxious. Now she felt certain
something was wrong, and telling the others not to wait, she fled out to
his favourite haunt, hardly knowing what she expected to find.
He did not hear her till she set foot in the summer-house; and the wild
idea smote him—Could it be Bel?
With a start he looked up; and at sight of his face Lady Forsyth’s heart
stood still.
‘My darling Boy, what _has_ happened?’
Mark frowned and straightened his shoulders. ‘She’s chucked me—that’s
all,’ he said in a dazed voice. ‘They’ve poisoned her point of view
between them.’ His eyes challenged hers. ‘Mother, you’ve been right all
along. I suppose—you even foresaw—this!’
‘Dear, indeed I didn’t.’ Her hand closed on the rough woodwork. She so
longed to gather him to her heart. ‘I was anxious—a little. But I hoped
better things of her.’
‘So did I. We were a pair of fools, it seems. And there’s an end of
_that_.’ With a gesture he dismissed the subject, and added, almost in
his normal voice, ‘What about the meeting? Any luck?’
‘Yes. People are quite keen. But—you’ll hardly feel like speaking.’
‘Oh, I’ll speak all right. The King’s affairs come a long way first.
I’ve had enough of false perspectives this morning. I’ll probably speak
all the better for having—flung in everything.’ He sighed. ‘Give me
to-morrow, Mums, to pull myself together, and I’ll do any mortal thing
that’s required of me. But I can’t show up yet—you understand? And it’s
you that must do the telling—as before!’
A spasm of pain crossed his face and she passed a hand over his hair.
He drew back sharply. ‘Oh—not that,’ he murmured; then checked himself
and tried to smile. ‘Sorry. I’m feeling—all raw, Mother. I can’t be civil
even to you.’ He could not tell her why the feel of a woman’s hand on his
hair was unendurable, and would be, for some time to come.
‘I understand, dear,’ she said, and turned to go. ‘Shall I send anything
to the studio?’
He shook his head. ‘Later on, perhaps. Dinner time. You might come up
yourself.’
‘Of course I will.’
And so she left him.
Lunch was nearly over when she got back. They had kept some hot for her;
but she hardly touched it.
Briefly, without comment, she told them her news: and escaped with Keith
into the study. To him she could speak more freely. He loved Mark like
a brother; a good deal more, indeed, than the average brother: and she
knew—though neither had spoken of it—that he had shared her distrust of
Bel.
But her thoughts and her words were of Mark only as she stood beside the
man who so intimately shared their lives, her small hand clenched upon
the edge of the high mantelshelf; tears in her eyes; but none in her
voice.
‘He faces trouble so exactly like his father,’ she said, when she had
told him of Mark’s refusal to postpone the meeting. ‘But Richard’s phlegm
went deeper. Mark, underneath, has all my terrible sensibility; though he
won’t let me see it except accidentally.’
Keith said nothing. He was not given to superfluous comment; and on the
whole she found his silences more satisfactory than other people’s talk.
He knew she was more or less thinking aloud. She was not even looking at
him, but at a full-length photograph of her husband—a powerful figure of
a man.
‘It’s so strange,’ she went on in the same subdued tone. ‘I sometimes
see Richard’s very self looking at me out of Mark’s eyes. When the look
comes I seem actually to feel him there. Twice this morning I’ve seen
it. Once when Mark spoke of war and again when he spoke of—that wretched
girl. Oh Keith—I hate her!’
The low voice broke unmistakably; and she bowed her forehead on the back
of her hand.
Macnair stood looking at her, his keen eyes clouded with tenderness. A
moment he seemed to hesitate, then deliberately, he laid his hand on
her shoulder. ‘Helen, don’t break your heart over it,’ he said. ‘We men
pull through these things: and Mark is made of sterner stuff, if I know
him, than to let a girl like Miss Alison smash him up for good. More
likely to do that by marrying him than by leaving him. There’s a crumb of
consolation for you!’
She raised her head now and smiled at him through tears that were not
allowed to fall.
‘If there is such a crumb anywhere, trust you to find it! What a blessing
you are to us, Keith!’ As his hand slipped from her shoulder she caught
and held it a minute. Then her thoughts went back to her son. ‘I
wonder—will he ever have eyes for Sheila again, after this?’
‘More likely after this than before. Sheila’s a born mother-woman, a
little Sister of Compassion. And we men are such fools, that we’re very
apt to overlook the beauty of that type till we’ve suffered a few hard
knocks from the other sort. The revulsion from that type, when it comes,
is curiously complete. But it takes time. As for our Sheila, whether she
would have him, after this, is another matter.’
Helen sighed. ‘I can’t forgive Maurice yet,’ she said. ‘I wonder if he’ll
enlist?’ And their talk slid back to the one all-absorbing subject—the
War.
* * * * *
As for Mark, he spent that interminable afternoon tramping endlessly,
aimlessly over the hills; hoping by the mechanical motion to deaden
thought and ease the pain within. Where all memory was intolerable, it
hurt him most to recall how cruelly she had tempted him by tone and
touch; as it were bribing him to be false to his own convictions. The
whole thing bewildered almost as much as it hurt him. There were moments
when he came near to hating her; proof, though he did not realise it,
that the love she evoked was strongly tinctured with baser metal.
And all the while Bobs, the incurably faithful, trotted to heel or
gambolled coquettishly under his master’s eyes without eliciting a word
or caress.
Hunger and lengthening shadows drew him back at last to the home he loved
yet now acutely desired to avoid. She had poisoned even that. Yet how his
heart ached for her! How the unregenerate blood in his veins craved the
touch of her lips and hands!
He reached his study without encountering anything more human than a
stray housemaid; and there the first thing he lighted on was his own
tender and beautiful little Study of Contemplation. Standing just inside
the door, he feasted his eyes on the soft, still face, the small head
with its close-fitting cap of hair and the long-limbed grace of her
figure. Then rage flamed in him. He felt like smashing the thing with a
hammer and flinging away the pieces as he had flung away her ring. A mere
pulse-beat of hesitation saved him and the artist prevailed over the man.
He could not murder the work of his hands. Later on, he would give it to
Maurice to wean him from the sin of impressionism. Meanwhile, he lifted
it as tenderly as he would have touched the original, put it away in a
corner cupboard and turned the key.
He had scarcely done so when he heard his mother outside.
‘Open the door, dear,’ she said. ‘My hands are full.’
He opened it and relieved her of a tray set out with appetising food and
wine.
‘Stunning of you, Mums,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry.’
To her delight he ate everything and drank three glasses of wine, while
they discussed ways and means; the money they could realise, the men they
could raise for England in this most critical hour of her destiny. Except
for the absence of laughter and badinage in their talk, it was as if
nothing abnormal had happened. But Lady Forsyth did not fail to note the
disappearance of his terra-cotta treasure; and she was sinful enough to
hope it had been destroyed.
She stayed more than half an hour and left him with a fervent ‘God bless
you!’ But this time she attempted no caress. She understood.
* * * * *
Next morning, after breakfast, she lingered in her turret room, wondering
what he would do with himself, hoping he would come and let her know. He
did come; and her heart ached at the tired look in his eyes.
‘I’m going to take the “Watersprite” up the loch, Mums,’ he told her.
‘And I’ll be away all day. Grant has stocked her well, so I shan’t
starve. Don’t be an idiot if I’m late and go imagining I’ve drowned
myself. At a time like this, a man’s life is not his own to chuck away.
Besides, I’m not the sort. And—there happens to be you,’ he added with a
travesty of a smile. ‘On the whole I’d sooner have the honour of being
shot by the Germans—’
‘Mark—don’t!’ She drew in a sharp breath.
‘Sorry, Mums. But it’s true. By the way, as I’m wasting some valuable
time hadn’t we better stay over Sunday?’
‘That _would_ make things easier,’ she admitted. ‘But I thought—you’d
rather get away soon.’
‘My dear Mother, don’t fash yourself with fancies. If it’ll ease things,
we’ll jolly well stay. _I_ don’t care a damn.’
The spark of irritation was purely refreshing: and he never apologised to
her for ‘language’ accidental or otherwise. So complete was the comrade
spirit between them that he prided himself on his habit of speaking to
her straightly as man to man. More than once, in University days, he had
filled some prospective visitor with envy by the casual remark: ‘Don’t be
alarmed if you hear me scrapping with my Mother. She’s the right sort. I
can talk to her just exactly as I talk to you.’
Now, in answer to his outburst, she said quietly: ‘Very well, Monday.
I’ll tell the others.’
‘That’s all right. And don’t you be a fool about me!’
So he left her and she did her best to obey him; but the faint
consolation that his trouble brought him nearer to herself was
obliterated by her acute consciousness of his hidden pain and resentment
against the cause of it.
That grey, weary Thursday seemed as if it would never pass. Clouds had
rolled up out of the West. Scudding showers lashed the loch; and through
them she could picture Mark driving the little steam-yacht he loved. Long
after sunset he came back wet to the skin; but looking, on the whole,
more like himself. He had fought and conquered something out there in the
rain and wind. But he spent what remained of the evening in his studio as
before.
On Friday evening, when they were gathered in the square hall waiting to
start, he strode casually down stairs and nodded his greetings as if he
had merely been away for a couple of nights. He had prepared a speech, he
said, that ought to make the men of Ardmuir sit up to some purpose: and
Keith, watching the little incident from the study threshold, murmured:
‘Well done, old boy!’
A second car had been ordered to accommodate the party; and while they
made ready, Mark was left momentarily alone with Sheila in the hall.
Then she took courage and looked up at him.
‘Mark—I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I may say that much, mayn’t I?’
For a second he held her gaze. Then: ‘You may say anything you please,’
he answered, ‘when you look like that! Truth is,’ he paused, ‘she’s never
been taught to see things the right way. It was just—that one couldn’t
make her understand.’
‘Poor Bel! She must be very unhappy.’
‘Bel—unhappy!’ His astonishment was manifest. But then—Sheila had not
seen the look in her eyes. ‘I doubt it,’ he added with a touch of
bitterness.
‘_I_ don’t,’ the soft voice persisted. ‘She’s bound to be—if she cares.’
‘But if she cared, how _could_ she—?’
The note of pain in his voice gave her still more courage.
‘You said—she didn’t understand, and that poisons everything.’
Touched to the heart he said impulsively ‘Sheila, what a wise little
Mouse you are!’
It was his old nickname for her and she drew in a quick breath. ‘Not so
very! But I do know—about caring.’
‘The first best knowledge surely,’ he said: then Keith appeared and bade
them hurry up.
But her eyes, shining on him through tears, and her words that gave him a
new point of view lingered in his memory. Odd how readily he could speak
of Bel to Sheila, how hardly to his mother, with whom he could talk of
everything in earth or heaven. And surely no one but Sheila could have
been inspired to couple sympathy for himself with so tender and delicate
a plea for Bel. If she were right, if Bel were really suffering, the door
of hope might still be ajar. Meantime there was his speech; for which he
had made comprehensive notes; there were convictions and appeals that he
must drive home to the hearts of his hearers; and while he sat smoking in
silence beside Keith—who drove the car—words full of vigour and fire came
crowding into his brain—
When at length he stood on the platform waiting for his clamorous welcome
to subside, the flame of his own conviction burnt away all nervousness,
all dread of failure; and for half an hour he spoke as none had imagined
he could speak, himself least of all.
‘First rate,’ Keith said quietly as he sat down amid a storm of cheers.
‘Heaven knows how I did it!’ he answered under cover of the noise. ‘Wish
I could bolt now.’
But the Provost had risen and was praising him to his face; a far worse
ordeal than the one he had so triumphantly weathered. The recruiting
result, in figures, was not sensational: but Ardmuir was obviously
impressed. It begged leave to distribute Sir Mark’s ‘great recruiting
speech’ as a leaflet; and Sir Mark, privately overwhelmed, gave gracious
consent, with the air of one who made brilliant speeches as easily as he
ate his breakfast.
‘Really, old boy, you ought to stand for Parliament,’ Keith said as they
drove home. ‘If that speech of yours is well distributed, the men will
soon be tumbling in. One has to give them time up here. The Radical
spirit is so strong in our beloved country.’
‘And the beauty of it is that the bulk of ’em, if they only knew it,
remain Radicals just _because_ they’re so conservative!’ Mark retorted
with a flash of his mother’s humour. ‘But Parliament—no thanks; not yet
awhile.’
Saturday was given over to rounding up his own men and business connected
with his mother’s small estate. That evening he conquered, not without
difficulty, a temptation to stroll down into the village and discover
whether the Rowans was yet empty of its treasure; and when the last post
came in he knew.
Glancing through half a dozen envelopes, he came suddenly on Bel’s
handwriting. His mother, who was watching him, saw, without appearing to
see, that he pocketed all his letters unopened and, after a reasonable
interval, rose and left the room. It was easy to guess what had happened;
and she rated herself for the horrid sinking at her heart. She could not
sleep till she knew; but as Mark did not reappear, she went up early and,
in passing, knocked at his door.
‘Good-night, dear,’ she said.
He opened it and stood before her—transfigured.
‘Come along in, Mums.’ Drawing her forward he closed the door behind her.
‘Read that!’
He thrust a faintly scented sheet of note-paper into her hand, and she
obeyed.
Bel’s communication was brief, moving, and very much to the point.
‘Are you generous enough to forgive me—and come to me?’ she
wrote without preamble. ‘If you can keep it up—_I can’t_. I
saw and heard you at Ardmuir. You are _brave_. As for me, I’m
bitterly sorry and ashamed. I hate it all still. But if you
wish it, I am yours—unconditionally, BEL. I shall be alone here
after 10.30. I can’t face Inveraig.’
Lady Forsyth had to read that note more than once before she could feel
sure of her voice. To her it seemed studied, consciously written for
effect: and the writing itself was equally studied, with the same touch
of hardness in it that showed in the level line of eyelids and brows.
‘Well?’ Mark was growing impatient.
‘You _can_ forgive her?’ she asked, looking steadily up at him.
‘Of course I can. And you must too. She’s sorry. She—cares. Isn’t that
enough for anyone?’
‘But she’s not convinced.’
‘_I’ll_ convince her, in time. I hope she’ll come south with us
to-morrow.’
Lady Forsyth drew in her lips and at once his hands came down on her
shoulders.
‘Look here, Mums, I _won’t_ have you antagonising and doubting her any
more—after this. It spoils everything. You might make an effort if only
for my sake. It’s beyond belief getting her back; and your attitude’s the
only flaw in my happiness. Has been all along.’
She was silent a minute, then she put her two hands on his breast. ‘Dear,
I will make an effort for your sake. I refuse to be the flaw in your
happiness! It’s a degrading position for a mother.’
He stooped and kissed her for the first time since Wednesday morning.
‘Bless you!’ he said. ‘Good-night.’
Alone in her room, confronting this new, unwelcome development, she
realised how, through all the pain of his grief, she had been upheld by
the secret conviction that his loss was gain; some day he would know
it. Now the old miserable uncertainty was nagging at her afresh. In her
heart, she distrusted the sincerity of the whole incident. But she had
given her word to Mark, and Bel should have the benefit of all the doubts
in creation.
* * * * *
Mark’s watch was three minutes short of the half-hour when he stood
outside the square grey house perched on the hillside above the road. A
white curtain fluttered; and a glimpse of Bel’s face signified that the
coast was clear.
When he entered the homely sitting-room and closed the door she did not
run to meet him as a simpler woman would have done. She remained standing
near the mantelpiece on the farther side of the square table, smiling her
cool provocative smile.
‘Mark!’ she said softly. ‘I’ve been wondering and wondering would you
really come?’
By that time the square table was no longer between them and Mark was
holding her as if he could never let her go.
‘Would you have broken your heart, if I hadn’t?’ he asked at last.
‘Very nearly!’ she admitted, with the slowest possible lift of her lashes.
‘But, Bel—if you cared, how _could_ you pull it through? How could you
look at me with your eyes like bits of glass?’
‘You forget,’ she said, ‘I can act. It was because—I cared so much;
because I couldn’t bear the idea of your taking part in that horror out
there; and because you were so obstinate, that in the end I put on the
strongest screw I could think of—and it wasn’t so strong as I supposed.
That’s the inner history of the last three days.’
He regarded her searchingly, taking it all in. ‘Women are queer things,’
he said. ‘Did you really suppose I’d capitulate—under the screw?’
‘I half hoped so—till I heard your speech. Then I began to see that I’d
never known the real Mark: only Bel’s lover.’
‘And—did you approve of the real Mark?’
She laughed and kissed him.
‘Honestly, I found him rather alarming. Too big altogether for a mere
Bel. But I wanted him more than ever. And now I know he’s still mine, I
can’t let him go!’
For Mark there was only one flaw in those first raptures of reunion:
and for that flaw his mother was unwittingly responsible. Nothing would
induce Bel to come up to Inveraig or to travel south with the Forsyths on
Monday.
‘I can’t face them yet awhile,’ she persisted, ‘specially your Mother.
She won’t easily forgive me for hurting you so. No real mother could.
Besides, she was probably thanking her stars for your escape; and now
I’ve turned up again, like a bad penny!’
‘Bel!’
But she laid her hand upon his lips.
‘Hush and listen to me. It wouldn’t be fair on Harry either; stranding
her with those two. In ten days, we can both come south and a regenerate
Bel can dare to pay you a visit. Their minds will be full of such big
terrible things by then that they’ll take me for granted. As for you—the
real Mark will be so swamped with his responsibilities that there would
be no time for love-making, even if I came.’
In the end he was forced to admit that she was right. Three days of
fighting himself had not been without a steadying effect on his impatient
spirit: and so the matter was settled.
Rain and wind had ceased. They spent all the afternoon and evening
together on the water; and on Monday the Forsyth party travelled down to
Wynchcombe Friars.
At no time could Lady Forsyth leave Inveraig without a pang: and never
had it been sharper than on that 10th of August with the glory and
anguish of Belgium’s gallant stand beating on her brain, and the poignant
question at her heart—when, and in what circumstances, would they four
see that grey rugged house and the lochs and hills of Scotland again?