Surely we need no satirist to point out the ironies of life, for they
are for ever with us! Here is the latest in my own experience:--
After all my arrangements, my care about telegrams, my determination not
to be defrauded of even half an hour’s satisfaction, I have heard at
last of the relief of Ladysmith from a child by the roadside; from a
child? nay but from a baby, a smudgy-faced cottage infant, that could
barely walk, and certainly was quite unable to talk! It happened in this
wise. I was hurrying along the lane on my way to take the train for
Godalming, having waited till the last minute in hopes of a telegram
which never came. My morning papers had told me nothing, or nothing
beyond vague surmises, which I was quite competent to provide for
myself; consequently I was famishing for more substantial fare. I had
nearly reached the village, and was hurrying round the last corner.
Suddenly out of one of the cottage doors came this creature, dragging
after it a stick with something red tied to it, which I entirely failed
to distinguish as having been even intended for a flag. Either it
stumbled, or from sheer force of circumstances simply sat down in the
middle of the road, right in front of me. I was delayed an instant, and
in that instant out flew its mother, and plucked it to its feet again,
with a sound maternal smack.
“There ain’t no sense in yer being run over, is there, ye little fule,
not if Ladysmith _is_ relieved!”
“Ladysmith!” I was upon the two of them in an instant, and had seized
the bigger one by the arm, though she was not an acquaintance of mine.
“What did you say? _Is_ Ladysmith relieved?”
“Lor bless you ma’am, don’t you know? Why hours and hours ago! _We_
heard of it a little afore eleven we did!”
“But are you certain? Is there no mistake this time?”
“Mistake? Bless you, no ma’am, there ain’t no mistake! Why it were stuck
up at the office by Mr. Smith hisself, just gone quarter to the hour. I
was a-coming along with my husband’s second breakfast, for he’s working
now for Mr. Bellew at the Mills. So as I was passing close to the office
‘Whatever is all this about,’ thinks I, for there was eight or ten
people a-standin’ there, and a-readin’ somethink. And with that I
sees----”
I too had seen something! A flag--unmistakably a Union Jack--hanging
near the Church, I had overlooked it in my hurry. At sight of that,
excitement, combined with the fear of missing my train, overcame my
politeness, and I flew down the lane in the direction of the station.
The train was caught, but only by the narrowest margin. I sprang into a
carriage, all but shaking hands as I did so with an absolutely unknown
old gentleman, who was its only other occupant. Everyone knows the
shrinking, the more than maidenly dread of the solitary travelling _he_,
for the unknown travelling _she_, however harmless the latter may look.
On this occasion public interest overcame even that terror. As a river
bursts through its banks, so my old gentleman burst into a torrent of
repressed information. He had just come from London; he had witnessed
the scene at the Mansion House; he described to me the Lord Mayor coming
to the window with a telegram in his hands; he dilated upon the crowds,
the cheering, the flags, the block in the streets; above all upon the
central fact of the situation, which was that he had himself been
thereby made twenty minutes late at his board, or meeting, whatever it
was. “For the first time in twenty-five years!--the very first time!
They couldn’t make out _what_ had happened to me; thought I must have
been run over!” he assured me several times between Guildford and
Godalming.
Well, well, it has come at last! All is right, all is well, and we may
go back to our own little concerns; our housekeepings, and our
marketings, our weedings, and our seed-sowing, with lighter; let us
hope, perhaps also, with a trifle gratefuller hearts?