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THE
CORNHILL MAGAZINE.
SEPTEMBER 1916.
_THE KAISER AS HIS FRIENDS KNEW HIM._
BY A NEUTRAL DIPLOMAT.
Among the high German officials whose opinion of William the Second’s
foreign policies I quoted in my previous article, I do not recall a
single one whose loyalty or sense of propriety did not prevent his
offering any personal criticisms of the Emperor to whose service his
best efforts were being devoted. An apprehensiveness, bordering on
positive dread in many instances, of the ultimate consequences of the
Kaiser’s impetuosities was often apparent in the observations of their
franker moments, but personal aspersions were never cast. This was,
of course, no more than could have been expected from the well-bred
men-of-the-world that they were. And in this connection it may be
in point to add that not even among the rather gay and not always
discreetly reserved officers of the Crown Prince’s suite (with whom I
was thrown not a little during their visit to India in 1911) was loose
criticism of the Emperor ever heard, either by myself or by others
who enjoyed still fuller opportunities than I had for meeting them on
intimate and confidential terms.
Frederick William himself was, I regret to record, far less discreet
than those about him in his references to his imperial progenitor, and
I recall very clearly that quick-tongued youth’s sarcastic allusions
to certain rulings of the Kaiser in the matter of the treatment of the
natives of some of the islands of German Melanesia. The Crown Prince,
I should explain, I had found consumed with interest concerning the
progress his people were making in several of their Pacific island
colonies I had recently visited, and it was to his very palpable desire
to ‘pump me dry’ of any information I might have picked up regarding
these incipient ‘places in the sun’ that I owed a number of hours of
conversation with him the edification of which would hardly otherwise
have fallen to my lot.
The outburst I had in mind was led up to by my royal inquisitor’s
asking me for my views concerning the comparative progress of the
three political divisions of the island of New Guinea, and by my
replying that, if the criterion of judgment was to be the contentment,
physical well-being, and economic usefulness of the native, I should
rate British New Guinea first, Dutch New Guinea an indifferent
second, and German New Guinea a very poor third. It was anything but
a courtier-like speech on my part, but I was not meeting Frederick
William in my official capacity, and, moreover, he had made a point of
asking that I should give him perfectly frank answers to his questions.
(‘None of the “bull con’,” as the Yankees say,’ was the way he put it;
‘give me the “straight goods.”’ Both expressions, as he confessed with
a grin, he had picked up from a ‘neat little filly from Kentucky’ he
had ‘seen a bit of’ at Ostend the previous summer.)
The Crown Prince, in spite of his undeniable personal courage, of which
I saw several striking instances in the course of his Indian visit, is
far from being what the Anglo-Saxons call a ‘good sport,’ and on this
occasion he made no pretence of hiding his annoyance. Because, however,
as transpired later, there were several other matters which he had in
mind ‘pumping’ me on, he evidently thought it best not to vent his
spleen for the moment on one whose usefulness was not quite exhausted.
This befell subsequently, I may add, though under circumstances which
have no especial bearing on my present subject.
Tapping his boot with his riding-whip--he had been playing polo--the
Prince sat in a sort of spoiled-child pout of petulance for a minute or
two, before bursting out with: ‘Doubtless you’re right. I’ve had hints
of the same thing myself from private reports. It’s all due to the
pater’s unwarranted interference in something he knows nothing about.
Old X----’ (mentioning the previous Governor of German New Guinea by
name) ‘has forgotten more about handling Papuans than the pater ever
knew. The pater has put his foot in it every time he has moved in our
Pacific colonies.’ (It may be in order to explain that not only does
the Crown Prince speak excellent English, but that on this Indian visit
he made a point of resorting to English idioms, colloquialisms, and
slang to an extent which at times became positively ridiculous. I have
quoted here almost his exact language.)
Frederick William went on to give me a spirited and approving account
of the manner in which a German colonist near Herbertshöhe had put an
end to raids on his yam patch by planting on each corner-post of the
enclosure the ‘frizzly’ head of a Papuan who had been shot in the act
of making off with the succulent tubers, concluding with the dogmatic
assertion that the only way to handle the black man was to ‘bleed him
white.’
I had the temerity to reply that, from what I had seen, the more ‘old
X----’ continued to forget of what he thought he knew about handling
Papuans, the better it would be for German colonial prospects in New
Guinea, and as a consequence threw my royal interrogator into another
fit of sulks. It is only fair to say that the ‘interference’ of which
the Crown Prince waxed so unfilially censorious really consisted of
measures calculated slightly--but only slightly--to mitigate the brutal
repressiveness toward the natives which had characterised the German
administration of New Guinea from the outset. The one bright spot in
the brief but bloody annals of German overseas colonisation was the six
or eight years’ régime of the broad-minded and humane Dr. Solf--the
present Colonial Secretary--in Samoa. This tiny and comparatively
unimportant Pacific outpost was the single Teutonic colony in which I
found the natives treated with anything approaching the humanitarian
consideration extended to them so universally by the English and the
French. Dr. Solf may well be, as has been occasionally hinted from
Holland, the hope of those conservative and intelligent Germans who
are known to be silently working for a reborn and ‘de-Prussified’
Fatherland after the war.
As I have said, the Crown Prince was the only highly placed German
whom I ever heard speak slightingly in a personal way of the Kaiser,
and that impetuous youth was--as he still is--a law unto himself. Such
loyalty and discretion, however, did not characterize all prominent
Germans in private life, and it is to several of these I am indebted
for the illuminating sidelights their observations and anecdotes threw
on the human side of William II. Of such, I fancy the Baron Y----, who
voyaged on the same steamer with me from Zanzibar to Port Said several
years ago, had enjoyed perhaps the most intimate opportunities for an
intelligent appraisal of his Emperor.
The Baron was a scion of one of the oldest and wealthiest of Bavarian
noble families, a graduate of the École des Beaux Arts as well as
Heidelberg, and to the fact that several years of his boyhood were
spent at Harrow owed an English accent in speaking that language which
betrayed no trace of Teutonic gutturality. He was returning from an
extended hunting trip in British and German East Africa at the time I
made his acquaintance, and was nursing a light grievance against his
own Government from the fact that he had been rather better treated
in the former than the latter. His attitude toward the Kaiser was
somewhat different from that of any other German I have ever met, this,
doubtless, being due to his own great wealth and assured position.
There was little of the ‘loyal and devoted subject’ in this attitude,
to which no better comparison suggests itself to me than that of a very
heavy stock-holder in a corporation toward a general manager who is in
no respect his social superior.
‘The Kaiser’s most pronounced characteristic,’ said Baron Y---- one
evening as we paced the promenade, ‘is his overweening vanity. His
“ego” dwarfs his every other attribute, natural or acquired, and it
is idle to try to understand what he is, what he does, what he stands
for--and, incidentally, what the German people, in quite another sense,
have to stand for--without taking that fact into consideration. It is
the obsession of his own importance--I might even say his belief in
his own omnipotence--that is responsible for his taking the so-called
Divine Right of the Hohenzollerns more seriously, interpreting the
term more literally, than any of his ancestors since Frederick the
Great. It is his vanity that is responsible for his incessant shiftings
of uniforms, for his posturings, his obvious attempts to conceal or
distract attention from his shrunken arm. He is the most consummate
master of stagecraft; indeed, the Fates spoiled a great producer of
spectacles--one who would have eclipsed Reinhardt--to make, not an
indifferent Emperor, but----’ The Baron checked himself and concluded
with: ‘Perhaps I had best not say what I had in mind. Everything
considered, however, I am convinced that it would have been better
for Germany if William the Second had been stage-manager rather than
Kaiser.’
Specific and intimate instance of the pettiness with which the Kaiser’s
vanity occasionally expressed itself Baron Y---- gave me the following
evening. I had been turning the pages of some of his German illustrated
papers, and was unable to refrain from commenting, not only on the
frequency with which the portrait of the Kaiser appeared, but also of
the defiant ‘come-one-come-all’ attitude of all of those in which the
War Lord appeared in uniform. The Baron laughed good-naturedly. ‘The
Kaiser’s attitudinizings,’ he said, ‘never seem to strike the Prussians
as in the least funny (they haven’t much of a sense of humour,
anyhow): but we Bavarians have always taken them as quite as much of a
joke as has the rest of Europe. Now this picture’ (he began turning the
pages of ‘Ueber Land und Meer’ in search of it), ‘which is one of the
most popular with the Prussians, we of Bavaria have always called “Ajax
Defying the Lightning,” and I am going to tell you the history of it.
‘This picture is reproduced from one of several dozen almost identical
photographs which have been taken of the Kaiser glowering into the
emptiness of the upper empyrean from the vantage of a little basaltic
crag which crops up at the forks of a road in one of the Imperial game
preserves. I have always taken a sort of paternal interest in this
apparently “to-be-continued-indefinitely” series of photographs, for
it chanced that I was in the company of their central figure on the
occasion when he discovered this now famous pedestal, and it was due to
a suggestion of mine that he was enabled to turn his find to what he no
doubt considers a most felicitous use.
‘It was on one of the early days of an imperial hunting party--just
the ordinary affair of its kind, with no one in particular from the
outside on hand, and nothing especial in the way of sport offered--and
the Kaiser, not being in very good fettle, had bidden me remain in the
lodge with him to discuss some experiments I had been conducting on my
estates with some drought-resisting barleys and lucernes, the seed of
which had been sent to Germany by one of our “agricultural explorers”
in Central Asia. The Kaiser’s keenness for skimming the cream of the
world and bringing it home for the German people is only exceeded by
his vanity,’ the Baron added parenthetically.
‘Having heard all I had to report, my imperial host suggested a stroll
in the forest, and it was while pushing on from tree to tree to study
the efficacy of a new kind of chemically treated cement the foresters
had been using to arrest the progress of decay that we wandered out
upon the jutting crag shown in this picture. It was late in the
afternoon, and by both of the two converging roads, several hundred
metres of vista of each of which were commanded from our lofty eyrie,
men were drifting back toward the lodge from the hunt. The dramatic
possibilities of the unexpected vantage point--the manner in which one
was able to step from behind the drop-curtain of the forest undergrowth
to the front of the stage at the tip of the jutting crag--kindled the
fire of the Kaiser’s imagination instantly.
‘“What a place from which to review my hunting guests!” he exclaimed,
stepping forward and throwing out his chest in his best “reviewing”
manner. “Strange I have never noticed it from the road. It must be
because the light is so bad here. Yes, that is what the trouble is.
They cannot see us even as clearly as we can see them.” (He frowned
his palpable disappointment that all eyes from below were not centred
upon him where he stood in fine defiance in the middle of his new-found
stage.)
‘“If I may venture a suggestion, Your Majesty,” I said, “I think it is
the dense shadow from that big tree on the next point that makes it so
dark here. Do you not see that the sun is directly behind it at this
hour? The removal of that out-reaching limb on the right would give
this crag at least an hour of sunshine, but, as a practical forester, I
should warn you that doing so would destroy the ‘balance’ of the tree
so much that the next heavy storm would probably topple it over to the
left. It already inclines that way, and----”
‘“There are several hundred thousand more trees like that in the Black
Forest,” cut in the Kaiser, “but not one other look-out to compare with
this. My sincere thanks for the suggestion. I will have it carried out.”
‘And so,’ continued Baron Y----, ‘the obscuring limb was removed, and
the mutilated tree, as I knew it must, went down the following winter.
“My look-out now will have three hours of sunlight instead of one,” the
Kaiser observed gleefully when he told me about it; “I was glad to see
it go.”
‘It was a case of one monarch against another, and as the Kaiser is
resolved to brook no rival, especially where the question of his
“sunlight” is concerned, I suppose the sequel was inevitable. All the
same I am sorry that--that it was the monarch of the forest that had to
go down. But though the tree went down,’ he concluded with a grimace,
tossing the magazine into my lap, ‘the “Ajax” pictures still continue.’
‘Wouldn’t “His Place in the Sun” be even an apter title than “Ajax
Defying the Lightning”?’ I ventured.
‘Unquestionably,’ was the reply. ‘I had thought of that myself. But,
you see, even we Bavarians are very keen in the matter of the extension
of Germany’s “_übersee_” colonies, and it wouldn’t do to make light of
our own ambitions.’
I have set down this little story just as it was told to me, and it is
only since the outbreak of the war, when the mainsprings of German
motives are revealed at Armageddon, that it has occurred to me how
perfectly it resolves itself into allegory. To the world at large, but
to the Briton especially, is there no suggestion in what the Kaiser
_did_ to the tree, which for a hundred years or more had shadowed his
tardily stumbled-upon look-out, of what he _planned to do_ to the
Empire which he had so often intimated had crowded him out of his
‘place in the sun’? With the tree he hewed off a sun-obscuring limb,
and the unbalanced, mutilated remnant succumbed to the first storm that
assailed it. Was not this the procedure that he reckoned upon following
with the ‘obscuring limbs’ of the British Empire?
The foregoing instance of the extravagant vanity of the Kaiser Baron
Y---- told more in amusement than in censoriousness, but I recall
another little story to much the same point that he related with hard
eyes and the shade of a frown, as one man speaks of another who has not
quite ‘played the game’ in sport or business. It, also, had to do with
an imperial hunt.
‘As you doubtless know,’ he said, after telling me something of how
creditably the Kaiser shot, considering his infirmity, ‘a strenuous
endeavour is always made on these occasions that the best game be
driven up to the rifles of royalty, a custom which none of the
Hohenzollerns have ever had the sporting instinct to modify in favour
of even the most distinguished visitors. By some chance on the day in
question, a remarkably fine boar ran unscathed the gauntlet of the
imperial batteries and fell--an easy shot--to my own bullet. It was a
really magnificent trophy--the brute was as high at the shoulder as a
good-sized pony, and his tusks curved through fully ninety degrees more
than a complete circle--and it had occurred to me at once that it was
in order that I should at least _offer_ to make a present of the head
to my royal host. Frankly, however, I really wanted it very badly for
my own hall, and I can still recall hoping that the Kaiser would “touch
and remit, after the manner of kings,” as Kipling puts it.’
The Baron was silent for a few moments, staring hard in front of him
with the look of a man who ponders something that has rankled in
his mind for years. ‘Well,’ he resumed presently, ‘the Kaiser _did_
“touch” (in the sense the Yankees use the term, I mean), but he did
not “remit.” When we came to group for the inevitable after-the-hunt
photograph, I was dumbfounded to see a couple of the imperial huntsmen
drag up my prize, not in front of me, where immemorial custom decreed
it should go, but to the feet of the Kaiser. He even had the nerve to
have the photograph taken with his foot on its head. You have shot big
game yourself, and you will know, therefore, that this would convey to
any hunter exactly the same thing as his writing under the photograph,
“I shot this boar myself.”’
The Baron took a long breath before resuming. ‘I need not tell you how
surprised and angry I was, and I will not tell you what it took all
the self-control I had to keep from doing. What I _did_ do, I flatter
myself, would have been thoroughly efficacious in bringing home to any
other man in this world the consummate meanness of the thing he had
done. The moment the photograph was finished I stepped up to the Kaiser
and, controlling my voice as best I could, said: “Your Majesty, I beg
you will deign to accept as a humble token of my admiration of your
prowess as a hunter and your courtesy as a host the fine boar which my
poor rifle was fortunate to bring down to-day.”
‘I still think that my polite sarcasm would have cut through the armour
of any other man on earth. It was impossible to mistake my meaning,
and he must have known that every man there knew it was _my_ boar that
he had had his picture taken with and was still coolly keeping his
boot upon. Possibly he decided in his own mind, then and there, that
the time had come to extend the “Divine Right of the Hohenzollerns”
to the hunting field. At any rate, he bowed graciously, thanked me
warmly, and, pointing down to where I had stood in the picture, said he
presumed it was “that little fellow with the deformed tusk.”
‘My head was humming from the shock of the effrontery, but I still
have distinct recollection of the deliberate _sang-froid_ of the
Kaiser’s manner as he directed someone to “mark that little boar with
a twisted tusk, a gift from my good friend, Baron Y----, for mounting
as a trophy.” I was a potential regicide for the next week or two, but
my sense of humour pulled me up in the end. For, after all, what is
the use of taking seriously a man who, for the sake of tickling his
insatiate vanity by having his photograph taken with his foot on the
head of a bigger pig than those in front of his hunting guests, commits
an act that, were he anything less than an Emperor, would stamp him
with every one of them as an out-and-out bounder? The memory of the
thing makes me “see red” a bit even to-day if I let my mind dwell on
it at all, but mingling with my resentment and mortification there is
always a sort of sneaking admiration for the way the Kaiser (as the
Yankees say) “got away with the goods.” The Hohenzollern--the trait
is as evident in the Crown Prince as it is in his father--will always
go forward instead of backward when it comes to being confronted with
the consequences of either their bluffs or their breaks, and it is
about time that the people in Germany, as well as the people outside of
Germany, got this fact well in mind when dealing with them.’
These words were spoken before the Kaiser backed down when his Agadir
bluff was called, but, generally speaking, I think the action of both
father and son since then has been eloquent vindication of their truth.
Another noble German of my acquaintance who had at one time been on
terms of exceptional intimacy with the Kaiser was the wealthy and
distinguished Baron von K----, who, in the two decades previous to
the outbreak of the war, had divided his time about equally between
his ancestral castle on the Rhine and a great Northern California
ranch brought him by his wealthy American wife. I met him first at
a house-party in Honolulu about ten years ago, and at that time he
appeared to take considerable pride in his friendship with the Kaiser,
of whom he was wont to speak often and sympathetically. Since then I
have encountered him, now in America, now in Europe, on an average of
once a year, and on each succeeding occasion I noticed a decreasing
warmth on his part, not so much for Germany and the Germans, for whom
he still expressed great affection, but rather toward the Kaiser and
his policies. It must have been fully seven years ago that he told me,
at the Lotus Club in New York, that the mad race of armaments in which
Germany was setting the pace for the rest of Europe could only end in
one way--a great war in which his country would run a risk of losing
far more than it had any chance of winning.
It was not long after this that I heard that Baron von K---- had
returned hurriedly and unexpectedly from Germany to America, taking
with him his two sons who had been at school there. I never learned
exactly what the trouble was, but a friend of his told me that it
had some connection with an effort that had been made to induce the
youngsters to become German subjects and join the army, flattering
prospects in which were held out to them. Von K---- is said to have
declared that the boys should never be allowed to set foot in Germany
again. Whether this latter statement is true or not, it is a fact that
neither of the lads has ever since crossed the Atlantic, and that both
are now at Harvard.
In the spring of 1911 von K---- cut short what was to have been a
fortnight’s business trip to Germany to one of four days, the change
in plan, as I have since learned, being due to an ‘invitation’ (an
euphemism for a command) from the Kaiser to invest a huge sum of
money in one of his armament concerns, great extensions in which
were contemplated. Von K---- refused point-blank, rushed through his
business, and took the first boat for New York. I did not see him until
the following year, but friends told me that for a couple of months
after his return to California he absolutely refused to talk of Germany
or of German affairs even with his intimates.
This silence was dramatically broken in the smoking-room of the Union
League Club, San Francisco, on the evening when the news came that the
Kaiser had sent the gunboat ‘Panther’ to Agadir as a trump card for the
game he was playing for the control of Morocco. Von K---- was frowning
over his paper when an American friend came up, clapped him on the
shoulder, and exclaimed: ‘The Baron is in close touch with the Kaiser;
perhaps he can tell us what “The Mailed Fist” is punching at in North
Africa.’
What von K---- said regarding the allegation that he was in close touch
with the Kaiser was not stated in words that even the San Francisco
papers (whose ‘news vultures’ had pounced upon the incident within
an hour) felt able to report verbatim the following morning, but his
‘Mailed Fist’ _mot_ went from California to Maine in the next twelve
hours, and even to-day is still freely quoted whenever the question of
the War Lord’s mentality is the subject of discussion.
‘Mailed vist!’ snorted the Baron, whose English has never climbed
entirely out of his throat; ‘Vell, berhabst dey haas mailed his
vist, but, by Gott, dey haas neffer mailed his prain.’ Then, as an
afterthought, ‘Or maype, if dey haas mailed his prain, der bostmann
haas forgodt it to deliffer.’
I saw Baron von K---- in San Francisco--encountered him beaming
over the sculptures in the Italian Building at the Panama-Pacific
Exposition--but was unable to draw him into any discussion of Germany
and the war. He did, however, tell me that his German estates were
for sale, that he never expected to return there again, and that--the
day after Belgium was invaded--he had applied for his first papers of
American citizenship.
_THE TUTOR’S STORY._[1]
BY THE LATE CHARLES KINGSLEY,
REVISED AND COMPLETED BY HIS DAUGHTER, LUCAS MALET.
CHAPTER XXX.
That was the first of many days--for by both Braithwaite’s and Nellie’s
request I stayed on at Westrea until nearly the end of the vacation--of
sweet but very searching experience. If I played with fire it was
a purifying fire surely, burning away the baser metal and leaving
whatever of gold might be in me free of dross.
Not that I say this boastfully--who am I, indeed, to boast?--but humbly
and thankfully, knowing I passed through an ordeal from which--while
the animal man cowered and shrank, crying aloud, aye, and with tears
of agony, to be spared--the spiritual man drew strength and rose, in
God’s mercy, to greater fulness of life. For I learned very much, and
that at first hand, by personal experiment, not by hearsay merely or,
parrot-like, by rote. Learned the truth of the apostle’s dictum, that
although ‘all things are lawful,’ yet, for some of us, many things,
however good in themselves or good for others, are ‘not expedient.’
Learned, too, the value of the second best, learned to accept the lower
place. Learned to rejoice in friendship, since the greater joys of love
were denied me, schooling myself to play a brother’s part; play it
fearlessly and, as I trust, unselfishly, watchful that neither by word,
or deed, or even by look, I overstepped the limit I had set myself and
forfeited the trust and faith Nellie reposed in me.
To do this was no easy matter. At moments, I own, the springs of
courage and resolution ran perilously dry. Then I would go away by
myself for a time; and--why should I hesitate to tell it?--pray,
wrestle in prayer, for self-mastery which, with that wrestling, came.
For if we are honest with ourselves and with Him, disdaining self-pity
and self-excuse, Almighty God is very safe to fulfil His part of the
bargain. This, also, I learned, during those sweet and searching days
at Westrea, beyond all question of doubt.
I rode or drove with Braithwaite about the neighbouring country.
Walked with him over his farm. Talked with him endlessly of his
agricultural schemes and improvements. Talked with him about public
events, too, and about politics. Only once or twice was Hartover, or
Hover, mentioned; and then, I observed, his tone took on a certain
bitterness. He had been up to Yorkshire on business a little prior to
my visit, had happened to run across Warcop--aged and sad, so he told
me. But my old friend laid aside much of his customary caution, it
appeared, on hearing Braithwaite expected shortly to see me, and bade
him tell me things were not well at Hover.
‘What he actually knows, what he only suspects, I could not quite
discover,’ Braithwaite went on. ‘But I gathered the Countess has
been up to queer tricks. As to that business, now, of the Italian
rascal going off with the plate--you heard of it?--well, it looks
uncommonly as though my lady was in no haste to have him laid by the
heels--bamboozled the police, as she bamboozled pretty well every
unlucky wretch she comes across, until he had time to make good his
escape.’
‘And the Colonel?’ I asked.
‘A dark horse. Connived at the fellow’s escape, too, I am inclined to
think. Marsigli knew too much of the family goings-on, and, if he was
caught, was pretty sure to blab in revenge. I am not given to troubling
myself about the unsavoury doings of great folks, Brownlow. They had
a short way with aristocratic heads during the French Revolution at
the end of last century, and I am not altogether sure they weren’t
right. But for my poor Nellie’s sake, I should never give that Longmoor
faction a second thought. As it is I have been obliged to think about
them, and I believe the plain English of the whole affair is that the
Colonel and my lady have been on better terms than they should be for
many years past. What she wants is a second Lord Longmoor as husband,
and the money, and the property, and--a son of her own to inherit it.
An ugly accusation? Yes. But can you spell out the mystery any better
way than that?’
I did not know that I could, and told him so. There the conversation
dropped, while my mind went back to the letter Nellie had shown me.--It
was a devilish action of Fédore’s, I thought, the mark of a base, cruel
nature, capable--the last sin--of trampling on the fallen. And yet
might it not have been dictated by the pardonable desire to secure her
prize for herself, to prevent pursuit, inquiry, scandal, perhaps fresh
misery for Nellie? There are two sides, two explanations, of every
human act; and the charitable one is just as rational, often more so,
than the uncharitable. If she stated her case somewhat coarsely, was
she not low-bred, ill-taught, excited by success?
Thus did I argue with myself, trying to excuse the woman, lest I should
let anger get the upper hand of reason and judgment. But what was her
relation to Marsigli? This it was which really mattered, which was of
lasting moment. And about this I must be silent, be cool and prudent.
At present I could take no action. I must wait on events.
Meanwhile each day brought me a closer acquaintance with, and respect
for, Nellie’s character; the liveliness of her intelligence, and
justness of her taste. And to it, the intellectual side of her nature,
I made my appeal, trying to take her mind off personal matters and
interest her in literature and thought. On warm mornings, her household
duties finished, she would bring her needlework out to a sheltered
spot in the garden, where the high red-brick wall formed an angle with
the house front; and sitting there, the flowers, the brimming water,
the gently upward sloping grass-land and avenue of oaks before us, I
would read aloud to her from her favourite authors or introduce her to
books she had not yet read. On chill evenings we would sit beside the
wood fire in the hall, while Braithwaite was busy with the newspaper
or accounts, and read till the dying twilight obliged her to rise
and light the lamp. Much of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, along with
Pope’s rendering of the Iliad, Hazlitt’s Lectures and Lamb’s Essays,
we studied thus. Shelley, save for a few of the lyrics, we avoided
by tacit consent; and Byron likewise, with the exception of certain
portions of ‘Childe Harold’; the heroic rather than the sentimental
note seeming safest--though from different causes--to us both.
Often I would illustrate our reading by telling her about the authors,
the places, or the period with which it dealt, to see her hands drop in
her lap, her face grow bright, her manner animated, as she listened and
questioned me--argued a little too, if she differed from my opinion.
Sometimes she laughed with frank enjoyment at some merry tale or novel
idea. And then I was indeed rewarded--only too well rewarded. For her
laughter was exquisite to me, both in sound and in token of--were it
but momentary--lightness of heart.
After that first morning in the Orchard Close, we rarely mentioned the
dear boy. I felt nothing could be gained by leading the conversation in
his direction. If it would afford her relief, if she wanted to speak,
she knew by now, I felt, she could do so without embarrassment or fear
of misunderstanding on my part. But it was not until the afternoon of
the day preceding my return to Cambridge that we had any prolonged talk
on the subject.
Braithwaite, I remember, had driven over to Thetford upon business;
and, at Nellie’s request, I walked with her to the village, so that she
might show me the fine old monuments and brasses in the parish church.
Coming back across the fields, we lingered a little, watching the
loveliness of the early May sunset. For, looking westward, all the
land lay drenched in golden haze, which--obliterating the horizon
line--faded upward into a faint golden-green sky, across which long
webs were drawn of rose and grey. Out of the sunset a soft wind blew;
full, as it seemed, of memory and wistful invitation to--well--I know
not what. But either that wind or consciousness of our parting on the
morrow moved Nellie to open her heart to me more freely than ever
before.
‘Dear Mr. Brownlow,’ she said, her eyes still fixed on that loveliness
of sunset--‘I want to thank you now, while we are still alone, for all
you have done for me. You have, indeed, been a good physician, and I
want you to know how much better I am since you came--stronger, and
more at peace. I promise you I will do my utmost to keep the ground I
have gained, and not fall back into the unworthy state of mind out of
which you have brought me. I do not say I am cured.’
She looked up at me, smiling.
‘I do not think you would ask that of me. I have no wish to be--I
should, I think, be ashamed to be cured of--of my love. For it would
make what was most beautiful seem unreal and untrue. But I am resigned
to all--almost all--which has happened. I no longer kick against the
pricks, or ask to have things otherwise. I shall not let it make me
sour or envious--thanks to you.’
And as she spoke I read in her dear eyes a depth of innocent and
trustful affection, which was almost more than I could endure.
‘I have come to a better frame of mind,’ she said. ‘It will last. It
shall last, I promise you.’
‘Then all is well,’ I answered, haltingly.
But as I spoke her expression changed. She walked forward along the
field path, looking upon the ground.
‘Yes, all--I suppose--is well,’ she repeated. ‘All except one
thing--that hurts still.’
‘And what is that one thing?’
I thought I knew. If I was right, I had a remedy at hand--a desperate
one, perhaps, but she was firm enough to bear it now.
‘I always felt how little I had to offer, as against his position, his
gifts, and all the attractions of his life at Hover, and still more his
life in town. The wonder was he should ever have found me worth caring
for at all. But I thought his nature was deeper and more constant, and
it hurts--it must always hurt--that he should have forgotten so soon
and so entirely as she--his wife--says he has.’
‘There she lied. He has not forgotten,’ I answered. ‘Here are
Hartover’s own words.’
And I gave her the letter I received after my visit to Chelsea. Let her
learn the truth, the whole truth, as from his own lips--learn the best
and the worst of him, and so meet whatever the future might bring with
open eyes.
Some twenty yards ahead a stile and gate divided the field of spring
wheat we were crossing from the pasture beyond. I must leave Nellie to
herself. So I went on and stood, leaning my elbows on the top bar of
the gate.
Below, in the hollow, the red roofs and chimneys of Westrea and a glint
of water showed through the veil of golden haze. An abode of peace, of
those wholesome fruitful industries which link man to mother-earth and
all her ancient mysteries of the seasons, of seed-time and harvest,
rain and shine. How far away in purpose and sentiment from the gaudy
world of fashion, of artificial excitement, intrigue and acrimonious
rivalries, to which my poor boy, Hartover, now belonged! Yes, and
therefore, since here her lot was cast, it was well Nellie should know
the best and worst of him, his weakness and his fine instincts alike;
because--because--in the back of my mind was a conviction, irrational,
unfounded, very foolish perhaps, but at this moment absolute, that
the end was not yet. And that, in the end, by ways which I knew not,
once again Nellie would find Hartover, and Hartover would find Nellie,
and finding her would find rest to his soul, salvation to his wayward
nature, and thus escape the fate of Alcibiades, which I had always
so dreaded for him, and prove worthy of his high station, his great
possessions, his singular beauty, charm and talent, even yet.
For five minutes, nearly ten minutes, while the gold faded to grey, I
waited, and Nellie gave no sign. I began to grow nervous and question
the wisdom of my own action. To her, pure and high-minded as she was,
would this revelation of dissipation and hard-living prove too painful,
would she turn from it in anger and disgust? Had I betrayed my trust,
been disloyal to the dear boy in letting her see his confession? I
bowed my head upon my hands. Fool, fool, thus to rush in where angels
might truly fear to tread!
Then quick, light footsteps behind me--the rustle of a woman’s dress.
And as, fearful and humiliated, I, turning, looked up, Nellie’s eyes
like stars, her face pale but glorious in its exaltation and triumphant
tenderness.
‘Dear good physician,’ she said, ‘I am really cured at last--not of,
but by love. All that seemed spoilt and lost is given back. How can
I thank you enough? I can bear to be away from him, bear to give him
up, now that I know he really cared for me, really suffered in leaving
me. I can even forgive her, though she has been cruel and insolent,
because she went to him in his trouble and helped to save his life. And
I understand why he married her--it was chivalrous and generous on his
part. It places him higher in my estimation. I can admire him in that
too.’
I gazed at her, dazzled, enchanted, wondering. And then--shame, thrice
shame to me after all my struggles, resolutions, prayers--the devil of
envy raised its evil head, of bitterness against the rich man, who with
all his gold and precious stones, his flocks and herds, must yet steal
the poor man’s one jewel, one little ewe lamb.
‘Have you read all the letter--read that part in which he speaks of his
first months in London?’ I asked.
For an instant she looked at me without comprehension, her eyebrows
drawn together, in evident question and surprise. Then the tension
relaxed. Gently and sweetly she laughed.
‘Ah! yes,’ she said. ‘I know. He grew reckless--he did wrong.
But--but, dear Mr. Brownlow--is it wicked of me?--I cannot condemn him
for that--because it was his love for me which drove him to it. He
tells you so himself. I suppose I ought to be shocked--I will try to
be--presently--if you say I ought. But not just yet--please not just
yet.’
‘Neither now nor presently,’ I answered, conscience-stricken and
ashamed. ‘You know far better than I what is right. Follow your own
heart.’
I opened the gate, and stood back for her to pass. As she did so she
paused.
‘You are displeased with me,’ she said. ‘Yet why? Why did you let me
read his letter, except to comfort me and make me happy by showing me
he was not to blame?’
Why indeed? She well might ask. And how was I to answer without still
further betraying my trust--my trust to her, this time, since I had
sworn to be to her as a brother and let no hint of my own feelings
disturb the serenity of our intercourse?
So I replied, I am afraid clumsily enough--
‘You are mistaken. And to show you how little I am displeased I beg you
to keep this letter, in exchange for the one you gave me to keep. You
may like to read it through again, from time to time.’
I held it out. And for an instant she hesitated, her eyes fixed upon
the writing, upon the paper, as though these actual and material things
were precious in her sight. Then she put her hands behind her and shook
her head.
‘No--better not. It is not necessary,’ she said with a childlike
gravity. Her whole attitude just now was curiously simple and
childlike. ‘I have every word of it by heart already, dear Mr.
Brownlow. I shall remember every word--always.’
And for a while we walked on in silence, side by side, beneath the
dying sunset. Upon the hump-backed bridge spanning the stream Nellie
stopped.
‘One thing more, good physician,’ she said, very gently. ‘I am cut off
from him for--for ever by his marriage. But you can watch over him and
care for his welfare still. You will do so?’
‘Before God--yes,’ I answered.
‘And, sometimes, you will let me hear, you will come and tell me about
him?’
‘Again--yes--before God.’
And I smiled to myself, bowing my head. Oh! the magnificent and
relentless egoism of love!--But she should have this since she asked
it; this and more than this. Plans began to form in my mind, a
determination to make sure, whatever it might cost me, about this same
marriage of Hartover’s. I would devote myself to an inquiry, pursue it
carefully, prudently; but pursue it regardless of time, regardless of
money--such money as, by economy and hard work, I could command. For
was not such an inquiry part, and an integral one, of the pledge to
watch over Hartover and care for his welfare which I had so recently
and solemnly given her? Undoubtedly it was.
‘Thank you,’ she said. Then after a pause, ‘I wonder why you are so
kind to me? Sometimes I am almost afraid of your kindness, lest it
should make me selfish and conceited, make me think too highly of
myself. Indeed I will try better to deserve it. I will read. I will
improve my mind, so as to be more worthy of your society and teaching,
when you come again.--But, Mr. Brownlow, I have never kept anything
from my father until now. Is it deceitful of me not to tell him of
these two letters? They would anger and vex him; and he has been so
much happier and like his old self since you have been with us. I hate
to disturb him and open up the past.’
‘I think you are, at least, justified in waiting for a time before
telling him,’ I faltered.
For my poor head was spinning, and I had much ado to collect my wits.
She would read, improve herself, be more worthy of my teaching when
I came again, forsooth!--Ah! Nellie, Nellie, that I must listen with
unmoved pedagogic countenance, that I must give you impersonal and sage
advice, out of a broken heart!--
‘Yes, wait,’ I repeated. ‘Later your course of action may be made
clearer, and you may have an opportunity of speaking without causing
him annoyance or distress. You are not disobeying his orders, in any
case.’
‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘See, the lamps are lit. My father must be
home and we are late. Oh! how I wish you were not going away to-morrow.
He will miss you, we shall all miss you so badly.’
I did not sleep much that night.