CHAPTER XXXIV.

We dined in a private room on the first floor, which overlooked

the street. Hartover proved a brilliant host. Once or twice, after

anecdotes a trifle too highly salted for my white tie and clerical

coat, he checked himself with a pretty air of penitence, expressing

a mischievous hope I ‘wasn’t shocked.’ Shocked I was not, being no

puritan; but somewhat grieved, I must admit, his wit should take so

gross a turn. Yet what wonder? The guard-room is hardly mealy-mouthed,

I supposed; neither, I could imagine, was French Mademoiselle--in

intimacy. To her, by the way, I observed, Hartover made so far no

smallest allusion.

But he spoke of Braithwaite, asking, with an indifference too studied

to carry conviction, if my friendship still continued with the father

and daughter, and--‘were they well?’ I answered both questions briefly

in the affirmative; and there, to my relief, the subject dropped.

Towards the end of dinner his high spirits, which, entertaining though

he had been, struck me all along as slightly forced, deserted him,

and he became silent and preoccupied. Were we approaching disclosure

of the trouble which, as he asserted, brought him here hot-foot, to

Cambridge and to me? How gladly would I have made the way of confession

easy for him! But I had sense to know I must be passive in the matter.

Whatever confidence he gave must be given spontaneously. To question

him, however circumspectly, would be to put him off by arousing his

sensitive pride.

As the waiter brought in coffee and lights, Hartover rose, swung out

onto the balcony, and, leaning his elbows on the high iron rail of

it, stood gazing down into the street. The June twilight lingered,

disputing the feeble glimmer of the street lamps. Roofs, gables,

pinnacles and towers showed velvet black against the sweet translucence

of an almost colourless sky. Footsteps, voices, a grind of wheels and

cloppet, cloppet, of horse-hoofs over the stones; the scream of swifts

in the buoyant rush of their evening flight, and the tang of a chapel

bell, a single reiterated note. Some five minutes must have elapsed

while these varied sounds reached me from without. Then Hartover raised

his head, calling imperatively over his shoulder----

‘Brownlow, Brownlow, where are you? I want you. Come here.’

Evidently he had reached some crisis of purpose or of feeling. I went

out into the warm evening air and stood beside him. His head was

lowered, and again he gazed down into the street.

‘I am sorry, I am ashamed, Brownlow,’ he said, an odd thickness in his

speech, ‘but I am afraid I have come here to-day and disturbed you on

false pretences. I am afraid I cannot bring myself to talk to you about

this matter after all.’

He paused as asking an answer.

‘Very well,’ I replied. ‘I, at all events, have gained by your coming,

in that I have had the joy of seeing you again. Leave the rest if you

think fit. You alone can know what you wish--know what appears to you

right under the circumstances. You must use your own judgment.’

‘Ah! there you have me,’ he returned sharply. ‘I don’t know what I

wish. I am uncertain what is right. I distrust my own judgment. In

short I’m cornered, Brownlow, miserably, detestably cornered. To speak

looks to me, at this moment, like an act of unpardonable treachery.

Yet, if I don’t speak, I may be rushed before many days are out, by

my own mad anger, into something even worse than treachery. Do you

understand?’

In a sense I did understand, by intuition born of affection and

sympathy. But, unless I was greatly mistaken in my reading of him, all

this was merely preliminary. If I waited, I should understand, or at

least hear, the whole. And that it would be well for him I should hear

the whole I had--God helping me--no shadow of doubt.

Slowly the twilight expired, while the blue of the night sky, opaque,

profound, travelled stealthily, almost imperceptibly, downward from

the zenith. The joyous scream of the swifts ceased, and the bell

tanged irregularly, nearing its finish. As it did so, a little group

of gownsmen, gathered upon the pavement immediately below, seized by

an irresponsible spirit of frolic--as most young animals are prone

to be at dusk--started laughing and skylarking, their black raiment

fluttering, batlike, as they skirmished across the greyness of the

street.

Whether the sudden outcry jarred his already strained nerves, or

whether the careless whole-hearted fun and laughter of these men, so

little younger than himself, offered too mordant a contrast to his

own troubled state, Hartover flung in from the balcony with an oath,

hesitated for an instant, then blew out the lights and threw himself

into an armchair.

‘No, I’m not strong enough to hold my tongue. Wretched weakling that I

am,’ he groaned, ‘I must blab. And concerning a woman too.’

He extended his hand, through the semi-darkness, motioning me to a

chair.

‘Sit there, please,’ he said. ‘My God, when it comes to the point how I

despise myself, Brownlow! It’s--it’s about her, about Fédore.’

‘Yes,’ I replied, as calmly as I could, for his tone moved me deeply.

And the subject, too! I trembled, penetrated alike by fear and hope of

what I should hear next.

‘For the last month or six weeks something’s been wrong--some mystery

on hand I cannot fathom. Somebody who has, or imagines they have, a

hold over her is pressing her for money, as far as I can make out.

I believe--oh! it is an abominable suspicion, but I cannot rid my

mind of it--this person visits the house when she is sure I shall be

away. I have no idea who, Brownlow; but someone belonging to her old

life, before I married her. Each time lately that I have been with

her she has insisted upon my telling her exactly when I intend to

come again. Nothing will pacify her but that I must fix a date and

hour. Her persistence has vexed me once or twice. We nearly quarrelled

over it. She says’--he choked a little--‘it is only that she may be

able to put on a pretty gown, prepare a nice little dinner, and have

everything smart and charming for me. But I don’t believe that is her

sole reason--perhaps I am just a jealous brute--but I can’t. I wish to

heaven I could!’

He waited, fighting down his emotion.

‘Yesterday matters came to a head. I went with’--he mentioned the names

of several young men, well known, not to say notorious, in fashionable

and sporting circles--‘to a race meeting at ----. I meant to stop the

week. But racing bores me after a little while, and the play was too

high at night. Positively I couldn’t afford it. So I cut my stay short,

went back to town, and to Chelsea. I can’t deny I had been living

rather hard, and I was cross with myself--I really have kept awfully

straight for the last six months, Brownlow--and a bit seedy and out of

sorts.’

Again he waited.

‘I let myself in at the garden door, and then at the house-door--as a

matter of course. I had no intention of jumping any surprise on her. I

was not thinking about my suspicions or any little tiff we had had. I

only wanted to get to her, Brownlow, because I knew she’d put me into

good conceit with myself--tease and pet and amuse me, you know--she can

be devilish amusing when she likes’----

His voice broke.

‘Yes,’ I said quietly, ‘yes’----

My heart bled for him; but I must be cautious and husband my resources.

The time to speak would surely come, but it was not yet.

‘I found the house empty,’ he went on presently, recovering himself,

‘windows bolted and doors locked. I called her, and looked for her

upstairs and down; but neither she nor the maid was at home. I was

disappointed, of course; but I would not let myself be angry. I had

told her I should be away till the end of the week, so she had a

perfect right to go out if she wanted to. Finally I went into the

drawing-room, meaning to wait there till she came in. But, somehow, I

received a new impression of the house. It struck me as grubby, fusty,

low-class. I wondered why I had never observed this before, or whether

it was merely the effect of my disappointment at her absence. There

were scraps of a torn-up letter on the carpet, for one thing, which

I greatly disliked. I began to pick them up, and casually--I did not

attempt to read it of course--I remarked the writing was in French.

Then I thought I would smoke, to pass the time until she came back. I

wanted something with which to cut off the end of my cigar, but found

I had brought no penknife, so I rummaged in her little worktable for

a pair of scissors. I could not find any in the top workbox part,

and tried to pull out the square silk-covered drawer arrangement

underneath, as I remembered often seeing her put her scissors away

in it with her work. But the beastly thing was locked or jammed.

Like a fool, I lost my temper over it, and dragged and poked till

the catch gave and the drawer flew open. And--and, Brownlow, inside

I saw a couple of white leather jewel-cases--oh! the whole thing was

so incredible, such a profanation--it made me sick--stamped with a

monogram and coronet. I recognised them at once. They belonged to my

mother--own mother I mean’--

His tone grew fierce.

‘Not her Magnificence. Her hands have never touched, and touching

defiled them, I am thankful to think.--These jewels would come to me,

in the ordinary course of events, with certain other possessions

of my mother’s, at my majority. Meanwhile they have always been

kept in the strong-room at Hover. And, Brownlow--this is the point

of the whole hateful business--they were among the valuables that

scoundrel, Marsigli--you remember him, my step-mother’s beloved

Italian butler?--made off with last year, and which by some to my mind

incomprehensible stupidity on the part of the police--I have often

talked it over with Fédore--have never yet been traced.’

‘Were the contents of the cases intact?’ I asked.

He hesitated.

‘No--’ he said at last, unwillingly, almost I thought

despairingly--‘and that makes it all the more intolerable. The cases

were empty; and from the position in which I found them it seemed to

me they had been thrown into the drawer just anyhow, by a person in a

frantic hurry--too great a hurry to make sure the drawer was actually

locked. For, if it had been properly locked, it would not have given

way so easily when I tried to force it. These signs of haste increased

my fears, Brownlow. For think,’ he cried with sudden passion, ‘only

think what it all points to, what it may all mean! How could these

precious things of my mother’s have found their way into the drawer

of Fédore’s worktable--unless? The conjunction of ideas would be

positively grotesque if--if it were not so damnable.--Does not it occur

to you what horrible possibilities are opened out?’

It did. I gauged those possibilities far more clearly than he, indeed,

remembering my conversation with Warcop in the stables at Hover but

a few weeks back. For was not Warcop’s theory in process of being

proven up to the hilt? But how could I speak of either theory or

proof to Hartover, distracted and tortured as he was? To do so would

be incomparably cruel. No, I must play a waiting game still. The

truth--or, to be exact, that which I firmly and increasingly believed

to be the truth--must reach him by degrees, lest he should be driven

into recklessness or violence. I would temporise, try to find excuses

even, so as to retard rather than hasten the shock of that most ugly

disclosure.

‘All which you tell me is very strange and perplexing,’ I said. ‘But do

not let us be hurried into rash and possibly unjust conclusions. There

may be some explanation which will put a very different complexion upon

affairs. Have you asked for any?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It was too soon to think of that. I could not meet her,

could not trust myself to see or speak to her then. My one impulse was

to get away, to get out of the house in which, as it seemed to me, I

had been so shamelessly betrayed and tricked. I was half mad with rage

and grief. For--ah! don’t you understand, Brownlow?--I do love her. Not

as I loved Nellie Braithwaite. That was unique--a love more of the soul

than the senses. Pure and clean as a wind of morning, blowing straight

out of paradise. The love of my youth, of--in a way--my virginity; such

as can never come twice in my or any man’s life.’

He stopped, a sob in his throat. But not for long. The floodgates were

open--all the proud, wayward, undisciplined, sensitive nature in revolt.

‘My love for Fédore is different--no morning wind from Eden about that.

How should there be? In the interval I had very effectually parted

company with all claims to the angelic state. But think--she nursed me,

dragged me back from the very mouth of hell; protected me from those

who sought to ruin me; gave herself to me; made a home for me, too, of

a sort--oh! that poor, poor, hateful little Chelsea house!--coaxed me,

flirted with me, kept me from gambling and from drink. How could I do

otherwise than marry her, and love her, out of the merest decency of

ordinary gratitude? I owe her so much---- And now’----

Here Hartover gave way completely. I felt rather than saw him--there

was no light in the room save that thrown upward from the lamps in the

street--fling himself sideways in the chair, crushing his face down

upon the arm of it in a paroxysm of weeping.

Only a woman should look on a man’s tears, since the motherhood

resident in every woman--whether potential or as an accomplished

act--has power to staunch those tears without humiliation and offence.

To his fellow-man the sight is disabling; painful or unseemly according

to individual quality, but, in either case, excluding all possibility

of approach.

I rose, went over to the window, and waited there. The boy should

have his cry out, unhindered by my neighbourhood, since I knew he was

beyond my clumsy male capacity of consolation. Later, when he came to

himself, he would understand I had withdrawn not through callousness,

but through reverence. Meanwhile, what a position and what a prospect!

My heart sank. How, in heaven’s name, could he be drawn up out of this

pit he had digged for himself? And he loved Nellie still. And, whatever

his faults, whatever his weaknesses--vices even--his beauty and charm

remained, beguiling, compelling, as ever. What woman could resist him?

The thought gave me a pang. I put it from me sternly. Self, and again

self--would self never die? Even in this hour of my dear boy’s agony,

as he lay sobbing his hot young heart out within half a dozen paces of

me, must I think of myself and of my private sorrow?

I looked up into the vast serenity of the star-gemmed sky above the

black irregular outline of the buildings opposite, and renewed my vow

to Nellie--remembering no greater love hath any man than this, that he

lay down his life--life of the body, or far dearer life of emotions,

the affections--for his friend.

And presently, as I still mused, I became aware of a movement in the

room and of Hartover close beside me, his right arm cast about my neck.

‘Dear old man, dear old man,’ he said hoarsely, yet very gently,

‘forgive me. I have felt for these past twenty-four hours as though the

last foothold had gone, the last foothold between me and perdition.

But it isn’t so--you are left. Stay by me, Brownlow. See me through.

Before God, I want to do right. Your worthless pupil wants for once to

be a credit to you. But I cannot stand alone. I am afraid of myself.

I distrust my own nature. If I go to her--to Fédore--with those empty

jewel boxes of my mother’s in my hand and she lies to me, I shall want

to kill her. And if she tells we what I can’t but believe is the truth,

I shall want to blow my own brains out. For she has been very much to

me. She is my wife--and what can the future hold for either of us but

estrangement, misery and disgrace?’

He waited, steadied his voice, and then--

‘I know it is no small thing I ask of you; but will you come back to

town with me to-morrow? And will you see her first, and so give me time

to get myself in hand and decide what is to be done, before she and I

meet? Will you stand between me and the devils of revenge and despair

who tempt me? Will you do this because--barring you, Brownlow--I have

nothing, no one, left?’

Needless to set down here what I answered. He should have his way. How,

in God’s name, could I refuse him?

Then, as on that first night of my arrival at Hover long ago, I got him

away to bed. Sat by him till he slept--at first restlessly, feverishly,

murmuring to himself; and once--it cut me to the quick--calling Fédore

by name, as one who calls for help in limitless distress.

The brief summer night was over and the dawn breaking before I felt

free to leave him, seek my room, and take some much-needed rest.

(_To be continued._)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Copyright by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. in the United

States of America.

_LEST WE FORGET._

_A WORD ON WAR MEMORIALS._

An old friend of mine, who was a boy at Rugby under the kindly,

orthodox and dignified Dr. Goulburn, told me that on his first evening

at that great school, a bewildered and timid little creature, after he

had been much catechised and derided by a lot of cheerful youngsters,

and with a terrible perspective before him of endless interviews with

countless strange and not necessarily amiable mortals, a loud bell

rang, and all trooped down to prayers. He sat on a bench in a big bare

hall with a timbered roof, a door opened and a grave butler appeared,

carrying two wax candles in silver candlesticks, followed by the

Headmaster in silk gown and bands, in unimaginable state. The candles

were set down on a table. The Headmaster opened a great Bible, and in

a sonorous voice read the twelfth chapter of the Book of Joshua, a

gloomy enough record, which begins, ‘Now these are the kings of the

land, which the Children of Israel smote,’ and ends up with a sinister

catalogue, ‘The king of Jericho, one; the king of Ai, one’--and so on

for many verses, finishing up with ‘The king of the nations of Gilgal,

one; the king of Tirzah, one; all the kings, thirty and one.’ After

which pious and edifying exercise, the book was closed, and prayer

offered.

My old friend was an impressionable boy, and it seemed to him, he

said, that there was a fearful and ominous significance in this list

of slaughtered monarchs, depicting and emphasizing the darker side of

life. But I have often thought that a few words from the Headmaster, on

the vanity of human greatness and the triumph of the divine purpose,

might have turned these lean and bitter memorials of the dead into an

unforgettable parable. What, for instance, could be more profoundly

moving in the scene of the ‘Passing of Arthur,’ where the knight steps

slowly in the moonlight from the ruined shrine and the place of tombs:

‘Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,

Old knights--and over them the sea-wind sang

Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam’?

That seems to lend the last touch of mystery and greatness to a scene

of human endeavour, that the earth beneath the living feet should cover

the bones, the hardy and heroic limbs of those who had lived and fought

worthily. As the dying king, with the poignant accent of passion cries

aloud:

‘“Such a sleep

They sleep--the men I loved!”’

For nothing surely in the world can be so utterly and simply moving as

the record of dead greatness--unless perhaps it be the oblivion which

is the end of all greatness at the last. There is a place on the bleak

top of the South Downs, a great tumulus, with an earth-work round it,

all grassy now and tufted with gorse, the sheep grazing over it, which

looks for miles north and east and west over the fertile weald, with

shadowy hills on the horizon; and to the south, where the great ridges

fold together, you can catch through the haze a golden glint of the

sea. I never pass the place without a deep and strange thrill. It is

called the Mound of the Seven Kings; it looks over a grassy space which

is known as ‘Terrible Down,’ and of what day and what doom it is the

record, who shall say?

It seems impossible to us now, just as it seemed to the old hill-men

who raised that tumulus, that as the world welters and widens onward,

the great tragedies and losses and sacrifices which we have seen with

our eyes, and the thought of which has so possessed our souls with a

sense of grief and glory combined, should become but a tale that is

told. But it is one of the thoughts which lie deepest and noblest in

the mind and soul of man, the thought of old and infinite strife and

endeavour, pain and death, courage and hope so richly blended, till

it seems too great for the heart to hold. The mystery of it is that,

as the Psalmist says: ‘I see that all things come to an end; but Thy

commandment is exceeding broad.’ The thought, if I can define it, leaps

like fire from crumbling ashes--all this great pageant of energy and

heroism and fame fading farther and farther into the past--and yet,

in spite of the hush of the tolling bell and the solemn music, the

certainty that it is all worth doing and enduring, that we must wrest

the great values out of life and make of it a noble thing; and that

while memory fades and honour seems to perish, yet the seed once sown,

it springs up again and again in life and beyond death, beyond all

possibility of extinction.

One of the things for which, in a great time like the present--great

for all its sadness, and perhaps because of its sadness--one of the

things for which I thank God is that this war has revealed as nothing

else could have done the latent heroism of our nation. If only it could

make us poets and cure us of being prophets! I have often been ashamed

to the bottom of my heart of the cries of panic-mongers and crabbed

pessimists shrieking in our ears that we were a nation sunk in sloth

and luxury and indifference. I have lived all my life among the young,

and if ever there was a thing of which I was certain, it was that our

youth was brave and modest and manly--as this long and bitter fight has

daily and hourly proved.

And we have a task before us--to see that the memory of those who

have fought for us and died for us should be as stably and as durably

commemorated as possible. It is not that I think of a memorial as being

in any sense a reward for the honoured dead. If there is one thing

which our heart tells us, it is that they have a nobler reward than

that. A new life, doubtless, a passing from strength to strength. But

as Shelley so immortally said, ‘Fame is love disguised,’ and we owe it

to our love and gratitude not only to remember, but to commemorate.

I defy anyone, however simple and stolid, to set foot in our great

Abbey, and not be thrilled with the thought, ‘After all, humanity is a

splendid thing, so full of devotion and greatness as it is!’ Statesmen,

monarchs, writers, artists, men of science, men of learning, there they

sleep; there is a generous glow in many young hearts, which may thus be

kindled. The poet of boyhood makes the boy, just disengaging himself

from the beloved school and stepping into the world, say to himself:

‘Much lost I: something stayed behind,

A snatch maybe of ancient song,

Some breathings of a deathless mind;

Some love of truth; some hate of wrong.

And to myself in games I said,

“What mean the books? Can I win fame?

I would be like the faithful dead,

A fearless man and pure of blame.”’

This, then, is our present task--to see that our dead are worthily

commemorated for our own sakes and for the sake of those who come

after. How shall we do it?

In the first place, we must not do it idly and carelessly--we must take

thought, have a plan and a purpose, not be in too great a hurry. Hurry

is the worst foe of memorials. We have a national habit--I think it is

rather a sign of greatness--not to do anything until we are obliged;

but the result of that often is a loss of grace and fineness; because

people who must act, and are a little ashamed of not having acted,

accept any solution.

What I hope we shall do is to take careful thought where our memorials

shall be set, so that they may be most constantly and plainly seen;

and then how they may best fulfil their purpose, which is to remind

us first, and next to kindle emotion and imagination. We have an ugly

habit of combining, if we can, local utility with a memorial, as in

the well-known story of the benevolent clergyman who read out the

announcement of the death of a great statesman and added, ‘That is

just what we wanted! We have long needed a new water supply!’ That is

like using a grandfather’s sword to trim a privet-hedge with! I do not

believe in fitting things in. If we commemorate, let us commemorate by

a memorial which arrests and attracts the eye, is long and gratefully

remembered, and by an inscription which touches the heart, and does not

merely merge a man among the possessors of all human gifts and virtues.

I remember a Georgian monument in a cathedral, where a lean man in a

toga peeped anxiously out of an arbour of fluted columns, and of whom

it was announced that in him ‘every talent which adorns the human

spirit was united with every virtue which sustains it.’ How different

is the little tablet in a church I know on which a former choir-boy

is commemorated! He had joined the army, and had won a Victoria Cross

in the Boer War which he did not live to receive. The facts were most

briefly told; and below were the words, which I can hardly read without

tears:

‘Thou hast put a new song in my mouth.’

What we want, then, are beauty, dignity, simplicity, and force. We want

what appeals directly to the eye, and then darts a strong emotion into

the heart, an emotion in which gratitude and hope are blended.

I must not here attempt to unfold a wide technical scheme; indeed I

could not if I would; but I may perhaps outline a few principles.

First comes the difficulty that places like to manage their own

affairs; and that the men who administer local interests, however

devotedly and industriously, do not acquire their influence by artistic

tastes. The next difficulty is that our artistic instinct in England is

not widely diffused. When Walter Pater’s attention was called to some

expensive tribute, and he became aware that an expression of admiration

was required, he used to say in his soft voice, ‘Very costly, no

doubt,’ and this was always accepted as an appropriate compliment, he

said. A third difficulty is the deep-seated mistrust in England of the

expert--it is all part of our independence--but the expert is often

regarded simply as a man who lets you in for heavier expense than you

had intended.

It would be well if some central advisory board could be established--a

central authority can hardly be expected, and indeed would not even be

desirable. The nature of memorials should be carefully scrutinised. We

are always weak in allegorical representation, and perhaps for that

very reason have a great fondness for it. Our civic heraldry, for

instance, is woefully weak, not by excess of symbolism, so much as by a

desperate inclusiveness of all local tradition, till the shield becomes

a landscape in which a company of travellers have hung their private

property on every bush.

Thus with our taste for representing and explaining and accounting

and cataloguing, our memorials become architectural first, with every

cornice loaded with precarious figures, like the painting described by

Dickens of six angels carrying a stout gentleman to heaven in festoons

with some difficulty. Our inscriptions become biographies. Again,

the surrounding scene is little regarded. A statesman in a bronze

frock-coat and trousers reading aloud a bronze manuscript behind the

railings of a city square, embowered in acacias, has no power over the

mind except the power of a ludicrous sense of embarrassment. A statue,

majestic enough in a pillared alcove, is only uncomfortable in a storm

of wind and rain.

We ought, I believe, to fight shy of elaborate _designs_, because

the pantomime of allegory at once begins. What we rather need is

simplicity of statement, with perhaps a touch of emblem, no more, of

characteristic material, of perfect gravity, so that the gazer can see

at once that the matter recorded is great and significant, and desires

to know more. It is said that an inscription was once to be seen in

India, marking one of the farthest points of the advance of Alexander

the Great. It was a slab with the words:

ΕΝΤΑΥΘΑ · ΕϹΤΗΝ

‘Here I stood’--upon it. What could be more impressive, what more

calculated to sow a seed of wonder in an imaginative mind?

These memorials should, I believe, evoke the spirit of the artist, as

a craftsman, rather than as a designer. Alike in inscriptions and in

representations, the wholesome and humble appeal must be direct and

personal, avoiding rhetoric and over-emphasis, as well as elaborate

conventions which other hands will dully and mechanically reproduce.

If, as in cast metal-work, reproduction is natural and inevitable, let

the designs be perfectly simple and sincere; if again it be painter,

sculptor, carver, or builder that is called upon to create a memorial,

let the responsibility and originality of the craft be his, and not

be superseded or overruled by the authority of the design--for this

indeed is, as Professor Prior said wittily to me the other day, as

though a surgeon should provide a specification and an estimate for an

operation, and leave the execution of it to other hands.

But we must not suppose that we can insist upon any particular form

of memorial in any particular place. What we may desire is that the

memorial, whatever it is, of this great and heroic trial through which

we are passing, should grow up out of the minds of the inhabitants of a

city or a town, and should be made by the hands of inhabitants as well.

I do not desire that they should be too costly. Indeed it may well be

that we shall have given so much of our resources to the prosecution of

the war that we shall have but little left for adorning our trophies.

I do not desire that they should be constructed to serve other uses,

at least not primarily. They are to tell their own story, a story of

noble deeds, and provide alike a dedication of our dead to honour, and

a dedication of ourselves to gratitude and future effort.

I hope too most earnestly that we shall not accumulate resources on one

national monument, to astonish tourists and to feed our vanity; but

that as many places as possible should have a record of a great fact

which has penetrated our national life more deeply than any historical

event in the whole of our annals.

Forethought, then, simplicity, naturalness, eloquence of emotion rather

than of word, native feeling, these will, I hope, be the notes of our

memorials. Let us try for once to express ourselves, not to cover up

truth with turgid verdicts, but to say what we mean and what we feel as

simply and emphatically as we can.

We are not likely to forget the war; but what we may forget is that

the result of it is the outcome of modest, faithful, loyal services

done with no flourish or vanity, by thousands of very simple,

straightforward people, who did not argue themselves into indignation,

or reflect much about what they were doing, but came forward, leaving

comfort and home and work and love, without any balancing of motives,

but just because they felt that they must take their place in the

battle of liberty and right with intolerable pride and aggression.

That is the plain truth; and that is the best and only proof of the

greatness of a nation that it should prefer death, if need be, to all

the pleasant business of life. If this or any of this can be recorded,

if this national impulse can be kept alive in our children, we need

not fear either life with all its complications, or death with all its

mysteries. The nation will live; and the memorials of these dark and

great days will stand to witness to our far-off sons and daughters that

their old forefathers did not live to no purpose and did not die in

vain.

_A GERMAN BUSINESS MIND._

BY SIR JOHN WOLFE BARRY, K.C.B.

Now that we are entering on the third year of the war so shamelessly

brought about by Germany, the accompanying correspondence,

commencing in August 1914, may interest your readers. It indicates

the extreme rancour against our country of a leading and capable

German manufacturer, not merely evoked by our declaration of war,

but pre-existing for a long time and very carefully concealed from

his English friends. It was to me in 1914 a curious lifting of the

curtain, and indicates for our present guidance what will remain to

be encountered by us in the economic struggle against the mercantile

interests of Germany when the war ends.

The manufacturer’s letter is also interesting as showing clearly the

anticipations held in Germany, when she declared war, of a speedy and

highly successful result of the wicked and stealthy attack on her

neighbours for which she had been so long preparing. It is astonishing

moreover in the extraordinary ignorance displayed, on the part of a

clever leader of German enterprise, as to the Constitution, resources,

and temper of the British Empire, and it gives full vent to his hatred

and contempt of France, Russia, and Japan.

This letter, printed second in the series, was addressed to an intimate

friend of mine who was closely connected with engineering interests in

Germany, and who had known the writer well for some years, having had

important interests with him in business. My friend sent me the letter

for my perusal, but did not disclose the name of the writer.

The third letter is an attempted reply on my part to the statements and

misstatements of the German manufacturer, and requires no comment from

me. My friend sent a copy of my letter to his German correspondent, but

it evoked no reply.

Copies of both these letters were forwarded, anonymously, by my friend

to a well-known English engineer long resident in Germany, who occupied

a leading and acknowledged position in that country. He had been for

many years closely in touch with very many members of his profession

there, and was connected with numerous commercial interests.

As will be seen, he promptly identified the German manufacturer,

and his note on the correspondence is placed first in the series in

order to make clear the character and position of the writer of the

amazing letter No. 2. He expresses the astonishment which he felt at

its contents, remarking that the sentiments expressed in it had been

carefully concealed in his interviews with him both before and after

the outbreak of the war. The correspondence appears to me to give

much food for thought in many various ways, and I may, with these few

explanatory comments, let the letters speak for themselves.

Letter No. 1.

Extract from a letter received by Mr. A. B. of London from Mr. C. D., a

gentleman long resident in Germany and unusually well acquainted with

German commercial life:

Received February 1915.

‘I now see from whom the letter came. He is a friend of

mine. I have had a good deal to do with him lately, also

after the outbreak of war. Curiously, although knowing

me to be an Englishman, he has never in the slightest

manner expressed himself in a like sense to me. He has

evidently written to you in a great state of excitement.

Nevertheless I cannot understand his doing so nor his

harbouring the thoughts expressed in his letter. He is a

clever and clear-headed man and much respected. His conduct

in the labour question is looked upon as exemplary. He has

proceeded by quiet well-considered but energetic measures

to get his working staff entirely free from labour and

social-democratic influences. His workmen are all content

with their conditions, and his works therefore free from

labour troubles when these break out in other works. I

am told that all works at ---- have profited by his wise

measures. I therefore can all the less understand his

writing you such an incredible letter. How can men of his

position be so blinded to the true facts?

‘The reply you sent[2] me sets this forth very clearly. I

entirely concur in the contents and the opinions expressed

in the same.’

Letter No. 2.

A letter written on August 29, 1914, to Mr. A. B. of London by a German

business friend, and sent by Mr. A. B., in September 1914, to Sir John

Wolfe Barry for his perusal:

‘The poisonous seed sown by your good King Edward VII. has

sprung up. It is a well-known fact that the great aim of

his life, to which he devoted all his energy, was to unite

the whole world in one bond against Germany, to annihilate

that hated nation.

‘His disciple Minister Grey has seized the opportunity of

tightening the noose with which Germany is to be strangled.

For ten years English diplomacy has worked for that end,

to close up the ring round us. Now the die is irrevocably

cast and Destiny goes its way. No one can say positively

what the outcome will be, but one thing I do believe, and

sixty-seven million Germans believe it with me, and that is

that we shall be victorious.

‘We shall win because we are fighting for the right, for

our national existence, for civilization. Without England’s

intervention this war would have been inconceivable. In

France, whom we sincerely pity, and whom this war will

crush, one hears a united cry that she is ready for peace.

In Russia it was only the aristocratic party that has

forced on the war, and they will seize this opportunity to

steal. That party of course owns the anti-German press,

such as the _Nowoje Wremja_ and other papers, which are

financed by England. England alone was thirsting for war,

and has pressed the other nations into war against us.

For years she has seen how we have excelled her more and

more in the industrial world. If people were but honest,

they would know that the reason for our success lies in

the fact that we are an industrious and hardworking folk.

In England, on the other hand, there exists a widespread

tendency to avoid work. We have no public holidays. Our

working week averages fifty-eight hours. We Directors have

no “week-ends,” we work in the factory on an average from

fifty to sixty hours a week, and as a rule spend one or two

nights and sometimes even all Sunday in the train in order

to get work for our business. Moreover we understand how

to adapt ourselves to all possible circumstances, while

your people in their well-known arrogance, do not concern

themselves with the requirements of other countries.

‘Because we have attained great prosperity by ability and

hard work, the hatred and jealousy you bear us Germans has

grown beyond all bounds. This embarrassing competition

must be crushed so that you can go on in your comfortable

decadent existence.

‘In order that a people, who appear particularly Christian,

may attain this worthy goal, the barbarian hordes of the

Slavs are mobilised against the champions of civilization,

to whom the world owes so much. The natives in Africa are

incited against us, and we are even betrayed in Japan. This

last act has raised a storm of indignation in our country

which would alarm you, had you any idea of it. England will

certainly make terrible amends for this underhand deed.

The hatred which is raging among Germany’s sixty-seven

millions will avenge itself on England in a most fearful

way. For a hundred years the fist of every German will be

clenched whenever the word “England” is spoken.

‘I have had many experiences in my time, but never have

I known anything like the satisfaction which prevailed

throughout our country yesterday, when it first became

known that your army of mercenaries had been under the

fire of our noble reserves, and that we were in a position

to shoot down the people who draw the sword for money.

Your soldiers who oppose us in the field will yet learn

something of the loathing which our army has for anything

that is English. Our sailors look forward eagerly to the

time when your fleet, of which you talk so much, appears

in German waters. You may be quite sure that a large part

of it will never again see the shores of England, even

if we lose the whole of our navy. It is to be hoped that

your fleet will at last summon up courage to attack us. If

they come under the guns of Heligoland and Kuxhaven, your

battleships will share the same fate as befell the forts at

Liège and Namur.

‘In this war, which is the most shameful crime that has

ever been committed against humanity, and which lies

entirely at the door of English statesmen, we shall be

triumphant. England will be shaken to her foundations.

Mankind could not but lose its belief in right and

justice, and more particularly in the Divine guidance of

the universe, if a country, who in the most shameless way

professes Christianity and yet allies herself with Asiatics

and barbarians, were to be victorious.

‘Your newspapers, of which we still regularly receive

copies, may overwhelm English readers with falsehoods

about our army and its successes. Truth is going forward,

and before fourteen days have passed our forces will be

investing Paris. Belgium, whom you incited to oppose us,

is cursing you. France, whom you likewise forced into war

against us, will in future show perfidious Albion the door.

‘It is very sad that a country like England which has won

for herself so much merit in the progress of mankind,

and has produced so many able men, should abandon moral

principles proved through the centuries and hand herself

over to a band of unscrupulous men like Minister Grey.

When one considers all the misery which this war, which is

the most terrible the world has yet seen, has caused, it

makes one shudder to imagine what sort of conscience the

Councillors of the Czar, your Minister Grey and Minister

Churchill must have.

‘Your great philosopher Carlyle has foreseen and indeed

prophesied the moral decadence which always precedes

political downfall. England has become the champion of

a band of murderers who eleven years ago assassinated

their King and his consort and have now killed a foreign

prince. This nation who wishes to be so great conspires

with the most barbaric race which the world has ever seen,

the Russians, and is the brother-in-arms of the most

treacherous, most contemptible, most ungrateful people that

the earth holds, the Japanese.

‘I am sure America will endorse the general scorn and wrath

towards your country. Australia will not be very grateful

to England who wishes to make the position of the Japanese

more assured. I will go so far as to maintain that the

British world-empire will split off in all directions. The

world’s history must be judged by subsequent generations,

and the judgment of the world now passes sentence on your

country’s action.

‘If I have offended you by what I have written, just

consider I cannot do otherwise than say what is my opinion.

My personal esteem for you is not altered by what is taking

place.’

Letter No. 3.

From Sir John Wolfe Barry to Mr. A. B.:

October 4th, 1914.

‘I have read with profound interest and grief the copy of

the letter of August 29th from your German friend. The

rancour which it displays is beyond words. It is apparently

useless to criticise its contents looking to the frame of

mind of the writer, who, I think and fear, expresses the

present general feeling in Germany of hatred and anger

with our country. Many of his statements and arguments are

however absolutely and fundamentally erroneous and are

capable of complete refutation.

‘The poisoning of German thought in respect of Great

Britain does not date from anything done by King Edward

and still less from Sir Edward Grey or the present or

former Ministry. It began long earlier in the antagonism

between the military class and what may be termed the

liberal aspirations of many thoughtful Germans when the

Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick William,

married our Princess Royal. Both were in sympathy with

liberal ideas and they were violently opposed by Bismarck

and the blood-and-iron school, while the youth of Germany

were systematically taught by the professors and writers of

Germany, under the encouragement of Bismarck and his school

of thought, to hate and despise Great Britain. There is not

and never has been a corresponding feeling here towards

Germany.

‘Of course the two countries are rivals in trade and

commerce, but that is no reason for rancorous hatred.

We are keen rivals in trade with the United States and

other countries, but such rivalries have not engendered

any other feelings than that each country should do its

best honourably to succeed in competition. It must never

be forgotten in this connection that in England and in

our colonies Germans, though keeping a strict barrier

of tariffs themselves, have had absolute freedom in

competition, that they have availed themselves of it and

have made huge profits under our Free Trade system. Thus

the rancour of Germany against Great Britain must be sought

for in other directions, and it cannot be truthfully put

down to trade rivalry.

‘The cause is in fact to be found in the _Welt Politik_,

the jealousy of Germany of British world power and in the

aspirations of crushing Great Britain by force of arms.

This has been the persistent and avowed policy of the

Kaiser and the Junker class.

‘The idea was to fight France and Russia to a finish

and then concentrate all forces against England (and

parenthetically against Belgium) and to destroy the British

Empire. The present extreme and violent hatred on the part

of Germany is due to the probability of the failure of

that deep-laid scheme in consequence of England supporting

her Allies, and refusing to break her pledged word to

Belgium. It may be also caused by the feeling which must

be somewhere embedded in German thought, that Germany has

behaved dishonourably and scandalously to Belgium, whose

neutrality she most solemnly guaranteed.

‘If one looks back on the history of the last twenty-five

years, or thereabouts, one sees Bismarck threatening an

unprovoked war with France, and only withdrawing under the

threat of the opposition of Russia and Great Britain. This

proposed attack on France by Bismarck was a most shameful

episode, for France’s only offence was her existence and

recuperative power after her disasters in 1870. Then came

the Emperor’s policy in our South African War, when, if he

could have done so, he would have arrayed Europe against

this country, but ended only in having lured Kruger to

ruin. Then came the “mailed fist” in China, the seizure

of Tsing-tau, and Germany’s efforts to crush Japan after

the Russo-Japanese war. The demonstrations at Tangiers and

Agadir occurred soon afterwards, with more threats of an

European war. Afterwards came the annexation of Bosnia by

Austria backed by Germany and the insults hurled at Russia

by Germany in “shining armour.”

‘It is these things and others of a similar nature when

the German “sabre has been rattled” constantly in the face

of Europe, that demonstrated that Germany was the enemy of

peace, and which, crowned by the breach of the Treaty of

Belgium, showed to the Allies that no treaty would hold

Germany, and that her aspirations and lust for world power

were Napoleonic. Lastly the Allies knew that Germany had

resolved on war and was making a catspaw of Austria by

preventing her from coming to an agreement with Servia and

Russia.

‘I have said nothing about the systematic building of

the German navy. It was within her rights as a Sovereign

Power, but none the less the avowed object was to seize the

“Trident of the Seas” and to attack Great Britain. It was

obviously intended to attack our coasts, so as to enable an

invasion of this country to be possible, and to seize the

colonies of Great Britain and France.

‘Germany was utterly deceived by her diplomatists about

England, which was troubled with threats of civil war and

by trade disputes, and they never thought that we would

stand up for Belgium and fight now rather than later. It is

chagrin at the miscalculation, combined with the effects

of our maritime power, which has produced the outburst of

hatred against us. Commercial rivalry has no real basis for

hatred, and as for the question of a “place in the sun,”

Germany has large and advantageous colonial possessions

but can do but little with those which she owns, and has

preferred to compete with us in our colonies as she has

done so long and so successfully.

‘All this history of German jealousy, hatred and designs

is very sad, and I do not suppose that your German friend,

obsessed as he is, would listen to any facts or arguments.

But since I began to write, somewhat hurriedly, to you I

have been led on to write more than I intended to try to

deal with. I do not imagine that he has seen or would be

allowed to see the statement of the British case in the

White Paper, which I understand will be further elaborated

in a new paper to be published next Tuesday.

‘Have you answered your friend’s letter, or have you looked

upon it as hopeless to do so? In the temper in which he

wrote there was nothing visible but fighting to a finish.

‘Yours very sincerely,

‘(_Signed_) J. WOLFE BARRY.

‘_P.S._--I suppose you have not had another letter? It

would be interesting to see one of a later date than August

29th.

‘J. W. B.’

_N.B._--A copy of Sir John Wolfe Barry’s letter was sent by Mr. A.

B. to his German business friend, but no reply was attempted and the

correspondence then ceased.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Viz. that of Sir John Wolfe Barry printed below as

letter No. 3.

_THE NEW TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY._

BY JOHN W. N. SULLIVAN.

(_The time is the present day. St. Anthony is discovered seated on the

ground outside his hut. The cross stands in its accustomed place, erect

before him; and the great panorama, of which he is now weary, lies

below him. He has changed but slightly with the years; something of his

old immobility has disappeared. He occasionally shrugs his shoulders

when speaking, and he often accompanies his reflections with slight

gestures of the hands._)

ANTHONY (_thinking_). I have attained peace. Those troubling visions

have disappeared. Never for an instant have I departed from grace since

the Saviour’s face appeared to me in its shining disc of gold. The

burning days and solemn nights pass noiselessly. Rare tempests mutter

unnoticed about me. Nothing has power to disturb my beatific monotony;

nor hope, nor fear, nor love, nor regrets. I have triumphed over all

temptations. The devil has left me. (_He sighs._) That journey through

space, upborne on his wings! (_Stars commence to shine: the daylight

lingers._) I have resisted all the seductions of the flesh. I value not

the riches of the mind. (_He starts, and looks fixedly at a vague light

which advances across the desert._) It seems as if----. But that cannot

be: I have already sustained all assaults.

(_The light approaches rapidly. It is rose-coloured; within it a figure

is dimly visible. With a thunderous noise it rolls to within ten paces

of the saint. The air shakes and for an instant the stars are obscured.

This passes: the light fades, and the form of a woman is perceived,

upright, robed in white, her face stern and majestic. The sleeves of

her garment are very wide, reaching to the ground._)

THE WOMAN (_slightly raising her right arm_). I have need of you.

ANTHONY (_stammering_). What mean you?

THE WOMAN. I am your creator. Much study and great gifts came together

for your making. They also were my children. My best blood flows in

your veins. My name must mean everything to you, for you are wholly a

product of my essence. I am called La France.

ANTHONY (_pales and gazes fixedly at his visitor_). I belong to God.

THE WOMAN (_sternly_). Do you deny that you are French? (_Anthony

blushes and averts his gaze. He becomes sulky._) What existence have

you had apart from France? Would the world still hold you, you and your

temptations, apart from----

ANTHONY (_starting up and with outstretched hands_). Say not that name!

Say it not! (_He places his fingers in his ears and then, observing

that the woman’s lips do not move, lowers his hands._) Speak! but avoid

that name. I can endure aught else.

THE WOMAN (_speaks, her arms hanging by her sides. Her head is thrown

slightly back. Her words come slowly. Her voice is as the sound of a

solemn sea plunging in distant caverns_). The hour of my agony is upon

me. I am beset. My strength is great, my courage greater, and my pride

reaches to the stars. But I have mighty foes, skilled in all cruel

arts. I suffer. I dwell in the shadow of pain. My woes increase and the

issue is doubtful. (_She stretches her hands towards Anthony._) Can you

remain aloof?

ANTHONY (_frowning_). This touches me not.

THE WOMAN (_with irony_). Have you, then, purified your heart of

all compassion? (_Anthony shrugs his shoulders with a gesture of

indifference._) Are you, indeed, amongst the noblest of my offspring?

My sons have sacrificed life for me: they have been content to forgo

their ardent curiosities for my sake. What holds you back?

ANTHONY (_with great dignity_). I seek union with God. The Devil

himself tempted me for many days. He failed. How, then, can you

succeed? (_Softly._) You cannot, even if you be he.

THE WOMAN (_flinging her arms apart, and letting them drop heavily_).

Shame cannot move you. But he who aids me receives great rewards. I

will show you visions.

(_She waves her hand. A cloud descends, swaying slowly in the air. It

unwinds in sluggish masses till it fills the horizon. It glows with

pale fire. Upon it are cities and wide plains. It is a very clean,

neat, and precise land. Rivers wind gently between ploughed fields,

red and brown. The cloud surges nearer, and presently Anthony discerns

an immense temple shining in the sun. It approaches more quickly,

its crystalline walls sending innumerable shafts of light before it.

Anthony and his companion are enveloped in an insupportable radiance,

and the next instant they find they are within the building. Facing

them is a great altar, its gold shining dully in the light of a

thousand lighted candles. The flags of France droop motionless about

the altar; upon it the carved figure of a soldier lies prone. The

pavement of the temple is invisible under the feet of the silent crowd.

Mighty columns rush upward and are lost in the sweep of the dim roof.

The air begins to pulsate with the heavy notes of an organ. Anthony

and The Woman are floating above the heads of the multitude. None have

observed them._)

THE WOMAN (_motioning to the crowd_). Here are assembled rich and poor,

wise men and fools; judges, statesmen, poets, the criminal and the

peasant. All France is here, united in a common gratitude.

ANTHONY. What do they?

THE WOMAN. They honour the dead. (_She points to the prone figure on

the altar._) The soldiers who saved France.

(_A trumpet note is heard and the air rustles with the inclining of a

myriad heads. A sweet singing arises behind the altar. A procession

slowly passes before it. The first to pass is a man beyond middle age,

with a grave, bearded face, a broad white forehead and serene eyes. He

kneels for an instant and passes on._)

THE WOMAN. The Philosophy of France. (_A young man, with a dark, keen

face, and a very penetrating look, follows. Each figure, on arriving

before the altar, kneels and passes on._) The Science of France.

(_Then follow the Literature of France, an old man, very harmoniously

dressed; the Music and Painting of France, two smaller figures; the

Statesmanship and Laws of France, superb men, but badly clothed. There

follow priests, merchants, scribes, criminals and courtesans. Anthony

and his companion begin to soar higher. The music fades; the bowed

heads of the people become indistinct. There is a period of darkness,

and Anthony finds himself back on his rock. Before him stands The

Woman. The great cloud has utterly vanished._)

THE WOMAN. You have seen the greatness of France.

ANTHONY (_thoughtfully_). It is a land not without merit.

THE WOMAN. Many have died for it. Many more must die for it, or it will

be a stricken land. Is it worth dying for?

ANTHONY (_who has grown more argumentative with the years, hesitates.

Then_:) That depends! (_He faces The Woman with a stern and questioning

look._) Much knowledge and beauty lie within the borders of your land,

but no man should die for knowledge or beauty. A man’s life belongs to

God alone. Do your great ones serve God? Do they use their wisdom more

fully to understand His counsels? Do they create beauty to glorify His

praise? (_The Woman does not answer._) I will die for you if my death

serves God. I will not die to extend your borders, to add beauty to

your palaces, to make you more skilled in wisdom. Will my death bring

you nearer to God?

THE WOMAN (_regards Anthony sadly_). You ask me hard questions. Are

there not many ways of serving God? I worship God in His creation. I

meditate on the laws of His universe. I reveal to the world the beauty

of His handiwork. Do I not therefore serve God?

ANTHONY (_drily_). Does that heresy still flourish? God is not His

creation.

THE WOMAN. Is knowledge to vanish from the earth? Must none seek after

beauty?

ANTHONY (_raising his right hand and speaking with deliberation_). None

may seek knowledge for the sake of wisdom. None may seek beauty for the

sake of happiness. These things are but the raiment of God. Your great

ones count the threads in God’s garment, but do they seek God? (_He

delicately shrugs his shoulders._) Does France worship clothes?

THE WOMAN (_sad and bewildered_). I do not understand.

ANTHONY (_regards her long and then speaks gently_). You will never

understand, for you are La France. You cannot see without eyes, nor

hear without ears. You are the cleverest and most limited of God’s

children.

THE WOMAN (_stands still, her arms hanging limp, her head bowed.

Suddenly she raises her head_). But I suffer!

(_The air grows dim and a cold wind rises. The stars vanish. In the

valley, mysteriously visible, Anthony sees a road. It is cumbered

with dead and wounded men, lying in all attitudes, some as if asleep,

head resting on arm, and some contorted hideously. Anthony notes the

curious attitude of one man who seems to have his legs drawn right up

under him; until presently he sees that he has no legs. A dead man sits

propped against a gun. The whole of his tongue is visible, hanging

downwards; the lower jaw is shot away. Presently one of the black

shapes starts to flounder clumsily. In the mysterious light comes the

glint of steel; the black shape is trying to fix the end of a bayonet

in the ground. In one of his clumsy attempts the man reveals the fact

that he has but one arm. For some minutes he struggles and finally the

bayonet is fixed. The man lies still. Then he raises himself awkwardly

on his one arm till the bayonet point touches his chest; he flings his

arm straight out and falls with his whole weight on the point. A long

red finger points up from his back._

_The Woman waves her arm and the scene vanishes, to be replaced by

another. A soldier, young, and with a look of bright intelligence,

is saying farewell to his mother at the door of a cottage. The old

woman’s face is lined; her hands tremble. Her eyes peer up anxiously

at the young man, as she fondles the sleeve of his tunic. He speaks

confidently and cheerfully, and after a final embrace walks briskly

away. The old woman enters the cottage and sits there, in silence and

alone. She picks up a book the young man had been reading and very

carefully places it in a drawer._)

THE WOMAN. An only child, and she a widow.

ANTHONY (_looks very thoughtful_). What of her son?

THE WOMAN. His agony is greater. He feels all her grief and his own.

She feels but her own, for his leave-taking deceived her, and she

believes he has joy in battle.

ANTHONY (_as if musing_). Will men do so much to keep France?

THE WOMAN (_softly_). They do much more. They know the issue is

doubtful. They sacrifice so much, knowing the sacrifice may be in vain.

(_Anthony raises his head and looks very intently at The Woman; she

continues, her eyes glowing._) For years you have suffered on your

rock. You suffer to save yourself. Jesus, your master, suffered to

save the world. (_She stretches out her arms and her voice rings with

triumph._) I offer you greater suffering. He who suffers for me knows

not the fruit of his suffering. I offer you the opportunity of the

greatest sacrifice: the sacrifice of all, knowing that your all may be

in vain.

(_The Woman pauses, her arms outspread. Anthony presses his hands to

his head, and remains silent for a long time. Then, taking a step

forward, he places his right hand in that of The Woman. They slowly

leave the ground. As they mount in the air the few retarded rays of

light utterly vanish, and blackest night confounds the jutting rock

with the starless heaven._)

_THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES: THE GOOD WORD._

BY BOYD CABLE.

It is quite inadequate to say that the troops were worn out, and indeed

it is hard to find words to convey to anyone who has not experienced

some days of a mixture of fighting and forced marching how utterly

exhausted, how dead beat, how stupefied and numbed in mind and body the

men were. For four days and nights they had fought and dug trenches and

marched, and fought again, and halted to dig again, and fought again,

and extricated themselves under hailing bullets and pouring shells from

positions they never expected to leave alive, only to scramble together

into some sort of ragged-shaped units and march again. And all this was

under a fierce August sun, with irregular meals and sometimes no meals,

at odd times with a scarcity or complete want of water, at all times

with a burning lack and want of sleep.

This want of sleep was the worst of it all. Any sort of fighting is

heavy sleep inducing; when it is prolonged for days and nights without

one good full, satisfying sleep, the desire for rest becomes a craving,

an all-absorbing aching passion. At first a man wants a bed or space

to lie down and stretch his limbs and pillow his head and sink into

dreamless oblivion; at last he would give his last possession merely

to be allowed to lean against a wall, to stand upright on his feet and

close his eyes. To keep awake is torture, to lift and move each foot is

a desperate effort, to keep the burning eyes open and seeing an agony.

It takes the most tremendous effort of will to contemplate another five

minutes of wakefulness, another hundred yards to be covered; and here

were hours, endless hours, of wakefulness, miles and tens of miles to

be covered.

Cruelly hard as the conditions were for the whole retreating army,

the rear-guard suffered the worst by a good deal. They were under the

constant threat of attack, were halted every now and then under that

threat or to allow the main body to keep a sufficient distance, had to

make some attempt to dig in again, had to endure spasmodic shelling

either in their shallow trenches or as they marched along the road.

By the fourth day the men were reduced to the condition of automatons.

They marched--no, it could hardly be said any longer that they

‘marched’; they stumbled and staggered along like drunken men; their

chins were sunk on their chests, their jaws hung slack, their eyes

were set in a fixed and glassy stare, or blinked, and shut and opened

heavily, slowly, and drowsily, their feet trailed draggingly, their

knees sagged under them. When the word passed to halt, the front ranks

took a minute or two to realise its meaning and obey, and the ranks

behind bumped into them and raised heads and vacant staring eyes for

a moment and let them drop again in a stupor of apathy. The change,

the cessation of automatic motion was too much for many men; once

halted they could no longer keep their feet, and dropped and sat or

rolled helplessly to lie in the dust of the road. These men who fell

were almost impossible to rouse. They sank into sleep that was almost

a swoon, and no shaking or calling or cursing could rouse them or get

them up again. The officers, knowing this, tried to keep them from

sitting or lying down, moved, staggering themselves as they walked, to

and fro along the line, exhorting, begging, beseeching, or scolding and

swearing and ordering the men to keep up, to stand, to be ready to move

on. And when the order was given again, the pathetically ridiculous

order to ‘Quick march,’ the front ranks slowly roused and shuffled off,

and the rear stirred slowly and with an effort heaved their rifles over

their shoulders again and reeled after the leaders.

Scores of the men had abandoned packs and haversacks, all of them had

cast away their overcoats. Many had taken their boots off and marched

with rags or puttees wound round their blistered and swollen feet.

But no matter what one or other or all had thrown away, there was no

man without his rifle, his full ammunition pouches, and his bayonet.

These things weighed murderously, cut deep and agonisingly into the

shoulders, cramped arms and fingers to an aching numbness; but every

man clung to them, had never a thought of throwing them into the ditch,

although many of them had many thoughts of throwing themselves there.

Many fell out--fell out in the literal as well as the drill sense

of the word; swerved to the side of the road and missed foot in the

ditch and fell there, or stumbled in the ranks, tripped, lacking the

brain or body quickness to recover themselves, collapsed, and rolled

and lay helpless. Others, again, gasped a word or two to a comrade or

an N.C.O., stumbled out of the ranks to the roadside, sank down with

hanging head and rounded shoulders to a sitting position. Few or none

of these men deliberately lay down. They sat till the regiment had

plodded his trailing length past, tried to stagger to knees and feet,

succeeded, and stood swaying a moment, and then lurched off after the

rear ranks; or failed, stared stupidly after them, collapsed again

slowly and completely. All these were left to lie where they fell. It

was useless to urge them to move, because every officer and N.C.O. knew

that no man gave up while he had an ounce of strength or energy left to

carry on, that orders or entreaties had less power to keep a man moving

than his own dogged pluck and will, that when these failed to keep a

man going nothing else could succeed.

All were not, of course, so hopelessly done as this. There were still a

number of the tougher muscled, the firmer willed, who kept their limbs

moving with conscious volition, who still retained some thinking power,

who even at times exchanged a few words or a mouthful of curses. These,

and the officers, kept the whole together, kept them moving by force

of example, set the pace for them and gave them the direction. Most of

them were in the leading ranks of their own companies, merely because

their greater energy had carried them there past and through the ranks

of those whose minds were nearly or quite a blank, whose bodies were

more completely exhausted, whose will-power was reduced to a blind and

sheep-like instinct to follow a leader, move when and where the dimly

seen khaki form or tramping boots in front of them moved, stop when and

where they stopped.

The roads by which the army was retreating were cumbered and in places

choked and blocked with fugitive peasantry fleeing from the advancing

Germans, spurred into and upon their flight by the tales that reached

them of ravished Belgium, by first-hand accounts of the murder of old

men and women and children, of rape and violation and pillage and

burning. Their slow, crawling procession checked and hindered the army

transport, added to the trials of the weary troops by making necessary

frequent halts and deviations off the road and back to it to clear some

block in the traffic where a cart had broken down, or where worn-out

women with hollow cheeks and staring eyes, and children with dusty,

tear-streaked faces crowded and filled the road.

The rear-guard passed numbers of these lying utterly exhausted by

the roadside, and the road for miles was strewn with the wreckage

of the retreat, with men who had fallen out unable longer to march

on blistered or bleeding feet or collapsed in the heedless sleep of

complete exhaustion; with broken-down carts dragged clear into the

roadside and spilled with their jumbled contents into the ditch; with

crippled horses and footsore cattle; with quivering-lipped, grey-haired

old men, and dry-eyed, cowering women, and frightened, clinging

children. Some of these peasantry roused themselves as the last of

the rear-guard regiments came up with them, struggled again to follow

on the road, or dragged themselves clear of it and sought refuge and

hiding in abandoned cottages or barns or the deep dry ditches.

At one point where the road crept up the long slope of a hill the

rear-guard came under the longe-range fire of the German guns. The

shells came roaring down, to burst in clouds of belching black smoke

in the fields to either side of the road, or to explode with a sharp

tearing cr-r-rash in the air, their splinters and bullets raining down

out of the thick white woolly smoke cloud that coiled and writhed and

unfolded in slow heavy oily eddies.

One battalion of the rear-guard was halted at the foot of the hill and

spread out off the road and across the line of it. Again they were told

not to lie down, and for the most part the men obeyed, leaning heavily

with their arms folded on the muzzles of their rifles or watching the

regiments crawling slowly up the road with the coal-black shell-bursts

in the fields about them or the white air-bursts of the shrapnel above

them.

‘Pretty bloomin’ sight--I don’t think,’ growled a gaunt and weary-eyed

private. The man next him laughed shortly. ‘Pretty one for the Germs,

anyway,’ he said; ‘and one they’re seein’ a sight too often for my

fancy. They’ll be forgettin’ wot our faces look like if we keep on at

this everlastin’ runnin’ away.’

‘Blast ’em,’ said the first speaker savagely, ‘but our turn will come

presently. D’you think this yarn is right, Jacko, that we’re retirin’

this way just to draw ’em away from their base?’

‘Gawd knows,’ said Jacko; ‘but they didn’t bring us over ’ere to do

nothin’ but run away, an’ you can bet on that, Peter.’

An order passed down the line, and the men began to move slowly into

the road again and to shake into some sort of formation on it, and

then to plod off up the hill in the wake of the rest. The shells were

still plastering the hillside and crashing over the road, and several

men were hit as the battalion tramped wearily up the hill. Even the

shells failed to rouse most of the men from their apathy and weariness,

but those it did stir it roused mainly to angry resentment or sullen

oath-mumblings and curses.

‘Well, Jacko,’ said Peter bitterly, ‘I’ve knowed I had a fair chance

o’ bein’ shot, but burn me if ever I thought I was goin’ to be shot in

the back.’

‘It’s a long way to Tipperary,’ said Jacko, ‘an’ there’s bound to be a

turnin’ in it somewheres.’

‘An’ it’s a longer way to Berlin if we keeps on marchin’ like this with

our backs to it,’ grumbled Peter.

The sound of another approaching shell rose from a faint moan to

a loud shriek, to a roar, to a wild torrent of yelling, whooping,

rush-of-an-express-train, whirlwind noise; and then, just when it

seemed to each man that the shell was about to fall directly on his own

individual head, it burst with a harsh crash over them, and a storm of

bullets and fragments whistled and hummed down, hitting the fields’

soft ground with deep _whutts_, clashing sharply on the harder road. A

young officer jerked out a cry, stumbled blindly forward a few paces

with outstretched arms, pitched, and fell heavily on his face. He was

close to where Peter and Jacko marched, and the two shambled hastily

together to where he lay, lifted and turned him over. Neither needed

a second look. ‘Done in,’ said Peter briefly, and ‘Never knew wot hit

’im,’ agreed Jacko.

An officer ran back to them, followed slowly and heavily by another.

There was no question as to what should be done with the lad’s body.

He had to be left there, and the utmost they could do for him was to

lift and carry him--four dog-tired men hardly able to lift their feet

and carry their own bodies--to a cottage by the roadside, and bring him

into an empty room with a litter of clothes and papers spilled about

the floor from the tumbled drawers, and lay him on a dishevelled bed

and spread a crumpled sheet over him.

‘Let’s hope they’ll bury him decently,’ said one of the officers. The

other was pocketing the watch and few pitiful trinkets he had taken

from the lad’s pockets. ‘Hope so,’ he said dully. ‘Not that it matters

much to poor old Dicky. Come on, we must move, or I’ll never be able to

catch the others up.’

They left the empty house quietly, pulling the door gently shut behind

them.

‘Pore little Blinker,’ said Jacko as they trudged up the road after the

battalion; ‘the best bloomin’ officer the platoon ever ’ad.’

‘The best I ever ’ad in all my seven,’ said Peter. ‘I ain’t forgettin’

the way ’e stood up for me afore the C.O. at Aldershot when I was

carpeted for drunk. And ’im tryin’ to stand wi’ the right side of ’is

face turned away from the light, so the C.O. wouldn’t spot the black

eye I gave ’im in that same drunk!’

‘Ah, an’ that was just like ’im,’ said Jacko. ‘An’ to think ’e’s washed

out with a ’ole in the back of his ’ead--the back of it, mind you.’

Peter cursed sourly.

The battalion trailed wearily on until noon, halted then, and for

the greater part flung themselves down and slept on the roadside for

the two hours they waited there; were roused--as many of them, that

is, as would rouse, for many, having stopped the machine-like motion

of marching, could not recommence it, and had to be left there--and

plodded on again through the baking afternoon heat. They had marched

over thirty miles that day when at last they trailed into a small town

where they were told they were to be billeted for the night. Other

troops, almost as worn as themselves, were to take over the duties of

rear-guard next day, but although that was good enough news it was

nothing to the fact that to-night, now, the battalion was to halt and

lie down and take their fill--if the Huns let them--of sleep.

They were halted in the main square and waited there for what seemed to

the tired men an interminable time.

‘Findin’ billets,’ said Jacko. ‘Wish they’d hurry up about it.’

‘Seems to me there’s something more than billets in the wind,’ said

Peter suspiciously. ‘Wot’s all the officers confabbin’ about, an’ wot’s

that _tamasha_ over there wi’ them Staff officers an’ the C.O.?’

The _tamasha_ broke up, and the C.O. tramped back to the group of his

officers, and after a short parley they saluted him and walked over to

the battalion.

‘Fall in,’ came the order sharply. ‘Fall in there, fall in.’

Most of the men were sitting along the curb of the pavement or in the

dusty road, or standing leaning on their rifles. They rose and moved

heavily and stiffly, and shuffled into line.

‘Wot is it, sergeant?’ asked Jacko suspiciously. ‘Wot’s the move?’

‘We’re goin’ back,’ said the sergeant. ‘Hurry up there, you. Fall in.

We’re goin’ back, an’ there’s some word of a fight.’

The word flew round the ranks. ‘Going back ... a fight ... back....’

Across the square another regiment tramped stolidly and turned down a

side street. A man in their rear ranks turned and waved a hand to the

waiting battalion. ‘So long, chums,’ he called. ‘See you in Berlin.’

‘Ga’ strewth,’ said Jacko, and drew a deep breath. ‘Goin’ back; an’ a

fight; an’ the ol’ Buffs on the move too. In Berlin, eh; wonder wot

they’ve ’eard. Back--blimey, Peter, I believe we’re goin’ for the

blinkin’ ’Uns again. I believe we’re goin’ to advance.’

That word went round even faster than the other, and where it passed

it left behind it a stir of excitement, a straightening of rounded

shoulders, a lifting of lolling heads. ‘Going back ... going to attack

this time ... going to advance....’

Actually this was untrue, or partly so at least. They were going back,

but still merely acting as rear-guard to take up a position clear of

the town and hold it against the threat of too close-pressing pursuit.

But the men knew nothing of that at the time. They were going back;

there was word of a fight; what else did that spell but a finish to

this cursed running away, an advance instead of a retreat? The rumour

acted like strong wine to the men. They moved to the parade orders

with something of their old drilled and disciplined appearance; they

swung off in their fours with shuffling steps, it is true, but with a

decent attempt to keep the step, with their heads more or less erect

and their shoulders back. And when the head of the column turned off

the square back into the same street they had come up into the town,

a buzz of talk and calling ran through the ranks, a voice piped up

shakily ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ and a dozen, a score, a hundred

voices took up the chorus sturdily and defiantly. The battalion moved

out with the narrow streets ringing to their steady tramp, tramp,

over the _pavé_ cobbles and the sound of their singing. Once clear of

the town, it is true, the singing died away and the regular tramping

march tailed off into the murmuring shuffle of feet moving out of

step. But the deadly apathy had lifted from the men, there was an air

of new life about them; one would never have known this battalion for

the one that had marched in over the same road half an hour before.

Then they were no more than a broken, dispirited crowd, their minds

dazed, their bodies numbed with fatigue, moving mechanically, dully,

apathetically, still plodding and shuffling their feet forward merely

because their conscious minds had set their limbs the task, and then

the tired brains, run down, had left the machinery of their bodies

still working--working jerkily and slackly perhaps, but nevertheless

working as it would continue to work until the overstrained muscles

refused their mechanical duty.

Now they were a battalion, a knitted and coherent body of fighting

men, still worn out and fatigued almost to the point of collapse, but

with working minds, with a conscious thought in their brains, with

discipline locking their ranks again, with the prospect of a fight

ahead, with the hope strong in them that the tide was turning, that

they were done with the running away and retreating and abandoning

hard-fought fields they were positive they had won; that now their turn

was come, that here they were commencing and making the longed-for

advance.

And as they marched they heard behind them a deep _boo-boom_,

_boo-boom_, _boo-moom_ and the whistling rush of the shells over their

heads. That and the low muttering rumble of guns far out on the flank

brought to them a final touch of satisfaction. They were advancing, and

the guns were supporting them already then--good, oh good!

And as they marched back down the road they had come they met some of

their stragglers hobbling painfully on bandaged feet, or picked them

up from where they still lay in a stupor of sleep on the roadside. And

to all of them the one word ‘advance’ was enough. ‘We’re going back

... it’s an advance,’ turned them staggering round to limp back in the

tail of the battalion, or lifted them to their feet to follow on as

best they might. They picked up more than their own men, too, men of

other regiments who had straggled and fallen out, but now drew fresh

store of strength from the cheerful word ‘advance,’ and would not be

denied their chance to be in the van of it, but tailed on in rear of

the battalion and struggled to keep up with them. ‘We’re all right,

sir,’ said one when an officer would have turned him and sent him back

to find his own battalion. ‘We’re pretty near done in on marching; but

there’s a plenty fight left in us--specially when it’s an advance.’

‘Jacko,’ said Peter, ‘I’m damn near dead; but thank the Lord I won’t

’ave to die runnin’ away.’

‘All I asks,’ said Jacko, ‘is as fair a target on ’em as we’ve ’ad

before, an’ a chance to put a ’ole in the back o’ some o’ _their_

’eads.’

‘Ah!’ said Peter. ‘Pore little Blinker. They’ve got to pay for ’im an’

a few more like ’im.’

‘They ’ave, blarst them,’ said Jacko savagely, and dropped his hand

to his bayonet haft, slid the steel half out and home again. ‘Don’t

fret, chum, they’ll pay--soon or late, this time or nex’, one day or

another--they’ll pay.’

_THE LOST NAVAL PAPERS._

BY BENNET COPPLESTONE.

I.

BAITING THE TRAP.

This story--which contains a moral for those fearful folk who exalt

everything German--was told to me by Richard Cary, the accomplished

naval correspondent of a big paper in the North of England. I have

known him and his enthusiasm for the White Ensign for twenty years.

He springs from an old naval stock, the Carys of North Devon, and

has devoted his life to the study of the Sea Service. He had for so

long been accustomed to move freely among shipyards and navymen, and

was trusted so completely, that the veil of secrecy which dropped in

August 1914 between the Fleets and the world scarcely existed for

him. Everything which he desired to know for the better understanding

of the real work of the Navy came to him officially or unofficially.

When, therefore, he states that the Naval Notes with which this story

deals would have been of incalculable value to the enemy, I accept

his word without hesitation. I have myself seen some of them and they

made me tremble--for Cary’s neck. I pressed him to write this story

himself, but he refused. ‘No,’ said he, ‘I have told you the yarn just

as it happened; write it yourself. I am a dull dog, quite efficient at

handling hard facts and making scientific deductions from them, but

with no eye for the picturesque details. I give it to you.’ He rose to

go--Cary had been lunching with me--but paused for an instant upon my

front doorstep. ‘If you insist upon it,’ added he, smiling, ‘I don’t

mind sharing in the plunder.’

* * * * *

It was in the latter part of May 1916. Cary was hard at work one

morning in his rooms in the Northern City where he had established

his headquarters. His study table was littered with papers--notes,

diagrams, and newspaper cuttings--and he was laboriously reducing the

apparent chaos into an orderly series of chapters upon the Navy’s

Work which he proposed to publish after the war was over. It was not

designed to be an exciting book--Cary has no dramatic instinct--but

it would be full of fine sound stuff, close accurate detail, and clear

analysis. Day by day for more than twenty months he had been collecting

details of every phase of the Navy’s operations, here a little and

there a little. He had recently returned from a confidential tour of

the shipyards and naval bases, and had exercised his trained eye upon

checking and amplifying what he had previously learned. While his

recollection of this tour was fresh he was actively writing up his

Notes and revising the rough early draft of his book. More than once

it had occurred to him that his accumulations of Notes were dangerous

explosives to store in a private house. They were becoming so full and

so accurate that the enemy would have paid any sum or have committed

any crime to secure possession of them. Cary is not nervous or

imaginative--have I not said that he springs from a naval stock?--but

even he now and then felt anxious. He would, I believe, have slept

peacefully though knowing that a delicately primed bomb lay beneath his

bed, for personal risks troubled him little, but the thought that hurt

to his country might come from his well-meant labours sometimes rapped

against his nerves. A few days before his patriotic conscience had been

stabbed by no less a personage than Admiral Jellicoe, who, speaking

to a group of naval students which included Cary, had said: ‘We have

concealed nothing from you, for we trust absolutely to your discretion.

Remember what you have seen, but do not make any notes.’ Yet here at

this moment was Cary disregarding the orders of a Commander-in-Chief

whom he worshipped. He tried to square his conscience by reflecting

that no more than three people knew of the existence of his Notes

or of the book which he was writing from them, and that each one of

those three was as trustworthy as himself. So he went on collating,

comparing, writing, and the heap upon his table grew bigger under his

hands.

The clock had just struck twelve upon that morning when a servant

entered and said ‘A gentleman to see you, sir, upon important business.

His name is Mr. Dawson.’

Cary jumped up and went to his dining-room, where the visitor was

waiting. The name had meant nothing to him, but the instant his eyes

fell upon Mr. Dawson he remembered that he was the chief Scotland

Yard officer who had come north to teach the local police how to keep

track of the German agents who infested the shipbuilding centres. Cary

had met Dawson more than once and had assisted him with his intimate

local knowledge. He greeted his visitor with smiling courtesy, but

Dawson did not smile. His first words, indeed, came like shots from an

automatic pistol.

‘Mr. Cary,’ said he, ‘I want to see your Naval Notes.’

Cary was staggered, for the three people whom I have mentioned did not

include Mr. Dawson. ‘Certainly,’ said he, ‘I will show them to you if

you ask officially. But how in the world did you hear anything about

them?’

‘I am afraid that a good many people know about them, most undesirable

people, too. If you will show them to me--I am asking officially--I

will tell you what I know.’

Cary led the way to his study. Dawson glanced round the room, at

the papers heaped upon the table, at the tall windows bare of

curtains--Cary, who loved light and sunshine, hated curtains--and

growled. Then he locked the door, pulled down the thick blue blinds

required by the East Coast lighting orders, and switched on the

electric lights though it was high noon in May. ‘That’s better,’ said

he. ‘You are an absolutely trustworthy man, Mr. Cary. I know all about

you. But you are damned careless. That bare window is overlooked from

half a dozen flats. You might as well do your work in the street.’

Dawson picked up some of the papers, and their purport was explained to

him by Cary. ‘I don’t know anything of naval details,’ said he, ‘but I

don’t need any evidence of the value of the stuff here. The enemy wants

it, wants it badly; that is good enough for me.’

‘But,’ remonstrated Cary, ‘no one knows of these papers, or of the use

to which I am putting them, except my son in the Navy, my wife (who has

not read a line of them), and my publisher in London.’

‘Hum!’ commented Dawson. ‘Then how do you account for this?’

He opened his leather despatch-case and drew forth a parcel carefully

wrapped up in brown paper. Within the wrapping was a large white

envelope of the linen woven paper used for registered letters, and

generously sealed. To Cary’s surprise, for the envelope appeared to be

secure, Dawson cautiously opened it so as not to break the seal which

was adhering to the flap and drew out a second smaller envelope, also

sealed. This he opened in the same delicate way and took out a third;

from the third he drew a fourth, and so on until eleven empty envelopes

had been added to the litter piled upon Cary’s table, and the twelfth,

a small one, remained in Dawson’s hands.

‘Did you ever see anything so childish?’ observed he, indicating the

envelopes. ‘A big, registered, sealed Chinese puzzle like that is just

crying out to be opened. We would have seen the inside of that one even

if it had been addressed to the Lord Mayor, and not to--well, someone

in whom we are deeply interested, though he does not know it.’

Cary, who had been fascinated by the succession of sealed envelopes,

stretched out his hand towards one of them. ‘Don’t touch,’ snapped out

Dawson. ‘Your clumsy hands would break the seals, and then there would

be the devil to pay. Of course all these envelopes were first opened in

my office. It takes a dozen years to train men to open sealed envelopes

so that neither flap nor seal is broken, and both can be again secured

without showing a sign of disturbance. It is a trade secret.’

Dawson’s expert fingers then opened the twelfth envelope and he

produced a letter. ‘Now, Mr. Cary, if we had not known you and also

known that you were absolutely honest and loyal--though dangerously

simple-minded and careless in the matter of windows--this letter would

have been very awkward indeed for you. It runs: “Hagan arrives 10.30

P.M. Wednesday to get Cary’s Naval Notes. Meet him. Urgent.” Had we not

known you, Mr. Richard Cary might have been asked to explain how Hagan

knew all about his Naval Notes and was so very confident of being able

to get them.’

Cary smiled. ‘I have often felt,’ said he, ‘especially in war-time,

that it was most useful to be well known to the police. You may ask me

anything you like and I will do my best to answer. I confess that I am

aghast at the searchlight of inquiry which has suddenly been turned

upon my humble labours. My son at sea knows nothing of the Notes except

what I have told him in my letters, my wife has not read a line of

them, and my publisher is the last man to talk. I seem to have suddenly

dropped into the middle of a detective story.’ The poor man scratched

his head and smiled ruefully at the Scotland Yard officer.

‘Mr. Cary,’ said Dawson, ‘those windows of yours would account for

anything. You have been watched for a long time, and I am perfectly

sure that our friend Hagan and his associates here know precisely in

what drawer of that desk you keep your naval papers. Your flat is easy

to enter--I had a look round before coming in to-day--and on Wednesday

night (that is to-morrow) there will be a scientific burglary here and

your Notes will be stolen.’

‘Oh no they won’t,’ cried Cary. ‘I will take them down this afternoon

to my office and lock them up in the big safe. It will put me to a lot

of bother, for I shall also have to lock up there the chapters of my

book.’

‘You newspaper men ought all to be locked up yourselves. You are a

cursed nuisance to honest, hard-worked Scotland Yard men like me. But

you mistake the object of my visit. I want this flat to be entered

to-morrow night, and I want your naval papers to be stolen.’

For a moment the wild thought came to Cary that this man Dawson--the

chosen of the Yard--was himself a German Secret Service agent, and

must have shown in his eyes some signs of the suspicion, for Dawson

laughed loudly. ‘No, Mr. Cary, I am not in the Kaiser’s pay, nor are

you, though the case against you might be painted pretty black. This

man Hagan is on our string in London and we want him very badly indeed.

Not to arrest--at least not just yet--but to keep running round showing

us his pals and all their little games. He is an Irish American, a very

unbenevolent neutral, to whom we want to give a nice, easy, happy time,

so that he can mix himself up thoroughly with the spy business and wrap

a rope many times round his neck. We will pull on to the end when we

have finished with him, but not a minute too soon. He is too precious

to be frightened. Did you ever come across such an ass’--Dawson

contemptuously indicated the pile of sealed envelopes--‘he must have

soaked himself in American dime novels and cinema crime films. He will

be of more use to us than a dozen of our best officers. I feel that I

love Hagan and won’t have him disturbed. When he comes here to-morrow

night he shall be seen but not heard. He shall enter this room, lift

your Notes, which shall be in their usual drawer, and shall take them

safely away. After that I rather fancy that we shall enjoy ourselves,

and that the salt will stick very firmly upon Hagan’s little tail.’

Cary did not at all like this plan; it might offer amusement and

instruction to the police, but seemed to involve himself in an

excessive amount of responsibility. ‘Will it not be far too risky to

let him take my Notes even if you do shadow him closely afterwards? He

will get them copied and scattered amongst a score of agents, one of

whom may get the information through to Germany. You know your job,

of course, but the risk seems too big for me. After all, they are my

Notes, and I would far sooner burn them now than that the Germans

should see a line of them.’

Dawson laughed again. ‘You are a dear simple soul, Mr. Cary; it does

one good to meet you. Why on earth do you suppose I came here to-day

if it were not to enlist your help? Hagan is going to take all the

risks; you and I are not looking for any. He is going to steal some

Naval Notes, but they will not be those which lie on this table. I

myself will take charge of those and of the chapters of your most

reprehensible book. You shall prepare, right now, a beautiful new

artistic set of notes calculated to deceive. They must be accurate

where any errors would be spotted, but wickedly false wherever

deception would be good for Fritz’s health. I want you to get down

to a real plant. This letter shall be sealed up again in its twelve

silly envelopes and go by registered post to Hagan’s correspondent.

You shall have till to-morrow morning to invent all those things which

we want Fritz to believe about the Navy. Make us out to be as rotten

as you plausibly can. Give him some heavy losses to gloat over and to

tempt him out of harbour. Don’t overdo it, but mix up your fiction with

enough facts to keep it sweet and make it sound convincing. If you do

your work well--and the Naval authorities here seem to think a lot of

you--Hagan will believe in your Notes, and will try to get them to

his German friends at any cost or risk, which will be exactly what we

want of him. Then, when he has served our purpose, he will find that

we--have--no--more--use--for--him.’

Dawson accompanied this slow, harmlessly sounding sentence with a grim

and nasty smile. Cary, before whose eyes flashed for a moment the

vision of a chill dawn, cold grey walls, and a silent firing party,

shuddered. It was a dirty task to lay so subtle a trap even for a dirty

Irish-American spy. His honest English soul revolted at the call upon

his brains and knowledge, but common sense told him that in this way,

Dawson’s way, he could do his country a very real service. For a few

minutes he mused over the task set to his hand, and then spoke.

‘All right. I think that I can put up exactly what you want. The faked

Notes shall be ready when you come to-morrow. I will give the whole day

to them.’

In the morning the new set of Naval Papers was ready, and their

purport was explained in detail to Dawson, who chuckled joyously. ‘This

is exactly what Admiral ---- wants, and it shall get through to Germany

by Fritz’s own channels. I have misjudged you, Mr. Cary; I thought you

little better than a fool, but that story here of a collision in a fog

and the list of damaged Queen Elizabeths in dock would have taken in

even me. Fritz will suck it down like cream. I like that effort even

better than your grave comments on damaged turbines and worn-out gun

tubes. You are a genius, Mr. Cary, and I must take you to lunch with

the Admiral this very day. You can explain the plant better than I can,

and he is dying to hear all about it. Oh, by the way, he particularly

wants a description of the failure to complete the latest batch of

big shell fuses, and the shortage of lyddite. You might get that done

before the evening. Now for the burglary. Do nothing, nothing at all,

outside your usual routine. Come home at your usual hour, go to bed

as usual, and sleep soundly if you can. Should you hear any noise in

the night put your head under the bedclothes. Say nothing to Mrs. Cary

unless you are obliged, and for God’s sake don’t let any woman--wife,

daughter, or maidservant--disturb my pearl of a burglar while he is at

work. He must have a clear run, with everything exactly as he expects

to find it. Can I depend upon you?’

‘I don’t pretend to like the business,’ said Cary, ‘but you can depend

upon me to the letter of my orders.’

‘Good,’ cried Dawson. ‘That is all I want.’

II.

THE TRAP CLOSES.

Cary heard no noise though he lay awake for most of the night,

listening intently. The flat seemed to be more quiet even than usual.

There was little traffic in the street below, and hardly a step

broke the long silence of the night. Early in the morning--at six

B.S.T.--Cary slipped out of bed, stole down to his study, and pulled

open the deep drawer in which he had placed the bundle of faked Naval

Notes. They had gone! So the Spy-Burglar had come, and, carefully

shepherded by Dawson’s sleuth-hounds, had found the primrose path easy

for his crime. To Cary, the simple, honest gentleman, the whole plot

seemed to be utterly revolting--justified, of course, by the country’s

needs in time of war, but none the less revolting. There is nothing

of glamour in the Secret Service, nothing of romance, little even of

excitement. It is a cold-blooded exercise of wits against wits, of

spies against spies. The amateur plays a fish upon a line and gives

him a fair run for his life, but the professional fisherman--to whom

a salmon is a people’s food--nets him coldly and expeditiously as he

comes in from the sea.

Shortly after breakfast there came a call from Dawson on the telephone.

‘All goes well. Come to my office as soon as possible.’ Cary found

Dawson bubbling with professional satisfaction. ‘It was beautiful,’

cried he. ‘Hagan was met at the train, taken to a place we know of,

and shadowed by us tight as wax. We now know all his associates--the

swine have not even the excuse of being German. He burgled your flat

himself while one of his gang watched outside. Never mind where I was;

you would be surprised if I told you; but I saw everything. He has the

faked papers, is busy making copies, and this afternoon is going down

the river in a steamer to get a glimpse of the shipyards and docks and

check your Notes as far as can be done. Will they stand all right?’

‘Quite all right,’ said Cary. ‘The obvious things were given correctly.’

‘Good. We will be in the steamer.’

Cary went that afternoon, quite unchanged in appearance by Dawson’s

order. ‘If you try to disguise yourself,’ declared that expert, ‘you

will be spotted at once. Leave the refinements to us.’ Dawson himself

went as an elderly dug-out officer with the rank marks of a colonel,

and never spoke a word to Cary upon the whole trip down and up the

teeming river. Dawson’s men were scattered here and there--one a

passenger of inquiring mind, another a deckhand, yet a third--a pretty

girl in khaki--sold tea and cakes in the vessel’s saloon. Hagan--who,

Cary heard afterwards, wore the brass-bound cap and blue kit of a mate

in the American merchant service--was never out of sight for an instant

of Dawson or of one of his troupe. He busied himself with a strong pair

of marine glasses and now and then asked innocent questions of the

ship’s deckhands. He had evidently himself once served as a sailor.

One deckhand, an idle fellow to whom Hagan was very civil, told his

questioner quite a lot of interesting details about the Navy ships,

great and small, which could be seen upon the building slips. All

these details tallied strangely with those recorded in Cary’s Notes.

The trip up and down the river was a great success for Hagan and for

Dawson, but for Cary it was rather a bore. He felt somehow out of the

picture. In the evening Dawson called at Cary’s office and broke in

upon him. ‘We had a splendid trip to-day,’ said he. ‘It exceeded my

utmost hopes. Hagan thinks no end of your Notes, but he is not taking

any risks. He leaves in the morning for Glasgow to do the Clyde and to

check some more of your stuff. Would you like to come?’ Cary remarked

that he was rather busy, and that these river excursions, though

doubtless great fun for Dawson, were rather poor sport for himself.

Dawson laughed joyously--he was a cheerful soul when he had a spy upon

his string. ‘Come along,’ said he. ‘See the thing through. I should

like you to be in at the death.’ Cary observed that he had no stomach

for cold damp dawns, and firing parties.

‘I did not quite mean that,’ replied Dawson. ‘Those closing ceremonies

are still strictly private. But you should see the chase through

to a finish. You are a newspaper man and should be eager for new

experiences.’

‘I will come,’ said Cary, rather reluctantly. ‘But I warn you that my

sympathies are steadily going over to Hagan. The poor devil does not

look to have a dog’s chance against you.’

‘He hasn’t,’ said Dawson with great satisfaction.

Cary, to whom the wonderful Clyde was as familiar as the river near

his own home, found the second trip almost as wearisome as the first.

But not quite. He was now able to recognise Hagan, who again appeared

as a brass-bounder, and did not affect to conceal his deep interest in

the Naval panorama offered by the river. Nothing of real importance

can, of course, be learned from a casual steamer trip, but Hagan

seemed to think otherwise, for he was always either watching through

his glasses or asking apparently artless questions of passengers or

passing deckhands. Again a sailor seemed disposed to be communicative;

he pointed out more than one monster in steel, red raw with surface

rust, and gave particulars of a completed power which would have

surprised the Admiralty Superintendent. They would not, however, have

surprised Mr. Cary, in whose ingenious brain they had been conceived.

This second trip, like the first, was declared by Dawson to have been

a great success. ‘Did you know me?’ he asked. ‘I was a clean-shaven

Naval doctor, about as unlike the Army colonel of the first trip as a

pigeon is unlike a gamecock. Hagan is off to London to-night by the

North-Western. There are three copies of your Notes. One is going

by Edinburgh and the east coast, and another by the Midland. Hagan

has the original masterpiece. I will look after him and leave the two

other messengers to my men. I have been on to the Yard by ’phone and

have arranged that all three shall have passports for Holland. The

two copies shall reach the Kaiser, bless him, but I really must have

Hagan’s set of Notes for my Museum.’

‘And what will become of Hagan?’ asked Cary.

‘Come and see,’ said Mr. Dawson.

Dawson entertained Cary at dinner in a private room at the Station

Hotel, waited upon by one of his own confidential men. ‘Nobody ever

sees me,’ he observed with much satisfaction, ‘though I am everywhere.’

(I suspect that Dawson is not without his little vanities.) ‘Except

in my office and with people whom I know well, I am always someone

else. The first time I came to your house I wore a beard, and the

second time looked like a gas inspector. You saw only the real Dawson.

When one has got the passion for the chase in one’s blood, one cannot

bide for long in a stuffy office. As I have a jewel of an assistant,

I can always escape and follow up my own victims. This man Hagan is

a black heartless devil. Don’t waste your sympathy on him, Mr. Cary.

He took money from us quite lately to betray the silly asses of Sinn

Feiners, and now, thinking us hoodwinked, is after more money from the

Kaiser. He is of the type that would sell his own mother and buy a

mistress with the money. He’s not worth your pity. We use him and his

like for just so long as they can be useful, and then the jaws of the

trap close. By letting him take those faked Notes we have done a fine

stroke for the Navy, for the Yard, and for Bill Dawson. We have got

into close touch with four new German agents here and two more down

south. We shan’t seize them yet; just keep them hanging on and use

them. That’s the game. I am never anxious about an agent when I know

him and can keep him watched. Anxious, bless you; I love him like a

cat loves a mouse. I’ve had some spies on my string ever since the war

began; I wouldn’t have them touched or worried for the world. Their

correspondence tells me everything, and if a letter to Holland which

they haven’t written slips in sometimes it’s useful, very useful, as

useful almost as your faked Notes.’

Half an hour before the night train was due to leave for the South,

Dawson, very simply but effectively changed in appearance--for Hagan

knew by sight the real Dawson,--led Cary to the middle sleeping-coach

on the train. ‘I have had Hagan put in No. 5,’ he said, ‘and you and

I will take Nos. 4 and 6. No. 5 is an observation berth; there is one

fixed up for us on this sleeping-coach. Come in here.’ He pulled Cary

into No. 4, shut the door, and pointed to a small wooden knob set a few

inches below the luggage rack. ‘If one unscrews that knob one can see

into the next berth, No. 5. No. 6 is fitted in the same way, so that

we can rake No. 5 from both sides. But, mind you, on no account touch

those knobs until the train is moving fast and until you have switched

out the lights. If No. 5 was dark when you opened the peep-hole, a ray

of light from your side would give the show away. And unless there was

a good deal of vibration and rattle in the train you might be heard.

Now cut away to No. 6, fasten the door, and go to bed. I shall sit up

and watch, but there is nothing for you to do.’

Hagan appeared in due course, was shown into No. 5 berth, and the train

started. Cary asked himself whether he should go to bed as advised or

sit up reading. He decided to obey Dawson’s orders, but to take a look

in upon Hagan before settling down for the journey. He switched off his

lights, climbed upon the bed, and carefully unscrewed the little knob

which was like the one shown to him by Dawson. A beam of light stabbed

the darkness of his berth, and putting his eye with some difficulty

to the hole--one’s nose gets so confoundedly in the way--he saw Hagan

comfortably arranging himself for the night. The spy had no suspicion

of his watchers on both sides, for, after settling himself in bed, he

unwrapped a flat parcel, and took out a bundle of blue papers which

Cary at once recognised as the originals of his stolen Notes. Hagan

went through them--he had put his suit-case across his knees to form

a desk--and carefully made marginal jottings. Cary, who had often

tried to write in trains, could not but admire the man’s laborious

patience. He painted his letters and figures over and over again, in

order to secure distinctness, in spite of the swaying of the train, and

frequently stopped to suck the point of his pencil.

‘I suppose,’ thought Cary, ‘that Dawson yonder is just gloating over

his prey, but for my part I feel an utterly contemptible beast. Never

again will I set a trap for even the worst of my fellow-creatures.’ He

put back the knob, went to bed, and passed half the night in extreme

mental discomfort and the other half in snatching brief intervals of

sleep. It was not a pleasant journey.

Dawson did not come out of his berth at Euston until after Hagan had

left the station in a taxicab, much to Cary’s surprise, and then was

quite ready, even anxious, to remain for breakfast at the hotel.

He explained his strange conduct. ‘Two of my men,’ said he, as he

wallowed in tea and fried soles--one cannot get Dover soles in the

weary North--‘who travelled in ordinary compartments, are after Hagan

in two taxis, so that if one is delayed the other will keep touch.

Hagan’s driver also has had a police warning, so that our spy is in a

barbed-wire net. I shall hear before very long all about him.’

Cary and Dawson spent the morning at the hotel with a telephone beside

them; every few minutes the bell would ring, and a whisper of Hagan’s

movements steal over the wires into the ears of the spider Dawson. He

reported progress to Cary with ever-increasing satisfaction.

‘Hagan has applied for and been granted a passport to Holland, and

has booked a passage in the boat which leaves Harwich to-night for

the Hook. We will go with him. The other two spies, with the copies,

haven’t turned up yet, but they are all right. My men will see them

safe across into Dutch territory, and make sure that no blundering

Customs officer interferes with their papers. This time the way of

transgressors shall be very soft. As for Hagan, he is not going to

arrive.’

‘I don’t quite understand why you carry on so long with him,’ said

Cary, who, though tired, could not but feel intense interest in the

perfection of the police system and in the serene confidence of Dawson.

The Yard could, it appeared, do unto the spies precisely what Dawson

chose to direct.

‘Hagan is an American citizen,’ explained Dawson. ‘If he had been a

British subject I would have taken him at Euston--we have full evidence

of the burglary, and of the stolen papers in his suit-case. But as he

is a damned unbenevolent neutral, and the American Government is very

touchy, we must prove his intention to sell the papers to Germany. Then

we can deal with him by secret court-martial, and President Wilson can

go to blazes. The journey to Holland will prove this intention. Hagan

has been most useful to us in Ireland, and now in the North of England

and in Scotland, but he is too enterprising and too daring to be left

any longer on the string. I will draw the ends together at the Hook.’

‘I did not want to go to Holland,’ said Cary to me, when telling his

story. ‘I was utterly sick and disgusted with the whole cold-blooded

game of cat and mouse, but the police needed my evidence about the

Notes and the burglary, and did not intend to let me slip out of their

clutches. Dawson was very civil and pleasant, but I was in fact as

tightly held upon his string as was the wretched Hagan. So I went on to

Holland with that quick-change artist, and watched him come on board

the steamer at Parkeston Quay, dressed as a rather German-looking

commercial traveller, eager for war commissions upon smuggled goods.

This sounds absurd, but his get-up seemed somehow to suggest the idea.

Then I went below. Dawson always kept away from me whenever Hagan might

have seen us together.’

The passage across to Holland was free from incident; there was no

sign that we were at war, and Continental traffic was being carried

serenely on, within easy striking distance of the German submarine base

at Zeebrugge. The steamer had drawn in to the Hook beside the train,

and Hagan was approaching the gangway, suit-case in hand. The man was

on the edge of safety; once upon Dutch soil, Dawson could not have

laid hands upon him. He would have been a neutral citizen in a neutral

country, and no English warrant would run against him. But between

Hagan and the gangway suddenly interposed the tall form of the ship’s

captain; instantly the man was ringed about by officers, and before

he could say a word or move a hand he was gripped hard and led across

the deck to the steamer’s chart-house. Therein sat Dawson, the real,

undisguised Dawson, and beside him sat Richard Cary. Hagan’s face,

which two minutes earlier had been glowing with triumph and with the

anticipation of German gold beyond the dreams of avarice, went white as

chalk. He staggered and gasped as one stabbed to the heart, and dropped

into a chair. His suit-case fell from his relaxed fingers to the floor.

‘Give him a stiff brandy-and-soda,’ directed Dawson, almost kindly, and

when the victim’s colour had ebbed back a little from his overcharged

heart, and he had drunk deep of the friendly cordial, the detective put

him out of pain. The game of cat and mouse was over.

‘It is all up, Hagan,’ said the detective gently. ‘Face the music and

make the best of it, my poor friend. This is Mr. Richard Cary, and you

have not for a moment been out of our sight since you left London for

the north four days ago.’

When I had completed the writing of his story I showed the MS. to

Richard Cary, who was pleased to express a general approval. ‘Not at

all bad, Copplestone,’ said he, ‘not at all bad. You have clothed my

dry bones in real flesh and blood. But you have missed what to me is

the outstanding feature of the whole affair, that which justifies to my

mind the whole rather grubby business. Let me give you two dates. On

May 25 two copies of my faked Notes were shepherded through to Holland

and reached the Germans; on May 31 was fought the Battle of Jutland.

Can the brief space between these dates have been merely an accident?

I cannot believe it. No, I prefer to believe that in my humble way I

induced the German Fleet to issue forth and to risk an action which,

under more favourable conditions for us, would have resulted in their

utter destruction. I may be wrong, but I am happy in retaining my

faith.’

‘What became of Hagan?’ I asked, for I wished to bring the narrative to

a clean artistic finish.

‘I am not sure,’ answered Cary, ‘though I gave evidence as ordered

by the court-martial. But I rather think that I have here Hagan’s

epitaph.’ He took out his pocket-book, and drew forth a slip of paper

upon which was gummed a brief newspaper cutting. This he handed to me,

and I read as follows:

The War Office announces that a

prisoner who was charged with espionage

and recently tried by court-martial at

the Westminster Guildhall was found

guilty and sentenced to death. The

sentence was duly confirmed and carried

out yesterday morning.

_THREE GENERATIONS._

Out in the quiet paddock, with the mellow brick walls screening them

from the common life in Bushey Park, they are browsing gently through

the last days of their existence. It is not so many years since, gay

with trappings, led by a groom apiece to restrain their Hanoverian

tempers, these old cream-coloured horses drew the wonderful glass coach

through the streets of London, haughtily accepting for themselves

the acclamations of the people. At how many pageants, could they but

tell us, have they not assisted? Are they old enough to have drawn

Queen Victoria to her Diamond Jubilee, and did they drag that heavy

gun-carriage with its pathetically small burden through the mourning

streets on a Queen’s last journey? Certainly in their own estimation

they were the central figures on the chilly August day when they

at last carried King Edward to Westminster Abbey amid the joyous

thanksgiving of a whole Empire. Their reminiscences would not probably

take them very far into the present reign. It must be some little time

since the next generation callously ousted them from between the royal

shafts, stripped them once for all of their gay trappings, and set them

on a back shelf of history.

So now they browse and slumber among the buttercups, and perhaps wonder

vaguely at their unshorn and generally disordered condition, and at

their prolonged days of idleness. They know and care nothing about the

war. They are aliens who have no need to be registered, naturalised as

they have been by long generations of royal service. For it is just two

hundred years since the first George, in a spirit of arrogance which,

as a race, they appear to have assimilated, brought their ancestors

from Hanover to draw his royal coach in his adopted country.

They came with those ill-featured ladies who, according to tradition,

gave the name to the _Frog Walk_ outside the Palace walls--yes,

_outside_--and the creams had nothing to do with them. Never, in

the course of their aristocratic history, have they drawn anything

but crowned heads and their most legitimate spouses, and for this

the British nation reveres and respects them. And now these, their

descendants in the paddock, have done with streets and crowds and

uniforms--and even with sovereigns. Sometimes one old fellow will lift

his head at the sound of the children’s cries on the swings in the

Park, and wonder if he is once more being cheered by the populace,

but his dim eyes can only see the chestnuts hanging out their red and

white candles, and a crow laughs at him from the wall. By his side

his comrades, wholly unmoved, with hanging heads and slowly switching

tails, are busy cropping the sweet grass, with no thought beyond it.

Old age does sometimes, in spite of evidence to the contrary, broaden

and mellow the sympathies, and the Cream Colours, who have been above

all things exclusive, have developed a very soft spot in their hearts

for the old bay horse who shares their paddock. Possibly he, who,

whatever he has done in private life, in royal processions has never

aspired beyond princesses, knows how to keep his place. At all events,

when a sudden spurt of renewed activity will carry him at a gallant

pace across the paddock, the august Three will follow him at a feeble

canter and with anxious whinnies, until at last, finding him on the

other side, they will happily nuzzle their noses into his neck, with

every sign of equine affection, which he must accept with mingled pride

and resignation. Is he not the _enfant gâté de la maison_?

Well, their great days are over, but they could have found no more

dignified place of retirement than under the royal shadow of Hampton

Court Palace, the accepted home of retirement and dignity.