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Title: The Burning Spear

Author: John Galsworthy

Release Date: June 14, 2006 [EBook #2905]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by David Widger





THE BURNING SPEAR

by John Galsworthy



Being the Experiences of Mr. John Lavender in the Time of War

Recorded by: A. R. P--M [John Galsworthy]


[NOTE: John Galsworthy said of this work: "'The Burning Spear' was
revenge of the nerves. It was bad enough to have to bear the dreads and
strains and griefs of war." Several years after its first publication he
admitted authorship and it was included in the collected edition of his
works. D.W.]



     "With a heart of furious fancies,
     Whereof I am commander,
     With a burning spear and a horse of air
     In the wilderness I wander;
     With a night of ghosts and shadows
     I summoned am to tourney
     Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end
     For me it is no journey."

             TOM O'BEDLAM




THE BURNING SPEAR




I

THE HERO

In the year ---- there dwelt on Hampstead Heath a small thin gentleman
of fifty-eight, gentle disposition, and independent means, whose wits
had become somewhat addled from reading the writings and speeches of
public men. The castle which, like every Englishman, he inhabited was
embedded in lilac bushes and laburnums, and was attached to another
castle, embedded, in deference to our national dislike of uniformity,
in acacias and laurustinus. Our gentleman, whose name was John Lavender,
had until the days of the Great War passed one of those curious
existences are sometimes to be met with, in doing harm to nobody. He
had been brought up to the Bar, but like most barristers had never
practised, and had spent his time among animals and the wisdom of the
past. At the period in which this record opens he owned a young female
sheep-dog called Blink, with beautiful eyes obscured by hair; and was
attended to by a thin and energetic housekeeper, in his estimation
above all weakness, whose name was Marian Petty, and by her husband, his
chauffeur, whose name was Joe.

It was the ambition of our hero to be, like all public men, without fear
and without reproach. He drank not, abstained from fleshly intercourse,
and habitually spoke the truth. His face was thin, high cheek-boned, and
not unpleasing, with one loose eyebrow over which he had no control; his
eyes, bright and of hazel hue, looked his fellows in the face without
seeing what was in it. Though his moustache was still dark, his thick
waving hair was permanently white, for his study was lined from floor to
ceiling with books, pamphlets, journals, and the recorded utterances
of great mouths. He was of a frugal habit, ate what was put before him
without question, and if asked what he would have, invariably answered:
"What is there?" without listening to the reply. For at mealtimes it was
his custom to read the writings of great men.

"Joe," he would say to his chauffeur, who had a slight limp, a green
wandering eye, and a red face, with a rather curved and rather redder
nose, "You must read this."

And Joe would answer:

"Which one is that, sir?"

"Hummingtop; a great man, I think, Joe."

"A brainy chap, right enough, sir."

"He has done wonders for the country. Listen to this." And Mr. Lavender
would read as follows: "If I had fifty sons I would give them all. If
I had forty daughters they should nurse and scrub and weed and fill
shells; if I had thirty country-houses they should all be hospitals; if
I had twenty pens I would use them all day long; if had ten voices they
should never cease to inspire and aid my country."

"If 'e had nine lives," interrupted Joe, with a certain suddenness,
"'e'd save the lot."

Mr. Lavender lowered the paper.

"I cannot bear cynicism, Joe; there is no quality so unbecoming to a
gentleman."

"Me and 'im don't put in for that, sir."

"Joe, Mr. Lavender would say you are, incorrigible...."

Our gentleman, in common with all worthy of the name, had a bank-book,
which, in hopes that it would disclose an unsuspected balance, he would
have "made up" every time he read an utterance exhorting people to
invest and save their country.

One morning at the end of May, finding there was none, he called in his
housekeeper and said:

"Mrs. Petty, we are spending too much; we have again been exhorted to
save. Listen! 'Every penny diverted from prosecution of the war is one
more spent in the interests of the enemies of mankind. No patriotic
person, I am confident; will spend upon him or herself a stiver which
could be devoted to the noble ends so near to all our hearts. Let us
make every spare copper into bullets to strengthen the sinews of war!' A
great speech. What can we do without?"

"The newspapers, sir."

"Don't be foolish, Mrs. Petty. From what else could we draw our
inspiration and comfort in these terrible days?"

Mrs. Petty sniffed. "Well, you can't eat less than you do," she said;
"but you might stop feedin' Blink out of your rations--that I do think."

"I have not found that forbidden as yet in any public utterance,"
returned Mr. Lavender; "but when the Earl of Betternot tells us to stop,
I shall follow his example, you may depend on that. The country comes
before everything." Mrs. Petty tossed her head and murmured darkly--

"Do you suppose he's got an example, Sir?"

"Mrs. Petty," replied Mr. Lavender, "that is quite unworthy of you. But,
tell me, what can we do without?"

"I could do without Joe," responded Mrs. Petty, "now that you're not
using him as chauffeur."

"Please be serious. Joe is an institution; besides, I am thinking of
offering myself to the Government as a speaker now that we may use gas."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Petty.

"I am going down about it to-morrow."

"Indeed, sir!"

"I feel my energies are not fully employed."

"No, sir?"

"By the way, there was a wonderful leader on potatoes yesterday. We must
dig up the garden. Do you know what the subsoil is?"

"Brickbats and dead cats, I expect, sir."

"Ah! We shall soon improve that. Every inch of land reclaimed is a nail
in the coffin of our common enemies."

And going over to a bookcase, Mr. Lavender took out the third from the
top of a pile of newspapers. "Listen!" he said. "'The problem before
us is the extraction of every potential ounce of food. No half measures
must content us. Potatoes! Potatoes! No matter how, where, when the
prime national necessity is now the growth of potatoes. All Britons
should join in raising a plant which may be our very salvation.

"Fudge!" murmured Mrs. Petty.

Mr. Lavender read on, and his eyes glowed.

"Ah!" he thought, "I, too, can do my bit to save England.... It needs
but the spark to burn away the dross of this terrible horse-sense which
keeps the country back.

"Mrs. Petty!" But Mrs. Petty was already not.

   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The grass never grew under the feet of Mr. Lavender, No sooner had he
formed his sudden resolve than he wrote to what he conceived to be the
proper quarter, and receiving no reply, went down to the centre of
the official world. It was at time of change and no small national
excitement; brooms were sweeping clean, and new offices had arisen
everywhere. Mr. Lavender passed bewildered among large stone buildings
and small wooden buildings, not knowing where to go. He had bought no
clothes since the beginning of the war, except the various Volunteer
uniforms which the exigencies of a shifting situation had forced the
authorities to withdraw from time to time; and his, small shrunken
figure struck somewhat vividly on the eye, with elbows and knees shining
in the summer sunlight. Stopping at last before the only object which
seemed unchanged, he said:

"Can you tell me where the Ministry is?"

The officer looked down at him.

"What for?"

"For speaking about the country."

"Ministry of Propagation? First on the right, second door on the left."

"Thank you. The Police are wonderful."

"None of that," said the officer coldly.

"I only said you were wonderful."

"I 'eard you."

"But you are. I don't know what the country would do without you.
Your solid qualities, your imperturbable bonhomie, your truly British
tenderness towards----"

"Pass away!" said the officer.

"I am only repeating what we all say of you," rejoined Mr. Lavender
reproachfully.

"Did you 'ear me say 'Move on,'" said the officer; "or must I make you
an example?"

"YOU are the example," said Mr. Lavender warmly.

"Any more names," returned the officer, "and I take you to the station."
And he moved out into the traffic. Puzzled by his unfriendliness Mr.
Lavender resumed his search, and, arriving at the door indicated, went
in. A dark, dusty, deserted corridor led him nowhere, till he came on a
little girl in a brown frock, with her hair down her back.

"Can you tell me, little one----" he said, laying his hand on her head.

"Chuck it!" said the little girl.

"No, no!" responded Mr. Lavender, deeply hurt. "Can you tell me where I
can find the Minister?"

"'Ave you an appointment?

"No; but I wrote to him. He should expect me."

"Wot nyme?"

"John Lavender. Here is my card."

"I'll tyke it in. Wyte 'ere!"

"Wonderful!" mused Mr. Lavender; "the patriotic impulse already stirring
in these little hearts! What was the stanza of that patriotic poet?

     "'Lives not a babe who shall not feel the pulse
     Of Britain's need beat wild in Britain's wrist.
     And, sacrificial, in the world's convulse
     Put up its lips to be by Britain kissed.'

"So young to bring their lives to the service of the country!"

"Come on," said the little girl, reappearing suddenly; "e'll see you."

Mr. Lavender entered a room which had a considerable resemblance to the
office of a lawyer save for the absence of tomes. It seemed furnished
almost exclusively by the Minister, who sat with knees crossed, in a
pair of large round tortoiseshell spectacles, which did not, however,
veil the keenness of his eyes. He was a man with close cropped grey
hair, a broad, yellow, clean-shaven face, and thrusting grey eyes.

"Mr. Lavender," he said, in a raw, forcible voice; "sit down, will you?"

"I wrote to you," began our hero, "expressing the wish to offer myself
as a speaker."

"Ah!" said the Minister. "Let's see--Lavender, Lavender. Here's your
letter." And extracting a letter from a file he read it, avoiding
with difficulty his tortoise-shell spectacles. "You want to stump the
country? M.A., Barrister, and Fellow of the Zoological. Are you a good
speaker?"

"If zeal---" began Mr. Lavender.

"That's it; spark! We're out to win this war, sir."

"Quite so," began Mr. Lavender. "If devotion----"

"You'll have to use gas," said the Minister; "and we don't pay."

"Pay!" cried Mr. Lavender with horror; "no, indeed!"

The Minister bent on him a shrewd glance.

"What's your line? Anything particular, or just general patriotism? I
recommend that; but you'll have to put some punch into it, you know."

"I have studied all the great orators of the war, sir," said Mr.
Lavender, "and am familiar with all the great writers on, it. I should
form myself on them; and if enthusiasm----"

"Quite!" said the Minister. "If you want any atrocities we can give you
them. No facts and no figures; just general pat."

"I shall endeavour----" began Mr. Lavender.

"Well, good-bye," said the Minister, rising. "When do you start?"

Mr. Lavender rose too. "To-morrow," he said, "if I can get inflated."

The Minister rang a bell.

"You're on your own, mind," he said. "No facts; what they want is
ginger. Yes, Mr. Japes?"

And seeing that the Minister was looking over his tortoiseshell.
spectacles at somebody behind him, Mr. Lavender turned and went out. In
the corridor he thought, "What terseness! How different from the days
when Dickens wrote his 'Circumlocution Office'! Punch!" And opening
the wrong door, he found himself in the presence of six little girls
in brown frocks, sitting against the walls with their thumbs in their
mouths.

"Oh!" he said, "I'm afraid I've lost my way."

The eldest of the little girls withdrew a thumb.

"What d'yer want?"

"The door," said Mr. Lavender.

"Second on the right."

"Goodbye," said Mr. Lavender.

The little girls did not answer. And he went out thinking, "These
children are really wonderful! What devotion one sees! And yet the
country is not yet fully roused!"




II

THE VALET

Joe Petty stood contemplating the car which, purchased some fifteen
years before had not been used since the war began. Birds had nested in
its hair. It smelled of mould inside; it creaked from rust. "The Guv'nor
must be cracked," he thought, "to think we can get anywhere in this
old geyser. Well, well, it's summer; if we break down it won't break my
'eart. Government job--better than diggin' or drillin'. Good old
Guv!" So musing, he lit his pipe and examined the recesses beneath the
driver's seat. "A bottle or three," he thought, "in case our patriotism
should get us stuck a bit off the beaten; a loaf or two, some 'oney in a
pot, and a good old 'am.

"A life on the rollin' road----' 'Ow they can give 'im the job I can't
think!" His soliloquy was here interrupted by the approach of his wife,
bearing a valise.

"Don't you wish you was comin', old girl?" he remarked to her lightly.

"I do not; I'm glad to be shut of you. Keep his feet dry. What have you
got under there?"

Joe Petty winked.

"What a lumbering great thing it looks!" said Mrs. Petty, gazing
upwards.

"Ah!" returned her husband thoughtfully, we'll 'ave the population round
us without advertisement. And taking the heads of two small boys who had
come up, he knocked them together in an absent-minded fashion.

"Well," said Mrs. Petty, "I can't waste time. Here's his extra set of
teeth. Don't lose them. Have you got your own toothbrush? Use it, and
behave yourself. Let me have a line. And don't let him get excited." She
tapped her forehead.

"Go away, you boys; shoo!"

The boys, now six in number, raised a slight cheer; for at that moment
Mr. Lavender, in a broad-brimmed grey felt hat and a holland dust-coat,
came out through his garden-gate carrying a pile of newspapers and
pamphlets so large that his feet, legs, and hat alone were visible.

"Open the door, Joe!" he said, and stumbled into the body of the
vehicle. A shrill cheer rose from the eight boys, who could see him
through the further window. Taking this for an augury Of success, Mr.
Lavender removed his hat, and putting his head through the window, thus
addressed the ten boys:

"I thank you. The occasion is one which I shall ever remember. The
Government has charged me with the great task of rousing our country in
days which demand of each of us the utmost exertions. I am proud to
feel that I have here, on the very threshold of my task, an audience of
bright young spirits, each one of whom in this democratic country has in
him perhaps the makings of a General or even of a Prime Minister. Let it
be your earnest endeavour, boys----"

At this moment a piece of indiarubber rebounded from Mr. Lavender's
forehead, and he recoiled into the body of the car.

"Are you right, sir?" said Joe, looking in; and without waiting for
reply he started the engine. The car moved out amid a volley of stones,
balls, cheers, and other missiles from the fifteen boys who pursued it
with frenzy. Swaying slightly from side to side, with billowing bag, it
gathered speed, and, turning a corner, took road for the country. Mr.
Lavender, somewhat dazed, for the indiarubber had been hard, sat gazing
through the little back window at the great city he was leaving. His
lips moved, expressing unconsciously the sentiments of innumerable Lord
Mayors: "Greatest City in the world, Queen of Commerce, whose full heart
I can still hear beating behind me, in mingled pride and regret I leave
you. With the most sacred gratitude I lay down my office. I go to other
work, whose----Joe!"

"Sir?"

"Do you see that?"

"I see your 'ead, that's all, sir."

"We seem to be followed by a little column of dust, which keeps ever at
the same distance in the middle of the road. Do you think it can be an
augury."

"No; I should think it's a dog."

"In that case, hold hard!" said Mr. Lavender, who had a weakness for
dog's. Joe slackened the car's pace, and leaned his head round the
corner. The column of dust approached rapidly.

"It is a dog," said Mr. Lavender, "it's Blink."

The female sheep-dog, almost flat with the ground from speed, emerged
from the dust, wild with hair and anxiety, white on the cheeks and chest
and top of the head, and grey in the body and the very little tail, and
passed them like a streak of lightning.

"Get on!" cried Mr. Lavender, excited; "follow her she's trying to catch
us up!"

Joe urged on the car, which responded gallantly, swaying from side to
side, while the gas-bag bellied and shook; but the faster it went the
faster the sheep-dog flew in front of it.

"This is dreadful!" said Mr. Lavender in anguish, leaning far out.
"Blink! Blink!"

His cries were drowned in the roar of the car.

"Damn the brute!" muttered Joe, "at this rate she'll be over the edge in
'alf a mo'. Wherever does she think we are?"

"Blink! Blink!" wailed Mr. Lavender. "Get on, Joe, get on! She's gaining
on us!"

"Well I never see anything like this," said Joe, "chasin' wot's chasing
you! Hi! Hi!"

Urged on by their shouts and the noise of the pursuing car, the poor dog
redoubled her efforts to rejoin her master, and Mr. Lavender, Joe, and
the car, which had begun to emit the most lamentable creaks and odours,
redoubled theirs.

"I shall bust her up," said Joe.

"I care not!" cried Mr. Lavender. "I must recover the dog."

They flashed through the outskirts of the Garden City. "Stop her, stop
her!" called Mr. Lavender to such of the astonished inhabitants as they
had already left behind. "This is a nightmare, Joe!"

"'It's a blinkin' day-dream," returned Joe, forcing the car to an
expiring spurt.

"If she gets to that 'ill before we ketch 'er, we're done; the old
geyser can't 'alf crawl up 'ills."

"We're gaining," shrieked Mr. Lavender; "I can see her tongue."

As though it heard his voice, the car leaped forward and stopped with a
sudden and most formidable jerk; the door burst open, and Mr. Lavender
fell out upon his sheep-dog.

Fortunately they were in the only bed of nettles in that part of the
world, and its softness and that of Blink assuaged the severity of his
fall, yet it was some minutes before he regained the full measure of his
faculties. He came to himself sitting on a milestone, with his dog on
her hind legs between his knees, licking his face clean, and panting
down his throat.

"Joe," he said; "where are you?"

The voice of Joe replied from underneath the car: "Here sir. She's
popped."

"Do you mean that our journey is arrested?"

"Ah! We're in irons. You may as well walk 'ome, sir. It ain't two miles.

"No! no!" said Mr. Lavender. "We passed the Garden City a little way
back; I could go and hold a meeting. How long will you be?"

"A day or two," said Joe.

Mr. Lavender sighed, and at this manifestation of his grief his
sheep-dog redoubled her efforts to comfort him. "Nothing becomes one
more than the practice of philosophy," he thought. "I always admired
those great public men who in moments of national peril can still dine
with a good appetite. We will sit in the car a little, for I have rather
a pain, and think over a speech." So musing he mounted the car, followed
by his dog, and sat down in considerable discomfort.

"What subject can I choose for a Garden City?" he thought, and
remembering that he had with him the speech of a bishop on the subject
of babies, he dived into his bundle of literature, and extracting a
pamphlet began to con its periods. A sharp blow from a hammer on the
bottom of the car just below where Blink was sitting caused him to pause
and the dog to rise and examine her tiny tail.

"Curious," thought Mr. Lavender dreamily, "how Joe always does the right
thing in the wrong place. He is very English." The hammering continued,
and the dog, who traced it to the omnipotence of her master, got up on
the seat where she could lick his face. Mr. Lavender was compelled to
stop.

"Joe," he said, leaning out and down; "must you?"

The face of Joe, very red, leaned out and up. "What's the matter now,
sir?"

"I am preparing a speech; must you hammer?"

"No," returned Joe, "I needn't."

"I don't wish you to waste your time," said Mr Lavender.

"Don't worry about that, sir," replied Joe; "there's plenty to do."

"In that case I shall be glad to finish my speech."

Mr. Lavender resumed his seat and Blink her position on the floor, with
her head on his feet. The sound of his voice soon rose again in the car
like the buzzing of large flies. "'If we are to win this war we must
have an ever-increasing population. In town and countryside, in
the palace and the slum, above all in the Garden City, we must have
babies.'"

Here Blink, who had been regarding him with lustrous eyes, leaped on
to his knees and licked his mouth. Again Mr. Lavender was compelled to
stop.

"Down, Blink, down! I am not speaking to you. 'The future of our country
depends on the little citizens born now. I especially appeal to women.
It is to them we must look----'"

"Will you 'ave a glass, sir?"

Mr. Lavender saw before him a tumbler containing a yellow fluid.

"Joe," he said sadly, "you know my rule----"

"'Ere's the exception, sir."

Mr. Lavender sighed. "No, no; I must practise what I preach. I shall
soon be rousing the people on the liquor question, too."

"Well, 'ere's luck," said Joe, draining the glass. "Will you 'ave a
slice of 'am?"

"That would not be amiss," said Mr. Lavender, taking Joe's knife with
the slice of ham upon its point. "'It is to them that we must look,'"
he resumed, "'to rejuvenate the Empire and make good the losses in the
firing-line.'" And he raised the knife to his mouth. No result followed,
while Blink wriggled on her base and licked her lips.

"Blink!" said Mr. Lavender reproachfully. "Joe!"

"Sir!"

"When you've finished your lunch and repaired the car you will find me
in the Town Hall or market-place. Take care of Blink. I'll tie her up.
Have you some string?"

Having secured his dog to the handle of the door and disregarded the
intensity of her gaze, Mr. Lavender walked back towards the Garden City
with a pamphlet in one hand and a crutch-handled stick in the other.
Restoring the ham to its nest behind his feet, Joe finished the bottle
of Bass. "This is a bit of all right!" he thought dreamily. "Lie down,
you bitch! Quiet! How can I get my nap while you make that row? Lie
down! That's better."

Blink was silent, gnawing at her string. The smile deepened on Joe's
face, his head fell a little one side his mouth fell open a fly flew
into it.

"Ah!" he thought, spitting it out; "dog's quiet now." He slept.




III

MR. LAVENDER ADDRESSES A CROWD OF HUNS

"'Give them ginger!'" thought Mr. Lavender, approaching the first
houses. "My first task, however, will be to collect them."

"Can you tell me," he said to a dustman, "where the market-place is?"

"Ain't none."

"The Town Hall, then?"

"Likewise."

"What place is there, then," said Mr. Lavender, "where people
congregate?"

"They don't."

"Do they never hold public meetings here?"

"Ah!" said the dustman mysteriously.

"I wish to address them on the subject of babies."

"Bill! Gent abaht babies. Where'd he better go?"

The man addressed, however, who carried a bag of tools, did not stop.

"You,'ear?" said the dustman, and urging his horse, passed on.

"How rude!" thought Mr. Lavender. Something cold and wet was pressed
against his hand, he felt a turmoil, and saw Blink moving round and
round him, curved like a horseshoe, with a bit of string dangling from
her white neck. At that moment of discouragement the sight of one who
believed in him gave Mr. Lavender nothing but pleasure. "How wonderful
dogs are!" he murmured. The sheep-dog responded by bounds and
ear-splitting barks, so that two boys and a little girl wheeling a
perambulator stopped to look and listen.

"She is like Mercury," thought Mr. Lavender; and taking advantage of
her interest in his hat, which she had knocked off in her effusions, he
placed his hand on her head and crumpled her ear. The dog passed into
an hypnotic trance, broken by soft grumblings of pleasure. "The most
beautiful eyes in the world!" thought Mr. Lavender, replacing his hat;
"the innocence and goodness of her face are entrancing."

In his long holland coat, with his wide-brimmed felt hat all dusty,
and the crutch-handled stick in his hand, he had already arrested
the attention of five boys, the little girl with the perambulator, a
postman, a maid-servant, and three old ladies.

"What a beautiful dog yours is!" said one of the old ladies; "dear
creature! Are you a shepherd?"

Mr. Lavender removed his hat.

"No, madam," he said; "a public speaker."

"How foolish of me!" replied the old lady.

"Not at all, madam; the folly is mine." And Mr. Lavender bowed. "I have
come here to give an address on babies."

The old lady looked at him shrewdly, and, saying something in a low
voice to her companions, passed on, to halt again a little way off.

In the meantime the rumour that there was a horse down in the Clemenceau
Road had spread rapidly, and more boys, several little girls, and
three soldiers in blue, with red ties, had joined the group round Mr.
Lavender, to whom there seemed something more than providential in this
rapid assemblage. Looking round him for a platform from which to address
them, he saw nothing but the low wall of the little villa garden outside
which he was standing. Mounting on this, therefore, and firmly grasping
the branch of a young acacia tree to steady himself, he stood upright,
while Blink, on her hind legs, scratched at the wall, whining and
sniffing his feet.

Encouraged by the low murmur of astonishment, which swelled idly into a
shrill cheer, Mr. Lavender removed his hat, and spoke as follows:

"Fellow Britons, at this crisis in the history of our country I make no
apology for addressing myself to the gathering I see around me. Here, in
the cradle of patriotism and the very heart of Movements, I may safely
assume that you are aware of the importance of Man-power. At a moment
when every man of a certain age and over is wanted at the front, and
every woman of marriageable years is needed in hospitals, in factories,
on the land, or where not, we see as never before the paramount
necessity of mobilizing the forces racial progress and increasing the
numbers of our population. Not a man, not a woman can be spared from the
great task in which they are now engaged, of defeating the common enemy.
Side by side with our American cousins, with la belle France, and the
Queen of the Adriatic, we are fighting to avert the greatest menace
which ever threatened civilization. Our cruel enemies are strong and
ruthless. While I have any say in this matter, no man or woman shall be
withdrawn from the sacred cause of victory; better they should die to
the last unit than that we should take our hands from the plough. But,
ladies and gentlemen, we must never forget that in the place of every
one who dies we must put two. Do not be content with ordinary measures;
these are no piping times of peace. Never was there in the history
of this country such a crying need for--for twins, if I may put it
picturesquely. In each family, in each home where there are no families,
let there be two babies where there was one, for thus only can we
triumph over the devastation of this war." At this moment the now
considerable audience, which had hitherto been silent, broke into a
shrill "'Ear, 'ear!" and Mr. Lavender, taking his hand from the acacia
branch to silence them, fell off the wall into the garden. Seeing her
master thus vanish, Blink, who had never ceased to whine and sniff his
toes, leaped over and landed on his chest. Rising with difficulty, Mr.
Lavender found himself in front of an elderly man with a commercial cast
of countenance, who said: "You're trespassing!"

"I am aware of it," returned Mr. Lavender and I beg your pardon. It was
quite inadvertent, however.

"Rubbish!" said the man.

"I fell off the wall."

"Whose wall do you think it is?" said the man.

"How should I know?" said Mr. Lavender; "I am a stranger."

"Out you go," said the man, applying his boot to Blink.

Mr. Lavender's eyes blazed. "You may insult me," he said, "but you must
not kick my dog, or I shall do you an injury."

"Try!" said the man.

"I will," responded Mr. Lavender, taking off his holland coat.

To what extremities he would have proceeded cannot be told, for at this
moment the old lady who had taken him for a shepherd appeared on the
path, tapping her forehead with finger.

"All right!" said the owner of the garden, "take him away."

The old lady laced her hand within Mr. Lavender's arm. "Come with me,
sir," she said, "and your nice doggie."

Mr. Lavender, whose politeness to ladies was invariable, bowed, and
resuming his coat accompanied her through the 'garden gate. "He kicked
my dog," he said; "no action could be more despicable."

"Yes, yes," said the old lady soothingly. "Poor doggie!"

The crowd, who had hoped for better things, here gave vent to a
prolonged jeer.

"Stop!" said Mr. Lavender; "I am going to take a collection.

"There, there!" said the old lady. "Poor man!"

"I don't know what you mean by that, madam," said Mr. Lavender,
whose spirit was roused; "I shall certainly take a collection, in
the interests of our population." So saying he removed his hat, and
disengaging his arm from the old lady's hand, moved out into the throng,
extending the hat. A boy took it from him at once, and placing it on
his head, ran off, pursued by Blink, who, by barking and jumping up
increased the boy's speed to one of which he could never have thought
himself capable. Mr. Lavender followed, calling out "Blink!" at the top
of his voice. The crowd followed Mr. Lavender, and the old lady followed
crowd. Thus they proceeded until the boy, arriving at a small piece of
communal water, flung the hat into the middle of it, and, scaling the
wall, made a strategic detour and became a disinterested spectator among
the crowd. The hat, after skimming the surface of the pond, settled like
a water-lily, crown downwards, while Blink, perceiving in all this the
hand of her master, stood barking at it wildly. Mr. Lavender arrived at
the edge of the pond slightly in advance of the crowd.

"Good Blink!" he said. "Fetch it! Good Blink!"

Blink looked up into his face, and, with the acumen for which her breed
is noted, perceiving he desired her to enter the water backed away from
it.

"She is not a water dog," explained Mr. Lavender to the three soldiers
in blue clothes.

"Good dog; fetch it!" Blink backed into the soldiers, who, bending down,
took her by head tail, threw her into the pond, and encouraged her
on with small stones pitched at the hat. Having taken the plunge, the
intelligent animal waded boldly to the hat, and endeavoured by barking
and making little rushes at it with her nose, to induce it to return to
shore.

"She thinks it's a sheep," said Mr. Lavender; "a striking instance of
hereditary instinct."

Blink, unable to persuade the hat, mounted it with her fore-paws and
trod it under.

"Ooray!" shouted the crowd.

"Give us a shilling, guv'nor, an' I'll get it for yer?"

"Thank you, my boy," said Mr. Lavender, producing a shilling.

The boy--the same boy who had thrown it in--stepped into the water and
waded towards the hat. But as he approached, Blink interposed between
him and the hat, growling and showing her teeth.

"Does she bite?" yelled the boy.

"Only strangers," cried Mr. Lavender.

Excited by her master's appeal, Blink seized the jacket of the boy, who
made for the shore, while the hat rested in the centre of the pond,
the cynosure of the stones with which the soldiers were endeavouring to
drive it towards the bank. By this, time the old lady had rejoined Mr.
Lavender.

"Your nice hat she murmured.

"I thank you for your sympathy, madam," Lavender, running his hand
through his hair; "in moments like these one realizes the deep humanity
of the British people. I really believe that in no other race could you
find such universal interest and anxiety to recover a hat. Say what you
will, we are a great nation, who only, need rousing to show our best
qualities. Do you remember the words of the editor: 'In the spavined
and spatch-cocked ruin to which our inhuman enemies have reduced
civilization, we of the island shine with undimmed effulgence in all
those qualities which mark man out from the ravening beast'?"

"But how are you going to get your hat?" asked the old lady.

"I know not," returned Mr. Lavender, still under the influence of the
sentiment he had quoted; "but if I had fifteen hats I would take them
all off to the virtues which have been ascribed to the British people by
all those great men who have written and spoken since the war began."

"Yes," said the old lady soothingly. "But, I think you had better come
under my sunshade. The sun is very strong."

"Madam," said Mr. Lavender, "you are very good, but your sunshade is too
small. To deprive you of even an inch of its shade would be unworthy
of anyone in public life." So saying, he recoiled from the proffered
sunshade into the pond, which he had forgotten was behind him.

"Oh, dear!" said the old lady; "now you've got your feet wet!"

"It is nothing," responded Mr. Lavender gallantly. And seeing that he
was already wet, he rolled up his trousers, and holding up the tails
of his holland coat, turned round and proceeded towards his hat, to the
frantic delight of the crowd.

"The war is a lesson to us to make little of little things," he thought,
securing the hat and wringing it out. "My feet are wet, but--how much
wetter they would be in the trenches, if feet can be wetter than wet
through," he mused with some exactitude. "Down, Blink, down!" For Blink
was plastering him with the water-marks of joy and anxiety. "Nothing
is quite so beautiful as the devotion of one's own dog," thought
Mr. Lavender, resuming the hat, and returning towards the shore. The
by-now-considerable throng were watching him with every mark of acute
enjoyment; and the moment appeared to Mr. Lavender auspicious for
addressing them. Without, therefore, emerging from the pond, which he
took for his, platform, he spoke as follows:

"Circumstances over which I have no control have given me the advantage
of your presence in numbers which do credit to the heart of the nation
to which we all belong. In the midst of the greatest war which ever
threatened the principle of Liberty, I rejoice to see so many people
able to follow the free and spontaneous impulses of their inmost beings.
For, while we must remember that our every hour is at the disposal of
our country, we must not forget the maxim of our fathers: 'Britons
never will be slaves.' Only by preserving the freedom of individual
conscience, and at the same time surrendering it whole-heartedly to
every which the State makes on us, can we hope defeat the machinations
of the arch enemies of mankind."

At this moment a little stone hit him sharply on the hand.

"Who threw that stone?" said Mr. Lavender. "Let him stand out."

The culprit, no other indeed than he who had thrown the hat in, and not
fetched it out for a shilling, thus menaced with discovery made use of a
masterly device, and called out loudly:

"Pro-German!"

Such was the instinctive patriotism of the crowd that the cry was
taken up in several quarters; and for the moment Mr. Lavender remained
speechless from astonishment. The cries of "Pro-German!" increased in
volume, and a stone hitting her on the nose caused Blink to utter a
yelp; Mr. Lavender's eyes blazed.

"Huns!" he cried; "Huns! I am coming out."

With this prodigious threat he emerged from the pond at the very moment
that a car scattered the throng, and a well-known voice said:

"Well, sir, you 'ave been goin' it!"

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, "don't speak to me!"

"Get in."

"Never!"

"Pro-Germans!" yelled the crowd.

"Get in!" repeated Joe.

And seizing Mr. Lavender as if collaring him at football, he knocked
off his hat, propelled him into the car, banged the door, mounted, and
started at full speed, with Blink leaping and barking in front of them.

Debouching from Piave Parade into Bottomley Lane he drove up it till the
crowd was but a memory before he stopped to examine the condition
his master. Mr. Lavender was hanging out of window, looking back, and
shivering violently.

"Well, sir," said Joe. "I don't think!"

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender that crowd ought not to be at large. They were
manifestly Huns.

"The speakin's been a bit too much for you, sir," said Joe. "But you've
got it off your chest, anyway."

Mr. Lavender regarded him for a moment in silence; then putting his hand
to his throat, said hoarsely:

"No, on my chest, I think, Joe. All public speakers do. It is
inseparable from that great calling."

"'Alf a mo'!" grunted Joe, diving into the recesses beneath the
driving-seat. "'Ere, swig that off, sir."

Mr. Lavender raised the tumbler of fluid to his mouth, and drank it
off; only from the dregs left on his moustache did he perceive that it
smelled of rum and honey.

"Joe," he said reproachfully, "you have made me break my pledge."

Joe smiled. "Well, what are they for, sir? You'll sleep at 'ome
to-night."

"Never," said Mr. Lavender. "I shall sleep at High Barnet; I must
address them there tomorrow on abstinence during the war."

"As you please, sir. But try and 'ave a nap while we go along." And
lifting Blink into the car, where she lay drenched and exhausted by
excitement, with the petal of a purple flower clinging to her black
nose, he mounted to his seat and drove off. Mr. Lavender, for years
unaccustomed to spirituous liquor, of which he had swallowed nearly
half a pint neat, passed rapidly into a state of coma. Nor did he fully
regain consciousness till he awoke in bed the next morning.




IV

INTO THE DANGERS OF A PUBLIC LIFE

"At what time is my meeting?" thought Mr. Lavender vaguely, gazing at
the light filtering through the Venetian blind. "Blink!"

His dog, who was lying beside his bed gnawing a bone which with some
presence of mind she had brought in, raised herself and regarded him
with the innocence of her species. "She has an air of divine madness,"
thought Mr. Lavender, "which is very pleasing to me. I have a terrible
headache." And seeing a bellrope near his hand he pulled it.

A voice said: "Yes, sir."

"I wish to see my servant, Joe Petty," said Lavender. "I shall not
require any breakfast thank you. What is the population of High Barnet?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, sir," answered the
voice, which seemed to be that of his housekeeper; "but you can't see
Joe; he's gone out with a flea in his ear. The idea of his letting you
get your feet wet like that!

"How is this?" said Mr. Lavender. "I thought you were the chambermaid of
the inn at High Barnet?"

"No, indeed," said Mrs. Petty soothingly, placing a thermometer in his
mouth. "Smoke that a minute, sir. Oh! look at what this dog's brought
in! Fie!" And taking the bone between thumb and finger she cast it out
of the window; while Blink, aware that she was considered in the wrong,
and convinced that she was in the right, spread out her left paw, laid
her head on her right paw, and pressed her chin hard against it. Mrs.
Petty, returning from the window, stood above her master, who lay gazing
up with the thermometer jutting out through the middle of his moustache.

"I thought so!" she said, removing it; "a hundred and one. No getting up
for you, sir! That Joe!"

"Mrs. Petty," said Mr. Lavender rather feebly, for his head pained him
excessively, "bring me the morning papers."

"No, sir. The thermometer bursts at an an' ten. I'll bring you the
doctor."

Mr. Lavender was about to utter a protest when he reflected that all
public men had doctors.

"About the bulletin?" he said faintly.

"What?" ejaculated Mrs. Petty, whose face seemed to Mr. Lavender to
have become all cheekbones, eyes, and shadows. Joe never said a about a
bullet. Where? and however did you get it in?

"I did not say 'bullet in'," murmured Mr. Lavender closing his eyes! "I
said bulletin. They have it."

At this mysterious sentence Mrs. Petty lifted her hands, and muttering
the word "Ravin'!" hastened from the room. No sooner had she gone,
however, than Blink, whose memory was perfect, rose, and going to the
window placed her forepaws on the sill. Seeing her bone shining on the
lawn below, with that disregard of worldly consequence which she shared
with all fine characters, she leaped through. The rattle of the Venetian
blind disturbed Mr. Lavender from the lethargy to which he had reverted.
"Mr. John Lavender passed a good night," he thought, "but his condition
is still critical." And in his disordered imagination he seemed to see
people outside Tube stations, standing stock-still in the middle of the
traffic, reading that bulletin in the evening papers. "Let me see," he
mused, "how will they run?" To-morrow I shall be better, but not yet
able to leave my bed; the day after to-morrow I shall have a slight
relapse, and my condition will still give cause for anxiety; on the day
following--What is that noise. For a sound like the whiffling of a wind
through dry sticks combined with the creaking of a saw had, impinged on
his senses. It was succeeded by scratching. "Blink!" said Mr. Lavender.
A heartrending whine came from outside the door. Mr. Lavender rose and
opened it. His dog came in carrying her bone, and putting it down by the
bed divided her attention between it and her master's legs, revealed by
the nightshirt which, in deference to the great Disraeli, he had never
abandoned in favour of pyjamas. Having achieved so erect a posture
Mr. Lavender, whose heated imagination had now carried him to the
convalescent stage of his indisposition, felt that a change of air would
do him good, and going to the window, leaned out above a lilac-tree.

"Mr. John Lavender," he murmured, "has gone to his seat to recuperate
before resuming his public duties."

While he stood there his attention was distracted by a tall young lady
of fine build and joyous colour, who was watering some sweet-peas in the
garden of the adjoining castle: Naturally delicate, Mr. Lavender at
once sought a jacket, and, having put it on, resumed his position at the
window. He had not watched her more than two minutes before he saw that
she was cultivating soil, and, filled with admiration, he leaned still
further out, and said:

"My dear young madam, you are doing a great work."

Thus addressed, the young lady, who had those roving grey eyes which see
everything and betoken a large nature not devoid of merry genius, looked
up and smiled.

"Believe me," continued Mr. Lavender, "no task in these days is so
important as the cultivation of the soil; now that we are fighting to
the last man and the last dollar every woman and child in the islands
should put their hands to the plough. And at that word his vision became
feverishly enlarged, so that he seemed to see not merely the young lady,
but quantities of young ladies, filling the whole garden.

"This," he went on, raising his voice, "is the psychological moment, the
turning-point in the history of these islands. The defeat of our common
enemies imposes on us the sacred duty of feeding ourselves once more.
'There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads
on to----Oh!" For in his desire to stir his audience, Mr. Lavender had
reached out too far, and losing foothold on his polished bedroom floor,
was slipping down into the lilac-bush. He was arrested by a jerk from
behind; where Blink, moved by this sudden elopement of her master, had
seized him by the nightshirt tails, and was staying his descent.

"Is anything up?" said the young lady.

"I have lost my balance," thickly answered Mr. Lavender, whose blood was
running to his head, which was now lower than his feet. "Fortunately, my
dog seems to be holding me from behind. But if someone could assist her
it would be an advantage, for I fear that I am slipping."

"Hold on!" cried the young lady. And breaking through the low privet
hedge which separated the domains, she vanished beneath him with a low
gurgling sound.

Mr. Lavender, who dared not speak again for fear that Blink, hearing
his voice, might let go to answer, remained suspended, torn with anxiety
about his costume. "If she comes in," he thought, "I shall die from
shame. And if she doesn't, I shall die from a broken neck. What a
dreadful alternative!" And he firmly grasped the most substantial
lilac-boughs within his reach, listening with the ears of a hare for
any sound within the room, in which he no longer was to any appreciable
extent. Then the thought of what a public man should feel in his
position came to his rescue. "We die but once," he mused; "rather than
shock that charming lady let me seek oblivion." And the words of his
obituary notice at once began to dance before his eyes. "This great
public servant honoured his country no less in his death than in his
life." Then striking out vigorously with his feet he launched his
body forward. The words "My goodness!" resounded above him, as all
restraining influence was suddenly relaxed; Mr. Lavender slid into the
lilac-bush, turned heels over head, and fell bump on the ground. He lay
there at full, length, conscious of everything, and especially of the
faces of Blink and the young lady looking down on him from the window.

"Are you hurt?" she called.

"No," said Mr. Lavender, "that is--er--yes," he added, ever scrupulously
exact.

"I'm coming down," said the young lady.

"Don't move!"

With a great effort Mr. Lavender arranged his costume, and closed his
eyes. "How many lie like this, staring at the blue heavens!" he thought.

"Where has it got you?" said a voice; and he saw the young lady bending
over him.

"'In the dorsal region, I think," said Mr. Lavender. "But I suffer more
from the thought that I--that you--"

"That's all right," said the young lady; "I'm a V.A.D. It WAS a bump!
Let's see if you can----" and taking his hands she raised him to a
sitting posture. "Does it work?"

"Yes," said Mr. Lavender rather faintly.

"Try and stand," said the young lady, pulling.

Mr. Lavender tried, and stood; but no, sooner was he on his feet than
she turned her face away. Great tears rolled down her cheeks; and she
writhed and shook all over.

"Don't!" cried Mr. Lavender, much concerned. "I beg you not to cry.
It's nothing, I assure you--nothing!" The young lady with an effort
controlled her emotion, and turned her large grey eyes on him.

"The angelic devotion of nurses!" murmured Mr. Lavender, leaning against
the wall of the house with his hand to his back. "Nothing like it has
been seen since the world began."

"I shall never forget the sight!" said the young lady, choking.

Mr. Lavender, who took the noises she made for sobbing, was unutterably
disturbed.

"I can't bear to see you distressed on my account," he said. "I am
quite well, I assure you; look--I can walk!" And he started forth up the
garden in his nightshirt and Norfolk jacket. When he turned round she
was no longer there, sounds of uncontrollable emotion were audible from
the adjoining garden. Going to the privet hedge, he looked aver. She was
lying gracefully on the grass, with her face smothered in her hands, and
her whole body shaking. "Poor thing!" thought Mr. Lavender. "No doubt
she is one of those whose nerves have been destroyed by the terrible
sights she has seen!" But at that moment the young lady rose and ran as
if demented into her castle. Mr. Lavender stayed transfixed. "Who would
not be ill for the pleasure of drinking from a cup held by her hand?" he
thought. "I am fortunate to have received injuries in trying to save her
from confusion. Down, Blink, down!"

For his dog, who had once more leaped from the window, was frantically
endeavouring to lick his face. Soothing her, and feeling his anatomy,
Mr. Lavender became conscious that he was not alone. An old lady was
standing on the gardenpath which led to the front gate, holding in her
hand a hat. Mr. Lavender sat down at once, and gathering his nightshirt
under him, spoke as follows:

"There are circumstances, madam, which even the greatest public servants
cannot foresee, and I, who am the humblest of them, ask you to forgive
me for receiving you in this costume."

"I have brought your hat back," said the old lady with a kindling eye;
"they told me you lived here and I was anxious to know that you and your
dear dog were none the worse."

"Madam," replied Mr. Lavender, "I am infinitely obliged to you. Would
you very kindly hang my hat up on the--er--weeping willow tree?"

At this moment a little white dog, who accompanied the old lady, began
sniffing round Mr. Lavender, and Blink, wounded in her proprietary
instincts, placed her paws at once on her master's shoulders, so that he
fell prone. When he recovered a sitting posture neither the old lady nor
the little dog were in sight, but his hat was hanging on a laurel bush.
"There seems to be something fateful about this morning," he mused;
"I had better go in before the rest of the female population----" and
recovering his feet with difficulty, he took his hat, and was about to
enter the house when he saw the young lady watching him from an upper
window of the adjoining castle. Thinking to relieve her anxiety, he said
at once:

"My dear young lady, I earnestly beg you to believe that such a thing
never happens to me, as a rule."

Her face was instantly withdrawn, and, sighing deeply, Mr. Lavender
entered the house and made his way upstairs. "Ah!" he thought, painfully
recumbent in his bed once more, "though my bones ache and my head burns
I have performed an action not unworthy of the traditions of public
life. There is nothing more uplifting than to serve Youth and Beauty at
the peril of one's existence. Humanity and Chivalry have ever been the
leading characteristics of the British race;" and, really half-delirious
now, he cried aloud: "This incident will for ever inspire those who have
any sense of beauty to the fulfilment of our common task. Believe me, we
shall never sheathe the sword until the cause of humanity and chivalry
is safe once more."

Blink, ever uneasy about sounds which seemed to her to have no meaning,
stood up on her hind legs and endeavoured to stay them by licking his
face; and Mr. Lavender, who had become so stiff that he could not stir
without great pain, had to content himself by moving his head feebly
from side to side until his dog, having taken her fill, resumed the
examination of her bone. Perceiving presently that whenever he began
to-talk she began to lick his face, he remained silent, with his mouth
open and his eyes shut, in an almost unconscious condition, from which
he was roused by a voice saying:

"He is suffering from alcoholic poisoning."

The monstrous injustice of these words restored his faculties,
and seeing before him what he took to be a large concourse of
people--composed in reality of Joe Petty, Mrs. Petty, and the doctor--he
thus addressed them in a faint, feverish voice:

"The pressure of these times, ladies and gentlemen, brings to the
fore the most pushing and obstreperous blackguards. We have amongst us
persons who, under the thin disguise of patriotism, do not scruple
to bring hideous charges against public men. Such but serve the
blood-stained cause of our common enemies. Conscious of the purity of
our private lives, we do not care what is said of us so long as we can
fulfil our duty to our country. Abstinence from every form of spirituous
liquor has been the watchword of all public men since this land was
first threatened by the most stupendous cataclysm which ever hung over
the heads of a great democracy. We have never ceased to preach the need
for it, and those who say the contrary are largely Germans or persons
lost to a sense of decency." So saying, he threw off all the bedclothes,
and fell back with a groan.

"Easy, easy, my dear sir!" said the voice.

"Have you a pain in your back?"

"I shall not submit," returned our hero, "to the ministrations of a Hun;
sooner will I breathe my last."

"Turn him over," said the voice. And Mr. Lavender found himself on his
face.

"Do you feel that?" said the voice.

Mr. Lavender answered faintly into his pillow:

"It is useless for you to torture me. No German hand shall wring from me
a groan."

"Is there mania in his family?" asked the voice. At this cruel insult
Mr. Lavender, who was nearly smothered, made a great effort, and
clearing his mouth of the pillow, said:

"Since we have no God nowadays, I call the God of my fathers to witness
that there is no saner public man than I."

It was, however, his last effort, for the wriggle he had given to
his spine brought on a kind of vertigo, and he relapsed into
unconsciousness.




V

IS CONVICTED OF A NEW DISEASE

Those who were assembled round the bed of Mr. Lavender remained for
a moment staring at him with their mouths open, while Blink growled
faintly from underneath.

"Put your hand here," said the doctor at last.

"There is a considerable swelling, an appearance of inflammation, and
the legs are a curious colour. You gave him three-quarters of a tumbler
of rum--how much honey?"

Thus addressed, Joe Petty, leaning his head a little to one side,
answered:

"Not 'alf a pot, sir."

"Um! There are all the signs here of something quite new. He's not had a
fall, has he?"

"Has he?" said Mrs. Petty severely to her husband.

"No," replied Joe.

"Singular!" said the doctor. Turn him back again; I want to feel his
head. Swollen; it may account for his curious way of talking. Well,
shove in quinine, and keep him quiet, with hot bottles to his feet. I
think we have come on a new war disease. I'll send you the quinine. Good
morning.

"Wot oh!" said Joe to his wife, when they were left alone with the
unconscious body of their master. "Poor old Guv! Watch and pray!"

"However could you have given him such a thing?"

"Wet outside, wet your inside," muttered Joe sulkily, "'as always been
my motto. Sorry I give 'im the honey. Who'd ha' thought the product of
an 'armless insect could 'a done 'im in like this?"

Fiddle said Mrs. Petty. "In my belief it's come on through reading those
newspapers. If I had my way I'd bum the lot. Can I trust you to watch
him while I go and get the bottles filled?"

Joe drooped his lids over his greenish eyes, and, with a whisk of her
head, his wife left the room.

"Gawd 'elp us!" thought Joe, gazing at his unconscious master, and
fingering his pipe; "'ow funny women are! If I was to smoke in 'ere
she'd have a fit. I'll just 'ave a whiff in the window, though!" And,
leaning out, he drew the curtains to behind him and lighted his pipe.

The sound of Blink gnawing her bone beneath the bed alone broke the
silence.

"I could do with a pint o' bitter," thought Joe; and, noticing the form
of the weekly gardener down below, he said softly:

"'Ello, Bob!"

"'Ello?" replied the gardener. "'Ow's yours?"

"Nicely."

"Goin' to 'ave some rain?"

"Ah!"

"What's the matter with that?"

"Good for the crops."

"Missis well?"

"So, so."

"Wish mine was."

"Wot's the matter with her?"

"Busy!" replied Joe, sinking his voice. Never 'ave a woman permanent;
that's my experience.

The gardener did not reply, but stood staring at the lilac-bush below
Joe Petty's face. He was a thin man, rather like an old horse.

"Do you think we can win this war?" resumed Joe.

"Dunno," replied the gardener apathetically.

"We seem to be goin' back nicely all the time."

Joe wagged his head. "You've 'it it," he said. And, jerking his head
back towards the room behind him, "Guv'nor's got it now."

"What?"

"The new disease."

"What new disease?"

"Wy, the Run-abaht-an-tell-'em-'ow-to-do-it."

"Ah!"

"'E's copped it fair. In bed."

"You don't say!"

"Not 'alf!" Joe sank his voice still lower. "Wot'll you bet me I don't
ketch it soon?"

The gardener uttered a low gurgle.

"The cats 'ave been in that laylock," he replied, twisting off a broken
branch. "I'll knock off now for a bit o' lunch."

But at that moment the sound of a voice speaking as it might be from a
cavern, caused him and Joe Petty to stare at each other as if petrified.

"Wot is it?" whispered Joe at last.

The gardener jerked his head towards a window on the ground floor.

"Someone in pain," he said.

"Sounds like the Guv'nor's voice."

"Ah!" said the gardener.

"Alf a mo'!" And, drawing in his head, Joe peered through the curtains.
The bed was empty and the door open.

"Watch it! 'E's loose!" he called to the gardener, and descended the
stairs at a run.

In fact, Mr. Lavender had come out of his coma at the words, "D'you
think we can win this war?" And, at once conscious that he had not read
the morning papers, had got out of bed. Sallying forth just as he was
he had made his way downstairs, followed by Blink. Seeing the journals
lying on the chest in the hall, he took all five to where he usually
went at this time of the morning, and sat down to read. Once there, the
pain he was in, added to the disorder occasioned in his brain by the
five leaders, caused him to give forth a summary of their contents,
while Blink pressed his knees with her chin whenever the rising of his
voice betokened too great absorption, as was her wont when she
wanted him to feed her. Joe Petty joined the gardener in considerable
embarrassment.

"Shan't I not 'alf cop it from the Missis?" he murmured. "The door's
locked."

The voice of Mr. Lavender maintained its steady flow, rising and falling
with the tides of his pain and his feelings. "What, then, is our duty?
Is it not plain and simple? We require every man in the Army, for that
is the 'sine qua non' of victory. We must greatly reinforce the ranks
of labour in our shipyards--ships, ships, ships, always more ships; for
without them we shall infallibly be defeated. We cannot too often repeat
that we must see the great drama that is being played before our eyes
steadily, and we must see it whole.... Not a man must be taken from the
cultivation of our soil, for on that depends our very existence as a
nation. Without abundant labour of the right sort on the land we cannot
hope to cope with the menace of the pirate submarine. We must have
the long vision, and not be scuppered by the fears of those who would
deplete our most vital industry.... In munition works," wailed Mr.
Lavender's voice, as he reached the fourth leader, "we still require the
maximum of effort, and a considerable reinforcement of manpower will in
that direction be necessary to enable us to establish the overwhelming
superiority in the air and in guns which alone can ensure the defeat
of our enemies...." He reached the fifth in what was almost a scream.
"Every man up to sixty must be mobilized but here we would utter the
most emphatic caveat. In the end this war will be won by the country
whose financial position stands the strain best. The last copper bullet
will be the deciding factor. Our economic strength must on no account be
diminished. We cannot at this time of day afford to deplete the ranks
of trade and let out the very life-blood in our veins." "We must see,"
groaned Mr. Lavender, "the problem steadily, and see it whole."

"Poor old geyser!" said the gardener; "'e do seem bad."

"Old me!" said Joe.

"I'll get on the sill and see what I can do through the top o' the
window."

He got up, and, held by the gardener, put his arm through. There was the
sound of considerable disturbance, and through the barking of Blink,
Mr. Lavender's voice was heard again: "Stanch in the middle of the
cataclysm, unruffled by the waters of heaven and hell, let us be
captains of our souls. Down, Blink, down!"

"He's out!" said Joe, rejoining the gardener. "Now for it, before my
missis comes!" and he ran into the house.

Mr. Lavender was walking dazedly in the hall with the journals held out
before him.

"Joe," he said, catching sight of his servant, "get the car ready. I
must be in five places at once, for only thus can we defeat the greatest
danger which ever threatened the future of civilization."

"Right-o, sir," replied Joe; and, waiting till his master turned round,
he seized him round the legs, and lifting that thin little body ascended
the stairs, while Mr. Lavender, with the journals waving fanlike in his
hands, his white hair on end, and his legs kicking, endeavoured to turn
his head to see what agency was moving him.

At the top of the stairs they came on Mrs. Petty, who, having Scotch
blood in her veins, stood against the wall to let them pass, with a hot
bottle in either hand. Having placed Mr. Lavender in his bed and drawn
the clothes up to his eyes, Joe Petty passed the back of his hand across
his brow, and wrung it out.

"Phew!" he gasped; "he's artful!"

His wife, who had followed them in, was already fastening her eyes on
the carpet.

"What's that?" she said, sniffing.

"That?" repeated Joe, picking up his pipe; "why, I had to run to ketch
'im, and it fell out o' me pocket."

"And lighted itself," said Mrs. Petty, darting, at the floor and taking
up a glowing quid which had burned a little round hole in the carpet.
"You're a pretty one!"

"You can't foresee those sort o' things," said Joe.

"You can't foresee anything," replied his wife; "you might be a
Government. Here! hold the clothes while I get the bottles to his
feet. Well I never! If he hasn't got----" And from various parts of Mr.
Lavender's body she recovered the five journals. "For putting things in
the wrong place, Joe Petty, I've never seen your like!"

"They'll keep 'im warm," said Joe.

Mr. Lavender who, on finding himself in bed, had once more fallen into a
comatose condition, stirred, and some words fell from his lips. "Five in
one, and one in five."

"What does he say?" said Mrs. Petty, tucking him up.

"It's the odds against Candelabra for the Derby."

"Only faith," cried Mr. Lavender, "can multiply exceedingly."

"Here, take them away!" muttered Mrs. Petty, and dealing the journals a
smart slap, she handed them to Joe.

"Faith!" repeated Mr. Lavender, and fell into a doze.

"About this new disease," said Joe. "D'you think it's ketchin'? I feel
rather funny meself."

"Stuff!" returned his wife. "Clear away those papers and that bone, and
go and take Blink out, and sit on a seat; it's all you're fit for. Of
all the happy-go-luckys you're the worst."

"Well, I never could worry," said Joe from the doorway; "'tisn't in me.
So long!"

And, dragging Blink by the collar, he withdrew.

Alone with her patient, Mrs. Petty, an enthusiast for cleanliness and
fresh air, went on her knees, and, having plucked out the charred ring
of the little hole in the carpet, opened the window wider to rid the
room of the smell of burning. "If it wasn't for me," she thought,
leaning out into the air, "I don't know what'd become of them."

A voice from a few feet away said:

"I hope he's none the worse. What does the doctor say?"

Looking round in astonishment, Mrs. Petty saw a young lady leaning out
of a window on her right.

"We can't tell at present," she said, with a certain reserve he is going
on satisfactory.

"It's not hydrophobia, is it?" asked the young lady. "You know he fell
out of the window?

"What!" ejaculated Mrs. Petty.

"Where the lilac's broken. If I can give you a hand I shall be very
glad. I'm a V.A.D."

"Thank you, I'm sure," said Mrs. Petty stiffly, for the passion of
jealousy, to which she was somewhat prone, was rising in her, "there is
no call." And she thought, "V.A. indeed! I know them."

Poor dear said the young lady. "He did come a bump. It was awfully
funny! Is he--er----?" And she touched her forehead, where tendrils of
fair hair were blowing in the breeze.

Inexpressibly outraged by such a question concerning one for whom she
had a proprietary reverence, Mrs. Petty answered acidly:

"Oh dear no! He is much wiser than some people!"

"It was only that he mentioned the last man and the last dollar, you
know," said the young lady, as if to herself, "but, of course, that's no
real sign." And she uttered a sudden silvery laugh.

Mrs. Petty became aware of something tickling her left ear, and turning
round, found her master leaning out beside her, in his dressing-gown.

"Leave me, Mrs. Petty," he said with such dignity that she instinctively
recoiled. "It may seem to you," continued Mr. Lavender, addressing the
young lady, "indelicate on my part to resume my justification, but as
a public man, I suffer, knowing that I have committed a breach of
decorum."

"Don't you think you ought to keep quiet in bed?" Mrs. Petty heard the
young lady ask.

"My dear young lady," Mr. Lavender replied, "the thought of bed is
abhorrent to me at a time like this. What more ignoble fate than to die
in, one's bed?"

"I'm only asking you to live in it," said the young lady, while Mrs.
Petty grasped her master by the skirts of his gown.

"Down, Blink, down!" said Mr. Lavender, leaning still further out.

"For pity's sake," wailed the young lady, "don't fall out again, or I
shall burst."

"Ah, believe me," said Mr. Lavender in a receding voice, "I would not
pain you further for the world----"

Mrs. Petty, exerting all her strength, had hauled him in.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself, sir," she said severely, "talking to a
young lady like that in your dressing-gown?

"Mrs. Petty," said Mr Lavender mysteriously, "it might have been
worse.... I should like some tea with a little lemon in it."

Taking this for a sign of returning reason Mrs. Petty drew him gently
towards the bed, and, having seen him get in, tucked him up and said:

"Now, sir, you never break your word, do you?"

"No public man----" began Mr. Lavender.

"Oh, bother! Now, promise me to stay quiet in bed while I get you that
tea."

"I certainly shall," replied our hero, "for I feel rather faint."

"That's right," said Mrs. Petty. "I trust you." And, bolting the window,
she whisked out of the room and locked the door behind her.

Mr. Lavender lay with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, clucking his
parched tongue. "God," he thought, "for one must use that word when the
country is in danger--God be thanked for Beauty! But I must not allow it
to unsteel my soul. Only when the cause of humanity has triumphed, and
with the avenging sword and shell we have exterminated that criminal
nation, only then shall I be entitled to let its gentle influence creep
about my being." And drinking off the tumbler of tea which Mrs. Petty
was holding to his lips, he sank almost immediately into a deep slumber.




VI

MAKES A MISTAKE, AND MEETS A MOON-CAT

The old lady, whose name was Sinkin, and whose interest in Mr. Lavender
had become so deep, lived in a castle in Frognal; and with her lived her
young nephew, a boy of forty-five, indissolubly connected with the
Board of Guardians. It was entirely due to her representations that he
presented himself at Mr. Lavender's on the following day, and, sending
in his card, was admitted to our hero's presence.

Mr. Lavender, pale and stiff, was sitting in his study, with Blink on
his feet, reading a speech.

"Excuse my getting up, sir," he said; "and pray be seated."

The nephew, who had a sleepy, hairless face and little Chinese
eyes, bowed, and sitting down, stared at Mr. Lavender with a certain
embarrassment.

"I have come," he said at last, "to ask you a few questions on behalf
of--"

"By all means," said Mr. Lavender, perceiving at once that he was being
interviewed. "I shall be most happy to give you my views. Please take a
cigarette, for I believe that is usual. I myself do not smoke. If it is
the human touch you want, you may like to know that I gave it up when
that appeal in your contemporary flooded the trenches with cigarettes
and undermined the nerves of our heroes. By setting an example of
abstinence, and at the same time releasing more tobacco for our men, I
felt that I was but doing my duty. Please don't mention that, though.
And while we are on the personal note, which I sincerely deprecate,
you might like to stroll round the room and look at the portrait of my
father, behind the door, and of my mother, over the fireplace. Forgive
my not accompanying you. The fact is--this is an interesting touch--I
have always been rather subject to lumbago." And seeing the nephew
Sinkin, who had risen to his suggestion, standing somewhat irresolutely
in front of him, he added: "Perhaps you would like to look a little more
closely at my eyes. Every now and then they flash with an almost
uncanny insight." For by now he had quite forgotten his modesty in the
identification he felt with the journal which was interviewing him. "I
am fifty-eight," he added quickly; "but I do not look my years, though
my hair, still thick and full of vigour, is prematurely white--so often
the case with men whose brains are continually on the stretch. The
little home, far from grandiose, which forms the background to this most
interesting personality is embowered in trees. Cats have made their mark
on its lawns, and its owner's love of animals was sharply illustrated
by the sheep-dog which lay on his feet clad in Turkish slippers. Get up,
Blink!"

Blink, disturbed by the motion of her master's feet, rose and gazed long
into his face.

"Look!" said Mr. Lavender, "she has the most beautiful eyes in the
world."

At this remark, which appeared to him no saner than the others he had
heard--so utterly did he misjudge Mr. Lavender's character--the nephew
put down the notebook he had taken out of his pocket, and said:

"Has there ever been anything--er--remarkable about your family?"

"Indeed, yes," said Mr. Lavender. "Born of poor but lofty parentage in
the city of Rochester, my father made his living as a publisher; my
mother was a true daughter of the bards, the scion of a stock tracing
its decent from the Druids; her name was originally Jones."

"Ah!" said the nephew Sinkin, writing.

"She has often told me at her knee," continued Mr. Lavender, "that there
was a strong vein of patriotism in her family."

"She did not die--in--in----"

"No, indeed," interrupted Mr. Lavender; "she is still living there."

"Ah!" said the nephew. "And your brothers and sisters?"

"One of my brothers," replied Mr. Lavender, with pardonable pride, "is
the editor of Cud Bits. The other is a clergyman."

"Eccentric," murmured the nephew absently. "Tell me, Mr. Lavender, do
you find your work a great strain? Does it----" and he touched the top
of his head, covered with moist black hair.

Mr. Lavender sighed. "At a time like this," he said, "we must all be
prepared to sacrifice our health. No public man, as you know, can call
his head his own for a moment. I should count myself singularly lacking
if I stopped to consider--er--such a consideration."

"Consider--er--such a consideration," repeated the nephew, jotting it
down.

"He carries on," murmured Mr. Lavender, once more identifying himself
with the journal, "grappling with the intricacies of this enormous
problem; happy in the thought that nothing--not even reason itself--is
too precious to sacrifice on the altar of his duty to his country. The
public may rest confident in the knowledge that he will so carry on till
they carry him out on his shield." And aware subconsciously that the
interview could go no further than that phrase, Mr. Lavender was silent,
gazing up with rather startled eyes.

"I see," said the nephew; "I am very much obliged to you. Is your dog
safe?" For Blink had begun to growl in a low and uneasy manner.

"The gentlest creature in the world," replied Lavender, "and the most
sociable. I sometimes think," he went on in a changed voice, "that
we have all gone mad, and that animals alone retain the sweet
reasonableness which used to be esteemed a virtue in human society.
Don't take that down," he added quickly, "we are all subject to moments
of weakness. It was just an 'obiter dictum'."

"Make your mind easy," said the nephew, rising, "it does not serve my
purpose. Just one thing, Mr. Lavender."

At this moment Blink, whose instinct had long been aware of some
sinister purpose in this tall and heavy man, whose trousers did not
smell of dogs, seeing him approach too near, bit him gently in the calf.

The nephew started back. "She's bitten me!" he said, in a hushed voice.

"My God!" ejaculated Mr. Lavender and falling back again, so stiff was
he. "Is it possible? There must be some good reason. Blink!"

Blink wagged her little tail, thrust her nose into his hand, removed it,
and growled again.

"She is quite well, I assure you," Mr. Lavender added hastily, "her nose
is icy."

"She's bitten me," repeated the nephew, pulling up his trouser leg.
"There's no mark, but she distinctly bit me."

"Treasure!" said Mr. Lavender, endeavouring to interest him in the dog.
"Do you notice how dark the rims of her eyes are, and how clear the
whites? Extraordinarily well bred. Blink!"

Aware that she was being talked of Blink continued to be torn between
the desire to wag her tail and to growl. Unable to make up her mind,
she sighed heavily and fell on her side against her side against her
master's legs.

"Wonderful with sheep, too," said Mr. Lavender; "at least, she would
be if they would let her.... You should see her with them on the Heath.
They simply can't bear her."

"You will hear from me again," said the nephew sourly.

"Thank you," said Mr. Lavender. "I shall be glad of a proof; it is
always safer, I believe."

"Good morning," said the nephew.

Blink, who alone perceived the dark meaning in these words, seeing him
move towards the door began to bark and run from side to side behind
him, for all the world as if he had been a flock of sheep.

"Keep her off!" said the nephew anxiously. "Keep her off. I refuse to be
bitten again."

"Blink!" called Mr. Lavender in some agony. Blink, whose obedience was
excessive, came back to him at once, and stood growling from under her
master's hand, laid on the white hair which flowed back from her collar,
till the nephew's footsteps had died away. "I cannot imagine," thought
Mr. Lavender, "why she should have taken exception to that excellent
journalist. Perhaps he did not smell quite right? One never knows."

And with her moustachioed muzzle pressed to his chin Mr. Lavender
sought for explanation in the innocent and living darkness of his dog's
eyes....

On leaving Mr. Lavender's the nephew forthwith returned to the castle in
Frognal, and sought his aunt.

"Mad as a March hare, Aunt Rosie; and his dog bit me."

"That dear doggie?"

"They're dangerous."

"You were always funny about dogs, dear," said his aunt soothingly.
"Why, even Sealey doesn't really like you." And calling to the little
low white dog she quite failed to attract his attention. "Did you notice
his dress. The first time I took him for a shepherd, and the second
time---! What do you think ought to be done?"

"He'll have to be watched," said the nephew. "We can't have lunatics at
large in Hampstead."

"But, Wilfred," said the old lady, "will our man-power stand it?
Couldn't they watch each other? Or, if it would be any help, I could
watch him myself. I took such a fancy to his dear dog."

"I shall take steps," said the nephew.

"No, don't do that. I'll go and call on the people, next door. Their
name is Scarlet. They'll know about him, no doubt. We mustn't do
anything inconsiderate."

The nephew, muttering and feeling his calf, withdrew to his study.
And the old lady, having put on her bonnet, set forth placidly,
unaccompanied by her little white dog.

On arriving at the castle embedded in acacias and laurustinus she asked
of the maid who opened:

"Can I see Mrs. Scarlet?"

"No," replied the girl dispassionately; "she's dead."

"Mr. Scarlet, then?"

"No," replied the girl, "he's a major."

"Oh, dear!" said the old lady.

"Miss Isabel's at home," said the girl, who appeared, like so many
people in time of war, to be of a simple, plain-spoken nature; "you'll
find her in the garden." And she let the old lady out through a French
window.

At the far end, under an acacia, Mrs. Sinkin could see the form of a
young lady in a blue dress, lying in a hammock, with a cigarette between
her lips and a yellow book in her hands. She approached her thinking,
"Dear me! how comfortable, in these days!" And, putting her head a
little on one side, she said with a smile: "My name is Sinkin. I hope
I'm not disturbing you."

The young lady rose with a vigorous gesture.

"Oh, no! Not a bit."

"I do admire some people," said the old lady; "they seem to find time
for everything."

The young lady stretched herself joyously.

"I'm taking it out before going to my new hospital. Try it," she said
touching the hammock; "it's not bad. Will you have a cigarette?"

"I'm afraid I'm too old for both," said the old lady, "though I've often
thought they must be delightfully soothing. I wanted to speak to you
about your neighbour."

The young lady rolled her large grey eyes. "Ah!" she said, "he's
perfectly sweet."

"I know," said the old lady, "and has such a dear dog. My nephew's very
interested in them. You may have heard of him--Wilfred Sinkin--a very
clever man; on so many Committees."

"Not really?" said the young lady.

"Oh, yes! He has one of those heads which nothing can disturb; so
valuable in these days."

"And what sort of a heart?" asked the young lady, emitting a ring of
smoke.

"Just as serene. I oughtn't to say so, but I think he's rather a
wonderful machine."

"So long as he's not a doctor! You can't think how they get on your
nerves when they're, like that. I've bumped up against so many of them.
They fired me at last!"

"Really? Where? I thought they only did that to the dear horses. Oh,
what a pretty laugh you have! It's so pleasant to hear anyone laugh, in
these days."

"I thought no one did anything else! I mean, what else can you do,
except die, don't you know?"

"I think that's rather a gloomy view," said the old lady placidly. "But
about your neighbour. What is his name?"

"Lavender. But I call him Don Pickwixote."

"Dear me, do you indeed? Have you noticed anything very eccentric about
him?"

"That depends on what you call eccentric. Wearing a nightshirt, for
instance? I don't know what your standard is, you see."

The old lady was about to reply when a voice from the adjoining garden
was heard saying:

"Blink! Don't touch that charming mooncat!"

"Hush!" murmured the young lady; and seizing her visitor's arm, she drew
her vigorously beneath the acacia tree. Sheltered from observation by
those thick and delicate branches, they stooped, and applying their eyes
to holes in the privet hedge, could see a very little cat, silvery-fawn
in colour and far advanced in kittens, holding up its paw exactly like a
dog, and gazing with sherry-coloured eyes at Mr. Lavender, who stood in
the middle of his lawn, with Blink behind him.

"If you see me going to laugh," whispered the young lady, "pinch me
hard."

"Moon-cat," repeated Mr. Lavender, "where have you come from? And what
do you want, holding up your paw like that? What curious little noises
you make, duckie!" The cat, indeed, was uttering sounds rather like a
duck. It came closer to Mr. Lavender, circled his legs, drubbed itself
against Blink's chest, while its tapered tail, barred with silver,
brushed her mouth.

"This is extraordinary," they heard Mr. Lavender say; "I would stroke it
if I wasn't so stiff. How nice of you little moon-cat to be friendly to
my play-girl! For what is there in all the world so pleasant to see as
friendliness between a dog and cat!"

At those words the old lady, who was a great lover of animals, was so
affected that she pinched the young lady by mistake.

"Not yet!" whispered the latter in some agony. "Listen!"

"Moon-cat," Mr. Lavender was saying, "Arcadia is in your golden eyes.
You have come, no doubt, to show us how far we have strayed away from
it." And too stiff to reach the cat by bending, Mr. Lavender let himself
slowly down till he could sit. "Pan is dead," he said, as he arrived on
the grass and crossed his feet, "and Christ is not alive. Moon-cat!"

The little cat had put its head into his hand, while Blink was thrusting
her nose into his mouth.

"I'm going to sneeze!" whispered the old lady, strangely affected.

"Pull your upper lip down hard, like the German Empress, and count
nine!" murmured the young.

While the old lady was doing this Mr. Lavender had again begun to speak.

"Life is now nothing but explosions. Gentleness has vanished, and beauty
is a dream. When you have your kittens, moon-cat, bring them up in
amity, to love milk, dogs, and the sun."

The moon-cat, who had now reached his shoulder, brushed the tip of her
tail across his loose right eyebrow, while Blink's jealous tongue avidly
licked his high left cheekbone. With one hand Mr. Lavender was cuddling
the cat's head, with the other twiddling Blink's forelock, and the
watchers could see his eyes shining, and his white hair standing up all
ruffled.

"Isn't it sweet?" murmured the old lady.

"Ah! moon-cat," went on Mr. Lavender, "come and live with us. You shall
have your kittens in the bathroom, and forget this age of blood and
iron."

Both the old lady and the young were removing moisture from their eyes
when, the voice of Mr. Lavender, very changed, recalled them to their
vigil. His face had become strained and troubled.

"Never," he was saying, "will we admit that doctrine of our common
enemies. Might is not right gentlemen those who take the sword shall
perish by the sword. With blood and iron we will ourselves stamp
out this noxious breed. No stone shall be left standing, and no
babe sleeping in that abandoned country. We will restore the tide of
humanity, if we have to wade through rivers of blood across mountains of
iron."

"Whom is he calling gentlemen?" whispered the old lady.

But Blink, by anxiously licking Mr. Lavender's lips, had produced a
silence in which the young-lady did not dare reply. The sound of the
little cat's purring broke the hush.

"Down, Blink, down!" said Mr. Lavender.

"Watch this little moon-cat and her perfect manners! We may all learn
from her how not to be crude. See the light shining through her pretty
ears!"

The little cat, who had seen a bird, had left Mr. Lavender's shoulder,
and was now crouching and moving the tip of its tail from side to side.

"She would like a bird inside her; but let us rather go and find her
some milk instead," said Mr. Lavender, and he began to rise.

"Do you know, I think he's quite sane," whispered the old lady, "except,
perhaps, at intervals. What do you?"

"Glorious print!" cried Mr. Lavender suddenly, for a journal had fallen
from his pocket, and the sight of it lying there, out of his reach,
excited him. "Glorious print! I can read you even from here. When the
enemy of mankind uses the word God he commits blasphemy! How different
from us!" And raising his eyes from the journal Mr. Lavender fastened
them, as it seemed to his anxious listeners, on the tree which sheltered
them. "Yes! Those unseen presences, who search out the workings of our
heart, know that even the most Jingo among us can say, 'I am not as they
are!' Come, mooncat!"

So murmuring, he turned and moved towards the house, clucking with his
tongue, and followed by Blink.

"Did he mean us?" said the old lady nervously.

"No; that was one of his intervals. He's not mad; he's just crazy."

"Is there any difference, my dear?"

"Why, we're all crazy about something, you know; it's only a question of
what."

"But what is his what?"

"He's got a message. They're in the air, you know."

"I haven't come across them," said the old lady. "I fear I live a very
quiet life--except for picking over sphagnum moss."

"Oh, well! There's no hurry."

"Well, I shall tell my nephew what I've seen," said the old lady.
"Good-bye."

"Good-bye," responded the young; and, picking up her yellow book, she
got back into the hammock and relighted her cigarette.




VII

SEES AND EDITOR, AND FINDS A FARMER

Not for some days after his fall from the window did Mr. Lavender begin
to regain the elasticity of body necessary to the resumption of
public life. He spent the hours profitably, however, in digesting the
newspapers and storing ardour. On Tuesday morning, remembering that no
proof of his interview had yet been sent him, and feeling that he ought
not to neglect so important a matter, he set forth to the office of the
great journal from which, in the occult fashion of the faithful, he was
convinced the reporter had come. While he was asking for the editor
in the stony entrance, a young man who was passing looked at him
attentively and said: "Ah, sir, here you are! He's waiting for you. Come
up, will you?"

Mr. Lavender followed up some stairs, greatly gratified at the thought
that he was expected. The young man led him through one or two swing
doors into an outer office, where a young woman was typing.

Mr. Lavender shook his head, and sat down on the edge of a green leather
chair. The editor, resuming his seat, crossed his legs deferentially,
and sinking his chin again on his chest, began:

"About your article. My only trouble, of course, is that I'm running
that stunt on British prisoners--great success! You've seen it, I
suppose?"

"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Lavender; I read you every day.

The editor made a little movement which showed that he was flattered,
and sinking his chin still further into his chest, resumed:

"It might run another week, or it might fall down to-morrow--you never
can tell. But I'm getting lots of letters. Tremendous public interest."

"Yes, yes," assented Mr. Lavender, "it's most important."

"Of course, we might run yours with it," said the editor. "But I don't
know; I think it'd kill the other. Still----"

"I shouldn't like----" began Mr. Lavender.

"I don't believe in giving them more than they want, you know," resumed
the editor. "I think I'll have my news editor in," and he blew into a
tube. "Send me Mr. Crackamup. This thing of yours is very important,
sir. Suppose we began to run it on Thursday. Yes, I should think they'll
be tired of British prisoners by then."

"Don't let me," began Mr. Lavender.

The editor's eye became unveiled for the Moment. "You'll be wanting to
take it somewhere else if we----Quite! Well, I think we could run them
together. See here, Mr. Crackamup"--Mr. Lavender saw a small man like
Beethoven frowning from behind spectacles--"could we run this German
prisoner stunt alongside the British, or d'you think it would kill it?"

Mr. Lavender almost rose from his chair in surprise. "Are you----" he
said; "is it----"

The small man hiccoughed, and said in a raw voice:

"The letters are falling off."

"Ah!" murmured the editor, "I thought we should be through by Thursday.
We'll start this new stunt Thursday. Give it all prominence, Crackamup.
It'll focus fury. All to the good--all to the good. Opinion's ripe."
Then for a moment he seemed to hesitate, and his chin sank back on his
chest. "I don't know," he murmured, "of course it may----"

"Please," began Mr. Lavender, rising, while the small man hiccoughed
again. The two motions seemed to determine the editor.

"That's all right, sir," he said, rising also; "that's quite all right.
We'll say Thursday, and risk it. Thursday, Crackamup." And he held out
his hand to Mr. Lavender. "Good morning, sir, good morning. Delighted to
have seen you. You wouldn't put your name to it? Well, well, it doesn't
matter; only you could have written it. The turn of phrase--immense!
They'll tumble all right!" And Mr. Lavender found himself, with Mr.
Crackamup, in the lobby. "It's bewildering," he thought, "how quickly he
settled that. And yet he had such repose. But is there some mistake?"
He was about to ask his companion, but with a distant hiccough the small
man had vanished. Thus deserted, Mr. Lavender was in two minds whether
to ask to be readmitted, when the four gentlemen with notebooks repassed
him in single file into the editor's room.

"My name is Lavender," he said resolutely to the young woman. "Is that
all right?"

"Quite," she answered, without looking up.

Mr. Lavender went out slowly, thinking, "I may perhaps have said more in
that interview than I remember. Next time I really will insist on having
a proof. Or have they taken me for some other public man?" This notion
was so disagreeable, however, that he dismissed it, and passed into the
street.

On Thursday, the day fixed for his fresh tour of public speaking,
he opened the great journal eagerly. Above the third column was the
headline: OUR VITAL DUTY: BY A GREAT PUBLIC MAN. "That must be it," he
thought. The article, which occupied just a column of precious space,
began with an appeal so moving that before he had read twenty lines
Mr. Lavender had identified himself completely with the writer; and if
anyone had told him that he had not uttered these sentiments, he would
have given him the lie direct. Working from heat to heat the article
finished in a glorious outburst with a passionate appeal to the country
to starve all German prisoners.

Mr. Lavender put it down in a glow of exultation. "I shall translate
words into action," he thought; "I shall at once visit a rural district
where German prisoners are working on the land, and see that the farmers
do their duty." And, forgetting in his excitement to eat his breakfast,
he put the journal in his pocket, wrapped himself in his dust-coat and
broad-brimmed hat, and went out to his car, which was drawn up, with
Blink, who had not forgotten her last experience, inside.

"We will go to a rural district, Joe," he said, getting in.

"Very good, sir," answered Joe; and, unnoticed by the population, they
glided into the hazy heat of the June morning.

"Well, what abaht it, sir?" said Joe, after they had proceeded for some
three hours. "Here we are."

Mr. Lavender, who had been lost in the beauty of the scenes through
which he was passing, awoke from reverie, and said:

"I am looking for German prisoners, Joe; if you see a farmer, you might
stop."

"Any sort of farmer?" asked Joe.

"Is there more than one sort?" returned Mr. Lavender, smiling.

Joe cocked his eye. "Ain't you never lived in the country, sir?"

"Not for more than a few weeks at a time, Joe, unless Rochester counts.
Of course, I know Eastbourne very well."

"I know Eastbourne from the inside," said Joe discursively. "I was a
waiter there once."

"An interesting life, a waiter's, Joe, I should think."

"Ah! Everything comes to 'im who waits, they say. But abaht
farmers--you've got a lot to learn, sir."

"I am always conscious of that, Joe; the ramifications of public life
are innumerable."

"I could give you some rummikins abaht farmers. I once travelled in
breeches."

"You seem to have done a great many things Joe."

"That's right, sir. I've been a sailor, a 'traveller,' a waiter, a
scene-shifter, and a shover, and I don't know which was the cushiest
job. But, talking of farmers: there's the old English type that wears
Bedfords--don't you go near 'im, 'e bites. There's the modern
scientific farmer, but it'll take us a week to find 'im. And there's the
small-'older, wearin' trahsers, likely as not; I don't think 'e'd be any
use to you.

"What am I to do then?" asked Mr Lavender.

"Ah!" said Joe, "'ave lunch."

Mr. Lavender sighed, his hunger quarelling with his sense of duty. "I
should like to have found a farmer first," he said.

"Well, sir, I'll drive up to that clump o'beeches, and you can have a
look round for one while I get lunch ready.

"That will do admirably."

"There's just one thing, sir," said Joe, when his master was about to
start; "don't you take any house you come across for a farm. They're
mostly cottages o' gentility nowadays, in'abited by lunatics."

"I shall be very careful," said Mr. Lavender.

"This glorious land!" he thought, walking away from the beech clump,
with Blink at his heels; "how wonderful to see it being restored to its
former fertility under pressure of the war! The farmer must be a happy
man, indeed, working so nobly for his country, without thought of
his own prosperity. How flowery those beans look already!" he mused,
glancing at a field of potatoes. "Now that I am here I shall be able
to combine my work on German prisoners with an effort to stimulate food
production. Blink!" For Blink was lingering in a gateway. Moving back to
her, Mr. Lavender saw that the sagacious animal was staring through the
gate at a farmer who was standing in a field perfectly still, with his
back turned, about thirty yards away.

"Have you----" Mr. Lavender began eagerly; "is it--are you employing any
German prisoners, sir?"

The farmer did not seem to hear. "He must," thought Mr. Lavender, "be of
the old stolid English variety."

The farmer, who was indeed attired in a bowler hat and Bedford cords,
continued to gaze over his land, unconscious of Mr. Lavender's presence.

"I am asking you a question, sir," resumed the latter in a louder
voice. "And however patriotically absorbed you may be in cultivating
your soil, there is no necessity for rudeness."

The farmer did not move a muscle.

"Sir," began Mr. Lavender again, very patiently, "though I have always
heard that the British farmer is of all men least amenable to influence
and new ideas, I have never believed it, and I am persuaded that if you
will but listen I shall be able to alter your whole outlook about the
agricultural future of this country." For it had suddenly occurred to
him that it might be a long time before he had again such an opportunity
of addressing a rural audience on the growth of food, and he was loth to
throw away the chance. The farmer, however, continued to stand with
his hack to the speaker, paying no more heed to his voice than to the
buzzing of a fly.

"You SHALL hear me," cried Mr. Lavender, unconsciously miming a voice
from the past, and catching, as he thought, the sound of a titter, he
flung his hand out, and exclaimed:

"Grass, gentlemen, grass is the hub of the matter. We have put our hand
to the plough"--and, his imagination taking flight at those words, he
went on in a voice calculated to reach the great assembly of farmers
which he now saw before him with their backs turned--"and never shall we
take it away till we have reduced every acre in the country to an arable
condition. In the future not only must we feed ourselves, but our dogs,
our horses, and our children, and restore the land to its pristine glory
in the front rank of the world's premier industry. But me no buts," he
went on with a winning smile, remembering that geniality is essential in
addressing a country audience, "and butter me no butter, for in future
we shall require to grow our margarine as well. Let us, in a word, put
behind us all prejudice and pusillanimity till we see this country of
ours once more blooming like one great cornfield, covered with cows.
Sirs, I am no iconoclast; let us do all this without departing in
any way from those great principles of Free Trade, Industrialism, and
Individual Liberty which have made our towns the largest, most crowded,
and wealthiest under that sun which never sets over the British Empire.
We do but need to see this great problem steadily and to see it whole,
and we shall achieve this revolution in our national life without
the sacrifice of a single principle or a single penny. Believe me,
gentlemen, we shall yet eat our cake and have it."

Mr. Lavender paused for breath, the headlines of his great speech in
tomorrow's paper dancing before his eyes: "THE CLIMACTERIC--EATS CAKE
AND HAS IT--A GREAT CONCLUSION." The wind, which had risen somewhat
during Mr. Lavender's speech, fluttered the farmer's garments at this
moment, so that they emitted a sound like the stir which runs through an
audience at a moment of strong emotion.

"Ah!" cried Mr. Lavender, "I see that I move you, gentlemen. Those have
traduced you who call you unimpressionable. After all, are you not the
backbone of this country up which runs the marrow which feeds the
brain; and shall you not respond to an appeal at once so simple and so
fundamental? I assure you, gentlemen, it needs no thought; indeed, the
less you think about it the better, for to do so will but weaken your
purpose and distract your attention. Your duty is to go forward with
stout hearts, firm steps, and kindling eyes; in this way alone shall we
defeat our common enemies. And at those words, which he had uttered
at the top of his voice, Mr. Lavender stood like a clock which has run
down, rubbing his eyes. For Blink, roaming the field during the speech,
and encountering quadruped called rabbit, which she had never seen
before, had backed away from it in dismay, brushed against the farmer's
legs and caused his breeches to fall down, revealing the sticks on which
they had been draped. When Mr. Lavender saw this he called out in a loud
voice Sir, you have deceived me. I took you for a human being. I now
perceive that you are but a selfish automaton, rooted to your own
business, without a particle of patriotic sense. Farewell!"




VIII

STARVES SOME GERMANS

After parting with the scarecrow Mr. Lavender who felt uncommonly
hungry' was about to despair of finding any German prisoners when he
saw before him a gravel-pit, and three men working therein. Clad in
dungaree, and very dusty, they had a cast of countenance so unmistakably
Teutonic that Mr. Lavender stood still. They paid little or no attention
to him, however, but went on sadly and silently with their work,
which was that of sifting gravel. Mr. Lavender sat down on a milestone
opposite, and his heart contracted within him. "They look very thin and
sad," he thought, "I should not like to be a prisoner myself far from my
country, in the midst of a hostile population, without a woman or a dog
to throw me a wag of the tail. Poor men! For though it is necessary to
hate the Germans, it seems impossible to forget that we are all human
beings. This is weakness," he added to himself, "which no editor would
tolerate for a moment. I must fight against it if I am to fulfil my duty
of rousing the population to the task of starving them. How hungry they
look already--their checks are hollow! I must be firm. Perhaps they have
wives and families at home, thinking of them at this moment. But, after
all, they are Huns. What did the great writer say? 'Vermin--creatures
no more worthy of pity than the tiger or the rat.' How true! And
yet--Blink!" For his dog, seated on her haunches, was looking at him
with that peculiarly steady gaze which betokened in her the desire for
food. "Yes," mused Mr. Lavender, "pity is the mark of the weak man. It
is a vice which was at one time rampant in this country; the war has
made one beneficial change at least--we are moving more and more towards
the manly and unforgiving vigour of the tiger and the rat. To be brutal!
This is the one lesson that the Germans can teach us, for we had almost
forgotten the art. What danger we were in! Thank God, we have past
masters again among us now!" A frown became fixed between his brows.
"Yes, indeed, past masters. How I venerate those good journalists and
all the great crowd of witnesses who have dominated the mortal weakness,
pity. 'The Hun must and shall be destroyed--root and branch--hip and
thigh--bag and baggage man, woman, and babe--this is the sole duty of
the great and humane British people. Roll up, ladies and gentlemen, roll
up! Great thought--great language! And yet----"

Here Mr. Lavender broke into a gentle sweat, while the Germans went on
sifting gravel in front of him, and Blink continued to look up into his
face with her fixed, lustrous eyes. "What an awful thing," he thought,
"to be a man. If only I were just a public man and could, as they do,
leave out the human and individual side of everything, how simple it
would be! It is the being a man as well which is so troublesome. A man
has feelings; it is wrong--wrong! There should be no connection whatever
between public duty and the feelings of a man. One ought to be able to
starve one's enemy without a quiver, to watch him drown without a wink.
In fact, one ought to be a German. We ought all to be Germans. Blink,
we ought all to be Germans, dear! I must steel myself!" And Mr. Lavender
wiped his forehead, for, though a great idea had come to him, he still
lacked the heroic savagery to put it into execution. "It is my duty," he
thought, "to cause those hungry, sad-looking men to follow me and watch
me eat my lunch. It is my duty. God give me strength! For unless I make
this sacrifice of my gentler nature I shall be unworthy to call myself a
public man, or to be reported in the newspapers. 'En avant, de Bracy!'"
So musing, he rose, and Blink with him. Crossing the road, he clenched
his fists, and said in a voice which anguish made somewhat shrill:

"Are you hungry, my friends?"

The Germans stopped sifting gravel, looked up at him, and one of them
nodded.

"And thirsty?"

This time they all three nodded.

"Come on, then," said Mr. Lavender.

And he led the way back along the road, followed by Blink and the three
Germans. Arriving at the beech clump whose great trees were already
throwing shadows, denoting that it was long past noon, Mr. Lavender saw
that Joe had spread food on the smooth ground, and was, indeed, just
finishing his own repast.

"What is there to eat?" thought Mr. Lavender, with a soft of horror.
"For I feel as if I were about to devour a meal of human flesh." And he
looked round at the three Germans slouching up shamefacedly behind him.

"Sit down, please," he said. The three men sat down.

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender to his surprised chauffeur, "serve my lunch.
Give me a large helping, and a glass of ale." And, paler than his
holland dust-coat, he sat resolutely down on the bole of a beech, with
Blink on her haunches beside him. While Joe was filling a plate with
pigeon-pie and pouring out a glass of foaming Bass, Mr. Lavender stared
at the three Germans and suffered the tortures of the damned. "I will
not flinch," he thought; "God helping me, I certainly will not flinch.
Nothing shall prevent my going through with it." And his eyes, more
prominent than a hunted rabbit's, watched the approach of Joe with
the plate and glass. The three men also followed the movements of the
chauffeur, and it seemed to Mr. Lavender that their eyes were watering.
"Courage!" he murmured to himself, transfixing a succulent morsel with
his fork and conveying it to his lips. For fully a minute he revolved
the tasty mouthful, which he could not swallow, while the three men's
eyes watched him with a sort of lugubrious surprise. "If," he thought
with anguish, "if I were a prisoner in Germany! Come, come! One
effort, it's only the first mouthful!" and with a superhuman effort,
he swallowed. "Look at me!" he cried to the three Germans, "look at me!
I--I--I'm going to be sick!" and putting down his plate, he rose and
staggered forward. "Joe," he said in a dying voice, "feed these poor
men, feed them; make them drink; feed them!" And rushing headlong to
the edge of the grove, he returned what he had swallowed--to the great
interest of Brink. Then, waving away the approach of Joe, and consumed
with shame and remorse at his lack of heroism, he ran and hid himself
in a clump of hazel bushes, trying to slink into the earth. "No," he
thought; "no; I am not for public life. I have failed at the first test.
Was ever so squeamish an exhibition? I have betrayed my country and
the honour of public life. These Germans are now full of beer and
pigeon-pie. What am I but a poltroon, unworthy to lace the shoes of the
great leaders of my land? The sun has witnessed my disgrace."

How long he stayed there lying on his face he did not know before he
heard the voice of Joe saying, "Wot oh, sir!"

"Joe," replied Mr. Lavender faintly, "my body is here, but my spirit has
departed."

"Ah!" said Joe, "a rum upset--that there. Swig this down, sir!" and he
held out to his master, a flask-cup filled with brandy. Mr. Lavender
swallowed it.

"Have they gone?" he said, gasping.

"They 'ave, sir," replied Joe, "and not 'alf full neither. Where did you
pick 'em up?"

"In a gravel-pit," said Mr. Lavender. "I can never forgive myself for
this betrayal of my King and country. I have fed three Germans. Leave
me, for I am not fit to mingle with my fellows."

"Well, I don't think," said Joe. "Germans?"

Gazing up into his face Mr. Lavender read the unmistakable signs of
uncontrolled surprise.

"Why do you look at me like that?" he said.

"Germans?" repeated Joe; "what Germans? Three blighters workin' on the
road, as English as you or me. Wot are you talkin' about, sir?"

"What!" cried Mr. Lavender, "do you tell me they were not Germans?"

"Well, their names was Tompkins, 'Obson, and Brown, and they 'adn't an
'aitch in their 'eads."

"God be praised!" said Mr. Lavender. "I am, then, still an English
gentleman. Joe, I am very hungry; is there nothing left?"

"Nothin' whatever, sir," replied Joe.

"Then take me home," said Mr. Lavender; "I care not, for my spirit has
come back to me."

So saying, he rose, and supported by Joe, made his way towards the car,
praising God in his heart that he had not disgraced his country.




IX

CONVERSES WITH A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR

"Yes," said Mr. Lavender, when they had proceeded some twenty miles
along the road for home, "my hunger is excessive. If we come across an
hotel, Joe, pull up."

"Right-o, sir," returned Joe. "'Otels, ain't what they were, but we'll
find something. I've got your coupons."

Mr. Lavender, who was seated beside his chauffeur on the driving-seat,
while Blink occupied in solitude the body of the car, was silent for a
minute, revolving a philosophic thought.

"Do you find," he said suddenly, "that compulsory sacrifice is doing you
good, Joe?"

"It's good for my thirst, sir," replied Joe. "Never was so powerful
thirsty in me life as I've been since they watered beer. There's just
'enough in it to tickle you. That bottle o' Bass you would 'ave 'ad at
lunch is the last of the old stock at 'ome, sir; an' the sight of it
fair gave me the wind up. To think those blighters 'ad it! Wish I'd
known they was Germans--I wouldn't 'ave weakened on it."

"Do not, I beg," said Mr. Lavender, "remind me of that episode. I
sometimes think," he went on as dreamily as his hunger would permit,
"that being forced to deprive oneself awakens one's worst passions; that
is, of course, speaking rather as a man than a public man. What do
you think will happen, Joe, when we are no longer obliged to sacrifice
ourselves?

"Do wot we've been doin all along--sacrifice someone else," said Joe
lightly.

"Be serious, Joe," said Mr. Lavender.

"Well," returned Joe, "I don't know what'll 'appen to you, sir, but I
shall go on the bust permanent."

Mr. Lavender sighed. "I do so wonder whether I shall, too," he said.

Joe looked round at him, and a gleam of compassion twinkled in his
greenish eyes. "Don't you worry, sir," he said; "it's a question of
constitootion. A week'd sew you up."

"A week!" said Mr. Lavender with watering lips, "I trust I may not
forget myself so long as that. Public men do not go 'on the bust,' Joe,
as you put it."

"Be careful, sir! I can't drive with one eye."

"How can they, indeed?" went on Mr. Lavender; "they are like athletes,
ever in training for their unending conflict with the national life."

"Well," answered Joe indulgently, "they 'as their own kind of
intoxication, too--that's true; and the fumes is permanent; they're
gassed all the time, and chloroformed the rest.

"I don't know to what you allude, Joe," said Mr. Lavender severely.

"'Aven't you never noticed, sir, that there's two worlds--the world as
it is, and the world as it seems to the public man?"

"That may be," said Mr. Lavender with some excitement. "But which is
the greater, which is the nobler, Joe? And what does the other matter?
Surely that which flourishes in great minds, and by their utterances
is made plain. Is it not better to live in a world where nobody shrinks
from being starved or killed so long as they can die for their kings and
countries, rather than in a world where people merely wish to live?"

"Ah!" said Joe, "we're all ready to die for our countries if we've got
to. But we don't look on it, like the public speakers, as a picnic.
They're a bit too light-'earted."

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, covering his ears, and instantly uncovering
them again, "this is the most horrible blasphemy I have ever listened
to."

"I can do better than that, sir," answered Joe. "Shall I get on with
it?"

"Yes," said Mr. Lavender, clenching his hands, "a public man shrinks
from nothing--not even from the gibes of his enemies."

"Well, wot abaht it, sir? Look at the things they say, and at what
really is. Mind you, I'm not speakin' particular of the public men in
this country--or any other country; I'm speakin' of the lot of 'em in
every country. They're a sort of secret society, brought up on gas.
And every now and then someone sets a match to it, and we get it in
the neck. Look 'ere, sir. Dahn squats one on his backside an' writes
something in 'igh words. Up pops another and says something in 'igher;
an' so they go on poppin' up an' squattin' dahn till you get an
atmosphere where you can't breathe; and all the time all we want is to
be let alone, and 'uman kindness do the rest. All these fellers 'ave
got two weaknesses--one's ideas, and the other's their own importance.
They've got to be conspicuous, and without ideas they can't, so it's a
vicious circle. When I see a man bein' conspicuous, I says to meself:
'Gawd 'elp us, we shall want it!' And sooner or later we always do. I'll
tell you what's the curse of the world, sir; it's the gift of expressin'
what ain't your real feeling. And--Lord! what a lot of us 'ave got it!"

"Joe," said Mr. Lavender, whose eyes were almost starting from his head,
"your words are the knell of poetry, philosophy, and prose--especially
of prose. They are the grave of history, which, as you know, is made up
of the wars and intrigues which have originated in the brains of public
men. If your sordid views were true, how do you suppose for one minute
that in this great epic struggle we could be consoled by the thought
that we are 'making history'? Has there been a single utterance of any
note which has not poured the balm of those words into our ears? Think
how they have sustained the widow and the orphan, and the wounded lying
out in agony under the stars. 'To make history,' 'to act out the great
drama'--that thought, ever kept before us, has been our comfort and
their stay. And you would take it from us? Shame--shame!" repeated
Mr. Lavender. "You would destroy all glamour, and be the death of every
principle."

"Give me facts," said Joe stubbornly, "an' you may 'ave my principles.
As to the other thing, I don't know what it is, but you may 'ave it,
too. And 'ere's another thing, sir: haven't you never noticed that when
a public man blows off and says something, it does 'im in? No matter
what 'appens afterwards, he's got to stick to it or look a fool."

"I certainly have not," said Mr. Lavender. "I have never, or very
seldom, noticed that narrowness in public men, nor have I ever seen them
'looking fools' as you rudely put it."

"Where are your eyes, sir?" answered Joe; "where are your eyes? I
give you my word it's one or the other, though I admit they've brought
camouflage to an 'igh art. But, speaking soberly, sir, if that's
possible, public men are a good thing' and you can 'ave too much of it.
But you began it, sir," he added soothingly, "and 'ere's your hotel.
You'll feel better with something inside you."

So saying, he brought the car to a standstill before a sign which bore
the words, "Royal Goat."

Mr. Lavender, deep sunk in the whirlpool of feeling which had been
stirred in him by his chauffeur's cynicism, gazed at the square redbrick
building with bewildered eyes.

"It's quite O. K.," said Joe; "I used to call here regular when I was
travellin' in breeches. Where the commercials are gathered together the
tap is good," he added, laying a finger against the side of his nose.
"And they've a fine brand of pickles. Here's your coupon."

Thus encouraged, Mr. Lavender descended from the car, and, accompanied
by Blink, entered the hotel and sought the coffee-room.

A maid of robust and comely appearance, with a fine free eye, divested
him of his overcoat and the coupon, and pointed to a table and a pale
and intellectual-looking young man in spectacles who was eating.

"Have you any more beef?" said the latter without looking up.

"No, sir," replied the maid.

"Then bring me the ham and eggs," he added.

"Here's another coupon--and anything else you've got."

Mr. Lavender, whose pangs had leaped in him at the word "beef," gazed at
the bare bone of the beef-joint, and sighed.

"I, too, will have some ham and a couple of poached eggs," he said.

"You can have ham, sir," replied the maid, "but there are only eggs
enough for one."

"And I am the one," said the young man, looking up for the first time.

Mr. Lavender at once conceived an aversion from him; his appearance was
unhealthy, and his eyes ravened from behind the spectacles beneath his
high forehead.

"I have no wish to deprive you of your eggs, sir," he said, "though I
have had nothing to eat all day."

"I have had nothing to eat to speak of for six months," replied the
young man, "and in a fortnight's time I shall have nothing to eat again
for two years."

Mr. Lavender, who habitually spoke, the truth, looked at him with a sort
of horror. But the young man had again concentrated his attention on his
plate. "How deceptive are appearances," thought Mr. Lavender; "one would
say an intellectual, not to say a spiritual type, and yet he eats like a
savage, and lies like a trooper!" And the pinchings of his hunger again
attacking him, he said rather acidly:

May I ask you, sir, whether you consider it amusing to tell such
untruths to a stranger?

The young man, who had finished what was on his plate, paused, and with
a faint smile said:

"I spoke figuratively. You, sir, I expect, have never been in prison."

At the word 'prison' Mr. Lavender's natural kindliness reasserted itself
at once. "Forgive me," he said gently; "please eat all the ham. I can
easily do with bread and cheese. I am extremely sorry you have had that
misfortune, and would on no account do anything which might encourage
you to incur it again. If it is a question of money or anything of
that sort," he went on timidly, "please command me. I abhor prisons;
I consider them inhuman; people should only be confined upon their
honours."

The young man's eyes kindled behind his spectacles.

"I have been confined," he said, "not upon my honour, but because of my
honour; to break it in."

"How is that?" cried Mr. Lavender, aghast, "to break it in?"

"Yes," said the young man, cutting a large slice of bread, "there's no
other way of putting it with truth. They want me to go back on my word
to go back on my faith, and I won't. In a fortnight's time they'll gaol
me again, so I MUST eat--excuse me. I shall want all my strength." And
he filled his mouth too full to go on speaking.

Mr. Lavender stared at him, greatly perturbed.

"How unjustly I judged him," he thought; and seeing that the maid had
placed the end of a ham before him he began carving off what little
there was left on it, and, filling a plate, placed it before the young
man. The latter thanked him, and without looking up ate rapidly on. Mr.
Lavender watched him with beaming eyes. "It's lovely to see him!" he
thought; "poor fellow!"

"Where are the eggs?" said the young man suddenly.

Mr. Lavender got up and rang the bell.

"Please bring those eggs for him," he said.

"Yes, sir," said the maid. "And what are you going to have? There's
nothing in the house now."

"Oh!" said Mr. Lavender, startled. "A cup of coffee and a slice of
bread, thank you. I can always eat at any time."

The maid went away muttering to herself, and bringing the eggs, plumped
them down before the young man, who ate them more hastily than words
could tell.

"I mean," he said, "to do all I can in this fort-night to build up my
strength. I shall eat almost continuously. They shall never break me."
And, reaching out, he took the remainder of the loaf.

Mr. Lavender watched it disappear with a certain irritation which he
subdued at once. "How selfish of me," he thought, "even to think of
eating while this young hero is still hungry."

"Are you, then," he said, "the victim of some religious or political
plot?"

"Both," replied the young man, leaning back with a sigh of repletion,
and wiping his mouth. "I was released to-day, and, as I said, I shall be
court-martialled again to-day fortnight. It'll be two years this time.
But they can't break me."

Mr. Lavender gasped, for at the word "courtmartialled" a dreadful doubt
had assailed him.

"Are you," he stammered--"you are not--you cannot be a Conscientious
Objector?"

"I can," said the young man.

Mr. Lavender half rose in horror.

"I don't approve," he ejaculated; "I do not approve of you."

"Of course not," said the young man with a little smile at once proud
and sad, "who does? If you did I shouldn't have to eat like this, nor
should I have the consciousness of spiritual loneliness to sustain me.
You look on me as a moral outcast, as a leper. That is my comfort and
my strength. For though I have a genuine abhorrence of war, I know full
well that I could not stick this if it were not for the feeling that
I must not and will not lower myself to the level of mere opportunists
like you, and sink myself in the herd of men in the street."

At hearing himself thus described Mr. Lavender flushed.

"I yield to no one," he said, "in my admiration of principle. It is
because of my principles that I regard you as a----"

"Shirker," put in the young man calmly. "Go on; don't mince words; we're
used to them."

"Yes," said Mr. Lavender, kindling, "a shirker. Excuse me! A renegade
from the camp of Liberty, a deserter from the ranks of Humanity, if you
will pardon me."

"Say a Christian, and have done with it," said the young man.

"No," said Mr. Lavender, who had risen to his feet, "I will not go so
far as that. You are not a Christian, you are a Pharisee. I abhor you."

"And I abhor you," said the young man suddenly. "I am a Christian
Socialist, but I refuse to consider you my brother. And I can tell
you this: Some day when through our struggle the triumph of Christian
Socialism and of Peace is assured, we shall see that you firebrands
and jingoes get no chance to put up your noxious heads and disturb the
brotherhood of the world. We shall stamp you out. We shall do you in. We
who believe in love will take jolly good care that you apostles of hate
get all we've had and more--if you provoke us enough that is."

He stopped, for Mr. Lavender's figure had rigidified on the other side
of the table into the semblance of one who is about to address the House
of Lords.

"I can find here," he cried, "no analogy with religious persecution.
This is a simple matter. The burden of defending his country falls
equally on every citizen. I know not, and I care not, what promises
were made to you, or in what spirit the laws of compulsory service were
passed. You will either serve or go to prison till you do. I am a plain
Englishman, expressing the view of my plain countrymen."

The young man, tilting back in his chair, rapped on the table with the
handle of his dinner-knife.

"Hear, hear!" he murmured.

"And let me tell you this," continued Mr. Lavender, "you have no right
to put a mouthful of food between your lips so long as you are not
prepared to die for it. And if the Huns came here tomorrow I would not
lift a finger to save you from the fate you would undoubtedly receive."

During this colloquy their voices had grown so loud that the maid,
entering in dismay, had gone into the bar and informed the company that
a Conscientious Objector had eaten all the food and was "carrying on
outrageous" in the coffee-room. On hearing this report those who were
assembled--being four commercial travellers far gone in liquor--taking
up the weapons which came nearest to hand--to wit, four syphons--formed
themselves two deep and marched into the coffee-room. Aware at once
from Mr. Lavender's white hair and words that he was not the Objector
in question, they advanced upon the young man, who was still seated,
and taking up the four points of the compass, began squirting him
unmercifully with soda-water. Blinded and dripping, the unfortunate
young fellow tried desperately to elude the cordon of his persecutors,
only to receive a fresh stream in his face at each attempt. Seeing
him thus tormented, amid the coarse laughter of these half-drunken
"travellers," Mr. Lavender suffered a moment of the most poignant
struggle between his principles and his chivalry. Then, almost
unconsciously grasping the ham-bone, he advanced and called out loudly:

"Stop! Do not persecute that young man. You are four and he is one. Drop
it, I tell you--Huns that you are!"

The commercial fellows, however, laughed; and this infuriating Mr.
Lavender, he dealt one of them a blow with the ham-bone, which, lighting
on the funny point of his elbow, caused him to howl and spin round the
room. One of the others promptly avenged him with a squirt of syphon
in Mr. Lavender's left eye; whereon he incontinently attacked them all,
whirling the ham-bone round his head like a shillelagh. And had it not
been that Blink and the maid seized his coat-tails he would have done
them severe injury. It was at this moment that Joe Petty, attracted by
the hullabaloo, arrived in the doorway, and running up to his master,
lifted him from behind and carried him from the room, still brandishing
the ham-bone and kicking out with his legs. Dumping him into the car,
Joe mounted hastily and drove off. Mr. Lavender sat for two or three
minutes coming to his senses before full realization of what he had done
dawned on him. Then, flinging the ham-bone from him, he sank back among
the cushions, with his chin buried on his chest. "What have I done?" he
thought over and over again. "What have I done? Taken up the bone for a
Conscientious Objector--defended a renegade against great odds! My God!
I am indeed less than a public man!"

And in this state of utter dejection, inanition, and collapse, with
Blink asleep on his feet, he was driven back to Hampstead.




X

DREAMS A DREAM AND SEES A VISION

Though habitually abstemious, Mr. Lavender was so very hungry that
evening when he sat down to supper that he was unable to leave the
lobster which Mrs. Petty had provided until it was reduced to mere
integument. Since his principles prevented his lightening it with
anything but ginger-beer he went to bed in some discomfort, and, tired
out with the emotions of the day, soon fell into a heavy slumber, which
at dawn became troubled by a dream of an extremely vivid character. He
fancied himself, indeed, dressed in khaki, with a breastplate composed
of newspapers containing reports of speeches which he had been charged
to deliver to soldiers at the front. He was passing in a winged tank
along those scenes of desolation of which he had so often read in his
daily papers, and which his swollen fancy now coloured even more vividly
than had those striking phrases of the past, when presently the tank
turned a somersault, and shot him out into a morass lighted up by
countless star-shells whizzing round and above. In this morass were
hundreds and thousands of figures sunk like himself up to the waist,
and waving their arms above their heads. "These," thought Mr. Lavender,
"must be the soldiers I have come to speak to," and he tore a sheet off
his breastplate; but before he could speak from its columns it became
thin air in his hand; and he went on tearing off sheet after sheet,
hoping to find a speech which would stay solid long enough for him to
deliver it. At last a little corner stayed substantial in his hand, and
he called out in a loud voice: "Heroes!"

But at the word the figures vanished with a wail, sinking into the
mud, which was left covered with bubbles iridescent in the light of the
star-shells. At this moment one of these, bursting over his head, turned
into a large bright moon; and Mr. Lavender saw to his amazement that
the bubbles were really butterflies, perched on the liquid moonlit mud,
fluttering their crimson wings, and peering up at him with tiny human
faces. "Who are you?" he cried; "oh! who are you?" The butterflies
closed their wings; and on each of their little faces came a look so
sad and questioning that Mr. Lavender's tears rolled down into his
breastplate of speeches. A whisper rose from them. "We are the dead."
And they flew up suddenly in swarms, and beat his face with their wings.

Mr. Lavender woke up sitting in the middle of the floor, with light
shining in on him through a hole in the curtain, and Blink licking off
the tears which were streaming down his face.

"Blink," he said, "I have had a horrible dream." And still conscious of
that weight on his chest, as of many undelivered speeches, he was
afraid to go back to bed; so, putting on some clothes, he went carefully
downstairs and out of doors into the morning. He walked with his
dog towards the risen sun, alone in the silvery light of Hampstead,
meditating deeply on his dream. "I have evidently," he thought, "not yet
acquired that felicitous insensibility which is needful for successful
public speaking. This is undoubtedly the secret of my dream. For the
sub-conscious knowledge of my deficiency explains the weight on my chest
and the futile tearing of sheet after sheet, which vanished as I tore
them away. I lack the self-complacency necessary to the orator in any
surroundings, and that golden certainty which has enchanted me in the
outpourings of great men, whether in ink or speech. This is, however,
a matter which I can rectify with practice." And coming to a little
may-tree in full blossom, he thus addressed it:

"Little tree, be my audience, for I see in you, tipped with the
sunlight, a vision of the tranquil and beautiful world, which, according
to every authority, will emerge out of this carnival of blood and iron."

And the little tree lifted up its voice and answered him with the song
of a blackbird.

Mr. Lavender's heart, deeply responsive to the voice of Nature, melted
within him.

"What are the realms of this earth, the dreams of statesmen, and all
plots and policies," he said, "compared with the beauty of this little
tree? She--or is it a he?--breathes, in her wild and simple dress, just
to be lovely and loved. He harbours the blackbird, and shakes fragrance
into the morning; and with her blossom catches the rain and the sun
drops of heaven. I see in him the witchery of God; and of her prettiness
would I make a song of redemption."

So saying he knelt down before the little tree, while Blink on her
haunches, very quiet beside him, looked wiser than many dogs.

A familiar gurgling sound roused him from his devotions, and turning his
head he saw his young neighbour in the garb of a nu