Part 6

There were many days last summer--to be accurate, I believe, there were forty-three--when it was by no means necessary to go to the Sahara in order to ascertain what a condition of almost unendurable drought could be like. For the present I feel that these two samples will suffice me. I cannot, unfortunately, return them, since I do not know their sender’s address, but I feel under no obligation to charter either camels or whale-boats, in order to go and make their acquaintance upon a larger scale.

As for the mere ferocity and killing powers of Nature we are not without a taste of her capacity even in that respect. Apart from the wild creatures, which have to look out for themselves, she exacts in weather like this a pretty stiff list of victims from the old, the weakly, and the very young. My energetic chow Mongo insisted upon my taking him for a late run through the snow this afternoon, and, as we stood for a moment near the stile, there came up a melancholy little chorus of bleatings from some sheepfold in the valley below us. I peered over into the white darkness, but could see nothing; Mongo licked his lips, and I earnestly trust that he was not thinking of mutton. It may be mere weakness on my part, but I have always felt glad that in my various communings with the good green earth I have stopped short at the garden, the wood, the bog, the hillside, and have never once stepped into the paddock or the farmyard. In reading lately Mr. Rider Haggard’s _Farmer’s Year_, I found my pleasure a good deal interfered with by the eternal and the detestable apparition of the butcher! Whenever the small lambs, that frisked so delicately, were beginning to grow plump; whenever certain Irish bullocks, whose vicissitudes one followed, were pronounced to be not improving as they ought; even when the old milch cow, who had given so much good milk, and had brought so many calves into the world, began to flag--always there was that abominable apparition in a smeared apron waiting for them close at hand, or peering in sinister fashion from round a corner. No, whatever other functionary I might be willing to share my pursuits with, assuredly I could never consent to share them with Mr. Bones! The objection may be merely sentimental, but so are most of our likings and dislikings merely sentimental. As for these green clients of ours, it is true that they do die pretty frequently upon our hands, and the fact is, no doubt, very distressing, the more so as in nine cases out of ten we are aware that it is entirely our own fault. In their case there are at least no heartrending cries or groans, heard or unheard. They go to their own place in peace, wafted as it were by slow music towards the gentlest of dissolutions. While as for ourselves, if we are their murderers, well, we manage to hold up our heads, and take particular care never to allude to the subject. On the contrary, we put on an air of extra cheerfulness, and make haste to plant something else!

FEBRUARY 10, 1900

That resolution about the war and its newspapers I still feel to have been the right one. Unfortunately, like many excellent resolutions, it has only one drawback, which is that it is impossible to keep to it! The situation has grown too strained; it clutches at one like a demon; it rides one all day like some waking nightmare. In vain I assure myself that the proper attitude for all non-combatants is one of absolute patience. That it becomes us just now to study patience, as we might study one of the fine arts; to learn, that is to say, either to go about our own concerns, or else to wait till we are told--as we might be at the end of an operation--“All over!” “All well!” This, I have no doubt, is the proper and patriotic attitude, only how is it to be attained? or who is sufficient for such placidity? It is not so many days since I opened my paper at eight o’clock in the morning, and the message heliographed by Sir George White to Sir Redvers Buller sprang to meet my eye. “Very hard pressed” and immediately below it the comment--“Here the light failed”!

“Here the light failed!” That seems indeed to be the summary of the whole situation. One question at least we are all forced to ask, if not with our lips, at least inwardly. What of Ladysmith? Will it; can it now be reached? and if not what is the alternative? Such thoughts are gadflies, and would drive the tamest mad. Restlessness gets possession of one. The thirst for news, more news, ever more, and more, becomes a possession; one that is no sooner slaked than it revives afresh. My particular garden boy has been turned into a mere newspaper boy, and spends his whole days running downhill to the station, on the bare chance of another paper having come in, or of someone having seen someone, who may possibly know something.

Has it often happened I wonder in the history of a country that this sort of external and public news--the news of the street and of the newspaper--becomes to each individual his own absolutely private news; news that for the moment seems to supersede even the acutest personal grief; news that makes the tears start, the pulses throb, the heart, at apprehension of what may be going to happen, literally stand still from fear? The thought of Ladysmith, it is no exaggeration to say, amounts to an agony. One feels it in one’s very bones. Fear of what its fate may be is the last thought at night, and one awakens to remember it with a sensation of despair which would be ridiculous were it not so real.

For the odd part of it is that not a single creature near and dear to me is shut up within those walls. My interest in it is therefore a purely external one, the interest of a citizen, nothing more. If we--myself, and others in the like case--feel it thus acutely, how must the situation stand to-day, to-morrow, all these pitiless, interminable days, to some?

FEBRUARY 12, 1900

I had occasion to go to Guildford yesterday despite the weather, and met in the train our eminent horticultural acquaintance, Mr. R. P. We have always a good deal to say to one another on the subject of our respective gardens, although his is a long-established and renowned one, ours such a callow young thing that it is hardly fit as yet to be called a garden at all. On this occasion, seeing that he was coming from London, my first remark was not a horticultural one.

“Is there anything fresh?” I asked. “News seems so often to come in just after the morning papers are out.”

“Fresh? Oh, you mean about the war? No, I think not. Everybody seems to be pretty sick over the whole business. I saw Sir F. J. the day before yesterday, and he was very much in the dumps about it. He says the Tommies out there don’t like it one bit. That they have got their tails regularly between their legs, and I’m sure _I_ don’t wonder.”

“How dare he!--I mean I don’t believe a word of that!” I exclaimed. “Anything else I am willing to believe, but not that. We have got our tails between our legs here at home if you like; I am quite ready to admit that. But they! Never!”

“Well, I don’t know. I only tell you what I hear. They have had a baddish time, you must remember. Stormberg and all that!--quite enough to give anyone the jumps, _I_ should say. Of course it has been kept out of the papers. In the papers the Tommies always figure as heroes. Is Anemone Blanda in flower with you yet?"--this with a sudden rise of animation.

“Anemone Blanda?” I repeated, feeling slightly confused by the rapidity of the transition. “Yes. At least no. I think not--I haven’t looked lately.”

“It is with me! Sixteen tufts in full flower--beauties! I shelter them a bit of course, but only to save them from getting knocked about. You never saw such a colour as they are! Yours were the pale blue ones, weren’t they? I know there’s a lot of that sort in the trade that are sold as Anemone Blanda, but they’re not the right Blanda at all. Mine are as blue as, oh, as blue as--blue paint.”

“We have numbers of bulbs at present in flower,” I said severely. “Scillas and chinodoxas, and daffodils, and tulips, and Iris Alata, and many others.”

“Ah, potted bulbs. They’re poor sort of things generally, don’t you think? Some people, I believe, like them though.”

“We have Cyclamen Coum in flower out of doors,” I added; garden vanity, or more probably deflected ill-humour, arousing in me a sudden spirit of violent horticultural rivalry.

“Oh, you have, have you?"--this in a tone of somewhat enhanced respect. “Don’t you shelter it at all?”

“Not in the least!” I replied contemptuously. “We grow it out in the copse; on the stones; in all directions. It is a perfect weed with us. No weather seems to make the slightest difference.”

I am really surprised that I did not assert that we had Orchids and Bougainvillæas growing out of doors in the snow! It is probable that I should have done so in another five minutes, for irritation sometimes takes the oddest forms. Luckily for my veracity our roads just then diverged; my horticultural acquaintance getting out at the next station, and I continuing on my way to Guildford.

I don’t think I have ever in my life felt more ruffled, more thoroughly exasperated than I was by that most uncalled-for remark about the Tommies. Had they been all individually my sons or my nephews I doubt if I could have felt more insulted! I adore my garden, and yield to no one in my estimation of its supreme importance as a topic; still there are moments when even horticulture must learn to bow its head; when the reputation of one’s Flag rises to a higher place in one’s estimation than even the reputation of one’s flower-beds. “Anemone Blanda!” I repeated several times to myself in the course of the afternoon, and each time with a stronger feeling of exasperation. “_Anemone Blanda_, indeed!”

FEBRUARY 13, 1900

If what lies beyond the next few weeks could be suddenly laid open to us, what should we see? It is, I am aware, rank cowardice upon my part, but if by merely ruffling over the blank pages of this diary which I hold in my hand I could in an instant find out, I know that I should refuse to do so. The same feeling has beset me before now, but hitherto always with regard to personal matters; never, so far as I can remember, with regard to public ones. Three weeks! It is not a very long time. Only a few more crocuses and scillas will be out in our little Dutch garden; only a few more oaks and chestnuts cut in the copse, yet within that time the fate of Ladysmith must be decided. Should help fail to reach it--and it may well prove impossible--what shall we see? what will the world see? what will our various enemies see? Only two alternatives appear to be open: an unbelievable surrender, and an only too easily believable slaughter. That last of course is the central thought, the unendurable one; the vision that hangs before one’s eyes day and night. Death upon those iron hills; death without the possibility of accomplishing anything; death under the most unendurable of conditions; shot helplessly, like the furred or the feathered beasts of a _battue_. I write it down deliberately, in the hope of thereby getting rid of it, for it haunts one unendurably. With that perversity, which makes us all at times our own most ingenious torturer, my mind revolves continually around the disaster before it comes, and fills up every detail with the most diabolical distinctness. “Fall of Ladysmith! Fall of Ladysmith! Destruction of the garrison!” It seems to reverberate along the roads; it presents itself upon every village hoarding, as a friend of mine saw it several times this winter upon those of the Paris boulevards. Before I open my paper in the morning it seems to be hidden under the folds, ready like an asp to spring out and poison me. At night I fall asleep to the thought of it, and in my dreams it performs wild and Weirtz-like antics, projecting itself in and out of them with all that monstrous reduplication which the besetting idea has a way of achieving for itself, when the brain that originated it is nominally asleep, and at peace.

LONDON, FEBRUARY 16, 1900

God be thanked! God be thanked! one of them, at least, is safe. Kimberley has been relieved, and the others, assuredly the others will follow? This leap from a midnight of gloom to a midday of joy has been almost too great; life, even for the most placid, has become too breathless, too crowded; let me pause a moment and recapitulate. I came to London upon Saint Valentine’s day, the 14th; S. S. being on her way south; circumstances delayed her a day, and in that day all this happened. We had gone to see a friend; she left me to take a turn in the Park; in a few minutes she returned breathlessly; she had met a park-keeper and he had told her the news. Five minutes more we were both in the park; had caught the same inspired park-keeper, and had fallen upon him simultaneously.

“Is it true? How do you know? Who told you?”

“Quite true ma’am. Quite true ladies. You’ll find it written up at the War Office.”

“But how? Where did they get in from? The enemy were right across; so----”

“Well ladies, as I understand it were like this. General French was sent north, and he fetched a big circuit as it were so. And----”

With our umbrellas we drew a hasty but effectual scheme of attack upon the park gravel, then hurried away from our gold-braided informant in the direction of Pall Mall.

Oddly enough St. James’s Palace did not appear to be in the least irradiated by the intelligence! its grim old face remained as unresponsive, and as dirty as usual. Everything else however had caught the glamour. It shone upon the cabs, or at any rate upon their cabbies; it lit up the sea of mud; it seemed to float along the pavements scoured by a recent shower. Men were coming out of the clubs in groups, talking loudly; everyone talked loudly; not an acquaintance was in sight, yet they seemed to be all acquaintances; more than acquaintances, friends, dear friends; we looked benignantly at them, and they looked benignantly back at us. In London; in St. James’ Street! Tall or short, stiff or pompous, young or old, it was all one; they were brothers; brothers in a common joy, brothers in a common relief from an all but maddening dread. To smile for no reason in some perfectly decorous stranger’s face seemed to be the most usual, the most natural behaviour. Safe! Safe! It was a chime, one which needed no joy bells to make it sound louder. Surely for us at least it was worth the strain, worth the long suspense, the almost hopeless anxiety for this? And Ladysmith? and Mafeking? The turn has come; the tide has changed! We shall shortly hear the same news of them. We shall be rejoicing over both of them to-morrow!

SURREY, FEBRUARY 26, 1900

There is a little tapestry fire-screen in my sitting-room here, which has been disturbing me quite seriously all this winter. It represents a group of Boers--when the tapestry was made I take it the word was spelt _boors_--of various ages and sexes, but all equally convulsed with laughter. The central figure is a big, square-jawed, good-natured looking fellow, who holds aloft in his hands a tiny, red-coated toy manikin, which he is causing to perform ridiculous antics for the amusement of a solid infant of two or three years old, who is trying to reach it. At a table close by an old man sits eating, in a suit of what appears to be greasy grey corduroys. He also grins with satisfaction at the performance. So does a woman--presumably the mother of the solid infant--who looks back laughingly from a doorway, over the dish which she carries in her hands. Other Boers, or boors, are to be seen in the background, all equally convulsed by the ludicrous figure cut by little Red-coat; all distorting jaws--wide enough by nature--into grimaces expressive of appreciation at his ridiculous position.

Since the original of this piece of tapestry was painted over three hundred years ago by a painter named Teniers, it is not at all likely that it was meant to represent our Boers of to-day, nor that the ridiculous little manikin in the red coat could be meant for an unfortunate _Rooinek_! In spite of that fact I have been unable for months to endure to look at this side of my harmless little fire-screen. Every morning on entering my sitting-room my first act has been to push it up through its sliding groove, until only a pair of prodigiously stout calves, and one infant’s shoe remain to be seen. To-day--and I write the fact down as a sign of changed times--my fire-screen remains untouched! More than this, I have found a malignant satisfaction in sitting down before it, and, as I warmed my feet--damp with gardening operations--surveying the row of grinning faces, with the little red manikin still performing his degrading antics in their midst.

“Laugh away, my friends!” I remarked. “Laugh away! Make the most of your time. Don’t disturb yourselves pray on my account. The unfortunate _Rooinek_ is no doubt, as you say, a very ridiculous and helpless sort of creature. At the same time don’t be too sure that he may not make a sudden leap yet out of your fingers! Stranger things have happened.”

So many caricaturists, friendly and unfriendly, have made capital out of this struggle of ours that I rather wonder none of them seem to have hit upon this familiar Teniers. That accuracy that pertains to all genius is plainly visible, moreover, as one looks at it, for the portraits--evidently they are portraits--might be those of any group of our worthy enemies to-day. As for the old fellow at the table, it might be Oom Paul himself in proper person; the same air of somewhat sanctimonious rectitude; the same broad fleshy nose, the same protruding chin, the same semicircular sweep of grizzled beard. It sets one reflecting upon the persistency of national types. Centuries rise, and grow, and fade away; wars are made and cease again, but probably few things in this fluctuating world change so little, or with such a snail-like slowness, as the few broad lines upon which the characteristics of any given race have once got themselves legibly inscribed.

MARCH 1, 1900

Surely we need no satirist to point out the ironies of life, for they are for ever with us! Here is the latest in my own experience:--

After all my arrangements, my care about telegrams, my determination not to be defrauded of even half an hour’s satisfaction, I have heard at last of the relief of Ladysmith from a child by the roadside; from a child? nay but from a baby, a smudgy-faced cottage infant, that could barely walk, and certainly was quite unable to talk! It happened in this wise. I was hurrying along the lane on my way to take the train for Godalming, having waited till the last minute in hopes of a telegram which never came. My morning papers had told me nothing, or nothing beyond vague surmises, which I was quite competent to provide for myself; consequently I was famishing for more substantial fare. I had nearly reached the village, and was hurrying round the last corner. Suddenly out of one of the cottage doors came this creature, dragging after it a stick with something red tied to it, which I entirely failed to distinguish as having been even intended for a flag. Either it stumbled, or from sheer force of circumstances simply sat down in the middle of the road, right in front of me. I was delayed an instant, and in that instant out flew its mother, and plucked it to its feet again, with a sound maternal smack.

“There ain’t no sense in yer being run over, is there, ye little fule, not if Ladysmith _is_ relieved!”

“Ladysmith!” I was upon the two of them in an instant, and had seized the bigger one by the arm, though she was not an acquaintance of mine.

“What did you say? _Is_ Ladysmith relieved?”

“Lor bless you ma’am, don’t you know? Why hours and hours ago! _We_ heard of it a little afore eleven we did!”

“But are you certain? Is there no mistake this time?”

“Mistake? Bless you, no ma’am, there ain’t no mistake! Why it were stuck up at the office by Mr. Smith hisself, just gone quarter to the hour. I was a-coming along with my husband’s second breakfast, for he’s working now for Mr. Bellew at the Mills. So as I was passing close to the office ‘Whatever is all this about,’ thinks I, for there was eight or ten people a-standin’ there, and a-readin’ somethink. And with that I sees----”

I too had seen something! A flag--unmistakably a Union Jack--hanging near the Church, I had overlooked it in my hurry. At sight of that, excitement, combined with the fear of missing my train, overcame my politeness, and I flew down the lane in the direction of the station.

The train was caught, but only by the narrowest margin. I sprang into a carriage, all but shaking hands as I did so with an absolutely unknown old gentleman, who was its only other occupant. Everyone knows the shrinking, the more than maidenly dread of the solitary travelling _he_, for the unknown travelling _she_, however harmless the latter may look. On this occasion public interest overcame even that terror. As a river bursts through its banks, so my old gentleman burst into a torrent of repressed information. He had just come from London; he had witnessed the scene at the Mansion House; he described to me the Lord Mayor coming to the window with a telegram in his hands; he dilated upon the crowds, the cheering, the flags, the block in the streets; above all upon the central fact of the situation, which was that he had himself been thereby made twenty minutes late at his board, or meeting, whatever it was. “For the first time in twenty-five years!--the very first time! They couldn’t make out _what_ had happened to me; thought I must have been run over!” he assured me several times between Guildford and Godalming.

Well, well, it has come at last! All is right, all is well, and we may go back to our own little concerns; our housekeepings, and our marketings, our weedings, and our seed-sowing, with lighter; let us hope, perhaps also, with a trifle gratefuller hearts?

MARCH 3, 1900

Our good old Cuttle is leaving us; will be gone by this time next week, and I feel more sorry than seems quite reasonable! To-day, when we began talking the matter over together, a suspicious huskiness in my voice warned me that I should do well to get away from the subject before my character for propriety was quite lost!

It is better I know for many reasons that he should leave. He cannot, indeed will not, undertake sole charge of both flower and kitchen garden, and to have anyone over him in either department is not to be dreamed of. Moreover his own home is four miles away, all up and down a long crooked lane, and a walk like that after a hard day’s work would be enough to try anyone half his age. Under ordinary circumstances the departure of a man who, though he has been with us now nearly three years, came at first as a mere jobber, would be a small affair on either side. Our poor old Cuttle is however so identified with the very existence of this little possession of ours that to lose him seems like losing a piece, and moreover a considerable piece of it. If the pegs and the marking-tapes have been our contributions, all the solid work, the earth turning and delving, the trenching, the grass-sowing, the cutting down of trees, above all the interminable pitchfork operations, have been his, and his satellite’s. Surely then he has a right to regard himself as its creator? Our good, old, kindly, argumentative Cuttle! The familiar little nooks and corners, cultivated, wild, half wild, will hardly seem so entirely themselves; hardly so intimately familiar, without your friendly face!

MARCH 5, 1900