Chapter 4

friend of his who knew, and told him, of my exact circumstances. This gentleman received me kindly and courteously. He and his like were among the most furiously hurried in the race, but their handling of great masses of diffuse information gave them, in many cases, a wide outlook, and where, as often happened, they were well balanced as well as honest, I think they served their age as truly as any of their contemporaries, and with more effect than most.

This gentleman talked to me for ten minutes, during which time he learned most of all there was to know about my little journalistic and debating experience at Cambridge, and the general trend of my views and purposes. I do not think he particularly desired my services; but, on the other hand, I was not an absolute ignoramus. I had written for publication; I had enthusiasm; and there was my Cambridge friend's letter.

"Well, Mr. Mordan," he said, turning toward a table littered deep with papers, and cumbered with telephones and bells, "I cannot offer you anything very brilliant at the moment; but I see no reason why you should not make a niche for yourself. We all have to do that, you know--or drop out to make way for others. You probably know that in Fleet Street, more perhaps than elsewhere, the race is to the swift. There are no reserved seats. The best I can do for you now is to enter you on the reporting staff. It is stretching a point somewhat to make the pay fifty shillings a week for a beginning. That is the best I can do. Would you care to take that?"

"Certainly," I told him; "and I'm very much obliged to you for the chance."

"Right. Then you might come in to-morrow. I will arrange with the news-editor. And now----" He looked up, and I took my hat. Then he looked down again, as though seeking something on the floor. "Well, I think that's all. Of course, it rests with you to make your own place, or--or lose it. I sympathize with what you have told me of your views--of course. You know the policy of the paper. But you must remember that running a newspaper is a complex business. One's methods cannot always be direct. Life is made up of compromises, and--er--at times a turn to the left is the shortest way to the right--er--Good night!"

Thus I was given my chance within a few hours of my descent upon the great roaring City. I was spared much. Even then I knew by hearsay, as I subsequently learned for myself, that hundreds of men of far wider experience and greater ability than mine were wearily tramping London's pavements at that moment, longing, questing bitterly for work that would bring them half the small salary I was to earn.

I wrote to Sylvia that night, from my little room among the cat-infested chimney-pots of Bloomsbury; and I am sure my letter did not suggest that London was a very gloomy place. My hopes ran high.

V

A JOURNALIST'S EQUIPMENT

"... Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore: Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, And pure religion breathing household laws."

WORDSWORTH.

Acting on the instructions I had received overnight, I presented myself at the office of the _Daily Gazette_ in good time on the morning after my interview with the editor. A pert boy showed me into the news-editor's room, after an interval of waiting, and I found myself confronting the man who controlled my immediate destiny. He was dictating telegrams to a shorthand writer, and, for the moment, took no notice whatever of me. I stood at the end of his table, hat in hand, wondering how so young-looking a man came to be occupying his chair.

He looked about my age, but was a few years older. His face was as smooth as the head of a new axe, and had something else chopper-like about it. He reminded me of pictures I had seen in the advertisement pages of American magazines; pictures showing a wedge-like human face, from the lips of which some such an assertion as "It's _you_ I want!" was supposed to be issuing. I subsequently learned that this Mr. Charles N. Pierce had spent several years in New York, and that he was credited with having largely increased the circulation of the _Daily Gazette_ since taking over his present position. He suddenly raised the even, mechanical tone in which he dictated, and snapped out the words:

"Right. Get on with those now, and come back in five minutes."

Then he switched his gaze on to me, like a searchlight.

"Mr. Mordan, I believe?"

I admitted the charge with my best smile. Mr. Pierce ignored the smile, and said:

"University man?"

Accepting his cue as to brevity, I said: "Yes. Corpus Christi, Cambridge."

He pursed his thin lips. "Ah well," he said, "you'll get over that."

In his way he was perfectly right; but his way was as coldly offensive as any I had ever met with.

"Well, Mr. Mordan, I've only three things to say. Reports for this paper must be sound English; they must be live stories; they must be short. You might ask a boy to show you the reporters' room. You'll get your assignment presently. As a day man, you'll be here from ten to six. That's all."

And his blade of a face descended into the heart of a sheaf of papers. As I reached the door the blade rose again, to emit a kind of thin bark:

"Ah!"

I turned on my heel, waiting.

"Do you know anything about spelling?"

I tried to look pleasant, as I said I thought I was to be relied on in this.

"Well, ask my secretary for tickets for the meeting at Memorial Hall to-day; something to do with spelling. Don't do more than thirty or forty lines. Right."

And the blade fell once more, leaving me free to make my escape, which I did with a considerable sense of relief. I found the secretary a meek little clerk, with a curious hidden vein of timid facetiousness. He supplied me with the necessary ticket and a hand-bill of particulars. Then he said:

"Mr. Pierce is quite bright and pleasant this morning."

"Oh, is he?" I said.

"Yes, very--for him. He's all right, you know, when you get into his way. Of course, he's a real hustler--cleverest journalist in London, they say."

"Really!" I think I introduced the right note of admiration. At all events, it seemed to please this little pale-eyed rabbit of a man, who, as I found later, was reverentially devoted to his bullying chief, and positively took a kind of fearful joy in being more savagely browbeaten by Pierce than any other man in the building. A queer taste, but a fortunate one for a man in his particular position.

For myself, I was at once repelled and gagged by Pierce's manner. I believe the man had ability, though I think this was a good deal overrated by himself, and by others, at his dictation; and I dare say he was a good enough fellow at heart. His manner was aggressive and feverish enough to be called a symptom of the disease of the period. If the blood in his veins sang any song at all to Mr. Pierce, the refrain of that song must have been, "Hurry, hurry, hurry!" He and his like never stopped to ask "Whither?" or "Why?" They had not time. And further, if pressed for reasons, destination, and so forth, they would have admitted, to themselves at all events, that there could be no other goal than success; and that success could mean no other thing than the acquisition of money; and that the man who thought otherwise must be a fool--a fool who would soon drop out altogether, to go under, among those who were broken by the way.

My general aim and purpose in journalistic work, at the outset, was the serving of social reform in everything that I did. As I saw it, society was in a parlous state indeed, and needed awaking to recognition of the fact, to the crying need for reforms in every direction. That attitude was justifiable enough in all conscience. The trouble was that I was at fault, first, in my diagnosis; second, in my notions as to what kind of remedies were required; and third, as to the application of those remedies.

Like the rest of the minority whose thoughts were not entirely occupied by the pursuit of pleasure and personal gain, I saw that the greatest obstacle in the path of the reformer was public indifference. But with regard to the causes of that indifference, I was entirely astray. I clung still to the nineteenth-century attitude, which had been justifiable enough during a good portion of that century, but had absolutely ceased to be justifiable before its end came. This was the attitude of demanding the introduction of reforms from above, from the State.

Though I fancied myself in advance of my time in thought, when I joined the staff of the _Daily Gazette_, I really was essentially of it. Even my obscure work as reporter very soon brought me into close contact with some of the dreadful sores which disfigured the body social and politic at that time. But do you think they taught me anything? No more than they taught the blindest racer after money in all London. They moved me, moved me deeply; they stirred the very foundations of my being; for I was far from being insensitive. But not even in the most glaringly obvious detail did they move me in the right direction. They merely filled me with resentment, and a passionate desire to bring improvement, aid, betterment; a desire to force the authorities into some action. Never once did it occur to me that the movement must come from the people themselves.

Poverty, though frequently a dreadful complication, was far from being at the root of all the sores. The average respectable working-class wage-earner with a wife and family, who earned from 25s. to 35s. or 40s. a week, would spend a quarter of that wage upon his own drinking; thereby not alone making saving for a rainy day impossible, but docking his family of some of the real necessities of life. But this was accepted as a matter of course. The man wanted the beer; he must have it. The State made absolutely no demand whatever upon such a man. But it did for him and his, more than he did for himself and his family. And, giving positively nothing to the State, he complainingly demanded yet more from it.

These were respectable men. A large number of men spent a half, and even three-quarters of their earnings in drink. The middle class spent proportionately far less on liquor, and far more upon display of one kind and another; they seldom denied themselves anything which they could possibly obtain. The rich, as a class, lived in and for indulgence, in some cases refined and subtle, in others gross; but always indulgence. The sense of duty to the State simply did not exist as an attribute of any class, but only here and there in individuals.

I believe I am strictly correct in saying that in half a century, while the population increased by seventy-five per cent., lunacy had increased by two hundred and fifty per cent.

Yet the majority rushed blindly on, paying no heed to any other thing on earth than their own gratification, their own pursuit of the money for the purchase of pleasure. One of the tragic fallacies of the period was this crazy notion that not alone pleasure, but happiness, could be bought with money, and in no other way. And the few who were stung by the prevailing suffering and wretchedness into recognition of our parlous state, we, for the most part, cherished my wild delusion, and insisted that the trouble could be remedied if the State would contract and discharge new obligations. We clamoured for more rights, more help, more liberty, more freedom from this and that; never seeing that our trouble was our incomplete comprehension of the rights and privileges we had, with their corresponding obligations.

Though I knew them not, and as a _Daily Gazette_ reporter was little likely to meet them, there were men who strove to open the eyes of the people to the truth, and strove most valiantly. I call to mind a great statesman and a great general, both old men, a great pro-consul, a great poet and writer, a great editor, and here and there politicians with elements of greatness in them, who fought hard for the right. But these men were lonely figures as yet, and I am bound to say of the people's leaders generally, at the time of my journalistic enterprise, that they were a poor, truckling, uninspired lot of sheep, with a few clever wolves among them, who saw the people's madness and folly and preyed upon it masterfully by every trick within the scope of their ingenuity.

Even those who were honourable, disinterested, and, for such a period, unselfish, were for the most part the disciples of tradition and the slaves of that life-sapping curse of British politics: the party spirit, which led otherwise honourable men to oppose with all their strength the measures of their party opponents, even in the face of their country's dire need.

Then there was the anti-British faction, a party which spread fast-growing shoots from out the then Government's very heart and root. The Government's half-hearted supporters were not anti-British, but they were not readers of the _Daily Gazette_; they were not, in short, whole-hearted Government supporters. They were Whigs, as the saying went. My party, the readers of the _Gazette_, the out-and-out Government party, to whom I looked for real progress, real social reform; they were unquestionably riddled through and through with this extraordinary sentiment which I call anti-British, a difficult thing to explain nowadays.

With the newly and too easily acquired rights and liberties of the nineteenth century, with its universal spread of education, cheap literature, and the like, there came, of course, increased knowledge, a wider outlook. No discipline came with it, and one of its earliest products was a nervous dread of being thought behind the time, of being called ignorant, narrow-minded, insular. People would do anything to avoid this. They went to the length of interlarding their speech and writings with foreign words often in ignorance of the meaning of those words. Broad-minded, catholic, tolerant, cosmopolitan--those were the descriptive adjectives which all desired to earn for themselves. It became a perfect mania, particularly with the young and clever, the half-educated, the would-be "smart" folk.

But it was also the honest ambition of many very worthy people, who truly desired broad-minded understanding and the avoidance of prejudice. This sapped the bulldog qualities of British pluck and persistence terribly. You can see at a glance how it would shut out a budding Nelson or a Wellington. But its most notable effect was to be seen among politicians, who were able to claim Fox for a precedent.

To believe in the superiority of the British became vulgar, a proof of narrow-mindedness. But, by that token, to enlarge upon the inferiority of the British indicated a broad, tolerant spirit, and a wide outlook upon mankind and affairs. From that to the sentiment I have called anti-British was no more than a step. Many thoroughly good, honourable, benevolent people took that step unwittingly, and all unconsciously became permeated with the vicious, suicidal sentiment, while really seeking only good. Such people were saved by their natural goodness and sense from becoming actual and purposeful enemies of their country. But as "Little Englanders"--so they were called--they managed, with the best intentions, to do their country infinite harm.

But there were others, the naturally vicious and unscrupulous, the morbid, the craven, the ignorant, the self-seeking; these were the dangerous exponents of the sentiment. With them, Little Englandism progressed in this wise: "There are plenty of foreigners just as good as the British; their rule abroad is just as good as ours." Then: "There are plenty of foreigners far better than the British; their rule abroad is better than ours." Then: "Let the people of our Empire fend for themselves among other peoples; our business is to look after ourselves." Then: "We oppose the people of the Empire; we oppose British rule; we oppose the British." From that to "We befriend the enemies of the British" was less than a step. It was the position openly occupied by many, in and out of Parliament.

"We are for you, for the people; and devil take Flag, Empire, and Crown!" said these ranters; drunken upon liberties they never understood, freedom they never earned, privileges they were not qualified to hold.

There were persons among them who spat upon the Flag that protected their worthless lives, and cut it down; sworn servants of the State who openly proclaimed their sympathy with the State's enemies; carefully protected, highly privileged subjects of the Crown, who impishly slashed at England's robes, to show her nakedness to England's foes.

And these were supporters, members, proteges of the Government, and readers of the _Daily Gazette_, upheld in all things by that organ. And I, the son of an English gentleman and clergyman, graduate of an English university, I looked to this party, the Liberal Government of England, as the leaders of reform, of progress, of social betterment. And so did the country; the British public. Errors of taste and judgment we regretted. That was how we described the most ribald outbursts of the anti-British sentiment.

It is hard to find excuse or palliation. Instinct must have told us that the demands, the programme, of such diseased creatures, could only aggravate the national ills instead of healing them. Yes, it would seem so. I can only say that comparatively few among us did see it. Perhaps disease was too general among us for the recognition of symptoms.

This then was the mental attitude with which I approached my duties as a reporter on the staff of a London daily newspaper of old standing and good progressive traditions. And my notion was that in every line written for publication, the end of social reform should be served, directly or indirectly. My idea of attaining social reformation was that the people must be taught, urged, spurred into extracting further gifts from the State; that the public must be shown how to make their lives easier by getting the State to do more for them. That was as much as my education and my expansive theorizing had done for me. Assuredly I was a product of my age.

I had forgotten one thing, however, and that was the thing which Mr. Charles N. Pierce began now to drill into me, by analogy, and with a good deal more precision and directness than I had ever seen used at Rugby or Cambridge. This one thing was that the _Daily Gazette_ was not a philanthropic organ, but a people's paper; and that the people did not want instructing but interesting.

"But," I pleaded, "surely, for their own sakes, in their own interests----"

"Damn their own sakes!"

"Well, but----"

"There's no 'but' about it. The public is an aggregation of individuals. This paper must interest the individual. The individual doesn't care a damn about the people. He cares about himself. He is very busy making money, and when he opens his paper he wants to be amused and interested; and he is not either interested or amused by any instruction as to how the people may be served. He doesn't want 'em served. He wants himself served and amused. That's your job."

I believe I had faint inclinations just then to wonder whether, after all, there might not be something to be said for the bloated Tories: the opponents of progress, as I always considered them. My thoughts ran on parties, in the old-fashioned style, you see. Also I was thinking, as a journalist, of the characteristics which distinguished different newspapers.

I cordially hated Mr. Charles N. Pierce, but he really had more discernment than I had, for he said:

"Don't you worry about teaching the people to grab more from the State. They'll take fast enough; they'll take quite as much as is good for 'em, without your assistance. But, for giving, the angel Gabriel and two advertisement canvassers wouldn't make 'em give a cent more than they're obliged."

VI

A JOURNALIST'S SURROUNDINGS

"Religion crowns the statesman and the man, Sole source of public and of private peace."

YOUNG.

I am bound to suppose that I must have been a tolerably tiring person to have to do with during my first year in London. The reason of this was that I could never concentrate my thoughts upon intimate, personal interests, either my own or those of the people I met. My thoughts were never of persons, but always of the people; never of affairs, but always of tendencies, movements, issues, ultimate ends. Probably my crude unrest would have made me tiresome to any people. It must have been peculiarly irritating to my contemporaries at that period, who, whatever they may have lacked, assuredly possessed in a remarkable degree the faculty of concentration upon their own individual affairs, their personal part in the race for personal gain.

I remember that I talked, even to the poor, overworked servant at my lodging, rather of the prospects of her class and order than of anything more intimate or within her narrow scope. Poor Bessie! She was of the callously named tribe of lodging-house "slaveys"; and what gave me some interest in her personality, apart from the type she represented, was the fact that she had come from the Vale of Blackmore, a part of Dorset which I knew very well. I even remembered, for its exceptional picturesqueness and beauty of situation, the cottage in which Bessie had passed her life until one year before my arrival at the fourth-rate Bloomsbury "apartments" house in which she now toiled for a living. There was little enough of the sap of her native valley left in Bessie's cheeks now. She had acquired the London muddiness of complexion quickly, poor child, in the semi-subterranean life she led.

I was moved to inquire as to what had led her to come to London, and gathered that she had been anxious to "see a bit o' life." Certainly she saw life, of a kind, when she entered her horrible underground kitchen of a morning, for, as a chance errand once showed me, its floor was a moving carpet of black-beetles until after the gas was lighted. In Bloomsbury, Bessie's daily work began about six o'clock--there were four stories in the house, and coals and food and water required upon every floor--and ended some seventeen hours later. Occasionally, an exacting lodger would make it eighteen hours--the number of Bessie's years in the world--but seventeen was the normal.

The trains which every day came rushing in from the country to the various railway termini of London were almost past counting. The "rural exodus," as it was called, was a sadly real movement then. Every one of them brought at least one Bessie, and one of her male counterparts, with ruddy cheeks, a tin box, and bright eyes straining to "see life." Insatiable London drew them all into its maw, and, while sapping the roses from their cheeks, enslaved many of them under one of the greatest curses of that day: the fascination of the streets.

So terrible a power was exercised by this unwholesome passion that men and women became paralyzed by it, and incapable of plucking up courage enough to enable them to leave the streets. I talked with men--poor, sodden creatures, whose greasy black coats were buttoned to their stubbly chins to hide the absence of collar and waistcoat--who supported a wretched existence in the streets, between begging, stealing, opening cab-doors, and the like, in constant dread of police attention. Among these I found many who had refused again and again offers of help to lead an honest, self-dependent life, for the sole reason that these offers involved quitting the streets.

The same creeping paralysis of the streets kept men from emigration to parts of the Empire in which independent prosperity was assured for the willing worker. They would not leave the hiving streets, with their chances, their flaunting vice, their incessant bustle, and their innumerable drinking bars.

The disease did not stop at endowing the streets with fascination for these poor, undisciplined, unmanned creatures; it implanted in them a lively fear, hard to comprehend, but very real to them, of all places outside the streets, with their familiar, pent noises and enclosed strife.

I met one old gentleman, the head of an important firm of printers, who, being impressed with the squalid wretchedness of the surroundings in which his work-people lived, decided to shift his works into the country. He chose the outskirts of a charmingly situated garden city, then in course of formation. He gave his people a holiday and entertained them at a picnic party upon the site of his proposed new works. He set before them plans and details of pleasant cottages he meant to build for them, with good gardens, and scores of conveniences which they could never know in the dingy, grimy tenements for which they paid extortionate rents in London.

There were four hundred and thirty-eight of these work-people. Twenty-seven of them, with some hesitation, expressed their willingness to enter into the new scheme for their benefit. The remaining four hundred and eleven refused positively to leave their warrens in London for this garden city, situated within an hour's run of the metropolis.

Figure to yourself the attitude of such people, where the great open uplands of the Empire were concerned: the prairie, the veld, the bush. Consider their relation to the elements, or to things elemental. We went farther than "Little Englandism" in those days; we produced little street and alley men by the hundred thousand; and then we bade them exercise their rights, their imperial heritage, and rule an Empire. As for me, I was busy in my newspaper work trying to secure more rights for them; for men whose present freedom from all discipline and control was their curse.

The reporters' room at the office of the _Daily Gazette_ was the working headquarters of five other men besides myself. One was a Cambridge man, one had been at Oxford, one came from Cork, and the other two were products of Scotch schools. Two of the five would have been called gentlemen; four of them were good fellows; the fifth had his good points, but perhaps he had been soured by a hard upbringing. One felt that the desire for money--advancement, success, or whatever you chose to call it; it all meant the one thing to Dunbar--mastered every feeling, every instinct even, in this young man, and made him about as safe and agreeable a neighbour as a wolf might be for a kennel of dogs.

A certain part of our time was devoted to waiting in the reporters' room for what Mr. Pierce called our "assignments," to this or that reporting task. Also, we did our writing here, and a prodigious amount of talking. The talk was largely of Fleet Street, the ruffianism of Mr. Pierce, the fortunes of our own and other journals, the poorness of our pay, the arduousness of our labours, the affairs of other newspaper offices, and the like. But at other times we turned to politics, and over our pipes and copy paper would readjust the concert of Europe and the balance of world power. More often we dealt with local politics, party intrigue, and scandals of Parliament; and sometimes--more frequently since my advent, it may be--we entered gaily upon large abstractions, and ventilated our little philosophies and views of the eternal verities.

By my recollection of those queer confused days, my colleagues were cynically anarchical in their political views, unconvinced and unconvincing Socialists, and indifferent Agnostics. I am not quite sure that we believed in anything very thoroughly--except that things were in a pretty bad way. Earnest belief in anything was not a feature of the period. I recall one occasion when consideration of some tyrannical act of our immediate chief, the news-editor, led our talk by way of character and morality to questions of religion. The _Daily Gazette_, I should mention, was a favourite organ with the most powerful religious community--the Nonconformists. Campbell, one of the two Scotch reporters, hazarded the first remark about religion, if I remember aright: something it was to the effect that men like Pierce had neither religion nor manners. Brown, the Cambridge man, took this up.

"Well now," he said, "that's a queer thing about religion. I'd like you to tell me what anybody's religion is in London."

"It's the capital of a Christian country, isn't it?" said Dunbar.

"Yes," admitted Brown. "That's just it. We're officially and politically Christian. It's a national affair. We're a Christian people; but who knows a Christian individual? Ours is a Christian newspaper, Christian city, Christian country, and all the rest of it. There's no doubt about it. All England believes; but no single man I ever meet admits that he believes. I suppose it's different up your way, Campbell. One gathers the Scotch are religious?"

"H'm! I won't answer for that," growled Campbell. "As a people, yes, as you say; but as individuals--well, I don't know. But my father's a believer; I could swear to it."

"Ah, yes; so's mine. But I'm not talking of fathers. I mean our generation."

"Well," I began, "for my part, I'm not so sure of the fathers."

"Oh, we can count you out," said Kelly, the Irishman. "All parsons' sons are atheists, as a matter of course; and bad hats at that."

"Rather a severe blow at our Christianity, isn't it?" said Brown.

I had no more to say on this point, not wishing to discuss my father. But I knew perfectly well that that good, kind man had cherished no belief whatever in many of what were judged to be the vital dogmas of Christianity.

"Well, I've just been thinking," said Campbell, "and upon my soul, Brown--if I've got one--I believe you're right. I don't know any one of our generation who believes. Every one thinks every one else believes, and everybody is most careful not to be disrespectful about the belief everybody else is supposed to hold. But, begad, nobody believes himself. We all wink at each other about it; accepting the certainty of every one else's belief, and only recognizing as a matter of course that you and me--we've got beyond that sort of thing."

"Well, I've often thought of it," said Brown. "I'll write an article about it one of these days."

"Who'll you get to publish it?"

"H'm! Yes, that's a fact. And yet, hang it, you know, how absurd! Who is there in this office that believes?"

"Echo answers, 'who?'"

"I happen to know that both Rainham and Baddeley go to church," said Dunbar, naming a proprietor and a manager.

"I don't see the connection," said Brown.

"Because there isn't any," said Campbell. "But Dunbar sees it, and so does the British public, begad. That's the kernel of the whole thing. That's why every one thinks every one else, except himself, believes. Rainham and Baddeley think their wives, and sons, and servants, and circle generally believe, and therefore would be shocked if Rainham and Baddeley didn't go to church. And every one else thinks the same. So they all go."

"But, my dear chap, they don't all go. The parsons are always complaining about it. The women do, but the men don't--not as a rule, I mean; particularly when they've got motors, and golf, and things. You know they don't. Here's six of us here. Does any one of us ever go to church?"

Dunbar, looking straight down over his nose, said: "I do--often."

"You're a fine fellow, Dunbar, sure enough," said Campbell; "and I believe you'll be a newspaper proprietor in five years. You've got your finger on the pulse. Can you look me in the face and say you believe?"

Dunbar smiled in his knowing way and wobbled. "I certainly believe it's a good thing to go to church occasionally," he said.

"And I believe you'll make a fortune in Fleet Street, my son."

"Well, in my humble opinion," said Kelly, "the trouble with you people in England is not so much that you don't believe; a good many believe, in a kind of a way, like they believe in ventilation, without troubling to act on it. They believe, but they don't think about it; they don't care, it isn't real. The poor beggars 'ld go crazy with fear of hell-fire, if the sort of armchair belief they have was real to 'em. It isn't real to 'em, like business, and money, and that, or like patriotism is in Japan."

"Well, it really is a rum thing," said Brown, with an affectation of pathos, "that in all this Christian country I shouldn't know a single believer of my generation."

"It's a devilish bad thing for the country," said Campbell. And even then, with all my fundamentally rotten sociological nostrums, I had a vague feeling that the Scotchman was right there.

"Well, then, that's why it's good to go to church," said Dunbar, with an air of finality.

"I still don't see the connection," murmured Brown.

"Because it still isn't there. But, of course, it's perfectly obvious. That's why Dunbar sees it, and why he'll presently run a paper." Then Campbell turned to Dunbar, and added slowly, as though speaking to a little child: "You see, my dear, it's not their not going to church that's bad; it's their not believing."

If I remember rightly, Mr. Pierce ended the conversation, through his telephone, by assigning to Brown the task of reporting a clerical gathering at Exeter Hall. Brown was credited with having a particularly happy touch in the reporting of religious meetings. He certainly had an open mind, for I remember his saying that day that he thought Christianity was perhaps better adapted to a skittish climate like ours than Buddhism, and that Ju-Ju worship in London would be sure to cause friction with the County Council.

As I see it now, there was a terribly large amount of truth in the view taken by Brown and Campbell and Kelly about belief in England, and more particularly in London. But there were devout men of all ages who did not happen to come within their circle of acquaintance. I met Salvation Army officers occasionally, who were both intelligent, self-denying, and hard-working; and I suppose that with them belief must have been at least as powerful a motive as devotion to their Army, their General, and the work of reclamation among the very poor. Also, there were High Church clergymen, who toiled unceasingly among the poor. Symbolism was a great force with them; but there must have been real belief there. Also, there were some fine Nonconformist missions. I recall one in West London, the work of which was a great power for good in such infected warrens as Soho. But it certainly was not an age of faith or of earnest beliefs. The vast majority took their Christianity, with the national safety and integrity, for granted--a thing long since established by an earlier generation; a matter about which no modern could spare time for thought or effort.

I believe it was on the day following this particular conversation in the reporters' room that I met Leslie Wheeler by appointment at Waterloo, and went down to Weybridge with him for the week-end. My friend was in even gayer spirits than usual, and laughingly told me that I must "Work up a better Saturday face than that" before we got to Weybridge.

I had known Leslie Wheeler since our school-days; and I remember lying awake in the room next his own at Weybridge that night, and wondering why in the world it was I felt so out of touch with my high-spirited friend. During that Saturday afternoon and evening I had been pretty much preoccupied in securing as much as possible of Sylvia's attention. But the journey down had been made with Leslie alone, and when his father had gone to bed, we two had spent another half-hour together in the billiard-room, smoking and sipping whiskey and soda. Leslie was in the vein most usual with him, of "turning to mirth all things on earth"; and I was conscious, upon my side, of a notable absence of reciprocal feeling, of friendly rapport. And I could find no explanation for this, as I lay thinking of it in bed.

Looking backward, I see many causes which probably contributed to my feeling of lost touch. I had only been about a month in London, but it had been a busy month, and full of new experiences, of intimate touch with realities of London life, sordid and otherwise. It was all very unlike Rugby and Cambridge; very unlike the life of the big luxurious Weybridge house, and even more unlike lichen-covered Tarn Regis. In those days I took little stock of such mundane details as bed and board. But these things count; I had been made to take note of them of late.

I paid 12s. 6d. a week for my garret, and 7s. a week for my breakfast, 1s. for lighting, and 1s. for my bath. That left me with 28s. 6d. a week for daily lunch and dinner, clothes, boots, tobacco, and the eternal penny outgoings of London life. The purchase of such a trifle as a box of sweets for Sylvia made a week's margin look very small. Already I had begun to note the expensiveness of stamps, laundry work, omnibus fares, and such matters. My training had not been a hopeful one, so far as small economies went. Leslie twitted me with neglecting golf, and failing to attend the Inter-'Varsity cricket match. He found economy, like all other things under heaven, and in heaven for that matter, suitable subjects for the exercise of his tireless humour. But I wondered greatly that his incessant banter should jar upon me; that I should catch myself regarding him with a coldly appraising eye. Indeed, it troubled me a good deal; and the more so when I thought of Sylvia.

I flatly declined to admit that London had affected my feeling for Sylvia. Whatever one's view, her big violet eyes were abrim with gentle sympathy. I watched her as I sat by her side in church, and thought of our irreverent talk at the office. Here was sincere piety, at all events, I thought. Mediaevalism never produced a sweeter devotee, a worshipper more rapt. I could not follow her into the place of ecstasy she reached. But, I told myself, I could admire from without, and even reverence. Could I? Well, I was somewhat strengthened in the belief that very Sunday night by Sylvia's father.

VII

A GIRL AND HER FAITH

"If faith produce no works, I see That faith is not a living tree."

HANNAH MORE.

During that Sunday at Weybridge I saw but little of my friend Leslie. It was only by having obtained special permission from the _Daily Gazette_ office that I was able to remain away from town that day. My leisure was brief, my chances few, I felt; and that seemed to justify the devoting of every possible moment to Sylvia's company.

Sylvia's church was not the family place of worship. When Mrs. Wheeler and Marjory attended service, it was at St. Mark's, but Sylvia made her devotions at St. Jude's, a church famous in that district for its high Anglicanism and stately ritual.

The incumbent of St. Jude's, his Reverence, or Father Hinton, as Sylvia always called him, was a tall, full-bodied man, with flashing dark eyes, and a fine, dramatic presence. I believe he was an indefatigable worker among the poor. I know he had a keen appreciation of the dramatic element in his priestly calling, and in the ritual of his church, with its rich symbolism and elaborate impressiveness. Even from my brief glimpses of the situation, I realized that this priest (the words clergyman and vicar were discouraged at St. Jude's) played a very important, a vital part, in the scheme of Sylvia's religion. I think Sylvia would have said that the personality of the man was nothing; but she would have added that his office was much, very much to her.

She may have been right, though not entirely so, I think. But it is certain that, in the case of Father Hinton, the dramatic personality of the man did nothing to lessen the magnitude of his office in the minds of such members of his flock as Sylvia. I gathered that belief in the celibacy of the clergy was, if not an article of faith, at least a part of piety at St. Jude's.

Before seven o'clock on Sunday morning I heard footsteps on the gravel under my window, and, looking out, saw Sylvia, book in hand, leaving the house. She was exquisitely dressed, the distinguishing note of her attire being, as always in my eyes, a demure sort of richness and picturesqueness. Never was there another saint so charming in appearance, I thought. Her very Prayer Book, or whatever the volume might be, had a seductive, feminine charm about its dimpled cover.

I hurried over my dressing and was out of the house by half-past seven and on my way to St. Jude's. Breakfast was not until half-past nine, I knew. The morning was brilliantly sunny; and life in the world, despite its drawbacks and complexities, as seen from Fleet Street, seemed an admirably good thing to me as I strode over a carpet of pine-needles, and watched the slanting sun-rays turning the tree trunks to burnished copper.

The service was barely over when I tiptoed into a seat beside the door at St. Jude's. At this period the appurtenances of ritual in such churches as St. Jude's--incense, candles, rich vestments, and the like--rivalled those of Rome itself. I remember that, fresh from the dewy morning sunshine without, these symbols rather jarred upon my senses than otherwise, with a strong hint of artificiality and tawdriness, the suggestion of a theatre seen by daylight. But they meant a great deal to many good folks in Weybridge, for, despite the earliness of the hour, there were fifty or sixty women present, besides Sylvia, and half a dozen men.

I could see Sylvia distinctly from my corner by the door, and I was made rather uneasy by the fact that she remained in her place when every one else had left the building. Five, ten minutes I waited, and then walked softly up the aisle to her place. I did not perceive, until I reached her side, that she was kneeling, or I suppose I should have felt obliged to refrain from disturbing her. As it was, Sylvia heard me, and, having seen who disturbed her, rose, with the gravest little smile, and, with a curtsy to the altar, walked out before me.

I found that Sylvia generally stayed on in the church for the eight o'clock service; and I was duly grateful when she yielded to my solicitations and set out for a walk with me instead. I had taken a few biscuits from the dining-room and eaten them on my way out; but I learned later, rather to my distress, that Sylvia had not broken her fast. I must suppose she was accustomed to such practices, for she seemed to enjoy almost as much as I did our long ramble in the fresh morning air.

I learned a good deal during that morning walk, and the day that followed it, the greater part of which I spent by Sylvia's side. Upon the whole, I was perturbed and made uneasy; but I continued to assure myself, perhaps too insistently for confidence or comfort, that Sylvia was wholly desirable and sweet. It was perhaps unfortunate for my peace of mind that the day was one of continuous religious exercises. The fact tinged all our converse, and indeed supplied the motive of most of it.

I did not at the time realize exactly what chilled and disturbed me, but I think now that it was what I might call the inhumanity of Sylvia's religion. I dipped into one of her sumptuous little books at some time during the day, and I remember this passage:

"To this end spiritual writers recommend what is called a 'holy indifference' to all created things, including things inanimate, place, time, and the like. Try as far as possible to be indifferent to all things. Remember that the one thing important above all others to you is the salvation of your own soul. It is the great work of your life, far greater than your work as parent, child, husband, wife, or friend."

It was a reputable sort of a book this, and fathered by a respected Oxford cleric.

There was singularly little of the mystic in my temperament. My mind, as you have seen, was surcharged with crude but fervent desires for the material betterment of my kind. I was nothing if not interested in human well-being, material progress, mortal ills and remedies. Approaching Sylvia's position and outlook from this level then, I thrust my way through what I impatiently dismissed as the "flummery"; by which I meant the poetry, the picturesqueness, the sacrosanct glamour surrounding his Reverence and St. Jude's; and found, or thought I found, that Sylvia's religion was at worst a selfish gratification of the senses of the individual worshipper, and at best a devout and pious ministration to the worshipper's own soul; in which the loving of one's neighbour and caring for one another seemed to play precisely no part at all.

True it was, as I already knew, that in the East End of London, and elsewhere, some of the very High Church clergy were carrying on a work of real devotion among the poor, and that with possibly a more distinguished measure of success than attended the efforts of any other branch of Christian service. They did not influence anything like the number of people who were influenced by dissenting bodies, but those who did come under their sway came without reservation.

But the point which absorbed me was the question of how this particular aspect of religion affected Sylvia. In this, at all events, it seemed to me a far from helpful or wholesome kind of religion. Sylvia liked early morning services because so few people attended them. It was "almost like having the church to oneself." The supreme feature of religious life for Sylvia had for its emblem the tinkle of the bell at the service she always called Mass. The coming of the Presence--that was the C Major of life for Sylvia. For the rest, meditation, preferably in the setting provided by St. Jude's, with its permanent aroma of incense and its dim lights--the world shut out by stained glass--this, with prayer, genuflections, and the ecstasy of long thought upon the circumstances of the supreme act of Christ's life upon earth, seemed to me to represent the sum total of Sylvia's religion.

But, over and above what was to me the chilling negativeness of all this, its indifference to the human welfare of all other mortals, there was in Sylvia's religion something else, which I find myself unable, even now, to put into words. Some indication of it, perhaps, is given by the little passage I have quoted from one of her books. It was the one thing positive which I found in my lady's religion; all the rest was to me a beautiful, intricate, purely artificial negation of human life and human interest.

This one thing positive struck into my vitals with a chill premonition, as of something unnatural and, to me, unfathomable. It was a sentiment which I can only call anti-human. Even as those of Sylvia's persuasion held that the clergy should be celibate, so it seemed to me they viewed all purely human loves, ties, emotions, sentiments, and interests generally with a kind of jealous suspicion, as influences to be belittled as far as possible, if not actually suppressed.

Puritanism, you say? But, no; the thing had no concern with Puritanism, for it lacked the discipline, the self-restraint that made Cromwell's men invincible. There was no Puritanism in the influence which could make women indifferent to the earthly ties of love and sentiment, to children, to the home and domesticity, while at the same time implanting in them an almost feverish appreciation of incense, rich vestments, gorgeous decorations, and the whole paraphernalia of such a service as that of St. Jude's, Weybridge. This religion, or, as I think it would be more just to say, Sylvia's conception of this religion, did not say:

"Deny yourself this or that."

It said:

"Deny yourself to the rest of your kind. Deny all other mortals. Wrap yourself in yourself, thinking only of your own soul and its relation to its Maker and Saviour."

This was how I saw Sylvia's religion, and, though she was sweetly kind and sympathetic to me, Dick Mordan, I was strangely chilled and perturbed by realization of the fact that nothing human really weighed with her, unless her own soul was human; that the people, our fellow men and women, of whose situation and welfare I thought so much, were far less to Sylvia than the Early Fathers and the Saints; that humanity had even less import for her, was less real, than to me, was the fascination of St. Jude's incense-laden atmosphere.

Sylvia's dainty person had an infinite charm for me; the personality which animated and informed it chilled and repelled me as it might have been a thing uncanny. When I insisted upon the dear importance of some one of humanity's claims, the faraway gaze of her beautiful eyes, with their light that never was on sea or land, her faintly superior smile--all this thrust me back, as might a blow, and with more baffling effect.

And then the accidental touch of her little hand would bring me back, with pulses fluttering, and the warm blood in my veins insisting that sweet Sylvia was adorable; that everything would be well lost in payment for the touch of her lips. So, moth-like, I spent that pleasant Sabbath day, attached to Sylvia by ties over which my mind had small control; by bonds which, if the truth were known, were not wholly dissimilar, I believe, from the ties which drew her daily to the heavy atmosphere of the sanctuary rails of St. Jude's.

In the evening Mr. Wheeler asked me to come and smoke a cigar with him in his private room, and the invitation was not one to be evaded. I was subconsciously aware that it elicited a meaning exchange of glances between Marjory and her mother.

"Well, Mordan, I hope things go well with you in Fleet Street," said Mr. Wheeler, when his cigar was alight and we were both seated in his luxurious little den.

"Oh, tolerably," I said. "Of course, I am quite an obscure person there as yet; quite on the lowest rungs, you know."

"Quite so; quite so; and from all I hear, competition is as keen there as in the City, though the rewards are--rather different, of course."

I nodded, and we were silent for a few moments. Then he flicked a little cigar-ash into a tray and looked up sharply, with quite the Moorgate Street expression, I remember thinking.

"I think you are a good deal attracted by my youngest girl, Mordan?" he said; and his tone demanded a reply even more than his words.

"Yes, I certainly admire her greatly," I said, more than a little puzzled by the wording of the question; more than a little fluttered, it may be; for it seemed to me a welcoming sort of question, and I was keenly aware of my ineligibility as a suitor.

"Exactly. That is no more than I expected to hear from you. Indeed, I think anything less would--well, I shouldn't have been at all pleased with anything less."

His complaisance quite startled me. Somehow, too, it reminded me of my many baffled retirements of that day, before the elements in Sylvia's character which chilled and repelled me. I was almost glad that I had not committed myself to any warmer or more definite declaration. Mr. Wheeler weighed his cigar with nice care.

"Yes," he continued. "If you had disputed the attraction--the attachment, I should perhaps say--I should have found serious ground for criticizing your--your behaviour to my girl. As it is, of course, the thing is natural enough. You have been attracted; the child is attractive; and you have paid her marked attentions--which is what any young man might be expected to do."

"If he is going to suggest an engagement," I thought, "I must be very clear about my financial position, or want of position." Mr. Wheeler continued thoughtfully to eye his cigar.

"Yes, it is perfectly natural," he said; "and you will probably think, therefore, that what I am going to say is very unnatural and unkind. But you must just bear in mind that I am a good deal older than you, and, also, I am Sylvia's father."

I nodded, with a new interest.

"Well, now, Mordan, let me say first that I know my girls pretty well, and I am quite satisfied that Sylvia is not fitted to be a poor man's wife. You would probably think her far better fitted for that part than her sister, because Marjory is a lot more gay and frivolous. Well, you would be wrong. They are neither of them really qualified for the post, but Sylvia is far less so than Marjory. In point of fact she would be wretched in it, she would fail in it; and--I may say that the fact would not make matters easier for her husband."

There did not seem to me any need for a reply, but I nodded again; and Mr. Wheeler resumed, after a long draw at his cigar. He smoked a very excellent, rather rich Havana.

"Yes, girls are different now from the girls I sweethearted with; and girls like mine must have money. I dare say you think Sylvia dresses very prettily, in a simple way. My dear fellow, her laundry bill alone would bankrupt a newspaper reporter."

I may have indicated before, that Mr. Wheeler was not a person of any particular refinement. He had made the money which provided a tolerably costly upbringing for his children, but his own education I gathered had been of a much more exiguous character. There was, as I know, a good deal of truth in what he said of the girl of the period.

"Well, now, I put it to you, Mordan, whether, admitting that what I say about Sylvia is true--and you may take it from me that it is true--whether it would be very kind or fair on my part to allow you to go on paying attention to her at the rate of--say to-day's. Do you think it would be wise or kind of me to allow it? I say nothing about your side in the matter, because--well, because I still have some recollection of how a young fellow feels in such a case. But would it be wise of me to allow it?"

He was a shrewd man, this father of Sylvia, and of my old friend; and I have no doubt that the tactics I found so disarming had served him well before that day in the City. At the same time, instinct seemed to forbid complete surrender on my side.

"It is just consideration of the present difficulties of my position which has made me careful to avoid seeking to commit Sylvia in any way," I said.

It was probably an unwise remark. At all events, it struck the note of opposition, of contumacy, which it seemed my host had been anticipating; and he met it with a new inflection in his voice, as who should say: "Well, now to be done with explanations and the velvet glove. Have at you!" What he actually said was:

"Ah, there's a deal of mischief to be done without a declaration, my friend. But, however, I don't expect that you should share my view. I only suggested it on the off chance because--well, I suppose, because that would be the easiest way out for me, as host. But I don't know that I should have thought much of you if you had met me half-way. So now let me do my part and get it over, for it's not very pleasant. I have shown you my reasons, which, however they may seem to you, are undeniable to me. Now for my wishes in the matter, as a father; I am sure there is no need for me to say 'instructions,' so I say 'wishes.' They are simply that for the time--for a year or two, anyhow--you should not give me the pleasure of being your host, and that you should not communicate in any way with Sylvia. There, now it's said, and done, and I think we might leave it at that; for I don't think it's much more pleasant for me than for you. I'm sure I hope we shall have many a pleasant evening together--er--after a few years have passed. Now, what do you say--shall we have another cigar, or go in to the ladies?"

I flatter myself that, with all my shortcomings, I was never a sulky fellow. At all events, I elected to join the ladies; but my reward was not immediately apparent, for it seemed that Sylvia had retired for the night. At least, we did not meet again until breakfast-time next morning, when departure was imminent, and the week's work had, so to say, begun.

VIII

A STIRRING WEEK

Ay! we would each fain drive At random, and not steer by rule. Weakness! and worse, weakness bestows in vain. Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive. We rush by coasts where we had lief remain; Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool.

. . . . .

Even so we leave behind, As, charter'd by some unknown Powers, We stem across the sea of life by night. The joys which were not for our use design'd; The friends to whom we had no natural right, The homes that were not destined to be ours.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

It goes without saying that Mr. Wheeler's attitude, and my being practically forbidden the house at Weybridge, strengthened and sharpened my interest in Sylvia. Nothing else so fans the flame of a young man's fancy as being forbidden all access to its object. Accordingly, in the weeks which followed that Sunday at Weybridge, I began an ardent correspondence with Sylvia, after inducing her to arrange to call for letters at a certain newspaper shop not far from the station.

It was a curious correspondence in many ways. Some of my long, wordy epistles were indited from the reporters' room at the _Daily Gazette_ office, in the midst of noisy talk and the hurried production of "copy." Others, again, were produced, long after--for my health's sake--I should have been in bed; and these were written on a corner of my little chest of drawers in the Bloomsbury lodging-house. I was a great reader of the poet Swinburne at the time, and I doubt not my muse was sufficiently passionate seeming. But, though I believe my phrases of endearment were alliteratively emphatic, and even, as I afterwards learned, somewhat alarming to their recipient, yet the real mainspring of my eloquence was the difference between our respective views of life, Sylvia's and mine.

In short, before very long my letters resolved themselves into fiery and vehement denunciation of Sylvia's particular and chosen _metier_ in religion, and equally vehement special pleading on behalf of the claims of humanity and social reform, as I saw them. I find the thing provocative of smiles now, but I was terribly in earnest then, or thought so, and had realized nothing of the absolute futility of pitting temperament against temperament, reason against conviction, argument against emotional belief.

We had some stolen meetings, too, in the evenings, I upon one side of a low garden wall, Sylvia upon the other. Stolen meetings are apt to be very sweet and stirring to young blood; but the sordid consideration of the railway fare to Weybridge forbade frequent indulgence, and such was my absorption in social questions, such my growing hatred of Sylvia's anti-human form of religion, that even here I could not altogether forbear from argument. Indeed, I believe I often left poor Sylvia weary and bewildered by the apparently crushing force of my representations, which, while quite capable of making her pretty head to ache, left her mental and emotional attitude as completely untouched as though I had never opened my lips.

Wrought up by means of my own eloquence, I would make my way back to London in a hot tremor of exaltation, which I took to be love and desire of Sylvia. And then, as like as not, I would receive a letter from my lady-love the next day, the refrain of which would be:

"How strange you are. How you muddle me! Indeed, you don't understand; and neither, perhaps, do I understand you. It seems to me you would drag sacred matters down to the dusty level of your politics."

The dusty level of my politics! That was it. The affairs of the world, of mortal men, they were as the affairs of ants to pretty Sylvia. A lofty and soaring view, you say? Why, no; not that exactly, for what remained of real and vital moment in her mind, to the exclusion of all serious interest in humanity? There remained, as a source of much gratification, what I called the daily dramatic performance at St. Jude's; and there remained as the one study worthy of serious devotion and interest--Sylvia Wheeler's own soul. She never sought to influence the welfare of another person's soul. Indeed, as she so often said to me, with a kind of plaintiveness which should have softened my declamatory ardour but did not, she did not like speaking of such matters at all; she regarded it as a kind of desecration.

No, it did not seem to me a lofty and inspiring view that Sylvia took. On the contrary, it exercised a choking effect upon me, by reason of what I regarded as its intense littleness and narrowness. The too often bitter and sordid realities of the struggle of life, as I saw it in London, had the effect upon me of making Sylvia's esoteric exclusiveness of interest seem so petty as to be an insult to human intelligence. I would stare out of the train windows, on my way back from Weybridge, at the countless lights, the endless huddled roofs of London; and, seeing in these a representation of the huge populace of the city, I would stretch out my arms in an impotent embrace, muttering:

"Yes, indeed, you _are_ real; you _are_ more important than any other consideration; you are _not_ the mere shadows she thinks you; your service is of more moment than any miracle, or than any nursing of one's own soul!"

And so I would make my way to Fleet Street, where I forced myself to believe I served the people by teaching them to despise patriotism, to give nothing, but to organize and demand, and keep on demanding and obtaining, more and more, from a State whose business it was to give, and to ask nothing in return. I was becoming known, and smiled at mockingly, for my earnest devotion to the extreme of the _Daily Gazette's_ policy, which, if it made for anything, made, I suppose, for anti-nationalism, anti-militarism, anti-Imperialism, anti-loyalty, and anti-everything else except State aid--by which was meant the antithesis of aid of the State.

"I've got quite a good job for you this afternoon, Mordan--something quite in your line," said Mr. Charles N. Pierce one morning. "A lot of these South African firebrands are having a luncheon at the Westminster Palace Hotel, and that fellow John Crondall is to give an address afterwards on 'Imperial Interests and Imperial Duties.' I'll give you your fling on this up to half a column--three-quarters if it's good enough; but, be careful. A sort of contemptuous good humour will be the best line to take. Make 'em ridiculous. And don't forget to convey the idea of the whole business being plutocratic. You know the sort of thing: Park Lane Israelites, scooping millions, at the expense of the overtaxed proletariat in England. Jingoism, a sort of swell bucket-shop business--you know the tone. None of your heroics, mind you. It's got to be news; but you can work in the ridicule all right."

I always think of that luncheon as one of the stepping-stones in my life. However crude and mistaken I had been up till then, I had always been sincere. My report of that function went against my own convictions. The writing of it was a painful business; I knew I was being mean and dishonest. Not that what I heard there changed my views materially. No; I still clung to my general convictions, which fitted the policy of the _Daily Gazette_. But the fact remained that in treating that gathering as I did, on the lines laid down by my news-editor, I knew that I was being dishonest, that I was conveying an untrue impression.

In this feeling, as in most of a young man's keen feelings, the personal element played a considerable part. I was introduced to the speaker, John Crondall, by a Cambridge man I knew, who came there on behalf of a Conservative paper, which had recently taken a new lease of life in new hands, and become the most powerful among the serious organs of the Empire party. It is a curious thing, by the way, that overwhelming as was the dominance of the anti-national party in politics, the Imperialist party could still claim the support of the greatest and most thoughtfully written newspapers.

John Crondall had no time to spare for more than a very few words with so obscure a person as myself; but in two minutes he was able to produce a deep impression upon me, as he did upon most people who met him. John Crondall had a great deal of personal charm, but the thing about him which bit right into my consciousness that afternoon was his earnest sincerity. As Crewe, the man who introduced me to him, said afterwards:

"There isn't one particle of flummery in Crondall's whole body."

It was an obviously truthful criticism. You might agree with the man or not, but no intelligent human being could doubt his honesty, the reality of his convictions, the strength and sincerity of his devotion to the cause of those convictions. It was perfectly well known then that Crondall had played a capable third or fourth fiddle in the maintenance, so far, of the Imperial interest in South Africa. His masterful leader, the man who, according to report, had inspired all his fiery earnestness in the Imperialist cause, was dead. But John Crondall had relinquished nothing of his activity as a lieutenant, and continued to spend a good share of his time in South Africa, while, wherever he was, continuing to devote his energies to the same cause.

As for his material interests, Crewe assured me that Crondall knew no more of business, South African or otherwise, than a schoolboy. He had inherited property worth about a couple of thousand a year, and had rather decreased than added to it. For, though he had acted as war correspondent in the Russo-Japan war, and through one or two "little wars," in outlying parts of the British Empire, circumstances had prevented such work being of profit to him. In the South African war he had served as an irregular, and achieved distinction in scouting and guiding work.

John Crondall's life, I gathered, had been the very opposite of my own sheltered progress from Dorset village to school, from school to University, and thence to my present street-bound routine in London. His views were clearly no less opposite to that vague tumult of resentment, protest, and aspiration which represented my own outlook upon life. Indeed, his speech that day was an epitome of the sentiment and opinions which I had chosen to regard with the utmost abhorrence.

With Crondall, every other consideration hinged upon and was subservient to the Imperialist idea of devotion to the bond which united all British possessions under one rule. The maintenance and furtherance of that tie, the absorption of all parts into that great whole, the subordination of all other interests to this: that I took to be John Crondall's great end in life. By association I had come to identify myself, and my ideals of social reform, entirely with those to whom mere mention of the rest of the Empire, or of the ties which made it an Empire, was as a red rag to a bull.

I have tried to explain something of the causes for this extraordinary attitude, but I am conscious that at the present time it cannot really be explained. It was there, however. We might interest ourselves in talk of Germany, we might enthusiastically admire and even model ourselves upon the conduct of a foreign people; but mention of the outside places of our own Empire filled us with anger, resentment, scorn, and contempt. It amounted to this: that we regarded as an enemy the man who sought to serve the Empire. He cannot do that without opposing us, we said in effect; as one who should say: You cannot cultivate my garden, or repair my fences, without injuring my house and showing yourself an enemy to my family. A strange business; but so it was.

Therefore, John Crondall's speech that day found me full enough of opposition, and not at all inclined to be sympathetic. But the thing of it was, I knew him for an honest and disinterested man; a man alight with high inspiration and lofty motive; a man immeasurably above sordid or selfish ends. And it was my task, first, to ridicule him; and, second, to attach sordidness and self-interest to him. That was the thing which made the day eventful for me.

John Crondall talked of British rule and British justice, as he had known them in the world's far places. He drew pictures of Oriental rule, Boer rule, Russian rule, savage rule; and, again, of the methods and customs of foreign Powers in their colonial administration. When he claimed this and that for British rule, and the Imperial unity which must back it, as such, sneers came naturally to me. The anti-British sentiment covered that. My qualms began, when he based his plea upon the value of British administration to all concerned, the danger to civilization, to mankind, of its being allowed to weaken.

Remember, he spoke in pictures, and in the first person; not of imaginings, but of what he had seen: how a single anti-British speech in London, meant a month's prolongation of bloody strife in one country, or an added weight of cruel oppression in another. Right or wrong, John Crondall carried you with him; for he dealt with men and things as he had brothered and known them, before ever he let loose, in a fiery peroration, that abstract idea of Empire patriotism which ruled his life.

But it was not all this that made my paltry journalistic task a hard one. It was my certainty of Crondall's lofty sincerity. From that afternoon I date the beginning of the end of my _Daily Gazette_ engagement. Some men in my shoes would have moved to success from this point; gaining from it either complete unscrupulousness, or the bold decision which would have made them important as friends or enemies. For my part I was simply slackened by the episode. I met John Crondall several times again. He chaffed me in the most generous fashion over my abominably unfair report of the luncheon gathering. He influenced me greatly, though my opinions remained untouched, so far as I knew.

I cannot explain just how John Crondall influenced me, but I am very conscious that he had a broadening effect on me--he enlarged my horizon. If he had remained in London things might have gone differently with me. One cannot tell. Among other things, I know his influence mightily reduced the number and length of my letters to Weybridge. In my mind I was always fighting John Crondall. It was my crowded millions of England against his lonely, sun-browned men and women outside--his world interests. The war in my heart was real, unceasing. And then there was pretty Sylvia and her little soul, and her meditations, and her daily miracles. The pin-point, bright as it was, became too tiny for me to concentrate upon it, when contrasted with these other tumultuous concerns.

Then came a crowded, confused week, in which I saw John Crondall depart by the South African boat-train from Waterloo. The first lieutenant of his dead leader out there had cabled for Crondall to come and hold his broad shoulders against the side of some political dam. My eyes pricked when John Crondall wrung my hand.

"You're all right, sonny," he said. "Don't you suppose I have the smallest doubt about you."

I had never given him anything but sneers and opposition--I, a little unknown scrub of a reporter; he a man who helped to direct policies and shape States. Here he was rushing off to the other side of the earth at his own expense, sacrificing his own interests and engagements at home, in the service of an Idea, an abstract Tie, a Flag. My philosophy had seemed spacious beside, say, Sylvia's: to secure better things for those about me, instead of for my own soul only. But what of Crondall? As I say, my eyes pricked, even while I framed some sentence in my mind expressing regret for his wrong-headedness. Ah, well!

The same week--the same day--brought me the gentlest little note of dismissal from Sylvia. Her duty to her father, and--my ideas seemed too much for her peace of mind; so bewildering. "I am no politician, you know; and truth to tell, these matters which seem so much to you that you would have them drive religion from me, they seem to me so infinitely unimportant. Forgive me!"

No doubt my vanity was wounded, but I will not pretend that I was very seriously hurt. Neither could I ponder long upon the matter, because another letter, received by the same post, claimed my attention. Sylvia's letter threw out a hint of better things for us in a year or two's time. Her notion of a break between us was "for the present." There were references to "later on, when you can come here again, and we need not hide things." But my other letter made more instant claims. It was type-written, and ran thus:

"DEAR MR. MORDAN:--Mr. Chas. N. Pierce directs me to inform you that after the expiration of the present month your services will no longer be required by the editor of the _Daily Gazette_.

"I am, Sir, Yours faithfully, JAMES MARTIN, _Secretary_."

I pictured the little pale-eyed rabbit of a man typing the dictum of his Napoleon, his hero, and wondering in his amiable way how "Mr. Mordan" would be affected thereby, and how he had managed to displease the great man. As for "the editor of the _Daily Gazette_," I had not seen him since the day of my engagement. But I recalled now various recent signs of chill disapproval of my work on Mr. Pierce's part. And, indeed, I was aware myself of a slackness in my work, a kind of reckless, windmill-tilting tendency in my general attitude.

Meantime, there was the fact that I had recently encroached twice upon my tiny nest-egg; once to buy a wedding present for my sister Lucy, and once for a piece of silly extravagance.

It was quite a notable week.

IX

A STEP DOWN

"Cosmopolitanism is nonsense; the cosmopolite is a cipher, worse than a cipher; outside of nationality there is neither art, nor truth, nor life; there is nothing."--IVAN TURGENIEFF.

I have mentioned a piece of reckless extravagance; it was reckless in view of my straightened circumstances. And the reason I mention this apparent trifle is that it and its attendant circumstances influenced me in my conduct after the abrupt termination of the _Daily Gazette_ engagement.

One of my fellow knights of the reporters' room introduced me in a certain Fleet Street wine-bar to one of the characters of that classic highway--a man named Clement Blaine, who edited and owned a weekly publication called _The Mass_. I hasten to add that this journal had nothing whatever to do with any kind of religious observance. Its title referred to the people, or rather, to the section of the public which, at that time, we still described by the quaintly misleading phrase, "the working classes," as though work were a monopoly in the hands of the manual labourer.

_The Mass_ was a journal which had quite a vogue at that time. This was brought about, I suppose, by the wave of anti-nationalism which, in 1906, established the notorious administration which subsequently became known as "The Destroyers." It was maintained largely, I fancy, by Clement Blaine's genius for getting himself quoted in other journals of every sort and standing.

The existence of _The Mass_, and the popularity which it earned by outraging every civic and national decency, stands in my mind as a striking example of the extraordinary laxity and slackness of moral which had grown out of our boasted tolerance, broad-mindedness, and cosmopolitanism. We had waxed drunken upon the parrot-like asseveration of "rights," which our fathers had won for us, and we had no time to spare for their compensating duties. This misguided apotheosis of what we considered freedom and broad-mindedness, produced the most startling and anomalous situations in our national life, including the almost incredible fact that, while nominally at peace with the world, the State was being bitterly warred against by cliques and parties among its own subjects.

For instance, in any other State than our own, my new acquaintance, Clement Blaine, would have been safely disposed in a convenient prison cell, and his flamingly seditious journal would have been promptly and effectually squashed. In England the man was free as the Prime Minister, and a Department of State, the Post Office, was engaged in the distribution of the journal which he devoted exclusively to stirring up animosity against that State, and traitorous opposition to its constitution.

Further, Mr. Blaine's vitriolic outpourings, his unnatural defilement of his own nest, were gravely quoted in every newspaper in the Kingdom, without a hint of recognition of the fact that they were fundamentally criminal and a public offence. The sacrosanct "liberty of the subject" was involved; and though Mr. Blaine would have been forcibly restrained if he had shown any tendency to injure lamp-posts, or to lay hands upon his own worthless life, he was given every facility in his self-appointed task of inciting the public to all sorts of offences against the State, and to a variety of forms of national suicide.

It was the commonest thing for a Member of Parliament, a man solemnly sworn and consecrated to the loyal service of the Crown and State, to fill a signed column of Clement Blaine's paper, with an article or letter the whole avowed end of which would be the championing of some national enemy or rival, or the advocacy of means whereby a shrewd blow might be struck against British rule or British prestige in some part of the world.

I recall one long and scurrilous article by a Member of Parliament, urging rebellious natives in South Africa to take heart of grace and pursue with ever-increasing vigour their attacks upon the small and isolated white populace which upheld British rule in that part of the Continent. I remember a long and venomous letter from another Member of Parliament (a strong advocate of the State payment of members) defending in the most ardently sympathetic manner both the action and the sentiments of a municipal official who had torn down and destroyed the Union Jack upon an occasion of public ceremony.

We called this sort of thing British freedom in those chaotic days; and when our Continental rivals were not jeering at the grotesqueness of it, they were lauding this particular form of madness to the skies, as well they might, seeing that our insensate profligacy and incontinence meant their gain. The cause of a foreigner, good, bad, or indifferent--that was the cause Clement Blaine most loved to champion in his journal. An attack upon anything British, though the author of it might be the basest creature ever outlawed from any community--that was certain of ready and eager hospitality in the columns of _The Mass_.

I can conceive of no infamy which that journal was not ready to condone, no offence it would not seek to justify--save and except the crime of patriotism, loyalty, avowed love of Britain. And this obscene, mad-dog policy, so difficult even to imagine at this time, was by curious devious ways identified with Socialism. _The Mass_ was called a Socialist organ. The fact may have been a libel upon Socialism, if not upon Socialists; but so it was.

Be it said that at Cambridge I had rather surprised the evangelical section of my college (Corpus Christi) by the part I played in founding a short-lived institution called the Anonymous Society, the choicest spirits in which affected canvas shirts and abstention from the use of neckties. As Socialists, we invited the waiters of the college to a soiree, at which a judicious blend of revolutionary economics and bitter beer was relied upon to provide a flow of reasonable and inexpensive entertainment. The society lapsed after a time, chiefly owing, if I remember rightly, to an insufficiency of funds for refreshments. But I had remained rather a person to be reckoned with at the Union.

I regarded my meeting with Clement Blaine as something of an event, and I very cheerfully and quite gratuitously contributed an article to his journal dealing with some form of government subvention which I held to be a State duty. (We wasted few words over the duties of the citizen in those days.) It was as a result of that article that I was invited to a Socialist soiree in which the moving spirit, at all events in the refreshment-room, was Mr. Clement Blaine. Here I met a variety of queer fish who called themselves Socialists. They were of both sexes, and upon the whole they were a silly, inconsequent set. Their views rather wearied me, despite my predisposition to favour them.

They were a kind of tepid, ineffectual anarchists, unconvinced and wholly unconvincing. Broadly speaking, theirs was a policy of blind reversal. They were not constructive, but they were opposed vaguely to the existing order of things, and, particularly, to everything British. They pinned their faith to the foreigner in all things, even though the foreigner's whole energies might be devoted to the honest endeavour to raise conditions in his country to a level approaching the British standard. Any contention against the existing order, and, above all, anything against Britain, appealed directly to these rather tawdry people.

In this drab, ineffective gathering, I found one point of colour, like a red rose on a dingy white tablecloth. This was Beatrice, the daughter of Clement Blaine. I believe the man had a wife. One figures her as a worn household drudge. In any case, she made no appearance in any of the places in which I met Blaine, or his handsome daughter. Beatrice Blaine was a new type to me. One had read of such girls, but I had never met them. And I suppose novelty always has a certain charm for youth. One felt that Beatrice had crossed the Rubicon. Mentally, at all events, one gathered that she had thrown her bonnet over the windmill.

Physically, materially, I have no doubt that Beatrice was perfectly well qualified to take care of herself. But here was a very handsome girl who was entirely without reticence or reserve. With her, many things usually treated with respect were--"all rot." Beatrice's aim in life was pleasure, and she not merely admitted, but boasted of the fact. She did not think much of her father's friends as individuals. She probably objected to their dinginess. But she acclaimed herself a thoroughgoing Socialist, I think because she believed that Socialism meant the provision of plenty in money, dresses, pleasures, and so forth, for all who were short of these commodities.

Perhaps I was a shade less dingy than the others. At all events, Beatrice honoured me with her favour upon this occasion, and talked to me of pleasure. So far as recollection serves me she connected pleasure chiefly with theatres, restaurants, the habit of supping in public, and the use of hansom cabs. At all events, within the week I squandered two whole sovereigns out of my small hoard on giving this young pagan what she called a "fluffy" evening. It reminded me more than a little of certain rather frantic undergraduate excursions from Cambridge. But Beatrice quoted luscious lines of minor poetry, and threw a certain glamour over a quarter of the town which was a warren of tawdry immorality; the hunting-ground of a pallid-faced battalion of alien pimps and parasites.

England was then the one civilized country in the world which still welcomed upon its shores the outcast, rejected, refuse of other lands; and, as a matter of course, when foreign capitals became positively too hot for irreclaimable characters, they flocked into Whitechapel and Soho, there to indulge their natural bent for every kind of criminality known to civilization, save those involving physical risk or physical exertion for the criminal. There were then whole quarters of the metropolis out of which every native resident had gradually been ousted, in which the English language was rarely heard, except during a police raid.

Tens of thousands of these unclassed, denationalized foreigners lived and waxed fat by playing upon the foibles and pandering to the weaknesses of the great city's native population. Others, of a higher class, steadily ousted native labour in the various branches of legitimate commerce. We know now, to our cost, something of the malignant danger these foreigners represented. In indirect ways one would have supposed their evil influence was sufficiently obvious then. But I remember that the parties represented by such organs as the _Daily Gazette_ prided themselves upon their furious opposition to any hint of precautions making for the restriction of alien immigration.

England was the land of the free, they said. Yet, while boasting that England was the refuge of the persecuted (as well as the rejected) of all lands, we were so wonderfully broad-minded that we upheld anything foreign against anything British, and were intolerant only of English sentiment, English rule, English institutions. I believe Beatrice's conviction of the superiority of the Continent and of foreigners generally was based upon the belief that:

"On the Continent people can really enjoy themselves. There's none of our ridiculous English puritanism, and early closing, and rubbish of that sort there."

I am rather surprised that the crude hedonism of Beatrice should have appealed to me, for my weaknesses had never really included mere fleshly indulgence. But, as I have said, the girl had the charm of novelty for me. I remember satirically assuring myself that, upon the whole, her frank concentration upon worldly pleasure was more natural and pleasing than Sylvia's rapt concentration upon other kinds of self-ministration. Ours was a period of self-indulgence. Beatrice was, after all, only a little more naive and outspoken than the majority in her thirst for pleasure. And she was quite charming to look upon.

Almost the first man to whom I spoke regarding my dismissal from the staff of the _Daily Gazette_ was Clement Blaine. I met him in Fleet Street, and was asked in to his cupboard of an office.

"You are a man who knows every one in Fleet Street," I said. "I wish you would keep an eye lifting for a journalistic billet for me."

And then I told him that I was leaving the _Daily Gazette_, and spoke of the work I had done, and of my little journalistic experiences at Cambridge.

He combed his glossy black beard with the fingers of one hand; a white hand it was, save where cigarettes had browned the first and second fingers; a hand that had never known physical toil, though its owner always addressed "working" men as one of themselves. He wore a fiery red necktie, and a fiery diamond on the little finger of the hand that combed his beard. A self-indulgent life in the city was telling on him, but Clement Blaine was still rather a fine figure of a man, in his coarse, bold way. He had a varnished look, and, dressed for the part, would have made a splendid stage pirate.

"It's odd you should have come to me to-day," he said. "Look here!"

He handed me a cutting from a daily paper.

At Holloway, yesterday afternoon, an inquest was held on the body of a man named Joseph Cartwright, who is said to have been a journalist. This man was found dead upon his bed, fully dressed, on Tuesday morning. The medical evidence showed death to be due to heart failure, and indicated alcoholism as the predisposing cause. A verdict was returned in accordance with the medical evidence.

"He was my assistant editor," said Clement Blaine, as I looked up from my perusal of this sorry tale.

"Really?" I said.

"Yes, a clever fellow; most accomplished journalist, but----" And Mr. Blaine raised his elbow with a significant gesture, by which he suggested the act of drinking.

Within the hour I had accepted an engagement as assistant editor of _The Mass_ with the magnificent sum of two pounds a week by way of remuneration.

"It's poor pay," said Blaine. "And I only wish I could double it. But that's all it will run to at present, and--well, of course, it counts for something to be working for the cause as directly as we do in _The Mass_."

I nodded, not without qualms. My education made it impossible for me to accept unreservedly the most scurrilous features of the journal. But the cause was good--I was assured of that; and I would introduce improvements, I thought. I was still very inexperienced. Meantime, I was not to know the carking anxiety of the out-of-work. I could still pay my way at the Bloomsbury lodging. This was something.

Beatrice expressed herself as delighted. I was to accumulate large sums in various vague ways, and enjoy innumerable "fluffy" evenings with her.

What a queer mad jumble of a shut-in world our London was, and how blindly self-centred we all were in our pursuit of immediate gain, in our absolute indifference to the larger outside movements, the shaping of national destinies, the warring of national interests! I remember that we were quite triumphant, in our little owlish way, that year; for the weight of socialistic and anti-national, anti-responsible feeling had forced a time-serving Cabinet into cutting down our Navy by a quarter at one stroke. The hurried scramblers after money and pleasure were much gratified.

"We can make defensive alliances with other Powers," they said. "Meantime--retrench, reduce, cut down, and give us more freedom in our race. Freedom, freedom--that's the thing; and peace for the development of commerce."

Undoubtedly, as a people, we were fey.

X

FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI

Love thou thy land, with love far-brought From out the storied Past, and used Within the Present, but transfused Thro' future time by power of thought.

True love turned round on fixed poles, Love that endures not sordid ends, For English natures, freemen, friends, Thy brothers and immortal souls.

But pamper not a hasty time, Nor feed with crude imaginings The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings That every sophister can lime.

Deliver not the tasks of might To weakness, neither hide the ray From those, not blind, who wait for day, Tho' sitting girt with doubtful light.

TENNYSON.

And now, as assistant editor of _The Mass_, I entered a period of my life upon which I look back as one might who, by chance rather than by reason of any particular fitness for survival, had won safely through a whirlpool. The next few years were a troublous time, a stormy era of transition, for most English people. For many besides myself the period was a veritable maelstrom of confusion, of blind battling with unrecognized forces, of wasted effort, neglected duty, futile struggles, and slavish inertia.

At an early stage I learned to know Clement Blaine for a sweater of underpaid labour, a man as grossly self-indulgent as he was unprincipled, as much a charlatan as he was, in many ways, an ignoramus. Yet I see now, more clearly than then, that even Clement Blaine was not all bad. He was not even completely a charlatan. He believed he was justified in making all the money he could, in any way that was possible. It must be remembered, however, that at that time most people really thought, whatever they might say, that the first and most obvious duty in life was to make money for themselves.

Then, too, I think Blaine really believed that the sort of anti-national, socialistic theories he advocated would make for the happiness of the people; for the profit and benefit of the majority. He was blinded by lack of knowledge of history and of human nature. He was an extreme example, perhaps, but, after all, his mistaken idea that happiness depended upon personal possession of this and that, upon having and holding, was very generally accepted at that time. The old saving sense of duty, love of country, national responsibility, and pride of race, had faded and become unreal to a people feverishly bent upon personal gain only. Nelson's famous signal and watchword was kept alive, in inscriptions; in men's hearts and minds it no longer had any meaning; it made no appeal. This is to speak broadly, of course, and of the majority. We had some noble exceptions to the rule.

In looking back now upon that period, it seems to me, as I suppose to all who lived through it, such a tragedy of confusion, of sordidness, and of futility, that one is driven to take too sweepingly pessimistic a view of the time. I have said a good deal of the anti-national sentiment, because it was undoubtedly in the ascendant then. As history shows us, this sentiment ruled; by it the ship of state was steered; by it the defences of the Empire were cut down and down to the ultimate breaking point. We call the administration of that period criminally unpatriotic. As such "The Destroyers" must always figure in history. But we must not forget that then, as now, we English people had as good a Government as we deserved. The spirit of selfish irresponsibility was not confined to Whitehall.

On the other hand, it must not be supposed that no patriotic party existed. There was a patriotic party, and the exigencies of the time inspired some of its leaders nobly. But the sheer weight of numbers, of indifference, and of selfishness to which this party was opposed was too much for it. The best method of realizing this nowadays is by the study of the newspaper files for the early years of the century. From these it will be seen that even the people and journals in whom devoted patriotism survived, even the leaders who gave up their time and energy (politics gave us such a man, the Army another, the Navy another, literature another, and journalism gave us an editor in whom the right fire burned brightly) to the task of warning and adjuring the public, and seeking to awaken the nation to the lost sense of its dangers, its duties, and its responsibilities; even these were forced by the weight of public selfishness into using an almost apologetic tone, with reference to the common calls of patriotism and Imperial unity.

People dismissed an obvious challenge of the national conscience with a hurried and impatient wave of the hand. They were tired of this; they had heard enough of the other; they were occupied with local interests of the moment, and could not be bothered with this or that consideration affecting the welfare of the world-wide shores of greater outside Britain. And, accordingly, we find that the most patriotic and public-spirited journal was obliged, for its life, to devote more attention to a football match at the Crystal Palace than to a change of public policy affecting the whole commercial future of a part of the Empire twenty times greater than Britain. There were other journals, organs of the self-centred majority, that would barely even mention an Imperial development of that sort, and then but casually, as a matter of no particular interest to their readers; as indeed it was.

I do not think that retrospection has coloured my view too darkly when I say that my brief experience in Fleet Street made me feel that the _Daily Gazette_ party, the supporters of "The Destroyers" (as naval folk had named the Government of the day) consisted of a mass of smugly hypocritical self-seekers; and that the party I served under Clement Blaine were a mass of blatantly frank self-seekers. Such generalizations can never be quite just, however. There were earnest and devoted men in every section of the community. But, as a generalization, as indicating the typical characteristics of the parties, I fear that my view has been proved correct.

It would be quite a mistake to suppose that in the political world the shortcomings were all on one side. Writers like myself, even men like Clement Blaine, had only too much justification for the contempt they poured upon the Conservative party. Selfishness, indolence, and the worship of the fossilized party spirit, had eaten into the very vitals of this section of the political world. The form of madness we called party loyalty made the best men we had willing to sacrifice national to personal interests. So-and-so must retain his place; loyalty to the party demands our support there and there. We must give it, whatever the consequences. The thing is not easy to understand; but it was so, and the strongest and best men of the day were culpable in this.

The farther my London experiences took me, the greater became the mass of my shattered illusions, broken ideals, and lost hopes. I remember my reflections during a brief visit I paid to my mother in Dorset, when I had spent an evening talking with my sister Lucy's husband. Doctor Woodthrop was a good fellow enough, and my sister seemed happier with him than one would have expected, remembering that it was rather the desire for freedom, than love, which gave her to him.

Woodthrop was popular, honest, steady-going; a fine, typical Englishman of the period, I suppose. In politics he was as his father before him, though the name had changed from Tory to Conservative. He talked politics for a week at election time. I would not say that he ever thought politics. I know that he had no knowledge, and less interest, where the affairs of his country were concerned, when I met and talked with him during that visit. The country's defences were actually of far less importance in his eyes than the country's cricket averages. As for either social reform interests in England, or the affairs of the Empire outside England, he simply could not be induced to give them even conversational breathing space. They were as exotic to my sister's husband as the ethics of esoteric Buddhism. But he was a thick and thin Conservative. To be sure, he would have said, nothing would cause him to waver in that.

As for myself, I defended the anti-national party in its repudiation of Imperial responsibility by arguing that the domestic needs of the country were too urgent and great to admit of any kind of expenditure, in money or energy, upon outside affairs. We did not recognize that internal reform and content were absolutely incompatible with shameless neglect of fundamental duties.

We were as sailors who should concentrate upon drying and cleaning their cabin, seeking at all hazards to make that comfortable, while refusing to spare time for the ship's pumps, though the water was rising in her hold from a score of external fissures. Our anti-nationalists and Little Englanders were little cabin-dwellers, shirkers from the open deck, careless of the ship's hull, and masts, and sails, busily bent only upon the enrichment of their particular divisions among her saloons.

In the early days of my engagement as assistant editor of _The Mass_, I think I may claim that I worked hard and with honest intent to make the paper represent truly what I conceived to be the good and helpful side of Socialism, of social progress and reform. But, if I am to be frank, I fear I must admit that within six months of my first engagement by Clement Blaine, I had ceased to entertain any sincere hope or ambition in this direction. And yet I remained assistant editor of _The Mass_.

The two statements doubtless redound to my discredit, and I have little excuse to offer. The work represented bread and butter for me, and that counted for something, of course. But I will admit that I think I could have found some more worthy employment, and should have done so but for Beatrice Blaine, my employer's daughter.

Time and time again my gorge rose at being obliged to play my part--very often, as a writer, the principal part--in what I knew to be an absolutely dishonest piece of journalism. Once I remember refusing to write a grossly malicious and untrue representation of certain actions of John Crondall's in the Transvaal. But I am ashamed to say I revised the proofs of the lying thing, and saw it to press, when a hireling of Clement Blaine's had prepared it. The man was a discharged servant of Crondall's, a convicted thief, as I afterwards learned, as well as a most abandoned liar. But his scurrilous fabrication, after publication in _The Mass_, was quoted at length by the _Daily Gazette_, and by the journals of that persuasion throughout the country.

I hardly know how to explain my relations with Blaine's daughter. I suppose the main point is she was beautiful, in the sense that certain cats are beautiful. I rarely heard of my Weybridge friends now, and never, directly, of Sylvia. My life seemed infinitely remote from that of the luxurious Wheeler _menage_. When I chanced to earn a few guineas with my pen outside the littered office of _The Mass_ (where the bulk of the editorial work fell to me), the money was almost invariably devoted to the entertainment of Beatrice. She was in several ways not unlike a kitten, or something feline, of larger growth: the panther, for example, in Balzac's thrilling story, "A Passion in the Desert."

I have never, before or since, met any woman so totally devoid of the moral sense as Beatrice. Yet she had a heart that was not bad; indeed it was a tender heart. But there was no moral sense to guide and balance her.

I think of Beatrice as very much a product of that time. Her own personal enjoyment, pleasure, indulgence; these formed alike the centre and the limit of her thoughts and aims. And the suggestion that serious thought or energy should be given to any other end, struck Beatrice as necessarily insincere and absurd. As for duty, the word had no more real application to her own life as Beatrice saw it than the counsels of old-time chivalry for the pursuit of the Holy Grail.

Soberly considered, this is doubtless very grievous. But it must be said that if Beatrice was singular in this, her singularity lay rather in her frank disclosure of her attitude than in the attitude itself. I am not sure that morally her absorption in such crude pleasures as she knew, was a whit more culpable than the equal absorption of nine people out of ten at that time, in money-getting, in sport, in society functions, or in sheer idleness. The same oblivion to the sense of duty was very generally characteristic; though in other matters, no doubt, the moral sense was more active. In Beatrice it simply was not present at all.

All this was tolerably clear to me even then; but I will not pretend that it interfered much with the physical and emotional attraction which Beatrice had for me. Apart from her my life was very drab in colour. I had no recreations. In my time at Rugby and at Cambridge we either practically ignored sport (so far, at all events, as actual participation in it went), or lived for it. I had very largely ignored it. Now, Beatrice Blaine represented, not exactly recreation, perhaps--no, not that I think--but gaiety. The hours I spent in her company were the only form of gaiety that entered into my life.

My feeling for Beatrice was not serious love, not at all a grand passion; but denying myself the occasional pleasure of ministering to her appetite for little outings would have been a harder task for me than the acceptation of Sylvia Wheeler's dismissal. My attentions to Beatrice were very much those of Balzac's Provencal to his panther, after he had overcome his first terrors.

There were times when her acceptance of gifts or compliments from another man made me believe myself really in love with Beatrice. Then some peculiarly distasteful aspect of my journalistic work would be forced upon me; I would receive some striking illustration of the hopelessly sordid character of Blaine and his circle, of the policy of _The Mass_, of the general trend of my life; and, seeing Beatrice's indifferent acceptance of all this venality, I would turn from her with a certain sense of revulsion--for three days. After that, I would return to handsome Beatrice, with her feline graces and her warm colouring, as a chilly, tired man turns from his work to his fireside.

In short, as time went on, I became as indifferent to ends and aims as the most callous among those at whose indifference to matters of real moment I had once girded so vehemently. And I lacked their excuse. I cut no figure at all in the race for money and pleasure; unless my clinging to Beatrice be accounted pursuit of pleasure. Certainly it lacked the rapt absorption which characterized the multitude really in the race. I fear I was rapidly degenerating into a common type of Fleet Street hack; into nothing more than Clement Blaine's assistant. And then a quite new influence came into my life.

XI

MORNING CALLERS

A woman mixed of such fine elements That were all virtue and religion dead She'd make them newly, being what she was.

GEORGE ELIOT.

A sandy-haired youth-of-all-work, named Rivers, spent his days in the box we called the front office; a kind of lobby really, by which one entered the tolerably large and desperately untidy room in which Blaine and myself compiled each issue of _The Mass_. Blaine spent a good slice of all his days in keeping appointments, usually in Fleet Street bars.

My days were spent in the main office of the paper, among the files, the scissors and paste, the books of reference, and the three Gargantuan waste-paper baskets. Here at different times I interviewed men of every European nationality and every known calling, besides innumerable followers of no recognized trade or profession. Among them all I cannot call to mind more than two or three who, by the most charitable stretch of imagination, could have been called gentlemen.

Most of them were obviously, and in all ways seedy, shady characters--furtive, wordy creatures, full of vague, involved grievances. The greater proportion were foreigners; scallywags from the mean streets of every Continental capital; men familiar with prisons; men who talked of the fraternity of labour, and never did any work; men full of windy plans for the enrichment of humanity, who themselves must always borrow and never repay--money, food, shelter, and the other things for which honest folk give their labour.

If an English Cabinet Minister had offered us an explanation of any political development we should have had small use for his contribution in _The Mass_, unless as an advertisement of our importance. For their teaching, for the text they gave us in our fulminations, we greatly preferred the rancorous and generally scurrilous vapourings of some unknown alien dumped upon our shores for the relief and benefit of his own country.

We wanted no information from Admiralty Lords about the Navy, from commanding officers about the Army, from pro-Consuls about the Colonies, or from the Foreign Office about foreign relations. But a deserter or a man dismissed from either of the Services, a broker ne'er-do-well rejected as unfit by one of the Colonies, or a foreign agitator with stories to tell of Britain's duplicity abroad; these were all welcome fish for our net, and folk whom it was my duty to receive with respectful attention. From their perjured lips it became my mechanical duty to extract and publish wisdom for the use of our readers in the guidance of their lives and the exercise of their rights as citizens and ratepayers. I became adept at the work, and in the end accomplished it daily without interest, and with only occasional qualms of conscience. It was my living.

On a sunshiny morning in June, which I remember very well, the sandy-haired Rivers brought me a visiting-card upon which I read the name of "Miss Constance Grey." In one corner of the card the words "Cape Town" had been crossed out and a London address written over them.

I was engaged at the time with a large, pale, fat man from Stettin, whose mission it was to show me that the socialist working men of the Fatherland dearly loved their comrades in England, and that the paying of taxes for the defence of these islands was a preposterously absurd thing, for the reason that the Socialists would never allow Germany to go to war with England or with any other country. "The Destroyers," in their truckling to Demos, had already cut down Naval and Army estimates by more than one-half since their rise to power, and our Stettin ambassador was priming me regarding a demand for further reductions, prior to actual disarmament, to provide funds for the fixing of a minimum day's pay and a maximum day's work.

The gentleman from Stettin was to provide us with material for a special article and a leading article. His proposals were to be made a "feature." However, I thought I had gone far enough with him at this time; and so, looking from his pendulous jowl to the card in my hand, I told Rivers to ask the lady to wait for two minutes, and to say that I would see her then. I remember Herr Mitmann found the occasion opportune for the airing of what I suppose he would have called his sense of humour. His English and his front teeth were equally badly broken, and his taste in jokes was almost as swinishly gross as his appearance. But I was able to be quit of him at length, and then Rivers ushered in Miss Constance Grey.

As I rose to provide my visitor with a chair, I received the impression that she was a young and quietly well-dressed woman, with a notable pair of dark eyes. I thought of her as being no more than five-and-twenty years of age and pleasant to look upon. But her eyes were the feature that seized one's attention. They produced an impression of light and brilliancy, of vigour, intelligence, and charm.

"I called to see you at the office of the _Daily Gazette_, Mr. Mordan, and this was the only address of yours they could give me, or I should have hesitated about intruding on you in working hours. I bring you an introduction from John Crondall."

And with that she handed me a letter in Crondall's writing, and nodded in a friendly way when I asked permission to read it at once.

"Please do," she said.

She had no particular accent, but yet her speech differed slightly from that of the conventional Englishwoman of her class--the refined and well-educated Englishwoman, that is. I suppose the difference was rather one of expression, tone, and choice of phrase than a matter of accent. I doubt if one could easily find an example of it nowadays, increased communication having so much broadened our own colloquial diction that many of its conventional peculiarities have disappeared. But it existed then, and after a time I learned to place it as characteristic of the speech of Greater Britain, as distinguished from the English of those of us who lived always in this capital centre of the Empire.

Miss Grey had the Colonial directness and vividness of speech; a larger, freer diction upon the whole than that of the Londoner born and bred; more racy, less clipped and formal, but, in certain ways, more correct. The society _cliche_, and the society fads of abbreviation and accent, were missing; and in their place was an easy, idiomatic directness, distinctly noticeable to a man like myself who had actually never been out of England. This it was that first struck me about Miss Grey; this and the warm brilliance of her eyes: a graphic, moving speech, a frank, compelling gaze; both indicative, as it seemed to me, of broadly sympathetic understanding.

I read John Crondall's kindly letter with a good deal of interest, moved by the fact that his terse, friendly phrases recalled to me a phase of my own life which, though no more than a couple of years past, seemed to me wonderfully remote. I had been new to London and to Fleet Street then, full of aspirations, of earnestness, of independent aims and hopes; fresh from the University and the more leisured days of my life as the son of the rector of Tarn Regis. I had had glimpses of much that was sordid and squalid in London life, at the period John Crondall's letter recalled, but as yet there had been no sordidness in my own life. All that was far otherwise now, I felt. Cambridge and Dorset were a long way from the office of _The Mass_. I thought of the greasy Teuton nondescript for whom I had kept Miss Grey waiting, and I felt colour rise in my face as I read John Crondall's letter:

"I expect you have been burgeoning mightily since I left London, and I should not be surprised to learn that you have put the _Daily Gazette_ and its kind definitely behind you. You remember our talks? Tut, my dear fellow, Liberalism, Conservatism, Radicalism--it's of not the slightest consequence, and they're all much of a muchness. The thing is to stand to one's duty as a citizen of the Empire, not as a member of this or that little tin coterie; and if we stick honourably to that, nothing else matters. You will like Constance Grey; that is why I have asked her to look you up. She's sterling all through; her father's daughter to the backbone. And he was the man of whom Talbot said: 'Give me two Greys, and'--and a couple of other men he mentioned--'and a free hand, and Whitehall could go to sleep with its head on South Africa, and never be disturbed again.'"--When Crondall quoted his dead chief, the man whose personality had dominated British South Africa, one felt he had said his utmost.--"The principal thing that takes her to London now, I believe, is detail connected with a special series she has been engaged upon for _The Times_; fine stuff, from what I have seen of it. It is marvellous the grip this one little bit of a girl has of South African affairs."

"Yes," I thought, now the fact was mentioned, "I suppose she is small."

"I hope the articles will be well read, for there's a heap of the vitals of South Africa in them; and even if they are to cut us adrift altogether, it's as well 'The Destroyers' should know a little about us, and the country. Constance Grey's name and introductions will take her anywhere in London, or I would have asked your help in that way."

I thought of Clement Blaine's friends, my own Fleet Street circle, and shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

"As it is, the boot may be rather on the other leg, and she may be of some service to you. But in any case, I want you to know each other, because you are a good chap, and will interest her, I know; and because she is of the bigger Britain and will interest you. Things political are, of course, looking pretty blue for us all, and your particular friends--I rather hope perhaps they're not so much your friends by now--are certainly doing their level best to cut all moorings. But one must keep pegging away. The more cutting for them, the more splicing for us. But I do wish we could blindfold Europe until these 'Destroyers' had got enough rope, and satisfactorily hanged themselves; for if they go much farther, their hanging will come too late to save the situation. Well, salue!"

I allowed my eyes to linger over the tail-end of the letter, while I thought. I was sensible of a very real embarrassment. There seemed a kind of treachery to John Crondall, a kind of unfairness to Miss Grey, in my receiving her there at all. By this time one had no illusions left regarding Clement Blaine and his circle, nor about _The Mass_. I knew that, at heart, I was ashamed, and with good reason, of my connection with both. Still, there I was; it was my living; and--I suppose my eyes must have wandered from the letter. At all events, evidently seeing that I had finished reading it, my visitor spoke.

"I had an introduction to the editor of the _Daily Gazette_, so I took advantage of being there this afternoon to see him. A nice man, I thought, though I don't care for his paper. He remembered you as soon as I mentioned your name, and told me you--you were here. He seemed quite sorry you had left his paper; but I am sure I can understand the attraction of a position in which the whole concern is more or less in one's own hands. Mr. Delaney found me a copy of _The Mass_; so I have been studying you before calling. Perhaps you have inadvertently done so much by me, through _The Times_--a rather high and dry old institution, isn't it?"

Naturally I had punctuated these remarks of hers, here and there. She had a very bright, alert way in talking, and now she added, easily, a sentence or two to the effect that it would be a dull world if we all held precisely the same views. She did the thing well, and in a few minutes I found myself chatting away with her in the most friendly manner. She managed with the utmost deftness to remove all ground for my embarrassment regarding my position. She talked for a while of South Africa, and the life she had lived there prior to her father's death; but she touched no topic which contained any controversial element. It seemed her aunt, a sister of her father's, had accompanied her to England, and she said:

"I promised my aunt, Mrs. Van Homrey, that I would induce you to spare us an evening soon. She loves meeting friends of John Crondall. We dine at eight, but would fix any other hour if it suited you better."

The end of it was I promised to dine with Miss Grey and her aunt in South Kensington on the following evening, and, after a quarter of an hour's very pleasant chat (twice interrupted by Rivers, who had people in his cupboard waiting to see me) my visitor rose to take her departure, with apologies for having trespassed upon a busy man's time. I told her with some warmth that the loss of my time was of no importance, and, with a thought as to the nature of my petty routine, I repeated the assurance. She smiled:

"Ah, that's just the masculine insincerity of your gallantry," she said, "unworn, I see, by working with women. John Crondall would have sent me packing."

"No doubt his time is of more value--better occupied."

I had a mental vision of Clement Blaine (who grew stouter and slacker day by day) sitting drinking with Herr Mitmann of Stettin, in a favourite bar, within fifty yards of the office.

"Still the insincerity of politeness," she laughed. "You forget I have read _The Mass_. I find you a terribly earnest partisan; very keenly occupied, I should say. Till to-morrow evening, then!"

And she was gone, and Rivers was leading in, like a bear on a cord, a tousled Polish Jew named Kraunski, who was teaching us how the Metropolitan Police Force should be run, and how tyrannically its wicked myrmidons oppressed worthy citizens of Houndsditch, like Mr. Kraunski--quite a good _Mass_ feature.

So I stepped back again, feeling as though Constance Grey had carried away the pale London sunlight with her when she left my littered den.

XII

SATURDAY NIGHT IN LONDON

"Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves."--DAVID GARRICK.

I remember that the evening of the day following my dinner engagement with Miss Grey and her aunt was consecrate, by previous arrangement, to Beatrice Blaine. I had received seven guineas a couple of days before for a rather silly and sensational descriptive article, the subject of which had been suggested by Beatrice. Indeed, she had made me write it, and liked the thing when it appeared in print. It described certain aspects of the quarter of London which stood for pleasure in her eyes; the quarter bounded by Charing Cross and Oxford Street, Leicester Square and Hyde Park Corner.

I think I would gladly have escaped the evening with Beatrice if I could have done so fairly. Seeing that I could not do this, and that my mood seemed chilly, I plunged with more than usual extravagance, and sought to work up all the gaiety I could. I had a vague feeling that I owed so much to Beatrice; that the occasion in some way marked a crisis in our relations. I did not mentally call it a last extravagance, but yet I fancy that must have been the notion at the back of my mind; from which one may assume, I think, that Constance Grey had already begun to exercise some influence over me.

With the seven guineas clinking in the pockets of my evening clothes--here, at all events, was a link with University days, for these seldom-worn garments bore the name of a Cambridge tailor--I drove to the corner of the road beside Battersea Park in which the Blaines lived, and there picked up Beatrice, in all her vivid finery, by appointment. She loved bright colours and daring devices in dress. That I should come in a cab to fetch her was an integral part of her pleasure, and, if funds could possibly be stretched to permit it, she liked to retain the services of the same cab until I brought her back to her own door.

We drove to a famous showy restaurant close to Piccadilly Circus, where Beatrice accomplished the kind of entrance which delighted her heart, with attendants fluttering about her, and a messenger posting back to the cab for a forgotten fan, and a deal of bustle and rustle of one sort and another. A quarter of an hour was devoted to the choice of a menu in a dining-room which resembled the more ornate type of music-hall, and was of about the same size. The flashing garishness of it all delighted Beatrice, and the heat of its atmosphere suited both her mood and her extremely _decollete_ toilette.

I remember beginning to speak of my previous evening's engagement while Beatrice sipped the rather sticky champagne, which was the first item of the meal to reach us. But a certain sense of unfitness or disinclination stopped me after a few sentences, and I did not again refer to my new friends; though I had been thinking a good deal of Constance Grey and her plain-faced, plain-spoken aunt. I felt strangely out of key with my environment in that glaring place, and the strains of an overloud orchestra, when they came crashing through the buzz of talk and laughter, and the clatter of glass and silver, were rather a relief to me as a substitute for conversation. I drank a great deal of champagne, and resented the fact that it seemed to have no stimulating effect upon me. But Beatrice was in a purring stage of contentment, her colour high, her passionate eyes sparkling, and low laughter ever atremble behind her full, red lips.

After the dinner we drove to another place exactly like the restaurant, all gilding and crimson plush, and there watched a performance, which for dulness and banality it would be difficult to equal anywhere. It was more silly than a peep-show at a country fair, but it was all set in a most gorgeous and costly frame. The man who did crude and ancient conjuring tricks was elaborately finely dressed, and attended by monstrous footmen in liveries of Oriental splendour. What he did was absurdly tame; the things he did it with, his accessories, were barbarously gorgeous.

This was not one of the great "Middle Class Halls," as they were called during their first year of existence, but an old-established haunt of those who aimed at "seeing life"--a great resort of ambitious young bloods about town. Not very long before this time, a powerful trust had been formed to confer the stuffy and inane delights of the "Hall" upon that sturdily respectable suburban middle class--the backbone of London society--which had hitherto, to a great extent, eschewed this particular form of dissipation. The trust amassed wealth by striking a shrewd blow at our national character. Its entertainments were to be all refinement--"fun without vulgarity"; the oily announcements were nauseating. But they answered their purpose only too well. The great and still religious bourgeois class was securely hooked; and then the name of "Middle Class Halls" was dropped, and the programme provided in these garish palaces became simply an inexpensive and rather amateurish imitation of those of the older halls, plus a kind of prudish, sentimental, and even quasi-religious lubricity, which made them altogether revolting, and infinitely deleterious.

But our choice upon this occasion had fallen upon the most famous of the old halls. Of the performance I remember a topical song which evoked enthusiastic applause. It was an incredibly stupid piece of doggerel about England's position in the world; and the shiny-faced exquisite who declaimed it strutted to and fro like a bantam cock at each fresh roar of applause from the heated house. When he used the word "fight" he waved an imaginary sword and assumed a ridiculous posture, which he evidently connected with warlike exercises of some kind. The song praised the Government--"A Government er business men; men that's got sense"--and told how this wonderful Government had stopped the pouring out of poor folks' money upon flag-waving, to devote it to poor folks' needs. It alluded to the title that Administration had earned: "The Destroyers"; and acclaimed it a proud title, because it meant the destruction of "gold-laced bunkcombe," and of "vampires that were preying on the British working man."

But the chorus was the thing, and the perspiring singer played conductor with all the airs and graces of a spangled showman in a booth, while the huge audience yelled itself hoarse over this. I can only recall two lines of it, and these were to the effect that: "They"--meaning the other Powers of civilization--"will never go for England, because England's got the dibs."

It was rather a startling spectacle; that vast auditorium, in which one saw countless flushed faces, tier on tier, gleaming through a haze of tobacco smoke; their mouths agape as they roared out the vapid lines of this song. I remember thinking that the doggerel might have been the creation of my fat contributor from Stettin, Herr Mitmann, and that if the music-hall public had reached this stage, I must have been oversensitive in my somewhat hostile and critical attitude toward the writings of that ponderous Teuton. I thought that for once _The Mass_ would almost lag behind its readers; though in the beginning I had regarded Herr Mitmann's proposals as going beyond even our limits.

We left the hall while its roof echoed the jingling tail-piece of another popular ditty, which tickled Beatrice's fancy hugely. In it the singer expressed, without exaggeration and without flattery, a good deal of the popular London attitude toward the pursuit of pleasure and the love of pleasure resorts. I recall phrases like: "Give my regards to Leicester Square--Greet the girls in Regent Street--Tell them in Bond Street we'll soon meet"--and, "Give them my love in the Strand."

The atmosphere reeked now of spirits, smoke, and overheated humanity. The voice of the great audience was hoarse and rather bestial in suggestion. The unescorted women began to make their invitations dreadfully pressing. Doubtless my mood coloured the whole tawdry business, but I remember finding those last few minutes distinctly revolting, and experiencing a genuine relief when we stepped into the outer air.

But the lights were just as brilliant outside, the pavements as thronged as the carpeted promenade, its faces almost as thickly painted as those of the lady who wished her "regards" given to Leicester Square, or the gentleman who had assured us that nobody wanted to fight England, because England had the "dibs."

Beatrice was now in feverishly high spirits. She no longer purred contentment; rather it seemed to me she panted in avid excitement, while pouring out a running fire of comment upon the dress and appearance of passers-by, as we drove to another palace of gilt and plush--a sort of magnified Pullman car, with decorations that made one's eyes ache. Here we partook of quite a complicated champagne supper. I dare say fifty pounds was spent in that room after the gorgeously uniformed attendants had begun their chant of "Time, gentlemen, please; time!" which signified that the closing hour had arrived.

Beatrice kept up her excitement--or perhaps the champagne did this for her--until our cab was half-way across Chelsea Bridge. Then she lay back in her corner, and, I suppose, began to feel the grayness of the as yet unseen dawn of a new day. But as I helped her out of the cab in Battersea, she said she had thoroughly enjoyed her "fluffy" evening, and thanked me very prettily. I returned in the cab as far as Westminster, and there dismissed the man with the last of my seven guineas, having decided to walk from there to my Bloomsbury lodging.

For a Socialist, my conduct was certainly peculiar. There were two of us. We had had two meals, one of which was as totally unnecessary as the other was overelaborate. And we had spent an hour or two in watching an incredibly stupid and vulgar performance. And over this I had spent a sum upon which an entire family could have been kept going for a couple of months. But there were scores of people in London that night--some of them passed me in cabs and carriages, as I walked from the Abbey toward Fleet Street--who had been through a similar programme and spent twice as much over it as I had. It was an extraordinarily extravagant period; and it seemed that the less folk did in the discharge of their national obligations as citizens, the more they demanded, and the more they spent, in the name of pleasure.

The people who passed me, as I made my way eastward, were mostly in evening dress, pale and raffish-looking. Many, particularly among the couples in hansoms, were intoxicated, and making a painful muddle of such melodies as those we had listened to at the music hall. Overeaten, overdrunken, overexcited, overextravagant, in all ways figures of incontinence, these noisy Londoners made their way homeward, pursued by the advancing gray light of a Sabbath dawn in midsummer.

And Beatrice loved everything foreign, because the foreigners had none of our stupid British Puritanism! And the British public was mightily pleased with its Government, "The Destroyers," because they were cutting down to vanishing point expenditure upon such superfluous vanities as national defence, in order to devote the money to improving the conditions in which the public lived, and to the reducing of their heavy burdens as citizens of a great Empire. Money could not possibly be spared for such ornamentation as ships and guns and bodies of trained men. We could not afford it!

As I passed the corner of Agar Street a drunken cabdriver, driving two noisily intoxicated men in evening dress, brought his cab into collision with a gaunt, wolf-eyed man who had been scouring the gutter for scraps of food. He was one of an army prowling London's gutters at that moment: human wolves, questing for scraps of refuse meat. The space between each prowler was no more than a few yards. This particular wretch was knocked down by the cab, but not hurt. Cabby and his fares roared out drunken laughter. The horse was never checked. But in the midst of their laughter one of the passengers threw out a coin, upon which the human wolf pounced like a bird of prey. I saw the glint of the coin. It was a sovereign; very likely the twentieth those men had spent that night. For that sum, four hundred of the gaunt, gutter-prowling wolves might have been fed and sheltered.

Entering Holborn I ran against a man I knew, named Wardle, one of the sub-editors of a Sunday newspaper, then on his way home from Fleet Street. Wardle was tired and sleepy, but stopped to exchange a few words of journalistic gossip.

"Rather sickening about the wind-up of the East Anglian Pageant," he said, "isn't it? Did you hear of it?"

I explained that I had not been in Fleet Street that night, and had heard nothing.

"Why, there was to be no end of a tumashi for the Saturday evening wind-up, you know, and we were featuring it. We sent a special man up yesterday to help the local fellow. Well, just as we'd got in about a couple of hundred words of his introductory stuff, word came through that the wires were interrupted, and not another blessed line did we get. I tell you there was some tall cursing done, and some flying around in the editorial 'fill-up' drawers. We were giving it first place--three columns. One blessing, we found the stoppage was general. No one else has got a line of East Anglian stuff to-night. Ours was the last word from the submerged city of Ipswich. But it really is rather an odd breakdown. No sign of rough weather; and, mind you there are a number of different lines of communication. But they're all blocked, telegraph and telephone. Our chief tried to get through via the Continent, just to give us something to go on. But it was no go. Odd, isn't it?"

"Very," I agreed, as we turned; and I added, rather inanely: "One hears a lot about East Anglian coast erosion."

Wardle yawned and grinned.

"Yes, to be sure. Perhaps East Anglia is cruising down Channel by now. Or perhaps the Kaiser's landed an army corps and taken possession. That Mediterranean business on Tuesday was pretty pronounced cheek, you know, and, by all accounts, the result of direct orders from Potsdam. Only the Kaiser's bluff, I suppose, but I'm told it's taken most of the Channel Fleet down into Spanish waters."

I smiled at the activity of Wardle's journalistic imagination, and thought of the music-hall crowd.

"Ah, well," I said, "'They'll never go for England, because England's got the dibs'!"

"What ho!" remarked Wardle, with another yawn. And this time he was really off.

And so I walked home alone to my lodgings, and climbed into bed, thinking vaguely of Constance Grey, and what she would have thought of my night's work; this, as the long, palely glinting arms of the Sabbath dawn thrust aside the mantle of summer night from Bloomsbury.

XIII

THE DEMONSTRATION IN HYDE PARK

Winds of the World give answer! They are whimpering to and fro-- And what should they know of England who only England know?-- The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English flag.

RUDYARD KIPLING.

As was usually the case on the day following one of Beatrice's "fluffy" evenings, I descended to my never very tempting lodging-house breakfast on that Sunday morning feeling the reverse of cheerful, and much inclined to take the gloomiest view of everything life had to offer me.

Sunday was generally a melancholy day for me. It was my only day out of Fleet Street, and, though I had long since taken such steps as I thought I could afford toward transforming my bedroom into a sitting-room, there was nothing very comfortable or homelike about it. I had dropped the habit of churchgoing after the first few months of my London life, without any particular thought or intention, but rather, I think, as one kind of reflex action--a subconscious reflection of the views and habits of those among whom I lived and worked.

Hearing a newsboy crying a "special" edition of some paper, I threw up the window and bought a copy, across the area railings. It was the paper for which Wardle worked. I found in it no particular justification for any special issue, and, as a fact, the probability is the appearance of this edition was merely a device to increase circulation, suggested mainly by the fact that the ordinary issue had been delayed by the East Anglian telegraphic breakdown. Regarding this, I found the following item of editorial commentary:

"As is explained elsewhere, a serious breakdown of telegraphic communication has occurred between London and Harwich, Ipswich and East Anglia generally, as a result of which our readers are robbed of special despatches regarding last night's conclusion of the East Anglian Pageant. It is thought that the breakdown is due to some electrical disturbance of the atmosphere resulting in a fusion of wires.

"But as an example of the ridiculous lengths to which the national defence cranks will go in their hatching of alarmist reports, a rumour was actually spread in Fleet Street at an early hour this morning that this commonplace accident to the telegraph wires was caused by an invading German army. This ridiculous _canard_ is reminiscent of some of the foolish scares which frightened our forefathers a little more than a century ago, when the Corsican terrorized Europe. But our rumour-mongers are too far out of date for this age. It is unfortunate that the advocates of militarism should receive parliamentary support of any kind. The Opposition is weakly and insignificant enough in all conscience, without courting further unpopularity by floating British public feeling in this way, and encouraging the cranks among its following to bring ridicule upon the country.

"The absurd _canard_ to which we have referred is maliciously ill-timed. It will doubtless be reported on the Continent, and may injure us there. But we trust our friends in Germany will do us the justice of recognizing at once that this is merely the work of an irresponsible and totally unrepresentative clique, and in no sort a reflection of any aspect of public feeling in this country. We are able to state with certainty that last Tuesday's regrettable incident in the Mediterranean has been satisfactorily and definitely closed. Admiral Blennerhaustein displayed characteristic German courtesy and generosity in his frank acceptance of the apology sent to him from Whitehall; and the report that our Channel Fleet had entered the Straits of Gibraltar is incorrect. A portion of the Channel Fleet had been cruising off the coast of the Peninsula, and is now on its way back to home waters. Our relations with His Imperial Majesty's Government in Berlin were never more harmonious, and such a _canard_ as this morning's rumour of invasion is only worthy of mention for the sake of a demonstration of its complete absurdity. If, as was stated, the author of this puerile invention is a Navy League supporter, who reached London in a motor-car from Harwich soon after daylight this morning, our advice to him is to devote the rest of the day to sleeping off the effects of an injudicious evening in East Anglia."

Failing the East Anglian Pageant, the paper's "first feature," I noticed, consisted of a lot of generously headed particulars regarding the big Disarmament Demonstration to be held in Hyde Park that afternoon. It seemed that this was to be a really big thing, and I decided to attend in the interests of _The Mass_. The President of the Local Government Board and three well-known members on the Government side of the House were to speak. The Demonstration had been organized by the National Peace Association for Disarmament and Social Reform, of which the Prime Minister had lately been elected President. Delegates, both German and English, of the Anglo-German Union had promised to deliver addresses. Among other well-known bodies who were sending representatives I saw mention of the Anti-Imperial and Free Tariff Society, the Independent English Guild, the Home Rule Association, the Free Trade League, and various Republican and Socialist bodies. The paper said some amusement was anticipated from a suggested counter demonstration proposed by a few Navy League enthusiasts; but that the police would take good care that no serious interruptions were allowed.

As the Demonstration was fixed for three o'clock in the afternoon, I decided to go up the river by steamboat to Kew after my late breakfast. It was a gloriously fine morning, and on the river I began to feel a little more cheerful. As we passed Battersea Park I thought of Beatrice, who always suffered from severe depressions after her little outings. Her spirits were affected; in my case, restaurant food, inferior wine, and the breathing of vitiated air was paid for by nothing worse than a headache and a morning's discomfort.

(One of the curses of the time, which seemed to grow more acute as the habit of extravagance and the thirst for pleasure increased, was the outrageous adulteration of all food-stuffs, and more particularly of all alcoholic liquors, which prevailed not alone in the West End of London, but in every city. Home products could only be obtained in clubs and in the houses of the rich. Their quantity was insufficient to admit of their reaching the open markets. In the cities we lived entirely upon foreign products, and their adulteration had reached a most amazing limit of badness.)

My thought of Beatrice was brief that morning, but I continued during most of my little excursion to dwell upon my new friends in South Kensington. I wondered how Constance Grey spent Sunday in London, and whether the confinement of the town oppressed her after the spacious freedom of the South African life she had described to me. I remembered that I had promised to call upon her and her aunt very soon, and wondered whether that afternoon, after the Demonstration, would be too soon. I mentally decided that it would, but that I would go all the same.

And then, suddenly, as the steamer passed under Hammersmith Bridge, a thought went through me like cold steel:

"She will very soon return to that freer, wider life out there in South Africa."

How I hated the place. South Africa! I had always associated it with Imperialism, militarism--"empireism," as I called it in my own mind: the strange, outside interests, which one regarded as opposing home interests, social reform, and the like. Though I did not know that any political party considerations influenced me one atom, I was in reality, like nearly every one else at that time, mentally the slave and creature of party feeling, party tradition, party prejudice. But now I had a new cause for hating those remote uplands of Empire, those outside places.

Sitting under a tree in Kew Gardens, I had leisure in which to browse over the matter, and, upon reflection, I was astonished that this sudden thought of mine should have struck so shrewdly, so violently, into my peace of mind. I tried to neutralize its effect by reminding myself that I had met Constance Grey only twice; that she was in many ways outside my purview; that she was the intimate friend of people who had helped to make history, the special contributor to _The Times_, with her introductions to ex-Cabinet Ministers in England and her other relations with great people; that such a woman could never play an intimate part in my life. Her friendliness could not be the prelude to friendship with the assistant editor of _The Mass_; it probably meant no more than a courteous deference to John Crondall's whim, I told myself. But I would call at the South Kensington flat, certainly; it would be boorish to refrain, and--there was no denying I should have been mightily perturbed if any valid reason had appeared against my going to see Constance Grey after doing my duty by the Demonstration.

The newsboys were putting a good deal of feeling into their crying of special editions when I reached the streets again; but I was not inclined to waste further pence upon the _Sunday News'_ moralizings over the evolution of _canards_. I took a mess of some adulterated pottage at a foreign restaurant in Notting Hill, as I had no wish to return to Bloomsbury before the Demonstration. The waiter--either a Swiss or a German--asked me:

"Vad you sink, sare, of ze news from ze country?"

I asked him what it was, and he handed me a fresh copy of the _Sunday News_, headed: "Special Edition. Noon."

"By Jove!" I thought; "no Sunday dinner for Wardle! They couldn't have printed this in the small hours."

But the only new matter in this issue was a short announcement, headed in poster type, as follows:

"EAST ANGLIA'S ISOLATION RAILWAY COMMUNICATION STOPPED STRANGE SUPPORT OF INVASION CANARD _IS THIS A TORY HOAX?_ (SPECIAL)

"The preposterous rumour of a German invasion of England is receiving mysterious support. We hear from a reliable source that some Imperialist and Navy League cranks have organized a gigantic hoax by way of opposition to the Disarmament Demonstration. If the curious breakdown of communication with the east coast does prove to be the work of political fanatics, we think, and hope, that these gentry may shortly be convinced, in a manner they are never likely to forget, that, even in this land of liberty, the crank is not allowed to interfere with the transaction of public business.

"No trains have reached Liverpool Street from the northeast this morning, and communication cannot be established beyond Chelmsford. Whatever the cause of this singular breakdown may be, our readers will soon know it, for, in order finally to dispel any hint of credence which may be attached in some quarters to the absurd invasion report, we have already despatched two representatives in two powerful motor-cars, northeastward from Brentwood, with instructions to return to that point and telegraph full particulars directly they can discover the cause of the stoppage of communication.

"Further special editions will be issued when news is received from East Anglia."

"Yes," I said to the waiter; "it's a curious affair."

"You believe him, sare--zat Shermany do it?"

"Eh? No; certainly not. Do you?"

"Me? Oh, sare, I don' know nozzing. Vaire shstrong, sare, ze Sherman Armay."

The fellow's face annoyed me in some way. It, and his grins and gesticulations, had a sinister seeming. My trade brought me into contact with so many low-class aliens. I told myself I was getting insular and prejudiced, and resumed my meal with more thought for myself and my tendencies and affairs than for the East Anglian business. I have wondered since what the waiter thought about while I ate; whether he thought of England, Germany, and of myself, as representing the British citizen. But, to be sure, for aught I know, his thoughts may have been ordered for him from Berlin.

The Demonstration drew an enormous concourse of people to Hyde Park. The weather being perfect, a number of people made an outing of the occasion, and one saw whole groups of people who clearly came from beyond Whitechapel, the Borough, Shepherd's Bush, and Islington. As had been anticipated, a few well-dressed people endeavoured to run a counter-demonstration under a Navy League banner; but their following was absurdly small, and the crowd gave them nothing but ridicule and contempt.

The President of the Local Government Board received a tremendous ovation. For some minutes after his first appearance that enormous crowd sang, "He's a jolly good fellow!" with great enthusiasm. Then, when this member of the Government at last succeeded in getting as far as: "Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen," some one started the song with the chorus containing the words: "They'll never go for England, because England's got the dibs." This spread like a line of fire in dry grass, and in a moment the vast crowd was rocking to the jingling rhythm of the song, the summer air quivering to the volume of its thousand-throated voice.

The President of the Local Government Board had been rather suspected of tuft-hunting recently, and his appearance in the stump orator's role, and in the cause of disarmament, was wonderfully popular. In his long career as Labour agitator, Socialist, and Radical, he had learned to know the popular pulse remarkably well; and now he responded cleverly to the call of the moment. His vein was that of the heavy, broad bludgeoning sarcasm which tickles a crowd, and his theme was not the wickedness, but the stupidity and futility of all "Jingoism," "spread-eagleism," "tall-talk," and "gold-lace bunkcombe."

"I am told my honourable friends of the opposition," he said, with an ironical bow in the direction of the now folded Navy League banner, "have played some kind of a practical joke in the eastern counties to-day. Well, children will be children; but I am afraid there will have to be spankings if half that I hear is true. They have tried to frighten you into abandoning this Demonstration with a pretended invasion of England. Well, my friends, it does not look to me as though their invasion had affected this Demonstration very seriously. I seem to fancy I see quite a number of people gathered together here. (It is estimated that over sixty thousand people were trying to hear his words.) But all I have to say on this invasion question is just this: If our friends from Germany have invaded East Anglia, let us be grateful for their enterprise, and, as a nation of shopkeepers should, let us make as much as we can out of 'em. But don't let us forget our hospitality. If our neighbours have dropped in in a friendly way, why, let's be sure we've something hot for supper. Perhaps a few sausages wouldn't be taken amiss. (The laughter and applause was so continuous here that for some moments nothing further could be heard.) No, my friends, this invasion hoax should now be placed finally upon the retired list. It has been on active service now since the year 1800, and I really think it's time our spread-eagle friends gave us a change. Let me for one moment address you in my official capacity, as your servant and a member of the Government. This England of ours is about as much in danger of being invaded as I am of becoming a millionaire, and those of you----"

The speaker's next words never reached me, being drowned by a great roar of laughter and applause. Just then I turned round to remonstrate with a man who was supporting himself upon my right shoulder. I was on the edge of the one narrow part of the crowd, against some iron railings. As I turned I noticed a number of boys tearing along in fan-shaped formation, and racing toward the crowd from the direction of Marble Arch. My eyes followed the approaching boys, and I forgot the fellow who had been plaguing me. The lads were all carrying bundles of papers, and now, as they drew nearer, I could see and hear that they were yelling as they ran.

"Another special edition," I thought. "No sort of a Sunday for poor Wardle."

The President of the Local Government Board had resumed his speech, and I could hear his clean-cut words distinctly. He had a good incisive delivery. Across his words now the hoarse yell of an approaching newsboy smote upon my ears:

"Extry speshul! Sixpence! German Army Corps in England! Speshul! Invashen er Sufferk! Speshul--sixpence! German Army Corps--sixpence! Invashen!"

"By Jove!" I thought. "That's rough on our disarmament feature from Herr Mitmann!"

I very well remember that that precisely was my thought.

XIV

THE NEWS

He could not hear Death's rattle at the door, He was so busy with his sottishness.

TURNER.

The chance of my position on the edge of the crowd nearest to Marble Arch caused me to be among those who secured a paper, and at the comparatively modest price of sixpence. Two minutes later, I saw a member of the committee of the Demonstration hand over half-a-crown for one of the same limp sheets, all warm and smeary from the press. And in two more minutes the newsboys (there must have been fifty of them) were racing back to Marble Arch, feverishly questing further supplies, and, I suppose, reckoning as they ran their unaccustomed gains.

The news, mostly in poster type, was only a matter of a few lines of comment, and a few more lines of telegraphic despatch from Brentwood:

"Telegraphic communication with Chelmsford has now been cut off, but one of our special representatives, who succeeded in obtaining a powerful six-cylinder motor-car, has reached Brentwood, after a racing tour to the northeastward. We publish his despatch under all possible reserve. He is a journalist of high repute, but we venture to say with confidence that he has evidently been imposed upon by the promoters of the most abominably wicked hoax and fraud ever perpetrated by criminal fanatics upon a trusting public. We have very little doubt that a number of these rabid advocates of that spirit of militarism to which the British public will never for one moment submit, will be cooling their heated brains in prison cells before the night is out."

And then followed the despatch from Brentwood, which said:

"Roads, railways, communication of all kinds absolutely blocked. Coastal regions of Suffolk and South Norfolk, and possibly Essex, are occupied by German soldiers. A cyclist from near Harwich says the landing was effected last evening, the most elaborate preparations and arrangements having been made beforehand. My car was fired at near Colchester. Chelmsford is now occupied by German cavalry, cyclist and motor corps. Have not heard of any loss of life, but whole country is panic-stricken. Cannot send further news. Telegraph office closed to public, being occupied in official business."

That was all. As my eyes rose from the blurred surface of the news-sheet the picture of the crowd absorbed me, like a stage-spectacle. There were from forty to sixty thousand people assembled, of all ages and classes. Among them were perhaps one thousand, perhaps two thousand, copies of the newspaper. Some ten thousand people were craning necks and straining eyes to read those papers. The rest were making short, hoarse, frequently meaningless ejaculations.

I saw one middle-aged man, who might have been a grocer, and a deacon in his place of worship, fold up his paper after reading it and thrust it, for future reference, in the tail-pocket of his sombre Sunday coat. But his neighbours in the crowd would not have that. A number of outstretched hands suddenly surrounded him. I saw his face pale. "Give us a look!" was all the sense I grasped from a score of exclamations. The grocer's paper was in fragments on the grass ten seconds later, and its destroyers were reaching out in other directions.

"It's abominable," I heard the grocer muttering to himself; and his hands shook as though he had the palsy.

But in other cases the papers passed whole from hand to hand, and their holders read the news aloud. I think the entire crowd had grasped the gist of it inside of four minutes; and their exclamatory comments were extraordinary, grotesque.

"My God!" and "My Gawd!" reached my ears frequently. But they were less representative than were short, sharp bursts of laughter, harsh and staccato, like a dog's bark, and, it may be, half-hysterical. And, piercing these snaps of laughter, one heard the curious, contradictory yapping of such sentences as: "I sye; 'ow about them 'ot sossiges?" "'Taint true, Bill, is it?" "Disgraceful business; perfectly disgraceful!" "Wot price the Kaiser? Not arf!" "Anything to sell the papers, you know!" "What? No. Jolly lot of rot!" "Johnny get yer gun, get yer gun!" "Some one must be punished for this. Might have caused a panic, you know." "True? Good Lord, no! What would our Navy be doing?" "Well, upon my word, I don't know." "Nice business for the fish trade!" "Well, if that's it, I shall take the children down to their Aunt Rebecca's." "Wot price Piccadilly an' Regent Street to-night?" "Come along, my dear; let's get home out of this." "Absolute bosh, my dear boy, from beginning to end--doing business with 'em every day o' my life!" And then a hoarse snatch of song: "'They'll never go for England'--not they! What ho! 'Because England's got the dibs!'"

Suddenly then, above and across the thousand-voiced small talk, came the trained notes of the voice of the President of the Local Government Board.

"My friends, the whole story is a most transparent fraud. It's a shameful hoax. I tell you the thing is physically and morally impossible. It couldn't have been done in the time; and it is all a lie, anyhow. I beg to propose a hearty vote of thanks to our chairman for----"

The crowd had listened attentively enough to the old agitator's comment on the news. They liked his assurances on that point. But they were in no mood for ceremonial. Thousands were already straggling across the grass toward Marble Arch and down to Hyde Park Corner. The speaker's further words were drowned in a confused hubbub of applause, cheers, laughter, shouts of "Are we downhearted?" raucous answers in the negative, and cries of "Never mind the chairman!" and "He's a jolly good fellow!"

In ten minutes that part of the park seemed to have been stripped naked, and the few vehicles, tables, and little platforms which had formed the centre of the Demonstration appeared, like the limbs of a tree suddenly bereft of foliage, looking curiously small and bare. I am told that restaurants and refreshment places did an enormous trade during the next few hours. When the public-houses opened they were besieged, and, in many cases, closed again after a few hours, sold out.

For my part, I made at once, and without thinking, for Constance Grey's flat in South Kensington. The crowds in the streets were not only much larger, but in many ways different from the usual run of Sunday crowds. The people wore their Sunday clothes, but they had doffed the Sunday manners and air. There was more of a suggestion of Saturday night in the streets; the suggestion that a tremendous number of people were going to enjoy a "spree" of some kind. A kind of noisy hilarity, combined with a general desire for cigars, drinks, singing, and gaiety, seemed to be ruling the people.

At the upper end of Sloane Street a German band was blaring out the air of "The Holy City," and people stood about in groups laughing and chatting noisily. The newspaper boys had some competitors now, and the Bank Holiday flavour of the streets was added to by a number of lads and girls who had appeared from nowhere, with all sorts of valueless commodities for sale, such as peacocks' feathers, paper fans, and streamers of coloured paper.

Why these things should have been wanted I cannot say; but their sellers knew their business very well. The demand was remarkably brisk. Indeed, I noticed one of three young men, who walked abreast, purchase quite a bunch of the long feathers, only to drop them beside the curb a few moments later, whence another vendor promptly plucked them, and sold them again. I suppose that by this time the vast majority of the people had no doubt whatever about the news being a monstrous hoax; but there was no blinking the fact that the public had been strongly moved.

It was with a distinct sense of relief that I learned from a servant that Miss Grey was at home--had just come in, as a matter of fact. It was as though I had some important business to transact with this girl from South Africa, with her brilliant dark eyes, and alert, thoughtful expression. I felt that it would have been serious if she should have been away, if I had missed her. It was not until I heard her step outside the door of the little drawing-room into which I had been shown, that I suddenly became conscious that I had no business whatever with Constance Grey, and that this call, on Sunday, within forty-eight hours of my dining there, might perhaps be adjudged a piece of questionable taste.

A minute later, and, if I had thought again of the matter at all, I should have known that Constance Grey wasted no time over any such petty considerations. She entered to me with a set, grave face, taking my hand mechanically, as though too much preoccupied for such ceremonies.

"What do you think of the news?" she said, without a word of preliminary greeting. I felt more than a little abashed at this; for, truth to tell, I really had given no serious thought to the news. I had observed its reception by the public as a spectator might. But, in the first place, I had been early warned that it was all a hoax; and then, too, like so many of my contemporaries, I was without the citizen feeling altogether, so far as national interests were concerned. I had grown to regard citizenship as exclusively a matter of domestic politics and social progress, municipal affairs, and the like. I never gave any thought to our position as a people and a nation in relation to foreign Powers.

"Oh, well," I said, "it's an extraordinary business, isn't it? I have just come from the Demonstration in Hyde Park. It was practically squashed by the arrival of the special editions. The people seemed pretty considerably muddled about it, so I suppose those who arranged it all may be said to have scored their point."

"So you don't believe it?"

"Well, I believe it is generally admitted to be a gigantic hoax, is it not?"

"But, my dear Mr. Mordan, how--how wonderful English people are! You, your own self; what do _you_ think about it? But forgive me for heckling. Won't you sit down? Or will you come into the study? Aunt is in there."

We went into the study, a cheerful, bright room, with low wicker chairs, and a big, littered writing-table.

"Mr. Mordan doesn't believe it," said Constance Grey, when I had shaken hands with her aunt.

"Doesn't he?" said that strong, plain-spoken woman. "Well, I fancy there are a good many more by the same way of thinking, who'll have their eyes opened pretty widely by this time to-morrow."

"Then you take the whole thing seriously?" I asked them.

Somehow, my own thoughts had become active in the presence of these women, and were racing over everything that I had seen and heard that day, from the moment of my chat with Wardle, before sunrise, in Holborn.

"I don't see any other way to take it," said Mrs. Van Homrey, with laconic emphasis. "Do you?" she added.

"Well, you see, I did not begin by taking your view. My first word of it was just before dawn this morning, from a newspaper man in Holborn; and, somehow--well, you know, the general idea seems to be that the whole thing is an elaborate joke worked up by the Navy League, or somebody, as a counter-stroke to the Disarmament Demonstration--to teach us a lesson, and all that, you know."

I had to remind myself that I was addressing two ladies who were sure to be whole-hearted supporters of the Navy League and all other Imperialist organizations. Constance Grey seemed to me to be appraising me. I fancied those brilliant eyes of hers were looking right into me with grave criticism, and discovering me unworthy. My heart sickened at the thought. I should have been more distressed had not a vague, futile anger crept into my mind. After all, I thought, what right had this girl from South Africa to criticize me? I was a man. I knew England better than she did. I was a journalist of experience. Bah! My twopenny thoughts drooped and fainted as they rose.

"But perhaps you are better informed?" I said, weakly. "Perhaps you have other information?"

Constance Grey looked straight at me, and as I recall her gaze now, it was almost maternal in its yearning gravity.

"I think it's going to be a lesson all right," she said. "What cuts me to the heart is the fear that it may have come too late."

Never have I heard such gravity in a young woman's voice. Her words overpowered me almost by the weight of prescient meaning she gave them. They reached me as from some solemn sanctuary, a fount of inspiration.

"We haven't any special information," said Mrs. Van Homrey. "We have only read, like every one else, that East Anglia is occupied by German soldiers, landed last night; that the East Anglian Pageant has been made the cloak of most elaborate preparations for weeks past; that the Mediterranean incident last week was a deliberate scheme to draw the Channel Fleet south; and that the whole dreadful business has succeeded so far, like--like perfect machinery; like the thing it is: the outcome of perfect discipline and long, deliberate planning. We have heard no more; but the only hoaxing that I can see is done by the purblind people who have made the public think it a hoax--and that is not conscious hoaxing, of course; they are too bemuddled with their disarmament farce for that."

"More tragedy than farce, aunt, I'm afraid," said Constance Grey. And then, turning to me, she said: "We lunched at General Penn Dicksee's to-day; and they have no doubt about the truth of the news. The General has motored down to Aldershot. They will begin some attempt at mobilizing at once, I believe. But it seemed impossible to get into touch with headquarters. All the War Office people are away for the week-end. In fact, they say the Minister's in Ipswich, and can't get away. General Penn Dicksee says they have practically no material to work with for any immediate mobilization purposes. He says that under the present system nothing can be done in less than a week. He thinks the most useful force will be the sailors from the Naval Barracks. But I should suppose they would be wanted for the ships--if we have any ships left fit for sea. The General thinks there may be a hundred thousand German soldiers within twenty or thirty miles of London by to-morrow."

"Yes," said Mrs. Van Homrey, "it doesn't seem easy to take it any other way than seriously; not if one's on the British side. And, for the matter of that, if I know the Teuton, they are taking it pretty seriously in East Anglia, and--and in Berlin."

And up till now, I had been thinking of the extra Sunday work for Wardle, and the way they had started selling peacocks' feathers and things, in the streets!

XV

SUNDAY NIGHT IN LONDON

. . .

"Ah," they cry, "Destiny, Prolong the present! Time, stand still here!"

The prompt stern Goddess Shakes her head, frowning; Time gives his hour-glass Its due reversal; Their hour is gone.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

I stayed to dinner at the flat in South Kensington, and after dinner, when I spoke of leaving, Constance Grey asked if I would care to accompany her into Blackfriars. She wanted to call at Printing House Square, and ascertain what further news had arrived. The implied intimacy and friendliness of the suggestion gave me a pleasurable thrill; it came as something of a reinstatement for me, and compensated for much. Constance Grey's views of me had in some way become more important to me than anything else. I was even now more concerned about that than about the news.

We made the journey by omnibus. I suggested a cab, as in duty bound, but, doubtless with a thought of my finances, my companion insisted upon the cheaper way. We had some trouble to get seats, but found them at last on a motor omnibus bound for Whitechapel. The streets were densely crowded, and the Bank Holiday spirit which I had remarked before was now general, and much more marked.

"It reminds me exactly of 'Mafeking Night,'" I said, referring to that evening of the South African war during which London waxed drunk upon the news of the relief of Mafeking.

"Was it as bad even then?" said my companion. And her question showed me, what I might otherwise have overlooked, that a good deal of water had passed under the bridges since South African war days. We had been a little ashamed of our innocent rowdiness over the Mafeking relief. We had become vastly more inconsistent and less sober since then. I think the "Middle Class Music Halls" had taken their share in the progress, by breaking down much of the staid reserve and self-restraint of the respectable middle class. But, of course, one sees now that the rapid growth among us of selfish irresponsibility and repudiation of national obligations was the root cause of that change in public behaviour which I saw clearly enough, once it had been suggested to me by Constance Grey's question.

I saw that, among the tens of thousands of noisy promenaders of both sexes who filled the streets, and impeded traffic at all crossings, the class which had always been rowdily inclined was now far more rowdy, and that its ranks were reinforced, doubled in strength, by recruits from a class which, a few years before, had been proverbially noted for its decorous and decent reserve. And this was Sunday Night. I learned afterwards that the clergy had preached to practically empty churches. A man we met in _The Times_ office told us of this, and my companion's comment was:

"Yes, even their religion has less meaning for them than their pleasure; and, with religion a dead letter, the spirit that won Trafalgar and armed the Thames against Napoleon, must be dead and buried."

The news we received at _The Times_ office was extraordinary. It seemed there was no longer room for the smallest doubt that a large portion of East Anglia was actually occupied by a German army. Positive details of information could not be obtained.

"The way the coastal districts have been hermetically sealed against communication, and the speed and thoroughness with which the occupation has been accomplished, will remain, I believe, the most amazing episode in the history of warfare," said the solemn graybeard, to whom I had been presented by Constance Grey. (If he had known that I was the assistant editor of _The Mass_, I doubt if this Mr. Poole-Smith would have consented to open his mouth in my presence. But my obscurity and his importance combined to shelter me, and I was treated with confidence as the friend of a respected contributor.)

"Already we know enough to be certain that the enemy has received incalculably valuable assistance from within. I am afraid there will presently be only too much evidence of the blackest kind of treachery from British subjects, members of one or other among the anti-National coteries. But in the meantime, we hear of extraordinary things accomplished by aliens employed in this country, many of them in official capacities. We have learned through the Great Eastern Railway Company, and through one or two shipping houses, of huge consignments of stores, and, I make very little doubt, of munitions of war. The thing must have been in train on this side for many months--possibly for years. Here, for instance, is an extraordinary item, which is hardly likely to be only coincidence: Out of one hundred postmasters within a sixty-mile radius of Harwich, eighty-one have obtained their positions within the last two years, and of those sixty-nine bear names which indicate German nationality or extraction. But that is only one small item. An analysis of the Eastern Railway employees, and of the larger business firms between here and Ipswich, will tell a more startling tale, unless I am greatly mistaken."

But to me, I think the part of the news we gathered which seemed most startling was the fact that a tiny special issue of _The Times_, then being sold in the streets, contained none of the information given to us, but only a cautiously worded warning to the public that the news received from East Anglia had been grossly exaggerated, and that no definite importance should be attached to it, until authoritative information, which would appear in the first ordinary issue of _The Times_ on Monday, had been considered. It was all worded very pompously, and vaguely, in a deprecating tone, which left it open for the reader to conclude that _The Times_ supported the generally accepted hoax theory. And we found that all the daily papers of repute and standing had issued similar bulletins to the public. Asked about this, our grave informant stroked his whiskers, and alluded distantly to "policy decided upon in consultation with representatives of the Crown."

"For one thing, you see, London is extraordinarily full of Germans, though we have already learned that vast numbers of them went to swell the attendance at the East Anglian Pageant, and may now, for all we know, be under arms. Then, too, anything in the nature of a panic on a large scale, and that before the authorities have decided upon any definite plan of action, would be disastrous. Unfortunately our reports from correspondents at the various southern military depots are all to the effect that mobilization will be a slow business. As you know, the regulars in England have been reduced to an almost negligible minimum, and the mobilization of the 'Haldane Army' involves the slow process of drawing men out of private life into the field. What is worse, it means in many cases Edinburgh men reporting themselves at Aldershot, and south-country men reporting themselves in the north. And then their practical knowledge so far leaves them simply men in the street.

"But the great trouble is that the Government and the official heads of departments have been at loggerheads this long time past, and now are far from arriving at any definite policy of procedure. Of course, the majority of the leaders are out of town. You will understand that every possible precaution must be taken to avoid unduly alarming the public, or provoking panic. We hope to be able to announce something definite in the morning. The sympathy of all the Powers will undoubtedly be with us, for every known tenet of international law has been outraged by this entirely unprovoked invasion."

"And what do you think will be the practical effect and use of their sympathy, Mr. Poole-Smith?" asked Constance Grey.

"Well," said our solemn friend, caressing his whiskers, "as to its _practical_ effect, my dear Miss Grey, why, I am afraid that in such bitter matters as these the practical value of sympathy, or of international law, is--er--cannot very easily be defined."

"Quite so. Exactly as I thought. It would not make one pennyworth of difference, Mr. Poole-Smith. The British public is on the eve of learning the meaning of brave old Lord Roberts's teaching: that no amount of diplomacy, of 'cordiality,' of treaties, or of anything else in the repertoire of the disarmament party, can ever counterbalance the uses of the rifle in the hands of disciplined men. Their twentieth-century notions will avail us pitifully little against the advance of the Kaiser's legions. The brotherhood of man and the sacred arts of commerce and peace will have little in the way of reply to machine guns. If only our people could have had even one year of universal military training! But no; they would not even pay for the maintenance of such defence force as they had when it took three years to beat the Boers; and now--didn't some man write a book called 'The Defenceless Isles'? We live in them."

"But that is not the worst, Miss Grey," said our friend. "These are now not only defenceless, but invaded isles."

"Ah! How long before they become surrendered isles, Mr. Poole-Smith?"

"The answer to that is with a higher Power than any in Printing House Square, Miss Grey. But, let me say this, in strict confidence, please. You wonder, and perhaps are inclined to condemn our--well, our reticence about this news. Do you know my fear? It is that if, in its present mood, suddenly, the British public, and more especially the London public, were allowed to realize clearly both what has happened in East Anglia, and the monumental unfitness of our authorities and defences to meet and cope with such an emergency--that then we should see England torn in sunder by the most terrible revolution of modern times. We should see statesmen hanging from lamp-posts in Whitehall; 'The Destroyers' would be destroyed; the Crown would be in danger, as well as its unworthy servants. And the Kaiser's machine-like army would find it had invaded a ravaged inferno, occupied by an infuriated populace hopelessly divided against itself, and already in the grip of the deadliest kind of strife. That, I think, is a danger to be guarded against, so far as it is possible, at all or any cost."

One could not but be impressed by this rather pompous, but sincere and earnest man's words.

"I see that very clearly, Mr. Poole-Smith," said Constance Grey. "But can the thing be done? Can the public be deluded for more than a few hours?"

"Not altogether, my dear young lady, not altogether. But, as we learn early in journalism, life is made up of compromises. We hope to school them to it, and give them the truth gradually, with as little shock as may be."

Soon after this we left the great office, and, as we passed out into the crowded streets, Constance Grey said to me:

"Thank God, _The Times_ managed to win clear of the syndicate's clutches when it did. There is moral and strength of purpose there now. I think the Press is behaving finely--if only the public can be made to do as well. But, oh, 'The Destroyers'--what a place they have cut out for themselves in history!"

But for the glorious summer weather, one could have fancied Christmas at hand from the look of Ludgate Hill. From the Circus we took a long look up at Paul's great dome, massive and calm against the evening sky. But between it and us was a seething crowd, promenading at the rate of a mile an hour, and served by two solid lines of vendors of useless trifles and fruit, and so forth.

Crossing Ludgate Circus, as we fought our way to the steps of an omnibus, was a band of youths linked arm in arm, and all apparently intoxicated. There must have been forty in a line. As they advanced, cutting all sorts of curious capers, they bawled, in something like unison, the melancholy music-hall refrain:

"They'll never go for England, because England's got the dibs."

The crowd caught up the jingle as fire licks up grass, and narrow Fleet Street echoed to the monstrous din of their singing. I began to feel anxious about getting Constance safely to her flat. Six out of the fourteen people on the top of our omnibus were noticeably and noisily tipsy.

"Ah me, Dick, where, where is their British reserve? How I hate that beloved word cosmopolitan!"

She looked at me, and perhaps that reminded her of something.

"Forgive my familiarity," she said. "John Crondall spoke of you as Dick Mordan. It's rather a way we have--out there."

I do not remember my exact reply, but it earned me the friendly short name from her for the future; and, with England tumbling about our ears, for aught we knew, that, somehow, made me curiously happy. But it was none the less with a sigh of relief that I handed her in at the outer door of the mansions in which their flat was situated. We paused for a moment at the stairs' foot, the first moment of privacy we had known that evening, and the last, I thought, with a recollection of Mrs. Van Homrey waiting in the flat above.

I know I was deeply moved. My heart seemed full to bursting. Perhaps the great news of that day affected me more than I knew. But yet it seemed I had no words, or very few. I remember I touched the sleeve of her dress with my finger-tips. What I said was:

"You know I am--you know I am at your orders, don't you?"

And she smiled, with her beautiful, sensitive mouth, while the light of grave watching never flickered in her eyes.

"Yes, Dick; and thank you!" she said, as we began to mount the stairs.

Yet I was still the assistant editor of _The Mass_--Clement Blaine's right hand.

XVI

A PERSONAL REVELATION

The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed. I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

BYRON.

That Sunday night was not one of London's black nights that have been so often described. The police began to be a little sharp with the people after nine or ten o'clock, and by midnight the streets were getting tolerably clear. For the great majority, I believe it had been a day of more or less pleasurable excitement and amusement. For the minority, who were better informed, it was a day and night of curious bewilderment and restless anxiety.

I looked in at several newspaper offices on my way home from South Kensington, but found that subordinate members of the staffs had no information to give, and that their superiors maintained an attitude of strict reticence. As I passed the dark windows of my own office I thought of our "feature" for the coming week: the demand for disarmament, in order that naval and military expenditure might be diverted into labour reform channels; Herr Mitmann's voluble assurances of the friendliness of the German people; of the ability and will of the German Socialists to make German aggression impossible, for the sake of their brother workers in England.

I thought of these things, and wished I could spurn under foot my connection with _The Mass_. Then, sitting at the window of my little bed-sitting-room in Bloomsbury, I looked into my petty finances. If I left Clement Blaine I had enough to subsist upon for six or eight weeks. It was a risky business. Then I pictured myself casually mentioning to Constance Grey that I was no longer connected with _The Mass_. I fancied that I saw the bright approval in her eyes. Before blowing my light out, I had composed the little speech to Blaine which, in the morning, should set a period to our connection.

And then I thought of Beatrice. It was barely twenty-four hours since we had parted beside Battersea Park (though it seemed more like twenty-four days), and recollection showed me Beatrice in her rather rumpled finery, with the bleakness of the gray hour that follows such pleasures as most appealed to her, beginning to steal over her handsome face, sapping its warm colour, thinning and sharpening its ripe, smooth contours. Beatrice would pout when she heard of my leaving her father. The thought showed me her full red lips, and the little even white teeth they so often disclosed.

The curves of Beatrice's mouth were of a kind that have twisted many men's lives awry; and those men have thought straightness well lost for such red lips. Yes, Beatrice was good to look upon. She had a way of throwing her head back, and showing the smooth, round whiteness of her throat when she laughed, that had thrilled me time and again. And how often, and how gaily she laughed.

In the midst of a picture of Beatrice, laughing at me across a restaurant table with a raised glass in her hand, I had a shadowy vision of Constance Grey beside the foot of the stairs in South Kensington. There was no laughter in her face. I had gathered, when I dined there, that Constance did not care for wine. She had said: "I don't care for anything that makes me feel as though I couldn't work if I wanted to." How Beatrice would have scoffed at that! And then, how Constance would have smiled over Beatrice's ideals--her "fluffy" evenings--in a kind of regretful, wondering way; almost as she had smiled when she first called me "Dick," in asking what had become of our staid English reserve; as she watched the noisy crowd in Fleet Street, singing its silly doggerel about England's security and England's "dibs."

And then, suddenly, my picture-making thoughts swept out across low Essex flats to the only part of East Anglia with which I was familiar, and gave me a vision of burning farmhouses, and terror-smitten country-folk fleeing blindly before a hail of bullets, and the pitiless advance of legions of fair-haired men in long coats of a kind of roan-gray, buttoned across the chest with bright buttons arranged to suggest the inward curve to an imaginary waist-line. The faces of the soldiers were all the same; they all had the face of Herr Mitmann of Stettin. And a hot wave of angry resentment and hatred of these machine-like invaders of a peaceful unprotected countryside pulsed through my veins. Could they dare--here on English soil? My fists clenched under the bed-clothes. If it was true, by heavens, there was work for Englishmen toward!

My blood was hot at the thought. It was perhaps the first swelling of a patriotic emotion I had known; the first hint of any larger citizenship than that which claims and demands, without thought of giving. And, immediately, it was succeeded by a sharp chill, a chill that ushered me into one of the bitterest moments of humiliation that I can remember. The thought accompanying that chill was this:

"What can you do? What are you fit for? What boy's part, even, can you take, though the roof were being burned over your mother's head? What of Constance, or Beatrice? Could you strike a blow for either? Work for Englishmen, forsooth! Yes, for those of them who have ever learned a man's part in such work. But you--you have never had a gun in your hand. What have you done? You have poured out for your weekly wage so many thousands of words; words meaning--what? Why, they have meant what the roadside beggar means: 'Give! Give! Give!' They have urged men to demand more from the State, and give the State nothing; to rob the State of even its defences, for the sake of adding to their own immediate ease. And you have ridiculed, as a survival of barbarous times, the efforts of such men as the brave old Field Marshal who gave his declining years to the thankless task of urging England to make some effort of preparation to fend off just that very crisis which has now come upon her, and found her absolutely unprepared. That is how you have earned your right to live, a citizen of the freest country in the world, a subject of the greatest Empire the world has ever seen. And when you have had leisure and money to spend, you have devoted it to overeating and drinking, and helping to fill the tills of alien parasites in Soho. That has been your part. And now, now that the fatal crisis has arrived, you, whose qualification is that you can wield the pen of a begging letter-writer, who is also scurrilous and insolent--you lie in bed and clench your useless hands, and prate of work for Englishmen!"

That was the thought that came to me with a sudden chill that night; and I suppose I was one of the earliest among millions doomed to writhe under the impotent shame of such a thought. I shall never forget that night in my Bloomsbury lodging. It was my ordeal of self-revelation. I suppose I slept a little toward morning; but I rose early with a kind of vague longing to escape from the company of the personality my thought had shown me in the night.

It is natural that the awakening of an individual should be a more speedy process than the awakening of a people--a nation. I regard my early rising on that Monday morning as the beginning of my first real awakening to life as an Englishman. I had still far to go--I had not even crossed the threshold as yet.

XVII

ONE STEP FORWARD

Thy trust, thy honours, these were great; the greater now thy shame, for thou hast proved both unready and unfit, unworthy offspring of a noble sire!--MERROW'S _Country Tales_.

Five minutes after Clement Blaine reached the office of _The Mass_ that morning, he had lost the services of his assistant editor, and I felt that I had taken one step upward from a veritable quagmire of humiliation.

Blaine was almost too excited about the news of the day to pay much heed to my little speech of resignation. The morning paper to which he subscribed--a Radical journal of pronounced tone--had observed far less reticence than most of its contemporaries, and, in its desire to lend sensational interest to its columns, had not minimized in any way the startling character of such intelligence as it had received.

"The bloodthirsty German devils!" said Blaine, the erstwhile apostle of internationalism and the socialistic brotherhood of man. "By God, the Admiralty and the War Office ought to swing for this! Here are we taxed out of house and home to support their wretched armies and navies, and German soldiers marching on London, they say, with never a sign of a hand raised to oppose 'em--damn them! Nice time you choose to talk of leaving. By God, Mordan, you may be leaving from against a wall with a bullet through your head, next thing you know. These German devils don't wear kid gloves, I fancy. They're not like our tin-pot army. Army!--we haven't got one--lot of gold-laced puppets!"

That was how Clement Blaine was moved by the news. Last week: "Bloated armaments," "huge battalions of idle men eating the heart out of the nation through its revenues." This week, we had no army, and because of it the Admiralty and the War Office ought to "swing." In Blaine's ravings I had my foretaste of public opinion on the crisis.

On the previous day I had listened to a prominent Member of Parliament urging that our children should be preserved from the contamination of contact with those who taught the practice of the "hellish art" of shooting.

The leading daily papers of this Monday morning admitted the central fact that England had been invaded during Saturday night, and even allowed readers to assume that portions of the eastern counties were then occupied by "foreign" troops. But they used the word "raid" in place of "invasion," and generally qualified it with such a word as "futile." The general tone was that a Power with whom we had believed ourselves to be upon friendly terms had been guilty of rash and provocative action toward us, which it would speedily be made to regret. It was an insult, which would be promptly avenged; full atonement for which would be demanded and obtained at once. It was even suggested that some tragic misunderstanding would be found to lie at the root of the whole business; and in any case, things were to be set right without delay. One journal, the _Standard_, did go so far as to say that the British public was likely to be forced now into learning at great cost a lesson which had been offered daily as a free gift since the opening of the century, and as steadily repudiated or ignored.

"Two things it should teach England," said this journal; "never to invite insult and contempt by a repetition of Sunday's Disarmament Demonstration or enunciation of its fallacious and dangerous teaching; and the necessity for paying instant heed to the warnings of the advocates of universal military training for purposes of home defence."

But at that time the nicknames of the "The Imperialist Banner" and "The Patriotic Pulpit," applied by various writers and others to this great newspaper, were scornful names, applied with opprobrious intent; and London was still full of people whose only comment upon this sufficiently badly-needed warning would be: "Oh, of course, the _Standard_!"

But the policy of reticence, though I have no doubt that it did save London from some terrible scenes of panic, was not to be tenable for many hours. Within half an hour of noon special editions of a halfpenny morning paper, and an evening paper belonging to the same proprietors, were issued simultaneously with a full, sensational, and quite unreserved statement of all the news obtainable from East Anglia. A number of motor-cyclists had been employed in the quest of intelligence, and one item of the news they had to tell was that Colchester had offered resistance to the invaders, and as a result had been shelled and burned to the ground. A number of volunteers and other civilians had been found bearing arms, and had been tried by drum-head court martial and shot within the hour, by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the German forces.

Another sensational item was a copy of a proclamation issued by the German Commander-in-Chief. This proclamation was dated from Ipswich, and I think it struck more terror into the people than any other single item of intelligence published during that eventful day. It was headed with the Imperial German Arms, and announced the establishment of German military jurisdiction in England. It announced that the penalty of immediate death would be inflicted without any exception upon any British subject not wearing and being entitled to wear British military uniform who should be found:

1. Taking arms against the invaders.

2. Misleading German troops.

3. Injuring in any manner whatever any German subject.

4. Injuring any road, rail, or waterway, or means of communication.

5. Offering resistance of any kind whatsoever to the advance and occupation of the German Army.

Then followed peremptory details of instructions as to the supplies which every householder must furnish for the German soldiers quartered in his neighbourhood, and an announcement as to the supreme and inviolable authority of the German officer in command of any given place.

Nothing else yet published brought home to the public the realization of what had happened as did this coldly pompous and, in the circumstances, very brutal proclamation. And no item in it so bit into the hearts of the bewildered Londoners who read it as did the clear incisive statement to the effect that a British subject who wore no military uniform would be shot like a dog if he raised a hand in the defence of his country or his home. He must receive the invader with open arms, and provide him food, lodging, and assistance of every kind, or be led out and shot. There were hundreds of thousands of men in London that day who would have given very much for the right to wear a uniform which they had learned almost to despise of late years; a uniform many of them had wished to abolish altogether, as the badge of a primitive and barbarous trade, a "hellish art."

We had talked glibly enough of war, of its impossibility in England, and of the childish savagery of the appeal to arms; just as, a few years earlier, before the naval reductions, we had talked of England's inviolability, secured her by her unquestioned mastery of the sea. We had written and spoken hundreds of thousands of fine words upon these subjects; and, within the last forty-eight hours, we had demonstrated with great energy the needlessness of armed forces for England. For and against, about it and about, we had woven a mazy network of windy platitudes and catch-phrases, all devised to hide the manifest and manly duties of citizenship; all intended to justify the individual's exclusive concentration upon his own personal pleasures and aggrandizement, without waste of time or energy upon any claims of the commonwealth.

And now, in a few score of short, sharp words, in a single brief document, peremptorily addressed to the fifty million people of these islands, a German soldier had brought an end to all our vapourings, all our smug, self-interested theories, and shattered the monstrous fabric of our complaisance, as it were, with a rattle of his sword-hilt. Never before in history had a people's vanity been so shaken by a word.

In the early afternoon an unavoidable errand took me to a northeastern suburb. I made my return to town as one among an army of refugees. The people had begun flocking into London from as far north and east as Brentwood. The Great Eastern Railway was disorganized. The northern highways leading into London were occupied by unbroken lines of people journeying into the city for protection--afoot, in motor-cars, on cycles, and in every kind of horse-drawn vehicle, and carrying with them the strangest assortment of personal belongings.

At the earliest possible hour I made my way toward South Kensington. I told myself there might be something I could do for Constance Grey. Beyond that there was the fact that I craved another sight of her, and I longed to hear her comment when she knew I had finished with _The Mass_.

A porter on the Underground Railway told me that the Southwestern and Great Western termini were blocked by feverish crowds of well-to-do people, struggling, with their children, for places in trains bound south and west. Huge motor-cars of the more luxurious type whizzed past one in the street continuously, their canopies piled high with bags, their bodies full of women and children, their chauffeurs driving hard toward the southern and western highways.

Outside South Kensington station I had my first sight of a Royal Proclamation upon the subject of the invasion. Evidently the Government realized that, prepared or unprepared, the state of affairs could no longer be hidden from the public. The King was at Buckingham Palace that day I knew, and it seemed to me that I read rather his Majesty's own sentiments than those of his Cabinet in the Proclamation. I gathered that the general public also formed this impression.

There is no need for me to reproduce a document which forms part of our history. The King's famous reference to the Government--"The Destroyers"--"Though admittedly unprepared for such a blow, my Government is taking prompt steps for coping in a decisive manner," etc.; and again, the equally famous reference to the German Emperor, in the sentence beginning: "This extraordinary attack by the armed forces of my Royal and Imperial nephew." These features of a nobly dignified and restrained Address seemed to me to be a really direct communication from their Sovereign to the English people. Whatever might be said of the position of "The Destroyers" in Whitehall, it became evident, even at this early stage, that the Throne was in no danger--that the sanctity pertaining to the person of the Monarch who, as it were in despite of his Government, had done more for the true cause of peace than any other in Europe, remained inviolate in the hearts of the people.

For the rest, the Proclamation was a brief, simple statement of the facts, with an equally simple but very heart-stirring appeal to every subject of the Crown to concentrate his whole energies, under proper guidance, upon the task of repelling "this dastardly and entirely unprovoked attack upon our beloved country."

I heard many deeply significant and interesting comments from the circle of men and women who were reading this copy of the Proclamation. The remarks of two men I repeat here because in both cases they were typical and representative. The first remark was from a man dressed as a navvy, with a short clay pipe in his mouth. He said:

"Oh, yus; the King's all right; Gawd bless un! No one 'ld mind fightin' for 'im. It's 'is blighted Gov'nment wot's all bloomin' wrong--blast 'em!"

The reply came from a young man evidently of sedentary occupation--a shop-assistant or clerk:

"You're all right, too, old sport; but don't you forget the other feller's proclamation. If you 'aven't got no uniform, your number's up for lead pills, an' don't you forget it. A fair fight an' no favour's all right; but I'm not on in this blooming execution act, thank you. Edward R. I. will have to pass me, I can see."

"Well, 'e won't lose much, matey, when all's said. But you're English, anyway; that seems a pity. Why don't yer run 'ome ter yer ma, eh?"

"Go it, old sport. You're a blue-blooded Tory; an Imperialist, aren't you?"

"Not me, boy; I'm only an able-bodied man."

"What ho! Got a flag in your pocket, have you? You watch the Germans don't catch you fer sausage meat."

And then I passed on, heading for Constance Grey's flat. I reflected that I had done my share toward forming the opinions, the mental attitude of that young clerk or shop-assistant. The type was familiar enough. But I had had no part nor lot in the preservation of that navvy's simple patriotism. Rather, by a good deal, had the tendency of all I said and wrote been toward weakening the sturdy growth, and causing it to be deprecated as a thing archaic, an obstacle in the way of progress.

Progress! The expounding of Herr Mitmann of Stettin! That Monday was a minor day of judgment for others beside myself.

XVIII

THE DEAR LOAF

A third of the people, then, in the event of war, would immediately be reduced to starvation: and the rest of the thirty-eight million would speedily be forced thither.--L. COPE CORNFORD'S _The Defenceless Islands_ (London, 1906).

I saw Constance Grey only for a few minutes during that day. She had passed the stage of shocked sorrow and sad fear in which I had found her on Sunday, and was exceedingly busy in organizing a corps of assistant nurses, women who had had some training, and were able to provide a practical outfit of nursing requisites. She had the countenance of the Army Medical authorities, but her nursing corps was to consist exclusively of volunteers.

The organizing ability this girl displayed was extraordinary. She spared five minutes for conversation, and warmed my heart with her appreciation of my severance of _The Mass_ connection. And then, before I knew what had happened, she had me impressed, willingly enough, in her service, and I was off upon an errand connected with the volunteer nursing corps. News had arrived of some wounded refugees in Romford, unable to proceed on their way into London; and a couple of motor-cars, with nurses and medical comforts, were despatched at once.

Detailed news of the sacking of Colchester showed this to have been a most extraordinarily brutal affair for the work of a civilized army. The British regular troops at Colchester represented the whole of our forces of the northeastern division, and included three batteries of artillery. The regiments of this division had been reduced to three, and for eighteen months or more these had been mere skeletons of regiments, the bulk of the men being utilized to fill other gaps caused by the consistently followed policy of reduction which had characterized "The Destroyers'" regime.

A German spy who had been captured in Romford and brought to London, said that the Commander-in-Chief of the German forces in England had publicly announced to his men that the instructions received from their Imperial master were that the pride of the British people must be struck down to the dust; that the first blows must be crushing; that the British people were to be smitten with terror from which recovery should be impossible.

Be this as it may, the sacking of Colchester was a terrible business. A number of citizens had joined the shockingly small body of regulars in a gallant attempt at defence. The attempt was quite hopeless; the German superiority in numbers, discipline, metal, and material being quite overwhelming. But the German commander was greatly angered by the resistance offered, and, as soon as he ascertained that civilians had taken part in this, the town was first shelled and then stormed. It was surrounded by a cordon of cavalry, and--_no prisoners were taken_.

The town was burned to the ground, though many valuable stores were first removed from it; and those of the inhabitants who had not already fled were literally mown down in their native streets, without parley or quarter--men, women, and children being alike regarded as offenders against the edict forbidding any civilian British subject, upon pain of death, to offer any form of resistance to German troops. I myself spoke to a man in Knightsbridge that evening who had definite news that his nineteen-year-old daughter, a governess in the house of a Colchester doctor, was among those shot down in the streets of the town while endeavouring to make her escape with two children. The handful of British regulars had been shot or cut to pieces, and the barracks and stores taken over by the Germans.

As I left Constance Grey's flat that evening I passed a small baker's shop, before which an angry crowd was engaged in terrifying a small boy in a white apron, who was nervously endeavouring to put up the window shutters. I asked what the trouble was, and was told the baker had refused to sell his half-quartern loaves under sevenpence, or his quartern loaves under a shilling.

"It's agin the law, so it is," shouted an angry woman. "I'm a policeman's wife, an' I know what I'm talking about. I'll have the law of the nasty mean hound, so I will, with his shillin' for a fivepenny loaf, indeed!"

Long before this time, and while Britain still held on to a good proportion of her foreign trade, it had been estimated by statisticians that in the United Kingdom some ten to twelve million persons lived always upon the verge of hunger. But since then the manufacturers of protected countries, notably Germany and the United States, had, as was inevitable in the face of our childish clinging to what we miscalled "free" trade, crowded the British manufacturer out of practically every market in the world, except those of Canada. Those also must of necessity have been lost, but for the forbearing and enduring loyalty of the Canadian people, who, in spite of persistent rebuffs, continued to extend and to increase their fiscal preference for imports from the Mother-country.

But, immense as Canada's growth was even then, no one country could keep the manufacturers of Britain busy; and I believe I am right in saying that at this time the number of those who lived always on the verge of hunger had increased to at least fifteen millions. Cases innumerable there were in which manufacturers themselves had gone to swell the ranks of the unemployed and insufficiently employed; the monstrous legion of those who lived always close to the terrifying spectre of hunger.

If the spirit of Richard Cobden walked the earth at that time, even as his obsessions assuredly still cumbered it, it must have found food for bitter reflection in the hundreds of empty factories, grass-grown courtyards, and broken-windowed warehouses, which a single day's walk would show one in the north of England.

You may be sure I thought of those things as I walked away from that baker's shop in South Kensington. A journalist, even though he be only the assistant of a man like Blaine, is apt to see the conditions of life in his country fairly plainly, because he has a wider vision of them than most men. Into Fleet Street, each day brings an endless stream of "news items," not only from all parts of the world, but from every town and city in the kingdom. And your journalist, though he may have scant leisure for its digestion, absorbs the whole of this mass of intelligence each day in the process of conveying one-tenth part of it, in tabloid form, to the public.

If one assumes for the moment that only twelve million people in Great Britain were living on hunger's extreme edge at that time, the picture I had of the sullen, angry crowd outside the baker's shop remains a sufficiently sinister one. As a matter of fact, I believe that particular baker was a shade premature, or a penny or two excessive, in his advance of prices. But I know that by nightfall you could not have purchased a quartern loaf for elevenpence halfpenny within ten miles of Charing Cross. The Bakers' Society had issued its mandates broadcast. Shop-windows were stoned that night in south and east London; but twenty-four hours later the price of the quartern loaf was 1s. 3d., and a man offering 1s. 2d. would go empty away.

And with the same loaf selling at one-third the price, twelve million persons at least had lived always on the verge of hunger. I mention the staple food only, but precisely the same conditions applied to all other food-stuffs with the exception of dairy produce, the price of which was quadrupled by Tuesday afternoon, and fish, the price of which put it at once beyond the reach of all save the rich, and all delicacies, the prices of which became prohibitive. Twelve million persons had lived on the verge of hunger, before, under normal conditions, and when the country's trade had been far larger and more prosperous than of late. Now, with the necessities of life standing at fully three times normal prices, a large number of trades employing many thousands of work-people were suddenly shut down upon, and rendered completely inoperative.

It must be borne in mind that we had been warned again and again that matters would be precisely thus and not otherwise in the event of war, and we had paid no heed whatever to the telling.

Historians have explained for us that the primary reason of the very sudden rise to famine rates of the prices of provisions was the persistent rumour that the effective bulk of the Channel Fleet had been captured or destroyed on its way northward from Spanish waters. German strategy had drawn the Fleet southward, in the first place, by means of an international "incident" in the Mediterranean, which was clearly the bait of what rumour called a death-trap. Once trapped, it was said, German seamanship and surprise tactics had done the rest.

The crews of the Channel Fleet ships (considerably below full strength) had been rushed out of shore barracks, in which discipline had fallen to a terribly low ebb, to their unfamiliar shipboard stations, at the time of the Mediterranean scare. Beset by the flower of the German Navy, in ships manned by crews who lived afloat, it was asserted that the Channel Fleet had been annihilated, and that the entire force of the German Navy was concentrated upon the task of patrolling English waters.

We know that men and horses, stores and munitions of war, were pouring steadily and continuously into East Anglia from Germany during this time, escorted by German cruisers and torpedo-boats, and uninterrupted by British ships. There was yet no report of the Channel Fleet, the ships of which were already twenty-four hours overdue at Portsmouth.

Two things, more than any others, had influenced the British Navy during the Administration of "The Destroyers": the total cessation of building operations, and the withdrawal of ships and men from sea service. The reserve ships had long been unfit to put to sea, the reserve crews had, for all practical purposes, become landsmen--landsmen among whom want of sea-going discipline had of late produced many mutinous outbreaks.

It had been said by the most famous admiral of the time, and said without much exaggeration, that, within twelve months of "The Destroyers'" abandonment of the traditional two-Power standard of efficiency, the British Navy had "fallen to half-Power standard." The process was quickened, of course, by the unprecedented progress of the German Navy during the same period. It was said that at the end of 1907 the German Government had ships of war building in every great dockyard in the world. It is known that the entire fleet of the "Kaiser" class torpedo-boats and destroyers was built and set afloat at the German Emperor's own private expense.

Then there were the "Well-borns," as they were called--vessels of no great weight of metal, it is true, but manned, armed, officered, and found better perhaps than any other war-ships in the world; entirely at the instigation of the German Navy League, and out of the pockets of the German nobility. The majority of our own wealthy classes preferred sinking their money in German motor-cars and German pleasure resorts; or one must assume so, for it is well known that our Navy League had long since ceased to exert any active influence, because it was unable to raise funds enough to pay its office expenses.

Our Navy might have had a useful reserve to draw upon in the various auxiliary naval bodies if these had not, one by one, been abolished. The Mercantile Marine was not in a position to lend much assistance in this respect, for our ships at that time carried eighty-seven thousand foreign officers and men, three parts of whom were Teutons. These facts were presumably all well known to the heads and governing bodies of the various trades, and, that being so, the extremely pessimistic attitude adopted by them, directly the fact of invasion was established, is scarcely to be wondered at.

In banking, insurance, underwriting, stock and share dealing, manufacturing, and in every branch of shipping the lead of the bakers were followed, and in many cases exceeded. The premiums asked in insurance and underwriting, and the unprecedented advance in the bank-rate, corresponding as it did with a hopeless "slump" in every stock and share quoted on the Stock Exchange, from Consols to mining shares, brought business to a standstill in London on Monday afternoon.

On Tuesday entire blocks of offices remained unopened. In business, more perhaps than in any other walk of life, self-preservation and self-advancement were at that time, not alone the first, but the only fixed law. With bread at 1s. 4d. a loaf, great ship-owners in England were cabling the masters of wheat ships in both hemispheres to remain where they were and await orders.

This last fact I learned from Leslie Wheeler, whom I happened to meet hurrying from the City to Waterloo, on his way down to Weybridge. His family were leaving for Devonshire next morning, to stay with relatives there.

"But, bless me!" I said, when he told me that friends of his father, shipping magnates, had despatched such cable messages that morning, "surely that's a ruffianly thing to do, when the English people are crying out for bread?"

Leslie shrugged his smartly-clad shoulders. "It's the English people's own affair," he said.

"How's that?"

"Why, you see it's all a matter of insurance. All commerce is based on insurance, in one form or another. The cost of shipping insurance to-day is absolutely prohibitive; in other words, there isn't any. We did have a permanent and non-fluctuating form of insurance of a kind one time. But you Socialist chaps--social reform, Little England for the English, and all that--you swept that away. Wouldn't pay for it; said it wasn't wanted. Now it's gone, and you're feeling the pinch. The worst of it is, you make the rest of us feel it, too. I'm thankful to say the dad's pulling out fairly well. He told me yesterday he hadn't five hundred pounds in anything British. Wise old bird, the dad!"

My friend's "You Socialist chaps" rather wrang my withers; its sting not being lessened at all by my knowledge of its justice. I asked after the welfare of the Wheeler family generally, but it was only as Leslie was closing the door of the cab he hailed that I mentioned Sylvia.

"Yes, Sylvia's all right," he said, as he waved me good-bye; "but she won't come away with the rest of us--absolutely refuses to budge."

And with that he was off, leaving me wondering about the girl who had at one time occupied so much of my mind, but of late had had so little of it. During the next few hours I wove quite a pretty story round Sylvia's refusal to accompany her family. I even thought of her as joining Constance Grey's nursing corps.

The thought of this development of Sylvia Wheeler's character interested me so much that I wrote to her that evening, tentatively sympathizing with her determination not to be frightened away from her own place. The whole thing was a curious misapprehension on my part; but Sylvia's reply (explaining that it was her particular place of worship she refused to leave, and that she was staying "with his Reverence's sister"), though written within twenty-four hours, did not reach me until after many days--days such as England will never face again.

XIX

THE TRAGIC WEEK

England can never have an efficient army during peace, and she must, therefore, accept the rebuffs and calamities which are always in store for the nation that is content to follow the breed of cowards who usually direct her great affairs. The day will come when she will violently and suddenly lose her former fighting renown to such an unmistakable extent that the plucky fishwives will march upon Downing Street, and if they can catch its usual inmates, will rend them. One party is as bad as the other, and I hope and pray that when the national misfortune of a great defeat at sea overtakes us, followed by the invasion of England, that John Bull will turn and rend the jawers and talkers who prevent us from being prepared to meet invasion.--_From a letter written by Lord Wolsley, ex-Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, to Lord Wemyss, and published, and ignored by the public, in the year 1906._

It is no part of my intention to make any attempt to limp after the historians of the Invasion. The Official History, the half-dozen of standard military treatises, and the well-known works of Low, Forster, Gordon, and others, have allowed few details of the Invasion to escape unrecorded. But I confess it has always seemed to me that these writers gave less attention to the immediate aftermath of the Invasion than that curious period demanded. Yet here was surely a case in which effect was of vastly more importance than cause, and aftermath than crisis. But perhaps I take that view because I am no historian.

To the non-expert mind, the most bewildering and extraordinary feature of that disastrous time was the amazing speed with which crisis succeeded crisis, and events, each of themselves epoch-making in character, crashed one upon another throughout the progress toward Black Saturday. We know now that much of this fury of haste which was so bewildering at the time, which certainly has no parallel in history, was due to the perfection of Germany's long-laid plans. Major-General Farquarson, in his "Military History of the Invasion," says:

"It may be doubted whether in all the history of warfare anything so scientifically perfect as the preparations for this attack can be found. It is safe to say that every inch of General von Fuechter's progress was mapped out in Berlin long months before it came to astound and horrify England. The maps and plans in the possession of the German staff were masterpieces of cartographical science and art. The German Army knew almost to a bale of hay what provender lay between London and the coast, and where it was stored; and certainly their knowledge of East Anglia far exceeded that of our own authorities. The world has never seen a quicker blow struck; it has seldom seen a blow so crushingly severe; it has not often seen one so aggressively unjustifiable. And, be it noted, that down to the last halter and the least fragment of detail, the German Army was provided with every conceivable aid to success--_in duplicate_.

"Never in any enterprise known to history was less left to chance. The German War Office left nothing at all to chance, not even its conception--a certainty really--of Britain's amazing unreadiness. And the German Army took no risks. A soldier's business, whether he be private or Field Marshal, is, after all, to obey orders. It would be both foolish and unjust to blame General von Fuechter. But the fact remains that no victorious army ever risked less by generosity than the invading German Army. Its tactics were undoubtedly ruthless; they were the tactics necessitated by the orders of the Chief of the Army. They were more severe, more crushing, than any that have ever been adopted even by a punitive expedition under British colours. They were successful. For that they were intended. Swiftness and thoroughness were of the essence of the contract.

"With regard to their humanity or morality I am not here concerned. But it should always be remembered by critics that British apathy and neglect made British soil a standing temptation to the invader. The invasion was entirely unprovoked, so far as direct provocation goes. But who shall say it was entirely undeserved, or even unforeseen, by advisers whom the nation chose to ignore? This much is certain: Black Saturday and the tragic events leading up to it were made possible, not so much by the skill and forethought of the enemy, which were notable, as by a state of affairs in England which made that day one of shame and humiliation, as well as a day of national mourning. No just recorder may hope to escape that fact."

In London, the gravest aspect of that tragic week was the condition of the populace. It is supposed that over two million people flocked into the capital during the first three days. And the prices of the necessities of life were higher in London than anywhere else in the country. The Government measures for relief were ill-considered and hopelessly inadequate. But, in justice to "The Destroyers," it must be remembered that leading authorities have said that adequate measures were impossible, from sheer lack of material.

During one day--I think it was Wednesday--huge armies of the hungry unemployed--nine-tenths of our wage-earners were unemployed--were set to work upon entrenchments in the north of London. But there was no sort of organization, and most of the men streamed back into the town that night, unpaid, unfed, and sullenly resentful.

Then, like cannon shots, came the reports of the fall of York, Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, Hull, and Huddersfield, and the apparently wanton demolition of Norwich Cathedral. The sinking of the _Dreadnought_ near the Nore was known in London within the hour. Among the half-equipped regulars who were hurried up from the southwest, I saw dozens of men intercepted in the streets by the hungry crowds, and hustled into leaving their fellows.

Then came Friday's awful "surrender riot" at Westminster, a magnificent account of which gives Martin's big work its distinctive value. I had left Constance Grey's flat only half an hour before the riot began, and when I reached Trafalgar Square there was no space between that and the Abbey in which a stone could have been dropped without falling upon a man or a woman. There were women in that maddened throng, and some of them, crying hoarsely in one breath for surrender and for bread, were suckling babies.

No Englishman who witnessed it could ever forget that sight. The Prime Minister's announcement that the surrender should be made came too late. The panic and hunger-maddened incendiaries had been at work. Smoke was rising already from Downing Street and the back of the Treasury. Then came the carnage. One can well believe that not a single unnecessary bullet was fired. Not to believe that would be to saddle those in authority with a less than human baseness. But the question history puts is: Who was primarily to blame for the circumstances which led up to the tragic necessity of the firing order?

Posterity has unanimously laid the blame upon the Administration of that day, and assuredly the task of whitewashing "The Destroyers" would be no light or pleasant one. But, again, we must remind ourselves that the essence of the British Constitution has granted to us always, for a century past at least, as good a Government as we have deserved. "The Destroyers" may have brought shame and humiliation upon England. Unquestionably, measures and acts of theirs produced those effects. But who and what produced "The Destroyers" as a Government? The only possible answer to that is, in the first place, the British public; in the second place, the British people's selfish apathy and neglect, where national duty and responsibility were concerned, and blindly selfish absorption, in the matter of its own individual interests and pleasures.

One hundred and thirty-two men, women, and children killed, and three hundred and twenty-eight wounded; the Treasury buildings and the official residence of the Prime Minister gutted; that was the casualty list of the "Surrender Riot" at Westminster. But the figures do not convey a tithe of the horror, the unforgettable shame and horror, of the people's attack upon the Empire's sanctuary. The essence of the tragedy lay in their demand for immediate and unconditional surrender; the misery of it lay in "The Destroyers'" weak, delayed, terrified response, followed almost immediately by the order to those in charge of the firing parties--an order flung hysterically at last, the very articulation of panic.

No one is likely to question Martin's assertion that Friday's tragedy at Westminster must be regarded--"not alone as the immediate cause of Black Saturday's national humiliation, but also as the crucial phase, the pivot upon which the development of the whole disastrous week turned." But the Westminster Riot at least had the saving feature of unpremeditation. It was, upon the one side, the outcry of a wholly undisciplined, hungry, and panic-smitten public; and, upon the other side, the irresponsible, more than half-hysterical action of a group of terrified and incompetent politicians. These men had been swept into great positions, which they were totally unfitted to fill, by a tidal wave of reactionary public feeling, and of the blind selfishness of a decadence born of long freedom from any form of national discipline; of liberties too easily won and but half-understood; of superficial education as to rights, and abysmal ignorance as to duties.

But, while fully admitting the soundness of Martin's verdict, for my