Chapter 5
not perhaps more shocking, but certainly more humiliating and disgraceful to England, than the picture burnt into my mind by the Westminster Riot. I will mention two of these.
By Wednesday a large proportion of the rich residents of Western London had left the capital to take its chances, while they sought the security of country homes, more particularly in the southwestern counties. Such thoroughfares as Piccadilly, Regent Street, and Bond Street were no longer occupied by well-dressed people with plenty of money to spend. Their usual patrons were for the most part absent; but, particularly at night, they were none the less very freely used--more crowded, indeed, than ever before. The really poor, the desperately hungry people, had no concern whatever with the wrecking of the famous German restaurants and beer-halls. They were not among the Regent Street and Piccadilly promenaders.
The Londoners who filled these streets at night--the people who sacked the Leicester Square hotel and took part in the famous orgy which Blackburn describes as "unequalled in England since the days of the Plague, or in Europe since the French Revolution"; these people were not at all in quest of food. They were engaged upon a mad pursuit of pleasure and debauchery and drink. "Eat, drink, and be vicious; but above all, drink and be vicious; for this is the end of England!" That was their watchword.
I have no wish to repeat Blackburn's terrible stories of rapine and bestiality, of the frenzy of intoxication, and the blind savagery of these Saturnalias. In their dreadful nakedness they stand for ever in the pages of his great book, a sinister blur, a fiery warning, writ large across the scroll of English history. I only wish to say that scenes I actually saw with my own eyes (one episode in trying to check the horror of which I lost two fingers and much blood), prove beyond all question to me that, even in its most lurid and revolting passages, Blackburn's account is a mere record of fact, and not at all, as some apologists have sought to show, an exaggerated or overheated version of these lamentable events.
Regarded as an indication of the pass we had reached at this period of our decadence, this stage of our trial by fire, the conduct of the crowds in Western London during those dreadful nights, impressed me more forcibly than the disaster which Martin considers the climax and pivot of the week's tragedy.
One does not cheerfully refer to these things, but, to be truthful, I must mention the other matter which produced upon me, personally, the greatest sense of horror and disgrace.
Military writers have described for us most fully the circumstances in which General Lord Wensley's command was cut and blown to pieces in the Epping and Romford districts. Authorities are agreed that the records of civilized warfare have nothing more horrible to tell than the history of that ghastly butchery. As a slaughter, there was nothing exactly like it in the Russo-Japanese war--for we know that there were less than a hundred survivors of the whole of Lord Wensley's command. But those who mourned the loss of these brave men had a consolation of which nothing could rob them; the consolation which is graven in stone upon the Epping monument; a consolation preserved as well in German as in English history. Germany may truthfully say of the Epping shambles that no quarter was given that day. England may say, with what pride she may, that none was asked. The last British soldier slaughtered in the Epping trenches had no white flag in his hand, but a broken bayonet, and, under his knee, the Colours of his regiment.
The British soldiers in those blood-soaked trenches were badly armed, less than half-trained, under-officered, and of a low physical standard. But these lamentable facts had little or nothing to do with their slaughter. There were but seven thousand of them, while the German force has been variously estimated at between seventy thousand and one hundred thousand horse and foot, besides artillery. One need not stop to question who should bear the blame for the half-trained, vilely equipped condition of these heroic victims. The far greater question, to which the only answer can be a sad silence of remorse and bitter humiliation, bears upon the awful needlessness of their sacrifice.
The circumstances have been described in fullest detail from authentic records. The stark fact which stands out before the average non-expert observer is that Lord Wensley was definitely promised reinforcements to the number of twenty thousand horse and foot; that after the Westminster Riot not a single man or horse reached him; _and he was never informed of the Government's forced decision to surrender_.
And thus those half-trained boys and men laid down their lives for England within a dozen miles of Westminster, almost twelve hours after a weak-kneed, panic-stricken Cabinet had passed its word to the people that England would surrender.
That, to my thinking, was the most burning feature of our disgrace; that, as an indication of our parlous estate, is more terrible than Martin's "pivot" of the tragic week.
XX
BLACK SATURDAY
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men.
WORDSWORTH.
In the afternoon of Black Saturday, General von Fuechter, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army in England, took up his quarters, with his staff, in the residence of the German Ambassador to the Court of St. James in Carlton House Terrace, and, so men said, enjoyed the first sleep he had had for a week. (The German Ambassador had handed in his credentials, and been escorted out of England on the previous Monday.)
Throughout the small hours of Saturday morning I was at work near Romford as one of the volunteer bearers attached to Constance Grey's nursing corps. That is one reason why the memory of the north of London massacre will never leave me. One may assume that the German Army had no wish to kill nurses, but, as evidence of the terrible character of the onslaught on the poor defences of London, I may recall the fact that three of our portable nursing shelters were blown to pieces; while of Constance Grey's nurses alone five were killed and fourteen were badly wounded.
Myself, I had much to be thankful for, my only wound being the ploughing of a little furrow over the biceps of my right arm by a bullet that passed out through the back of my coat. But a circumstance for which my gratitude was more deeply moved was the fact that Constance Grey, despite a number of wonderfully narrow escapes, was entirely uninjured.
The actual entry of General von Fuechter and his troops into London has been so often described that nothing remains for me to say about that. Also, I am unable to speak as an eye witness, since Constance Grey and myself were among those who returned to London, in the rear of the German troops, with the ambulances. The enemy's line of communications stretched now from the Wash to London, and between Brentwood and London there were more Germans than English. I believe the actual number of troops which entered London behind General von Fuechter was under forty-eight thousand; but to the northward, northeast, and northwest the huge force which really invested the capital was spread in careful formation, and amply provided with heavy artillery, then trained upon central London from all such points as the Hampstead heights.
Although a formal note of surrender had been conveyed to General von Fuechter at Romford, _after_ the annihilation of our entrenched troops, occasional shots were fired upon the enemy as they entered London. Indeed, in the Whitechapel Road, one of the General's aides-de-camp, riding within a few yards of his chief, was killed by a shot from the upper windows of a provision shop. But the German reprisals were sharp. It is said that fifty-seven lives paid the penalty for the shooting of that aide-de-camp. Several streets of houses in northeast London were burned.
By this time the Lord Mayor of London had been notified that serious results would accrue if any further opposition were offered to the German acceptance of London's surrender; and proclamations to that effect were posted everywhere. But the great bulk of London's inhabitants were completely cowed by hunger and terror. Practically, it may be said that, throughout, the only resistance offered to the Army of the invaders was that which ended so tragically in the trenches beyond Epping and Romford, with the equally tragical defence of Colchester, and some of the northern towns captured by the eighth German Army Corps.
In London the people's demand from the first had been for unconditional surrender. It was this demand which had culminated in the Westminster Riot. The populace was so entirely undisciplined, so completely lacking in the sort of training which makes for self-restraint, that even if the Government had been possessed of an efficient striking force for defensive purposes, the public would not have permitted its proper utilization. The roar of German artillery during Friday night and Saturday morning, with the news of the awful massacre in the northern entrenchments, had combined to extinguish the last vestige of desire for resistance which remained in London.
Almost all the people with money had left the capital. Those remaining--the poor, the refugees from northward, irresponsibles, people without a stake of any kind; these desired but the one thing: food and safety. The German Commander-in-Chief was wise. He knew that if time had been allowed, resistance would have been organized, even though the British regular Army had, by continuous reductions in the name of "economy," practically ceased to exist as a striking force. And therefore time was the one thing he had been most determined to deny England.
It is said that fatigue killed more German soldiers than fell to British bullets; and the fact may well be believed when we consider the herculean task General von Fuechter had accomplished in one week. His plan of campaign was to strike his hardest, and to keep on striking his hardest, without pause, till he had the British Government on its knees before him; till he had the British public--maddened by sudden fear, and the panic which blows of this sort must bring to a people with no defensive organization, and no disciplinary training--cowed and crying for quarter.
The German Commander has been called inhuman, a monster, a creature without bowels. All that is really of small importance. He was a soldier who carried out orders. His orders were ruthless orders. The instrument he used was a very perfect one. He carried out his orders with the utmost precision and thoroughness; and his method was the surest, quickest, and, perhaps, the only way of taking possession of England.
At noon precisely, the Lord Mayor of London was brought before the German Commander-in-Chief in the audience chamber of the Mansion House, and formally placed under arrest. A triple cordon of sentries and two machine-gun parties were placed in charge of the Bank of England, and quarters were allotted for two German regiments in the immediate vicinity. Two machine-guns were brought into position in front of the Stock Exchange, and all avenues leading from the heart of the City were occupied by mixed details of cavalry and infantry, each party having one machine-gun.
My acquaintance, Wardle, of the _Sunday News_, was in the audience chamber of the Mansion House at this time, and he says that he never saw a man look more exhausted than General von Fuechter, who, according to report, had not had an hour's sleep during the week. But though the General's cheeks were sunken, his chin unshaven, and his eyes blood-red, his demeanour was that of an iron man--stern, brusque, taciturn, erect, and singularly immobile.
Food was served to this man of blood and iron in the Mansion House, while the Lord Mayor's secretary proceeded to Whitehall, with word to the effect that the Commander-in-Chief of the German forces in England awaited the sword and formal surrender of the British Commander, before proceeding to take up quarters in which he would deal with peace negotiations.
Forster's great work, "The Surrender," gives the finest description we have of the scene that followed. The Field Marshal in command of the British forces had that morning been sent for by a Cabinet Council then being held in the Prime Minister's room at the House of Commons. With nine members of his staff, the white-haired Field Marshal rode slowly into the City, in full uniform. His instructions were for unconditional surrender, and a request for the immediate consideration of the details of peace negotiations.
The Field Marshal had once been the most popular idol of the British people, whom he had served nobly in a hundred fights. Of late years he himself had been as completely disregarded, as the grave warnings, the earnest appeals, which he had bravely continued to urge upon a neglectful people. The very Government which now despatched him upon the hardest task of his whole career, the tendering of his sword to his country's enemy, had for long treated him with cold disfavour. The general public, in its anti-national madness, had sneered at this great little man, their one-time hero, as a Jingo crank.
(As an instance of the lengths to which the public madness went in this matter, the curious will find in the British Museum copies of at least one farcical work of fiction written and published with considerable success, as burlesques of that very invasion which had now occurred, of the possibility of which this loyal servant in particular had so earnestly and so unavailingly warned his countrymen.)
Now, the blow he had so often foreshadowed had fallen; the capital of the British Empire was actually in possession of an enemy; and the British leader knew himself for a Commander without an Army.
He had long since given his only son to the cause of Britain's defence. The whole of his own strenuous life had been devoted to the same cause. His declining years had known no ease by reason of his unceasing and thankless striving to awaken his fellow countrymen to a sense of their military responsibilities. Now he felt that the end of all things had come for him, in the carrying out of an order which snapped his life's work in two, and flung it down at the feet of England's almost unopposed conqueror.
The understanding Englishman has forgiven General von Fuechter much, by virtue of his treatment of the noble old soldier, who with tear-blinded eyes and twitching lips tendered him the surrender of the almost non-existent British Army. No man ever heard a speech from General von Fuechter, but the remark with which he returned our Field Marshal's sword to him will never be forgotten in England. He said, in rather laboured English, with a stiff, low bow:
"Keep it, my lord. If your countrymen had not forgotten how to recognize a great soldier, I could never have demanded it of you."
And the man of iron saluted the heart-broken Chief of the shattered British Army.
We prefer not to believe the report that this, the German Commander's one act of gentleness and magnanimity in England, was subsequently paid for by the loss of a certain Imperial decoration. But, if the story was true, then the decoration it concerned was well lost.
It was a grim, war-stained procession that followed General von Fuechter when, between two and three o'clock, he rode with his staff by way of Ludgate Hill and the Strand to Carlton House Terrace. But the cavalry rode with drawn sabres, the infantry marched with fixed bayonets, and, though weariness showed in every line of the men's faces, there was as yet no sign of relaxed tension.
Throughout that evening and night the baggage wagons rumbled through London, without cessation, to the two main western encampments in Hyde Park. The whole of Pall Mall and Park Lane were occupied by German officers that night, few of the usual occupants of the clubs in the one thoroughfare, or the residences in the other, being then in London.
By four o'clock General von Fuechter's terms were in the hands of the Government which had now completed its earning of the title of "The Destroyers." The Chief Commissioner of Police and the principal municipal authorities of greater London had all been examined during the day at the House of Commons, and were unanimous in their verdict that any delay in the arrangement of peace and the resumption of trade, ashore and afloat, could mean only revolution. Whole streets of shops had been sacked and looted already by hungry mobs, who gave no thought to the invasion or to any other matter than the question of food supply. A great, lowering crowd of hungry men and women occupied Westminster Bridge and the southern embankment (no German soldiers had been seen south of the Thames) waiting for the news of the promised conclusion of peace terms.
There is not wanting evidence that certain members of the Government had already bitterly repented of their suicidal retrenchment and anti-defensive attitude in the past. But repentance had come too late. The Government stood between a hungry, terrified populace demanding peace and food, and a mighty and victorious army whose commander, acting upon the orders of his Government, offered peace at a terrible price, or the absolute destruction of London. For General von Fuechter's brief memorandum of terms alluded threateningly to the fact that his heavy artillery was so placed that he could blow the House of Commons into the river in an hour.
At six o'clock the German terms were accepted, a provisional declaration of peace was signed, and public proclamations to that effect, embodying reference to the deadly perils which would be incurred by those taking part in any kind of street disorder, were issued to the public. As to the nature of the German terms, it must be admitted that they were as pitiless as the German tactics throughout the invasion, and as surely designed to accomplish their end and object. Berlin had not forgotten the wonderful recuperative powers which enabled France to rise so swiftly from out of the ashes of 1870. Britain was to be far more effectually crippled.
The money indemnity demanded by General von Fuechter was the largest ever known: one thousand million pounds sterling. But it must be remembered that the enemy already held the Bank of England. One hundred millions, or securities representing that amount, were to be handed over within twenty-four hours. The remaining nine hundred millions were to be paid in nine annual instalments of one hundred millions each, the first of which must be paid within three months. Until the last payment was made, German troops were to occupy Glasgow, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Devonport, Chatham, Yarmouth, Harwich, Hull, and Newcastle. The Transvaal was to be ceded to the Boers under a German Protectorate. Britain was to withdraw all pretensions regarding Egypt and Morocco, and to cede to Germany, Gibraltar, Malta, Ceylon, and British West Africa.
It is not necessary for me to quote the few further details of the most exacting demands a victor ever made upon a defeated enemy. There can be no doubt that, in the disastrous circumstances they had been so largely instrumental in bringing about, "The Destroyers" had no choice, no alternative from their acceptance of these crushing terms.
And thus it was that--not at the end of a long and hard-fought war, as the result of vast misfortunes or overwhelming valour on the enemy's side, but simply as the result of the condition of utter and lamentable defencelessness into which a truckling Government and an undisciplined, blindly selfish people had allowed England to lapse--the greatest, wealthiest Power in civilization was brought to its knees in the incredibly short space of one week, by the sudden but scientifically devised onslaught of a single ambitious nation, ruled by a monarch whose lack of scruples was more than balanced by his strength of purpose.
XXI
ENGLAND ASLEEP
Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth.
LOWELL.
General von Fuechter and his splendidly trained troops were not the only people in England for whom the mere fatigue of that week was something not easily to be forgotten. My impression of its last three days is that they brought no period of rest for any one. I know that there were as many people in the streets by night as by day. The act of going within doors or sitting down, seemed in some way to be a kind of cowardice, a species of shirking, or disloyalty.
I remember Constance Grey assuring me that she had lain down for an hour on Thursday. I can say with certainty that we were both of us on our feet from that time until after the terms of the surrender were made known on Saturday evening. I can also say that no thought of this matter of physical weariness occurred to me until that period of Saturday evening--soon after seven o'clock it was--when the proclamations were posted up in Whitehall, and the special issues of the newspapers containing the peace announcements began to be hawked.
An issue of the _Standard_, a single sheet, with broad black borders, was the first press announcement to reach the public; and it contained a grave, closely reasoned address from the most famous statesman of the Opposition, urging upon the public the need vital of exercising the utmost cautiousness and self-restraint.
"England has been stricken to the earth," said this dignified statement. "Her condition is critical. If the injury sustained is not to prove mortal, the utmost circumspection is required at this moment. The immediate duty of every loyal subject is quietly to concentrate his energies for the time upon the restoration of normal conditions. In that way only can our suffering country be given that breathing space which is the first step toward recuperation. For my part, I can conceive of no better, quicker method for the individual of serving this end than for him to make the speediest possible return to the pursuit of his ordinary avocation in life. It is to be hoped that, bearing in mind our urgent need, all employers of labour will do their utmost to provide immediate occupation for their work-people. It is not in the tragic catastrophe of the past week, but in the ordeal of this moment, of the coming days, that the real test of England's endurance lies. Never before was her need so great; never before has Nelson's demand had so real and intimate a message for each and every one of us. I pray God the response may ring true. 'England expects that every man will do his duty!'"
I must not omit my tribute to those responsible for the salient fact that this important issue of the journal whose unwavering Imperialism had been scoffed at in the mad times before the Invasion, was not sold, but distributed. Employment was found for hundreds of hungry men, women, and children in its free distribution; their wage being the thing they most desired: bread, with soup, which, as I learned that night, was prepared in huge coppers in the foundry of the printing works.
I was with Constance Grey in Trafalgar Square when the news of the accepted terms of peace reached us. We had just secured admission into Charing Cross Hospital--not without considerable difficulty, for its wards were crowded--for two wounded nurses from Epping. Together we read the news, and when the end was reached it seemed to me that the light of life and energy passed suddenly out of my companion. She seemed to suffer some bodily change and loss, to be bereft of her spring and erectness.
"Ah, well," she said, "I am very tired, Dick; and, do you know, it occurs to me I have had nothing to eat since yesterday afternoon. I wonder can we get away from these men, anywhere?"
The streets between Victoria and Hyde Park were lined by German cavalry men, who sat motionless on their chargers, erect and soldierly, but, in many cases, fast asleep.
We began to walk eastward, looking for some place in which we could rest and eat. But every place seemed to be closed.
"How long have you been on your feet?" said Constance, as we passed the Law Courts.
"Only since Thursday evening," I said. "I had a long rest in that cart, you remember--the one I brought the lint and bandages in."
Just then we passed a tailor's shop-window, and, in a long, narrow strip of mirror I caught a full-length reflection of myself. I positively turned swiftly to see who could have cast that reflection. Four days without shaving and without a change of collar; two days without even washing my hands or face; four days without undressing, and eight hours' work beside the North London entrenchments--these experiences had made a wild-looking savage of me, and, until that moment, I had never thought of my appearance.
Smoke, earth, and blood had worked their will upon me. My left hand, from which two fingers were missing, was swathed in blackened bandages. My right coat-sleeve had been cut off by a good-natured fellow who had bandaged the flesh wound in my arm to stop its bleeding. My eyes glinted dully in a black face, with curious white fringes round them, where their moisture had penetrated my skin of smoked dirt. And here was I walking beside Constance Grey!
Then I realized, for the first time, that Constance herself bore many traces of these last few terrible days. In some mysterious fashion her face and collar seemed to have escaped scot free; but her dress was torn, ragged, and stained; and the intense weariness of her expression was something I found it hard to bear.
Just then we met Wardle of the _Sunday News_, and he told us of the bread and soup distribution in the _Standard_ office. Something warned me that Constance had reached the limit of her endurance, and, in another moment, she had reeled against me and almost fallen. I took her in my arms, and Wardle walked beside me, up a flight of stairs and into the office of the great newspaper. There I walked into the first room I saw--the sanctum of some managerial bashaw, for aught I knew--and placed Constance comfortably in a huge easy chair of green leather.
Wardle brought some water, for Constance was in a fainting state still; but I hurried him off again to look for bread and soup. Meantime I lowered Constance to the floor, having just remembered that in such a case the head should be kept low. Her face was positively deathly--lips, cheeks, all alike gray-white, save for the purple hollows under both eyes. One moment I was taking stock of these things, as a doctor might; the next I was on my knees and kissing the nerveless hand at her side, all worn and bruised and stained as it was from her ceaseless strivings of the past week. I knew then that, for me, though I should live a hundred years and Constance should never deign to speak to me again, there was but one woman in the world.
I am afraid Wardle found me at the same employ; but, though I remember vaguely resenting his fresh linen and normally smart appearance, he was a good fellow, and knew when to seem blind. All he said was:
"Here's the soup!"
He had brought a small wash-hand basin full to the brim, and a loaf of warm, new bread. As the steam of the hot soup reached me, I realized that I was a very hungry animal, whatever else I might be besides. It may have been the steam of the soup that rallied Constance. I know that within two minutes I was feeding her with it from a cracked teacup. It is a wonderful thing to watch the effect of a few mouthfuls of hot soup upon an exhausted woman, whose exhaustion is due as much to lack of food as need of rest. There was no spoon, but the teacup, though cracked, was clean, and I found a tumbler in a luxurious little cabinet near the chair one felt was dedicated to the Fleet Street magnate whose room we had invaded. A tumbler is almost as convenient to drink soup from as a cup, but requires more careful manipulation when hot. If the side of the tumbler becomes soupy, it can easily be wiped with the crumb of new bread.
Wardle seemed to be as sufficiently nourished as he was neatly dressed; but he found a certain vicarious pleasure, I think, in watching Constance and myself at the bowl. We sat on the Turkey carpet, and used the seat of the green chair as a table--a strange meal, in strange surroundings; but a better I never had, before or since. There was a physical gratification, a warmth and a comfort to me, in watching the colour flowing gradually back into Constance's face; a singularly beautiful process of nature I thought it. Presently the door of the room opened with a jerk, and a tallish man wearing a silk hat looked in.
"H'm!" he said brusquely. "Beg pardon!" And he was gone. I learned afterwards that the room belonged to him, and that he came direct from a conference of newspaper pundits called together at Westminster by the Home Secretary. I do not know where he took refuge, but as for us we went on with our soup and bread till repletion overtook us, as it quickly does after long fasts, and renewed strength brought sighs of contentment.
"Wardle," I remember saying to my journalistic friend, with absurd earnestness, "have you anything to smoke?"
"I haven't a thing but my pipe," he said. "But wait a moment! There used to be--yes. Look here!"
There was a drawer in a side-table near the great writing-table, and one division of it was half-full of cigarettes, the other of Upman's "Torpedoes."
"I will repay thee," I murmured irreverently, as I helped myself to one of each, and lit the cigarette, having obtained permission from Constance. It was the first tobacco I had tasted for forty-eight hours, and I was a very regular smoker. I had not known my need till then, a fact which will tell much to smokers.
"And now?" said Constance. Her eyelids were drooping heavily.
"Now I am going to take you straight out to South Kensington, and you are going to rest."
I had never used quite that tone to Constance before. I think, till now, hers had been the guiding and directing part. Yet her influence had never been stronger upon me than at that moment.
"Well, of course, there are no cabs or omnibuses," said Wardle, "but a man told me the Underground was running trains at six o'clock."
We had a long, long wait at Blackfriars' station, but a train came eventually, and we reached the flat in South Kensington as a neighbouring church clock struck ten. The journey was curious and impressive from first to last. Fleet Street had been very much alive still when we left it; and we saw long files of baggage wagons rumbling along between Prussian lancers. But Blackfriars was deserted, the ticket collector slept soundly on his box; the streets in South Kensington were silent as the grave.
London slept that night for the first time in a week. I learned afterwards how the long lines of German sentries in Pall Mall, Park Lane, and elsewhere slept solidly at their posts; how the Metropolitan police slept on their beats; how thousands of men, women, and children slept in the streets of South London, whither they had fled panic-stricken that morning. Conquerors and conquered together, the whole vast city slept that night as never perhaps before or since. After a week of terror, of effort, of despair, and of debauchery, the sorely stricken capital of the British Empire lay that night like a city of the dead. England and her invaders were worn out.
At the flat we found Mrs. Van Homrey placidly knitting.
"Well, young folk," she said cheerily; "I've had all the news, and there's nothing to be said; and--there's bath and bed waiting for you, Conny. I shall bring you something hot in your room."
Ah, the kindly comfort of that motherly soul's words! It was but a few hours since her "Conny" had stood by my side on ground that was literally blood-soaked. Since the previous night we had both seen Death in his most terrible guise; Death swinging his dripping scythe through scores of lives at a stroke. We had been in England's riven heart throughout the day of England's bitterest humiliation; and Mrs. Van Homrey had bed and bath waiting, with "something hot" for Constance to take in her room.
"But, Aunty, if you could have seen----"
"Dear child, I know it all." She patted her niece's shoulder, and I noticed the rings and the shiny softness of her fingers. She saw at a glance--indeed, had seen beforehand, in anticipation--the wrought-up, exhausted condition Constance had reached. "I know it all, dear," she said soothingly. "But the time has come for rest now. Nothing else is any good till that is done with. Come, child. God will send better days for England. First, we must rest."
So Constance turned to leave the room.
"And you?" she said to me.
"I will see to him. You run along, my dear," said her aunt. So Constance took my hand.
"Good night, Dick. You have been very good and kind, and--patient. Good night!"
There was no spare bedroom in that little flat, but the dear old lady had actually made up a bed for me on a couch in the drawing-room, and before she retired for the night she made me free of the bathroom, and supplied me with towels and such like matters, and gave me cake and cocoa; a delicious repast I thought it. And so, while crushed and beaten London lay sleeping off its exhaustion, I slept under Constance Grey's roof, full of gratitude, and of a kind of new hope and gladness, very foreign, one would have said, to my gruesome experiences of the past forty-eight hours.
England, the old victorious island kingdom, bequeathed to us by Raleigh, Drake, Nelson; the nineteenth-century England of triumphant commercialism; England till then inviolate for a thousand years; rich and powerful beyond all other lands; broken now under the invader's heel--that ancient England slept.